ticularly named by him as friends whose merits, and whose courtesies to himself, he would never forget. These were Jacopo Gaddi, Carlo Dati, Pietro Frescobaldi, Agostino Coltellini, Benedetto Buommattei, Valerio Chimentelli, and Antonio Francini. They have all left some traces of themselves in Italian literary history, though some of them are now best remembered by the happy accident of their contact with Milton. It was either in Florence, or in its close neighbourhood, that he also "found and visited the "famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisi"tion for thinking in Astronomy otherwise than the "Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought." From Florence, through Siena, Milton went to Rome. His stay here extended over nearly two months more (Oct. -Ñov. 1638); and here again, besides musing amid the ruins of the Eternal City, seeing the galleries and other sights, and being present at a concert in the palace of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, where he heard Leonora Baroni sing (see Introd. to Ad Leonoram Roma canentem), he enjoyed the society of the literary clubs or Academies. He made especial acquaintance with Lucas Holste or Holstenius, a learned German, settled in Rome as secretary to Cardinal Barberini and one of the librarians of the Vatican, and also with Alessandro Cherubini, Giovanni Salzilli, and a certain more obscure Selvaggi. Leaving Rome, in company with "a certain Eremite Friar," he spent some little time (Nov.-Dec. 1638) in Naples. Here, through his travelling companion, he was introduced to the great man of the place, the venerable Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa, then nearly eighty years of age (see Introd. to the Latin poem Mansus). From Naples it was his intention to cross over into Sicily and thence to extend his tour into Greece; but "the sad news of civil war in England," determined him to return, "inasmuch," he says, 'as I thought it base to "be travelling at my ease for intellectual culture while "my fellow-countrymen at home were fighting for

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liberty."- -The news that had reached Milton in Naples, however, was not quite that of civil war in England itself, but only of such a course of events in Scotland as seemed to make civil war inevitable. The Covenant having been adopted all but universally by the population of Scotland, Charles had been obliged to temporize so far as to permit the meeting of a General Assembly of the Kirk at Glasgow for the consideration of affairs; and at this Assembly (Nov. 21Dec. 20, 1638) the result of the consideration of affairs had been defiance to Charles and Laud in every particular. Not only had the recent ecclesiastical innovations been condemned, but all the Scottish Bishops had been deposed and disgraced, Episcopacy of every kind had been declared at an end in Scotland, and the Kirk and nation had returned absolutely to the old Presbyterian system of Knox. To punish the Scots for such audacity Charles was certainly levying forces in England and Ireland, so that in a sense civil war in Britain had actually begun. It was probably the receipt of much more correct information that made Milton's homeward journey more leisurely than he purposed when he left Naples. He spent, at all events, a second two months in Rome (Jan.-Feb. 1639), going about freely, and also talking freely, though warned, he says, that the English Jesuits in the city were on the watch to entrap him into some danger from the Papal police; and he also spent a second two months in Florence (Feb.-April, 1639), where his Florentine friends were rejoiced at his reappearance. From Florence he made an excursion to Lucca; after which, crossing the Apennines, and passing through Bologna and Ferrara, he came to Venice. He spent one month in that city (May, 1639); whence, having despatched to England by sea the books he had collected in Italy, he made his way, by Verona and Milan, and over the Pennine Alps, to Geneva. Here he passed a week or two (June, 1639), once more among Protestants, and conversing daily with the theologian Dr. Jean Diodati,

the uncle of his friend Charles.

Thence his route through France took him again to Paris; and early in August 1639 he was back in England.

Milton's fifteen or sixteen months of foreign travel and residence contributed but few additions to the list of his writings. Besides two Latin Familiar Epistles written at Florence, one to the Florentine grammarian Buommattei (Sept. 10, 1638), and one to Holstenius at Rome (March 30, 1639), we have to note only the following:

Ad Leonoram Romæ canentem (three pieces annexed to the Elegiarum Liber). 1638.

Ad Salsillum, Poetam Romanum, ægrotantem (among the Sylva). 1638.

MANSUS (among the Sylva). 1638.

Five Italian Sonnets, with a Canzone. 1639?

The Introductions to these will add particulars to this section of the Memoir.

BACK AT HORTON AND IN LONDON: LODGINGS IN ST. BRIDE'S CHURCHYARD, FLEET STREET.

1639-1640 aætat. 31-32.

:

At Horton, where Milton found all well, there had been born in his absence a little nephew, the first child of Christopher Milton and his young wife. The infant, however, had died and been buried five months before (March 26, 1639).

Another death that had happened in Milton's absence was that of his friend Charles Diodati. Milton had vaguely heard of the fact while abroad; but not till his return did he learn the full particulars. Till now the exact place and date of the death have eluded research; but, while I am writing this Memoir, I am in receipt of the long-desired information. Charles Diodati," I am informed by Colonel Chester, whose contributions to our knowledge of Milton's family history I have already had occasion to acknowledge

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a tè p. x.), was buried at St. Anne, Blackfriars, "ondon, 27 Aug. 1638. The entry in the Register is simply 'Mr. Charles Deodate, from Mr. Dollam's.' "Scen days before, viz. 10 Aug. 1638, was also ouried there Mrs. Philadelphia Deodate, from Mr. "Dollam's. On the 29th of June 1638 was baptized Richard, son of John and Isabell Deodate'; and on "the 23rd of June in the same year was buried "Isabell, wife to John Deodate? These are all the 66 entries of the name that occur in the Register of St. Anne, Blackfriars." The interpretation of these records is as follows:-When Milton had gone abroad, he had left his friend, the young physician Charles Diodati, living in lodgings, with a sister of his called Philadelphia, in the house of a Mr. Dollam in Blackfriars, near the house of their married brother, John Diodati, and therefore at some little distance from the house of their father, the naturalized Italian physician, Dr. Theodore Diodati, in Little St. Bartholomew, whose recent second marriage in his old age seems to have somewhat alienated from him these grown-up children by his first wife. Milton had left all three well in Blackfriars; but in June 1638, only two months after he had set out on his foreign tour, John Diodati had lost his wife in childbirth, and in August 1638, when he was in Florence for the first time and little dreaming of any such calamity, his friend Charles Diodati had been carried off by some epidemic of which his sister also had been a victim, and both had been buried from Mr. Dollam's house.

There was no more profound private feeling in all Milton's life than that which he experienced in the loss of Charles Diodati. He gave expression to it in that Latin pastoral of lament which he wrote immediately after his return to England (probably at Horton), and which deserves here to stand by itself :—

EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS (among the Sylvæ). 1639.1

The new facts in the text, communicated to me at the last moment by Colonel Chester, add precision to the information I have given in

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Not long after Milton's return to England the household at Horton was broken up. The father, with Christopher Milton and his wife, remained at Horton, indeed, to as late as August 1640, Christopher_having been called to the Bar of the Inner Temple January 26, 1639-40; but soon afterwards Christopher, his wife, and a second child, born at Horton, went to live at Reading, the father accompanying them. Some time before that removal (probably in the winter of 1639-40) Milton had taken lodgings in London, "in St. Bride's Churchyard, Fleet Street, at the house of one Russel, a tailor," consenting at the same time to an arrangement which can hardly have added to his comfort. His only surviving sister, whom we saw married to Mr. Edward Phillips of the Crown Office in 1624, was no longer Mrs. Phillips. Her first husband had died in 1631; and, after some time of widowhood, she had married his successor in the Crown Office, Mr. Thomas Agar. There had been left her, however, two young boys by the first marriage-Edward Phillips and John Phillips. The younger of these, (probably his godson) aged only nine years, Milton now took wholly into his charge; while the elder, only about a year older, went daily, from his mother's house near Charing Cross, to the lodging in St. Bride's Churchyard, for the benefit also of his uncle's lessons. And so, teaching his two young nephews, meditating literary projects, and looking round him on public affairs, Milton found himself in the famous year 1640.

What a year that was! In the previous year there had been the First Bishops' War-i.e. the first war of

the Introduction to the Epitaphium Damonis. They also require one correction there and in the Introduction to the Elegia Prima: viz. the substitution of "John" for "Theodore" as the name of Charles Diodati's brother. There was a Theodore Diodati the younger; but he was the son of the Genevese theologian, and therefore only the nephew of the old Dr. Theodore Diodati of London, the father of John and Charles. He outlived his uncle Dr. Theodore and his cousin John, as well as his cousin Charles, and is heard of as a "Doctor of Medicine and Merchant" in London, and apparently the sole survivor of the London Diodatis, as late as 1680.