he sailed by a coast-packet to Leghorn, where he disembarked, and proceeded inland by way of Pisa to Florence, the centre of Italian art and literature. Here Milton remained two months, most probably August and September. The Florentines were celebrated for their courtesy to strangers, and the Englishman had hardly arrived when he experienced proofs of their kindness. "There immediately," he says, "I contracted the acquaintance of many truly noble and learned men; whose private academies also (which are an institution there of most praiseworthy effect, both for the cultivation of polite letters and the keeping up of friendships) I assiduously attended. The memory of you, Jacopo Gaddi; of you, Carlo Dati; of you, Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Bonmattei, Chimentelli, Francini, and of not a few others, always delightful and pleasant as it is to me, time shall never destroy."* Milton seems to have quite charmed the Tuscan scholars. Francini wrote an Italian ode in his praise, and Dati a Latin epistle. He was even allowed to express his religious opinions with the utmost freedom.+ But, at this distance of time, by far the most memorable incident of his stay in Florence was his visit to the illustrious Galileo, " a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought."+ Long afterwards, when writing his Paradise Lost, the recollection of that visit suggested the comparison of Satan's shield to Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe."§ Shortly before his departure from the city of the Medici, he addressed an interesting letter in Latin|| to Bonmattei on his treatise on Tuscan Grammar. It is dated 10th September 1638. By the end of the month or the beginning of October he was in Rome, where he also stayed about two months, detained by "the antiquity and ancient renown of the city," ¶ and where he received the same civilities as in Florence. The first person of any consequence whose acquaintance he made was Lucas Holstenius, keeper of the Vatican Library. Holstenius, though a native of Hamburg, had studied for some time at Oxford, and so may have felt a more than ordinary interest in the young Englishman. At any rate, we learn from Milton's letter of thanks,** dated Florence, March 30, 1639, that the learned librarian received him with the utmost courtesy, showed him all the treasures of the place, and even presented him with a book or two. He also introduced him to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who was noted for his politeness to English visitors, and who was certainly very gracious in his attentions to Milton. "It was in consequence of the mention you made of me to the most excellent Cardinal Francesco Barberini, that when he, a few days after, gave that public musical entertainment with truly Roman magnificence, he, himself waiting Epist. Fam., 10, addressed to Carlo Dati, and dated London, April 21, 1647. Areopagitica, Birch, ed. 1738, vol. i., p. 153. § Paradise Lost, B. I., l. 287-291. Defensio Secunda, vol. ii., p. 332. ** Epist. Fam., viii. at the doors, and seeking me out in so great a crowd, nay, almost laying hold of me by the hand, admitted me within in a truly most honourable manner."* Here probably Milton heard for the first time the famous Leonora Baroni. He was enraptured with her singing, and has thrice recorded his admiration in Latin epigrams. Other Roman literati besides Holstenius, with whom he lived in friendly intimacy, were Selvaggi and Salsillus; both of whom presented him with "written encomiums," in which he was enthusiastically declared the rival or superior of Homer and Virgil. From Rome Milton went on to Naples in the company of a certain Eremite," by whom, he says, "I was introduced to Joannes Baptista Mansus, Marquis of Villa, a most noble and important man (to whom Torquatus Tasso, the famous Italian poet, addressed his Discourse on Friendship); and as long as I stayed there, I experienced him truly most friendly to me, he himself leading me round through the different parts of the city and the palace of the viceroy, and coming himself, not once only, to my inn to visit me." Manso was a nobleman of fine culture and chivalrous character. Το the unhappy Tasso he had been a most generous and beneficent friend: he had founded two of the best literary societies in Naples, and was himself an author of considerable reputation. Age had not chilled the ardour of his spirit or the warmth of his sympathies. In his seventy-eighth year he was capable of a new affection, and received the Englishman with open arms. There would, indeed, have been no limits to his kindness, had it not been for Milton's freedom of speech in the matter of religion. Before leaving, Milton addressed to him a splendid epistle in Latin hexameters; and received in turn a farewell gift of two cups of rich workmanship, accompanied with what Johnson justly enough terms a "sorry distich," the point of which is taken from the mot recorded of Pope Gregory by the historian Bede : "Ut mens, forma, decor, facies, mos, si pietas sic, There can be no question that the poet was in some danger. "The merchants" (at Naples), he says, "warned me that they had learnt by letters that snares were being laid for me by the English Jesuits, if I should return to Rome, on the ground that I had spoken too freely concerning religion. For I had made this resolution with myself:-Not, indeed, of my own accord to introduce in these places conversation about religion; but if interrogated respecting the faith, then, whatsoever I should suffer, to dissemble nothing. To Rome, therefore, I did return, notwithstanding what I had been told: what I was, if any one asked, I concealed from no one; if any one, in the very city of the Pope, attacked the orthodox religion, I, as before, for a second space of nearly two months, defended it most freely."