or five in the morning, and, after hearing a chapter or two
from the Hebrew Bible and breakfasting, to have passed the five hours
before his midday dinner dictating or having some book read to him. In
the afternoon he would walk a little in his garden; all his life a
garden had been one of the things he would not do without. Then music
and more private study carried him on to an Horatian supper of olives
or other "light things"; and so to a pipe of tobacco, a glass of water
and bed. He drank but little wine, and that only with his meals. {79}
Such a way of life deserved a healthful old age, which, but for that
healthy man's disease the gout, he had, and a death such as he had, so
easy as to be imperceptible to the bystanders. That was on November 8,
1674. Four days later his body was buried in the church of St. Giles,
Cripplegate, where his grave may still be seen; the funeral being
accompanied by "all his learned and great friends in London, not
without a concourse of the vulgar."

By that time the battle of his life had been won. The astonishing
achievements of his last years had more than fulfilled the high promise
and proud words of his long distant youth. Perhaps no seven years in
all literary history provide a finer record of poetic genius triumphing
over difficulties external and internal than these last seven of
Milton's life from 1667 to 1674. They had their reward and not only
from posterity. There is a still lingering delusion, based chiefly on
the five pounds paid for the first edition of _Paradise Lost_, that
Milton's greatness was little recognized in his lifetime. The truth is
the exact reverse. He had far more chance of hearing his own praises,
if he cared for that, than most of the great English poets: than Keats
and Shelley, for instance; than Wordsworth, {80} at least till he was
old; nay, in all probability than Shakspeare himself. Which of them
heard the most popular poet of their day say of them anything at all
like Dryden's famous and generous "This man cuts us all out and the
ancients too"? It is not even true that _Paradise Lost_ sold badly.
On the contrary, in a year and a half from the day of publication over
thirteen hundred copies had been sold, from which the author received
10 pounds and the publisher, it is believed, 50 pounds or 60 pounds.
He would be a sanguine publisher to-day who would be quite certain of
making in eighteen months the modern equivalent of this sum, say 1