From Florence Milton went on to Rome, where his scholarly tastes gratified themselves for two months in the study of what remained of the ancient city. The famous picture of Rome in _Paradise Regained_ may owe something to these weeks. There, too, he was well received by several of Rome's most distinguished scholars who paid him compliments of Italian extravagance. There, too, he heard the famous Leonora Baroni {45} sing, and was so moved as to write three Latin epigrams in her praise. But it was at Naples, whither he passed on before winter, that he made the acquaintance which, except that of Galileo, is the most interesting his Italian tour brought him. It was that of the Neopolitan patrician, Giovanni Manso, who had been intimate with Tasso and Marini and had been celebrated by Tasso in the _Gerusalemme Conquistata_. His courtesy to a foreigner was soon to procure him a still greater honour; for before leaving Naples Milton addressed to him a Latin poem thanking him for his kindness, speaking openly of his own poetic ambitions and praying that, if he lives to write the great Arthurian Epic which he was then planning, he may find such a friend as Tasso found to welcome his poem, comfort his old age and cherish his fame. The only difficulty which separated Manso and Milton was that of religion, where Milton's unguarded frankness embarrassed his host. So, when he abandoned his intended tour in Greece because he thought it "base" to be "travelling abroad at case for intellectual culture while his fellow-countrymen were fighting at home for liberty," he was warned that the Jesuits at Rome had their eyes on him. But he stayed there two {46} months nevertheless, fearlessly keeping his resolution, not indeed to introduce or invite religious controversy but, if questioned, then, as he says, "whatsoever I should suffer to dissemble nothing." By February he was again in Florence; and after visits to Bologna, Ferrara and Venice, whence he characteristically shipped "a chest or two of choice music books" for England, he crossed the Alps, spent a week or two at Geneva and in France, and was at home by August 1639.