His mind, just then
open on all sides to impressions from books, was peculiarly attracted
by Italian poetry. The language grew to be loved for its own sake.
Saturated as he was with Dante and Petrarch, Tasso and Ariosto, the
desire arose to let the ear drink in the music of Tuscan speech.
The "unhappy gift of beauty," which has attracted the spoiler of all
ages to the Italian peninsula, has ever exerted, and still exerts, a
magnetic force on every cultivated mind. Manifold are the sources of
this fascination now. The scholar and the artist, the antiquarian and
the historian, the architect and the lover of natural scenery, alike
find here the amplest gratification of their tastes. This is so still;
but in the sixteenth century the Italian cities were the only homes
of an ancient and decaying civilization, Not insensible to other
impressions, it was specially the desire of social converse with the
living poets and men of taste--a feeble generation, but one still
nourishing the traditions of the great poetic age--which drew Milton
across the Alps.
In April, 1637, Milton's mother had died; but his younger brother,
Christopher, had come to live, with his wife, in the paternal home at
Horton.
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