After I was well enough to go abroad with respect to my own health and the safety of others, I went up, in the beginning of the twelfth month, 1661, to my friend Isaac Penington’s at Chalfont, and abode there some time, for the airing myself more fully, that I might be more fit for conversation.
I mentioned before, that when I was a boy I had made some good progress in learning, and lost it all again before I came to be a man; nor was I rightly sensible of my loss therein until I came amongst the Quakers. But then I both saw my loss and lamented it; and applied myself with utmost diligence, at all leisure times, to recover it; so false I found that charge to be which in those times was cast as a reproach upon the Quakers, that they despised and decried all human learning, because they denied it to be essentially necessary to a gospel ministry, which was one of the controversies of those times.
But though I toiled hard and spared no pains to regain what once I had been master of, yet I found it a matter of so great difficulty that I was ready to say as the noble eunuch to Philip in another case, “How can I, unless I had some man to guide me?”
This I had formerly complained of to my especial friend Isaac Penington, but now more earnestly, which put him upon considering and contriving a means for my assistance.
He had an intimate acquaintance with Dr. Paget, a physician of note in London, and he, with John Milton, a gentleman of great note for learning throughout the learned world, for the accurate pieces he had written on various subjects and occasions.
This person, having filled a public station in the former times, lived now a private and retired life in London, and having wholly lost his sight, kept always a man to read to him, which usually was the son of some gentleman of his acquaintance, whom in kindness he took to improve in his learning.
Thus, by the mediation of my friend Isaac Penington with Dr. Paget, and of Dr. Paget with John Milton, was I admitted to come to him, not as a servant to him (which at that time he needed not), nor to be in the house with him, but only to have the liberty of coming to his house at certain hours when I would, and to read to him what books he should appoint me, which was all the favour I desired.