tâ potest observantiâ meo nomine salutes, cujus magnæ virtutes, rectique studium, ad provehendas item omnes arte liberales egregiè comparatum, semper mihi ob oculos versatur.'

At Rome, Milton also became acquainted with the two Italian poets, Selvaggi and Salsilli; the first of whom, in a distich, makes him equal to Homer and Virgil; and the second, in a tetrastich, sets him not only above both the Greek and Roman poets, but even above his own Tasso. With his honours thus thick upon him, Milton departed for Naples; and was introduced to Manso, marquis of Villa, by a hermit, who had been the companion of his journey. Manso was the patron of Tasso; and is not only mentioned, among the princes of Campania, in the twentieth book of Gierusalemme Liberata,-but received the dedication of a treatise, by the same author, intitled De Amicitia. He went himself with Milton to view the curiosities of the city; often visited him, in person, at his lodgings; and, finally, wrote a distich of Latin verses, in praise of every thing but his religion. If it was for these two lines

Urban VIII.; who, says Dr. Bargrave, had nothing in his mouth but Cardinall Padrone. Where is the Cardinall Padrone? call the Cardinali Padrone: speake to the Cardinall Padrone: nothing was heard of but the Cardinall Padrone.' Todd, vol. i. p. 34, note. Cardinal Barberini knew whom he was to caress; and, had Milton come with letters to any other guardian, he would have been more likely to show him out of a rausical assembly, than to conduct him into it. When I was at Rome with the earle of Chesterfield, (we still use the words of Dr. Bargrave,) then under my tuition, 1650, at a yeare of jubile, this Cardinall (formerly kind to me) would not admit my lord or myself to any audience, though, in eleven months' time, tryed severall times: and I heard that it was because that we had recommendatory letters from our queen mother to Cardinall Copponies, and another from the dutchess of Savoy to Cardinall Penzirolo, and no letters to him, who was the English (I say Rebells) Protector; and that we visited them before him. Ibid. p. 33, note.

that Milton sent back Mansus, the marquis of Villa was certainly overpaid.

The patron of Tasso did our poet a more friendly service, by telling him, frankly, that he was too forward in promulgating his own opinions; and that, had he not visited Galileo, and been less free in his speech about religion and politics, he would have received yet more and greater marks of distinction. While he was preparing to embark for Sicily and Greece, he received intelligence of the civil war in England; and, thinking that his own country demanded his first care, he resolved to change his destination, and return home. Some merchants now brought him numerous reports of plots against his life by the English Jesuits; and advised him, by all means, not to travel by the way of Rome. But Milton seems to have wanted neither civil nor personal courage;* and, in a spirit of defiance, he set out again for Rome; resolving, says Toland, to maintain his doctrines even under the nose of the pope;' to dispute, whenever there should be occasion, and perhaps to fight, if it should become necessary. Fortunately, however, the Jesuits had not resolved to take his life, and the pope gave himself little trouble about his opinions. He was permitted to live as unmolested, and to speak as freely, as ever; and, though he spent two months more in Rome, we do not find him engaged in any adventures, of which it has been thought worth while to give posterity

an account.

*He was reproached with weakness by the author of Clamor Regii Sanguinis; and he thus answers the charge: Neither am I (says he) slender; for I was strong and capable enough in my youth to handle my weapons, and to exercise daily fencing: so that, wearing a sword by my side, as became a gentleman, I thought myself a match for those that were much stronger, and was not afraid of re ceiving an affront from any body. I have still the same soul and vigour, but not the same eyes.' And we cannot but remark, that it is almost solely on this occasion, and for this reason alone, that he ever seems to lament the loss of his eyes..

From Rome he travelled through Lucca, Bononia, and Ferrara, to Venice; and, after shipping a collection of rare books, proceeded thence to Verona, to Milan, along the Poenine Alps, and by Lake Leman, to Geneva. Dr. Johnson thinks, he now considered himself as 'in the metropolis of orthodoxy;' and was happy to become acquainted with John Diodati and Frederick Spanhiem, two learned professors of divinity.' Diodati was, indeed, a noted theologian; but Spanhiem had his head too much filled with other things to find a place for divinity. Toland calls him the celebrated critic and antiquary;' and says he was alive in 1761.* From Geneva Milton passed into France, and returned to England. He now learned, that Charles Diodati had died in his absence; and, resolving to perpetuate the memory of so near a friend, he composed a pastoral poem, entitled Epitaphium Damonis. Diodati was descended from a family in Lucca; and might have been related to the Genevan professor, whom we have just mentioned. He was born in England; and became a student of physic. He is said to have written Greek letters to Milton;† and it is not probable, that he would be so frequently answered in Latin, unless he had been a good scholar.

