A story has been repeatedly told as the occasion of Milton's Italian journey, and very generally believed, which Todd has shown to be told also in the preface to "Poésies de Marguerite, Eleanore Clotilde, depuis Madame de Surville, Poëte Française du xv. Siècle," of another poet, a Louis de Puytendre, exactly agreeing in all the particulars, except that the ladies were on foot. That Milton needed no such romantic incentive to his Italian tour is self-evident, having a sufficient one in his classical and poetic tastes; but as it appeared in a newspaper, and obtained general credence, it may be worth transcribing.
"It is well known that in the bloom of youth, and when he pursued his studies at Cambridge, this poet was extremely beautiful. Wandering one day, during the summer, far beyond the precincts of the University, into the country, he became so heated and fatigued that, reclining himself at the foot of a tree to rest, he fell asleep. Before he woke, two ladies, who were foreigners, passed in a carriage; agreeably astonished at the loveliness of his appearance, they alighted, and having admired him, as they thought, unperceived, for some time, the youngest, who was very handsome, drew a pencil from her pocket, and having written some lines upon a piece of paper, put it with her trembling hand into his own; immediately afterward they proceeded on their journey. Some of his acquaintances, who were in search of him, had observed this silent adventure, but at too great a distance to discover that the highly-favored party in it was our illustrious poet. Approaching nearer, they saw their friend, to whom, being awakened, they mentioned what had happened; Milton opened the paper, and with surprise read these verses from Guarini, Madrigal xii., ed. 1598:
'Occhi, stelle mortali,
Ministre de miei mali—
Se chiusi m'uccidete,
Aperti che farete?'
"'Ye eyes, ye human stars! ye authors of my liveliest pangs! If thus, when shut, ye wound me, what must have proved the consequence had ye been open?" Eager from this moment to find the fair incognita, Milton traversed, but in vain, through every part of Italy. His poetic fervor became incessantly more and more heated by the idea which he had formed of his unknown admirer; and it is in some degree to her that his own times, the present times, and the latest posterity, must feel themselves indebted for several of the most impassioned and charming compositions of the Paradise Lost."
Now, to say nothing of the incoherence of this story—of the questions that naturally suggest themselves, of how these young men, too far off to recognize their companion as the object of this flattering attention, could know that the ladies were foreigners, and that the one who wrote the paper was the youngest, and was very handsome—it is evident that, had a young Cantab found himself awaking, nowadays, under a tree, with a paper of Italian verses in his hand, and his comrades ready with a story of a couple of beautiful young ladies, foreigners, traveling in a carriage, and the youngest, who was very handsome, putting this paper into his hand, he would very naturally have deemed himself the subject of a most palpable quiz. Yet did the world, in a simpler age, not only gravely receive this narrative as a fact, but Anna Seward did it into verse.
Returned from Italy, not from the vain quest after an imaginary and romantic fair one, but with his mind stored with knowledge and poetic imagery, which he had not pursued in vain, Milton took up his residence in London, in order to be ready, as occasion presented itself, to serve his country. He had no longer the inducement to return to Horton. He had seen his mother laid in the grave before he went; his father had probably quitted Horton when the civil war broke out, and betaken himself to the security of Reading, a fortified town; for on the surrender of that town to the Earl of Essex, in 1643, the old man came up to London to his son, with whom he continued to reside till his death, about four years afterward.
During the five years spent by Milton at Horton, between leaving Cambridge and setting out on his travels, he did not entirely bury himself there in his classical books and poetic musings in the woods and fields. He had occasional lodgings in London, in order to cultivate music, for which he had always a great passion, to prosecute his mathematics, to procure books, to enjoy the society of his friends, among whom were many of his old college friends, and, no doubt, to perfect himself in the speaking of the French and Italian languages, which it is not to be supposed he could do at Horton. Now, however, duty as well as inclination fixed him almost wholly in London. Great events were transpiring, and he felt a persuasion that he must bear his part in them. There was one circumstance which drew him for a while from the metropolis, and it was this. He became attached to a young lady in Oxfordshire, and is supposed to have made some abode in the place of her residence. "The tradition," says Todd, "that he did reside at this beautiful village of Forest Hill, near Shotover, is general, though none of his biographers assert the circumstance. Madame du Bocage, in her entertaining 'Letters concerning England,' &c., relates that, 'visiting, in June, 1750, Baron Shutz and lady, at their house near Shotover Hill, they showed me, from a small eminence, Milton's House, to which I bowed with all the reverence with which that poet's memory inspires me.'" And the same writer quotes this interesting account of the place and circumstance from a letter of Sir William Jones: "The necessary trouble of correcting the first printed sheets of my history prevented me to-day from paying a proper respect to the memory of Shakspeare, by attending his jubilee. But I resolved to do all the honor in my power to as great a poet, and set out in the morning, in company with a friend, to visit a place where Milton spent some part of his life, and where, in all probability, he composed several of his earliest compositions. It is a small village on a pleasant hill, about five miles from Oxford, called Forest Hill, because it formerly lay contiguous to a forest, which has since been cut down. The poet chose this place of retirement after his first marriage, and he describes the beauties of this retreat in that fine passage of his L'Allegro:
'Sometime walking not unseen,
By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,—
While the plowman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
While the landscape round it measures;
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The laboring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees;
Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks,' &c.
"It was neither the proper season of the year, nor time of the day, to hear all the rural sounds, and see all the objects mentioned in this description; but, by a pleasing concurrence of circumstances, we were saluted on our approach to the village with the music of the mower and his scythe; we saw the plowman intent upon his labor, and the milkmaid returning from her country employment.