§ This passage shows how deep and stern was that Puritan spirit that underlay the liberal culture of Milton. All the courtesies of the Italian scholars left unimpaired the integrity of his religious convictions; and we are not surprised to learn that when the news reached him of the stir among his countrymen in conse Epist. Fam., ix. Defensio Sccunda, vol. ii., p. 332. Ibid. § Ibid. quence of the success of the Scotch Covenanters, he abandoned his design of proceeding farther east, and resolved to return home. "While I was desirous," he says, "to cross into Sicily and Greece, the sad news of civil war coming from England called me back; for I considered it disgraceful, that while my fellow-countrymen were fighting at home for liberty, I should be travelling abroad at ease for intellectual purposes. Other two months were spent at Florence, after which he set out for Venice, crossing the Apennines, and taking Bologna and Ferrara on his way. There is some ground for supposing that Milton's Italian sonnets were composed in one or other of these cities. From Venice, where he remained a month (part of April and May 1639), he shipped for England the books and music which he had collected in different parts of Italy. Thence he hastened "through Verona and Milan and the Pennine Alps" to Geneva, where he stayed for a week, to enjoy the society of "the most learned professor of theology," Dr. John Diodati, uncle of his friend Charles Diodati, who had just recently died, and whose loss he has commemorated in the exquisite Latin poem entitled Epitaphium Damonis. Resuming his homeward journey, he passed rapidly through France, and arrived in England late in July or early in August, after an absence of fifteen months. During all his wanderings his conduct had been blameless,--worthy of him who thought no man should be a poet whose life was not itself a poem. "I again take God to witness," he says, "that in all those places, where so many things are considered lawful, I lived sound and untouched from all profligacy and vice; having this thought perpetually with me, that though I might escape the eyes of men, I certainly could not the eyes of God."+ The autumn of 1639 was spent partly at Horton with his father, and partly in visits to London, where he finally resolved to settle; and in the course of the winter "he took him a lodging in St. Bride's Churchyard, at the house of one Russel, a tailor; where he first undertook the education and instruction of his sister's two sons, the younger whereof had been wholly committed to his charge and care. From a passage in the Epitaphium Damonis, we can also form some idea of his literary projects. His ambition had been stimulated by the encomiums passed on his trifles in Italy, and he was manifestly eager to emulate the fame of Tasso and Ariosto by writing a heroic poem on some national legend; ‡ but the political and religious confusions of the time soon preoccupied his mind, dragged him into the arena of public controversy, and for more than twenty years robbed him of his singing-robes. From St. Bride's Churchyard he removed to a larger house in Aldergate Street, where his pupils increased. The Long Parliament now (1640) assembled, animated by the sternest determination to crush the despotism of Strafford and Laud, who were quickly subjected to a procedure as thorough" as their own. "As soon as the liberty of speech......began to be granted, all mouths were opened against the bishops; some to expostulate on the vices of the men, others on the vice of the order itself."§ Among the first who thus opened his mouth was Milton. Bishop Hall had opened the war of * Defensio Secunda, vol. ii., p. 332. 66 + Ibid. See Introduction to the Notes on Paradise Lost. § Defensio Secunda, vol. ii., p. 332–33. * pamphlets that preceded the clash of swords by his Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament, in favour of the divine right of Episcopacy. It appeared in January 1641, and an answer was published in March by five ministers of Puritan sentiments, the initials of whose names made up the nom de plume Smectymnuus, under which it was issued. Milton may have had something to do with it; but his genius was solitary, and worked best alone. In the summer appeared a splendid pamphlet in two books, entitled, Of Reformation touching Church-Discipline in England, and the Causes that hitherto have Hindred it; the authorship of which he subsequently acknowledged in his Defensio Secunda. It was followed, later in the same year, by a smaller pamphlet Prelatical Episcopacy, and whether it may be Deduc'd from the Apostolical Times, &c., in reply to a treatise of Archbishop Usher's; and by another, entitled Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus, in answer to a second pamphlet of Hall's defending himself against "the frivolous and false exceptions of Smectymnuus." The Animadversions is a most effective but truculent performance. Never before in England had a live bishop been tossed about with such reckless disrespect and scornful humour; and of all men wearing the episcopal lawn, Hall was perhaps in the worst position to complain, for his own career in literature had been far from clean or clerical. During the winter of 1641 Milton was quietly vigilant. Scores of pamphlets on the great Church question continued to appear on both sides; but a certain collection of treatises, published at Oxford and vindicating Episcopacy, particularly attracted his notice; and early in the spring of 1642 he published, by way of reply, The Reason of Church Governement Urg'd against Prelaty. Hitherto he had been either historical or censorious in his controversy, but now he undertook "to argue against Prelacy on grounds of philosophic reason, or from a study of the principles of Christianity and human nature.”