Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/33

Milton history of a manuscript given by Malatesti to Milton, containing some equivocal sonnets, which was afterwards in possession of Thomas Hollis, see ,'i. 786-7 n.) At Florence Milton, as he states in the ‘Areopagitica,’ saw Galileo. References in ‘Paradise Lost’ (i. 287-91, v. 262) also indicate the impression made upon Milton by this interview; and the noble lines upon Vallombrosa commemorate a visit of which there was said to be some tradition at the convent ( poem, At Vallombrosa, 1837; works by, vi. 82). Two Latin letters written by Milton to the convent had been shown at Vallombrosa a ‘few years ago’ in 1877 (Notes and Queries, 5th ser. viii.117). At Rome Milton's chief association was apparently with Lucas Holsten or Holstenius, librarian of the Vatican, who had lived at Oxford, and afterwards became a convert to Catholicism. Holstenius showed him collections of books and manuscripts, and introduced him to his patron, Cardinal Barberini. Milton attended a concert at Barberini's palace, and there probably heard the great singer, Leonora Baroni, to whom he addressed three Latin epigrams. At Naples Milton was introduced by ‘a certain eremite,’ with whom he had travelled from Rome, to the aged Manso, formerly the patron of Tasso and Marini. To Manso he addressed an epistle in Latin hexameters, and received in acknowledgment two richly worked cups (described in his ‘Epitaphium Damonis’). Manso, says Milton, excused himself for not showing more attentions on account of his guest's freedom in conversations upon religion. Milton was afterwards told that the English Jesuits at Rome intended to lay snares for him upon the same ground. He determined, however, to speak freely if he should be attacked, and, though carrying out his resolution, was not molested. Milton wrote five Italian sonnets and a canzone, professing love to a beautiful Italian lady of Bologna, which from the allusions to the scenery are supposed to have been written during his visit to that place in the spring of 1639. One of them, however, is addressed to Charles Diodati, who died in August 1638, but it is possible that Milton may not have heard of his loss. Nothing further is known of the lady, whom Warton arbitrarily identified with the singer Leonora; and they are chiefly remarkable as proofs of Milton's facility in writing Italian, although not without occasional slips of grammar and idiom (, i. 826-7 n.)

Milton soon after his return to England took lodgings at a tailor's house in St. Bride's Churchyard. His sister, Mrs. Phillips, had lost her husband in 1631, and afterwards married Thomas Agar, who had succeeded her first husband as secondary in the crown office. She had two sons by her first marriage: Edward, aged about nine, and John, a year younger, who now became pupils of their uncle, the youngest being ‘wholly committed to his charge.’ After a short stay in lodgings, where he had no room for his books, he took a ‘pretty garden-house’ in Aldersgate Street, then, says Phillips, one of the quietest streets in London. Professor Masson (ii. 207) thinks that it was near Golden Lion Court. The elder nephew now came to board with him also, and the household became an example of ‘hard study and spare diet.’ Once a month or so he allowed himself a ‘gaudy day,’ with some ‘beaux of these times,’ but otherwise he devoted himself to carrying out the system of education described in his treatise on that subject (letter to Hartlib, published in June 1644). He gives a portentous list of books to be read; and his pupils are to be trained in athletic and military sports, and in poetry and philosophy, besides obtaining a vast amount of useful knowledge so far as such knowledge is accessible through classical authors. Phillips gives some account of his practice. In 1643 he began to take more pupils. Meanwhile he was busy with literary projects. The ‘Epitaphium Damonis,’ written soon after his return, commemorates, in the form of a pastoral idyll in Latin hexameters, his grief for the loss of Diodati, and incidentally states the resolution, to which he adhered, of henceforth writing in the vernacular. He sketches the plan of an heroic poem upon Arthur. A notebook, now in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, gives a list of ninety-nine subjects for poems extracted from scripture and English history. Four drafts show that he was already contemplating a poem on ‘Paradise Lost,’ which was, however, to be in the form of the Greek tragedy. The other subjects are more briefly noticed, and probably few of them occupied his attention for more than the moment. A passage in his ‘Reason of Church-Government’ (1641) describes his meditations upon some great moral and religious poem, the poem and topic being still undecided (for the reasons for assigning the date of about 1640 to these jottings see, ii. 121).

Milton's attention was soon diverted from poetry to ecclesiastical disputes. The meeting of the Long parliament in November 1640 was the signal for urgent attacks upon the episcopacy. Numerously signed petitions were followed by proceedings in parliament, and accompanied by a shower of books and pamphlets. The chief champion of 