FANNY «YS: 
 

 fyxmll 
 
 PRO 
 
 ^nmxiii^ | 
 
 HE< • 
 
 M THE INCOME Of't 
 
 FISKE 
 
 ENDOWMENT 
 
 FUND 
 
 
 THE BEQUESTibF 
 
 • 
 
 
 !Q9U[ar& S^ske 
 
 
 lyibrarian 
 
 of the University ^ 
 
 [868-1883 
 
 Wimo 
 
 
 ato-t. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 3584.B99 
 
 Milton on the continent; a itey to L'alleg 
 
 3 1924 013 192 665 
 
The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013192665 
 
MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 A KEY 
 
 L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO 
 
 WITH SEVERAL ILLUSTRATIONS, A HISTORICAL 
 
 CHART, AND AN ORIGINAL PORTRAIT 
 
 OF GALILEO 
 
 BY 
 
 Mrs, fanny BYSE 
 
 (me LEE) 
 
 LONDON 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. 
 
 LAUSANNE: ROUSSY'S ENGLISH LIBRARY 
 1903 
 
THIS FRUIT OF MANY YEARS 
 TO THE MEMORY OF MY MATERNAL UNCLE 
 
 ERNEST ELLABY, M.A. 
 
 FELLOW OF WADHAM COLLEQB, OXFORD 
 
 WHO IN EARLY DAYS 
 
 TAUGHT ME TO WANDER 
 
 BY SHADY GROVE OR SUNNY HILL 
 
 WITH HIS BELOVED BARD 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Preface - 
 
 Text of the Twin Poems (Mr. Beecham's): 
 l'allegro 
 
 PAGE 
 
 xi 
 
 15 
 
 IL PENSEROSO 20 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 MILTON IN PARIS 
 
 Milton in the Paris of 1638, 26 — Wit and Arms, 31 — Anne Genevieve 
 de Bourbon, 33 — H&tel de Rambouillet, 35 — Benserade and. 
 Voiture, 36 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MILTON IN ITALY 
 
 Milton in Italy, 38 — Michael Angelo's II Penseroso, 39 — Hermes Tris- 
 megistos, 42 — The Pensive Nun, 44 — Neoplatonism, 46 — Leonora 
 Baroni, 47 — Frescobaldi, Organist of St. Peter's, 50 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MILTON ON THE SIMPLON PASS 
 
 The Roaming Whimsey, 53 — Rocks hung in Air, 53 — Legend of the 
 Rosminians, 54 — The Simplon, 56 — Ebon Shades of Gondo, 57 — 
 The Amphitheatre of the New Pleasures, 59 — La Dent du 
 Midi, 60 
 
 [ vii ] 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 BEX AND LA TOUR DE DUIN 
 
 Bex-les-Bains and its Old Tower, 62 — Labouring Clouds, 63 — Towers 
 and Battlements, 63 — Upland Hamlets, 65 — The Swiss Mi-ete, 66 
 — The Drudging Goblin, 67 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 DOES THE KEY FIT? 
 
 Preface of the Stationer Moseley, 71 — Contents of Poemata edited in 
 164s, 72 — English Chauvinism, 72 — The Turning-point in his 
 Writings, 73 — Milton's Fireside Memories, 74 — Last Notes of the 
 Doric Quill, 75 — Conclusion, 76 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Portrait of Galileo (attributed to Sustermans, // 
 Fiammingo ; from the Collection of Count Q. 
 Galletti) . Frontispiece 
 
 La Tour de Ddin To face 27 
 
 Galileo's Tower at Arcetri, near Florence 
 
 (Torre del Gallo) ,, 40 
 
 Panorama of Bex-les-Bains - - ,, S^ 
 
 Arms of Bex-les-Bains Page 62 
 
 Historical Chart of Milton's Contemporaries at the 
 
 Time of his Continental Tour, 1638-1639 At end 
 
 [ix ] 
 
WORKS CONSULTED 
 
 English. 
 
 ' The Poetical Works of John Milton': D. Masson, M.A., LL.D. 
 'The Oxford Glossary.' 
 
 ' Poems of John Milton, both Latin and English, composed at 
 Several Times, printed by his True Copies, 1645.' 
 ' Memorials of Westminster Abbey ' : Dean Stanley. 
 ' Life of Michael Angelo Buonarroti': John Harford, D.C.L.,F.R.S. 
 ' First Sketch of English Literature ' : H. Morley. 
 
 French. 
 
 ' Vie de la Duchesse de Longueville ' : Victor Cousin. 
 ' Causeries du Lundi ',: Ste.-Beuve. 
 ' Le Quattrocento ' ■- Ph. Monnier. 
 
 Vaddois. 
 
 ' Le Conservateur Suisse ' : Doyen Bridel. 
 
 ' Histoire du Canton de Vaud ' : Verdeil. 
 
 ' Legendes des Alpes ' : Alf. Ceresole. 
 
 ' Bex et ses Environs ' •- Eug. Rambert (Payot, Lausanne). 
 
 ' La Vallee des Ormonts ' ■- Professeur E. Busset, et E. de la Harpe, 
 pasteur. 
 
 ' Dictionnaire historique du Canton de Vaud ' •- Martignier et de 
 Crousaz. 
 
 Italian. 
 
 ' Archivio Storico Romano. ' 
 
 'Milton e Galileo ': Giacomo Zanella (Le Monnier, Florence). 
 
 [ X ] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 MOST critics of Milton's poetry are unanimous in 
 representing the Twin Poems as fantastic and 
 unreal. Dr. Masson says: 'The scenery of Horton furnishes 
 no original for 
 
 ' Mountains, on whose barren breast 
 The labouring clouds do often rest.' 
 
 Mr. J. R. Green, in his ' History of the English People,' 
 writing of L Allegro and // Penseroso as first results of 
 the poet's retirement at Horton, accuses him (p. 510) of 'a 
 want of precision and exactness, even in his picturesque 
 touches.' 
 
 Mr. H. B. Cotterill, in his learned and fascinating little 
 volume, 'Milton's "Lycidas,"' is surprised that 'he left scarce 
 any record of the impression made on him by the literary 
 societies and art treasures of Florence.' He calls Milton's 
 pictures in the Twins ' made-up pictures — seen through 
 student spectacles.' Yet Mr. Cotterill* does not agree with 
 Dr. Masson that these pictures were painted in order to 
 call up visions on our mind by the ' intimation ' of some 
 picturesque epithet or by some suggestion of scenes 
 
 * Mr. Cotterill explains (note on line 143 in his Lycidas) the word 
 ' tufted ' as giving the idea of a plant with much-branched stem and a, 
 clustering mass of foliage. This sense is what exactly describes the 
 foliage up to the Tour de Duin — the ' tufted trees ' oi V Allegro. 
 
 [xi ] 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 described by other poets. Indeed, he comes to meet me 
 halfway in my realistic interpretation of the whole by 
 adding that Milton sketches with a few graphic touches the 
 actual scenes as he himself saw them — like a painter in water- 
 colours ; and he considers them as exquisitely drawn. My 
 object is to show the living models of those scenes by 
 giving up the date 1633, and placing the poems nearer to 
 the date of their publication (1645). 
 
 With no pretence to emulate the erudition of these 
 writer^nd a crowd of others — Mr. Stopford Brooke and 
 Mr. Henry Morley were my professors, Ruskin ever had 
 my deep reverence — I approached this special subject quite 
 from the other side, the side of experience. I lived for 
 five years in Bex. There, morning after morning, I saw the 
 rounded hill of the Tour de Duin, with its ' tufted trees.' I 
 played with my children that this was Milton's tower, with- 
 out having the faintest idea that he might have passed the 
 Simplon. 
 
 Seven years later, returning to Bex and opening my hotel 
 window, it occurred to me that the description, not only of 
 the ' towers and battlements,' but of the whole scene of the 
 ' new pleasures,' was remarkably applicable to the panorama 
 of Bex. 
 
 I therefore began the research, with no view to contradict 
 learned critics, but as a pure lover and follower of the 
 truth-seeking Milton. 
 
 Mr. Cotterill's memory, he tells us (p. 40), has been 
 haunted for nearly half a century with the majestic ocean- 
 music of Milton's Hymn on the Morning of Chrisfs Nativity 
 — haunted by visions that were called up in his childish and 
 uncritical mind by many of its imaginative passages. 
 
 For nearly forty years I, too, have been haunted in the 
 same way by the Twin Poems. They have been woven 
 like a running thread of silver into my life since the time 
 
PSEFACE xiii 
 
 when, at fourteen, ignoring the art of drawing, I painted 
 in glowing colours L' Allegro with his merry train, and II 
 Penseroso under the moonlight. 
 
 After mature reflection, I am inclined to believe that 
 U Allegro was written first — it is richer in imagery — and // 
 Penseroso written afterwards to match, as an echo, fainter, 
 though perhaps more charming. Both may have seen the 
 light and been christened in Italy, even if they were com- 
 pleted only in the house in St. Bride's Churchyard, where 
 Professor Masson sees ' the books on the poet's table in 
 the winter evenings ' — before having the worry of his two 
 nephews' education, let us hope. 
 
 It has been suggested that Milton was too opposed to the 
 Church of England to have introduced a cathedral into a 
 piece written later than 1633. But in Lycidas had he not 
 already called the clergy ' blind mouths ?' His comprehensive 
 mind might unite all images of happiness in E Allegro, even 
 if he did not approve of all. He did not approve of the loves 
 of Bacchus — even the ' spicy nut-brown ale ' was no ideal of 
 his — yet they are in E Allegro. Did he advocate the morals 
 of Saturn's reign, or fasting, or false gods ? Did he beheve 
 in the demonology of Plato ? If, then, he seems to approve 
 cathedral choirs and the hairy gown of the hermit, these 
 must only be taken decoratively ; the object is to group 
 together merry images or sad ones, not to preach polemics. 
 
 Neither do I think, with Mr. Stopford Brooke, that political 
 allegories are to be sought in Comus. The lady will not 
 drink the wine of Circe ; she has courage never to submit 
 or yield. Her mind is its own place. She stands faithful 
 among the faithless; nor number nor example can make 
 her swerve from truth, nor change her constant mind, though 
 single 
 
 Milton's strong faith in the dignity of human liberty 
 makes Comus a work of all time, stretching far beyond the 
 
xiv PREFACE 
 
 wranglings of the reiga of Charles I. That early faith 
 is embodied in the lines : 
 
 ' Mortals that would follow me, 
 Love Virtue ; she alone is free : 
 She can teach you how to climb 
 Higher than the sphery chime ; 
 Or, if Virtue feeble were, 
 Heaven itself would stoop to her. ' 
 
 Like Comus, the Twin Poems are simpler and more 
 beautiful without preconceived ideas. 
 
I.A TOUR DE DUIX, F.EX. 
 
TEXT OF THE TWIN POEMS 
 
 (Mr. Beecham's) 
 
 L'ALLEGRO 
 
 HENCE loathed Melancholy 
 Of Cerberus, and blackest midnight born, 
 In Stygian Cave forlorn 
 
 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy, 
 Find out som uncouth cell. 
 
 Where brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings, 
 And the night-Raven sings ; 
 
 There under Ebon shades, and low-brow'd Rocks, 
 As ragged as thy Locks, 
 
 In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 
 But com thou Goddes fair and free. 
 In Heav'n ycleap'd Euphrasy ne, 
 And by men, heart-easing Mirth, 
 Whom lovely Venus at a birth 
 J^Jith two sister Graces more 
 To Ivy-crowned Bacchus bore ; 
 Or jiirhether (as som Sager sing) 
 The frolick Wind that breathes the Spring, 
 Zephir with Aurora playing. 
 As he met her once a Maying, 
 [ 15] 
 
i6 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 There on Beds of Violets blew, 
 And fresh-blown Roses washt in dew, 
 Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair. 
 So bucksom, blith, and debonair. 
 Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee 
 Jest and youthful Jollity, 
 Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, 
 Nods, and Becks, and Wreathed Smiles, 
 Such as hang on Heb£s cheek, 
 And love to live in dimple sleek ; 
 Sport that wrincled Care derides. 
 And Laughter holding both his sides. 
 Com, and trip it as ye* go 
 On the light fantastick toe. 
 And in thy right hand lead with thee, 
 The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty ; 
 And if I give thee honour due, 
 Mirth, admit me of thy crue 
 To live with her, and live with thee. 
 In unreproved pleasures free ; 
 To hear the Lark begin his flight. 
 And singing startle the dull night, 
 From his watch-towre in the skies, 
 Till the dappled dawn doth rise ; 
 Then to com in spight of sorrow. 
 And at my window bid good morrow. 
 Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine, 
 Or the twisted Eglantine. 
 While the Cock with lively din, 
 Scatters the rear of darknes thin. 
 And to the stack, or the Barn dore. 
 Stoutly struts his Dames before, 
 
 • You (1673). 
 
V ALLEGRO I7 
 
 Oft list'ning how the Hounds and horn 
 Chearly rouse the slumbering morn, 
 From the side of som Hoar Hill, 
 Through the high wood echoing shrill. 
 Som time walking not unseen 
 By Hedge-row Elms, on Hillocks green, 
 Right against the Eastern gate, 
 Wher the great Sun begins his state, 
 Rob'd in flames, and Amber light. 
 The clouds in thousand Liveries dight. 
 While the Plowman neer at hand. 
 Whistles ore the Furrow'd Land, 
 And the Milkmaid singeth blithe. 
 And the Mower whets his sithe, 
 And every Shepherd tells his tale 
 Under the Hawthorn in the dale. 
 Streit mine eye hath caught new pleasures 
 Whilst the Lantskip round it measures. 
 Russet Lawns, and Fallows Gray, 
 Where the nibling flocks do stray, 
 Mountains on whose barren brest 
 The labouring clouds do often rest : 
 Meadows trim with Daisies pide, 
 Shallow Brooks, and Rivers wide. 
 Towers, and Battlements it sees 
 Boosom'd high in tufted Trees, 
 Wher perhaps som beauty lies, 
 The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes. 
 Hard by, a Cottage chimney smokes. 
 From betwixt two aged Okes, 
 Where Corydon and Thyrsis met. 
 Are at their savory dinner set 
 Of Hearbs, and other Country Messes, 
 Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses ; 
 
i8 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 And then in haste her Bowre she leaves, 
 
 With Thesiylis to bind the Sheaves ; 
 
 Or if the earlier season lead 
 
 To the tann'd Haycock in the Mead, 
 
 Som times with secure delight 
 
 The up-land Hamlets will invite. 
 
 When the merry Bells ring round, 
 
 And the jocond rebecks sound 
 
 To many a youth, and many a maid, 
 
 Dancing in the Chequer'd shade ; 
 
 And young and old com forth to play 
 
 On a Sunshine Holyday, 
 
 Till the live-long day-light fail, 
 
 Then to the Spicy Nut-brown Ale, 
 
 With stories told of many a feat, 
 
 How Faery Mob the junkets eat. 
 
 She was pincht, and pull'd she sed, 
 
 And he by* Friars Lanthorn led 
 
 Tells how the drudging Goblin swet. 
 
 To em his Cream-bowle duly set. 
 
 When in one night, ere glimps of morn. 
 
 His shadowy Flale hath thresh'd the Corn 
 
 That tea day-labourers could not end, 
 
 Then lies him down the Lubbar Fend, 
 
 And stretch'd out all the Chimney's length, 
 
 Basks at the fire his hairy strength ; 
 
 And Crop-full out of dores he flings. 
 
 Ere the first Cock his Mattin rings. 
 
 Thus don the Tales, to bed they creep, 
 
 By whispering Windes soon luU'd asleep. 
 
 Towred Cities please us then, 
 
 And the busie humm of men, 
 
 * And by the (1673). 
 
L'ALLEGRO 19 
 
 Where throngs of Knights and Barons bold, 
 
 In weeds of Peace high triumphs hold, 
 
 With store of Ladies, whose bright eies 
 
 Rain influence, and judge the prise 
 
 Of Wit, or Arms, while both contend 
 
 To win her Grace, whom all commend. 
 
 There let Hymen oft appear 
 
 In Saffron robe, with Taper clear. 
 
 And pomp, and feast, and revelry. 
 
 With mask, and antique Pageantry, 
 
 Such sights as youthfuU Poets dream 
 
 On Summer eeves by haunted stream. 
 
 Then to the well-trod stage anon, 
 
 li/onsons learned Sock be on, 
 
 Or sweetest Shakespear fancies childe. 
 
 Warble his native Wood-notes wilde. 
 
 And ever against eating Cares, 
 
 Lap me in soft Lydian Aires, 
 
 Married to immortal verse 
 
 Such as the meeting soul may pierce 
 
 In notes, with many a winding bout 
 
 Of lincked sweetnes long drawn out. 
 
 With wanton heed, and giddy cunning. 
 
 The melting voice through mazes running ; 
 
 Untwisting all the chains that ty 
 
 The hidden soul of harmony. 
 
 That Orpheus self may heave his head 
 
 From golden slumber on a bed 
 
 Of heapt Elysian flowres, and hear 
 
 Such streins as would have won the ear 
 
 Of Pluto, to have quite set free 
 
 His half regain'd Eurydke. 
 
 These delights, if thou canst give. 
 
 Mirth with thee, I mean to live. 
 
IL PENSEROSO 
 
 HENCE vain deluding joyes, 
 The brood of folly without father bred, 
 How little you bested, 
 
 Or fill the fixed mind with all your toyes ; 
 Dwell in som idle brain,- 
 
 And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, 
 As thick and numberless 
 
 As the gay motes that people the Sun Beams, 
 Or likest hovering dreams 
 
 The fickle Pensioners of Morpheus train. 
 But hail thou Goddes, sage and holy, 
 Hail divinest Melancholy, 
 Whose Saintly visage is too bright 
 To hit the Sense of human sight ; 
 And therfore to our weaker view. 
 Ore laid with black staid Wisdoms hue. 
 Black, but such as in esteem. 
 Prince Memnons sister might beseem, 
 Or that Starr'd Ethiope Queen that strove 
 To set her beauties praise above 
 The Sea Nymphs, and their powers offended. 
 Yet thou art higher far descended. 
 Thee bright-hair'd Vesta long of yore. 
 To solitary Saturn bore ; 
 [ 20] 
 
IL PENSBROSO 
 
 His daughter she (in Saturns raign, 
 
 Such mixture was not held a stain) 
 
 Oft in ghmmering Bowres, and glades 
 
 He met her, and in secret shades 
 
 Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 
 
 While yet there was no fear oijove. 
 
 Com pensive Nun, devout and pure, 
 
 Sober, stedfast, and demure, 
 
 All in a robe of darkest grain, 
 
 Flowing with majestick train, 
 
 And sable stole of Cipres Lawn, 
 
 Over thy decent shoulders drawn. 
 
 Com, but keep thy wonted state, 
 
 With eev'n step, and musing gate, 
 
 And looks commercing with the skies. 
 
 Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes : 
 
 There held in holy passion still, 
 
 Forget thy self to Marble, till 
 
 With a sad Leaden downward cast. 
 
 Thou fix them on the earth as fast. 
 
 And joyn with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, 
 
 Spare Fast that oft with gods doth diet, 
 
 And hears the Muses in a ring. 
 
 Ay round zbovXjoves Altar sing. 
 
