" She
combined with Anne, the eldest daughter, "to counsel his maidservant
to cheat him in his marketings." They sold his books without his
knowledge. "They made nothing of deserting him," he was often heard to
complain. They continued to live with him five or six years after
his marriage. But at last the situation became intolerable to both
parties, and they were sent out to learn embroidery in gold or silver,
as a means of obtaining their livelihood. Deborah, the youngest, was
included in the same arrangement, though she seems to have been more
helpful to her father, and to have been at one time his principal
reader. Aubrey says that he "taught her Latin, and that she was his
amanuensis." She even spoke of him when she was old--she lived to be
seventy-four--with some tenderness. She was once, in 1725, shewn
Faithorne's crayon drawing of the poet, without being told for whom it
was intended. She immediately exclaimed, "O Lord! that is the picture
of my father!" and stroking down the hair of her forehead, added,
"Just so my father wore his hair."
One of Milton's volunteer readers, and one to whom we owe the most
authentic account of him in his last years, was a young Quaker, named
Thomas Ellwood.
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