But it will be asked what invention there is in this poem? There is invention in the epithets, in the combinations, in the descriptions, in the apostrophes, in the visionary parts of the poem, in the sorrows, the predictions, and the consolations: in all those associations, which none but a rich and poetical mind produces.

Johnson had so accustomed himself to cultivate dry reason only, that he thought all array of imagery idle and useless. If he had any feeling, it was only when he argued himself into it; it did not come from the senses: he loved abstraction; but it was not the abstraction of shadows, nor the "bodying forth" of "airy nothings." Milton's mind was in a blaze, surrounded by a whole range of invisible worlds and their aerial inhabitants: his genius gave to matter an ideal light and ideal properties: he connected the dignity of human existence with the beauty and the grandeur of the scenery of nature.

The epithets which true poets give to imagery confer upon it its spell: "Lycidas is full of these epithets from beginning to end: they are always fresh and exquisitely vivid, but ever extravagant or over-ornamental.

The vers ification is as regular as is consistent with vigour and variety: the fivefeet lines are far preferable to the shorter lines of the two poems before discussed. "Lycidas" is full of learned allusions, perhaps too full,-which was Milton's

fault.

Dr. Joseph Warton has truly said, that the admiration or dislike of this poem is an infallible test whether a reader has or has not a poetical taste: he who is not enraptured with it can have no genuine idea of poetry.

If we are asked what puts all within the range of mind before us in such brilliant or such affecting colours, we can only say that it is indefinable, but that we cannot doubt its effects. All secondary poets attempt this by a false gloss: they are full of ornament; but the ornament is a glare, or a set of artificial flowers: there is no fragrance, no vivifying spirit. In a true poet, like Milton, all springs up unsought from the fountain of the soul or the heart: it is an enthusiasm ; but an enthusiasm not unapproved by the sober judgment and the conscience. Nothing is good, which there is not some susceptibility within us ready instantly to recognise: nothing can be forced upon us by artful effort: no factitious gilding will avail. The poet's difficulty is to find expressions for what he really feels.

Now and then there may be a momentary blaze in inferior authors; but, in bards like Milton, all is one texture of light.

Just before Milton's return from Italy in 1639, his friend Charles Deodate died, and the news met him on his arrival: he then wrote a Latin elegy on him, entitled Epitaphium Damonis," which has some similitude to "Lycidas." Warton says, that there are in it some new and natural country images, and the common topics are often recommended by a novelty of elegant expression: it contains some passages which wander far beyond the bounds of bucolic song, and are in his own original style of the more sublime poetry. Milton cannot be a shepherd long his own native powers break forth, and cannot bear the assumed disguise.

At line 155 of this elegy, he hints his design of writing an epic poem on some part of the ancient British story. So, in his poem entitled " Mansus," he says,

"

Si quando indigenas revocabo in carmina reges,
Arturumque etiam sub terris bella moventem.

These are the ancient kings of Britain: this was the subject for an epic poem that
first occupied his mind. King Arthur, at his death, was supposed to be carried
into the subterraneous land of fairy or of spirits, where he still reigned as a king ;
and whence he was to return into Britain, to renew the round table, conquer all
his enemies, and re-establish his throne: he was therefore "etiam movens bella
sub terris, still meditating wars under the earth. The impulse of Milton's attach-
ment to this subject was not entirely suppressed: it produced his " History of
Britain." By the expression, "revocabo in carmina," the poet means, that these
ancient kings, which were once the themes of the British bards, should now again
be celebrated in verse.
Milton, in his "Church Government," written in 1641,
says that, after the example of Tasso, "it haply would be no rashness, from an
equal diligence and inclination, to present the like offer in one of our own ancient
stories!" It is possible that the advice of Manso, the friend of Tasso, might
determine the poet to a design of this kind.

C

CHAPTER VI.

ON COMUS.

IN 1634, Milton wrote his immortal "Mask of Comus," for John Egerton, first Earl of Bridgewater, then Lord President of Wales, to be presented at Ludlow Castle, which was his Lordship's residence.

The poet's father held his house under the Earls of Bridgewater, at Horton, near Harefield, and not far from Ashridge: thus, perhaps, was the poet introduced to that noble family: he certainly had not yet become a decided puritan and republican. The Countess of Derby (Alice Spencer), mother-in-law of the Earl of Bridgewater, and also widow of Lord Chancellor Egerton, was a generous patroness of poets, and, among the rest, of her relation, the author of the "Faery Queene." Such a patroness would be, above all others, grateful to Milton.

"Comus" was acted by the Earl's children, the Lord Brackley, Mr. Thomas Egerton, and the Lady Alice Egerton.

The Egertons were among the most powerful of the nobility, and lived in the most state. By a marriage with a co-heiress of the great feudal family of Stanley, who were co-heirs to the royal races of Tudor and Plantagenet, they held a sort of demi-regal respect. Their domains were large, and their character for hospitality and accomplishments stood high. This historical house have a century afterwards rendered themselves again immortal by designing and patronising national works of another class*.

Masks had been common in the time of Ben Jonson. I leave to antiquaries to trace the origin of the subject and design of "Comus." The merit lies not in the hint but in the superstructure. The story is said to have been occasioned by a domestic incident of the Egerton family.

