I mentioned before, that when I was a boy I had made some good
progress in learning, and lost it all again before I came to be a
man; nor was I rightly sensible of my loss therein until I came
amongst the Quakers. But then I both saw my loss and lamented it;
and applied myself with utmost diligence, at all leisure times, to
recover it; so false I found that charge to be which in those times
was cast as a reproach upon the Quakers, that they despised and
decried all human learning, because they denied it to be essentially
necessary to a gospel ministry, which was one of the controversies
of those times.

But though I toiled hard and spared no pains to regain what once I
had been master of, yet I found it a matter of so great difficulty
that I was ready to say as the noble eunuch to Philip in another
case, "How can I, unless I had some man to guide me?"

This I had formerly complained of to my especial friend Isaac
Penington, but now more earnestly, which put him upon considering
and contriving a means for my assistance.

He had an intimate acquaintance with Dr. Paget, a physician of note
in London, and he, with John Milton, a gentleman of great note for
learning throughout the learned world, for the accurate pieces he
had written on various subjects and occasions.

This person, having filled a public station in the former times,
lived now a private and retired life in London, and having wholly
lost his sight, kept always a man to read to him, which usually was
the son of some gentleman of his acquaintance, whom in kindness he
took to improve in his learning.