e is darkened which Nature ever made; an eye so privileged, and gifted
with such rare qualities that it may with truth be said to have seen
more than all of those eyes who are gone, and to have opened the eyes of
all who are to come.' Galileo endured his affliction with patient
resignation and fortitude, and in the following extract from a letter by
him he acknowledges the chastening hand of a Divine Providence: 'Alas!
your dear friend and servant Galileo has become totally blind, so that
this heaven, this earth, this universe, which with wonderful
observations I had enlarged a hundred and a thousand times beyond the
belief of bygone ages, henceforward for me is shrunk into the narrow
space which I myself fill in it. So it pleases God; it shall then please
me also.' The rigorous curtailment of his liberty which prompted Galileo
to head his letters, 'From my prison at Arcetri,' was relaxed when total
blindness had supervened upon the infirmities of age. Permission was
given him to receive his friends, and he was allowed to have free
intercourse with his neighbours.

Milton, during his stay at Florence, visited Galileo at Arcetri. We are
ignorant of the details of this eventful and interesting interview
between the aged and blind astronomer and the young English poet, who
afterwards immortalised his name in heroic verse, and who in his
declining years suffered from an affliction similar to that which befel
Galileo, and to which he alludes so pathetically in the following
lines:--

Thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou
Revisitest not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled.--iii. 21-26.

We can imagine that Galileo's astronomical views, which at that time
were the subject of much discussion among scientific men and professors
of religion, and on account of which he suffered persecution, were
eagerly discussed. It is also probable that the information communicated
by Galileo, or by some of his followers, may have persuaded Milton to
entertain a more favourable opinion of the Copernican theory. The
interesting discoveries made by Galileo with his telescope without doubt
formed a pleasant subject of conversation, and Milton enjoyed the
privilege of listening to a detailed description of these from the lips
of the aged astronomer. The telescope, its