Of Milton's impression of Rome there is no record. There are no traces
of special observation in his poetry. The description of the city in
_Paradise Regained_ (iv. 32) has nothing characteristic, and could
have been written by one who had never seen it, and by many as well
as by Milton. We get one glimpse of him by aid of the register of the
English College, as dining there at a "sumptuous entertainment" on
30th October, when he met Nicholas Carey, brother of Lord Falkland.
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. Milton's Italian journey brings out the two
conflicting strains of feeling which were uttered together in
_Lycidas_, the poet's impressibility by nature, the freeman's
indignation at clerical domination.