17.] In writing this letter Milton must have had brought back to his recollection his visit to Geneva fifteen years before (June 1639) on his way home from Italy.

The venerable Diodati, the uncle of his friend Charles, was the person in Geneva of whom he had seen most, and who dwelt most in his memory; but the elder Spanheim had then been in the same city, and Morus too, and the present Ezekiel Spanheim, as a boy in his tenth year, and others, still alive, who had then known Morus, and had since that time had him in view.

Milton had certainly not then himself seen Morus, though he must have heard of him; but it is possible he may have seen the elder Spanheim, and may now, in writing to Spanheim's son, have remembered the fact.

In any case there were links of acquaintanceship still connecting Milton with Geneva and its gossip.

The "Calandrini," for example, who is mentioned in Milton's letter, and who may be identified with a Genevese merchant named "Jean Louis Calandrin," heard of in Thurloe's correspondence, must in some way have been known to Milton personally, and interested in serving him.[1] It had been in in consequence of a suggestion of this Calandrini, "acting-with his usual courtesy," that young Spanheim had, in October 1654, when Morus's fragmentary _Fides Publica_ was just out or nearly so, addressed a polite letter to Milton, sending him some additional information about the Genevese portion of Morus's career.