One more poem — the last song of his young and fresh life — ])rece(ie<l his going abroad. Tlie admirers of '•Bare Ben" honored his meniorj- by a volume oi' tjiice- dia, or funeral eulogies, entitled J<)hso« ]'irbius. The scholars of Cambridge proposed a similar tribute to the ghost of Edward King. To this collection jMilton con- tributed that finest of elegies, the Lycidas. It is the- ecbo of the ]iastoral music of the ancient (Jreeks, and recalls the ]ilaintivc strains of Bion, while adopting the metrical forms of the Italian ranzoni.
Not long after this Milton .set out on his Continental tour. Northern Europe was closed against him by the Thirty -Years' War, which was ravaging the whole of Germany. France was writhing beneath the tyranny of Kichelicu, who was consolidating the monarchy at home, and strangling the supremacy of the House of Austria abroad. iMilton crossed over to Paris, where he formed the accpiaintancc of (Jrotius; proceeded to Ly- ons, and, descending the Khone, readied Marseilles. Thence he followed the littorale to Nice. From Nice he went to (ienoa, and to Florence, in which city, the centre of Italian culture, he was welcomed witli the highest distinction, and was elected a member of the
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Florentine academies. While at Florence he visited " the starry Galileo,"' now seventy-five years of age, at his pleasant villa of Arcetri, in the neighborhood. Con- tinuing his journey, he reached Kome, spending two months there " in viewing the antiquities," and listening to Leonora Baroni— the Jenny Lind of those days— who seems to have touched his heart, and to whom he ad- dressed three Latin epigrams. He next proceeded to Naples, where he was hospitably entertained by IManso, marquis di Villa, the friend of Tasso. Everywhere he was received with honor, admiration, and the inter- change of complimentary verses.
Milton had proposed to extend his travels to Sicily and Greece, but v/as not permitted to anticipate lord Byron in a poetic pilgrimage to the land of Helicon and Par- nassus, and of the Vale of Tempe. He Avas recalled from Naples by the political agitations at home, and the dull murmurs of approaching civil war. On his home- ward journey he was met by intelligence of the death of his friend, Charles Deodati, whereupon he wrote the Epitaphiuin Damonii — the Latin counterpart of the L;/cidus. From this it is evident that he was still re- volving an epic on the Brut cVAnyleterre or the Morte d'A lii'iur. But he deserted the fountains of Hippocrene, and for twenty-one years devoted himself to polemics, politics, and prose.
III. Period 1CA9-166Q.— Milton as a Polemic, Theolo- f/iaii, PoUtician, and Prose-icriter. — On his return to England, IMilton undertook the education of his two nephews, John and Edward Phillips. He was induced to receive other boys also, and accordingly took a large house in Aldersgate Street, and opened a school. Out of his academical employments sprung his Tractate on Education, his Accidence commenced Grammar, and his posthumous work On Christian Doctrine, which lay un- known till 1825. (It was edited by the present incum- bent of the episcopal chair of Winchester [bishop Sum- ner] ; a translation has also been published.) The first expounded his views on education, which resembled those of Roger Ascham and of John Lyly. The second was a practical exemplification of his method for the use of his school. The third was an expansion and system- atization of the religious instructions given by him to his pupils. It has a much higher significance. It pre- sents jMilton's peculiar and utterly heterodox theology — which is thoroughly Arian, and in a great measure ma- terialistic. It was the theological preparation for the Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, and is their best commentary. Indeed, it is impossible to understand the esoteric meaning of those great poems, to estimate their spirit, or to appreciate many of their details, with- out the continuous illustration afforded by this long-lost treatise in prose. " His active imagination and impet- uous spirit," it has been well said, "mingle too strongly with his theologj-, and in several particulars corrupt it; but though, like Locke, he sometimes mistakes the sense of Scripture, no man had a higher opinion of its supreme autliority, or held more iirmly its most vital truths. His name cannot be classed with modern LTnitarians."
In 1G41 Milton reappeared as a \Miter lielnrc tlic )>ul> lic with his first prose work. Of licj'>'riiiiiti<'ii In KiiijUind, " to prove that the Church of England siill stoinl in need of reformation." He continued the subject in four other works, replying to bishop Hall and archbishop Usher in a short essay. Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and in a more elaborate response, entitled The Reason of Church Gorernment urr/ed ar/ainst Prehitij. It is in this latter work that Milton commences the remarkable series of autobiographical sketches whence so much of our infor- mation in regard to his tastes, studies, habits, senti- ments, principles, and occupations is gathered. Bishop Hall and archbishop Usher had aroused other assailants. Chief among such attacks in that pamphleteering day was a pamphlet designated Smectymnuus, from the ini- tials of its five authors— Stephen Marshal, Edmund Cal- amy, Thomas Young, Jlatthew Newcomen, and Wil- liam Spurston. To this attack bishop Hall replied in a
Defence of the Remonstrance, Milton, who had assailed the original Kemonstrance, and was the gratefid pupil of Thomas Young, now brought out A nimadversions on the Remonstrants' Defence. A rejoinder from bishop Hall's son followed, to which Milton responded in 1642 bj' his celebrated Ajyology for Smectymnuus. These productions thus all hang together. Their object and interdependence are pointed out in the author's Second Defence for the People of England.