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me the further attention which he desired in that city on account of my unwillingness to conceal my religious sentiments." Milton's resolve, on leaving home, was, never to obtrude his religious views, but never to conceal them when that question should be raised by others. But this precaution, it seems, was not enough to secure him against inconvenience, nor even from danger; for when he meditated returning to Rome, he was admonished by merchants in Naples that they had learnt by letters, that snares were being laid for him by English Jesuits, if he should appear again in that city. But return he must, and he would return through Rome. He was a good swordsman, and feared nothing, where the strife should be man to man.

It was at Naples that grave tidings reached him in regard to the conflict which had grown up between sovereign and subject in England. It was his wish to have gone to Sicily, and onwards to Greece; but on receiving such news, he says: "I considered it disgraceful that, while my fellow-countrymen were fighting at home for liberty, I should be travelling abroad at ease, for intellectual purposes." The Scottish nation had swept away, and with a rude hand, all the ecclesiastical innovations of Laud and the king. England was in strong sympathy with what Scotland had done; and if civil war had not commenced south of the Tweed, thoughtful men saw that it was imminent. When about to leave Naples, Milton addressed an epistle to Manso, in Latin hexameters, rich in a higher style of poetry than anything which the muse of Tasso had inspired in his favour. Manso, in return, presented his friend with two cups of rich workmanship, and with them the following brief but expressive lines. The reference in the last line is to the well-known story of the beautiful Saxon youths exposed for sale in the Roman slave-market in the time of Pope Gregory:—

"Joannes Baptista Mansus, Marquis of Villa, Neapolitan, to John Milton, Englishman.

"Mind, form, grace, face, and morals are perfect; if but thy creed were,

Then not Angelic alone, truly Angelic thou'dst be."

It was something to leave this impression on the mind of the first man in Naples. "To Rome," says Milton, "I returned, notwithstanding what I had been told. What I was, if any man asked, I concealed from no one; if any one in the city of the Pope attacked the orthodox religion, I, as before, for a second space of nearly two months, defended it most freely." In Florence, as in Rome, Milton renewed his intercourse with old friends, and then passed through Bologna and Ferrara, to halt for a month in Venice. From Venice his track was through Verona and Milan, and over Mount St. Bernard to Geneva. In the latter city the traveller remained some weeks; and then, returning by the same route to Paris, he reached England about the end of July, having been absent "a year and three months, more or less." This brief account of his travels was given when the course he had taken in public affairs had exposed him to many unscrupulous party calumnies; and for this reason he concludes his statement on this matter in the following words: "I again take God to witness that in all those places, where so many things are considered lawful, I lived sound and untouched from all profligacy and vice, having this thought perpetually with me, that, though I might escape the eyes of men, I certainly could not the eyes of God."

It is observable that all the poetry of Milton written while in Italy, in common with nearly everything written by him while in Cambridge, is of a grave description. We have seen, that in

his noble epistle to Manso, he made no secret of intending to give his mind to the writing of an epic poem; and the verses of his friends concerning him, both in Rome and Florence, show that enough had fallen from his lips in those places to have led them to expect a work of that nature from his genius. To this time, indeed, no thought had come to him of taking the loss of Paradise as his theme. It was the story of King Arthur, and of the chivalrous knights and the ladies about him, that had hitherto filled his imagination with its glowing pictures.

When Milton returned to England, his father had relinquished the house at Horton, and was residing with his son Christopher at Reading. The expense inseparable from the travel of the poet had not prevented his purchasing a considerable number of books. Some he brought with him, and others were to follow. In fact, we are warranted from circumstances in supposing that the means now allowed him were such as to secure him a moderate independence. Commercial life, in his case, was not thought of, and he had come to be as little disposed towards professional life. If his kind father could provide for him, so as to leave him to his books and to his literary work, we may be sure he would, and it is obvious that he must have so done.

Milton's first step on his return to London, was to hire part of a house in St. Bride's Churchyard. There he lodged his books, and resumed his studies. This was sometime towards the close of 1639. But in the following year we find him taking a "garden house"—that is, a detached house with a garden round it—in Aldersgate Street: a street described as being at that time, one of the most quiet and genteel outlets of London. By this time his sister Philips had become a widow, and had married again. While in St. Bride's Churchyard he had taken her youngest son—a lad of much promise, then nine years of age—"to his own charge and care," and now an elder nephew was received with him as a boarder. Having generally engaged to conduct the education of these lads himself, we find a few others taken with them, sons of his personal friends; and with whom he no doubt received a liberal acknowledgment for his services.

At this point in Milton's career, Johnson gives full vent to his bitter disaffection towards him. "Let not our veneration for Milton," he writes, "forbid us to look with some degree of merriment on great promises and small performances; on the man who hastens home because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his patriotism in a private boarding-school." Milton tells us that he thought it became him at this juncture to leave, "the event of public affairs, first to God, and then to those to whom the people had committed that task."1 But Milton's writings are, to a large extent, his biography; and had Johnson condescended to read his prose works with the care they merit, the following passage must have arrested his attention, and must have sufficed somewhat to check his merriment: "Relying on the assistance of God, they-the people of England-repelled servitude with the most justifiable war; and though I claim no share of their peculiar praise, I can easily defend myself against the charge (if any charge of that nature should be brought against me) of timidity or of indolence. For I did not for any other reason decline the toils and dangers of war, than that I might, in another way, with much more efficacy, and with not less danger to myself, render assistance to my countrymen, and discover a mind neither shrinking from adverse fortune, nor actuated by any improper fear of calumny or of death. Since from my childhood I had been devoted to the more liberal studies, and was always more powerful in my intellect than in my body, avoiding the labours of the camp, in which any robust common soldier might easily have surpassed me, I betook myself to those weapons which I could wield with the most effect, and I

¹ Masson's Milton.

^\* Defensio Secundus.

Defensio Secunda.