“With Dangers Compast Round” 1660–1665master to friend: “he was most familiar and free in his conversation to those to
whome most severe in his way of education.”^59 Toland heard that, besides walking
for exercise, he had a kind of swing: “a Pully to swing and keep him in motion” (EL
194). Music remained a special pleasure. Early biographers report that he had “a
delicate tunable voice, an excellent ear, could play on the Organ, and bear a part in
vocal and instrumental Musick,” and that he “play’d much upon an Organ he kept
in the House” as well as (perhaps) the bass-viol (EL 48, 194, 204). Cyriak Skinner
noted two exceptions to his habitual frugality: “he was not sparing to buy good
Books; of which he left a fair Collection; and was generous in relieving the wants of
his Friends” (EL 31). He was said to be very temperate: Aubrey heard that he “rarely
dranke between meales,” Toland, that he liked food “most in season, or the easiest
to be procured,” Newton, that he was very temperate but also very discerning and
that “what he had he always loved to have of the best.”^60 From such details Newton
produces what sounds like an eyewitness account of Milton’s evenings:
[Milton] after dinner played on the organ, and either sung himself or made his wife
sing, who (he said) had a good voice but no ear; and then he went up to study again
till six, when his friends came to visit him and sat with him perhaps till eight; then he
went down to supper, which was usually olives or some light thing; and after supper
he smoked his pipe, and drank a glass of water, and went to bed.... After his severer
studies, and after dinner as we observed before, he used to divert and unbend his mind
with playing upon the organ or bass-viol, which was a great relief to him after he had
lost his sight.^61While Milton engaged in most of these activities during his later life, this recon-
struction of comfortable regularity, with simple fare and homey pipe and slippers, is
altogether too cosy. His program of reading and writing must have been far less
orderly. He often had to depend on the chance visits of friends with the requisite
skills, but their occasions often kept them away. In July, 1663 Marvell went abroad
as secretary to the Earl of Carlisle, the newly appointed ambassador to Muscovy,
Sweden, and Denmark, and did not return until January, 1665. Edward Phillips
came less often after October, 1663, when he moved to John Evelyn’s country
house in Essex to tutor his son.^62 Milton’s arrangements with student readers were
subject, as in the case of Ellwood, to various disruptions. At times his wife, at other
times his unwilling daughters, had to fill in but could not really meet his scholarly
needs.^63 Milton’s prodigious achievements during these years took place in the face
of obstacles, practical and psychological, that can hardly be imagined.
Cyriack Skinner reports that Milton “was visited at his house on Bun-hill by a
Chief Officer of State, and desir’d to imploy his Pen on thir behalfe” (EL 32). Some
such overture was probably made: it would have been quite a coup to win over the
notorious Milton, and would go far to discredit all his previous polemics. Of course
he refused. Newton claimed that his widow “was wont... to say, that her husband