progress of the story; and worse, it strikes a note alien to the genius of the fanciful Masque and all its festive associations. But this demerit is characteristic of the poet. Milton's one defect, what more than aught else marks him Shakespeare's inferior, is lack of humour. A sense of humour means a keen sense of the incongruous; and a writer with half Milton's genius but more of that sense would have shunned the incongruous element which mars Comus as a Masque while increasing its power and beauty as a poem. It is, therefore, as a poem that the piece should be regarded, and the long speeches "must be read as majestic soliloquies" (Macaulay).

"The Miltonic idea"

"Comus."

This didactic element reveals Milton, and that at a point of special interest in his career. It teaches the doctrine nearest to his heart, namely, sobriety of life. There was nothing embodied in for which Milton cared more than this. An atmosphere of rare purity breathes in his works. He shows an extraordinarily nice sense of whatsoever things are fair and of good report. There is in him a strong vein of asceticism, and he praises more than once the "cloistered virtue" of abstinence. As a youth he described thus, in a strain of classical allusion, the obligations of those who would touch the highest reaches of poetic art:

"But they, who demi-gods and heroes praise,
And feats performed in Jove's more youthful days,
Who now the counsels of high heaven explore,
Now shades that echo the Cerberean roar,
Simply let these, like him of Samos, live,
Let herbs to them a bloodless banquet give;
In beechen goblets let their beverage shine,
Cool from the crystal spring their sober wine.
Their youth should pass in innocence secure
From stain licentious, and in manners pure,
Pure as the priest, when robed in white he stands,
The fresh lustration ready in his hands.

Thus Linus lived, and thus, as poets write,
Tiresias, wiser for his loss of sight.

Thus exiled Chalcas, thus the bard of Thrace,
Melodious tamer of the savage race.
Thus trained by temperance, Homer led of yore
His chief of Ithaca from shore to shore.
For these are sacred bards, and from above
Drink large infusions from the mind of Jovel."

That was his youthful ideal: his works and all that we know of his life show that it was his practice. Professor Masson well sums up the matter in the statement that "the sublime notion and high mystery" of a disciplined life is "the Miltonic idea." Nowhere is it more conspicuous than in this Masque.

Under any circumstances the theme would have kindled his muse to eloquence. But now in the year 1634, when the people were slowly separating

The Puri

tans and the

Cavaliers.

into hostile camps, the truth was of more than personal import: it had become vitalised with a tragic national intensity. Each day the conflict between the gloom and ungraciousness of Puritanism and the pleasureseeking carelessness of the Cavalier world grew keener. Extremes produce extremes: for one part of the nation life meant pleasure: the other identified pleasure with sin. When Comus was written Milton stood between the two armies. His Puritanism was tempered by Renaissance culture. The life of ideal happiness as pictured in L'Allegro is one into which enter all the influences of culture and nature that bring in their train "the joy in widest commonalty spread;" the cheerfulness which should be synonymous with Life, and to which Art should minister. And when in Il Penseroso Milton celebrates divinest Melancholy, she is not the bitter power whom Dante punished with the pains of Purgatory; rather, she has something of the kindliness

1 From the sixth of the Latin Elegies, Cowper's translation.

that Shakespeare attributes to his goddess Adversity, whose uses are sweet, and of whom it was happily said that she must be a fourth Grace, less known than the classic Three, but still their sister.

These poems, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Comus, belong to the non-political period in Milton's life. The bare fact that he wrote the last showed that he had not yet gone over to help the party whose unreasoning hatred of all amusement had flashed out in Prynne's Histriomastix1 (1633). As Green says, "the historic interest of Comus lies in its forming part of a protest made by the more cultured Puritans against the gloomier bigotry which persecution was fostering in the party at large." On the other hand, the whole tone of Comus was opposed to the spirit of the Cavaliers. It sternly rebuked intemperance. The revel-god personified the worst elements of Court-life. In his overthrow Milton allegorically foreshadowed the downfall of those who led that life; just as in Lycidas, under the guise of pastoral symbolism, he predicted the ruin of the "corrupted Clergie," and at the end of his life lamented the crash of Puritanism through the mouth of Samson Agonistes. Two hundred and fifty years ago therefore Comus was terribly real as a warning against the danger upon which the ship of national life was drifting. But the theme is true yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and the art with which it is enforced remains undimmed, the wisdom unfading.

The lyrical parts of "Comus."

Johnson had fault to find with the songs in Comus. He considered them "harsh" and "not very musical." This was the most curious feature of his strange, grudging criticism of

1 Prynne often refers to Masques, and always in terms of scorn; e.g. on page 783 of the Histriomastix, "Stage-players, Mümeries, Masques, and such like heathenish practises," 1633 ed.

the Masque, since the superlative excellence of Milton's lyrics has never been a matter of dispute. In them Milton achieves a style of quintessential beauty, reminding us with Wordsworth that poetry is primarily a matter of inspiration, and proving, like Gray, that it must also be a matter of art. Richness of imagery, epithets that (in Macaulay's words) supply "a text for a canto," single phrases that for their curious felicity are, as Archbishop Trench said, "poems in miniature," evanescent touches that recall to the classical reader the old and happy, far-off things of Athens and Rome-these qualities, that belong mainly to art, are held together and heightened by a perfect genuineness of emotion which is the outcome of sheer inspiration. Above all, Milton gives us what we require most in lyric verse-true melody, and those who are deaf to these sphere-born notes, who find the "numbers" of Comus unpleasing, must be left to their displeasure.

Most of us will prefer Mr Saintsbury's verdict: "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."

It was a happy inspiration which reserved the rhymed parts mainly for the close, where they form a kind of lyric cadenza on which the Masque closes. After bearing the heat and burden of the piece, after enforcing with all the power of his eloquence and righteous enthusiasm the moral which Comus illustrates, Milton turned to his muse and bade her touch a lighter, festive note. The philosophic strain was dropped: the poet of L'Allegro reasserted himself; and Comus came to an end with Lawes's music ringing through the Hall.

Stage-his

tory.

The stage-history of Comus is very slight. The representation at Ludlow appears to be the only one that took place in the seventeenth century. It is interesting to note that part at least of the music written by Lawes for the original performance survives, viz. the five numbers, "From the heavens," "Sweet Echo," "Sabrina fair," "Back Shepherds" and "Now my task." In the last century most of Milton's minor poems were made to supply libretti for contemporary musicians. Handel set L'Allegro and Il Penseroso (1740) to music, and afterwards (1742) made Samson Agonistes the basis of his Oratorio. Comus, or rather an adaptation of it, fell to the skilful hands of Dr Arne, the composer to whom we owe some of the best known settings of Shakespeare's songs. The adaptation of the Masque was made by the Rev. John Dalton, afterwards Canon of Worcester. He altered it beyond recognition, dividing it into three acts, redistributing the speeches, introducing fresh characters (among them, Lycidas) and scenes, and interpolating songs of his own composition. The most curious change occurs in Act III., which commences with twenty-six lines ("But come, thou goddess," line 11) taken from L'Allegro, the invocation to Mirth being followed by the appearance on the scene of Euphrosyne.

This stage-version was produced at Drury Lane theatre in 1738, and was frequently acted and several times printed. On the title-page of the first imprint (1738) are the words "never presented but on Michaelmas Day, 1634."

Geneste in his Annals of the Stage mentions later stage-versions with Arne's music, notably one for which Sir Henry Bishop wrote additional airs. Altogether Comus seems to have had some vogue on the stage in a quasi-operatic form. The last notable rendering of the Masque was that produced by Macready, who himself played the part of the magician.