"
The author of _Lycidas_ cannot but have been quite aware of the small
poetical merit of such an ode as that which was addressed to him by
Francini. In this ode Milton is the swan of Thames--"Thames, which,
owing to thee, rivals Boeotian Permessus;" and so forth. But there is
a genuine feeling, an ungrudging warmth of sympathetic recognition
underlying the trite and tumid panegyric. And Milton may have yielded
to the not unnatural impulse of showing his countrymen, that though
not a prophet in boorish and fanatical England, he had found
recognition in the home of letters and arts. Upon us is forced, by
this their different reception of Milton, the contrast between the
two countries, Italy and England, in the middle of the seventeenth
century. The rude north, whose civilisation was all to come,
concentrating all its intelligence in a violent effort to work off the
ecclesiastical poison from its system, is brought into sharp contrast
with the sweet south, whose civilisation is behind it, and whose
intellect, after a severe struggle, has succumbed to the material
force and organisation of the church.
As soon as the season allowed of it, Milton set forward to Rome,
taking what was then the usual way by Siena.
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