" We are told that
when he was dictating sometimes he sat leaning back sideways in
an easy-chair, with his leg flung over the arm. Sometimes he
dictated from his bed, and if in the middle of the night lines
came to him, whatever time it was he would ring for one of his
daughters to write them down for him, lest the thought should be
lost ere morning.
We are told, too, that he wrote very little in summer. For he
said himself that it was in winter and spring that his poetic
fancy seemed to come best to him, and that what he wrote at other
times did not please him. "So that in all the years he was about
this poem, he may be said to have spent but half his time
therein."*
*Philips.
But now, while Milton's mind was full of splendid images, while
in spite of the discomfort and lonliness of his misruled home, he
was adding line to line of splendid sounding English, great
changes came over the land.
Oliver Cromwell died. To him succeeded his son Richard. But his
weak hands could not hold the scepter.
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