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matical confufion, and the trouble of leffons unneceffarily repeated.

About this time Elwood the quaker, being recommended to him as one who would read Latin to him, for the advantage of his converfation, attended him every afternoon, except on Sundays. Milton, who, in his letter to Hartlib, had declared, that to read Latin with an English mouth is as ill a bearing as Low French, required that Elwood should learn and practife the Italian pronunciation, which, he faid, was neceffary, if he would talk with foreigners. This feems to have been a task troublesome without ufe. There is little reafon for preferring the Italian pronunciation to our own, except that it is more general; and to teach it to an Englishman is only to make him a foreigner at home. He who travels, if he speaks Latin, may fo foon learn the founds which every native gives it, that he need make no provifion before his journey; and if ftrangers vifit us, it is their business to practife fuch conformity to our modes as they expect from us in their own countries. Elwood complied with the directions, and improved himself by his atten

dance,

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dance, for he relates, that Milton, having a curious ear, knew by his voice when he read what he did not understand, and would stop him, and open the most difficult paffages.

In a fhort time he took a house in the Artillery Walk, leading to Bunhill Fields; the mention of which concludes the register of Milton's removals and habitations. He lived longer in this place than any other.

He was now bufied by Paradife Loft. Whence he drew the original design has been variously conjectured by men who cannot bear to think themselves ignorant of that which, at laft, neither diligence nor fagacity can discover. Some find the hint in an Italian tragedy. Voltaire tells a wild and unauthorised story of a farce seen by Milton in Italy, which opened thus: Let the Rainbow be the Fiddlestick of the Fiddle of Heaven. It has been already fhewn, that the first conception was a tragedy or mystery, not of a narrative, but a dramatick work, which he is fuppofed to have begun to reduce to its present form about the time (1655) when he finished

finished his difpute with the defenders of the king.

He long had promifed to adorn his native country by fome great performance, while he had yet perhaps no fettled defign, and was ftimulated only by fuch expectations as naturally arose from the furvey of his attainments, and the confcioufnefs of his powers. What

he should undertake, it was difficult to determine. He was long chufing, and began late,

While he was obliged to divide his time between his private ftudies and affairs of state, his poetical labour must have been often interrupted; and perhaps he did little more in that bufy time than conftruct the narrative, adjust the episodes, proportion the parts, accumulate images and fentiments, and trea fure in his memory, or preferve in writing, fuch hints as books or meditation would fupply. Nothing particular is known of his intellectual operations while he was a statef man; for, having every help and accommodation at hand, he had no need of uncommon expedients.

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Being driven from all publick ftations, he is yet too great not to be traced by curiosity to his retirement; where he has been found by Mr. Richardson, the fondeft of his admirers, fitting before his door in a grey coat of coarfe cloth, in warm fultry weather, to enjoy the fresh air; and fo, as in his own room, receiving the vifits of people of diftinguished parts as well as quality. His vifitors of high quality must now be imagined to be few; but men of parts might reasonably court the converfation of a man fo generally illuftrious, that foreigners are reported, by Wood, to have visited the house in Bread-street where he was born.

According to another account, he was feen in a small house, neatly enough dressed in black cloaths, fitting in a room hung with rufty green; pale but not cadaverous, with chalkflones in his bands. He faid, that if it were not for the gout, his blindness would be tolerable,

In the intervals of his pain, being made unable to use the common exercises, he used

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to fwing in a chair, and fometimes played

upon an organ.

He was now confeffedly and visibly employed upon his poem, of which the progrefs

might be noted by thofe with whom he was familiar; for he was obliged, when he had compofed as many lines as his memory would conveniently retain, to employ fome friend in writing them, having, at leaft for part of the time, no regular attendant. This gave opportunity to obfervations and reports.

Mr. Philips obferves, that there was a very remarkable circumftance in the compofure of Paradife Loft, "which I have a particular "reafon," fays he, "to remember; for "whereas I had the perufal of it from the

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very beginning, for fome years, as I went "from time to time to vifit him, in parcels "of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time (which, being written by whatever hand "came next, might poffibly want correction as to the orthography and pointing), having, as the fummer came on, not been fhewed any for a confiderable while, and defiring "the reafon thereof, was anfwered, that his " vein

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