“Seeing Foreign Parts” 1638–1639He returned home through France “by the same route as before,” that is by
Lyons, along the Loire, Orléans, Paris, Calais, and the Channel.^98 He evidently
arrived home in late July or early August, 1639.^99 Amidst all the challenges of
setting up a new household and taking up life in London, Milton had one piece of
unfinished business intimately connected with his Italian voyage: a poetic tribute
to Charles Diodati. His Latin funeral poem, Epitaphium Damonis (discussed on
pages 114–19), was evidently written late in 1639 or early in 1640. It is his most
autobiographical poem, filled with anguish for the loss of his oldest, and perhaps
only, truly intimate friend. The headnote states that “from childhood [they] had
pursued the same interests and were most affectionate friends,” and describes Diodati
as “a youth who, while he lived, was outstanding for genius, learning, and every
other splendid virtue.”^100 The poem itself says little about Diodati, save for a few
lines underscoring the irony that this physician could not be saved by his own
medicines and arts (ll. 150–4). In Lycidas and Mansus Milton was led by the con-
templation of other deaths to imagine his own death under various circumstances;
but here he confronts the immense void left in the survivor’s life when his best-
loved companion dies. The pain, grief, and sense of loss erupt from passionate
love, transposed into the Neoplatonic register of the union of souls. That is under-
scored in the poem’s conclusion, in which Damon/Diodati, as a chaste youth and
unmarried, is seen to enjoy the rewards designed for virgins in the all-encompass-
ing ecstasies of heaven:
Because the blush of modesty and a youth without stain were your choice, and be-
cause you never tasted the delight of the marriage bed, see – virginal honors are
reserved for you! Your radiant head circled with a gleaming crown, the joyful, shady
branches of leafy palm in your hands, you will take part for ever in the immortal
marriage-rite, where singing is heard and the lyre rages in the midst of the ecstatic
dances, and where the festal orgies rave in Bacchic frenzy under the thyrsus of Zion.
(ll. 212–19)^101In this passage, classical evocations of bliss are fused with several allusions to the
heavenly marriage feast in Revelation, but the fact that only one of them pertains
specifically to virgins tells against the view that Milton idealizes virginity as the most
perfect state.^102 Virginity is singled out for praise here because it is presumably
Diodati’s state (and, as yet, Milton’s). The poem was printed anonymously and
privately, probably in 1640.^103
Milton no doubt sent copies to Diodati’s family and to friends in Italy, especially
Dati and Francini who are affectionately mentioned by name in the poem, in rec-
ognition of and response to the encomia they presented to him in Florence. Appar-
ently, however, Milton had no further contact with his academy friends until 1647,
when Dati wrote him a (now lost) letter. Milton’s answer, dated April 20, 1647,^104
refers to those lines in the Epitaphium as proof of his love for Dati, and describes his
acute sense of loss in being separated from his Florentine friends: