A fate more blest the wretched bard had found,
Had your bright beauties shot the burning wound.
Oh! had he heard the wonders of your song,,
As leads your voice its liquid maze along :
Or seen you, in your mother's right, command
The lyre, while rapture wakes beneath your hand;
By Pentheus' wildness though his brain were toss'd;
Or his worn sense in sullen slumber lost,

His soul had check'd her wand'rings at the strain;
The soothing charm had lull'd his stormy brain:
Or breathing, with creative power endued,
In his dead bosom sense and joy renew'd.

This lady is supposed to have been celebrated by Milton in her own language, and to have been the object of his love in his Italian sonnets. Of these effusions of our poet's gallantry I will not hazard an opinion. The purity of their language has been commended by Italian critics; and for any affected and forced thoughts, which may be distinguishable in them, the character of the Italian taste, at that time, may be admitted as an apology. One of these short pieces, as exhibiting a picture of some of the principal features of the poet's own mind, may deserve to be transcribed. We shall soon see this boasted fortitude demanded for severe trials, and we shall find that it did not shrink.

• Adriana of Mantua, equally celebrated with her daughter for her voice and her lyre.

1

VI.

Giovane piano, e simplicette amante

Poi che fuggir me stesso in dubbio sono,
Madonna a voi del mio cuor l'humil dono
Faro divoto; io certo a prove tante,
L'hebbi, fedele, intrepido, costante,

De pensieri leggïadro, accorto, e buono;
Quando rugge il gran mondo,e scocca il tuono,
S'arma di se, e d'intero diamante:

Tanto del forse, e d'invidia securo,

Di timori, e speranza, al popol use,
Quanto d'ingegno, e d'alto valor vago,
E di cetra sonora, e delle muse:
Sol troverete in tal parte men duro,
Ove amor mise l'insanabil ago.

Lady, to you a youth unknown to art,

(Who fondly from himself in thought would fly,)
Devotes the faith, truth, spirit, constancy,

And firm yet feeling temper of his heart;

Proved strong by trials for life's arduous part:

When shakes the world, and thunders roll on high,

All adamant, it dares the storm defy,

Erect, unconscious of the guilty start:

Not more above fear, envy, low desire,

And all the tyrants of the vulgar breast,

Than prone to hail the heaven-resounding lyre, High worth, and Genius of the Muse possest: Unshaken and entire,-and only found

Not proof against the shaft when love directs the wound.

An eye, like Milton's, created for the enjoyment of beauty in all her shapes, and an imagination, which was ever solicitously vagrant for gratification, even in the regions of Arabian fiction and of Gothic romance,

could not be insensible to those opportunities of luxurious indulgence, which the capital of Italy afforded. Milton, as we cannot reasonably doubt, studied the forms of ideal nature, not only as they existed in the marbles of ancient Greece, but also as they breathed and glowed in the tints of modern Italy. We may be certain that he contemplated with delight the animated walls of the Vatican, and that his genius kindled and expanded from the sublime frescoes of Michael Angelo, and the milder and more characteristic canvas of Raphael. Imagination will converse with imagination through the medium of diversified art; and, whether words or forms be the exciters or conductors, the idea will flash from mind to mind, and

P To speak with philosophical precision, forms are the only means by which the ideas of one mind can be imparted to another: words merely stimulate the mind, to which they are addressed, to form ideas or phantasms of its own. When we see the Hercules or the Transfiguration, we behold the very identical mental representation, in its immediate transcript, from which Glycon or Raphael worked his marble or his colours: but when we read the description of Paradise or the vale of Tempe, our minds are only urged, within certain limits and under some particular modifications, to form a creation of their own. If fifty artists, without any intercourse with each other, were to draw these scenes, not one of the draughts would be precisely like another, though they might all be justified by the words of the poet or the historian.

will increase the mass of etherial fire, where it is received. The mind of Milton unquestionably maintained an intercourse with the minds of the great masters of the pencil, and probably derived from them what was afterwards matured into the conceptions of his Satan and his Raphael, his Adam and his Eve. But if he became indebted, on this occasion, to the genius of painting, his Muse has most amply discharged the obligation to her "dumb sister," by giving to Fuseli much more than she borrowed from his lineal progenitor in the pedigree of genius, Michael Angelo; and inducing the ideas of that creation, displayed in the Milton Gallery, which, constituting the pride of the present times, will be the admiration and wonder of the succeeding

ones.

From Rome our traveller continued his route to Naples; and, falling into company with a certain pilgrim, or hermit, as he tells us, upon the road, was by him, from whom such a service could be the least expected, introduced to the celebrated Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa. This accomplished nobleman, who had formerly distinguished himself in the armies of Spain, was now, at an advanced age, established in his native city; and, though possessed of great

wealth, high rank and eminent character, deriving his principal renown from the friendship of the illustrious Tasso; of whom he had been the cherisher when living, and the biographer when dead. He now opened his arms to Milton, and received, with kindness, a poet yet superior to his immortal friend. The attentions, which he paid to the English traveller were of the most flattering nature, not only conducting him through the viceroy's palace, and to a sight of all that was worthy to be shown in the city, but honouring him also with some familiar and friendly visits. The imprudent freedom, with which our zealous protestant, unmindful of his friend Wotton's counsel, had discovered his sentiments on the subject of religion, was the only circumstance, which deprived him of a still more free and intimate communication with this elegant Mæcenas of modern Italy. This was intimated to Milton, on his departure from Naples, by Manso himself, who with all his kindnesses on this occasion had not satisfied the liberality of his own mind, and who was desirous of explaining the cause of the imaginary deficiency. He had, indeed, pointed to this offence of religion in a latin distich, with which he had presented his new guest, and which is cer