of learning.  In any case, but for Ellwood, we should never have known the softer side of Milton’s character, never have known of what gentleness, patience, and courtesy he was capable.  And, indeed, when we remember Milton’s position at this time, as tragical as that of Demosthenes after Chaeronea, and of Dante at the Court of Verona, there is something inexpressibly touching in the picture here given with so much simplicity and with such evident unconsciousness on the part of the painter of the effect produced.  There is one passage which is quite delicious, and yet its point may be, as it commonly is, easily missed.  It illustrates the density of Ellwood’s stupidity, and the delicate irony of the sadly courteous poet.  Milton had lent him, it will be seen, the manuscript of Paradise Lost; and on Ellwood returning it to him, ’he asked me how I liked it, and what I thought of it, which I modestly but freely told him, and after some further discourse about it I pleasantly said to him, “Thou has said much here of Paradise Lost, but what has thou to say of Paradise Found?"’ Now the whole point and scope of Paradise Lost is Paradise Found—­the redemption—­the substitution of a spiritual Eden within man for a physical Eden without man, a point emphasised in the invocation, and elaborately worked out in the closing vision from the Specular Mount.  It is easy to understand the significance of what follows:  ’He made me no answer, but sat sometime in a muse; then broke off that discourse, and fell upon another subject.’  The result no doubt of that ‘muse’ was the suspicion, or, perhaps, the conviction, that the rest of the world would, in all probability, be as obtuse as Ellwood; and to that suspicion or conviction we appear to owe Paradise Regained.  The Plague over, Milton returned to London, settling in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields.  ’And when afterwards I went to wait on him there ... he shewed me his second poem, called Paradise Regained, 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."’ In ‘the pleasant tone’ more, and much more, is implied, of that we may be very sure, than meets the ear.  We should like to have seen the expression on Milton’s face both on this occasion and also when, on Dryden requesting his permission to turn Paradise Lost into an opera, he replied; ’Oh, certainly, you may tug my verses if you please, Mr. Dryden.’  It may be added that Paradise Lost was not published till 1667, and Paradise Regained did not see the light till 1671.  Ellwood seems to imply that Paradise Regained was composed between the end of August or the beginning of September 1665, and the end of the autumn of the same year, which is, of course, incredible and quite at variance with what Phillips tells us.  Ellwood is, no doubt, expressing himself loosely, and his ‘afterwards’ need not necessarily relate to his first, or to his second, or even to his third visit to Milton after the poet’s return to Artillery Walk, but refers vaguely to one of those ‘occasions which drew him to London.’  When he last saw Milton we have no means of knowing.  He never refers to him again.  His autobiography closes with the year 1683.