been laid to rest with the three now in the churchyard.

Before Milton had served his seven years' apprenticeship at Cambridge, his
parents moved to the village of Horton--twenty miles out of London,
Windsor way.

The village of Horton has not changed much with the years, and a tramp
across the fields from Eton by way of Burnham Beeches and Stoke Pogis,
where Gray wrote "The Elegy," is quite worth while. It is a land of lazy
woods, and winding streams and hedgerows melodious with birds. One treads
on storied ground, and if you wish you can recline beneath gnarled old
oaks where Milton mused and scribbled, and wrote the first draft of "L'
Allegro" and "Il Penseroso."

Milton loitered here at Horton for six years, and in that time produced
just six poems.

He was thirty-two years of age, and had never earned a sixpence. But what
booted it! His father and mother's home was his: they gladly supplied his
every want; and his mother, especially, was ever his kindly critic and
most intimate friend. His days were spent in study, dreams, lonely walks
across green fields, and homecomings when, with his mother's hand in his,
he would talk or recite to her in order to clarify the thought that
pressed upon him. Very calm, very peaceful and very beautiful were those
days. "The pensive attitude of mind brings the best result--not the
active," he used to say. It was then he wrote to his old friend, Diodati:
"You asked what I am about--what I am thinking of? Why, with God's help, I
am thinking of immortality. Forgive the word, it is for your ear alone--I
am pluming my wings for flight."