They were sent out to learn embroidery as a means of future support--a proper step in itself, and one which would appear to have entailed considerable expense upon Milton.

But they might perfectly well have remained inmates of the family, and the inference is that domestic discord had at length grown unbearable to all.

Friends, or at least visitors, were, on the other hand, more numerous than of late years.

The most interesting were the "subtle, cunning, and reserved" Earl of Anglesey, who must have "coveted Milton's society and converse" very much if, as Phillips reports, he often came all the way to Bunhill Fields to enjoy it; and Dryden, whose generous admiration does not seem to have been affected by Milton's over-hasty sentence upon him as "a good rhymester, but no poet." One of Dryden's visits is famous in literary history, when he came with the modest request that Milton would let him turn his epic into an opera.
"Aye," responded Milton, equal to the occasion, "tag my verses if you will"-- to tag being to put a shining metal point--compared in Milton's fancy to a rhyme--at the end of a lace or cord.

Dryden took him at his word, and in due time "Paradise Lost" had become an opera under the title of "The State of Innocence and Fall of Man," which may also be interpreted as referring to the condition of the poem before Dryden laid hands upon it and afterwards.