Though Milton has not favoured us with any interesting details of his interview with Galileo, nor expressed his opinions with regard to the controversies which at that time agitated both the religious and scientific worlds of thought, and which eventually culminated in a storm of rancour and hatred that burst over the devoted head of the aged astronomer, and brought him to his knees, yet he informs us that he ‘found and visited’ Galileo, whom he describes as ‘grown old,’ and cynically remarks that he ‘was held a prisoner of the Inquisition for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought.’ Milton does not allude to his blindness, and yet it would be natural to imagine that, had his host suffered from this affliction at the time of his visit, he would have referred to it. We learn that Milton arrived in Italy in the spring of 1638. In 1637, the affection which, in the preceding year, deprived Galileo of the use of his right eye, attacked the left also, which began to grow dim, and in the course of a few months became sightless; so that, although Milton has not alluded to this calamity, Galileo had become totally blind at the time of his visit.
How much Milton was impressed with the fame of Galileo and his telescope becomes apparent on referring to his ‘Paradise Lost.’ In it he alludes to the instrument upon three different occasions, twice when in the hands of Galileo; and the remembrance of the same artist was doubtless in his mind when he mentions the ‘glazed optic tube’ in another part of his poem. The interval that elapsed from the date of Milton’s visit to Galileo in 1638, to the publication of ‘Paradise Lost’ in 1667, included a period of about thirty years, yet this length of time did not erase from Milton’s memory his recollection of Galileo and of his pleasant sojourn at Florence.
The first allusion in the poem to the Italian astronomer is in the lines in which Milton describes the shield carried by Satan:—
The broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening, from the top of Fesolé,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.—i. 286-91.
Galileo is described as having observed the Moon from the heights of Fesolé, which formed part of the suburbs of Florence, or from Valdarno, the valley of the Arno, in which the city is situated. The belief that Galileo had discovered continents and seas on the Moon justified Milton in imagining the existence of rivers and mountains on the lunar surface. The expression ‘spotty globe’ is more descriptive of the appearance of our satellite when observed with the telescope, than when seen with the naked eye. Galileo’s attention was attracted by the freckled aspect of the Moon—a visual effect created by the number of extinct volcanoes scattered over the surface of the orb.
In his next allusion to the telescope Milton associates Galileo’s name with the instrument:—
As when by night the glass
Of Galileo, less assured, observes
Imagined lands and regions in the Moon.—v. 261-63.
In these lines Milton describes with accuracy the extent of Galileo’s knowledge of our satellite. The conclusions which the Italian astronomer arrived at with regard to its habitability were not supported by telescopic evidence sufficient to justify such a belief. Galileo writes: ‘Had its surface been absolutely smooth it would have been but a vast, unblessed desert, void of animals, of plants, of cities and men; the abode of silence and inaction—senseless, lifeless, soulless, and stripped of all those ornaments which now render it so variable and so beautiful:’—
There lands the Fiend, a spot like which perhaps
Astronomer in the Sun’s lucent orb
Through his glazed optic tube yet never saw.—iii. 588-90.
Milton may have remembered that Galileo was the first astronomer who directed a telescope to the Sun; and that he discovered the dark spots frequently seen on the solar disc.