What he composed at night, he dictated in the day,
sitting obliquely in an elbow-chair, with his leg thrown over the arm.
He would dictate forty lines, as it were in a breath, and then reduce
them to half the number.
Milton's piety is admitted, even by his enemies; and it is a piety
which oppresses his writings as well as his life, The fact that a man,
with a deep sense of religion, should not have attended any place of
public worship, has given great trouble to Milton's biographers. And
the principal biographers of this thorough-going nonconformist have
been Anglican clergymen; Bishop Newton, Todd, Mitford; Dr. Johnson,
more clerical than any cleric, being no exception, Mitford would give
Milton a dispensation on the score of his age and infirmities. But the
cause lay deeper. A profound apprehension of the spiritual world leads
to a disregard of rites. To a mind so disposed externals become, first
indifferent, then impedient. Ministration is officious intrusion. I
do not find that Milton, though he wrote against paid ministers as
hirelings, ever expressly formulated an opinion against ministers as
such.
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