Sæva nec anguiferos extende calumnia rictus:
In me triste nihil, fœdissima turba, potestis,
Nec vestri sum juris ego; securaque tutus
Pectora, viperio gradiar sublimis ab ictu.

Away then, sleepless care! complaint away!
And envy " with thy jealous leer malign;"
Nor let the monster calumny shoot forth
Her venom'd tongue at me! Detested foes!
Ye all are impotent against my peace;
For I am privileg'd, and bear my breast
Safe, and too high for your viperian wound.

After this high-toned burst of confidence and indignation, how sweetly the poet sinks again into the tender notes of gratitude in the close of this truly filial composition!

At tibi, chare pater, postquam non æqua merenti
Posse referre datur, nec dona rependere factis,
Sit memorasse satis, repetitaque munera grato
Percensere animo, fidæque reponere menti.
Et vos, O nostri, juvenilia carmina, lusus,
Si modo perpetuos sperare audebitis annos,
Et domini superesse rogo, lucemque tueri,
Nec spissò rapient oblivia nigra sub orco;
Forsitan has laudes, decantatumque parentis
Nomen, ad exemplum, sero servabitis ævo.

But thou, my father, since to render thanks
Equivalent, and to requite by deeds
Thy liberality, exceeds my power,
Suffice it that I thus record thy gifts,
And bear them treasur'd in a grateful mind.
Ye too, the favorite pastime of my youth,
My voluntary numbers, if ye dare
To hope longevity, and to survive

Your master's funeral, not soon absorb'd
In the oblivious Lethæan gulph,

Shall to futurity perhaps convey

This theme, and by these praises of my sire
Improve the fathers of a distant age.

"He began now," says Johnson, “to grow weary of the country, and had some purpose of taking chambers in the inns of court.'

This weariness appears to have existed only in the fancy of the biographer. During the five years that Milton resided with his parents, in Buckinghamshire, he had occasional lodgings in London, which he visited, as he informs us himself, for the purpose of buying books, and improving himself in mathematics and in music, at that time his

favorite amusements. The letter, which intimates his intention of taking chambers in the inns of court, was not written from the country, as his biographer seems to have supposed; it is dated from London, and only expresses, that his quarters there, appeared to him awkward and inconvenient.*

On the death of his mother, who died in April, 1637, and is buried in the chancel of Horton church he obtained his father's permission to gratify his eager desire of visiting the continent, a permission the more readily granted, perhaps, as one of his motives for visiting Italy was to form a collection of Italian music.

Having received some directions for his travels from the celebrated Sir Henry Wotton, he went, with a single servant, to Paris, in 1638; he was there honored by the notice of Lord Scudamore, the English ambassador,

* Dicam jam nunc serio quid cogitem, in hospitium juridicorum aliquod immigrare, sicubi amoena et umbrosa ambulatio est, quod et inter aliquot sodales, commodior illic habitatio, si domi manere, et oguntington ευπρεπέςερον quocunque libitum erit excurrere: ubi nunc sum, ut nosti, obscurè et angustè sum.

who, at his earnest desire, gave him an introduction to Grotius, then residing at Paris as the minister of Sweden.

Curiosity is naturally excited by the idea of a conference between two persons so eminent and accomplished. It has been conjectured, that Milton might conceive his first design of writing a tragedy on the banishment of Adam from this interview with Grotius; but if the Adamus Exul of the Swedish Ambassador were a subject of their discourse, it is probable its author must have spoken of it but slightly, as a juvenile composition, since he does so in a letter to his friend Vossius, in 1616, concerning a new edition of his poetry, from which he particularly excluded this sacred drama, as too puerile in his own judgment, to be republished.*

The letters of Grotius, voluminous and circumstantial as they are, afford no traces

* Christum patientem recudendum judico, ideoque velim aliquod ejus exemplum ad me mitti, ut errata typographica corrigam, quando ipse nullum habeo. Adami Exulis poema juvenilius est quam ut ausim addere. Grotti Epist. 77.

of this interesting visit; but they lead me to imagine, that the point, which the learned ambassador most warmly recommended to Milton, on his departure for Italy, was to pay the kindest attention in his power to the sufferings of Galileo, then persecuted as a prisoner by the inquisition in Florence.

In a letter to Vossius, dated in the very month when Milton was probably introduced to Grotius, that liberal friend to science and humanity speaks thus of Galileo; "This old man, to whom the universe is so deeply indebted, worn out with maladies, and still more with anguish of mind, gives us little reason to hope, that his life can be long; common prudence, therefore, suggests to us to make the utmost of the time, while we can yet avail ourselves of such an instructor.*" Milton was, of all travellers, the most likely to seize a hint of this kind with avidity, and expressions in Paradise Lost have led an Italian biographer of the poet to suppose,

* Senex is, optime de universo meritus, morbo fractus, insuper et animi ægritudine, haud multum nobis vitæ suæ promittit; quare prudentiæ erit arripere tempus, dum tanto doctore uti licet. Grotii Epist. 964.