Holiness the Pope as he certainly would have been, had his days been prolonged, of His Majesty the Pretender.

There is something very characteristic in this almost inflamed hostility in the case of a man with such love of beauty and passion for architecture and music as always abided in Milton, and who could write:

‘But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters’ pale,
And love the high embowèd roof,
With antique pillars massy-proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim, religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced quire below,
In service high and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before my eyes.’

Here surely is proof of an æsthetic nature beyond most of our modern raptures; but none the less,

and at the very same time, Rome was for Milton the ‘grim wolf’ who, ‘with privy paw, daily devours apace.’  It is with a sigh of sad sincerity that Dr. Newman admits that Milton breathes through his pages a hatred of the Catholic Church, and consequently the Cardinal feels free to call him a proud and rebellious creature of God.  That Milton was both proud and rebellious cannot be disputed.  Nonconformists need not claim him for their own with much eagerness.  What he thought of Presbyterians we know, and he was never a church member, or indeed a church-goer.  Dr. Newman has admitted that the poet Pope was an unsatisfactory Catholic; Milton was certainly an unsatisfactory Dissenter.  Let us be candid in these matters.  Milton was therefore bidden by his friends, and by those with whom he took counsel, to hold his peace whilst in Rome about the ‘grim wolf,’ and he promised to do so, adding, however, the Miltonic proviso that this was on condition that the Papists did not attack his religion first.  ‘If anyone,’ he wrote, ‘in the very city of the Pope attacked the orthodox religion, I defended it most freely.’  To call the Protestant religion, which had not yet attained to its second century, the orthodox religion

under the shadow of the Vatican was to have the courage of his opinions.  But Milton was not a man to be frightened of schism.  That his religious opinions should be peculiar probably seemed to him to be almost inevitable, and not unbecoming.  He would have agreed with Emerson, who declares that would man be great he must be a Nonconformist.

There is something very fascinating in the records we have of Milton’s one visit to the Continent.  A more impressive Englishman never left our shores.  Sir Philip Sidney perhaps approaches him nearest.  Beautiful beyond praise, and just sufficiently conscious of it to be careful never to appear at a disadvantage, dignified in manners, versed in foreign tongues, yet full of the ancient learning—a gentleman, a scholar, a poet, a musician, and a Christian—he moved about in a leisurely manner from city to city, writing Latin verses for his hosts and Italian sonnets in their ladies’ albums, buying books and music, and creating, one cannot doubt, an all too flattering impression of an English Protestant.  To travel in Italy with Montaigne or Milton, or Evelyn or Gray, or Shelley, or, pathetic as it is, with the dying Sir Walter, is perhaps more instructive than to go there for

yourself with a tourist’s ticket.  Old Montaigne, who was but forty-seven when he made his journey, and whom therefore I would not call old had not Pope done so before me, is the most delightful of travelling companions, and as easy as an old shoe.  A humaner man than Milton, a wiser man than Evelyn—with none of the constraint of Gray, or the strange, though fascinating, outlandishness of Shelley—he perhaps was more akin to Scott than any of the other travellers; but Scott went to Italy an overwhelmed man, whose only fear was he might die away from the heather and the murmur of Tweed.  However, Milton is the most improving companion of them all, and amidst the impurities of Italy, ‘in all the places where vice meets with so little discouragement, and is protected with so little shame,’ he remained the Milton of Cambridge and Horton, and did nothing to pollute the pure temple of a poet’s mind.  He visited Paris, Nice, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence, staying in the last city two months, and living on terms of great intimacy with seven young Italians, whose musical names he duly records.  These were the months of August and September, not nowadays reckoned safe months for Englishmen to be in Florence—modern lives

being raised in price.  From Florence he proceeded through Siena to Rome, where he also stayed two months.  There he was present at a magnificent entertainment given by the Cardinal Francesco Barberini in his palace, and heard the singing of the celebrated Leonora Baroni.  It is not for one moment to be supposed that he sought an interview with the Pope, as Montaigne had done, who was exhorted by His Holiness ‘to persevere in the devotion he had ever manifested in the cause of the Church;’ and yet perhaps Montaigne by his essays did more to sap the authority of Peter’s chair than Milton, however willing, was able to do.

It has been remarked that Milton’s chief enthusiasm in Italy was not art, but music, which falls in with Coleridge’s dictum, that Milton is not so much a picturesque as a musical poet—meaning thereby, I suppose, that the effects which he produces and the scenes which he portrays are rather suggested to us by the rhythm of his lines than by actual verbal descriptions.  From Rome Milton went to Naples, whence he had intended to go to Sicily and Greece; but the troubles beginning at home he forewent this pleasure, and consequently never saw Athens, which was surely a

great pity.  He returned to Rome, where, troubles or no troubles, he stayed another two months.  From Rome he went back to Florence, which he found too pleasant to leave under two more months.  Then he went to Lucca, and so to Venice, where he was very stern with himself, and only lingered a month.  From Venice he went to Milan, and then over the Alps to Geneva, where he had dear friends.  He was back in London in August, 1639, after an absence of fifteen months.

The times were troubled enough.  Charles I., whose literary taste was so good that one must regret the mischance that placed a crown upon his comely head, was trying hard, at the bidding of a priest, to thrust Episcopacy down Scottish throats, who would not have it at any price.  He was desperately in need of money, and the House of Commons (which had then a raison d’être) was not prepared to give him any except on terms.  Altogether it was an exciting time, but Milton was in no way specially concerned in it.  Milton looms so large in our imagination amongst the figures of the period that, despite Dr. Johnson’s sneers, we are apt to forget his political insignificance, and to fancy him curtailing his tour and returning home to

take his place amongst the leaders of the Parliament men.  Return home he did, but it was, as another pedagogue has reminded us, to receive boys ‘to be boarded and instructed.’  Dr. Johnson tells us that we ought not to allow our veneration for Milton to rob us of a joke at the expense of a 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