the uncle of his friend Charles Diodati. Here also he made the acquaintance of Frederick Spanheim, an eminent theologian. He thence proceeded to Lyons; and taking his former route through France, reached his native land in safety some time in the month of August, 1639, after an absence of fifteen months.

It does not seem to have occurred to any of Milton's biographers, to endeavour to assign the time of the year that he was in the different cities of Italy which he visited; yet it is not an uninteresting subject, and we will therefore try if we can succeed in elucidating it.

It is probable that he reached Florence some time in the month of July, 1638,* for he was two months there, and it is not at all likely that he would have set out for Rome till toward the middle or end of September, so as not to arrive till the period of the malaria in that city was nearly over, and people of rank were returning to it from the country. He staid there, as he tells us, about two months, so he may have reached Naples toward the end of November. His stay there must have been brief, perhaps not more than a fortnight, and he was probably back in Rome before Christmas. As he remained there two months, and was two months more in Florence, and one month in Venice, and we know that he was in Geneva in the beginning of June,† he probably left Rome about the middle of February. He wrote, as we have

* As he left England in May and made only a short stay in Paris, it is difficult to conjecture how he spent so much time on his way to Italy.

+ Mr. Hunter (p. 23) mentions an album kept at Geneva at that time, in which Milton had written

"If virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her.

"Cœlum non animum muto dum trans mare curro.

Junii 10°, 1639. Johannes Miltonius, Anglus."

seen, to Holstein from Florence on the 30th of March, and within the next fortnight he must have set out for Venice, where he spent a month, and so left it in or about the middle of May, so as to reach Geneva by the end of that month or the beginning of June. He must have made some stay in Geneva, as he did not land in England till some time in August.*

When terminating at Geneva the brief account which he gives of his travels, Milton expresses himself in the following terms:-" Here again I take God to witness, that I lived in all those places, where so much license is given, free from and untouched by any kind of vice and infamy, continually bearing in mind that even if I could escape the eyes of men, I could not escape those of God." Even in his Italian poetry, written at Florence, we may discern the same religious tone which characterized his English compositions anterior to his abode at Horton. From his poem to Manso, and from the complimentary verses of his Roman friends, we may perceive that he had formed the intention and made known his resolution of writing an heroic poem, taking his subject from some part of the ancient British history, as narrated by Geoffrey of Monmouth. There is not the slightest reason for supposing that the Fall of Man had as yet presented itself to his mind, as the subject of either an epic poem or a drama.

We feel a kind of pride at the reflection that our own route in Italy, the only time we have been able to visit it, and the time we spent in its various cities, have several points of coincidence with those of Milton.

22

THIRD PERIOD.

CIVIL WAR AND COMMONWEALTH.

A. D. 1639-1660. A. ET. 31-52.

MILTON's return to England was not, as he himself (by a slip of memory, no doubt) states, "at the time when Charles, having broken the peace with the Scots, was renewing the second of those wars named Episcopal," but exactly a twelvemonth previous to that time, and about eight months before the meeting of the Short Parliament. It is not improbable that his father had disposed of the house at Horton during his son's absence, and gone to reside with his son Christopher, with whom we find him living in Reading, at a somewhat later period. Milton therefore, who had now a large collection of books, and who expected more every day from Italy, and for this and probably other reasons did not wish to live out of London, hired apartments for himself in that city.

It was probably very soon after his return that he wrote his beautiful Latin poem, the Epitaphium Damonis, to commemorate the virtues of his early friend Charles Diodati, who had died apparently in the preceding spring, while the poet was enjoying the delights

*Defensio Secunda.

of Florence. Though he tells us himself that "he received the intelligence while he was abroad," his biographers assure us that he did not hear of it till his

return.

Milton was now arrived at the close of his thirty-first year; the allowance made him by his father placed him at least in independent circumstances; nature had not qualified him to take an active part in public affairs, for his delight was in the studious shade of retirement; but still, to live entirely to himself in literary selfishness would in his eyes have been a gross dereliction of duty. "Things," says he,† "being in such a disturbed and fluctuating state, I looked about to see if I could get any place that would hold myself and my books, and so I took a house of sufficient size in the city; and there, with no small delight, I resumed my intermitted studies; cheerfully leaving the event of public affairs, first to God, and then to those to whom the people had committed that task." We may here observe, that the house of which he speaks was not his first residence in London after his return from the Continent. His nephew informs us, that he took apartments (probably the whole upper part of the house) in the house of one Russell, a tailor, in St. Bride's churchyard, Fleet-street. As his sister, Mrs. Phillips, had married a second time, and perhaps was not in very affluent circumstances, he kindly undertook to relieve her of the burden of her younger son John, then a smart clever boy of nine years of age, taking him "to his own charge and care," as his other

"Thyrsis, animi causa profectus peregre, de obitu Damonis nuncium accepit. Demum postea reversus, et rem ita esse comperto, se suamque solitudinem hoc carmine deplorat."-Argum. Epit. Damonis. + Defensio Secunda.

nephew expresses it, that is, keeping and educating him at his own expense.

He did not remain long in these lodgings, for finding them too confined, or more probably being, as we shall see, urged by his friends to extend his sphere of usefulness, he left them some time early in 1640, and took what was called a garden-house,-i. e. a house standing detached in an enclosed garden, of which there were many such at that time in London. It stood at the end of an entry in Aldersgate-street, "and therefore," says Phillips, "the fitter for his turn by the reason of the privacy, besides that there were few streets in London more free from noise than that."* Here his elder nephew Edward Phillips was, he tells us, "put to board with him;" and, in addition to his nephews, he was induced to receive a few more pupils, the sons of his intimate friends, for whom we are to suppose he was liberally remunerated. We are not informed of the number or the names of these, but the number of course could not have been large.

His course of education was a very extensive one, by far too much so for the ordinary order of minds. But it was also, in our opinion, an erroneous one; as, by putting authors of an inferior order into the hands of youth, the opportunity of forming a pure and correct taste was lost, and by giving the preference to works of science, the culture of the imagination, which is such a source of pure happiness at all periods of life, was nearly altogether neglected. Where a poet was the teacher,

Mr. Hunter (Milton, p. 26) having given the names of those who lived in the same street, among whom was Milton's old master Dr. Gill and Sir Thomas Cecil, observes that "Milton's house was situated in what, in modern phrase, would be called a genteel part of the town."