No good story is quite true. Clarges, as Monck's brother-in-law, and Marvell, as Monck's intimate friend, had both influence at the time, and, as Professor Masson also notes, Arthur Annesley, afterwards first Earl of Anglesey [q. v.], was a close friend of Milton in later years, and was at this time a chief manager of the Restoration and in favour of lenity. It cannot be now decided how far any of these stories represents the facts. An incredible story of a mock funeral, carried out by his friends, was given in Cunningham's ‘History of Great Britain,’ 1787, i. 14. On regaining his liberty, Milton took a house in Holborn, near Red Lion Fields (Phillips), and soon afterwards moved to Jewin Street. He lost much in money. He had, according to Phillips, put 2,000l. into the excise office, and could never get it out. He lost another sum invested somewhere injudiciously. He had to give up property valued at 60l., which he had bought out of the estates of Westminster. Professor Masson calculates that before the catastrophe he had about 4,000l. variously invested, and some house property in London, which, with his official income and some other investments, would bring him in some 500l. a year. This may have been reduced to 200l. Milton was frugal and temperate, and Phillips thinks that, ‘all things considered,’ he had still a ‘considerable estate’ (Masson, vi. 444-5). Mrs. Powell renewed her attempts to recover the property after the Restoration. Her eldest son finally regained Forest Hill, and Milton apparently made over the Wheatley estate to the Powells, though it does not appear what he received for the old debt, or for his promised marriage portion of 1,000l. (ib. vi. 449-51).
Milton soon found it desirable to take a third wife who could look after his affairs. His eldest daughter was in her seventeenth year, and the household apparently much mismanaged, when on 24 Feb. 1662-3 he married Elizabeth Minshull. She was born on 30 Dec. 1638, and was a cousin of Milton's friend, Dr. Nathan Paget, by whom the match was arranged. The marriage, though not romantic, was successful. Shortly afterwards Milton moved to a house in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields. It was small, but, like all Milton's houses, had a garden. He lived there for the rest of his life, except that, according to Richardson, he lodged for a time (about 1670) with the bookseller Millington. During the plague of 1665 Milton retired to Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, where a ‘pretty box’ was taken for him by the quaker Thomas Ellwood [q. v.] Ellwood had been introduced to Milton in 1662 by Paget; in order to improve his scholarship he had offered to read Latin books to the blind man, who became interested in him and encouraged his studies. Ellwood afterwards became a tutor in the family of the Penningtons at Chalfont. The cottage in which Milton stayed at Chalfont is now preserved, having been bought by public subscription in 1887, and is the only house connected with Milton which still exists. Ellwood visited Milton there one day, and received from him the complete manuscript of ‘Paradise Lost.’ ‘Thou hast said much here of "Paradise Lost,"’ he observed, ‘but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?’
Blind, infirm, and poor, depressed by the triumph of the principles which he most detested, Milton had determined to achieve the great purpose to which from early youth he had been self-devoted. His sonnet upon completing his twenty-third year, and the letter with which it was accompanied (Masson, i. 324, first published in Birch's Life), show that he was then looking forward to some great work. He had resolved to write a poem which should be national in character, and set forth his conception of the providential order of the world. At the time of his foreign journey he had contemplated a poem upon the Arthurian legend, to which he refers in the ‘Epistle to Manso’ and the ‘Epitaphium Damonis,’ 1638-9. At the time of his jottings, however, about 1641, his chief interest had come to be in a dramatic treatment of the fall of man, although in the ‘Reasons of Church-Government,’ 1641-2, he declares his resolution to take full time for meditation on a fit subject. Phillips reports that the opening passage of this, composed about 1642, was the speech of Satan, which is now at the beginning of the fourth book of ‘Paradise Lost.’ Milton's controversies and business distracted his mind from poetry, and he produced little except the few noble sonnets which commemorate his political emotions. In 1658 he settled down to the composition of ‘Paradise Lost.’ It is said by Aubrey to have been finished in 1663. Among earlier poems from which Milton may have taken hints are especially noticeable: the Anglo-Saxon poem attributed to Cædmon [q. v.], and published in 1655 by Francis Junius; the ‘Adamo’ of Andreini, which was translated by Cowper for Hayley's edition of Milton, and is in Cowper's ‘Works’ by Southey (1837, vol. x.); and the ‘Lucifer’ of Joost van Vondel, published in 1654. The coincidences with the last are the most remarkable. An account of Vondel's poem is given in Mr. Gosse's ‘Literature of Northern Europe’ (1883, pp. 278-312), and an elaborate comparison of ‘Lucifer’ and
