One of the sort of inventions which I attribute to Steevens has been got up with a deal of romantic effect, to embellish the poetical life of Milton; and unquestionably must have sadly perplexed his last matter-of-fact editor, who is not a man to comprehend a flim-flam!--for he has sanctioned the whole fiction, by preserving it in his biographical narrative! The first impulse of Milton to travel in Italy is ascribed to the circumstance of his having been found asleep at the foot of a tree in the vicinity of Cambridge, when two foreign ladies, attracted by the loveliness of the youthful poet, alighted from their carriage, and having admired him for some time as they imagined unperceived, the youngest, who was very beautiful, drew a pencil from her pocket, and having written some lines, put the paper with her trembling hand into his own! But it seems,--for something was to account how the sleeping youth could have been aware of these minute particulars, unless he had been dreaming them,--that the ladies had been observed at a distance by some friends of Milton, and they explained to him the whole silent adventure. Milton on opening the paper read _four verses_ from Guarini, addressed to those "human stars," his own eyes! On this romantic adventure, Milton set off for Italy, to discover the fair "incognita," to which undiscovered lady we are told we stand indebted for the most impassioned touches in the Paradise Lost! We know how Milton passed his time in Italy, with Dati, and Gaddi, and Frescobaldi, and other literary friends, amidst its academies, and often busied in book-collecting. Had Milton's tour in Italy been an adventure of knight-errantry, to discover a lady whom he had never seen, at least he had not the merit of going out of the direct road to Florence and Rome, nor of having once alluded to this _Dame de ses pensees_, in his letters or inquiries among his friends, who would have thought themselves fortunate to have introduced so poetical an adventure in the numerous _canzoni_ they showered on our youthful poet. This _historiette_, scarcely fitted for a novel, first appeared where generally Steevens's literary amusements were carried on, in the _General Evening Post_, or the _St. James's Chronicle_: and Mr. Todd, in the improved edition of Milton's Life, obtained this spurious original, where the reader may find it; but the more curious part of the story remains to be told. Mr. Todd proceeds, "The preceding highly-coloured relation, however, is _not singular_; my friend, Mr. Walker, points out to me a counterpart in the extract from the preface to _Poesies de Marguerite-Eleanore Clotilde, depuis Madame de Surville, Poete Francois du XV. Siecle. Paris, 1803_."