is new leisure, he turned again at once to those three
labours which had been occupying him, at intervals, for so many
years, and which were, in fact, always in reserve as his favourite
hack-employments when he had nothing else to do--his compilations for
his intended _Thesaurus Linguae Latinae_, his _History of
Britain_, and his _Body of Biblical Theology_. The mere
mention of such works as again in progress in the house in Petty
France in the third or fourth year of Milton's blindness confirms
conclusively the other evidences that he had by this time overcome in
a remarkable manner the worst difficulties of his condition. One sees
him in his room, daily for hours together, with his readers and
amanuenses, directing them to this or that book on the shelves,
listening as they read the passages wanted, interrupting and
requiring another book, listening again, interrupting again, and so
at length dictating his notes, and giving cautions as to the keeping
of them. His different sets of papers, with the volumes most in use,
are familiar now even to his own touch in their places on the table
or the floor; and, when his amanuenses are gone, he can sit on by
himself, revising the day's work mentally, and projecting the sequel.
And so from day to day, with the variation of his afternoon exercise
in the garden, or the walk beyond it in some one's company into the
park or farther, or an occasional message from Thurloe on
office-business, or calls from friends singly or two or three
together, and always, of course, at intervals through the day, the
pleased contact of the blind hands with the stops of the organ.

Among the inmates of the house in Petty France in the latter part of
1655, besides the blind widower himself, were his three little orphan
girls, the eldest, Anne, but nine years of age, the second, Mary, but
seven, and the youngest, Deborah, only three. How they were tended no
one knows; but one fancies them seeing little of their father, and
left very much to the charge of servants. Two women-servants, with
perhaps a man or boy to wait on Milton personally, may have completed
the household, unless Milton's two nephews are to be reckoned as also
belonging to it.

That the nephews still hovered about Milton, and resided with him
occasionally, together or by turn, giving him their services as
amanuenses, appears to be certain. Edward Phillips was now
twenty-five years of age, and John Phillips twenty-four; but neither
of