 And adde to these retired Leasure, 
 
 That in trim Gardens takes his pleasure ; 
 
 But first, and chiefest, with thee bring. 
 
 Him that yon soars on golden wing. 
 
 Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, 
 
 The Cherub Contemplation, 
 
 And the mute Silence hist along, 
 
 'Less Philomel will daign a Song, 
 
 In her sweetest, saddest plight. 
 
 Smoothing the rugged brow of night. 
 
MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 While Cynthia checks her Dragon yoke, 
 
 Gently o're th'accustom'd Oke ; 
 
 Sweet Bird that shunn'st the noise of folly. 
 
 Most musical!, most melancholy ! 
 
 Thee Chauntress oft the Woods among, 
 
 I woo to hear thy eeven-Song ; 
 
 And missing thee, I walk unseen 
 
 On the dry smooth-shaven Green, 
 
 To behold the wandring Moon, 
 
 Riding neer her highest noon, 
 
 Like one that had bin led astray 
 
 Through the Heav'ns wide pathles way ; 
 
 And oft, as if her head she bow'd. 
 
 Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 
 
 Oft on a Plat of rising ground, 
 
 I hear the far-ofif Curfeu sound, 
 
 Over som wide-water'd shoar, 
 
 Swinging slow with sullen roar ; 
 
 Or if the Ayr will not permit, 
 
 Som still removed place will fit. 
 
 Where glowing Embers through the room 
 
 Teach light to counterfeit a gloom. 
 
 Far from all resort of mirth, 
 
 Save the Cricket on the hearth. 
 
 Or the Belmans drousie charm. 
 
 To bless the dores from nightly harm : 
 
 Or let my Lamp at midnight hour, 
 
 Be seen in som high lonely Towr, 
 
 Where I may oft out-watch the Bear, 
 
 With thrice great Hermes, or unsphear 
 
 The spirit of Plato to unfold 
 
 What Worlds, or what vast Regions hold 
 
 The immortal mind that hath forsook 
 
 Her mansion in this fleshly nook : 
 
IL PENSEROSO 23 
 
 And of those Damons that are found 
 
 In fire, air, flood, or under ground, 
 
 Whose power hath a true consent 
 
 With Planet, or with Element. 
 
 Som time let Gorgeous Tragedy 
 
 In Scepter'd Pall com sweeping by, 
 
 Presenting Thebs, or Pelops line. 
 
 Or the tale of Troy divine. 
 
 Or what (though rare) of later age. 
 
 Ennobled hath the Buskind stage. 
 
 But, O sad Virgin, that thy power 
 
 Might raise Muscbus from his bower, 
 
 Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 
 
 Such notes as warbled to the string. 
 
 Drew Iron tears down Pluto's cheek, 
 
 And made Hell grant what Love did seek. 
 
 Or call up him that left half told 
 
 The story of Cambuscan bold, 
 
 Of Camball, and of Algarstfe, 
 
 And who had Canace to wife. 
 
 That own'd the vertuous Ring and Glass, 
 
 And of the wondrous Hors of Brass, 
 
 On which the Tartar King did ride ; 
 
 And if ought els, great Bards beside, 
 
 In sage and solemn tunes have sung. 
 
 Of Turneys and of Trophies hung ; 
 
 Of Forests, and inchantments drear. 
 
 Where more is meant then meets the ear. 
 
 Thus night oft see me in thy pale career. 
 
 Till civil-suited Morn appear. 
 
 Not trickt and frounc't as she was wont. 
 
 With the Attick Boy to hunt, 
 
 But Cherchef t in a comly Cloud. 
 
 While rocking Winds are Piping loud, 
 
24 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 Or usher'd with a shower still, 
 When the gust hath blown his fill, 
 Ending on the russling Leaves, 
 With minute drops from off the Eaves. 
 And when the Sun begins to fling 
 His flaring beams, me Goddes bring 
 To arched walks of twilight groves. 
 And shadows brown that Sylvan loves 
 Of Pine, or monumental Oake, 
 Where the rude Ax with heaved stroke. 
 Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt, 
 Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt. 
 There in close covert by som Brook, 
 Where no profaner eye may look, 
 Hide me from Day's garish eie, 
 While the Bee with Honied thie. 
 That at her flowry work doth sing, 
 And the Waters murmuring 
 ■With such consort as they keep, 
 Entice the dewy-feather'd Sleep ; 
 And let som strange mysterious dream. 
 Wave at his Wings in Airy stream. 
 Of lively portrature display'd. 
 Softly on my eye-lids laid. 
 And as I wake, sweet musick breath. 
 Above, about, or underneath. 
 Sent by som spirit to mortals good. 
 Or th'unseen Genius of the Wood. 
 But let my due feet never fail, 
 To walk the studious Cloysters pale. 
 And love the high embowed Roof, 
 With antick Pillars massy proof. 
 And storied Windows richly dight. 
 Casting a dimm religious light. 
 
IL PENSEROSO 25 
 
 There let the pealing Organ blow, 
 
 To the full voic'd Quire below, 
 
 In Service high, and Anthems clear, 
 
 As may with sweetnes, through mine ear, 
 
 Dissolve me into extasies. 
 
 And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes. 
 
 And may at last my weary age 
 
 Find out the peacefull hermitage, 
 
 The Hairy Gown and Mossy Cell, 
 
 Where I may sit and rightly spell 
 
 Of every Star that Heav'n doth shew. 
 
 And every Herb that sips the dew ; 
 
 Till old experience do attain 
 
 To something like Prophetic strain. 
 
 These pleasures Melancholy give. 
 
 And I with thee will choose to live. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 MILTON IN PARIS 
 
 A TOWER of the twelfth century, solitary remnant of 
 a castle* ruined in the wars of Burgundy, still 
 stands on a round wooded hill overlooking the village 
 of Bex. The hill prolongs itself in graceful declivities, ' 
 forming one wide amphitheatre westward, till the abrupt 
 fall of the land on St. Maurice, 
 
 ' . . . where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between 
 Heights which appear as lovers who have parted.' 
 
 The ' heights ' are the Dent du Midi, who bears on her 
 bosom so many zones, in whose skirts the old abbey 
 nestles; and the Dent de Morcles, her rival, on the right 
 bank of the river. 
 
 * See ' Dictionnaire historique du Canton de Vaud,' par Martignier 
 et de Crousaz, p. 87, etc., and F. de Gingins, ' Developpement de 
 I'Independance du Haut-Valais.' In 1475, just before the wars of 
 Burgundy, Charles the Bold brought over paid troops from Lom- 
 bardy by the St. Bernard, to join his army in Franche-Comte. The 
 Bernese, alarmed, came over by Gsteig and les Ormonts to Aigle. 
 Next year, after the celebrated battle of Grandson, the men of 
 Berne with les Ormonens attacked the Vaudois population. It was 
 in these expeditions that the Bernese destroyed the towers of Duin 
 or Duyn, of St. Triphon and of Aigremont. Milton, seeing the 
 Tower of Duin, with its ruined battlements, recalls to mind the 
 story of the fair lady of Aigremont. To complete the picture, see 
 further on. Worse vandals have lately restored the castle, changed 
 its form, and made it into a temperance cafe. 
 
 [ 26 ] 
 
IN PARIS 27 
 
 These, we suggest, were the ' mountains ' alluded to by 
 Milton in E Allegro, a feature for which, writes Professor 
 Masson, ' the scenery of Horton furnishes no original.' 
 
 ' Mountains on whose barren breast 
 The labouring clouds do often rest." 
 
 And the Tour de Duin, whose battlements are still 
 visible, half hidden among chestnut-trees and ivy, is one of 
 those ' towers and battlements ' which the poet's eye sees 
 'bosom'd high in tufted trees.' Professor David Masson 
 writes, in his admirable ' Life of Milton,' referring to the 
 early pieces, Comus, Lycidas, To the Nightingale, L Allegro, 
 II Penseroso, Arcades : ' Comus, the most important, is 
 certainly known to be of the year 1634, and that the other 
 pieces preceded it is a matter of most probable inference.' 
 
 We venture to suggest that L' Allegro and // Penseroso 
 were not written during Milton's youth at Horton ; that, on 
 the contrary, they are rife with rich souvenirs of Conti- 
 nental travel. Dr. Masson, we hope, will allow us to lay 
 aside his ' probable inference ' that they were written during 
 the Horton period, as there are no proofs of the assertion. 
 We have studied the whole matter long and carefully, on 
 the Continent and in the light of French history, and 
 possess such an arch of evidence as to bridge over the two 
 and a half centuries which separate us from the publication 
 of these poems (1645) with somewhat more than ' probable 
 inference.' The beauty of the Twin Poems is increased in^j 
 an extraordinary degree when we see in them the realism' 
 of Milton. In spite of the metaphysical lore which is the 
 soil where his poems grow, they are ever true to Nature — in/ 
 a word, vkus. ■' 
 
 Milton travelled to Paris and Italy in 1638-39, for a tour 
 of fifteen months. It was three years after the foundation 
 of the French Academy that he visited Paris ' for intellectual 
 
28 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 purposes '; and, to those who have read his biography by 
 Dr. Masson, there is no doubt that he frequented the first 
 society. 
 
 Now, as knowledge builds the forts of her progressive 
 conquest over the world, many regions are brought from 
 the metaphysical to the positive stage. To what extent, we 
 may ask, are readers of Milton retained in the metaphysical 
 stage with regard to his poetry ? We allude chiefly to the 
 Twin Poems, // Penseroso and 1! Allegro, which manuals 
 of English literature and biographies of Milton attribute 
 invariably to a period of his life when he could not have 
 gone through what he describes. 
 
 We wish to suggest that the Twin Poems on Melancholy 
 and Mirth contain unmistakable proofs of having been 
 written during the poet's foreign tour, or on his return to 
 London after it. Instead of a dreamy, meaningless senti- 
 mentality, we see in these gems of our literature a fine 
 mosaic of his experiences in Paris, in Italy, and in Switzer- 
 land. English scenery, English women, English Church 
 music, could not have inspired, in the earlier half of the 
 seventeenth century, what his acute power of perception 
 and expression, and his accurate memory, brought back 
 from the charms of Genevifeve de Bourbon, from the music 
 of Italy, from his communion with the aged Galileo, and 
 from the terrors of the Alpine pass. 
 
 It is sometimes assumed that the truly scientific spirit is 
 a growth of our own day ; the realistic school of painting 
 aims to be modern. But that which is real and per- 
 manent has at all times been true to Nature. 
 
 Milton had enormous imaginative power, but it did not 
 tend to blind his keen observation. All he wrote in those 
 poems meant something to him, and something that had 
 touched him with true feeling — mirth, joy, sorrow : now 
 the comfort of the English homestead, now the uncouth 
 
IN PARIS 29 
 
 heights and depths of the Alpine gorges, now the captive 
 Gahleo, with the ' pensive nun,' his daughter. Looked at 
 as a record of his travels, those poems form an admirably 
 true picture of the history of his time, and of the places and 
 persons who came across his path. 
 
 As a proof of Milton's accuracy in observing the indi- 
 vidual character of natural objects, we need only recall to 
 memory his lines on the rivers of England. Each one has 
 its special and appropriate epithet : 
 
 ' Rivers, arise ; whether thou be the son 
 Of utmost Tweed or Ouse, or gulphy Dun, 
 Or Trent, who, like some earth-born giant, spreads 
 His thirty arms along the indented meads ; 
 Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath ; 
 Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death ; 
 Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lee, 
 Or coaly Tyne, or ancient hallowed Dee ; 
 Or Humber loud, that keeps the Scythian's name. 
 Or Medway smooth, or royal-tower'd Thame.' 
 
 Milton became M.A. of Oxford in 1635; in 1636 the 
 plague carried away many lives. Ben Jonson died of it. 
 Milton's friend Edward King was drowned off the coast of 
 Anglesea. Lycidas, the elegy on the death of this young 
 and faithful fellow-servant of Truth, exists in the poet's 
 handwriting in the Cambridge MS. dated November, 1637. 
 The closing words of this very graceful lament show his 
 earnest desire to travel, a desire which four months later 
 was satisfied : 
 
 ■ At last he rose and twitch'd his mantle blue : 
 To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. ' 
 
 For five years he had retired to Horton, where he had 
 beei% ' fining his lungs with the sweet air of the healthy 
 downs round about Buckinghamshire,' and saturating his 
 mind with the Greek and Latin writers, 'now and then 
 going up to London,' as he tells us, to learn ' something 
 
30 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 new in music and mathematics, in which sciences I then 
 delighted. Having passed five years in this manner, after 
 my mother's death, I, being desirous of seeing foreign 
 lands, and especially Italy, went abroad, with one servant, 
 having by entreaty obtained my father's consent.' 
 
 This time at Horton, to which the Twin Poems are 
 attributed as a whole, corresponds entirely to the opening 
 scene of V Allegro. How thoroughly English is the descrip- 
 tion of the morning lark, the hawthorns, the dappled dawn, 
 the climbing vine, the sweetbriar, the wild-rose, and the 
 hounds and horn echoing in the distance, sights and sounds 
 rare or unknown in Switzerland ! But, far from referring to 
 any one place, after the merry side of English country life, 
 the writer gives the following description, which is strikingly 
 Swiss : 
 
 ' Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures. 
 While the landscape round it measures,' 
 
 etc. But we must pause before entering the laughing valley 
 of the Rhone, by which Milton returned to England, and 
 follow him as he sets foot in the Paris of Louis XIII.'s 
 reign, for we desire to follow across the Twin Poems the 
 visions of the poet.* 
 
 Milton, arriving in the gay Paris of 1638, would not have 
 to seek far for images of mirth ; and, if we are not greatly 
 mistaken, the following lines from Z' Allegro are a minute 
 delineation of the things and persons he met then : 
 
 * Although Professor Masson sees no good reason for his own 
 conjecture, it was he who suggested to me, some jears ago, that 
 Milton might have seen in Paris the picture which met the eye of 
 the Scottish poet Drummond of Hawthornden in 1607, in the 
 spacious galleries where the fair of St. Germain was held. This 
 picture of two figures moved him much. 'The first,' he wrote, 
 ' clothed in a sky-coloured mantle with some red, held out his finger, 
 by way of demonstration, in scorn to another, in a sable mantle, 
 who held his arms across, declined his head pitifully, and seemed to 
 shed tears.' 
 
IN PARIS 31 
 
 ' Tower'd cities please us then, 
 And the busy hum of men. 
 Where throngs of knights and barons bold. 
 In weeds of peace high triumphs hold, 
 With store of ladies, whose bright eyes 
 Rain influence, and judge the prize 
 Of wit or arms, while both ' 
 
 (both the literary critics and the soldiers) 
 
 ' contend 
 To win her grace, whom all commend. ' 
 
 What could Milton mean by such words? This lady, 
 whoever she is, is no village Queen of the May, such as 
 were common in the reign of James I. She belongs to 
 'tower'd cities.'* 
 
 The' ^ knights ' would be the warriors of the Thirty 
 Years' War, returned ' in weeds of peace ' to a well- 
 earned rest for a time ; the ' store of ladies ' would be the 
 dainty circle clustering round Catherine de Vivonne,! 
 Marquise de Rambouillet, and her daughters j the bright 
 eyes of these ladies, whose critical taste was the lever that 
 raised the French Academy, rained influence, like the eyes 
 of those who sat round the lists of old, recompensing the 
 victors who wore their favours. 
 
 * See the ' Vie de Madame de Longueville,' by Victor Cousin. 
 The extraordinary beauty of Mademoiselle de Bourbon, who was 
 nearly twenty in 1638, the power of her eyes and her influence in 
 literature, lead us to believe that, among this host of beautiful and 
 talented women, she was the one who had struck Milton by her 
 personal appearance and literary position. She it is, probably, 
 ' whom all commend,' for, after looking carefully at the dates and 
 descriptions of all the feminine contemporaries of Milton in Paris, 
 we perceive that she unites, as none other, beauty, critical taste, 
 personal prestige, powerful eyes, and the flower of youth. She 
 married the Duke of Longueville some time after Milton's passage. 
 If throughout the twin labyrinths we have the good fortune to find 
 the conducting thread of Milton's travels, is it not worth while to 
 examine point by point the evidence for and against the supposition 
 that these poems describe real experiences ? 
 
 •j- Catherine de Vivonne married the Marquis in 1600, 
 
32 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 The prize is of ' wit or arms.' 
 
 As to ' arms,' the Thirty Years' War was winning 
 Alsace-Lorraine to France. 
 
 As to 'wit,' the femmes prkieuses were the supreme 
 judges of good taste, before they became the prtcieuses 
 ridicules. 
 
 'The ladies of Paris,' says Mr. Henry Morley, in his 
 ' First Sketch of English Literature,' ' began the movement 
 of reform by exercising social influence ; the Marquise de 
 Rambouillet, reinforced by four daughters, was still living 
 at the accession of Charles IL Many English "persons of 
 quality" in Paris during the Commonwealth would be 
 among her guests.' 
 
 To us moderns, one vista of the past is apt to hide 
 another. We are in danger of losing the delicate com- 
 parison of Milton between the li^ts of the Middle Ages, 
 which were not so far off then, and the critical circle of 
 the Hotel de Rambouillet. In both cases, 
 
 ' None but the brave deserve the fair. ' 
 
 The victorious warrior in L Allegro, as well as the successful 
 poet, may 
 
 ' Win her grace whom all commend.' 
 
 Continuing about the Marquise, Mr. Morley writes : 
 'Before her Pierre Corneille read his tragedies and the 
 youthful Bossuet first displayed the genius of the preacher.' 
 
 But this is not all : ' both contend ' ; literature and war lie 
 at the feet of a new Rowena. Who is she ? 
 
 Are not the lines above quoted an allusion to the power- 
 ful eyes of Mademoiselle de Bourbon ? Is not she com- 
 mended on all sides, arbiter of wit and centre of the ladies 
 who received the ' barons bold ' or urged them on to 
 glory ? 
 
IN PARIS 33 
 
 We shall refer to nothing that is not illustrative of the 
 descriptions of the travels which we unearth in the Twin 
 Poems. In Paris, by Sir H. Wotton's introduction, Milton 
 saw Lord Scudamore and the Earl of Leicester, Ambas- 
 sadors from Charles I. to Louis XIII. There he met Hugo 
 Grotius, Ambassador from the widow of Gustavus Adolphus, 
 who had perished at Lutzen in 1632. Now, since 1635, 
 the year of the foundation of the French Academy, France 
 had joined in the Thirty Years' War, struggling against the 
 House of Austria, under the leadership of Richeheu. 
 Cond^, Turenne and Coligny were young warriors ; 
 Chatillon and Br6z6 had gained the battle of Avein, near 
 Lifege, in 1635 ; two years later the Cardinal de La Valette 
 took several towns : in a word, France was spreading 
 Rhinewards. Artois, Roussillon, Alsace and Lorraine 
 were gained from Austria. Young beauties in Paris were 
 waiting to award the prize of arms to the gallant victors. 
 
 Milton would not be insensible to their charms. They 
 would take him to their summer retreats at Chantilly and 
 other country seats, where Coligny, Dandelot, the Dues de 
 Nemours, Chatillon, d'Enghien, spent long days with them 
 in the woods, feasting, acting, reciting poetry, 
 
 ' In unreproved pleasures free.' 
 
