still if Galileo could have known that his name would be written in
"Paradise Lost," or Milton could have foreseen that within thirteen
years he too would see only with the inner eye, but that the calamity
which disabled the astronomer would restore inspiration to the poet. How
deeply he was impressed appears, not merely from the famous comparison
of Satan's shield to the moon enlarged in "the Tuscan artist's optic
glass," but by the ventilation in the fourth and eighth books of
"Paradise Lost," of the points at issue between Ptolemy and
Copernicus:--

"Whether the sun predominant in heaven
Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun,
He from the east his flaming road begin,
Or she from west her silent course advance
With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps
On her soft axle, while she paces even,
And bears thee soft with the smooth air along."

It would be interesting to know if Milton's Florentine acquaintance
included that romantic adventurer, Robert Dudley, strange prototype of
Shelley in face and fortune, whom Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Dean
Bargrave encountered at Florence, but whom Milton does not mention. The
next stage in his pilgrimage was the Eternal City, by this time resigned
to live upon its past. The revenues of which Protestant revolt had
deprived it were compensated by the voluntary contributions of the
lovers of antiquity and art; and it had become under Paul V. one of the
centres of European finance. Recent Popes had added splendid
architectural embellishments, and the tendency to secular display was
well represented by Urban VIII., a great gatherer and a great dispenser
of wealth, an accomplished amateur in many arts, and surrounded by a