ight supper, sometimes of olives, which we may well imagine fraught
for him with Tuscan memories, a pipe, and a glass of water. This picture
of plain living and high thinking is confirmed by the testimony of the
Quaker Thomas Ellwood, who for a short time read to him, and who
describes the kindness of his demeanour, and the pains he took to teach
the foreign method of pronouncing Latin. Even more; "having a curious
ear, he understood by my tone when I understood what I read and when I
did not, and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most
difficult passages to me." Milton must have felt a special tenderness
for the Quakers, whose religious opinions, divested of the shell of
eccentricity which the vulgar have always mistaken for the kernel, had
become substantially his own. He had outgrown Independency as formerly
Presbyterianism. His blindness served to excuse his absence from public
worship; to which, so long at least as Clarendon's intolerance prevailed
in the councils of Charles the Second, might be added the difficulty of
finding edification in the pulpit, had he needed it. But these reasons,
though not imaginary, were not those which really actuated him. He had
ceased to value rites and forms of any kind, and, had his religious
views been known, he would have been "equalled in fate" with his
contemporary Spinoza. Yet he was writing a book which orthodox
Protestantism has accepted as but a little lower than the Scriptures.

"The kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation." We know but little
of the history of the greatest works of genius. That something more than
usual should be known of "Paradise Lost" must be ascribed to the
author's blindness, and consequent dependence upon amanuenses. When
inspiration came upon him any one at hand would be called upon to
preserve the precious verses, hence the progress of the poem was known
to many, and Phillips can speak of "parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty
verses at a time." We have already heard from him that Milton's season
of inspiration lasted from the autumnal equinox to the vernal: the
remainder of the year doubtless contributed much to the matter of his
poem, if nothing to the form. His habits of composition appear to be
shadowed forth by himself in the induction to the Third Book:--

"Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit--"

"Then feed on thoughts that voluntary mov