 Among this fair assemblage there was one whose beauty 
 and charm surpassed all, and ' who was admired not only by 
 the wits and pious priests of the time,' but allowed supreme 
 honours even by the women who surrounded her — -Anne 
 Genevieve de Bourbon, sister to the young Due d'Enghien. 
 Her father was Henri de Bourbon, Prince de Conde, and 
 h^ mother the celebrated beauty, Charlotte Marguerite 
 de Montmorency. Born in a dungeon, and carefully 
 brought up by the Princess, between the convent of the 
 Carmelites and the Hotel de Rambouillet, which centre of 
 
 3 
 
34 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 culture she entered at twelve, she was so averse to the 
 pleasures of the world that she is said to have shed bitter 
 tears on the occasion of her first ball. It was as if she 
 presaged the sorrow that awaited her. Her entrance into 
 the world with her young brother was brilliant in the 
 extreme. Four years later Milton would have known her, 
 in 1638, before her marriage with the Due de Longueville. 
 The years of her greatest splendour, we are told by her 
 careful biographer, Victor Cousin, were from 1638 to 1648. 
 He writes : 
 
 ' Quelle suite de femmes ce sifecle nous pr^sente, environ- 
 ti6es d'hommages, entrainant apres elles tous les coeurs et 
 r^pandant, de proche en proche, dans tous les rangs, ce 
 culte de la beauts que, d'un bout de I'Europe a I'autre, on 
 a appeld la galanterie, k commencer par Charlotte de Mont- 
 morency et k finir par Madame de Montespan ! 
 
 ' Madame de Longueville avait un charme particulier, les 
 yeux du plus tendre bleu. Des cheveux d'un blond cendre 
 et de la dernifere finesse, descendant en boucles abon- 
 dantes, ornaient 1' ovale gracieux de son visage et inondaient 
 d'admirables dpaules, trfes decouvertes selon la mode du 
 temps.' 
 
 Her voice, too, was ' soft and low,' a thing in Milton's 
 appreciation no less excellent than in Shakespeare's ; her 
 complexion was of the most delicate pearl ; her gestures 
 were in perfect harmony with the tones of her voice and 
 her expressive features. 
 
 ' Mais le charme qui lui dtait propre dtait un abandon 
 plein de grice, une langueur qui avait des rdveils brillants, 
 quand la passion la saisissait, mais qui lui donnait un air 
 de nonchalance aristocratique.' 
 
 Victor Cousin explains that this is no fancy portrait. He 
 quotes the testimony of several contemporary writers. The 
 Cardinal de Retz says : ' It was impossible to see her with- 
 
IN PARIS 33 
 
 out loving and wishing to please her. Her eyes were not 
 large, but beautiful and bright ; their blue was admirable. 
 Poets always compared her to lilies and roses. The pink 
 and white of her complexion, and her flaxen, silvery hair, 
 in company with so many wonderful things, made her 
 more like an angel than a woman.' La Grande Mademoiselle 
 wrote also : ' Monsieur de Longueville was old ; Made- 
 moiselle de Bourbon was young, and fair as an angel.' Mon- 
 sieur de Scud^ry praises her, as well as the good old priest, 
 Paul Dubosc. She was the publicly acknowledged sovereign 
 judge of literature, the queen of del esprit, the arbiter of 
 taste and elegance. We suspect Milton and Mademoiselle 
 de Bourbon united their voices to condemn the formality 
 of much French poetry, for one day somebody read to her 
 ' La Pucelle,' by Chapelain. She said : ' Oui, cela est fort 
 beau, mais cela est bien ennuyeux.' Milton, too, in his 
 Allegro, will not admit threatrical pieces, if they are neither 
 amusing nor true to Nature : 
 
 ' Then to the well-trod stage anon, 
 7/ Johnson's learned sock be on, 
 Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 
 Warble his native wood-notes wild. ' 
 
 A la bonne heure ! The notes of Nature would ever be 
 welcome to the young English poet and to the beautiful 
 arbiter of French taste, both appreciating the true charm 
 of Divine philosophy. 
 
 At the Hotel de Rambouillet the associates of the noble 
 girl are described as a nest of attractive and terrible 
 beauties. There were la Grande Mademoiselle, Madame de 
 la Vallifere, Mesdemoiselles de Boutteville, Mesdemoiselles 
 du Vigean, and the clever Mademoiselle de Scuddry, besides 
 her older and most intimate friend, la Marquise de Sabld. 
 Round each of these names hangs some story, romantic, 
 chivalrous or tragic. Monsieur Victor Cousin describes 
 
 3—2 
 
36 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 Mademoiselle de Bourbon as indisputably the first and lead- 
 ing figure of this gay circle. The marriage with Monsieur 
 de Longueville was undertaken without love, and was most 
 unhappy. Ere long her exquisite beauty was somewhat 
 tarnished by small-pox. In 1649 — some ten years after the 
 interview we suppose she had with Milton — Benserade and 
 Voiture wrote two rival sonnets. All the Court took part 
 with Benserade, but Madame de Longueville, still beautiful 
 (although not quite what Milton would have known her), 
 approved the verses of Voiture. The prestige of her judg- 
 ment was such that she brought round everyone to her 
 opinion. 
 
 After reading the engaging biography by Victor Cousin, 
 we can fancy what sympathy Milton, in the midst of this 
 frivolous assembly, would have with the noble soul of 
 Mademoiselle de Bourbon. The shady groves of Chantilly, 
 which he may have visited, or the country seat at Ruel, 
 where the Princess had a theatre, may have suggested the 
 lines 
 
 ■ There let Hymen oft appear 
 
 In saffron robe, with taper clear, 
 
 And pomp, and feast, and revelry, 
 
 With mask and antique pageantry ; 
 
 Such sights as youthful poets dream 
 
 On summer eves by haunted stream.' 
 
 What would be more natural than marriages between 
 the knights and bright-eyed women ? 
 
 We cannot leave this interesting figure without a glimpse 
 into the love and sorrow of her life. The platonic gallantry 
 of the Hotel de Rambouillet did not alarm, but rather 
 pleased her. In the end, the wish to be loved and the 
 wish to show the power of her eyes and her wit were her 
 ruin. She loved but one, the ungrateful Due de La Roche- 
 foucauld, and for him sacrificed her all. He meant to arrive 
 at the favour of her brother, the Due d'Enghien, afterwards 
 
IN PARIS 37 
 
 the Grand Condd, and, with this political end in view, sought 
 the good graces of the sister. Sincere repentance, after 
 being abandoned by the handsome diplomatist, brought 
 Madame de Longueville back for long years to that convent 
 of the Carmelites in which she had been brought up, and 
 whose protection she had been so loath to leave for the 
 treacherous waters of worldly success. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 MILTON IN ITALY 
 
 ON September lo, 1638, Milton reached Florence. He 
 did not go by ship from Marseilles, as Sir H. Wotton 
 advised him, but travelled by land, in order not to miss 
 the natural beauties and the artistic treasures of Nice, 
 Genoa, Leghorn and Pisa, till he arrived in the town of 
 Michael Angelo, Florence itself. Here he spent two 
 delightful months. Here he saw living in marble the old 
 gods and mythological personages of whom he had read 
 so much, besides many heroes of the Old Testament — not 
 only the statues, but the paintings and the architecture, of 
 Michael Angelo. With what joy he must have read the 
 poems of this brother-genius, and examined all the statues 
 and drawings he left behind, and his Church of St. Peter, 
 begun in 1546, when past seventy-two ! Here Milton had 
 close fellowship with a mind nearly akin to his own, and with 
 as noble and uncompromising a soul. ' Michael Angelo's 
 irreproachable morals formed a striking contrast to those of 
 the times in which he lived. These quahties, united to his 
 philosophical turn of mind and intense devotion to art, 
 disposed him to contemplation and solitude.' Here Milton 
 would naturally seek out the most stupendous works of the 
 great sculptor, which, in Florence, are the tombs of the 
 
 [38 ] 
 
IN ITALY 39 
 
 Medici in the New Sacristy of San Lorenzo. Only two of 
 the statues surmounting the eight tombs were accomplished ; 
 ' for Michael Angelo was working upon those parts which 
 were incomplete, when, in consequence of differences 
 between him and Duke Alessandro de' Medici, he found 
 himself compelled by motives of personal safety to bid a 
 final adieu to Florence ' (' Life of Michael Angelo,' by John 
 Harford, D.C.L., F.R.S.)- 
 
 ' The Sacristy is of a square form surmounted by a 
 central cupola; it has a large recess in each side, within 
 two of which, and opposite each other, are the statues of 
 Giuliano de' Medici, Due de Nemours, brother of Leo X., 
 and of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, grandson of the Magni- 
 ficent. The statues of the two are seated, and seem to 
 symbolize Action and Contemplation. That of Giuliano 
 is dignified and imposing; his hands are placed upon a 
 baton of office which rests upon his knees. The opposite 
 figure of Lorenzo is highly idealized, stamped with the 
 character of profound reflection.' ' It thus acquired,' 
 writes Dr. Harford, ' the distinctive appellation of Za Pensee 
 de Michel- Ange,^ or // Fenseroso.* 
 
 The four figures which adorn the tombs, Night and Morn- 
 ing, Twilight and Aurora, show once more the same sort 
 of contrast as is remarkable in the structure of the Twin 
 Poems and in other works of art of the period. 
 
 But if Michael Angelo was only to be found in his works, 
 several were there, living friends, Carlo Dati, Pietro Fresco- 
 baldi the organist, and other distinguished Florentines, 
 'whose memory,' he wrote, 'time shall never destroy.' 
 Here, too, in flesh and blood, but aged and ill, was the 
 
 * Penseroso is an old Italian word meaning thoughtful, as anyone 
 can discover by reference to such dictionaries as Michaelis' or 
 II Grande (Cotterill). 
 
40 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 great Galileo,* condemned by the Tnquisition and hope- 
 lessly blind. 
 
 What we now wish to suggest is that, when Milton wrote 
 in // Penseroso : 
 
 • Where I may oft outwatch the Bear, 
 With thrice-great Hermes,' 
 
 he was alluding to the astronomical studies of Galileo, 
 whom he takes as a type of Melancholy. 
 
 Signor Favaro, charged by the Italian Government, 
 during the University festivities of Padua in 1892, with 
 the publication of Galileo's books, indicated to us an article 
 in the Archivio Storice Romano t by Herr A. von Reurnont. 
 This well-known critic concludes, from the best and most 
 trustworthy Italian evidence, that the author of Paradise 
 ■Lost visited the melancholy sage about September, 1638, 
 neither in his town house, Sulla Costa, nor in a convent, 
 nor even in the Torre del Gallo,t but at the house next 
 door to the tower, called Villa d' Arcetri, where Galileo 
 passed his old age, in all the misery and misfortune which 
 he describes in the last letter he ever wrote, one to 
 Alessandro Boccherini Buonamici, from his sick-bed, 
 twenty days before his death. 
 
 * The photograph on the frontispiece is from a cliche kindly 
 given by the former proprietor of the Torre del Gallo, Count Q. Gal- 
 letti. It is from an original attributed to Sustermans, the Fleming. 
 There is also a very fine bust of Galileo in the museum of the Count, 
 with telescopes of the seventeenth century, portraits of Copernicus 
 and of Galileo's daughter, and numerous valuable curiosities. 
 
 t Tome xxvi., pp. 427-443, 1877. 
 
 X The Villa d' Arcetri, next to the Torre del Gallo, overlooking 
 Florence, the winding Arno, and a large tract of hilly country, 
 contains many souvenirs of Galileo, and other most interesting 
 works of art. There is a pensien in part of the building, which 
 affords the leisure necessary for a thorough investigation of the 
 treasures belonging to Count Galletti. The same laurels are there 
 as are described by Zanella. The writer climbed to the top, where 
 the celebrated cock in sheet-iron trembles in the wind. 
 
J, -^ p-r-^ 
 
 j^ ,.'5 
 
 GALILEO'S TOWER AT ARCETRI, NEAR FLIIRKNCE 
 (TORRE DEL GALLO). 
 
IN ITALY 41 
 
 In a former letter from La Costa, Galileo wrote to Elia 
 Diodati, in Paris, complaining of his bad sight, inflamma- 
 tion and running of the eyes, his utter prostration, and the 
 fear that he would soon be too weak even to dictate his 
 letters.* Not even when he became totally blind did his 
 persecutors cease their molestations, although his treaty 
 with the States-General of Holland was effectually stopped 
 by his infirmity. 'This treaty,' wrote Galileo, on August 14, 
 to the same Elia Diodati, ' ought not to bear me any pre- 
 judice, but rather honour and fame, were I an ordinary 
 man, and not more miserable than others.'! This letter 
 is from Arcetri. 
 
 When the interview took place cannot be determined 
 with certainty. On Milton's return from Rome in 1639, 
 he was well known in Italy. The Florentines, indeed, 
 received him with great liberality, and did not question 
 him as to his faith. He had a hearty welcome also from 
 learned men in Rome, even from a Cardinal, the cultivated 
 nephew of Urban VIII., and he dined in the English 
 College there, dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury. 
 Both Heinsius and Manso complain, nevertheless, of his 
 too great freedom of speech and his contumely of the Pope. 
 
 The clearest allusions to Galileo occur in Paradise Lost, 
 where he is even named (Book V., line 262) : 
 
 * See letter to Cardinal Barberini of July 23, printed in the 
 second volume ' del Commercio epistolare nell' edizione Alber- 
 iana.' 
 
 t We give here part of a letter, on the old pencil portrait of 
 Galileo, from a learned Venetian senator, dated Vicenza, Novem- 
 ber 5, 1902 : 
 
 ' II ritratto di Galilei, dipinto o disegnato da Guido Reni, non 
 e che una contraffazione grossolana, e di cui si conosce il pittore 
 modernissimo, che non avrebbe dovuto perpetuarla. Quanto 
 all'altra so che I'originale consiste in un disegno che pare a matita, 
 su cartone, ed e veramente bello, e certamente non posteriore al 
 secolo xvii. Pero non esiste alcun documento, che provi che sia 
 uscito dall' autore dei due ritratti di Galilei, che sono I'uno agli 
 
42 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 ' As when by night the glass 
 Of Galileo, less assured, observes 
 Imagined lands and mountains in the moon. ' 
 
 (Book I., line 257 :) 
 
 ' The moon, whose orb 
 Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
 At evening from the top of Fesole, 
 Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 
 Rivers and mountains in her spotty globe. ' * 
 
 (And line 301 :) 
 
 ' lay entranced 
 Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks 
 In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades 
 High over-arch'd embower.' 
 
 Why, it may be asked, did not Milton name Galileo as 
 clearly in // Penseroso as in the first of these passages ? 
 We would answer : In the whole course of the Twin Poems, 
 only two proper names of moderns are used, and they are 
 those of two authors, Jonson and Shakespeare, who were not 
 living in 1639. All the other personages are enveloped in 
 mythological disguise. Galileo, who was Milton's contem- 
 porary, and who was probably not dead when // Penseroso 
 was written, could not figure with Zephyr, Bacchus, Saturn, 
 or the Muses. If he appear, he must take an ancient dis- 
 guise, and one in keeping with his character. None could 
 be found so apt as Hermes, for had not Galileo wrested from 
 the book of Nature her secret by discovering the true solar 
 system to mankind ? 
 
 Giacomo Zanella,t a poet of great merit and charm, who 
 
 Uf&zi, 1' altro a Pitti. La fotografia che Ella mi ha mandata, non 
 pui dare nemmeno una pallida idea dell' originate, come non la 
 dava altra fotografia che dee aver servito per questa riproduzione. 
 "... Ho scritto in italiano per essere piu esatto. 
 
 ' 11 Sue, 
 
 ' Fedele Lampertico.' 
 
 * See note to Dr. Thomas Newton's edition o Milton's poems, 
 t Florence, Le Monnier. 
 
IN ITALY 
 
 43 
 
 died in 1886, has left a poem on the meeting of these 
 'giants.' At early dawn, when the moon is paling, the 
 young poet climbs unexpectedly through the oUve bushes 
 and surprises the old man, who, by a poetical license, is 
 not yet deprived of his daughter's presence. 
 
 Did Zanella take the ' pensive nun ' of// Penseroso, as the 
 present writer does, to mean Galileo's daughter ? Whether 
 or not such were his intention, he certainly does make his 
 Milton ' outwatch the Bear ' with Galileo, the thrice-great 
 Hermes of our theme, for the stars grow dim and the 
 moon becomes pale while, through the summer night, 
 Galileo lays bare the sorrows of his life to the sympathetic 
 Milton. 
 
 Thus does Hermes keep company with the author of 
 
 // Penseroso. Together they will raise the ghost of Plato 
 
 to unveil the fate of the dead, and ask him 
 
 ' . .of those demons that are found 
 In fire, air, flood or underground. 
 Whose power hath a true consent 
 With planet or with element.' 
 
 Lycidas invokes neither Hermes nor Plato. He hears, 
 
 ■ Where other groves and other streames among 
 With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 
 The unexpressive nuptial song. ' 
 
 His ' solemn troops ' and ' sweet societies ' are of a tamer 
 mood. But the Twin Poems call up Hermes, Plato, and 
 Orpheus. 
 
 Again, at the end of // Penseroso, Galileo reappears as 
 learned in ' every herb that sucks the dew,' as well as in 
 astronomy ; had not his old experience foreseen, what pos- 
 terity was slow to acknowledge, the true solar system ? 
 
 ' And may at last my weary age 
 Find out the peaceful hermitage. 
 The hairy gown and mossy cell, 
 Where I may sit and rightly spell 
 Of every star that heaven doth shew. 
 And every herb that sucks the dew ; 
 
44 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 Till old experience do attain 
 To something like prophetic strain. 
 These pleasures, Melancholy, give, 
 And I with thee will choose to live.' 
 
 The poet Zanella has embellished his creation, to no 
 small degree, by introducing the sweet character of Maria 
 Celeste. 
 
 To add to his sorrows, Galileo's angelic daughter died in 
 1634, eight years before himself. He would speak of her 
 to Milton, whose ardent imagination would well picture her 
 pure form among the jessamine and laurels with which 
 Zanella clothes the hill of Arcetri : ' Maria, his gentle first- 
 born and faithful guardian, stood by him, her hair hidden 
 by the bands of her sisterhood.' 
 
 The opening of the second part of the poem gives the 
 rising of the full moon over Florence, and Maria is seen 
 looking at it. The silver rays are beating full upon her eyes, 
 which she does not remove till her father calls her, in order 
 to sound her praises as his Antigone. 
 
 Although Milton never saw her, the memory of her 
 virtues transmitted to him by Galileo seems to live again 
 in the Penseroso, as well as her personal appearance and 
 attitude, for Melancholy is invoked under the form of a nun : 
 
 ' Come, pensive nun, devout and pure. 
 Sober, steadfast and demure, 
 All in a robe of darkest grain, 
 Flowing with majestic train, 
 And sable stole of Cypress lawn. 
 Over thy decent shoulders drawn. 
 Come, but keep thy wonted state, 
 With even step and musing gait. 
 And looks commercing with the skies, 
 Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes : 
 There, held in holy passion still. 
 Forget thyself to marble* , till 
 With a sad leaden downward cast, 
 Thou fix them on the earth as fast.' 
 
