2. Voltaire related that Milton during his tour in Italy (1638) had seen performed _L'Adamo_, a sacred drama by the Florentine Giovanni Battista Andreini, and that he "took from that ridiculous trifle" the hint of the "noblest product of human imagination." Though Voltaire relates this as a matter of fact, it is doubtful if it be more than an _on dit_ which he had picked up in London society. Voltaire could not have seen Andreini's drama, for it is not at all a ridiculous trifle. Though much of the dialogue is as insipid as dialogue in operettas usually is, there is great invention in the plot, and animation in the action. Andreini is incessantly offending against taste, and is infected with the vice of the Marinists, the pursuit of _concetti_, or far-fetched analogies between things unlike. His infernal personages are grotesque and disgusting, rather than terrible; his scenes in heaven childish--at once familiar and fantastic, in the style of the Mysteries of the age before the drama. With all these faults the _Adamo_ is a lively and spirited representation of the Hebrew legend, and not unworthy to have been the antecedent of _Paradise Lost_. There is no question of plagiarism, for the resemblance is not even that of imitation or parentage, or adoption. The utmost that can be conceded is to concur in Hayley's opinion that, either in representation or in perusal, the _Adamo_ of Andreini had made an impression on the mind of Milton; had, as Voltaire says, revealed to him the hidden majesty of the subject. There had been at least three editions of the _Adamo_ by 1641, and Milton may have brought one of these with him, among the books which he had shipped from Venice, even, if he had not seen the drama on the Italian stage, or had not, as Todd suggests, met Andreini in person. So much appears to me to be certain from the internal evidence of the two compositions as they stand. But there are further some slight corroborative circumstances, (i.) The Trinity College sketch, so often referred to, of Milton's scheme when it was intended to be dramatic, keeps much more closely, both in its personages and in its ordering, to Andreini. (ii.) In Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum_, a compilation in which he had his uncle's help, Andreini is mentioned as author "of a fantastic poem entitled Olivastro, which was printed at Bologna, 1642." If Andreini was known to Edward Phillips, the inference is that he was known to Milton.