Milton's next object was to procure a residence, and get into some kind of business. He took lodg ings at the house of one Russel, a taylor, in St. Bride's Church-yard; and, as his two nephews, Edward and John Phillips, were, in a measure, cast upon the world, by the second marriage of his sister Ann, he concluded to adopt them for his own, and be the superintendant of their education. He shortly after undertook the same office for the sons of some

Tol. p. 15.

+ Tol. p. 16. He speaks of two Greek letters of his to Milton, very handsomely written, and which,' he adds, ‘I have now in my brands.'

Godw. p. 4.

intimate friends; and, finding his room too small for the reception of his library, and the accommodation of his pupils, he removed into Aldersgate street, and took a garden-house at the end of an entry. He was generally a pattern to his scholars, of hard study and spare diet; but once in three weeks or a month, (says his nephew,) he would drop into the society of some young sparks of his acquaintance, the chief whereof were Mr. Alphry and Mr. Miller, two gentlemen of Gray's Inn, the beaux of those times, but nothing near so bad as those now-a-days; with these gentlemen he would so far make free with his body as now and then to keep a gaudy day.”* We suspect, from his early poems, that he was naturally prone to festivity and dissipation; and Aristotle had set him the example of being, at the same time, a fop and a philosopher.

His course of studies has been censured by Dr. Johnson; and the schoolmaster of Litchfield is certainly entitled to be heard on all questions of education. Milton seems to have taken an idea from Cowley, that it would be a great economy of time, if students could be made to learn, from one and the same author, the rudiments of language, and the principles of science. In five years, therefore, he made his scholars 'run over (to use the words of his nephew) all the most celebrated Greek and Roman authors upon agriculture, physic, natural history, architecture, military tactics, astronomy, cosmography, geography, cynegetics and helieutics, education, and moral philosophy. The list is truly formidable:-Cato, Varro, Columella, Palladius, Hesiod, Celsus, Pliny, Vitruvius, Frontinus, Ælian, Polyænus, Lucretius, Manilius, Geminus, Aratus, Dionysius Afer, Oppian, Quintus Calaber, Appollonius Rhodius, Plutarch, Xenophon. After these, +he student was put into the Arithmetic of Urstisius,

* Ph. ap. Godw. pp. 364, 365.

Riff's Geometry, Petiseus' Trigonometry, Bosco's Spherics, and Davity's Geography.* Then they were to learn Italian and French; to have a smattering of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac; and to hear a theological lecture upon every Sabbath day.

Dr. Johnson recommends a very different course. As the sciences are seldom wanted for the purposes of active life, he thinks, that the season of education should rather be spent in acquiring correct notions of right and wrong, and in making ourselves acquainted with the general history of mankind, and the biography of particular individuals. Prudence and justice (says he) are virtues and excellencies of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Physiological learning is of so rare emergence, that one may know another half his life, without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears. Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools, that supply most axioms, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation.' We have the presumption to think that the disposition and capacities of a boy are little considered, when he is expected to become learned in the sciences, adept in morality, or fertile for conversation, at the same time that he is making himself skilful in the etymology and syntax of the dead languages. To suppose that even a man can, in the same passage, be learning to construe a sentence

Ph. ap. Godw. pp. 362, 363. Mr. Godwin supposes that Homer, Eschylus. Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, Anacreon, Herodotus, Thu cydides, Plato, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Catullus, Juvenal, Martial, Cicero, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, were excluded from the course, because Milton thought it would be a profanation to em ploy' the works of such authors' as exercises' to acquire the rudiments of etymology prosody, and syntax.' p. 315, note. If it had been Milton's sole object to teach these rudiments, does Mr. Godwin take him to have had so little sense, as to neglect the only works in which they could be correctly acquired?