 * This line recalls the monument erected to the memory of Pope 
 Julius II. It was achieved by slow degrees. At last, on a reduced 
 
I^ ITALY 45 
 
 The companions of Melancholy are just those of Maria 
 Celeste, who lived in a convent hard by, and came daily 
 to tend her blind father. These are Peace, Quiet, Fast, 
 Leisure, Contemplation, with Cynthia and the Nightingale. 
 
 scale, it was finally erected at Rome, in the Church of San Pietro 
 in Vincoli, where it appears quite out of place. It is some time 
 before the spectator discovers the reclining form of Pope Julius 
 on the second stage of the monument, where the Moses of Michael 
 Angelo is the all-absorbing object of interest. On each side of the 
 Moses are two statues emblematic of Active and Contemplative 
 Life, which Milton seems to have examined attentively. They 
 were designed and finished by Michael Angelo himself. Mr. 
 Harford says that the idea is borrowed from Dante. The Active 
 Life is represented as Leah, who holds a mirror in one hand 
 and in the other a wreath of flowers, the symbol of cheerfulness. 
 
 The Contemplative Life, under the name of Rachel, indicates by 
 the bent knee, by the upraised head and eye, that her rapt soul 
 is mounting heavenwards, 
 
 ' And looks commercing with the skies. 
 Thy wrapt soul sitting in thine eyes, 
 Forget thyself to marble.' 
 
 According to Dante, Leah, the Active Life, is thus introduced at 
 morning : 
 
 ' About the hour, 
 As I believe, when Venus from the east 
 First lightened on the mountain, she whose orb 
 Seems always glowing with the fire of love, 
 A lady young and beautiful, I dreamed. 
 Was passing o'er a lea : and, as she came, 
 Methought I saw her ever and anon 
 Bending to cull the flowers ; and thus she sang : 
 Know ye, whoever of my name would ask, 
 That I am Leah : for my brow to weave 
 A garland, these fair bands unwearied ply. 
 To please me at the crystal mirror, here 
 I deck me.' 
 
 Michael Angelo followed Dante's idea in giving her the flowers 
 and the mirror : 
 
 ' But my sister Rachel, she 
 Before her glass abides the livelong day 
 Her radiant eyes beholding, charmed no less 
 Than I with this delightful task. Her joy 
 In contemplation, as in labour mine.' 
 
 'Purg.,' xxvii. 
 
46 MJLTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 The ideas attributed to Hermes and Zoroaster are creations 
 
 of the modern Platonists of the Florentine Academy, founded 
 
 more than a century before Milton's passage in Italy. They 
 
 thought that our present existence is death, and our body 
 
 our sepulture. Milton echoes their thoughts in his Ninth 
 
 Sonnet : 
 
 ' Meekly thou didst resign this earthly load 
 Of death, called life ; which us from life doth sever.' 
 
 We cannot refrain from quoting here a few lines from 
 Pic de la Mirandole, which are very Miltonic in spirit : 
 ' Dieu a ci66 I'homme ni mortel ni immortel, afin que 
 I'homme devint I'artisan et le modeleur de sa propre des- 
 tinee, et qu'il put, selon son arbitre et son choix, ou 
 ddgendrer dans les 6tres infdrieurs et brutaux, ou renaitre 
 dans les etres divins.' 
 
 The Twin Poems are inspired, like Lycidas and Comus, 
 with classic lore, but have in addition a strong Neo-Platonic 
 basis. 
 
 All here is correspondence, contrast. The slumbering 
 morn is aroused in L' Allegro, while his brother basks in the 
 dewy-fingered sleep induced by the drowsy song of the bee 
 and the murmuring of waters. 
 
 The austere square tower, where languished the aged 
 Galileo (// Fenseroso, lines 85 and 167), has its merry 
 counterpart in the smiling, ivy-clad, round Tour de Duin, 
 to which the poet's imagination has transferred the legend- 
 ary Fair Lady of Aigremont (see pp. 26, 63), ' cynosure of 
 neighbouring eyes.' 
 
 L' Allegro and // Fenseroso mark the two poles of human 
 existence — the light and shade of the great Artist, the Day 
 and Night of Lorenzo's tomb in Florence \ both the ever- 
 lasting Martha and the Mary, the mind waiting at the feet 
 of Truth (they also serve) and the mind fixed on lively, 
 active work. Each poem sets the other in strong relief, 
 
IN ITALY 47 
 
 and the opening of each deprecates strongly its fellow. 
 But in every detail they correspond to each other organi- 
 cally, like the two sides of a leaf, like the two sides of the 
 body, or those forms made by folding paper over a blot, 
 which, by-the-bye, furnishes a hypothesis as to how organic 
 life began. 
 
 ' Who knows, and what does it matter,' we read in 
 Professor Masson's article in Good Words ior ]a.nua.Ty, 1893, 
 ' whether the " fleecy cloud " may be attributed to Horton ?' 
 A ' fleecy cloud,' we answer, may be seen throughout the tent:., 
 perate zone. But it does matter to us very much whether the j, 
 scenery in both poems be ' eclectic and visionary,' as is sug- j 
 gested. No doubt there is a certain eclecticism in the poems, \ 
 but there is no reason to suppose that they sprang spontane- i 
 ously from the imagination of a book-worm. We think this J 
 is no 'scenery invented to suit the contrasted moods of 
 cheerfulness and melancholy,' but the outward expression of 
 what the young, vibrating soul of Milton drank in so deeply, 
 the mountains and valleys, the joys and sorrows of the 
 men he met and of the men who had trodden that classic 
 soil before him. 
 
 But we must hasten on with Milton from Florence to 
 Rome, where he had the opportunity of hearing the culti- 
 vated and remarkable voice of Leonora Baroni. 
 
 ■ And ever, against eating cares, 
 Lap me in soft Lydian airs, 
 Married to immortal verse ; * 
 Such as the meeting soul may pierce. 
 In notes, with many a winding bout 
 Of linked sweetness long drawn out. 
 With wanton heed and giddy cunning ; 
 The melting voice though mazes running, 
 Untwisting all the chains that tie 
 The hidden soul of harmony.' 
 
 * See also Milton's poem. At a Solemn Music: 
 
 ' Blest pair of sirens, pledges of heaven's joy. 
 Sphere-born harmonious sisters, voice and verse. 
 Wed your divine sounds,' etc. 
 
48 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 Strangely, it does not occur to Professor David Masson to 
 apply this description to the singing of Leonora Baroni, 
 while he affirms that this virtuous lady and her mother, 
 of Mantua, were reputed, between 1637 and 1641, the 
 finest voices in the world. Catherine, the other daughter, 
 completed the trio, who, going about from town to town, 
 ' moved Italy to madness,' as he tells us in his most graphic 
 biography of our great poet. 
 
 How deeply Milton was touched by the voice of Leonora 
 
 is evident from his Latin poem, translated by the learned 
 
 Professor : 
 
 ' To Leonora, singing at Rome. 
 
 ' To everyone, so let the nations believe, there is allotted from 
 among the ethereal ranks his own winged angel. What 
 wonder, Leonora, if it be so, to thee there should be a greater 
 glory ? Thy very voice sounds God as present in thee. Either 
 God, or at least some high intelligence of the deserted heaven, 
 warbles active in secret through thy throat, warbles active and 
 teaches with ease that mortal hearts may by degrees grow 
 accustomed to immortal sound. If, however, God is in all 
 things and through all diffused, in thee alone He speaks ; all 
 else He inhabits mute.'* 
 
 The description of clear-story in stained glass might, 
 of course, have arisen from Milton's visits to English 
 cathedrals. ' We would cite the magnificent stained glass 
 which decorates the chapel of King's College, Cam- 
 bridge, of the sixteenth century ; the east window of St. 
 Margaret's Church, Westminster, stands as a worthy con- 
 temporary. A most glorious example of the stained glass 
 of the thirteenth century yet remains in La Sainte Chapelle 
 at Paris, and the effect of a building entirely illuminated 
 by windows completely filled with the richest and most 
 brilliant tints is only to be appreciated and enjoyed in that 
 beautiful edifice.'! 
 
 * ' Quid si cuncta quidem Deus est, per cunctaque fusus. 
 In te unt loquitur, caetera mutus habet.' 
 
 •|- Oxford Glossary, Part I., p. 239. 
 
IN ITALY 
 
 49 
 
 It is probable that Milton visited this in Paris, before 
 writing the words 
 
 ■ But let my due feet never fail 
 To walk the studious cloister's pale, 
 And love the high embowed roof, 
 With antic pillars massy proof ' — 
 
 that is, the bowed or bent Gothic arch, sustained by ancient 
 massive pillars, time-proof, 
 
 ' And stoned windows richly dight, 
 Casting a dim religious light.' 
 
 So much for Gothic architecture and painted windows, 
 whether in England or abroad ; now for the music : 
 
 ' There let the pealing organ blow 
 To the full-voiced choir below, 
 In service high and anthems clear, 
 As may with sweetness, through mine ear. 
 Dissolve me into ecstasies, 
 And bring all heaven before mine eyes.' 
 
 Does this sound like English Church music a hundred 
 years after the Reformation ? Are these English hymns ? 
 
 Organ music was poor in the time of Charles I. It is the 
 voice of Dean Stanley that comes in here, with its silvery 
 tones, from out of Westminster Abbey, to our help : * 
 
 ' The first musician who was buried within the church — 
 the Chaucer, as it were, of the musicians' corner — was 
 Henry Purcell. . . . He was buried October 24, 1676, 
 close to the organ which he had been the first to raise to 
 celebrity, and with the anthem which he had, but a few 
 months before, composed for the funeral of Queen Mary, 
 (wife of William of Orange), t We see at once that this 
 
 * ' Memorials of Westminster Abbey,' chap, iv., p. 289. 
 + See Historical Chart. 
 
so MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 Purcell came somewhat later than Frescobaldi, who died in 
 1654, twenty-two years before him, having been organist forty 
 years in St. Peter's at Rome. Frescobaldi is the greatest 
 organist of the seventeenth century. Born at Ferrara, 
 formed in the best school of the time, the Flemish school 
 — he was celebrated while still young as a singer, com- 
 poser and organ-player. Milton's visit to Florence fell in 
 the midst of his brilliant career. The poet, who in his 
 youth had played the organ, and who later solaced the 
 cares of Cromwell by his music, would indeed delight to 
 hear Frescobaldi play. One can fancy all his sensitive ear 
 enjoyed for the first time in Italy. Frescobaldi's music is 
 of the fugue sort ; the sonorous bass notes are long-sustained, 
 so as to give to some degree the effect of the modern organ. 
 We are not surprised to learn that Milton supplied himself 
 with a provision of heavy music-books. Purcell learnt 
 much from him.* Considering the condition of music in 
 England in the latter half of the seventeenth century, this 
 composer has a high place. . . . He has left works of all 
 sorts, sometimes of evident originality.' 
 
 One sometimes regrets that Milton never heard a sym- 
 phony of Beethoven, nor saw the Holy Grail descend in 
 Wagner's Parsifal along the silver beam which music paints 
 so much better than poetry ; but, if we are to judge from the 
 transports in // Penseroso, we may conclude that he could 
 not have got more delight out of these than he had in Fres- 
 cobaldi's early organ music. 
 
 Puritan as he was, the Latin chanting responding to the 
 organ ' dissolved him into ecstasies.' We can well fancy 
 that, when Lawes put for the first time English words to 
 music, it was a great satisfaction to him. 
 
 * We suspect that in the latter half of the seventeenth century 
 he imitated Frescobaldi, having got hold of his music-books from 
 Milton, whose journey ended in 1639. 
 
IN ITALY 51 
 
 ' Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured lay 
 
 First taught our English music how to span 
 Words with just note and accent — 
 
 To after-age thou shalt be writ the man 
 That with smooth air could humour best our tongue.' * 
 
 Our tongue, indeed, is somewhat rebel to the muses. 
 Milton felt it, and congratulated Lawes on being the first 
 to conquer the difficulty. But the praise given in L' Allegro 
 
 to 
 
 ' The melting voice in mazes running ' 
 
 applies to Leonora Baroni. Cowper has translated two 
 poems in her honour, written in Latin by Milton, besides 
 the one above quoted. No incipient English psalmody 
 could account for such a burst of enthusiastic admiration, 
 just at the time of this singer's greatest fame, between 1637 
 and 1 641 : 
 
 ' Untwisting all the chains that tie 
 The hidden soul of harmony ; 
 That Orpheus' self may heave his head 
 From golden slumber on a bed 
 Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear 
 Such strains as would have won the ear 
 Of Pluto, to have quite set free 
 His half-regained Eurydice. ' 
 
 * 'To Mr. H. Lawes, On the Publishing his Airs' (Sonnet viii.). 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 MILTON ON THE SIMPLON PASS 
 
 FROM Rome Milton went to Naples, where he made 
 the acquaintance of Manso, the friend of Tasso ;* on 
 his return to Rome, Leonora, we may suppose, as well as 
 the Roman antiquities and the organ music of Frescobaldi, 
 retained him during January and part of February, 1639. 
 At Florence he would revisit II Penseroso of Michael 
 Angelo, the name, blending in some morning dream with 
 the melancholy vision of great Galileo, suggesting, perchance, 
 the poem. We possess a letter begun at Florence, March 30, 
 1639, in which Milton writes: 'Having crossed the Apen- 
 nines, I passed through Bologna and Ferrara on my way 
 to Venice.' There he spent a month more, collecting the 
 music which he sent by sea to England. Lucca Marenzo, 
 Monte Verdi, Horatio Vecchi, and Cifa, were among the 
 best composers at that time, besides Frescobaldi. ' Rid of 
 these [music-books] by their shipment, moving homeward 
 through Verona, Milan, and the Pennine Alps, and then by 
 the Lake Leman, I arrived at Geneva.' 
 
 The Pennine Alps are Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, the 
 Great St. Bernard, and Monte Rosa. 
 
 Starting from Milan, it would have been quite natural to 
 take the Great St. Bernard Pass. He had meant to visit 
 * ■ Mansus sylvarum liber.' 
 
 [ 52 ] 
 
ON THE SIMPLON PASS 53 
 
 Greece, and was forced by political reasons to return to 
 England, where his friend Diodati was dying, unknown to 
 him. Why did he not take the shorter and easier route ? 
 The same independent, adventurous spirit which had made 
 him despise Sir H. Wotton's advice on the way out, and 
 which led him, in theology and politics, out of the beaten 
 track, must needs now lead him by the Simplon ! So, at 
 least, says tradition at Domodossola, and so implies his 
 Latin poem to Diodati : 
 
 ' Ah ! what roaming whimsey drew my steps to a distance, 
 Over the rocks hung in air and the Alpine passes and glaciers !'* 
 
 He evidently regrets having taken the more picturesque 
 but longer road, not knowing that his friend's life was ebb- 
 ing away day by day. Parts of the old Roman road are 
 still to be seen, alongside of the military road constructed 
 by Napoleon, sometimes running below, sometimes at 
 another angle, sometimes broken off sharp. 
 
 This ancient road had the Hospice of the Simplon at its 
 summit. It was sold by the Knights Hospitallers to the 
 Stockalper family of Brigue, but appears to contain no 
 longer any object of interest. Above it, on Napoleon's 
 highroad, is the present hospice, built originally for 
 barracks, where now the Augustine monks, sent yearly by 
 the St. Bernard monastery, lodge travellers. 
 
 The passage of the Simplon adds the corner-stone to our 
 arch of evidence. 
 
 The inhabitants of Domodossola, and especially the 
 Rosminian College established there, retain the belief that 
 Milton passed by their town on his way to Brigue. A 
 Reverend Father said to the writer : ' We were talking of this 
 only a few days ago, how Milton had been here. We are 
 
 * ' Hen quis me ignotas traxit vagus error in oras 
 Ire per aereas rupes, Alpemque nivosam !' 
 
S4 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 all of your opinion.' There is even a legend which pretends 
 that Paradise Lost -^2,% composed there. There is no smoke 
 without fire. It is certain that the aspect of a level plain, 
 which suddenly droops towards the sea near Vallombrosa, 
 fits beautifully the closing lines of the great epic : 
 
 ' In either hand the hastening angel caught 
 Our lingering parents, and to the eastern gate 
 Led them direct,' and down the cliff as fast, 
 To the subjected plain ; then disappeared.' 
 
 We have essayed to prove that the inspiration of the 
 Twin Poems came in part from Paris and Italy ; we have 
 shown negatively that in England Milton could neither 
 have heard the organ music nor the human voice wedded to 
 words in such perfection as he describes. We have also 
 shown positively that in Italy he had the opportunity of 
 hearing both. That they enraptured him is shown by facts 
 outside the antiphonal poems we are scrutinizing. 
 
 We hope to set forth as clearly that the extreme of tragic 
 scenery on the Simplon, and the intense beauty of the 
 country, as you emerge from the Rhone Valley to the plain, 
 suggested much of the contrasted scenery of // Penseroso 
 and L' Allegro. 
 
 In these poems we get a glimpse of Milton's youthful 
 feelings, before diplomacy and struggles for truth had made 
 him the sober man he became later on. In the depths of 
 Gondo every crag seems alive to him ; under the smiling 
 sun of Bex and its environs, he basks ' in close covert by 
 some brook.' 
 
 What is an imagination fed alone on books and narrow 
 experience ? Not rich and full as Milton's was, after his 
 foreign travels. You have only to compare sweet classical 
 Lycidas with these poems, rife with the learning of the 
 Italian Renaissance. 
 
ON THE SIMPLON PASS $5 
 
 Milton's free contact with men and women of such 
 varied excellence, combined with his wide knowledge of 
 antiquity and Neoplatonism, are woven by the swiftly- 
 flying shuttle of his boundless imagination into the rich 
 tapestry of the Twin Poems. And the colours are fast; 
 our only pretension is to bring them out of their musty 
 staircase into the fair and open sunlight. 
 
 The first suggestion that the Twin Poems were written 
 as a storehouse of memories, foreign no less than English, 
 came to the writer quite by chance. A residence of some 
 years in view of the Tour de Duin* at Bex brought so 
 strongly to mind the words : 
 
 ' Towers and battlements it sees 
 Bosom'd high in tufted trees,' 
 
 as to impose the question with an obsession which led to a 
 radical exploration of the subject. 
 
 An Italian of most suggestive and wide intelligence came 
 across the path of the writer : ' If Bex,' he said, ' seems to 
 you a scene corresponding to L' Allegro, the rocks on the 
 Italian side may well have suggested II Penseroso, for they 
 are remarkably dark and terrible.' 
 
 Milton had arrived by sea, passing Genoa and Pisa ; if he 
 took the Simplon, it was on his way back, by Milan, the 
 Pennines, and the Leman. 
 
 * As for the Simplon, very uncertain (as a road) in the time of 
 the Romans, it is not mentioned before 1235. But it soon became 
 very important as, an international passage, provided with a 
 hospice. The Bishop of Sion, who bought from the Castello family 
 the eastern slope of the pass, conpluded arrangements, in 1272, 
 with merchant companies from Milan and from Pistoia to establish 
 a regular service by the Simplon, with fixed stations and tolls to be 
 paid. The road was fit for carriages — at least, during part of its 
 length. This means of communication must have brought to the 
 Valais in Switzerland, Savoy and France the trade of the East, 
 being conveyed by the great commercial route of the Euphrates to 
 the port of Lagazzo, Venice, and Milan. 
 
