“His third imprisonment was in the year 1665, being taken up, with many others, in the open street of Amersham, as they were carrying and accompanying the body of a deceased Friend to the grave. From hence he was sent again to Aylesbury gaol; but this commitment being in order to banishment, was but for a month, or thereabouts.

“His fourth imprisonment was in the same year 1665, about a month after his releasement from the former. Hitherto his commitment had been by the civil magistrates; but now, that he might experience the severity of each, he fell into the military hands. A rude soldier, without any other warrant than what he carried in his scabbard, came to his house, and told him he came to fetch him before Sir Philip Palmer, one of the deputy-lieutenants of the county. He meekly went, and was by him sent with a guard of soldiers to Aylesbury gaol, with a kind of mittimus, importing ‘That the gaoler should receive and keep him in safe custody during the pleasure of the Earl of Bridgewater,’ who had, it seems, conceived so great, as well as unjust, displeasure against this innocent man, that, although (it being the sickness year) the plague was suspected to be in the gaol, he would not be prevailed with only to permit Isaac Penington to be removed to another house in the town, and there kept prisoner until the gaol was clear. Afterwards, a prisoner dying in the gaol of the plague, the gaoler’s wife, her husband being absent, gave leave to Isaac Penington to remove to another house, where he was shut up for six weeks; after which, by the procurement of the Earl of Ancram, a release was sent from the said Philip Palmer, by which he was discharged, after he had suffered imprisonment three-quarters of a year, with apparent hazard of his life, and that for no offence.”

This was not the end of the troubles of Ellwood’s patron and friend. He had been home only three weeks when “the said Philip Palmer” seized him again, dragged him out of bed, sent him, without any cause shown, to Aylesbury gaol, and kept him a year and a half prisoner “in rooms so cold, damp, and unhealthy, that it went very near to cost him his life, and procured him so great a distemper that he lay weak of it several months. At length a relation of his wife, by an habeas corpus, removed him to the King’s Bench bar, where (with the wonder of the court that a man should he so long imprisoned for nothing) he was at last released in the year 1668.” “Paradise Lost” had appeared in the year before. Yet a sixth imprisonment followed in 1670, when Penington, visiting some Friends in Reading gaol, was seized and carried before Sir William Armorer, a justice of the peace, who sent him back to share their sufferings. Penington died in 1679.

Of Thomas Ellwood’s experience as reader to Milton, and of Milton’s regard for the gentle Quaker, the book tells its own tale. I will only add one comment upon an often-quoted incident that it contains. When Milton gave his young friend—then twenty-six years old—the manuscript of “Paradise Lost” to read, his desire could only have been to learn what comprehension of his purpose there would be in a young man sincerely religious, as intelligent as most, and with a taste for verse, though not much of a poet. The observation Ellwood made, of which he is proud because of its consequence, might well cause Milton to be silent for a little while, and then change the conversation. It showed that the whole aim of the poem had been missed. Its crown is in the story of redemption, Paradise Found, the better Eden, the “Paradise within thee, happier far.” Milton had applied his test, and learnt—what every great poet has to learn—that he must trust more to the vague impression of truth, beauty, and high thought, that can be made upon thousands of right-hearted men and women, than to the clear, full understanding of his work. The noblest aims of the true artist can make themselves felt by all, though understood by few. Few know the secrets of the sunshine, although all draw new life from the sun. When Milton—who, with his habitual gentleness, never allowed Ellwood to suspect that he had missed the whole purpose of “Paradise Lost”—showed him “Paradise Regained,” and made him happy by telling him that he caused it to be written; he showed him a poem that expanded the closing thought of “Paradise Lost” into an image of the Paradise within, that is to be obtained only by an imitation of Christ under all forms of our temptation.

Of Ellwood’s life after the year in which he ends his own account of it, let it suffice to say, that he wrote earnest, gentle books in support of his opinions and against the persecution of them. He lived retired until the year 1688, and occupied himself with an attempt at a Davideis, a Life of David in verse. He had not then seen Cowley’s. Ellwood carried on his verses to the end of David’s life, and published them in 1712. When George Fox died, in 1690, Thomas Ellwood transcribed his journal for the press, and printed it next year in folio, prefixing an account of Fox. He was engaged afterwards in controversy with George Keith, a seceder from the Friends. His intellectual activity continued unabated to the end. In 1709 he suffered distraint for tithes; goods to the value of £24 10s. being taken for a due of about £14, after which the distrainers “brought him still in debt, and wanted more.”

Ellwood’s life was healthy, except that he was asthmatic towards the end. His wife died five years before him. Of her, J. Wyeth, citizen of London, who was the editor of “Ellwood’s History of his Life,” and wrote its sequel, says that she was “a solid, weighty woman.” But the context shows that he means those adjectives to be read in a spiritual sense. “The liberal soul shall be made fat,” says Solomon.

H. M.

November 1885.

THE
History Of Thomas Ellwood.
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.

Although my station, not being so eminent either in the church of Christ or in the world as others who have moved in higher orbs, may not afford such considerable remarks as theirs, yet inasmuch as in the course of my travels through this vale of tears I have passed through various and some uncommon exercises, which the Lord hath been graciously pleased to support me under and conduct me through, I hold it a matter excusable at least, if not commendable, to give the world some little account of my life, that in recounting the many deliverances and preservations which the Lord hath vouchsafed to work for me, both I, by a grateful acknowledgment thereof and return of thanksgivings unto him therefor, may in some measure set forth His abundant goodness to me, and others, whose lot it may be to tread the same path and fall into the same or like exercises, may be encouraged to persevere in the way of holiness, and with full assurance of mind to trust in the Lord, whatsoever trials may befall them.