wife, by an habeas corpus, removed him to the King's Bench bar,
where (with the wonder of the court that a man should he so long
imprisoned for nothing) he was at last released in the year 1668."
"Paradise Lost" had appeared in the year before. Yet a sixth
imprisonment followed in 1670, when Penington, visiting some Friends
in Reading gaol, was seized and carried before Sir William Armorer,
a justice of the peace, who sent him back to share their sufferings.
Penington died in 1679.

Of Thomas Ellwood's experience as reader to Milton, and of Milton's
regard for the gentle Quaker, the book tells its own tale. I will
only add one comment upon an often-quoted incident that it contains.
When Milton gave his young friend--then twenty-six years old--the
manuscript of "Paradise Lost" to read, his desire could only have
been to learn what comprehension of his purpose there would be in a
young man sincerely religious, as intelligent as most, and with a
taste for verse, though not much of a poet. The observation Ellwood
made, of which he is proud because of its consequence, might well
cause Milton to be silent for a little while, and then change the
conversation. It showed that the whole aim of the poem had been
missed. Its crown is in the story of redemption, Paradise Found,
the better Eden, the "Paradise within thee, happier far." Milton
had applied his test, and learnt--what every great poet has to
learn--that he must trust more to the vague impression of truth,
beauty, and high thought, that can be made upon thousands of right-
hearted men and women, than to the clear, full understanding of his
work. The noblest aims of the true artist can make themselves felt
by all, though understood by few. Few know the secrets of the
sunshine, although all draw new life from the sun. When Milton--
who, with his habitual gentleness, never allowed Ellwood to suspect