+ It is interesting to observe that in this work Milton's theory of Church government is thoroughly Presbyterian. He had not yet reached that stage in his ecclesiastical education when it seemed to him that ". 'new presbyter was but old priest writ large." The opening chapter of the second book is in part autobiographical, and conceived in a very lofty spirit. One passage relating to his native tongue has a supreme interest. Confessing the inability of himself, or any other modern however skilled, to compete with the ancients in Latin, he says: "I apply'd myselfe to that resolution which Ariosto follow'd against the perswasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my native tongue ;-not to make verbal curiosities the end (that were a toylsom vanity); but to be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest things among mine own citizens throughout this Island in the mother dialect: that what the greatest and choycest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old, did for their country, I, in my proportion, with this over and above, of being a Christian, might doe for mine; not caring to be once nam'd abroad, (though perhaps I could attaine to that,) but content with these British Islands as my world,-whose fortune hath hitherto bin, that if the Athenians, * Stephen Marshal, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young (Milton's old tutor), Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow. † Masson's Milton, vol. ii., p. 363. as some say, made their small deeds great and renowned by their eloquent writers, England hath had her noble atchievments made small by the unskilfull handling of monks and mechanicks." * Masson suggests that the motive which led Milton to speak of himself so openly in an abstruse treatise on Church government, was the honest desire to show what fitness he possessed, by character and culture, to address his countrymen on a subject of such magnitude and importance. This appears to us the true explanation of the remarkable chapter. Meanwhile, the Animadversions had called forth a crowd of replies, to which Milton gave a final answer in An Apology against a Pamphlet call'd A Modest Confutation of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrant against Smectymnuus; in which we have additional biographical matter, and a second assault on Hall, as savagely contemptuous as the first. This closes his war against the bishops. The questions at issue between him and them were now to be subjected to the bloody arbitrament of the sword. On the 22nd of August 1642, King Charles raised his standard at Nottingham, and the Civil War began. As the citizens of London had taken the side of the Parliament, the royal army, flushed with some slight successes, threatened to assault the city; but did not venture to do so, owing to the bold front presented by the inhabitants. This was about the middle of November, and helps us to fix the date of Milton's Sonnet, When the Assault was Intended to the City; in which he beseeches' (half-ironically) the Royalist "Captain, or Colonel, or Knight-inarms," to spare his house : 66 Lift not thy spear against the Muse's bower." But otherwise we have no glimpses of him during the early part of the struggle. On the capture of Reading (April 1643) by the Parliamentary forces under Essex, his aged father, who had left Horton to reside there with his younger son Christopher, went to live with the elder in London, and remained there till his death in 1647, "wholly retired," says Philips, "to his rest and devotion, without the least trouble imaginable." Some time before the arrival of his venerable parent, Milton married, somewhat suddenly to appearance. "About Whitsuntide it was, or a little after, that he took a journey into the countrey, nobody about him certainly knowing the reason, or that it was any more than a journey of recreation. After a month's stay, home he returns, a married man who went out a bachelor; his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter of Mr. Richard Powell, then a Justice of Peace, of Forest Hill, near Shotover, in Oxfordshire."+ There is evidence, however, that the families had been long acquainted, and it is quite possible that Milton's purpose was of older date than his nephew supposed. The marriage was not a happy one. The bride found her new home dull, and her husband very severe. In her own family she had been accustomed to a life of careless gaiety; in fact, the Powells had become deeply embarrassed by their extravagance. Aubrey says, she "was brought up and bred where there was a great deal of company and merriment, as dancing, &c.; and when she came to live with her husband she found it solitary: no company came to her; and she often heard her nephews cry and be beaten. This life + Philips. * Life of Milton, vol. ii., pp. 383-385. |