nality of theme, or of anything else extra-poetical, — much more those (the greater number) who simply vary transmitted ideas, — may be scandalized at this assertion, but that will hardly matter much. And indeed the indebtedness of Comus in point of subject (it is probably limited to the Odyssey, which is public property, and to George Peele's Old Wives' Tale, which gave little but a few hints of story) is scarcely greater than that of Paradise Lost; while the form of the drama, a kind nearly as venerable and majestic as that of the epic, is completely filled. And in Comus there is none of the stiffness, none of the longueurs, none of the almost ludicrous want of humour, which mar the larger poem. Humour indeed was what Milton always lacked; had he had it, Shakespere himself might hardly have been greater. The plan is not really more artificial than that of the epic; though in the latter case it is masked to us by the scale, by the grandeur of the personages, and by the familiarity of the images to all men who have been brought up on the Bible. The versification, as even Johnson saw, is the versification of Paradise Lost, and to my fancy at any rate it has a spring, a variety, a sweep and rush of genius, which are but rarely present later. As for its beauty in parts, quis vituperavit? It is impossible to single out passages, for the whole is golden. The entering address of Comus, the song "Sweet Echo," the descriptive speech of the Spirit, and the magnificent eulogy of the "sun-clad power of chastity," would be the most beautiful things where all is beautiful, if the unapproachable "Sabrina fair" did not come later, and were not sustained before and after, for nearly two hundred lines of pure nectar. If poetry could be taught by the reading of it, then indeed the critic's advice to a poet might be limited to this : "Give your days and nights to the reading of Comus."

[William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, Appendix, p. 201 et seq.1]

Of all Milton's smaller poems, Lycidas is the greatest favourite with me. I cannot agree to the charge which Dr. Johnson has brought against it of pedantry and want of feeling. It is the fine emanation of classical sentiment in a youthful scholar'most musical, most melancholy.' A certain tender gloom overspreads it, a wayward abstraction, a forgetfulness of his subject in the serious reflections that arise out of it. The gusts of passion come and go like the sounds of music borne on the wind. The loss of the friend whose death he laments seems to have recalled, with double force, the reality of those speculations which they had indulged together; we are transported to classic ground, and a mysterious strain steals responsive on the ear, while we listen to the poet,

'With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.'

I shall proceed to give a few passages at length in support of my opinion. The first I shall quote is as remarkable for the truth and sweetness of the natural descriptions as for the characteristic elegance of the allusions. [Lines

25-49 quoted.]

After the fine apostrophe on Fame which Phoebus is involved to utter, the poet proceeds: [Lines 85-99 quoted.] If this is art, it is perfect art; nor do we wish for anything better. The measure of the verse, the very sound of the names, would almost produce the effect here described. To ask the poet not to make use of such allusions as these is to ask the painter not to dip in the colours of the rainbow, if he could. · In fact, it is the common cant of criticism to consider every allusion to the clas

1 New York, 1845. Wiley and Putnam.

sics, and particularly in a mind like Milton's, as pedantry and affectation. Habit is a second nature; and, in this sense, the pedantry (if it is to be so called) of the scholastic enthusiast, who is constantly referring to images of which his mind is full, is as graceful as it is natural. It is not affectation in him to recur to ideas and modes of expression with which he has the strongest associations, and in which he takes the greatest delight. Milton was as conversant with the world of genius before him as with the world of nature about him; the fables of the ancient mythology were as familiar to him as his dreams. To be a pedant is to see neither the beauties of nature nor of art. Milton saw

both; and he made use of the one only to adorn and give interest to the other. He was a passionate admirer of nature; and, in a single couplet of his, describing the moon,

'Like one that had been led astray

Through the heaven's wide pathless way,'

there is more intense observation, and intense feeling of nature (as if he had gazed himself blind in looking at her,) than in twenty volumes of descriptive poetry. But he added in his own observation of nature the splendid fictions of ancient genius, enshrined her in the mysteries of ancient religion, and celebrated her with the pomp of ancient names.1

[Dowden, Transcripts and Studies, pp. 460–465, 473.]

Milton, as an artist, works in the manner of an idealist. His starting-point is ordinarily an abstraction. Whereas with Bunyan abstract virtues and vices are per1 Hazlitt continues with a rather fanciful defense of Milton's combination of heathen and Christian elements.

petually tending to become real persons, with Milton each real person tends to become the representative of an idea or a group, more or less complex, of ideas.

Comus is the work of a youthful spirit, enamoured of its ideals of beauty and of virtue, zealous to exhibit the identity of moral loveliness with moral severity. The real incident from which the mask is said to have originated disengages itself, in the imagination of Milton, from the world of actual occurrences, and becomes an occasion for the dramatic display of his own poetical abstractions. The young English gentlemen cast off their identity and individuality, and appear in the elementary shapes of "First Brother" and "Second Brother." The Lady Alice rises into an ideal impersonation of virgin strength and virtue. The scene is earth, a wild wood; but earth, as in all the poems of Milton, with the heavens arching over it a dim spot, in which men "strive to keep up a frail and feverish being" set below the "starry threshold of Jove's Court,"

"Where those immortal shapes

Of bright aerial spirits live inspher'd

In regions mild of calm and serene air."

From its first scene to the last the drama is a representation of the trials, difficulties, and dangers to which moral purity is exposed in this world, and of the victory of the better principle in the soul, gained by strenuous human endeavour aided by the grace of God. In this spiritual warfare the powers of good and evil are arrayed against one another; upon this side the Lady, her brothers (types of human helpfulness weak in itself, and liable to go astray), and the supernatural powers auxiliar to virtue in heaven and in earth the Attendant Spirit and the nymph Sabrina.

The enchanter Comus is son of Bacchus and Circe, and inheritor of twofold vice. If Milton had pictured the life of innocent mirth in L'Allegro, here was a picture to set beside the other, a vision of the genius of sensual indulgence. Yet Comus is inwardly, not outwardly foul; no grim monster like that which the medieval imagination conjured up to terrify the spirit and disgust the senses. The attempt of sin upon the soul as conceived by Milton is not the open and violent obsession of a brute power, but involves a cheat, an imposture. The soul is put upon its trial through the seduction of the senses and the lower parts of our nature. Flattering lies entice the ears of Eve; Christ is tried by false visions of power and glory, and beneficent rule; Samson is defrauded of his strength by deceitful blandishment. And in like manner Comus must needs possess a beauty of his own, such beauty as ensnares the eye untrained in the severe school of moral perfection. Correggio sought him as a favourite model, but not Michael Angelo. He is sensitive to rich forms and sweet sounds, graceful in oratory, possessed, like Satan, of high intellect, but intellect in the service of the senses; he surrounds himself with a world of art which lulls the soul into forgetfulness of its higher instincts and of duty; his palace is stately, and "set out with all manner of deliciousness."

Over against this potent enchanter stands the original figure of the Lady, who is stronger than he. Young men, themselves conscious of high powers, and who are more truly acquainted with admiration than with love, find the presence of strength in woman invincibly attractive. Shakspere, in his earlier dramatic period, delighted to represent such characters as Rosalind, and Beatrice, and Portia; characters at once stronger and weaker than his Imogens and Desdemonas, · - stronger because more intel