After supping thus sparingly, he smoked a pipe of tobacco, drank a
glass of water, and then retired to bed. He was sparing in his use of
wine. His Samson, who in this as in other things, is Milton himself,
allays his thirst "from the clear milky juice."
Bed with its warmth and recumbent posture he found favourable to
composition. At other times he would compose or prune his verses, as
he walked in the garden, and then, coming in, dictate. His verse was
not at the command of his will. Sometimes he would lie awake the whole
night, trying but unable to make a single line. At other times lines
flowed without premeditation "with a certain impetus and oestro." What
was his season of inspiration is somewhat uncertain. In the elegy
"To Spring," Milton says it was the spring which restored his poetic
faculty. Phillips, however, says, "that his vein never flowed happily
but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal," and that the poet told
him this. Phillips' reminiscence is perhaps true at the date of
_Paradise Lost_, when Milton's habits had changed from what they
had been at twenty. Or we may agree with Toland, that Phillips has
transposed the seasons, though preserving the fact of intermittent
inspiration.
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