Born at Crowell in Oxfordshire, was converted at twenty to Quakerism; in 1662 made Milton’s acquaintance; and soon, visiting him almost daily, “read to him in such books in the Latin tongue as he pleased to hear read.” In 1665 he hired a cottage at Chalfont St. Giles, where Milton might escape the plague in London. Milton gave him the MS. of “Paradise Lost” to read, and on returning it Ellwood said, “Thou hast said much of ‘Paradise Lost,’ but what hast thou to say of ‘Paradise Found’?” Ellwood was busy in controversy, and had more than his share of persecution as a Quaker almost till his death. Of his many writings, only his Autobiography (1683; new ed. by Prof. H. Morley, 1885) is new interesting for Milton’s sake.
Personal
Let no one imagine a prevailing absurdity in Thomas Ellwood’s life; he was a man whom every reader must heartily respect and honor. He was incorruptibly true and unimpeachably brave, and he suffered for his faith, outrage and injustice with saintly patience and manly strength. Again and again he was seized and cast into prison without cause; every ruffian and coward felt free to insult the gallant youth who had once been so quick with his sword. If the reader will know how, without striking a blow, a man of courage may make knightly defence of a lady, let him turn to Ellwood’s modest account of how he protected the beautiful Guli Pennington, afterwards the wife of William Penn, from the rudeness of some drunken troopers; and if he will learn how a true man is always efficiently a man, let him compare the quiet fearlessness of Ellwood in moments of peril with the valor of Lord Herbert…. The Quaker will suffer nothing by contrast with the cavalier.
History of Thomas Ellwood, 1683
At about this date [1683] his narrative ceases. We learn, from other sources, that he continued to write and print in defence of his religious views up to the year of his death, which took place in 1713. One of his productions, a poetical version of the “Life of David,” may be still met with, in the old Quaker libraries. On the score of poetical merit, it is about on a level with Michael Drayton’s verses on the same subject.
Many of Ellwood’s writings have not been printed; but the fact that twenty-four works of all kinds—poems, pamphlets, and controversial treatises—were published and forgotten must be our comfort and stay in this partial deprivation. His autobiography has alone survived to our time, and it will probably keep his memory alive as long as men love to read simple, sincere, and manly books. Its manner has for me a great charm, and from the clearness with which it mirrors the author and the profound religious movement in which he was so largely concerned, it must always be interesting to the student of history; whoever loves a quaint force of style, and many delicate unconscious flavors of character, or values rare pictures of the intimate life of the past, must also enjoy it. No one will like it the less for the harmless vanity which occasionally appears in it. Ellwood came hardly by his religion and his learning, and so much as any man might, had a right to self-satisfaction in them.
Distinguished for many literary excellences, and entirely free from the fanaticism and intolerance so generally displayed in other writings of the early Friends.
“The History of Thomas Ellwood, written by Himself,” is interesting for the frankness with which it makes Thomas Ellwood himself known to us; and again, for the same frank simplicity that brings us nearer than books usually bring us to a living knowledge of some features of a bygone time; and yet again, because it helps us a little to come near to Milton in his daily life. He would be a good novelist who could invent as pleasant a book as this unaffected record of a quiet life touched by great influences in eventful times.
As regards diction and rhetoric, there is nothing antique or affected in the “History of Thomas Ellwood.” He does not seem to have been influenced much by the older generation of English authors; like Bunyan he seems to have adopted naturally a practical style of composition, not overweighted in any way, good at reporting conversations. In Ellwood’s case, and from the character of his mind, there was one subject only, the history of his own life, to which this style could be applied with full success. The same conditions that went to make his “History” so good were those that kept him from writing any other work that can be compared with it.
