“Seeing Foreign Parts” 1638–1639The reference to England as the land of the Hyperboreans associates it with the
mythic northern land in Pindar’s Olympian 3 and Pythian 10, where the arts thrive
and where Apollo and the Muses are especially honored. That allusion solves the
problem of the frozen North by making Britain a land of poets, and making Milton
a British poet–messenger of Apollo.^111 Milton also names as his Muse Clio, the
Muse of history and so of historical epic (l. 24). The praises of his academy friends
comparing him to Homer, Virgil, and Tasso indicate that he had been talking about
plans for a historical epic. But the direct link with Tasso through his friend and
patron Manso prompts Milton’s clearest statement yet about the subject of his pro-
jected epic – King Arthur and the Round Table, the early British kings battling the
Saxons, and the legends surrounding Arthur’s miraculous preservation in the other
world and promised return to rule over Britain:
O, if my lot might but bestow such a friend upon me, a friend who understands how
to honor the devotees of Phoebus – if ever I shall summon back our native kings into
our songs, and Arthur, waging his wars beneath the earth, or if ever I shall proclaim
the magnanimous heroes of the table which their mutual fidelity made invincible, and
(if only the spirit be with me) shall shatter the Saxon phalanxes under the British
Mars!^112With deft and gracious compliments, Milton praises Manso for his hospitality to
Tasso and Marino, but underscores the greater benefit the patron has gained from
these relationships. Echoing Virgil’s famous line from the Georgics, “Fortunate
senex,” Milton derives Manso’s claim to immortality from his association with these
poets, who will preserve his fame much more than he will theirs by monuments or
biographies:
Fortunate old man. For wherever the glory and the mighty name of Torquato shall be
celebrated through all the world, and wherever the glorious reputation of the immor-
tal Marino shall spread, your name and fame also shall constantly be in men’s mouths,
and with flight no less swift than theirs you shall mount the way of immortality.^113Only one dear to the gods could befriend a great poet, and the evidence of their
favor is Manso’s continued vigor: “Therefore your old age is green with lingering
bloom and... your spirit strong and the power of your mind at its height” (ll. 74–
7). By implication, those mental faculties are still able to discern merit in his new
poet–guest, who (by further implication) honors Manso more by accepting his
hospitality than Manso honors him by offering it. This very poem will add to
Manso’s honors: “If my Muse has breath sufficient, you too shall sit among the
victorious ivy and laurels” (5–6).
Manso’s place of honor is with the patrons: Gallus, the friend of Ovid and Virgil,
and Maecenas, the patron of Horace and Propertius. Milton emphasizes the hierar-
chy of honors by creating and applying to the poet–patron relationship a myth of