must read to you what
Mary and I have this moment finished. It is a passage in the Life of
Thomas Elwood.' He then read to us the following extract:

'Some little time before I went to Alesbury prison, I was desired by my
quondam master, Milton, to take an house for him in the neighbourhood
where I dwell, that he might get out of the city, for the safety of
himself and his family, the pestilence then growing hot in London. I
took a pretty box for him in Giles-Chalford, a mile from me, of which I
gave him notice; and intended to have waited on him, and seen him well
settled in it, but was prevented by that imprisonment.

'But now being released, and returned home, I soon made a visit to him,
to welcome him into the country.

'After some common discourses had passed between us, he called for a
manuscript of his, which being brought, he delivered to me, bidding me
take it home with me and read it at my leisure; and when I had so done,
return it to him with my judgment thereupon.

'When I came home, and had set myself to read it, I found it was that
excellent poem which he entituled 'Paradise Lost.' After I had with the
best attention read it through, I made him another visit, and returned
him his book with due acknowledgment of the favour he had done me in
communicating it to me. He asked me how I liked it, and what I thought
of it, which I modestly, but freely told him; and after some further
discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, "Thou hast said much here
of Paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise found?" He made
me no answer, but sate some time in a muse; then brake off that
discourse, and fell upon another subject. After the sickness was over,
and the city well cleansed and become safely habitable again, he
returned thither; and when afterwards I went to wait on him there (which
I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions drew me to London), he
showed me his second poem, called "Paradise Regained;" and in a
pleasant tone said to me, "This is owing to you, for you put it into my
head by the question you put to me at Chalford, which before I had not
thought of." _But from this digression I return to the family I then
lived in.'_

Wordsworth was highly diverted with the _apology_ of the worthy Quaker,
for _the digression_, which has alone saved him from oblivion. He
offered to send us the old book, which came a few days after; and I
shall add another digression in favour of John Milton, to whom