“Seeing Foreign Parts” 1638–1639Apollo visiting the cave of Chiron, the centaur who was tutor to Achilles and
Aesculapius. In Milton’s myth Apollo, exiled from Olympus for a year, visits Chiron
and sings in his cave, producing effects like those caused by that other figure for the
poet, Orpheus: trees are uprooted, rivers overflow, wild animals are gentled. Tasso,
Marino, and Milton are the (divine) guests, like Apollo, and Manso the humble
host, like Chiron.^114 The poet-figures are always primary: Apollo, Virgil, Horace,
Tasso, Marino, Milton. In the next rank are the patrons who help them: Chiron,
Gallus, Maecenas, Manso.
Milton fantasizes about finding a worthy patron like Manso whose aid would
enable him to write an English epic in Tasso’s vein and would thereby resolve the
still-open question of career and livelihood. As Manso cared for Tasso during his
last years and provided a tomb and monument for Marino, Milton imagines that on
his deathbed he might be honored and cared for by a patron–friend who would
erect a fitting monument for him and spread his fame. In Lycidas Milton imagined
himself as a young and unfulfilled poet threatened by early death; here he evokes a
happier portrait of himself full of years and achievements, and receiving due honors
on earth as well as in heaven. But, in a final reversal, the imagined patron does not
proclaim the poet Milton’s fame. Since Manso’s epigram with its angle/angel pun
had classed Protestant Milton with barbarians in need of conversion and had ig-
nored his poetry, Milton has to assert his own claim to the heavenly rewards due to
faith and righteousness, and pronounce his own praises in a classical apotheosis on
Olympus:
Then, if there be such a thing as faith and assured rewards of the righteous, I myself,
far remote in the ethereal homes of the gods who dwell in heaven, whither labor and
a pure mind and ardent virtue lead, shall look down upon these events – as much as
the fates permit – from some part of that mysterious world, and with a serene spirit
and a face suffused with smiles and rosy light, I shall congratulate myself [plaudam
mihi] on ethereal Olympus.^115Milton is serious in this riposte to Manso and in pressing the claims of poets over
patrons, but he diffuses any offense by wit and playfulness. The final line echoes a
Horatian satire in which a miser applauds himself on his riches, an allusion that
tempers with ironic self-mockery what might otherwise seem pompous self-right-
eousness.^116 Nonetheless, this eliding of the patron intimates that the patronage
relationship will not do for an independent-minded and free-speaking Protestant
poet, even as the apostrophe to Manso as an old man, however fortunate and vig-
orous, intimates that such patronage belongs to another era. The poem achieves its
multiple purposes with a delicately balanced mix of tones that allow for a poet’s
boldly revisionary claims without violating the decorum of panegyric and gracious
civility.
Epitaphium Damonis (219 lines) is Milton’s most impressive achievement as a