In spite of Sir Henry Wotton's caution, his resoluteness, as A.
Wood calls it, in his religion, besides making the English Jesuits
indignant, caused others, not Jesuits, to withhold civilities. Milton
only tells us himself that the antiquities detained him in Rome about
two months.
At the end of November he went on to Naples. On the road he fell in
with an Eremite friar, who gave him an introduction to the one man in
Naples whom it was important he should know, Giovanni Battista Manso,
Marquis of Villa. The marquis, now seventy-eight, had been for
two generations the Maecenas of letters in Southern Italy. He had
sheltered Tasso in the former generation, and Marini in the latter. It
was the singular privilege of his old age that he should now entertain
a third poet, greater than either. In spite of his years, he was able
to act as cicerone to the young Englishman over the scenes which he
himself, in his _Life of Tasso_, has described with the enthusiasm of
a poet. But even the high-souled Manso quailed before the terrors of
the Inquisition, and apologised to Milton for not having shown him
greater attention, because he would not be more circumspect in the
matter of religion.
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