f their
nation. Having seen the finest parts of Italy, and conversed with men
of the first distinction, he was preparing to pass over into Sicily
and Greece, when the news from England, that a civil war was like to
lay his country in blood, diverted his purpose; for as by his
education and principles he was attached to the parliamentary
interest, he thought it a mark of abject cowardice, for a lover of his
country to take his pleasure abroad, while the friends of liberty were
contending at home for the rights of human nature. He resolved
therefore to return by way of Rome, tho' he was dissuaded from
pursuing that resolution by the merchants, who were informed by their
correspondents, that the English jesuits there were forming plots
against his life, in case he should return thither, on account of the
great freedom with which he had treated their religion, and the
boldness he discovered in demonstrating the absurdity of the Popish
tenets; for he by no means observed the rule recommended to him by Sir
Henry Wotton, of keeping his thoughts close, and his countenance open.
Milton was removed above dissimulation, he hated whatever had the
appearance of disguise, and being naturally a man of undaunted
courage, he was never afraid to assert his opinions, nor to vindicate
truth tho' violated by the suffrage of the majority.

Stedfast in his resolutions, he went to Rome a second time, and stayed
there two months more, neither concealing his name, nor declining any
disputations to which his antagonists in religious opinions invited
him; he escaped the secret machinations of the jesuits, and came safe
to Florence, where he was received by his friends with as much
tenderness as if he had returned to his own country. Here he remained
two months, as he had done in his former visit, excepting only an
excursion of a few days to Lucca, and then crossing the Appenine, and
passing thro' Bologna, and Ferrara, he arrived at Venice, in which
city he spent a month; and having shipped off the books he had
collected in his travels, he took his course thro' Verona, Milan, and
along the Lake Leman to Geneva. In this city he continued some time,
meeting there with people of his own principles, and contracted an
intimate friendship with Giovanni Deodati, the most learned professor
of Divinity, whose annotations on the bible are published in English;
and from thence returning to France the same way that he had gone
before, he arrived safe in Engla