Phillips's words might even imply that he had resumed this design before the end of the First Protectorate.

For, after having mentioned that, in the comparative leisure in which he was left by the conclusion of his controversy with Morus (Aug.

1655), he resumed those two favourite hack-occupations on which he always fell back when he had nothing else to do,--his History of England and his compilations for a Latin Dictionary,--Phillips adds, "But the highth of his noble fancy and invention began now to be seriously and mainly employed in a subject worthy of such a muse: viz.

a Heroic Poem, entitled _Paradise Lost_, the noblest," &c.

In this passage, however, Phillips is throwing together, in 1694, all his recollections of the four years of his uncle's life between Aug.