At Rome he spent two
months, occupying himself partly with seeing the antiquities, and
partly with cultivating the acquaintance of natives, and some of the
many foreigners resident in the eternal city. But though he received
much civility, we do not find that he met with the peculiar sympathy
which endeared to him his Tuscan friends. His chief ally was the
German, Lucas Holstenius, a native of Hamburg, who had abjured
Protestantism to become librarian of the Vatican. Holstenius had
resided three years in Oxford, and considered himself bound to repay
to the English scholar some of the attentions he had received himself.
Through Holstenius Milton was presented to the nephew, Francesco
Barberini, who was just then everything in Rome. It was at a concert
at the Barberini palace that Milton heard Leonora Baroni sing. His
three Latin epigrams addressed to this lady, the first singer of
Italy, or of the world at that time, testify to the enthusiasm she
excited in the musical soul of Milton.
Nor are these three epigrams the only homage which Milton paid to
Italian beauty. The susceptible poet, who in the sunless north would
fain have "sported with the tangles of Neaera's hair," could not
behold Neaera herself and the flashing splendour of her eye, unmoved.
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