venerable ruins and
masterpieces of ancient and modern art which have inspired so many
immortal compositions, Milton tells us nothing, and but one allusion to
them is discoverable in his writings. The study of antiquity, as
distinguished from that of classical authors, was not yet a living
element in European culture: there is also truth in Coleridge's
observation that music always had a greater attraction for Milton than
plastic art.

After two months' stay in Rome, Milton proceeded to Naples, whence,
after two months' residence, he was recalled by tidings of the impending
troubles at home, just as he was about to extend his travels to Sicily
and Greece. The only name associated with his at Naples is that of the
Marquis Manso, then passing his seventy-ninth year with the halo of
reverence due to a veteran who fifty years ago had soothed and shielded
Tasso, and since had protected Marini. He now entertained Milton with
equal kindness, little dreaming that in return for hospitality he was
receiving immortality. Milton celebrated his desert as the friend of
poets, in a Latin poem of singular elegance, praying for a like guardian
of his own fame, in lines which should never be absent from the memory
of his biographers. He also unfolded the project which he then cherished
of an epic on King Arthur, and assured Manso that Britain was not wholly
barbarous, for the Druids were really very considerable poets. He is
silent on Chaucer and Shakespeare. Manso requited the eulogium with an
epigram and two richly-wrought cups, and told Milton that he would have
shown him more observance still if he could have abstained from
religious controversy. Milton had not acted on Sir Henry Wootton's
advice to him, _il volto sciolto, i pensieri stretti_. "I had made this
resolution with myself," he says, "not of my own accord to introduce
conversation about religion; but, if interrogated respecting the faith,
whatsoever I should suffer, to dissemble nothing." To this resolution he
adhered, he says, during his second two months' visit to Rome,
notwithstanding threats of Jesuit molestation, which probably were not
serious. At Florence his friends received him with no less warmth than
if they had been his countrymen, and with them he spent another two
months. His way to Venice lay through Bologna and Ferrara, and if his
sonnets in the Italian language were written in Italy, and all addressed
to the same person, it was probably at Bologna, since th