tion of additional songs, selected and adapted from L'Allegro, &c.; and, although not calculated to shine in theatric exhibitions, for those very reasons which constitute its essential and specific merit, from this introduction to notice Comus grew popular as a poem. L'Allegro and Il Penseroso were set to music by Handel in 1741; and his expressive harmonies here received the honour which they have so seldom found, but which they so justly deserve, of being "married to immortal ."-WARTON'S Preface to Milton's Minor Poems. verse. 'We must not read Comus with an eye to the stage, or with the expectation of dramatic propriety. Under this restriction, the absurdity of the Spirit speaking to an audience in a solitary forest at midnight, and the want of reciprocation in the dialogue, are overlooked. Comus is a suite of speeches; not interesting by discrimination of character; not conveying a variety of incidents, nor gradually exciting curiosity: but perpetually attracting attention by sublime sentiment, by fanciful imagery of the richest vein, by an exuberance of picturesque description, poetical allusion, and ornamental expression. While it widely departs from the grotesque anomalies of the mask now in fashion, it does not nearly approach to the natural constitution of a regular play. There is a chastity in the application and conduct of the machinery; and Sabrina is introduced with much address, after the brothers had imprudently suffered the enchantinent of Comus to take effect. This is the first time the old English Mask was in some degree reduced to the principles and form of rational composition; yet still it could not but retain some of its arbitrary peculiarities. The poet had here properly no more to do with the pathos of tragedy than the character of comedy. Nor do I know that he was confined to the usual modes of theatrical interlocution. A great critic [Dr. Johnson] observes, that the dispute between the Lady and Comus is the most animated and affecting scene of the piece. Perhaps some other scenes, either consisting only of a soliloquy, or of three or four speeches only, have afforded more true pleasure. The same critic thinks that in all the moral dialogue, although the language is poetical, and the sentiments generous, something is still wanting to allure attention. But surely, in such passages, sentiments so generous, and language so poetical, are sufficient to rouse all our feelings. For this reason, I cannot admit his position that Comus is a drama tediously instructive. And if, as he says, to these ethical discussions the auditor listens, as to a lecture, without passion, without anxiety, yet he listens with elevation and delight. The action is said to be improbable, because the brothers, when their sister sinks with fatigue in a pathless wilderness, wander both away together in search of berries, too far to find their way back, and leave a helpless lady to all the sadness and danger of solitude. But here is no desertion or neglect of the lady. The brothers leave their sister under a spreading pine in the forest, fainting for refreshment; they go to procure berries or some other fruit for her immediate relief, and, with great probability, lose their way in going or returning: to say nothing of the poet's art in making this very natural and simple accident to be productive of the distress which forms the future business and complication of the fable. It is certainly a fault, that the brothers, although with some indications of anxiety, should enter with so much tranquillity when their sister is lost, and at leisure pronounce philosophical panegyrics on the mysteries of virginity; but we must not too scrupulously attend to the exigencies of situation, nor suffer ourselves to suppose that we are reading a play, which Milton did not mean to write. These splendid insertions will please, independently of the story, from which, however, they result; and their elegance and sublimity will overbalance their want of place. In a Greek tragedy, such sentimental harangues, arising from the subject, would have been given to a Chorus. On the whole, whether Comus be or be not deficient as a drama, whether it is considered as an epic drama, a series of lines, a mask, or a poem, I am of opinion that our author is here only inferior to his own Paradise Lost.' - WARTON'S Edition of Milton's Minor Poems. 'The first published verses of Milton were an epitaph on the admirable dramatic poet, Shakespeare, commencing thus:— What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones, The labour of an age in piled stones? Or, that his hallow'd reliques should be hid 'It is remarkable that, while our author was himself meditating "to build the lofty rhyme," and frame a work more stately, and not less enduring, than a "star-ypointing pyramid," his minor productions, whereon he exercised and perfected his skill for that great undertaking, on materials the most precious and wrought into the most exquisite symmetry, he left strewn about, here and there, for chance publication, without so much as giving his name, when he allowed them to escape into print. Even at the stage of prime manhood, when his muse, in her halcyon days, had brought forth Comus That happy miracle of her rare birth he abandoned it, as the ostrich trusts her young in the wilderness, to be disclosed to the world by his friend Henry Lawes, who composed the accompanying music, when it was performed with lordly pomp at Ludlow Castle; the principal actors being three children of the noble family of John, Earl of Bridgewater, on whose misadventure, in a neighbouring wood, the romantic fable is founded. In point of fine fancy, rich embellishment, diction of unsurpassable beauty, and high-toned moral sentiment, this masque may be pronounced the most perfect of Milton's compositions. But to be enjoyed, it must be read as a poem, for the sake of these excellences, and not as a drama representing anything probable or possible in human life, under any imaginable circumstances, even admitting the preternatural machinery which the poet has introduced to exalt a simple incident into tragic dignity. For, were Comus and his crew, Sabrina and her nymphs, as real as the lady herself, the elder and the younger brother, but especially the attendant spirit, would not have discoursed so learnedly, nor acted so dilatorily (though each may have felt all that each is made toexpress), in a crisis of such agonising suspense and imminent peril to the captured lady, after they knew her situation. With this drawback (if it be one except in reference to a stage exhibition) Comus may claim the eulogium which a critic of the purest taste, the late Dr. Aikin, has passed upon it. He says: "The poem possesses great beauty of versification, varying from the gayest Anacreontics to the most majestic and sonorous heroics. On the whole, if an example were required of a work made up of the very essence of poetry; perhaps none of equal length, in any language, could be produced answering this character in so high a degree as the Masque of Comus." It may be added that here Milton first tried his hand in blank verse, and proved himself master of the whole diapason of rythmical tones and cadences, through all their implications.'-JAMES MONTGOMERY'S Memoir of Milton. "In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner more happily displayed than in the Allegro and the Penseroso. It is impossible to conceive that the mechanism of language can be brought to a more exquisite degree of perfection. These poems differ from others, as atar of roses differs from ordinary rose water, the close packed essence from the thin diluted mixture. They are, indeed, not so much poems as collections of hints, from each of which the reader is to make out a poem for himself. Every epithet is a text for a stanza. 'The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works which, though of very different merit, offer some marked points of resemblance. Both are lyric poems in the form of plays. There are, perhaps, no two kinds of composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken; the effect is as unpleasant as that which is produced on the stage by the voice of the prompter or the entrance of a scene-shifter. 'But this species of egotism, though fatal to the drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It is the part of the lyric poet to abandon himself without reserve to his own emotions. 'Between these hostile elements many great men have endeavoured to effect an amalgamation, but never with complete success. 'The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian 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 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 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, 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 ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing the severest test of the crucible. 'Milton attended, in the Comus, to the distinction which he afterwards neglected in the Samson. He made his Masque what it ought to be, essentially lyrical, and dramatic only 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 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 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 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 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, |