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For two rich months he had lived in Florence, then the most attractive of Italian cities, with Gaddi, Dati, Coltellini, and the rest for his friends. He had visited Galileo, then just grown blind, as he was himself destined to be. His inner sight always preserved the old visions he had garnered At evening from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno.
But that he could not alter those decrees the king of gods himself confesses in the book above cited, when he comforts Hercules for the death of Pallas, who had invoked his aid before he threw his lance at Turnus: "Trojae sub maenibus altis Tot nati cecidere deum; quin occidit una Sarpedon, mea progenies; etiam sua Turnum Fata vocant, metasque dati pervenit ad aevi."
As we take leave of Dati at this point, for some time at least, I may quote an interesting sentence, respecting one of his intentions in later life, from the notices of him in Salvini's Fasti Consolari dell' Accademia Fiorentina : "He had particularly in view the publication of the letters which he had received from various literary men, such as John Milton, Isaac Vossius, Paganino Gaudenzio, Giovanni Rodio, Valerio Chimentelli, and Nicolas Heinsius: from the last he had a very large number."
By a curious chance, however, a MS. copy of it exists in Milton's own hand either a draft which Milton kept at the time, or perhaps the actual copy sent to Dati. It is one of some valuable Milton documents in the possession of Mr.
From that date on to our limit of time in the present volume we have no distinct incident of the Holborn household to record, unless it be the receipt of another letter from Carlo Dati.
The sentences in which Milton speaks of his hard fate in being tied by accident or law to the constant companionship of people with whom he had no sympathy, while those whom he really cared for were distant or dead, may have been read by Dati with only a vague general construction of their meaning, and perhaps would not have been written by Milton to any one capable of a more exact construction from knowledge of the circumstances.
Dati may have been there replying to that portion of Milton's letter in which he had vaguely intimated his private melancholy in being doomed to unfit companionship; or he may have heard more particular rumours in Florence of Milton's marriage-mishap and its consequences.
The admiration was real; and, after Milton had gone, young Dati had often thought of him, often talked of him among his companions of the Delia Crusca and of Gaddi's more private Academy of the Svogliati, often wondered what he was doing in his native land. Three times at intervals he had written to Milton; but all the letters had miscarried.
Marsh, in a note to me, remarks ingeniously, "Dating from the feast-day, according to the Roman Catholic usage, in writing to an Italian friend, indicates a tolerance and politeness worth noticing." Easter in 1647 fell on Sunday, April 18, so that the third day, or Easter-Tuesday, was April 20. There are passages in this letter which we can interpret now better than Dati can have done then.
Whereupon the chief men of that quarter, Lorenzo Ridolfi, Bartolommeo Corbinelli, Neri di Gino Capponi, and Goro di Stagio Dati, with very many other citizens, obtained an order from the Signoria for the rebuilding of the Church of S. Spirito, and made Stoldo Frescobaldi provveditore.
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