The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.
* * * * *
Marmontel in the “Encyclopedie” declares that the Italians did not
possess a single comedy worth reading—therein displaying his
ignorance. Some of the greatest {576} names in Italian Literature were
writers of comedy. Baretti mentions a collection of four thousand
dramas made by Apostolo Zeno, of which the greater part were
comedies—many of a high order.
* * * * *
A comedy or opera by Andreini was the origin of “Paradise Lost.”
Andreini's Adamo was the model of Milton's Adam.
* * * * *
Milton has the expression “Forget thyself to marble.” Pope has the
line “I have not yet forgot myself to stone.”
* * * * *
The noble simile of Milton, of Satan with the rising sun in the first
book of the Paradise Lost, had nearly occasioned the suppression of
that epic: it was supposed to contain a treasonable allusion.
* * * * *