took a pretty box for him in
Giles Chalfont, a mile from me, of which I gave him notice, and intended
to have waited on him and seen him well settled, but was prevented by
that imprisonment. But now being released and returned home, I soon made
a visit to him, to welcome him into the country. After some common
discourse had passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his,
which, having brought, he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with
me and read it at my leisure, and when I had so done return it to him,
with my judgment thereupon."

Now, what does the reader think young Ellwood carried in his gray coat
pocket across the dikes and hedges and through the green lanes of Giles
Chalfont that autumn day? Let us look farther "When I came home, and had
set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem which he
entitled _Paradise Lost_. After I had, with the best attention, read it
through, I made him another visit; and, returning his book with due
acknowledgment of the favor he had done me in communicating it to me, he
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 ci