of dame Memory and her siren daughters; but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge; and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases," &c.

We must surely be struck with that noble and sublime spirit, which pervades these passages, and admire that conscious force, with that devout diffidence, which they exhibit. It may entertain us also to discover from them the very different sensations with which Milton, and some of our more modern poets seem to have contemplated the arduous labour of constructing an epic poem. But all the parties on this occasion may be right, with reference to their own particular object. After intimating the toils by sea and land, by opposition from earth and heaven, which his hero was to sustain, and finally, by the assistance of the fates and of Jupiter, to overcome, the poet closes the awful recital, with this majestic line

Tantæ molis erat Romanam condere gentem.

So great a toil it was to found imperial Rome.

This was spoken of a mighty empire, which was to extend over the world, and to endure

Reas. of C. Govern. vol. i. 123.

for a succession of ages: but an Arab camp may be planted in one day, and its vestiges may be effaced by the wind of the desert in another.

Having completed his intended residence at Naples, he addressed himself to the execution of the remaining part of his plan of travel, which extended to Sicily and Greece; those regions on which the classic imagination loves to dwell, which it invests with unfading green, and brightens with perpetual sunshine. The fancy of Milton was, no doubt, strongly excited by the 'approach of that time, when he was to tread the vales of Enna and of Tempe; the plains, on which Gelon and Miltiades had triumphed for the liberty of Greece over Carthage and Persia; the favoured spot, where Theocrites had charmed the car with his Doric melodies, and Euripides had drawn tears with his pathetic scene. But the dream of fancy was soon to be interrupted, and duty required a privation, to which our traveller did not hesitate to submit. As he was preparing for his passage to Sicily, he received letters from England, acquainting him with the distracted state of his country, and with the near prospect, which affrighted it, of a civil war. His own account on this occasion is concise and

impressive." In Siciliam quoque et Græciam trajicere volentem, me tristis ex Angliâ belli civilis nuntius revocavit: turpe enim existimabam, dum mei cives de libertate demicarent, ne animi causâ, otiosè peregrinari.” "As I was desirous to pass into Sicily and Greece, the melancholy intelligence from England of the civil war recalled me: for I esteemed it dishonourable for me to be lingering abroad, even for the improvement of my mind, when my fellow citizens were contending for their liberty at home."

h

He resolved, however, to revisit Rome; and, though he was cautioned by some friendly merchants to avoid that city where the English Jesuits were meditating plans against his safety, he persevered in his resolution, and returned to the papal capital. Here, according to his previous determination, neither timidly concealing nor ostentatiously flaunting his religious opinions, he continued in fearless openness for nearly two

Def. sec. P.W. vol. v. 231.

When Milton speaks of the civil war as already begun, and I mention it as existing only in prospect at the same period, we do not give incompatible accounts: he considers the civil war as begun by the resistance of the Scots, and I as commencing, somewhat later, at the declaration of the English parliament for the raising of an army, or at the immediately subsequent event of the siege of Hull. The Scots rebellion began in 1637, the civil war of England in 1642.

months; and whenever his religion was at tacked, he scrupled not to defend it with spirit, even within the precincts of the sacerdotal palace. Whatever dangers might threaten him in this strong hold of priestly domination, (and I can see no reason for supposing that there were none,) they were averted by a good Providence, and he was allowed to repair again in safety to Florence.

His second visit to this city, which the

kindness of his friends made a species of home to him, was of equal duration with his first. He stole, indeed, a few days from it to pass them at Lucca, the native place of the Deodati, the family of his respected and beloved schoolfellow. When he departed from Florence, he crossed the Apennines, and travelled, through Bologna and Ferrara, to Venice. He spent a month in viewing

At the name of Venice every thoughtful and generous bosom must heave a sigh of pain and indignation, when the spectacle recurs of her present situation, and of its detestable cause. When we see a city, after ages of independence and renown, consigned, by unfeeling policy, to the dead oppression of a foreign and rigid yoke, can we do otherwise than curse the cruelty of ambition?-than execrate all the parties, who were involved in the guilt of the transaction, the power that permitted, the robber who seized, and the thief who accepted. the plunder-France, Bonaparte, and the Emperor? The fate of Switzerland is equally to be lamented, and execrated: but in this age, more than in any former one, the happiness of man seems to be made the sport and victim of individual ambition,

the curiosities of this celebrated city, which had once grasped the sceptre of Constantine, and where national prosperity and individual happiness had flourished, for some centuries, under the controll of a rigid, but a regulated and self-balanced aristocracy. Having provided for the safety of the books, which he had collected in Italy, by procuring a place for them in a vessel bound for England, he pursued his returning course, through Verona and Milan, over the Pennine Alps and by the lake Lemanus, to Geneva.

The name of this city, associated in his mind at a later period with the calumnies of his profligate adversary, Morus, induces him, in his own relation of his travels, solemnly to invoke God as the witness of his truth, when he declares, that, residing in a country, where much license was admitted, he had preserved himself pure from stain and reproach; perpetually assured that, if offences could escape the observation of man, they must yet lie exposed under the eye of God. His visit, indeed, to Italy was induced

* Quæ urbs, cum in mentem mihi hinc veniat Mori calumniatoris, facit ut Deum hic rursus testem invocem, me his omnibus in locis, ubi tam multa licent, ab omni flagitio ac probro integrum atq; intactum vixisse, illud perpetuò cogitantem, si hominum latere oculos possem, Dei certe non posse.

Def. Secun. P.W. vol. v. 232.