was even then attended by his “man” who read to him out of the Hebrew Bible.  Such erudition in a serving-man almost surpasses credibility:  the English Bible probably sufficed both.  It is easier to believe that some one read to him or wrote for him from seven till dinner time:  if, however, “the writing was nearly as much as the reading,” much that Milton dictated must have been lost.  His recreations were walking in his garden, never wanting to any of his residences, where he would continue for three or four hours at a time; swinging in a chair when weather prevented open-air exercise; and music, that blissful resource of blindness.  His instrument was usually the organ, the counterpart of the stately harmony of his own verse.  To these relaxations must be added the society of faithful friends, among whom Andrew Marvell, Dr. Paget, and Cyriack Skinner are particularly named.  Nor did Edward Phillips neglect his uncle, finding him, as Aubrey implies, “most familiar and free in his conversation to those to whom most sour in his way of education.”  Milton had made him “a songster,” and we can imagine the “sober, silent, and most harmless person” (Evelyn) opening his lips to accompany his uncle’s music.  Of Milton’s manner Aubrey says, “Extreme pleasant in his conversation, and at dinner, supper, etc., but satirical.”  Visitors usually came from six till eight, if at all, and the day concluded with a light supper, sometimes of olives, which we may well imagine fraught for him with Tuscan memories, a pipe, and a glass of water.  This picture of plain living and high thinking is confirmed by the testimony of the Quaker Thomas Ellwood, who for a short time read to him, and who describes the kindness of his demeanour, and the pains he took to teach the foreign method of pronouncing Latin.  Even more; “having a curious ear, he understood by my tone when I understood what I read and when I did not, and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most difficult passages to me.”  Milton must have felt a special tenderness for the Quakers, whose religious opinions, divested of the shell of eccentricity which the vulgar have always mistaken for the kernel, had become substantially his own.  He had outgrown Independency as formerly Presbyterianism.  His blindness served to excuse his absence from public worship; to which, so long at least as Clarendon’s intolerance prevailed in the councils of Charles the Second, might be added the difficulty of finding edification in the pulpit, had he needed it.  But these reasons, though not imaginary, were not those which really actuated him.  He had ceased to value rites and forms of any kind, and, had his religious views been known, he would have been “equalled in fate” with his contemporary Spinoza.  Yet he was writing a book which orthodox Protestantism has accepted as but a little lower than the Scriptures.