S6 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 Leaving Domodossola in its wide fruitful valley, on his 
 return journey to Switzerland, the traveller passes the 
 scattered village of Crevola, sleeping in its chestnuts, maize, 
 and vines, and enters a solitary picturesque gorge leading to 
 Varso, a more cultivated region, with pretty villas. Gradu- 
 ally the scene begins to change as he mounts the gentle 
 ascent ; great rocks appear, frowning in the shade. These 
 rocks, which are mostly of schist, are very different in cha- 
 racter from those on the St. Bernard Pass. These are 
 very beautiful, covered in places with lichens ranging from 
 the tenderest green to orange. But on the Simplon the 
 rocks are brittle, black, and lowering. Black ravens,* too, 
 are seen flying from crag to crag. As he approaches Isella, 
 the rocks become more continuous, closer to each other, 
 across the torrent, until they form a high wall on either 
 hand. Melancholy, terrible are these overhanging rocks — 
 ' hung in air ' indeed ! The large boulders on the road- 
 side show how dangerous they become when worked 
 upon by the weight of winter's snow. Once the reins are 
 thrown on the neck of the imagination^ there is no end to 
 the forms of horror discernible in the perpendicular broken 
 crags, as the traveller becomes engaged between the walls, 
 which rise one behind another, one above another, remind- 
 ing us of those lines : 
 
 ■ And in the lowest deep a lower deep. 
 Still threatening to devour me, opens wide. 
 
 (Paradise Lost.) 
 
 After passing Isella — a few houses nestling in the rocks, 
 whose parish church appears on the opposite heights, at 
 Trasquora — he continues the direful ascent to Gondo, the 
 road turning now to the right, now to the left, now be- 
 coming broader, now narrower, as he is further involved in 
 
 * ■ And the night-raven sings ' (V Allegro). 
 
ON THE SIMPLON PASS 57 
 
 the darkening vistas. In strong relief on the black rocks, 
 that rise to 2,000 feet above sea-level, there suddenly 
 appears, chiselled in the rock, a colossal female face. The 
 image is soon lost in perspective, as you advance ; but at 
 one point, from the mouth of this Egyptian-looking creature 
 rushes the splendid torrent called La Fressinone, while far 
 below the Doveria foams and struggles, and heaves herself 
 a noisy passage to meet her passionate rival between the 
 worn rocks in their narrowest gorge. To pass from Isella 
 by Gondo to the Simplon village on a rainy or stormy day 
 is to enter one of the most dark, uncouth, and melancholy 
 of earth's nooks of horror. Milton must indeed have felt 
 the weirdness of this ascent from the Italian side to the 
 Simplon. Once out of it, we may indeed cry : 
 
 ' Hence, loathed Melancholy, 
 
 Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born, 
 In Stygian cave forlorn, 
 
 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,* 
 Find out some uncouth cell, 
 
 Where brooding Darkness spreads her jealous wings. 
 And the night-raven t sings ; 
 
 There, under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks, 
 As ragged as thy locks. 
 
 In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. ' 
 
 Such is the appreciation of L' Allegro, who will none 
 of it. 
 
 But what a charm lies in this melancholy scene, and how 
 deep in true poetic feeling is the invocation to the genius of 
 // Penseroso : ' Come, pensive Nun !' 
 
 We leave these solemn scenes ; we pass by the new 
 Hospice du Simplon, that looks wistfully down on the 
 
 * We are informed, by a competent observer, of the ill-fame even 
 now attached to the galleries and narrow passages along the road 
 near to Isella on Sundays and feast-days. 
 
 t Ravens are among the birds in the museum of Domodossola ; 
 they frequent the Simplon rocks. 
 
S8 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 ancient one, with its square tower, sloping roof, and high 
 belfry, for there Milton possibly slept; and we descend 
 into the Valley of the Rhone upon Brigue. At this point, 
 between Berisal and Brigue, we meet some forest oaks and 
 pines, whose tops have been lopped off by the avalanches. 
 These find no place in the Twin Poems, but are exactly 
 delineated in Paradise Lost (Book I., hnes 612-614) : 
 
 ' as when heaven's fire* 
 Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines, 
 With singed top, their stately growth, though bare. 
 Stands on the blasted heath.' 
 
 One is reminded over and over again in this First Book 
 of the contrasted moods of the early Twins. The ' Evil, be 
 thou my good,' the ' Hail, horrors, hail !' the grand figure 
 of the revolted Satan, correspond to II Penseroso ; while the 
 bliss of heaven is faintly foreshadowed by the Happy Poem. 
 At St. Maurice the valley grows again dark and narrow ; 
 like the motive of some sad melody recurring at the end of 
 one of Beethoven's Andantes, the Dent du Midi, seen from 
 below, casts us one cruel precipitate glance, recalling Gondo. 
 But // Penseroso is over ; terrors and melancholy lie behind 
 the back of the lover of Milton, for he emerges suddenly on 
 sunlit Bex-les-Bains ! The valley has opened out, the well- 
 watered plains lie green before him, and the panorama 
 defies description. Milton could not pass by such a sight 
 without noting it in his memoranda. Nothing before or 
 after Bex, in the Rhone Valley, can equal the harmonious 
 beauty of that point of the journey. t 
 
 * Compare Nova Solyma — 
 
 'Just so it is when Heav'n's hurl'd lightning falls, 
 Striking the wither'd top of some tall oak.' 
 In both cases Milton mistakes the work of the avalanche for the 
 effect of lightning. 
 
 t The landscape round is so rich and varied that the traveller 
 cannot take it in at once ; clouds and mist often hide some essential 
 features. 
 
PANORAMA OF BEX. 
 
ON THE SIMPLON PASS S9 
 
 The scene of the 'new pleasures,' which is Milton's 
 description of the view from Bex, stands in contrast, on the 
 one hand, with the merry English life he has just depicted, 
 and on the other with the melancholy thoughts hitherto 
 suggested by his route. 
 
 Look all around the wonderful amphitheatre. Turn your 
 eye, with Milton's that 'caught new pleasures,' from the 
 four august peaks of the Diablerets, by sloping Javernaz, to 
 the delicate Dents de Morcles ; then down, down, till it rests 
 on the distant Glaciers du Trient, and, eastward, mounts 
 the varied declivities of the majestic Dent du Midi ! From 
 Clarens and Vevey you discern the seven peaks of this 
 Mountain-queen ; from Bex, /a cime de PEst may be visu- 
 ally scaled all the way up on one side. The slopes at first 
 are green and smiling, gradually more cold and severe. 
 The very broad base on which she rests, as she rises 
 through precipices, torrents and nhiis to the tapering top, 
 makes the Dent du Midi the ideal mountain, and Bex the 
 standpoint from which to view it. 
 
 At the foot of the Dent du Midi, as the eye descends, 
 lies the charming Plateau de Veyrossa, with its white steeple 
 drawn on the green slopes, its bois noir of dark fir-trees. If 
 the spectator now turn northwards, he will see, on either 
 hand, mountains in waves bordering the Valley of the 
 Rhone, and stretching beyond the lake. 
 
 There it was, then, that Milton must have arrived, as he 
 came from Milan ' by the Pennine Alps to the Leman,' even 
 had he come by the St. Bernard Pass. We may well believe 
 it was bad weather; he seems to have had rain passing 
 the Simplon, and he does not seem to have seen the Dent 
 du Midi in all her glory, because of the 'labouring clotids.' 
 He saw her ' fallows gray ' where chamois and goats feed, 
 and her 'barren breast,' made of hard rock, where no vege- 
 tation can live, and on which the clouds make a bridge 
 
6o MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 across to the Dent de Morcles. It is grand to see them 
 struggle, as it were, with the mountain, which attracts them. 
 They will linger there for days together, tantalizing the lover 
 of the Dent du Midi, who from day to day awaits her 
 appearing. The late Professor Eugene Rambert, poet and 
 Alpinist, in his book ' Bex et ses Environs,'* has painted 
 with wonderful truth the divers climates which she bears 
 on her bosom at different altitudes. It is marvellous that 
 Milton should have observed them, too. There is first the 
 wide green basis, rich and fruitful, 
 
 ' Meadows trim, with daisies pied ' ; 
 
 higher, 'russet lawns, 't where little grass is left for cows ; 
 ' fallows gray ' above, where, perhaps, few tufts may still be 
 accessible to the goats ; lastly, the cloud-tipped summit. 
 All these expressions are hard to understand until one has 
 seen the things they describe. 
 
 At Bex, too, in full view of the two majestic mountains, 
 
 • Georges Bridel, Lausaniie. 
 
 t The old road from Bex to Aigle did not lie, in Milton's time, 
 where now lies the grand highroad which continues over the 
 Simplon (Napoleon's). It passed, on the contrary, near to OUon, 
 a village between Bex and Aigle. At that part there are specially 
 beautiful expanses of red heather in spring. Hence, perhaps, 
 ' russet lawns,' for Milton returned by Bex in spring. 
 
 Rambert's ' Bex et ses Environs,' p. 66, says : ' La Dent du Midi 
 s'eleve au-dessus de chaudes et riches contrees, qu'elle enrichit 
 encore en leur renvoyant les rayons du soleil qui se reflechissent 
 sur ses flancs. A ses pieds regne une vegetation digne d'ltalie ; sur 
 ses sommets reposent les neiges du pole, et, entre deux, toute la 
 serie des possibles. Les produits et les phenomenes des zones les 
 plus eloignees se sent donne rendez-vous sur ces pentes. II en 
 resulte un effet de profusion creatrice d'autant plus splendide que 
 la montagne a des formes plus accidentees, des expositions plus 
 changeantes, des terrains plus divers. Un tableau pareil est de 
 ceux qu'on n'epuise pas. Et cependant on n'y remarque ni 
 embarras, ni encombrement. Chaque chose a sa place, et de cette 
 abondance nait un ensemble dont I'unite est aussi manifeste que la 
 variete en est infinie.' Should we wonder that Milton, passing 
 there, notices its divers zones with as careful an eye as the poet 
 Rambert ? 
 
ON THE SIMPLON PASS 6i 
 
 whence they flow, are the ' shallow brooks ' : the Croisette, 
 the torrent of St. Bartholomew (where the fairy Frisette* 
 lived) ; there are the ' rivers wide ' : the vikhante Gryonne, 
 which has often t away its dykes ; the swift Avangon, 
 
 that hastens so y to unburden itself in the bosom of 
 
 the wide Rhone assonger. 
 
 It is true that many high mountains may correspond to 
 this sort of watershed ; few, however (if any) rise up straight 
 from the plain, so as to be visible all the way up, as the 
 Dent du Midi does, and so as to display the vegetation of 
 its varied zones, which Milton describes. 
 
 But the poet does not stop here ,• he will put the dots on 
 the IS, as the French say. He has seen many towers since 
 he left Galileo's. On the Italian side of the Simplon, 
 especially round Crevola, there are tall straight white towers, 
 with many stories, and two windows on each all the way 
 up. The Tower of Gondo is one of these, built by ' the 
 Stockalper family as a refuge for travellers,' says Baedeker, 
 ' long before the opening of the present Simplon road.' On 
 the Swiss side there are also towers, of quite another type, 
 at St. Triphon, at Sion. But none of these broader towers 
 are at all comparable to Milton's incomparable description 
 of La Tour de Duin. 
 
 When near enough to see the tower and the wooded hill 
 on which it stands, the spectator cannot, at the same time, 
 catch sight of the great mountains on either hand. This is 
 why the writer has given an autotype drawing, which, by 
 bringing near the tower (in order not to lose the moun- 
 tains), cannot pretend to the soft harmonious beauty of the 
 scene, such as a simple photograph would convey. 
 
 * See ' Legendes Vaudoises,' by Alfred Ceresole. 
 
ARMS OF BEX-LES-BAINS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 BEX AND LA TOUR DE DUIN 
 
 THESE ruins were the ancient Castle of Bex, built by 
 Girold da Bex in the twelfth century, already re- 
 ferred to (p. 26).* It was burnt down in 1476. The 
 chestnut-trees which now crown all that hill were brought 
 over from Italy in the eighteenth century, but the place 
 was formerly thickly wooded by oak-trees, many of which 
 remain now, especially near the tower itself. The words 
 of JO Allegro, far from referring to Windsor Castle, depict, 
 to those who know it well, the Tower of Duin, with that 
 ' precision of detail ' which was one form of Milton's homage 
 to truth, and which could but be augmented by his contact 
 with the founders of the French Academy and the fetnmes 
 pr'ecieuses. So, arriving at Bex, he cries : 
 
 ' Straight mine eye hatii caught new pleasures, 
 While the landscape round it measures, 
 Russet lawns+ and fallows gray, 
 Where the nibbling flocks do stray.' } 
 
 * See ' Dictionnaire historique du Canton de Vaud,' par Martig- 
 nier et de Crousaz, p. 87. 
 
 t Lawns=open places, clairieres. 
 
 t The arms of the village of Bex show that there were formerly 
 flocks of sheep ; the inhabitants still call themselves Belerins, from 
 hSer, to bleat. 
 
 [ 62] 
 
BEX AND THE TOWER OF DUIN 63 
 
 All this is seen from Bex ; the panorama is magnificent, 
 and above these ' russet lawns ' and ' fallows gray ' the 
 clouds rest on the barren rocks of the Dent du Midi : 
 
 ' Mountains, on whose barren breast, 
 The labouring clouds do often rest ; 
 Meadows trim, with daisies pied. 
 Shallow brooks and rivers wide.' 
 
 But the crowning point of all is the picture of the round 
 wooded hill, where, among clustering chestnut-trees, the 
 battlements of the old tower are seen : 
 
 ' Towers and battlements it sees, 
 Bospm'd high in tufted trees, 
 Where perhaps some beauty lies,* 
 The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.'t 
 
 * Allusion, perhaps, to the Dame d'Aigremont 
 
 t Milton, who was not in the habit of ' doing ' places with his 
 Baedecker, but, good linguist as he was, of conversing with the men 
 he met, may easily have heard this old legend of the opposite 
 valley, which the feasts of the Mi-ete would have passed from mouth 
 to mouth. Aigremont, Duin, and St. Triphon, as we have already 
 said, p. 26, note, were burnt at the same time by the Bernese (see 
 ' La Vallee des Ormonts,' par E. Busset, prof, et E. de la Harpe, 
 pasteur, p. 72). 
 
 Monsieur Eug. Corthesy, of Moudon, has kindly given us the 
 proof-sheets of his thise on this subject. In his conscientious study, 
 we learn that one night the Lady Eleonore was besieged in her 
 castle, in the absence of her lord, the Seigneur of Pontverre. The 
 peasants, who loved their chatelaine, arrived from La Forclaz, and 
 delivered the noble and beautiful lady from imminent danger. She 
 rewarded them by the pasture-land of Perche (you pass it returning 
 from the Lac de Chavonnes to Les Ormonts, but you may easily 
 get lost in the woods), on condition that the women should have 
 their share with the men. This tradition is put in practice, or, at 
 least, was general in the last century. 
 
 The researches of Monsieur Corthesy have not discovered any 
 text that lends an appearance of reality to this legend. Popular 
 imagination has invested the Dame d'Aigremont with a halo of 
 youth, grace, and beauty — and this is all we need. The men 
 of Bex that Milton saw would not ignore the graceful story. They 
 met the inhabitants of La Forclaz and of Les Ormonts at the mid- 
 summer fetes at Taveyannaz or Chavonnes ' from time immemorial. ' 
 Is it not written in the book of the Doyen Bridel ? ' Si vous voutez 
 rever de chdtdaines, de beaux pages, de seigneurs jaloux, allez a la 
 tour de Duin et faites vous en raconter les les legendes. ' — Rambert, 
 p. 31. 
 
64 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 After naming Zephyr and Aurora, Orpheus and Eurydice, 
 the secret shades 
 
 ' Of woody Ida's inmost grove,' 
 
 the poet would shock the ladies of 1' Hotel Rambouillet if 
 he were to name persons and places contemporaneous or 
 common. Milton can but paint ' lantskips,' as he so well 
 knows how to do, of the lovely or terrible places he passed, 
 and portraits of the learned or charming persons he met. 
 Even Chaucer and Spenser are baptized after a fashion 
 more agreeable to the circle of his Paris friends (// Pense- 
 roso, lines 109 and 116). 
 
 Corydon and Thyrsis, the rival singers of the Eclogues, 
 now come forward to represent the peasants of Bex, in 
 harvest-time or haymaking, eating what is not much used in 
 England — more's the pity ! — the good vegetable soup so 
 appreciated on the Continent : 
 
 ' Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes. 
 From betwixt two aged oaks, 
 Where Corydon and Thyris met. 
 Are at their savoury dinner set 
 Of herbs, and other country messes, 
 Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses ; 
 And then, in haste, her bower she leaves 
 With Thestylis * to bind the sheaves. ' 
 
 A publication much appreciated by old families of the 
 Canton de Vaud is ' Le Conservateur Suisse,' by the 
 Doyen Bridel, a very accomplished scholar and observer of 
 men. He was Pastor at Montreux in 1799. All the long 
 valley of Les Ormonts, going from Aigle to the Pillon Pass, 
 he knew in detail, before even the road was decided which 
 is now so much used to get to Gsteig and Thun. 
 
 * ' Thestylis is bruising for the reapers, o'erspent by the scorch- 
 ing heat, garlic and wild thyme, savoury herbs ' : Eclogue ii. 8 
 Virgil ; Phyllis, Eclogue iii. 
 
BEX AND THE TOWER OF DUIN 65 
 
 Now we are at a loss to imagine what idea is conveyed 
 to the English mind by these words : 
 
 ■ The upland hamlets will invite. ' 
 
 Dean Bridel gives a graphic picture of the Mi-etd, a 
 feast celebrated in several mountain places above Aigle and 
 Bex, who in turn ' invite ' the others.* He calls it the 
 Mi-Tsautein or Mi-chaud-temps. Here is the description of 
 one of these mid-summer feasts : 
 
 ' On a pretty flat meadow which looks down on the Lac 
 Lagot stands a rock in the shape of a pulpit. Here and 
 there natural stone benches, rising from the grass, offer 
 comfortable seats. This place is the p/an, or level, for the 
 country dances which have taken place in our Alps from 
 time immemorial. At the Mi-Tsautein (Mi-dt6) all the 
 youth of the neighbouring villages resort to the mountains, 
 where their cows feed during the summer months, with their 
 musical instruments (" rebecks," according to Milton). Pack- 
 horses bring the wine and provisions. The fete, which 
 begins with a religious service, lasts from morning till 
 evening 
 
 (" Till the livelong daylight fail"), 
 
 especially if the weather is fine and no storms are appre- 
 hended for the night.' 
 
 But in the year when Dean Bridel wrote this, the Munici- 
 palities of the Aigle district had forbidden the villagers to 
 bring up any wine on the Sunday of the Mi-6t6, as the 
 drinking and late hours had caused some scandal. 
 
 ' Consequently,' he observes sadly, ' there was no dance, 
 because there was no music ; for the votaries of Apollo 
 avoid cTarefuUy places where the gifts of Bacchus are 
 banished. If I were younger, I should regret the sup- 
 
 * On these occasions the cowherds make out their accounts as to 
 the sale of cattle and produce of the milk. 
 
 S 
 
66 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 pression of these Alpine festivals, consecrated as they are 
 by ancient custom; they form a very essential feature of 
 those national habits which it is important to maintain.' 
 
 ' To return from Brettaie,' he continues — and this shows 
 how the description applies to Bex and its environs on the 
 Simplon road — ' we descend by the hamlet of La Forclaz, 
 on the valley of Ormonts Dessous (Ze SSpey), and on Bex 
 by the mountain of Enscex, where there is an Alpine village 
 of more than ninety chalets, and thence to Taveyannaz ' 
 (the classical ground of the M.i-6t6) ' where sixty-five chalets 
 are arranged in seven lines ' (see p. 259 of the ' Conservateur 
 Suisse '). 
 
 Doyen Bridel thought a few policemen would be all 
 that was necessary to avoid the scandals of the M.i-6t6. 
 Had he lived now, he would be inclined to repress these 
 feasts altogether, as they do much in demoralizing the 
 people. 
 
 Here is Milton's description of the Mi-dtd : 
 
 • Sometimes with secure delight ' 
 — the bulls are shut up in the stable on these occasions — 
 
 ' The upland hamlets will invite, 
 When the merry bells ring round, 
 And the jocund rebecks * sound. 
 To many a youth and many a maid. 
 Dancing in the chequered shade. 
 And young and old come forth to play 
 On a sunshine holiday. 
 Till the livelong daylight fail.' 
 
 The following lines, by Juste Olivier, the poet of the 
 Vaudois Alps, are still sung at these summer feasts : 
 
 * ' Rebec : a French word. Originally it had two strings, then 
 three, till exalted into the more perfect violin with four strings. It 
 is thought to have been a Moorish instrument' (Webster). The 
 ' oaken fiute ' is forgotten here (Lycidas). 
 
BEX AND THE TOWER OF DUIN 67 
 
 ' Nous autres montagnards 
 Avons aussi nos fetes, 
 Le ciel bleu sur nos tetes. 
 Forts de nos fiers remparts, 
 Nous autres montagnards. 
 
 ' Alnsi nous de Grypn 
 Dansons 4 Taveyannaz, 
 Comme ceux de Lausanne 
 Dansent it Montbenon, 
 Ainsi nous de Gryon.' 
 
 That Milton met with Swiss Fairy Lore in the conversa- 
 tion of the peasants of Bex, we may conclude by his lines 
 on the lubber fiend or goblin household drudge, in French 
 Ze Servant or Ze Vouivre. It is true that this fellow is not 
 unUke his cousin, the Scotch Brownie, Lob-he-by-the-Fire ;* 
 but he is placed here in the upland hamlets, where the 
 cream-bowl is set by night on the window-sill as guerdon 
 for his pains. 
 
 Some seventy years ago, the old women of Les Ormonts 
 would tell you, if you gained their confidence and under- 
 stood their patois, of the unseen haunters of their chalets. 
 Woe to the niggardly cowherd who should neglect to pro- 
 vide for their needs ; all his cattle would fall into the preci- 
 pice as they went to the watering. These Good People 
 hid and found objects with malicious intent, dogging the 
 footsteps of the mountaineer, with good or evil omen, all 
 his days. 
 
 After the dance and the spicy beverage of the twilight 
 hour, the peasants begin their stories of the invisible — how 
 fairy Mab ate the junkets, t how the wife was pulled and 
 pinched by invisible hands. The husband calls to mind the 
 wonderful night in which the goblin had threshed for him 
 
 * See 'Lob-lie-by-the-Fire,' by Juliana HoratiaEwing. London: 
 George Bell. 
 
 + Juncate, according to Webster : French, jonchee, cream-cheese, 
 made in a wicker basket ; from the Latin /mmcms, a reed. It is used 
 elsewhere by Milton to indicate any kind of delicate food. 
 
68 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 more corn than ten paid labourers would have done, in 
 order to earn his dish of cream ; the wood fire was still 
 flickering, and his form could almost be discerned as, crop- 
 full, he stretched before the hearth ; yet at earliest dawn he 
 had fled. 
 
 ■ And crop-full, out of door he flings, 
 Ere the first cock his matin rings. 
 Thus done the tales, to bed they creep. 
 By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.' 
 
 Here we must quote Doyen Bridel once more : ' I call 
 Brettaie the Valley of the Four Lakes. It is a very romantic 
 country, where the imagination roves at will, and which she 
 peoples with fantastic scenes so soon created by waters, 
 forests, winds, silence, solitude, and the mysterious shades 
 of night. Do not be surprised, my friend ' — Dean Bridel 
 has chosen the form of a letter — ' that superstition, which 
 seems to prefer the mountain to the plain, has also her word 
 to say. Let us listen to her for a few moments, for, if she is 
 not always instructive, she has at least the power to amuse.' 
 (Hence her presence in L' Allegro.) 'Such and such a 
 shepherd affirms that he has seen on the Lac Serrai a 
 dragon covered with white feathers, beating the water with 
 his wings.' 
 
 Fairies are also much in credit in this part of the Alps. 
 They have their ballroom, their rock, their den, their 
 fountain, their resting-place. Once upon a time they were 
 friendly to the young shepherds, whom they conducted to 
 their underground haunts. Some even married them clan- 
 destinely, and informed them of hidden treasures and the 
 virtues of plants. They were not unlike the girls of the 
 place, except that their skin was black and their feet without 
 heels, and their hair was so long and thick as to serve them 
 as a mantle. The brutality of one of these shepherd- 
 husbands, who tried to beat the fairy with his debattoir, 
 caused her to retreat with her sisters. They fled in search 
 
BEX AND THE TOWER OF DUIN 69 
 
 of a country where husbands are more courteous. Since 
 that time no more fairies have been seen, ' metis ai la 
 veillie et au cotter on en parle volontiers ' (but sitting up late 
 and in their familiar meetings the villagers like to talk of 
 them). 
 
 ' Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, 
 With stories told of many a feat, 
 How fairy Mab the junkets eat. 
 She was pinch'd and puU'd, she said ; 
 And he, by friar's lantern led, 
 Tells how the drudging goblin sweat 
 To earn his cream-bowl duly set. 
 When in one night, ere glimpse of morn. 
 His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn 
 That ten day-labourers could not end.' 
 
 A friend wrote two years ago to the author : ' Would it 
 not add further point to your subject to show that Fairy 
 Mab, the friar's lantern and the drudging goblin have all 
 their existence among the peasantry of the valley of the 
 Rhone ?' In this point, as in others, we can only be sug- 
 gestive, not exhaustive. Similar legends are known in 
 Russia and elsewhere. 
 
 Milton went by the Leman to Geneva, where he spent 
 two weeks with the Protestants and had talks with the uncle 
 of his friend Diodati. How much he would have to tell 
 them about the tyranny of the Inquisition, and the struggle 
 for religious liberty which called him back to England ! 
 
 Before starting he had written Lycidas ; on his return he 
 wrote, with still deeper iegtet,£pttapMum Damonis {Diodati. 
 was Damon), deploring his zvh'm in choosing the Alpine 
 passes and glaciers. 
 
 Two other lines of the same poem, though no proof of our 
 theme, are interesting as recalling his recent visit to Galileo. 
 Speaking of himself, he says : 
 
 ■ for then that shepherd was absent, 
 Kept by the Muse's sweet love in the far-famed tower of the 
 Tuscan.' 
 
70 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 A noteworthy fact is that, on his return, he found Lycidas 
 and Comus published. Had the Twin Poems been written 
 before his tour, would they not have been published also ? 
 They did not find a place in Milton's MS. book called 
 Jottings of Subjects. Milton's strong personality has become 
 so absorbing an interest from his time to our own, in 
 politics, dogma and epic poetry, that these minor poems, 
 written just before he threw himself into the struggles for his 
 country's freedom, have been left on one side, graceful 
 enigmas but one quarter deciphered, although honoured by 
 a sort of liturgical cult. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 DOES THE KEY FIT ? 
 
 THE rare volume of Poemata ; or, Poems of John Milton, 
 both Latin and English, composed at Several Times, 
 printed by his True Copies, may be seen in the Library at 
 Guildhall. 
 
 It is quite to the point to quote here the preface of 
 Moseley ' the Stationer ' to the Reader : 'It is not any 
 private respect of gain, gentle Reader, for the slightest 
 pamphlet is nowadayes more vendable then the works of 
 learnedest men ; but it is the love I have to our own 
 Language that hath made me diligent to collect and set forth 
 such peeces both in Prose and Verse, so as may renew the 
 wonted esteem of our English tongue. . . . That incourage- 
 ment I have received from the most ingenious men in their 
 clear and courteous entertainment of Mr. Waller's late 
 choice Peeces hath once more made me adventure into the 
 World, presenting it with these ever-green and not to be 
 blasted laurels. The Author's more peculiar excellence in 
 these studies was too well known to conceal his Papers or 
 to keep me from attempting to solicit them from him.' 
 
 Tliese words show that Milton did not publish himself 
 the volume of Poemata which contains the Twins, and con- 
 sequently the order in which the contents of the book are 
 placed can hardly have any chronological significance. 
 
 [ 71 ] 
 
72 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 His Defence against Smectymnuus, Divorce, and Areo- 
 pagitica, all appeared before 1645.* 
 
 Professor David Masson writes beautifully : ' Word 
 follows word, and clause fits into clause, in Milton's verse, 
 with a precision and a neatness not usual even among the 
 most careful of the Spenserians, and proving the severity of 
 his understanding in respect of what he himself wrote.' 
 This is exactly what we maintain. We saw through a glass 
 darkly, but now face to face ; the glass is changed into a 
 microscope, revealing the fine mosaic, in which everything 
 fits into its proper place. 
 
 ' So far as the scenery in the Allegro and Penseroso is 
 taken from any one place,' continues Dr. Masson, ' the 
 credit may be given to Horton and its neighbourhood ; 
 " the towers and battlements " are almost evidently Windsor 
 Castle '! 
 
 ' That Milton did not adhere to local truth of detail '— 
 he continues — ' is seen from his 
 
 ' ' ' Mountains on whose barren breast 
 The labouring clouds do often rest." ' 
 
 Now, should our love of merry England make us worse 
 chauvins than the French ? 
 
 The impartial reader will probably allow that these words, 
 
 • It may interest those \yho do not know the little volume of the 
 Poemata to see the list of the contents : 
 
 I. Hymn to the Nativity. 2. Paraphrase of Ps. civ., cxxxvi. 
 3. The Passion. 4. On Time. 5. On the Circumcision. 6. At a 
 Solemn Music. 7. The Epitaph of the Marchioness of Winchester. 
 8. Song on May Morning. 9. On Shakespeare (dated 1630). 10. On 
 the University Carrier. 11. Another on the Same. 12. L' Allegro. 
 13. II Penseroso. 14. Sonnets : O Nightingale ; Italian Sonnets ; 
 Sonnet VII. : How soon hath time, the subtle thief of youth ; 
 VIII. Captain or Colonel ; IX. Lady that in the prime, etc. 15. Ar- 
 cades. 16. Lycidas. 17. A Mask : Ludlow Castle. Comus. Joannis 
 Miltoni Londinensis Poemata. Quorum pleraque intra annum 
 aetatis vigesimum conscript. Nunc primum edita 1645. ^^ Leo- 
 noram Romas canentem. Sylvarum Liber. 
 
DOES THE KEY FIT? 
 
 73 
 
 though they do not apply to Horton or Windsor, are most 
 Miltonic in ' local truth of detail ' when taken as simply 
 descriptive of the poet's return journey by the Simplon, when 
 he saw the clouds stretching across the green valley of the 
 Rhone, from the barren breast of the Dent du Midi to the 
 giddy heights of Morcles ; do we not find below them the 
 hill of the Tour de Duin, where old battlements nestle 
 among the tuft-like chestnut-trees of Bex, overlooking the 
 'wide' Rhone? 
 
 ' So in the Penseroso,' says Dr. Masson, ' the sound of the 
 distant roaring of the sea is, as regards any part of Bucking- 
 hamshire, equally ideal.' But, we venture to reply, at the 
 time these poems were written, Milton had at any rate 
 heard the voice of the sea at Genoa and at Nice. 
 
 Professor Raleigh, in his erudite book on Milton, says 
 nothing that would not harmonize perfectly with our ex- 
 planation of L! Allegro and // Penseroso. 
 
 He tells us how the rising tide of political passion sub- 
 merged the Arcadia of the poet's early fancies, so that the 
 very subjects of his later writings are dictated by polemics. 
 
 These poems, then, mark precisely the turning-point 
 between his early lyric poetry and his more sober career of 
 struggle and disappointment. 
 
 Well might he pause before leaving Fairy Land, well 
 might he assemble in one poem all the laughing images to 
 which he meant to say a sad farewell, and turn his steps 
 resolutely towards duty, however melancholy the prospect ! 
 He felt he ought not to abandon, in a crisis of so much 
 danger, his country and his fellow-Christians ; he saw that 
 a way was opening for the establishment of real liberty, and 
 that the foundation was being laid for the deliverance of 
 mankind from the yoke of slavery and superstition ; and he 
 did not hesitate to sacrifice, in the cause of the Liberty of 
 the Press, his very eyesight. 
 
74 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 With such thoughts in his heart, the poet returns to 
 London. 
 
 Here we take up with pleasure Dr. Masson's words, and 
 heartily echo them : ' Do we not see him ? There, during 
 his brief breathing-time of peace and poetic scheming before 
 the great interruption came ? There, through the winter of 
 1639-40, he sits among his books and papers, in his lodgings 
 at St. Bride's Churchyard, his two boy-nephews occasionally 
 with him, the bustle of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill well 
 shut out, or only at night the not unpleasant melancholy of 
 the wintry London gusts mingling with the quiet warmth 
 flrithin. The very thoughts that then made up Milton s 
 musings are known to us, and we can see the books that 
 were on his table. His thoughts were of the Italian scenes 
 and friends so recently left, and yet bright in his memory.'* 
 
 It seems that Dr. Masson's words are becoming truer 
 than ever.t We wish to ask competent critics whether, 
 out of those very thoughts, in those winter nights, Milton 
 may not have been working out these exquisite antiphonal 
 poems, where the names of Galileo, of Leonora, of Maria 
 Celeste, of Genevifeve de Bourbon, of Frescobaldi, of Michael 
 Angelo, are, to our eyes, for ever embossed as in a golden 
 shrine, consecrated to all the sciences and to all the arts. 
 
 Coming from the flat scenery of England to Italy, 
 passing from the broad valley of Domodossola, by the 
 terrors of Gondo, to the laughing valley of the Rhone, the 
 ideas of Melancholy and of Mirth became, in the mind of 
 the poet, as centres around which the images of his travels, 
 and of his former experience in England, too, gradually 
 
 *, We italicize. 
 
 + In the Preface to Dr. Masson's delightful work we read that 
 some errors are contained in it which will never be discovered, and 
 others that may be. We have perhaps found one. Only the 
 deepest respect for truth and for Milton has induced us to point it 
 out, if such it is. 
 
DOES THE KEY FIT ? 75 
 
 clustered. Which is the fairer, the sad or the mirthful 
 mood, it is hard to say. There is a pleasure in melancholy, 
 there is a looking backward on past sorrow which has a real 
 and living charm. The Andante of Beethoven is sweeter 
 than his Allegro, but, oh ! the charm of the quicker move- 
 ment, as it bears you along ! So the poem // Fenseroso 
 must needs begin by decrying the foolish joys of mirth, and 
 L' Allegro must set its bright form in relief by the ' ebon 
 shades and low-browed rocks ' where ' loathed Melancholy ' 
 first sajW twilight. Yet Melancholy has sublime companions 
 — Peace, Quiet, Fast, Leisure, Contemplation — who meet 
 by moonlight under the chequered shade of the oak, listening 
 to the nightingale, just as those others, the merry ones, 
 met under the chequered shade of the ' upland hamlets,' 
 dancing to the sound of the rebeck at the Mi-itL 
 
 ' The moanings of the homeless sea,' as Tennyson would 
 put it, the swinging of the curfew, the winter firelight, images 
 all well in keeping, succeed each other ; the form of Galileo, 
 great and sad ; Tragedy, especially ancient, divine; Orpheus, 
 Chaucer, Spenser, follow suit ; the droppings of rain at 
 night, the solitary wide wood with dreams and weird music; 
 next the cloister, the dim cathedral with its coloured win- 
 dows, story upon story, and the ecstatic organ and anthems. 
 
 But the image of Galileo returns as one of supreme 
 melancholy; to be like him, to sit in quiet retirement, 
 learning out of Nature's book the laws of astronomy and 
 biology, 
 
 ' Till old experience do attain 
 To something like prophetic strain,' 
 
 is the summum bonum of // Fenseroso. 
 
 ' These pleasures. Melancholy, give, 
 And I with thee will choose to live.' 
 
 r Allegro recalls the scenes of Chantilly, Venus. Bacchus 
 and the Graces, with all the pranks of unreined Fancy. 
 
76 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 Smiles and Nods, Sport and Laughter, come dancing along 
 with L' Allegro, who leads Liberty, the mountain nymph, in 
 her right hand — sweet Liberty so beloved by Milton. In 
 sooth, he will be of their party, if not unworthy to live un- 
 reproved in their graceful company. Then follow in the 
 poem the happy English scenes, simple and blithe ; then 
 the ' new pleasures ' of mountainous Switzerland, with its 
 many streams and precipitous torrents, where persons from 
 Virgil's Eclogues meet over vegetable soup to rejoice in the 
 hayfield or the harvest-home. The Mi-tsautein in the 
 ' upland hamlets,' halfway up the giant sides of some snow- 
 capped entity, where the air is cooler, is a merry thought 
 indeed, and the superstitious stories, which some take 
 seriously, are another source of amusement. 
 
 But, thanks to Madame de Longueville, whose sweet and 
 brilliant image is engraved on Milton's young imagination, 
 the crowning scene is not in the country, but in the 
 ' tower'd cities.' 
 
 The throngs of knights and barons bold, heroes of the 
 Thirty Years' War, cluster before his memory, not in 
 armour, but in the peaceful livery of learned Rambouillet, 
 ' with store of ladies,' whose favours are the greatest recom- 
 pense to the warrior as to the tragedian. Shakespeare's 
 comedies are here invoked, and Jonson's wit. Music must 
 again envelop all ; let it be, this time, the vocal music of 
 Leonora 'warbling active,' making mortal hearts accus- 
 tomed to immortal and immortalizing sound : 
 
 ' That Orpheus' self may heave his head 
 From golden slumber on a bed 
 Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear 
 Such strains as would have won the ear 
 Of Pluto, to have quite set free 
 His half-regain'd Eurydice.' 
 
 If this short essay be taken in the same good faith in 
 which it is offered, and examined with the same honesty as 
 
DOES THE KEY FIT? 77 
 
 has been invariably used in working out the conclusions 
 arrived at, our labour will not have been in vain. So much 
 has the beauty of these poems been enhanced by the 
 thought that they allude, in so large a measure, to Milton's 
 travels, and so much have the places where he stayed 
 gained in interest, that the writer feels bound to gladden 
 others by the discovery. 
 
FURTHER CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE 
 
 T A USANNE, 1909. — Since the appearance of my book 
 / ^ in 1903, further details have come to light, enhancing 
 the interest of Milton's foreign tour as memorized in 
 the Twin Poems. 
 
