Page images
PDF
EPUB

he panted for poetical immortality, and for the superior rewards of a laborious life, devoted to piety and virtue.

His acquaintance with Manso may be regarded as the most fortunate incident of his foreign excursion. Nothing could have a greater tendency to preserve and call forth the seeds of poetic enterprize in the mind of the young traveller, than his familiarity with this eminent and engaging personage, the bosom friend of Tasso; the friend who had cherished that great and afflicted poet under his roof in a season of his mental calamity, had restored his health, re-animated his fancy, and given a religious turn to the latest efforts of his majestic muse. The very life of Tasso, which this noble biographer had written with the copious and minute fidelity of personal knowledge, and with the ardour of affectionate enthusiasm, might be sufficient to give new energy to Milton's early passion for poetical renown: his conversation had, probably, a still greater tendency to produce this effect. Circumstances remote, and apparently of little moment, have often a mar

vellous influence on the works of imagination; nor is it too wild a conjecture to suppose, that the zeal of Manso, in speaking to Milton of his departed friend, might give force and permanence to that literary ambition, which ultimately rendered his aspiring guest the great rival of Tasso, and, in the estimation of Englishmen, his superior.

From Naples it was the design of Milton to pass into Sicily and Greece; but receiving intelligence of the civil war in England, he felt it inconsistent with his principles to wander abroad, even for the improvement of his mind, while his countrymen were contending for liberty at home.

In preparing for his return to Rome, he was cautioned against it by some mercantile friends, whose letters intimated that he had much to apprehend from the machinations of English jesuits, if he appeared again in that city; they were incensed against him by the freedom of his discourse on topics of religion; "I had made it a rule (says Milton) never to start a religious subject in this country; but if I were questioned on my faith,

66

never to dissemble, whatever I might suffer. I returned, nevertheless to Rome," continues the undaunted traveller, "and, whenever I was interrogated, I attempted no disguise; if any one attacked my principles, I defended the true religion in the very city of the pope, and during almost two months, with as much freedom as I had used before. By the protection of God I returned safe again to Florence, revisiting friends, who received me as gladly as if I had been restored to my native home."*

* In Siciliam quoque et Græciam trajicere volentem me, tristis ex Anglia belli civilis nuntius revocavit; turpe enim existimabam, dum mei cives domi de libertate dimicarent, me animi causâ otiose peregrinari. Romam autem reversurum, monebant mercatores se didicisse per literas parari mihi ab jesuitis Anglis insidias, si Romam reverterem, có quod de religione nimis liberè loquutus essem. Sic enim mecum statueram, de religione quidem iis in locis sermones ultro non inferre: interrogatus de fide, quicquid essem passurus, nihil dissimulare. Romam itaque nihilominus redii: quid essem, si quis interrogabat, nemine celavi; si quis adoriebatur, in ipsâ urbe pontificis, alteros prope duos menses, orthodoxam religionem, ut antea, liberrimè tuebar; deoque

After a second residence of almost two months in Florence, whence he made an excursion to Lucca, a place endeared to him by having produced the ancestors of his favorite friend Diodati, he extended his travels through Bologna and Ferrara to Venice. Here, he remained a month, and having sent hence a collection of books, and particularly of music, by sea, he proceeded himself through Verona and Milan to Geneva. In this city he was gratified by the society and kindness of John Diodati, uncle of his young friend, whose untimely death he lamented in a Latin poem, of which we shall soon have occasion to speak. Returning by his former road through France, he reached England at a period that seems to have made a strong impression on his mind, when the king was waging, in favor of episcopacy, his unprosperous war with the Scots, The time of Milton's absence from his native

sic volente, incolumis Florentiam rursus perveni: haud minus mei cupientes revisens, ac si in patriam revertisscm.-Defensio Secunda.

country exceeded not, by his own account a year and three months.

In the relation that he gives himself of his return, the name of Geneva recalling to his mind one of the most slanderous of his political adversaries, he animates his narrative by a solemn appeal to heaven on his unspotted integrity; he protests that, during his residence in foreign scenes, where licentiousness was universal, his own conduct was perfectly irreproachable*. I dwell the more zealously on whatever may elucidate the moral character of Milton, because even among those who love and revere him, the splendor of the poet has in some measure eclipsed the merit of the man; but in proportion as the particulars of his life are studied with intelligence and candour, his virtue will become, as it ought to be, the friendly

* Quæ urbs, cum in mentem mihi hinc veniat Mori calumniatoris, facit ut deum hic rursus testem invocem, me his omnibus in locis, ubi tam multa licent, ab omni flagitio ac probro integrum atque intactum vixisse, illud perpetuo cogitatem, si hominum latere oculos possem, dei certe non posse.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »