Paradise Lost,—"To justify the ways of God to men."

PARADISE LOST. BK. II Painting by S. Meteyard.

"Satan with less toil, and now with ease, ...

Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold ...

This pendent world in bigness as a star

Of smallest magnitude."

(Paradise Lost. Bk. II.)

Dinner despatched, the master of the house, led by his devoted friends, went out into the garden. A garden was the desideratum of his existence, and he had never been without one; for in seventeenth-century London every house was fitly furnished in this respect. Here Milton was in the habit of taking that steady exercise which was a sine quâ non to a sedentary and gouty man. He made a point of walking up and down out of doors, in cold weather, for three or four hours at a time,—sometimes composing his majestic lines, sometimes merely meditating. When weary with walking, he would come in and either dictate what he had conceived, or would take further exercise in a swing. In really warm weather, he received his visitors sitting outside his house door, wrapped in a coarse grey overcoat—gazing out upon the fields of the Artillery ground with those "unblemished eyes" that belied their own clear beauty—"the only point," as he said, "in which I am against my will a hypocrite." To-day, being cool and cloudy, allowed but intermittent periods in the open air. Milton, Lawrence and Skinner paced slowly to and fro, deep in enthralling intercourse, until three o'clock: when the rain and Thomas Elwood arrived simultaneously, and the other two men departed to their respective avocations.

Thomas Elwood was a young Quaker of twenty-three, who was acting in some degree as honorary secretary to Milton. Himself of a defective education, and having been expelled from his father's house on account of his religious opinions, he was only too glad to take a lodging in the neighbourhood, and, by reading aloud to Milton every afternoon, acquire an amount of information and a variety of learning, which by no other means could he have obtained. And there was also a tacit sympathy between them, insomuch as Milton was, more and more, as life went on, inclining towards the Quaker tenets,—in those days, bien entendu, viewed with horror and detestation by the majority of men.

Having re-entered the house, "We will not read as yet, Tom," Milton said, "I desire greatly to comfort myself with sweet sounds. Bring me into the withdrawing-room, and place me at the organ. A little bellows-blowing will not hurt thee, Tom. And let my wife attend me, that we may have song withal. She hath a good voice, though a poor ear."

Seated at his beloved instrument, the blind man steeped himself in the principal pleasure that was left him. Milton's father, stout Puritan though he might be, was an accomplished musician, and had taught his son to play in early youth. The austerities of a narrow dogma had not been able to crush out the inveterate artistry of either father or son: and now the devotee of "divinest Melancholy" was able to solace himself with such lovely concords, such "anthems clear,"

"As may with sweetness, through mine ear,

Dissolve me into ecstasies,

And bring all heaven before mine eyes."

Sometimes he sang as he played; sometimes Mrs. Milton, with her clear unemotional notes, sang to his accompaniment. Presently, that Elwood should not be wearied in his blowing, he quitted the organ for the bass-viol, on which he was no mean performer. At the conclusion of his