Milton and the Diodatis

REVIEWS MILTON AND THE DIODATIS' A. E. BARKER This very thoroughly documented account of the fortunes of the Diodati family in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries should be of interest to students of social and medical history as well as to the students of Milton to whom it is primarily addressed. The friendship of the young Milton and Charles Diodati-of which the Epitaphium Damonis is the memorial- was Mr. Dorian's starting-point; but, in order to illuminate a relation which was presumably influential during Milton's formative years but of which the records arc provokingly meagre and the quality and extent therefore in some degree conjectural , he has been led to investigate the Diodati background. The story of conscientious exile, self-reliant enterprise, and family loyalty is not without drama, though Mr. Dorian is far from embroidering the results of his precise and extensive research in English and continental documents in the currently popular and nostalgic semifictional manner. In the mid-sixteenth century, soon after the accession of the inquisitorial Pius V, various groups of Diodatis, one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most cultured patrician families, left Lucca for rcasons of conscience, influenced by the reforming Prior of San Frediano, Pietro Martire Vermigli. They made their way through Lyons and the Paris of the French Wars of Religion to Geneva in particular and to other centres of Protestantism, maintaining their family and business connections and establishing themselves eminently in several pro- .fessions. One is reminded of the Napoleonic Rothschilds, though the quality of this already highly cultured family of Lucchese patricians is rather different. Theodore, father of Charles, was born in Geneva, studied medicine at Leyden, and moved thence to England to establish himself, through the combination of intelligent charm and determination which seems to have been characteristic of all the Diodatis, as tutor and later as physician in the family of Sir John Harrington of Exton, first cousin of Sidney and of the translator of Ariosto and brother of Lucy, Countess of Bedford. Subsequently Theodore set himself up in independent practice with London as his centre but with many patients of good family in the provinces, among them those Spencers with whom Edmund Spenser claimed a relation, one of whom was the Countess Dowager of Derby entertained by Milton's Arcades and related by marriage to the Egertons of Comus. *The English Diodatis. By DONALD CLAYTON DORIAN. New Brunswick, N.]. : Rutgers University Press. 1950. Pp. xviii, 365. $5.00. 430 REVIEWS 431 The historian of medical education and practice will find a good deal of new and useful material in the account of Theodore's career. Mr. Dorian has cleared up, for example, much that has been obscure in the procedures for licensing. His patient unravelling of family interrelations among the English and among the international Diodatis will delight the student of society. Students of Milton will follow with interest the literary and intellectual associations of the Diodatis. At the Harrington's Theodore helped Florio with his Montaigne. Jonson, Drayton, Daniel, Donne, all had connections with the families he served. He knew Wotton, through both continental and English connections , and probably Hales. Hakewell describes his striking treatment of a critical case. He had been at Leyden with Grotius, and his relations on the Continent were in touch with significant movements. Jean Diodati of Geneva, whom Milton visited during his continental tour, was one of the delegates to the Synod of Dort and fully approved its decision. Eli Diodati of Paris was Galileo's friend, agent, and translator. How much of all this in the background of Charles was in the foreground of Milton's relation with him it remains difficult to tell. The direction of the influence is obvious, and it would combine with the intelligent and cultivated influence of Alexander Gill, under whom they were together at St. Paul's School. But despite Mr. Dorian's efforts Charles remains, and now, it appears, must always remain, a somewhat shadowy /igure. What we have known from a few letters and from Milton of his rare intelligence, his cheerful good nature, his graceful literary talent, and his sensitive enjoyment of unreproved pleasures, is confirmed; and there is clear...