In every city of Italy he was cordially and honorably received by the most distinguished persons of the age, and studied the works of the great masters, in both painting and sculpture, with an effect which is believed to be apparent in his great work, Paradise Lost. The sacrifice which he made to the spirit of patriotism by this return is eloquently adverted to by Warton. "He gave up," he remarks, "these countries, connected with his finer feelings, interwoven with his poetical ideas, and impressed upon his imagination by his habits of reading, and by long and intimate converse with the Grecian literature. But so prevalent were his patriotic attachments, that hearing in Italy of the commencement of the national quarrel, instead of proceeding forward, to feast his fancy with the contemplation of scenes familiar to Theocritus and Homer, the fires of Etna, and the porticoes of Pericles, he abruptly changed his course, and hastily returned home to plead the cause of ideal liberty. Yet in this chaos of controversy, amid endless disputes concerning religious and political reformation, independency, prelacy, tithes, toleration, and tyranny, he sometimes seems to have heaved a sigh for the peaceable enjoyments of lettered solitude, for his congenial pursuits, and the more mild and ingenious exercises of the Muse." But though he might sigh for these, he never suffered them to draw him aside from the path of what he deemed the most sacred duty, both toward God and man; he sacrificed not only his desire of visiting classical regions, and of lettered ease, but he was willing to risk the achievement of what he considered--and which eventually proved to be--the crowning act of his eternal fame, the writing of his great epic. He had conceived, as he tells us himself, the scheme of his Paradise Lost; on that he placed his hope of immortality; but even that he heroically resolved to postpone till he had seen his country rescued from her oppressors, and placed on a firm ground of freedom. The casualties of life might have robbed him and the world forever of the projected work, but he ventured all for the great cause of his country and of man, and was rewarded. 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.