truly detects "some melancholy in his mirth." In _Lycidas_, for a
moment, the tones of both ages, the past and the coming, are combined,
and then Milton leaves behind him for ever the golden age, and one
half of his poetic genius. He never fulfilled the promise with which
_Lycidas_ concludes, "Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new."




CHAPTER III.

JOURNEY TO ITALY.


Before 1632 Milton had begun to learn Italian. His mind, just then
open on all sides to impressions from books, was peculiarly attracted
by Italian poetry. The language grew to be loved for its own sake.
Saturated as he was with Dante and Petrarch, Tasso and Ariosto, the
desire arose to let the ear drink in the music of Tuscan speech.

The "unhappy gift of beauty," which has attracted the spoiler of all
ages to the Italian peninsula, has ever exerted, and still exerts, a
magnetic force on every cultivated mind. Manifold are the sources of
this fascination now. The scholar and the artist, the antiquarian and
the historian, the architect and the lover of natural scenery, alike
find here the amplest gratification of their tastes. This is so still;
but in the sixteenth century the Italian cities were the only homes
of an ancient and decaying civilization, Not insensible to other
impressions, it was specially the desire of social converse with the
living poets and men of taste--a feeble generation, but one still