some constant occupations, I have put it off
nearly another three months. I would not have you understand from
this my tardiness in replying that my grateful sense of your
kindness to me has cooled, but rather that the remembrance has sunk
deeper from my longer and more frequent daily thinking of my duty
to you in return. Late performance of duty has at least this excuse
for itself, that there is a clearer confession of obligation to do
a thing when it is done so long after than if it had been done
immediately.

You are not wrong, in the first place, in the opinion of me
expressed in the beginning of your letter--to wit, that I am not
likely to be surprised at being addressed by a foreigner; nor could
you, indeed, have a more correct impression of me than precisely by
thinking that I regard no good man in the character of a foreigner
or a stranger. That you are such I am readily persuaded by your
being the son of a most learned and most saintly father, also by
your being well esteemed by good men, and also finally by the fact
that you hate the bad. With which kind of cattle as I too happen to
have a warfare, Calandrini has but acted with his usual courtesy,
and in accordance with my own sentiment, in signifying to you that
it would be very gratifying to me if you lent me your help against
a common adversary. This you have most obligingly done in this very
letter, part of which, with the author's name not mentioned, I have
not hesitated, trusting in your regard for me, to insert by way of
evidence in my forthcoming _Defensio_ [in reply to More's
_Fides Publica_]. This book, as soon as it is published, I
will direct to be sent to you, if there is any one to whose care I
may rightly entrust it. Any letters you may intend for me,
meanwhile, you will not, I think, be unsafe if you send under cover
to Turretin of Geneva, now staying in London, whose brother in
Geneva you know; through whom as this of mine will reach you most
conveniently, so will yours reach me. For the rest I would assure
you that you have won a high place in my esteem, and that I
particularly wish to be loved by you yet more.

Westminster: March 24, 1654-5.[1]

[Footnote 1: Epist. Fam. 17.]

In writing this letter Milton must have had brought back to his
recollection his visit to Geneva fifteen years before (June 1639) on
his way home from Italy. The venerable Diodati, the uncle of his