 Note I, to p. 29. — In July 1632, Milton had graduated as 
 M.A at Cambridge, and in 1635 was incorporated as M.A. 
 at Oxford. We have gathered, sauferreur, that he was in 
 Paris from April to September 1638, in Florence till 
 November, in Rome from January 1639 ; that he visited 
 Florence and Galileo either on going or returning, or both. 
 April and May were spent in Venice, and he arrived in Bex 
 at the most beautiful time of year ; thence by the Leman 
 to Geneva, to talk with Jean Diodati, the learned translator 
 of the Bible, uncle of his lately deceased friend. 
 
 Two months before he arrived in Paris the Battle of 
 Rheinfelden was gained by Bernard de Saxe-Weimar, fight- 
 ing by the side of Rohan against the Imperialists, Feb- 
 ruary 28, 1638. Cyrano de Bergerac belonged to this 
 chivalrous age of 
 
 • Hosts of knights and barons bold.' 
 
 Note 2, to p. 46, /. I. — When Milton went to Italy to 
 study the beauties of art and literature, the Italians received 
 him very kindly, and he dined with Cardinal Bembo, who 
 took so active a part in creating an appreciation of beautiful 
 scenery. Milton seems to have been deeply impressed by 
 the statues of Michael Angelo, Leah and Rachel. We 
 cannot suppose he omitted to see the rooms of Raphael in 
 the Vatican, begun in 1508, just after the birth of the 
 neo-platonic Academy of Florence under the patronage of 
 Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492). 
 
 These Stanze contain a picture called the ' Parnassus.' 
 It positively overflows with the joys of the Italian Renais- 
 sance, where the learning of past and ['resent met in one 
 [ 78 ] 
 
FURTHER CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE 79 
 
 splendid blaze of poetic thought. Apollo, under the laurels 
 with his violin, is in the centre of the picture, looking up- 
 ward in ravishment. He is surrounded by the Muses in all 
 sorts of graceful attitudes. Portraits of those whose works 
 had been made accessible by the translations of the Floren- 
 tine and Aldine Academies stretch right and left. Virgil is 
 there with Dante, not far from the blind Mseonides ; Sappho 
 is with Petrarch, Pindar with Horace. The joy of the 
 Quattrocento celebrating the triumph of literary talent in all 
 ages must have touched Milton. It is the sort of joy that 
 inspires V Allegro, where so many laughing images are united 
 in one poem, as in Raphael's picture such varied talents. 
 It is true that the School of Athens unites more writers and 
 more Greeks, but the ' Parnassus ' is the purest expression 
 of Lorenzo's ' joie de vivre.' 
 
 Note 3, to p. 57. — The attention drawn to the Passage at 
 the close of the last century has produced facts in support 
 of our theory. M. Autran, a Genevese engineer, published 
 in 1897 a very complete pamphlet on the Simplon as it was 
 both in the Middle Ages and in the days of Napoleon. 
 NicoWs Cdard is his hero, to whom Napoleon entrusted a 
 portion of his famous highroad, along which cannon was to 
 be contfeyed from Paris to Milan. 
 
 ' L'ancieji cherain muletier,' writes M. Autran,* ' quittait 
 Brigue poiir s'dlever directement k travers les pentes du 
 Brigerberg . . . et s'engageait dans les gorges de la Saltine, 
 sur la rive droite de ce torrent. ... Le pont de la Ganter 
 a dt6 d^truit dans la suite pour entraver le passage des 
 contrebandiers. ... A partir du sommet du col, le 
 chemin reste un peu en dessous de la route actuelle, passe 
 par I'ancien hopital et atteint le village de Siraplon pour 
 descendre directement sur Algaby. 
 
 ' Entre Algaby et Isella, I'ancien chemin n'est plus prati- 
 cable actuelleraent. ... 
 
 ' D'Iselle k Crevola on trouve encore quelques vestiges 
 du tracd . . . Au printemps de I'annde 1800, pendant le 
 passlge de Napoleon par le Saint-Bernard,' he continues, 
 ' un d^tachement avait dte envoy^ par le Simplon, sous les 
 ordres du gdndral Bdthencourt, afin d'assurer le flanc gauche 
 
 * Extrait du ■ Moniteur de I'Industrie et de la Construction,' etc. 
 Geneve, Ch. Eggimann et Cie, ed. 1897. 
 
8o MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 de I'arm^e dans sa tnarche sur I'ltalie.' They were some 
 thousand foot men. 
 
 It was not without difficulty that they accomplished the 
 feat, especially when threading their way among the rocks 
 of Gondo. The road was partly destroyed on one side of 
 the strait. A soldier fastened a rope to one of the heavy 
 beams stuck in the rock, which had served to sustain the 
 vanished pathway. Climbing from crag to crag, he attached 
 it to other beams. Holding on to this rope, the whole de- 
 tachment found footing in the sides of the rock. For the 
 dogs it was not so difficult, as those that were not killed got 
 down to the Doveria and swam. 
 
 The story of the fir bridge runs thus. During the wars 
 with Italy two French horsemen met two Austrian hussars 
 at Crevola. The bridge was covered with branches and 
 earth. As neither party would yield precedence to the 
 other, a combat took place in the middle of the bridge, 
 which broke, and the four horsemen found their level in the 
 icy waters. 
 
 As 1,000 of Napoleon's soldiers passed by the old road 
 in 1800, it may be considered as safe fooling for John 
 Milton and his attendant in 1639. 
 
 ' For most travellers at that period,' writes Mr. Havelock 
 Ellis (1604), ' the Alps still remained what they had been 
 for Livy and Ammianus, a scene of unmitigated horror 
 which no one could approach for the sake of pleasure.' In 
 162 1 Howell, who, as a Welshman, might have been ex- 
 pected to be appreciative of mountains, and who possessed 
 an alert mind, very receptive to new impressions, wrote of 
 the 'high and hideous' Alps, 'uncouth, huge, monstrous 
 excrescences of Nature, unlike our mountains in Wales, 
 wiiich bear always something useful to man and beast, some 
 grass at least.'* Pepys, half a century later, in 1668, ex- 
 perienced something of the same feelings when merely going 
 across Salisbury Plain, where he encounted some great hills, 
 ' even to fright us.' 
 
 It was not before the time of Rousseau that travellers 
 understood something of the romantic beauty attached to 
 wild scenery. 
 
 * It was no Snowdon that inspired Milton, though he had been 
 in Wales. 
 
FURTHER CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE 8i 
 
 As to the tragic and stormy weather on the Pass at 
 certain seasons of the year, we may quote the words of an 
 eyewitness in one of the Lausanne papers {Feuille d'Avii) 
 some three years ago : 
 
 ' On dcrit de Gondo, sur la route du Simplon, que, dans 
 la nuit du 9 au 10 octobre, un orage d'une violence inouie 
 a eclatde dans la region ; dfes les 7 heures jusqu'k minuit, 
 une trombe d'eau n'a cessd de tomber accompagnde de 
 coups de tonnerre rendus plus terrifiants encore par I'dcho 
 des masses rocheuses ; les eclairs multiples, au milieu d'une 
 obscurity sans pareille, ajoutaient encore &. cette scene un 
 effet des plus saisisants. II semblait vraiment que tous les 
 elements de la nature s'dtaient ddchainds pour fondre, d'un 
 commun accord, sur I'dtroite gorge qui sdpare le village du 
 Simplon de la frontibre italienne, prfes de laquelle se trouve 
 Gondo, encaissd entre deux dnormes rochers. 
 
 ' En moins de deux heures, de la moindre fissure des 
 rochers s'dchappaient des chutes d'eau, lesquelles en- 
 trainaient avec elles tout ce qui se trouvait sur leur passage. 
 Pierres, troncs ddracinds, etc., venaient s'abattre sur la route 
 du Simplon.' 
 
 No doubt Paradise Lost was greatly enriched by the 
 -foreign experiences of Milton. In the Book II., about the 
 middle, there are descriptions for which Gondo and Isella 
 have served as models : 
 
 ' Four ways their flying march along the banks 
 Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge 
 Into the burning lake their baneful streams : 
 Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate. . . .' 
 
 And again : 
 
 ' Beyond this flood a frozen continent 
 Lies, dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms 
 Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land 
 Tiaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems 
 Of ancient pile ; or else deep snow and ice, 
 A gulf profound, where armies whole have sunk. . . . 
 Through many a dark and dreary vale 
 • They passed, and many a region dolorous. 
 O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, 
 Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, 
 A universe of death ; which God by curse 
 Created evil, for evil only good ; 
 Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds, 
 
82 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, 
 Abominable, inutterable, and worse 
 Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived ; 
 Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire.' 
 
 We learn from the pamphlet that Nicolas Cdard also was 
 more struck by the terrible character of the Swiss moiintains 
 than by their beauties. He marked these rocks in his map 
 as afreux. Words failed him to describe the sublime 
 horror of the hurricanes and avalanches. If C^ard, 
 Napoleon's ins-pecteur divisionnaire, could not find words, 
 the poet whose statue adorns St. Giles', Cripplegate, surely 
 found them. His relief in escaping with his life from the 
 black depths of Gondo, and the doubtful bridges that 
 spanned them, breaks out in lines which could hardly be 
 the product of inexperienced imagination. The address to 
 Melancholy resumes in a few lines his feelings on escaping 
 safely from such dangers. 
 
 Note 4, lop. 62.— We have realized more fully how much 
 the Rhone* was changed in the nineteenth century, and 
 how Milton's description of the panorama was even more 
 exact than it would now be. 
 
 If we return from Lavey-les-Bains by the left bank, and 
 take the footpath at the river's brink, we see the peculiar 
 grey sand which the torrents of ages have brought dowri— 
 pounded mountain. On this sort of alluvial soil vegetation 
 was scarce, and, instead of producing long hay, the fields 
 only gave a short thin grass fit for sheep. This is the ex- 
 planation of ' fallows grey,' 
 
 ' Where the nibbling flocks do stray.' 
 
 At the present time these have given place to the culture of 
 hay. The dyking of the Rhone has here produced a greater 
 money value, for the milk trade is more profitable than 
 sheep, that can feed anywhere. The ram figures, however, 
 in the arms of Bex, to testify to ' Milton's truth of detail." 
 
 The ' russet lawns ' are also cleariy explained. The road 
 from Bex to Aigle avoided the plain, always in danger of 
 inundations. Before the construction of the present ele- 
 vated road, it passed near to Ollon. At that part of the 
 plain there is a sandy soil, bearing beautiful expanses of red 
 
 * See ill VatrU Vaudoise, Armand Vautier, Lausanne. 
 
FURTHER CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE 83 
 
 heather, about the middle of April at their brightest. We 
 can but pause in admiration of these exact touches, which 
 succeed each other in these long-undeciphered notes of a 
 journey unique of its kind — a journey made before any 
 Rousseau or Wordsworth had thought of opening the eyes 
 of travellers to behold the beauties of Nature. 
 
 We can fancy what a pretty premier plan met the poetic 
 eye when there were these rosy lawns, alternating with the 
 grey fallows, and those trim meadows starred with the Bex 
 ilowers. The view of this plain, so frequently inundated, 
 in the latitude of Northern Italy, contrasted with the breezy 
 downs of Berkshire and Buckingham, whence the early sky- 
 lark spurs its perpendicular ascent. The heather has been 
 chased by modern cultivation to the border of the forest 
 above OUon. 
 
 Note 4, to p. 64. — Milton has written Lycidas in the 
 pastoral form. Among the shepherds of Bex and the rural 
 life of haymakers and reapers his thought reverts to this 
 form. Had he not called the unfaithful clergy ' blind 
 mouths,' that eat the mutton instead of feeding the sheep ? 
 
 In the Epitaphium Damonts, where he speaks of rocks 
 bung in air, Milton is Thyrsis and John Diodati his 
 ' Damon dear.' 
 
 L' Allegro introduces Thyrsis again, and if we may sup- 
 pose he meant himself by this, we may ask, Who is Corydon ? 
 Who could tell him all he seems to know of Swiss life and 
 legends in the mountain and in the plain ? 
 
 Byron observes that in the Vaudois villages there were 
 few cultivated persons among the laity. Voltaire's letters 
 to Allamand, a distinguished pastor and writer, confirm this 
 impression, for Voltaire pities him for the long winters of 
 Bex. He invites Allamand to come to stay with him in 
 Lausanne as a variety from his dismal functions in the 
 ' caverns of Bex,' where Voltaire thinks he is dull for want of 
 company. 
 
 Smoke is seen. curling up from between two aged oaks. 
 Thither Corydon and Thyrsis meet to share the meal pre- 
 pared by the shepherdess Phyllis. But Phyllis is ' in haste.' 
 In Bex the days are short, on account of the immense 
 mountains ; she must leave the gallery or ' bower,' so 
 generally used for dining in ancient Bex, and be off to the 
 
 6—2 
 
84 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 binding of the sheaves or the haymaking with her fellow- 
 labourer, Thestylis. 
 
 ' And then in haste her bower she leaves. 
 With Thestylis to bind the sheaves ; 
 Or, if the earlier season lead, 
 To the tann'd haycock in the mead.' 
 
 The pastor of Bex from 1634 to 1646 was Antoine 
 Rochat, the son of a French refugee. He had been in charge 
 of the parish of Gryon during eighteen long years, before 
 coming down to Bex. The Co/ de la Croix would place him 
 in communication with Ormont-Dessus, the sidelong valley ; 
 and he no doubt officiated at the feast of the Mi-dt6 at 
 Taveyannaz, for the pastor of Gryon generally does so. 
 
 We need no longer wonder how Milton heard of the 
 doings of the Swiss Brownie, nor of the ' upper hamlets,' 
 which, in turn, invite each other to feast and dance. 
 
 Here then is the Corydon ; and Milton is the Thyrsis, 
 who hears him sing what we now read in the poems of 
 Juste Olivier, the Vaudois poet, and in the prose of the 
 Doyen Bridel ! 
 
 Note 5, to p. 67. — The fires of the shepherds in the North 
 of Europe are called, in Vaudois patois, Schaffeiru. They 
 were often accompanied by feasts, in which merveilles or 
 beignefs, made of light pastry and fried, play their part, 
 according to tradition. The ' junkets ' eaten by the fairy 
 Mab may have some connection with these feasts. 
 
 As to the origin of ancient ballads, we have pretty lines 
 by Clement Michaels : 
 
 ' La legende nai've est la fiUe du p^tre, 
 Qui la vit naitre un jour sous le manteau de I'sltre. 
 Elle aime k s'arreter sous le toit des hameaux, 
 Quand I'ouragan g^mit aux portes verrouillees. 
 Pour parler a chacun des vieux temps envoUs. ' 
 
 As to the goblins — 
 
 ' Des lutins, des esprits, des demons affoles ' — 
 
 we borrow information from Ceresole's Ligendes : ' Les 
 services que rendaient ces esprits espiegles et malicieux 
 e'taient tout b^n^voles, mais lis se d^dommageaint en 
 lutinant (teazing) les maitres ou les servantes. Ce qui les 
 
FURTHER CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE 85 
 
 caractdrisait, c'dtait plus que la petitesse, c'^tait I'invisibilit^. 
 Pour le pitre ou I'agriculteur — maitre ou valet — qui ^tait 
 assez heureux pour Stre honord da leurs bonnes grices, les 
 peines de la vie dtaient singuliferement facilities. Grace au 
 Servant, plus d'un labeur penible se faisait pendant le 
 sommeil du protdgd En retour de leurs bons et prdcieux 
 services, que demandaient les servants? Tout d'abord le 
 silence et la discretion sur leurs personnes, un abri sous 
 le toit aim^, une petite portion, ordinairement la premiere, 
 de la soupe du jour ou du lait de la traite du soir. Cette 
 frugale pitance dtait versde dans un baquet special, lequel 
 etait ddpos^ sur la toit du chalet ou sur le soliveau de 
 ratable. Malheur, cent fois malheur, k I'audacieux qui, 
 manquant des. dgards dlementaires de la reconnaissance, 
 refusait cette nourriture I' 
 
 We recognize the same patronage in Milton's household 
 drudge, when he 
 
 ' Tells how the drudging goblin sweat, 
 To earn his cream-bowl duly set, 
 When in one night, ere glimpse of morn. 
 His shadowy flail had threshed the corn 
 That ten day-labourers could not end.' 
 
 In the Canton de Vaud the servant is often thought of as 
 a hairy being — a fox, a cat, or a sable. In the latter half of 
 the nineteenth century a servant, under the form of a fox, 
 rushed down to Aigle from the mountain, passed between 
 the legs of an astonished peasant, and dashed into a chalet, 
 which suddenly became illuminated with flame. 
 
 ' Then lies him down the lubbar fiend, 
 And stretched out all the chimney's length, 
 Basks at the fire his hairy strength. . , ' 
 
 Milton, too, thinks of him as hairy, informed by his Swiss 
 Corydon of the doings of the Good People. 
 
 At Aigle the Town Council, in 1551, walled up the 
 servant, to be no more plagued with his tricks. Ces tschar- 
 navoutes, as they said in patois, agaffaient tout ; in 1820 
 they still continued to set his cream-bowl. 
 
 As to the .' friars' lantern,' Ceresole's JJgendes inform us 
 that the Ormonanches were said to have seen by night these 
 
86 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 Satanic spirits wandering one by one over the pastureland, 
 bearing little lanterns in their hands. 
 
 ' And he by friars' lantern led 
 Tells how the drudging goblin,' etc. 
 
 That is, the goblin was lighted by the friars' lantern. 
 JVbie 7, (op. 68. — The curious verb creep, 
 
 ' Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,' 
 
 would not have pleased Milton's taste had it no meaning. 
 It has none in an English cottage or hut, but in the old Swiss 
 chalets there are often unexpected beams that, even by day, 
 are dangerous ; at night-time one. must indeed creep past 
 such dangers to climb into the high bedstead, which often 
 had a drawer underneath. 
 J\/oU 8, top. 6g. — 
 
 ' She was pinch'd and pulled,' 
 she said. 
 
 This inexplicable line of the Allegro comes in the twilight 
 stories. Milton would not have introduced such odd and 
 insignificant words for no reason. They mean something as 
 a memory of the Vaudois legends of the lutin or servant. 
 
 In the poem Le Servant, by Juste Olivier, we read the 
 same detail, as one of the tricks of the invisible tormentor 
 who tells his own story. It is the household drudge who 
 says : 
 
 ' La servante alors dans son lit 
 S'eveille, m'entend et pHIit ; 
 Puis, se tournant vers sa compagne 
 Qu'^ son tour cette frayeur gagne, 
 " !^coute," dit-elle : " c'est lui !" 
 II est en colore aujourd'hui. 
 Moi, d'une marche alerte et fine, 
 Je m'en approche et les lutine, 
 De leurs fronts /e tire le drap. 
 Doucement le long de leurs bras 
 Je pose un doigt, puis deux, puis, quatre, 
 Au risque de me faire battre. 
 Mais prst ! Je gagne amont, sans mal, 
 A peine amont, je suis aval. 
 Je les chatouille, y« les pince, 
 Et la marque n'en est pas mince.' 
 
