"
"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.
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