“Seeing Foreign Parts” 1638–1639That separation [from Florence], I may not conceal from you, was also very painful
for me; and it fixed those stings in my heart which even now rankle whenever I think
that, reluctant and actually torn away, I left so many companions and at the same time
such good friends, and such congenial ones in a single city – a city distant indeed but
to me most dear.... I could think of nothing pleasanter than to recall my dearest
memory of you all, of you, Dati, especially. (CPW II, 763)He promises to send Dati the Latin portion of his 1645 Poems, bespeaking for
“those words spoken rather sharply on some pages against the Roman Pope” the
same tolerance his friends accorded him in Florence when he expressed his reli-
gious views among them:
Now I beg you to obtain from my other friends (for of you I am certain) that same
indulgence to freedom of speech which, as you know, you have been used to granting
in the past with singular kindness – I do not mean to your Dante and Petrarch in this
case but to me; I crave it now whenever mention be made of your religion according
to our custom. (CPW II, 764)Fond as he was of them, keeping up with friends through correspondence was not
one of Milton’s strong points. He offers Dati a strained excuse for failing to write
sooner – that if he had written first he would have had to write to all his Florentine
friends – an excuse somewhat reminiscent of his explanation to Diodati in 1637 for
a similar procrastination.^105 But he sends warm greetings to them all: “Give my best
greeting to Coltellini, Francini, Frescobaldi, Malatesta, Chimentelli the younger,
and any other of our group whom you know to be especially fond of me – in short
to the whole Gaddian Academy” (CPW II, 765).^106
The most important and enduring effect of Milton’s “Grand Tour” may well
have been his associations in the Florentine academies. In The Reason of Church-
governement (1642) he describes the recognition his poetry received in the acad-
emies – both the collegiate “trifles” he repeated from memory and the new poems
he composed in less than ideal conditions – as a formative experience reconfirming
his vocation as a poet:
In the privat Academies of Italy, whither I was favor’d to resort, perceiving that some
trifles which I had in memory, compos’d at under twenty or thereabout (for the
manner is that every one must give some proof of his wit and reading there) met with
acceptance above what was lookt for, and other things which I had shifted in scarsity
of books and conveniences to patch up amongst them, were receiv’d with written
Encomiums, which the Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this side the Alps,
I began thus farre to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home, and
not lesse to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and
intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joyn’d with the strong pro-
pensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they
should not willingly let it die. (CPW I, 809–10)