“Seeing Foreign Parts” 1638–1639By her own self the tower fell onto the plain.
Whose song offers not only to England her noblest speech
But also to Spain, France, Tuscany, and Greece and Rome.The most profound secrets
Which Nature conceals in heaven or in earth,
Even from superhuman geniuses
Too often covetously has hidden them and locked them up,
You have clearly understood, and arrived at the end
At the great frontier of moral virtue.
...
Give me your own sweet lyre,
If you wish that I sing of your own sweet song
That exalts you to the skies
Making you a celestial man of the highest honor.
Thames will state that this is conceded:
Through thee as her swan she equals Parnassus.^75Over the months, and in various places, Milton’s responses to Italy altered as he
took on various roles: at times the enthusiastic visitor, at times the polite guest, at
other times the polemicist framing an argument. Like many northern Europeans he
delighted in the climate, describing to Salzilli his escape from the frozen North to
sunny Italy, a region which nurtures wit and talent:
[I am] that London-bred Milton who recently left his nest and his own quarter of the
sky – where the worst of the winds in its headlong flight, with its lungs uncontrollably
raging, rolls its panting gusts beneath the heavens – and came to the genial soil of Italy
to see its cities, which their proud fame has made familiar, and its men and its talented
and cultured youth.^76To Manso he portrayed himself in similar terms, as an “alien muse... poorly
nourished under the frozen Bear,” whose countrymen “in the long nights endure
the wintry Boötes” (Mansus, ll. 27–37). The balmy Italian days evidently brought
to the fore Milton’s lifelong belief that England’s cold northern climate might pose
a serious obstacle to poetic creation. Often he declared his great love for Italy. To
Buonmattei he pronounced himself “such a lover of your Nation that no other, I
think, is a greater” (CPW I, 330). In the Defensio Secunda he insists that he went to
Italy, not to escape an evil reputation at home but to find a long-admired cultural
home: “I knew beforehand that Italy was not, as you think, a refuge or asylum for
criminals, but rather the lodging place of humanitas and of all the arts of civilization,
and so I found it” (CPW IV.1, 609). Chiefly he loved Florence, “that city, which I
have always admired above all others because of the elegance, not just of its tongue,
but also of its wit” (CPW IV.1, 615), and it is usually Florence he thinks of when he
praises Italy for the arts of civilization.