They are little worlds of imagination, exhibiting, as it were, in fairy and concentrated miniature, the whole horizon of our pleasing or pensive associations. They have the truly angelic inspiration of a feeling of happi ness, which they breathe and communicate hoth with and without gaiety. For Milton's melancholy man is as enviable a being as his cheerful one.
In his 30th year, with the concurrence of his father, he resolved upon an excursion to the Continua, chiefly with a view to the classic region of Italy. Ott the inti mation of his design, he received a letter from the ce lebrated Sir Harry \Votton, who had resided at Venice as ambassador front James the First, and was now Pro vost of Eton. The compliment which Sir Harry pays to some of the poetry of Milton, which he had lately received from him, and to which he confesses that in its kind he had seen nothing parallel in our language, is remarkable, as perhaps the earliest token of superlative admiration which can be found to have been paid to his poetical genius. Certainly, at the time of his leaving England, we have no proofs of his general celebrity at home being in any degree equal to his genius. It is in Italy that we begin to perceive him adequately appre ciated. He left England in 1638, attended by a single servant. At Paris we only learn that he saw Grotius, but have no means of ascertaining with what mutual sentiments they impressed each other. He proceeded from Paris to Nice, and embarking from thence to Ge noa, proceeded through Leghorn and Pisa to Florence, at which place he remained for two months. He had studied the language and literature of Italy with the deepest attention, and thus accomplished, he soon ob tained admission into the literary academies of the Flo rentines; became the object of their admiration, and the subject of their encomiums, which he says the Italian is not forward to bestow on men this side the Alps. Carlo Dati, Antonio Francini, Gaddi, Frescobaldo, and several other men, very respectable in Italian literature, were among his eulogists and almost worshippers.
A work entitled 44 La Tina," by Antonia Malatesti, was dedicated to him whilst at Florence ; and the dedi cation of a work of even moderate merit to a stranger passing hastily through the place, and distinguished by neither wealth nor political importance, argues Milton Ito have then acquired no ordinary celebrity. The Ita lians thought so highly of his knowledge of their own language, that the academy Della Crursca consulted him on the verbal niceties of Italian. During his visit to Florence, he saw and conversed with Galileo, at that time a victim of ignorance and cruelty, having been imprisoned for his philosophical views by the Inquisi tion, and greatly reduced by sickness and mental dis tress. From Florence Milton passed through Siena to Rome, where he spent other two months. Here the kindness of Holstensius opened to him the curiosities of the Vatican, and introduced him to Cardinal Barbcrini, who at that time possessed the whole delegated autho 'ity of Rome, under his uncle Pope Urban the Seventh.
At a great musical entertainment which this opulent :burchman gave, Barberini looked for our traveller among the crowd at the door, and brought him, as Mil ton says, almost by the hand into the assembly.* At Rome he was praised in Latin epigrams by Salsilli and Silvaggi. He continued his route from thence to Na pies, and falling into company with a hermit upon the road, was by him, from whom such a set vice could he least expected, introduced to the celebrated Manso, the pation and biographer of Tasso, who received him with flattering kindness and attention. The freedom with which Miltr.n expressed himself on religious subjects was the only circumstance which deprived him of an unlimitedly free and intimate communication w ith this venerable nobleman, a circumstance which Manso him self commemorated in a well-known epigram. Un doubtedly the complimentary offerings of the Italians to Milton are not distinguished by merit as compositions, but we must regard them as the hasty though sincere effusions of men seeking to express their immediate feelings of enthusiasm, and not attending to what they wrote with the anxiety of authors writing for reputa tion. From a passage in Milton's address to Manso, we discover what he also mentions in one of his subse quent political writingsa that he already cherished the project of some great poetical work, " which he should leave so written to after-times, that they should not wil lingly let it die." The plan of his intended travels extended to Sicily and Greece; but as he was preparing to depart for Sicily, he received letters acquainting him with the near prospect of a civil war in England. He esteemed it dishonourable to be abroad whilst his fellow citizens were contending for liberty at home. Ile revisited Rome, however, and staid also at Naples for two months, excepting a few days which he passed at Lucca, the na tive place of the Deodati, the family of his beloved school-fellow of that name. From Florence he crossed the Appenines, and travelled through Bologna and Fer rara to Venice, Nvhere he staid a month, viewing the cu riosities of the renowned city. Having provided for the safety of the books which he had collected in Italy; by procuring a place for them in a vessel bound to Eng land, he pursued his returning course by Verona and Milan to Geneva. From thence he returned through France to his native country, after an absence of a year and three months. This was at the time of the King's return from his second expedition against Scotland, when his forces had been obliged to retreat before Leslie. The crisis was a striking one. Private griefs, however, must have been at this time mixed with Milton's sensa tions of interest in the public, as the first news which he heard on coming home was the death of his friend Carlo Deodati. He dedicated to his name his Epitaphium Damonis. From a passage in this poem, it appears that he still frequently thought of sonic great epic composi tion, and that Arthur and the heroes of British fable were at that time his meditated subjects.