asked me how I liked it and what I thought of it, which I modestly but
freely told him; and, after some farther discourse about it, I pleasantly
said to him, 'Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost; what hast thou
to say of Paradise Found?' He made me no answer, but sat some time in a
muse; then brake off that discourse, and fell upon another subject."

"I modestly but freely told him what I thought" of Paradise Lost! What
he told him remains a mystery. One would like to know more precisely
what the first critical reader of that song "of Man's first disobedience"
thought of it. Fancy the young Quaker and blind Milton sitting, some
pleasant afternoon of the autumn of that old year, in "the pretty box" at
Chalfont, the soft wind through the open window lifting the thin hair of
the glorious old Poet! Back-slidden England, plague-smitten, and
accursed with her faithless Church and libertine King, knows little of
poor "Master Milton," and takes small note of his Puritanic verse-making.
Alone, with his humble friend, he sits there, conning over that poem
which, he fondly hoped, the world, which had grown all dark and strange
to the author, "would not willingly let die." The suggestion in respect
to Paradise Found, to which, as we have seen, "he made no answer, but sat
some time in a muse," seems not to have been lost; for, "after the
sickness was over," continues Ellwood, "and the city well cleansed, and
become safely habitable again, he returned thither; and when afterwards I
waited on him there, which I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions
drew me to London, he showed me his second poem, called Paradise Gained;
and, in a pleasant tone, said to me, 'This is owing to you, for you put
it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, which before I
had not thought of.'"

Golden days were these for the young Latin reader, even if it be true, as
we suspect, that he was himself very far from appreciating the glorious