In recording the publication of "Paradise Lost" in 1667, we have passed over the interval of Milton's life immediately subsequent to the completion of the poem in 1663.

The first incident of any importance is his migration to Chalfont St.Giles, near Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire, about July, 1665, to escape the plague then devastating London.

Ell wood, whose family lived in the neighbourhood of Chalfont, had at his request taken for him "a pretty box" in that village; and we are, says Professor Masson, "to imagine Milton's house in Artillery Walk shuttered up, and a coach and a large waggon brought to the door, and the blind man helped in, and the wife and the three daughters following, with a servant to look after the books and other things they have taken with them, and the whole party driven away towards Giles-Chalfont." According to the same authority, Chalfont well deserves the name of Sleepy Hollow, lying at the bottom of a leafy dell.

Milton's cottage, alone of his residences, still exists, though divided into two tenements.

It is a two-storey dwelling, with a garden, is built of brick, with wooden beams, musters nine rooms--though a question arises whether some of them ought not rather to be described as closets; the porch in which Milton may have breathed the summer air is gone, but the parlour retains the latticed casement at which he sat, though through it he could not see.