The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 6.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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‘ [54] neighborhood where I dwelt, that he might go out of the city for the safety of himself and his family, the pestilence then growing hot in London. I took a pretty box for him in Giles Chalfont, a mile from me, of which I gave him notice, and intended to have waited on him and seen him well settled, but was prevented by that imprisonment. But now being released and returned home, I soon made a visit to him, to welcome him into the country. After some common discourse had passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his, which, having brought, he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with me and read it at my leisure, and when I had so done return it to him, with my judgment thereupon.’

Now, what does the reader think young Ellwood carried in his gray coat pocket across the dikes and hedges and through the green lanes of Giles Chalfont that autumn day? Let us look farther: ‘When I came home, and had set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem which he entitled Paradise Lost. After I had, with the best attention, read it through, I made him another visit; and, returning his book with due acknowledgment of the favor he had done me in communicating it to me, he asked me how I liked it and what I thought of it, which I modestly but freely told him; and, after some farther discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, “ Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost; hast thou to say of Paradise Found?” He made me no answer, but sat some time in a muse; then brake off that dis. course, and fell upon another subject.’