kissing the long ears of Bottom.* At all events, there can be no doubt that his veneration for the Athenian, whether just or not, was injurious to the Samson Agonistes. Had he taken Æschylus for his model, he would have given himself up to the lyric inspiration, 5 and poured out profusely all the treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on those dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work rendered it impossible to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile things in their own nature inconsistent, he has failed, 10 as every one else must have failed. We cannot identify ourselves with the characters as in a good play. We cannot identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali+ mixed, neutralise each other. We 15 are by no means insensible to the merits of this celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the style, the graceful and pathetic solemnity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric melody which gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. But we 20 think it, we confess, the least successful effort of the genius of Milton.

The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian

*

Bottom, the weaver in Shakespeare's' Midsummer Night's Dream'. He is represented in one part of the play, with an ass's head, and Titania, ⚫ the Queen of the Fairies, through the influence of a spell, takes him for a beautiful youth Adonis, and caresses him fondly.

† Alkali (Arabic), a name for certain chemical substances, which have great affinity for acids, and combine with them, forming salts in which the peculiar qualities of both alkali and acid are generally destroyed.

Masque, as the Samson is framed on the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest performance of the kind which exists in any language. It is as far superior to the Faithful Shepherdess+ as the 5 Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, ‡ or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. § It was well for Milton that he had here no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and loved the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the same veneration which he IO entertained for the remains of Athenian and Roman poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections. The faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, 15 sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever 20 ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only

* Masque, differed from the Drama proper in being written to celebrate a special occasion, and in having music, scenery, and other embellishments then denied to the regular plays.

Faithful Shepherdess, a pastoral drama written by the dramatist John Fletcher (1576-1625).

Aminta, an Italian poem by Tasso (1544-1595).

§ Il Pastor Fido, 'The Faithful Swain,' also Italian, but the work of Guarini (1537-1612) mentioned below.

May-day, a general holiday among the lower classes in England.

dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing the severest test of the crucible.*

Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction which he neglected in the Samson. He made it what it ought to be-essentially lyrical, and dramatic only 5 in semblance. He has not attempted a fruitless struggle against a defect inherent in the nature of that species of composition; and he has therefore succeeded wherever success was not impossible. The speeches must be read as majestic soliloquies; and 10 he who so reads them will be enraptured with their eloquence, their sublimity and their music. The interruptions of the dialogue, however, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break the illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which are 15 lyric in form as well as in spirit. 'I should much commend,' says the excellent Sir Henry Wotton,† in a letter to Milton, 'the tragical part, if the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain dorique delicacy in your songs and odes, whereunto I must plainly confess 20 to you I have seen yet nothing parallel in our language.' The criticism was just. It is when Milton escapes from the shackles of the dialogue, when he is

* Crucible, a chemist's melting pot, so called because formerly marked with a cross.

Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), a scholar and poet, who had been ambassador to Venice in James I.'s reign. When Milton was living at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, where he wrote the 'Comus,' Wotton was Provost (Head) of Eton College, close by, and Milton submitted the poem to his criticism.

discharged from the labour of uniting two incongruous styles, when he is at liberty to indulge his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises even above himself. Then, like his own good genius bursting from 5 the earthly form and weeds of Thyrsis, * he stands forth in celestial freedom and beauty; he seems to cry exultingly :

ΙΟ

'Now my task is smoothly done
I can fly or I can run '

-Comus, 1012, 1013.

to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the Elysian+ dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, which the musky wings of the zephyr scatter through the cedared 15 alleys of the Hesperides.‡

20

'There eternal summer dwells,

And west winds, with musky wing,
About the cedared alleys fling

Nard and cassia's balmy smells:
Iris there with humid bow

Waters the odorous banks, that blow
Flowers of more mingled hue

Than her purfled scarf can shew,

And drenches with Elysian dew

25

(List, mortals, if your ears be true)

* Thyrsis, in the 'Comus,' takes the dress of a shepherd, but is really a spirit in disguise.

Elysian, from Elysium, the Paradise of the Greeks. It means nothing more now than delightful.

Hesperides, in Greek mythology, the three daughters of Hesperus, who guarded the golden apples of Juno.

2

Beds of hyacinths and roses,
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound.'

-Comus, 988-1000.

There are several of the minor poems of Milton on 5 which we would willingly make a few remarks. Still more willingly would we enter into a detailed examination of that admirable poem, the Paradise Regained, which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever mentioned except as an instance of the blindness of that parental 10 affection which men of letters bear towards the offspring of their intellects. That Milton was mistaken in preferring this work, excellent as it is, to the Paradise Lost, we must readily admit. But we are sure that the superiority of the Paradise Lost to the Para- 15 dise Regained is not more decided than the superiority of the Paradise Regained to every poem which has since made its appearance. But our limits prevent us from discussing the point at length. We hasten on to that extraordinary production which the general suff-20 rage of critics has placed in the highest class of human compositions.

The only poem of modern times which can be compared with the Paradise Lost is the Divine Comedy.* The subject of Milton, in some points resembled that 25

* Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia), the chief poem of Dante (12651321), the greatest of all the poets of Italy; a native of Florence in Tuscany. Hence Macaulay speaks of him below as the Florentine poet, and calls him the Father of Tuscan literature.