The poet John Milton had embarked in…

The poet John Milton had embarked in May 1638 upon a tour of France and Italy that is to last up to July or August 1639.

His travels supplement his study with new and direct experience of artistic and religious traditions, especially Roman Catholicism.

He meets famous theorists and intellectuals of the time, and is able to display his poetic skills.

For specific details of what happened within Milton's "grand tour", there appears to be just one primary source: Milton's own Defensio Secunda.

Although there are other records, including some letters and some references in his other prose tracts, the bulk of the information about the tour comes from a work that, according to Barbara Lewalski, "was not intended as autobiography but as rhetoric, designed to emphasize his sterling reputation with the learned of Europe."

He had first gone to Calais, and then on to Paris, riding horseback, with a letter from diplomat Henry Wotton to ambassador John Scudamore.

Through Scudamore, Milton had met Hugo Grotius, the Dutch law philosopher, playwright and poet.

Leaving France soon after this meeting, Milton had traveled south, from Nice to Genoa, and then to Livorno and Pisa.

He reaches Florence in July 1638.

While here, Milton enjoys many of the sites and structures of the city.

His candor of manner and erudite neo-Latin poetry makes him friends in Florentine intellectual circles, and he meets the astronomer Galileo, who is under virtual house arrest at Arcetri, as well as others.