FURTHER CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE 87 
 
 Note 9, to p. 72. — Green, in his ' History of the EngHsh 
 People,' like most other writers on Milton, has been simply 
 mesmerized by the 'probable inference' of Professor 
 Masson. On p. 54 he writes on L' Allegro and // Penseroso ; 
 ' There is a want of precision and exactness even in his 
 most picturesque touches. Milton's imagination was not 
 strong enough to identify him with the world which he 
 imagines ; he stands apart from it, and looks at it as from a 
 distance, ordering it and arranging it at his will.' No 
 wonder ! Green considers these poems as ' the first results 
 of his retirement at Horton.' 
 
 ' So far as the scenery is taken from any one place.' It 
 is strange that the charming biographer of Milton could 
 attribute these varied scenes to any one place. . Milton gives 
 us dissolving views from four distinct countries. His name 
 fades not, but grows with distance, and his wonderful face 
 and noble form stand before us in perpetual remembrance 
 at Cripplegate. The comprehension of Milton's individu- 
 ality, which Mr. Horace Montford has demonstrated in the 
 statue, passes all praise. 
 
 ' Je I'ai vu, son mSme air, son mSme habit de lin, 
 Sa demarche, ses yeux, et tons ses traits enfin ; 
 C'est lui-meme. ' 
 
 The whole conception manifests the courage never to 
 submit or yield, and the undaunted spirit of Abdiel. 
 
 ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE TWIN 
 POEMS 
 
 LET us now peer into the deepest recesses of Miltonic 
 thought; let us trace the contrasted lines of his 
 creation to their ultimate conclusion. 
 
 Are there, as Milton seems to say, two worlds, one of 
 fickle shadow, hovering dreams, made up of the sensations : 
 the sweetbriar or the hunters' horn, the russet lawn and 
 the cloud-tipped mountain? Here the unreal Fairy Mab 
 thrones in all her glory, and the Goblin basks in the dying 
 embers, only to flee before the first rays of dawn. 
 
88 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 Is the pageant of earthly glory, 
 
 ' With throngs of knights and barons bold,' 
 a part of true life, or 
 
 ' The prize of wit, or arms ' ? 
 
 These false delights cannot long retain the seeker for 
 ' divine philosophy.' However strongly they appeal to the 
 senses, the world of Spirit, after all, is the true and only 
 existence. 
 
 // Penseroso lands us in the realm of thought. He con- 
 demns material delights — 
 
 ' Vain deluding joys, ' 
 
 as unmitigated folly : 
 
 ' The brood of Folly, without father bred. 
 How little you bested. 
 Or fill the fixed, mind with all your toys ! ' 
 
 They are at best 
 
 ' Hovering dreams. 
 The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.' 
 
 Must we then conclude that Milton, Puritan and 
 abstinent as he was, held Melancholy as superior to Mirth ? 
 
 Not for a moment 
 
 To the senses the reality of Being appears abstruse, 
 remote, and indeed invisible, while material pleasure seems 
 substantial. Our ' weaker view ' sees Truth 
 
 ' O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue,' 
 
 whereas in fact it is only 
 
 ■ Too bright 
 To hit the sense of human sight.* 
 
 ' But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty — the 
 divine beauty, I mean, pure, clear, and unalloyed, not 
 clogged with the pollutions of mortality, and all of the 
 colours and vanities of human life, — thither looking, and 
 holding converse with the true beauty, divine and simple ?' 
 —(Plato,) 
 
 With the blithe scenes of English country life, with the 
 laughing beauty of the Bex panorama, with the feasts and 
 
ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE TWIN POEMS 89 
 
 dancing in the 'upper hamlets,' with the splendours of 
 ' towered cities,' Milton contrasts the austere memories 
 which he had gleaned from Italy. That devoted land — 
 fettered in the dark net of Catholic dogma, struggling under 
 the persecution of the Inquisition — is nobly represented in 
 7/ Penseroso by Galileo and by Maria Celeste, his sweet 
 Antigone. 
 
 Other links with the spiritual also lingered in the Tuscan 
 shades, besides the ' high lonely tower ' which served as an 
 observatory to Galileo. At Arcetri, some 150 years before, 
 the Florentine Academy had placed in strong relief the 
 ancient doctrines of Hermes. The neo-platonism of Ficino 
 and Pazetti taught that our present existence is death and 
 our body our sepulture, a thought re-echoed in Milton's 
 ninth Sonnet, published in 1646, the year after the Twin 
 Poems. 
 
 ' Meekly thou didst resign this earthly load 
 Of death, called life : which us from life doth sever.' 
 
 We have now to ask what Milton knew of Hermes, when 
 he applied that name to Galileo. 
 
 Hermes is a generic name, like Manou and Buddha. 
 Hermes-Thoth was the first initiator of Egypt. The Greeks 
 called him tris-megistos, thrice great, as prophet, priest, and 
 king. The doctrine of Principle (Fire) and Verb (Light) 
 is the centre of Egyptian initiation. ' None of our 
 thoughts,' says Hermes to Asclepios, his disciple, ' can con- 
 ceive of God, no language can define Him. That which 
 is incorporeal, invisible, without form, cannot be perceived 
 by our senses ; that which is eternal cannot be measured 
 by the scanty rule of time. God is therefore ineffable. 
 He can, it is true, communicate to certain elect persons the 
 faculty of rising above natural things to perceive some ray 
 of His supreme perfection. But these elect ones find no 
 words to translate into vulgar language the immaterial 
 visions that entrance them. They can explain to humanity 
 the secondary causes which pass before their eyes as images 
 of universal life; but the First Cause remains veiled, and 
 we shall only understand it in the translation of death.' — 
 (From M. Schur^'s French 'Les Grands Initios,' p. 119, 
 chapitre Ifermh.) 
 
go MILTON ON THE CO?}TINENT 
 
 M. Maspero says that the learned esoteric theology of 
 the Ancient Empire was monotheistic. The unity of God is 
 forcibly affirmed. He is the One Unique who exists by 
 essence; the only One who lives by substance; the only 
 Generator in heaven and earth who was not generated. 
 Father, Mother and Son, he engenders perpetually, and 
 these three persons, far from destroying divine unity, work 
 for its infinite perfection. 
 
 God's attributes are immensity, eternity, independence, 
 all-powerful will, unlimited goodness. Yet the old texts 
 say that He creates His own members, which are gods 
 identical to the Unique God ; each of them forms a new 
 type, from which other inferior types proceed (' Histoire 
 ancienne des Peuples d'Orient '). 
 
 This inconsistent denial of the oneness of God is a blot 
 upon the fair page of this ancient revelation. 
 
 In the opinion of the Florentine Academy, Hermes has 
 -discovered the whole truth. The Renaissance found in his 
 writings the primal source of the initiations of Orpheus, arid 
 of the philosophy of Pythagoras and Plato, all figuring m 
 Jl Fejiseroso. It is related of Justin Martyr, that, hearing 
 of a Pythagorean professor of ethics, he expressed the wish 
 to become one of his disciples. ' Very well,' the teacher 
 replied; 'but have you studied music, astronomy, and 
 geometry, and do you think it possible for you to under- 
 stand aught of that which leads to bliss without having 
 mastered the sciences that disengage the soul from objects 
 of sense, so rendering it a fit habitation for the intel- 
 liffGnccs ? 
 
 The date of the Hermetic thought is no longer considered, 
 as a whole, to be so ancient as the Florentines believed. 
 Milton, before 1645, would naturally share the same opinion 
 as he found expressed in the writings of the Academicians, 
 and would name Hermes as the central figure, under whose 
 name all discoveries were made. He often mentions 
 him. 
 
 The best -known names in the Florentine Academy, 
 whither Greek learning had taken refuge after the fall of 
 Constantinople, are Ficino, Politian, and Pico di Mirandula. 
 
 M. Philippe Monnier, in his Quattrocento, actually gives 
 life to the story of the friendly intercourse of these early 
 
ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE TWIN POEMS 91 
 
 translators of the Greek classics in their hours of leisure. 
 One really seems to have known them after reading his 
 book. Their powers of plodding, of memory, of research, 
 their elasticity and buoyancy of spirit, were immense. Pic 
 and Lorenzo platonize in sonnets imitated from Petrarch ; 
 Tomaso Benci translates the Pimandre of Hermes Trisme- 
 gistos. On the hills of Arcetri, which, later, Galileo and 
 Milton were to tread, these erudites had villas, not far 
 distant from each other, where they would retire for a 
 frugal repast. They would stroll along the rose-embordered 
 paths, where 
 
 ' The Tuscan shades, high over-arched, embower,' 
 
 reciting a sonnet, engaging in a tournament of wit, and at 
 evening returning 
 
 ' from the top of Fesole,' 
 
 wending their way down to the Palace of the Magnificent, 
 where a banquet awaited them, and they might meet a John 
 Collet or a Linacre. 
 
 The Academy had nothing official about it. ' It was 
 a doctrine, an attitude, a religion, and Marsiglio Ficino 
 was the soul of it.' He had been received as a poor 
 student by Lorenzo as tutor to his boys. Michael Angelo, 
 it will be remembered, was admitted to share their lessons, 
 and his poetry proves how deeply he had imbibed the 
 Platonic doctrines. 
 
 Pic de la Mirandole was a prince, fair, agile, lovely to 
 behold. ' Fortune had given him everything, even modesty.' 
 His memory was encyclopsedic. He united profound learn- 
 ing with a widely philosophic mind. To him man was the 
 great miracle. 
 
 'God created man,' he wrote, 'neither celestial nor 
 terrestrial, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that he 
 might be the artisan and modeller of his own form, and, 
 according to his own choice, either degenerate into inferior 
 and brutal beings or be born again among the divine.' 
 Attacked by Pope Innocent VIII., his friend Ficino defends 
 his cause. 
 
 As a proof that Milton studied the learning of the 
 
92 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 Renaissance in Florence, if any were necessary, we might 
 quote how he remained enamoured of the muse : 
 
 ' In Tuscan Fiorenza long detained, 
 But stored at length with all he wished to know. 
 For His flock's sake now hastened to return.' 
 
 (Cowper: Epitaphium Damonis.) 
 It is also a joy to read : 
 
 ■ Oh ! how elate was I, when stretched beside 
 The murmuring course of Arno's breezy tide, 
 And hearing as I lay at ease along, 
 Your swains contending for the prize of song, 
 I also dared attempt, and, as it seems, 
 Not much displeased attempting various themes ' — 
 
 lines which show that he had joined a local academy. 
 To ' outwatch the Bear ' with Galileo, 
 
 ' Quando la notte e nelle valli, et penda 
 Scolorata la luna.' 
 
 (Zanella : Milton e Galileo.) 
 
 in his 'lonely tower,' to communicate with the 'soul of 
 Plato ' on the fate of those who had left the ' fleshy nook ' 
 of earth — such are the pleasures of the thoughtful mind. 
 
 After the 134 years since Milton's death, human progress 
 has advanced at an enormous rate ; the unexplored Switzer- 
 land of his day has become the rendez-vous of East and 
 West j every year new railways deflower some virgin Alp ; 
 while English schoolboys still learn by heart the Twin 
 Poems, framing in one monotonous British setting the 
 varied scenes of Milton's adventures abroad. Yet, after 
 so long, — although fewpersons r&zA Paradise Lost — II Allegro 
 and // Penseroso are as fresh as ever. They have even 
 acquired a new richness of colour as a result of the present 
 intimate knowledge of those years when he was 'young, 
 when the French Academy also was young, and the 
 bourgeoning Renaissance was throwing its light over the 
 world of antiquity. 
 
 At the turning-point of his career we find Milton giving 
 up poetry and sitting down to work out his Liberty of the 
 Press — at whatever cost — we find him choosing 
 
 ' The better part with Mary and with Ruth, ' 
 the straight and narrow way that leads to life. 
 
MILTON ET LE CANTON DE VA UD 93 
 
 Thus, in his mature years, he echoed in practice his own 
 early theories expressed in Comus : 
 
 ' How charming is divine philosophy ! 
 Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose ; 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute, 
 And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, 
 Where no crude surfeit reigns.' 
 
 MILTON ET LE CANTON DE VAUD 
 
 Par M. A. Maurer, Professeur de Litteratures etrangeres 4 
 I'Universite de Lausanne. 
 
 (Extrait de la Gazette de Lausanne du 13 jiiillet 1903.) 
 
 LES paysages de Milton, dont la beautd et la sublimit^ 
 ont la reputation de ne jamais avoir 6i6 d^passdes, ne 
 reproduisent pas uniquement la nature anglaise ; il s'y trouve 
 des touches qui trahissent une nature plus grandiose. Dans 
 U Allegro, par exemple, oil Milton rappelle les attentes, les 
 rSveries, les premiers enchantements de sa jeunesse, apres 
 avoir ^'voqu^ 'I'alouette qui prend son essor et, de son 
 chant, eveiUe la nuit morne jusqu'k ce que se Ifeve 1 aube 
 tachet^e ■ le laboureur qui siffle sur le sillon ; la laitifere qui 
 chante de tout son coeurj le faucheur qui aiguise sa faux 
 dans le vallon sous I'aub^pine fleurie,' — tout k coup, 
 disant adieu k la campagne anglaise, il afeve le regard vers 
 des paysages nouveaux, il le laisse errer k travers de roux 
 paturages et de grises jachferes jusqu'aux nuages harasses 
 qui reposent sur le sein stdrile de la montagne, et il 1 arrete 
 avec ravissement sur le bord des froids ruisseaux, des larges 
 torrents et des prairies piqu^es de fleurs, ou les danses de 
 la mi-etd font accourir aux sons du rebec jeunes et vieux 
 de tous les hameaux du pays d'en haul. 
 
 Ah ! 5a, se demanderont quelques-uns, Milton aurait-U 
 
 oris cela chez nous ? . ■, ■ j 
 
 Certainement, leur rdpond Mme. Byse, qui, depuis de 
 longues anndes, s'occupe de cette question, et qui vient de 
 publier un charmant volume sur 'Milton on the Continent, 
 
94 MILTON ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 6dh6 par la maison Elliot Stock et mis en vente dans la 
 librairie Roussy (Lausanne). 
 
 Le pofete, nous dit Mme. Byse, a pass^ par notre pays. 
 II y a 6t€ au retour de son voyage qui devait le conduire 
 successivement k Paris, k Florence, h Rome, k Naples et k 
 Venise. 
 
 II est arrive chez nous par le Siraplon. Les sauvages 
 horreurs de ce long ddfile, I'dclat souriant de la plaine de 
 Bex encadr^e par la Dent du Midi et la Dent de Morcles, 
 la vieille tour de Duin, dont les cr6neaux percent qa. et \k 
 I'opulente couronne des chataigners qui s'elancent du haut 
 d'une colline bois^e, les souvenirs du moyen age, les joyeuses 
 idylles qui font dpoque dans la vie de notre montagnard, 
 les l^gendes qui amusent ses soirdes d'hiver, les alpages 
 avec leurs troupeaux, les torrents dcumants, les cimes d^- 
 charn^es et les nuages qui viennent les envelopper, — tout 
 cela a p^ndtre dans Time emerveill^e de Milton et a laisse 
 des traces indubitables dans ses ceuvres. EUes sont par- 
 ticulierement nettes dans L' Allegro et le Penseroso, inspires 
 sans doute par les effluves de la campagne anglaise, mais 
 aliment^s aussi par les impressions rapportdes de notre 
 pays. 
 
 Voila ce que nous apprend Mme. Byse au sujet de son 
 pofete prdf^rd ; et, bien que ses interpretations ne soient pas 
 toujours celles des biographes les plus autoris^s de Milton, 
 j'avoue que ses analyses ingifnieuses et ses rapprochements 
 bien documentds m'ont convaincu que les paysages reputes 
 imaginaires de notre pofete sont le plus souvent dessin^s 
 d'aprbs nature, et d'aprfes des modules qui se trouvent chez 
 nous. 
 
 N'y eflt-il que cela, il y aurait dejk un grand m^rite dans 
 I'intdressante publication de Mme. Byse ; mais il y a encore 
 autre chose. Son commentaire accompagne Milton dans 
 tout son voyage k travers la France et I'ltalie ; il evoque les 
 souvenirs que I'un et I'autre pays ont laissds dans I'ceuvre 
 de Milton ; il fait surgir devant nous les hdros de la guerre 
 de Trente ans qui se pressent dans les salons de la marquise 
 de Rambouillet, la fibre Genevibve de Bourbon qui, dans 
 les troubles de la Fronde, se signalera sous le nom de la 
 duchesse de LongueviUe, le vieux Galilee aveugle et 
 abandonnd qui lui apparalt comme I'incarnation meme de 
 
MILTON ET LE CANTON DE VA UD 95 
 
 la mdlancolie. Bref, c'est un guide suggestif qu'il est utile 
 de consulter, quand on veut lire las ceuvres de Milton et en 
 apprecier toute la saveur. 
 
 Je croyais que Mme. Byse dtait sculpteur ; elle se r6vh\e 
 dans son livre comme litterateur de godt et critique 
 ingenieux. 
 
 ERRATA 
 
 Page vii, for ' Beecham's,' read • Beeching's.' 
 Page xii, for ' writer sand,' read ' writers and.' 
 Pa^e 15, for ' Beecham's,' read ' Beeching's.' 
 Page 27, for ' metaphysical,' read ' mythological. ' 
 Page 29, for ' Oxford,' read ' Cambridge.' 
 Page 49, for ' October 24, 1676,' read ' November 26, 1695. ' 
 View of Milton's contemporaries, for ' Malesherbes,' read 
 ' Malherbe." 
 
 Ei/iDt stock, 62, raier>%oster Rciv, London, E.C. 
 
I—) 
 
 o 
 < 
 
 l-H 
 PL, 
 
 C/2 
 
 w 
 
 t— 1 
 
 <1 
 
 O 
 
 w 
 
 H 
 
 o 
 u 
 
 en 
 
 O 
 
 H 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 •-'> 
 
 
 tn '-' 
 
 
 mX 
 
 
 hJ 
 
 
 « S 
 
 
 5 » 
 
 
 W o 
 
 
 UJ 
 
 
 ■a 
 
 hoco 
 
 - n 
 
 o 
 
Q 
 
 I— ( 
 
 o 
 
 w 
 
 H 
 
 o 
 u 
 
 o 
 
 H 
 
 O 
 
 ><! 
 
 o 
 
 is 
 
 03 ■ 
 
 . a 
 o be 
 
 5 
 
 0) o 
 
 ■S-g 
 So 
 
 ;5t4 
 il 
 
 MM 
 
 a> 
 
 o 
 
 "HVAi. .SHVHA AXHIHX 
 
 D 
 
 u 
 
 m El 
 J) m 
 
 g 
 
 <U en 
 
 
 V; O 
 
 o 2 «^3 h 
 r3:2 a 'iS MS 
 
 «i a C>^ om c 
 .q o 3 ta rt- <o 
 
 0^2 § o i3 S S 
 
 d 5ja o rt u ta ^ 
 
 — .. ' 
 
 s 
 ja 
 a> 
 
 ■o 
 
 <J 
 
 CO 
 
 3 
 
 en 
 
 3 
 
 ■a 
 a 
 .2 
 
 a 
 
 ■a 
 
 C8 
 
 PI 
 
 r 
 
 §s 
 
 s 
 
 Oh3 
 
 M o 
 
 O 
 
 pa 
 
 i-i 
 Hi 
 
 
 "Sis "■ 
 
 O en 4t! 
 © ?« 
 
 Phoco 
 
 (D 
 
 
 § 
 
 c3 m bs 
 
 § 
 
\