perfect shape of all things good, wise,
and just. His body must be spotless and without blemish, his life pure,
his thoughts high, his studies intense. There was no drinking at the
'Mermaid' for John Milton. His thoughts, like his joys, were not those
that

'are in widest commonalty spread.'

When in his walks he met the Hodge of his period, he is more likely to
have thought of a line in Virgil than of stopping to have a chat with the
poor fellow. He became a student of the Italian language, and writes to
a friend: 'I who certainly have not merely wetted the tip of my lips in
the stream of these (the classical) languages, but in proportion to my
years have swallowed the most copious draughts, can yet sometimes retire
with avidity and delight to feast on Dante, Petrarch, and many others;
nor has Athens itself been able to confine me to the transparent waves of
its Ilissus, nor ancient Rome to the banks of its Tiber, so as to prevent
my visiting with delight the streams of the Arno and the hills of
Faesolae.'

Now it was that he, in his often-quoted words written to the young
Deodati, doomed to an early death, was meditating 'an immortality of
fame,' letting his wings grow and preparing to fly. But dreaming though
he ever was of things to come, none the less, it was at Horton he
composed _Comus_, _Lycidas_, _L'Allegro_, and _Il Penseroso_, poems which
enable us half sadly to realize how much went and how much was sacrificed
to make the author of _Paradise Lost_.

After five years' retirement Milton began to feel the want of a little
society, of the kind that is 'quiet, wise, and good,' and he meditated
taking chambers in one of the Inns of Court, where he could have a
pleasant and shady walk under 'immemorial elms,' and also enjoy the
advantages of a few choice associates at home and an elegant society
abroad. The death of his mother in 1637 gave his thoughts another
direction, and he obtained his father's permission to travel to Italy,
'that woman-country, wooed not wed,' which has been the mistress of so
many poetical hearts, and was so of John Milton's. His friends and
relatives saw but one difficulty in the way. John Milton the younger,
though not at this time a Nonconformist, was a stern and unbending
Protestant, and was as bitter an opponent of His Holiness the Pope as he
certainly would have been, had his days been prolonged, of His Majesty
the Pretender.

There is something very characteristic in