When I came home [i.e., The Grange; from which ISAAC PBNINGTON, with his family (including THOMAS ELLWOOD) was, by military force, expelled about a month after their first return from Aylesbury gaol (i.e., about the middle of September); and he again sent to the same prison], 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 returned him his book; with due acknowledgment of the favour 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 further discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, "Thou hast said much, here, of Paradise lost: but what hast thou to say of Paradise found?"
He made me no answer; but sate some time in a muse: then brake off that discourse, and fell upon another subject.
After the sickness [Plague] was over; and the City well cleansed, and become safely habitable again: he returned thither.
And when, afterwards [probably in 1668 or 1669], I went to wait on him there (which I seldom failed of doing, whenever my occasions drew me to London), he showed me his second poem, called Paradise Regained: and, in a pleasant tone, said to me, "This is owing to you! For you put it into my head, by the question you put to me at Chalfont! which, before, I had not thought of."
[Paradise Regained was licensed for publication on 2nd July, 1670.]
ADVICE TO A YOUNG REVIEWER, WITH A SPECIMEN OF THE ART.
1807.