worked both as men and as writers. It has sometimes been questioned
whether Dryden is a poet. Few would dispute that Milton divides with
Shakespeare the supremacy in English poetry. In Dryden as a man there is
little to attract or interest us. In character and in private life he
appears to have been perfectly commonplace. We close his biography, and
our curiosity is satisfied. With Milton it is far otherwise. We feel
instinctively that he belongs to the demi-gods of our race. We have the
same curiosity about him as we have about Homer, Aeschylus, and
Shakespeare, so that the merest trifles which throw any light on his
personality assume an interest altogether out of proportion to their
intrinsic importance. Our debt to Ellwood is, it must be admitted, much
less than it might have been, if he had thought a little more of Milton
and a little less of his somewhat stupid self and the sect to which he
belonged. But, as the proverb says, we must not look a gift-horse in the
mouth, and we are the richer for the Quaker's reminiscences. With
Ellwood's work, the _History of Thomas Ellwood, written by Himself_, we
are only concerned so far as it bears on his relation with Milton. Born
in 1639, the son of a small squire and justice of the peace at Crowell in
Oxfordshire, Ellwood had, in 1659, been persuaded by Edward Burrough, one
of the most distinguished of Fox's followers, to join the Quakers. He was
in his twenty-fourth year when he first met Milton. Milton was then living
in Jewin Street, having removed from his former lodging in Holborn, most
probably in the autumn of 1661. The restoration had terminated his work
as a controversialist and politician. For a short time his life had been
in peril, but he had received a pardon, and could at least live in peace.
He could no longer be of service as a patriot, and was now occupied with
the composition of _Paradise Lost_. Since 1650 he had been blind, and for
study and recreation was dependent on assistance. Having little domestic
comfort as a widower, he had just married his third wife.