assed on before winter,
that he made the acquaintance which, except that of Galileo, is the
most interesting his Italian tour brought him. It was that of the
Neopolitan patrician, Giovanni Manso, who had been intimate with Tasso
and Marini and had been celebrated by Tasso in the _Gerusalemme
Conquistata_. His courtesy to a foreigner was soon to procure him a
still greater honour; for before leaving Naples Milton addressed to him
a Latin poem thanking him for his kindness, speaking openly of his own
poetic ambitions and praying that, if he lives to write the great
Arthurian Epic which he was then planning, he may find such a friend as
Tasso found to welcome his poem, comfort his old age and cherish his
fame. The only difficulty which separated Manso and Milton was that of
religion, where Milton's unguarded frankness embarrassed his host. So,
when he abandoned his intended tour in Greece because he thought it
"base" to be "travelling abroad at case for intellectual culture while
his fellow-countrymen were fighting at home for liberty," he was warned
that the Jesuits at Rome had their eyes on him. But he stayed there
two {46} months nevertheless, fearlessly keeping his resolution, not
indeed to introduce or invite religious controversy but, if questioned,
then, as he says, "whatsoever I should suffer to dissemble nothing."
By February he was again in Florence; and after visits to Bologna,
Ferrara and Venice, whence he characteristically shipped "a chest or
two of choice music books" for England, he crossed the Alps, spent a
week or two at Geneva and in France, and was at home by August 1639.

The elaborate education was now formally complete; and what ordinary
men call practical life was at last to begin for Milton. Now for the
first time he had an abode of his own, a lodging in St. Bride's, Fleet
Street, and soon afterwards a house in Aldersgate Street where he
settled with a young nephew whom he undertook to educate. But the real
work which he had in view was that of a poet, not of a schoolmaster.
The high expectations which he knew he had excited among Italian men of
letters had reinforced those of his English friends; and he was now
more than ever inclined to follow that "inward prompting which now grew
daily upon me that by labour and intent study (which I take to be my
portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I
might {47} perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes as they
shou