And wisdom's self Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, Where, with her best nurse, contemplations She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings, That in the various bustle of resort Were all-to ruffled and sometimes impair'd. That at Horton Milton "read all the Greek and Latin writers" is one of Johnson's careless versions of Milton's own words, "enjoyed a complete holiday in turning over Latin and Greek authors." Milton read, not as a professional philologian, but as a poet and scholar, and always in the light of his secret purpose. It was not in his way to sit down to read over all the Greek and Latin writers, as Casaubon or Salmasius might do. Milton read with selection, and "meditated," says Aubrey, what he read. His practice conformed to the principle he has himself laid down in the often-quoted lines (_Paradise Regained_, iv. 322)-- Who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior, Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep vers'd in books, and shallow in himself. Some of Milton's Greek books have been traced; his _Arattis, Lyeophron, Euripides_ (the Stepharnis of 1602), and his _Pindar_ (the Benedictus of 1620), are still extant, with marginal memoranda, which should seem to evince careful and discerning reading. One critic even thought it worth while to accuse Joshua Barnes of silently appropriating conjectural emendations from Milton's _Euripides_. But Milton's own poems are the beat evidence of his familiarity with all that is most choice in the remains of classic poetry. Though the commentators are accused of often, seeing an imitation where there is none, no commentary can point out the ever-present infusion of classical flavour, which bespeaks intimate converse far more than direct adaptation. Milton's classical allusions, says Hartley Coleridge, are amalgamated and consubstantiated with his native thought.