When we open this poem, we seem to enter on the beings and language of another world. Every word is poetry.

The first of the dramatis persona is the Spirit, whose speech runs to ninety-two lines. It is of the deepest interest to the piece, and opens to us the sovereignty of Neptune the quartering of our island to his blue-haired deities-the parentage of Comus-his dangerous arts, and the Spirit's own protecting intervention.

Next comes Comus attended by his monstrous rout, whom he thus addresses :

The star that bids the shepherd fold
Now the top of heaven doth hold, &c.

The noise of their revelry calls the attention of the Lady, who now enters :

This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,

My best guide now.

"By laying the scene of this Mask," Warton observes, "in a wild forest, Milton secured to himself a perpetual fund of picturesque description, which, resulting from situation, was always at hand. He was not obliged to go out of his way for this striking embellishment: it was suggested of necessity by present circumstances. The same happy choice of scene supplied Sophocles in Philoctetes,' Shakspeare in 'As You Like It,' and Fletcher in the Faithful Shepherdess,' with frequent and even unavoidable opportunities of rural delineation; and that of the most romantic kind. But Milton has had additional advantages: his forest is not only the resi dence of a magician, but is exhibited under the gloom of midnight. Fletcher, however, to whom Milton is confessedly indebted, avails himself of the latter cir

cumstance."

The lady exclaims,

A thousand phantasies
Begin to throng into my memory,

Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,
And aëry tongues, that syllable men's names
On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses.

*The canal navigation of the last Duke of Bridgewater, who died in 1803, is celebrated all over the world. The last two Earls, who succeeded him, were indeed less eminent, and dimmed-the former by his mediocrity, the latter by his eccentricities-some of the lustre of the name. The last died in 1829. Such are the chances and changes of time.

Warton says, "I remember these superstitions, which are here finely applied, in the ancient voyages of Marco Paolo the Venetian, speaking of the vast and perilous desert of Lop in Asia, Cernuntur et audiuntur, in eo interdiu, et sæpius noctu, dæmonum variae illusiones. Unde viatoribus summe cavendum est, ne multum ab invicem seipsos dissocient, aut aliquis a tergo sese diutius impediat. Alioquin, quamprimum propter montes et calles quispiam comitum suorum aspectum perdiderit, non facile ad eos perveniet: nam audiuntur ibi voces dæmonum, qui solitarie incedentes propriis appellant nominibus, voces fingentes illorum quos comitari se putant, ut a recto itinere abductos in perniciem deducant.'-De Regionib. Oriental. 1. 1. c. 44. But there is a mixture from Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess,' A. 1. S. i. p. 108. The shepherdess mentions, among other nocturnal terrors in a wood, Or voices calling me in dead of night.' These fancies from Marco Paolo are adopted in Heylin's Cosmographie," I am not sure if in any of the three editions printed before Comus' appeared The song on Echo is more exquisite than

any thing of its kind in our language.

"Comus," says Warton, "is universally allowed to have taken some of its tints from the Tempest.'"

The following is a beautiful passage:

'Tis most true That musing meditation most affects The pensive secrecy of desert cell,

Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds,

And sits as safe as in a senate-house.

On which Warton has the following somewhat singular note :-" Not many years after this was written, Milton's friends showed that the safety of a senate-house was not inviolable: but when the people turn legislators, what place is safe from the tumults of innovation, and the insults of disobedience?" True-if uncontrolled by king and lords, as they have lately attempted to be.

The poet, speaking of chastity, says,

Yea, there, where very desolation dwells,

By grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid shades,
She may pass on with unblench'd majesty,

Be it not done in pride, or in presumption.

Dr. Joseph Warton remarks, in his "Essay on Pope," that poet's imitation of this and other passages of Milton's juvenile poems. "This is the first instance," adds Thomas Warton, " of any degree even of the slightest attention being paid to Milton's smaller poems by a writer of note since their first publication. Milton was never mentioned or acknowledged as an English poet till after the appearance of Paradise Lost; and long after that time these pieces were totally forgotten and overlooked. It is strange that Pope, by no means of a congenial spirit, should be the first who copied Comus' or ' Il Penseroso.' But Pope was a gleaner of the old English poets; and he was here pilfering from obsolete English poetry, without the least fear or danger of being detected."

At 1. 780 the lady says,

To him that dares

Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words
Against the sun-clad power of chastity,

Fain would I something say, yet to what end?

Thou hast nor ear nor soul to apprehend

The sublime notion, and high mystery,

That must be utter'd to unfold the sage

And serious doctrine of virginity;

And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know
More happiness than this thy present lot.

Upon this passage, also, Warton has the following curious note :

"By studying the reveries of the Platonic writers, Milton contracted a theory concerning chastity and the purity of love, in the contemplation of which, like other visionaries, he indulged his imagination with ideal refinements, and with pleasing but unmeaning notions of excellence and perfection. Plato's sentimental *See lib. iii. p. 201, edit. 1652, fol. Sylvestre, in Du Bartas, has also the tradition in the text, ed. fol. ut supr. p. 274.

or metaphysical love, he seems to have applied to the natural love between the sexes. The very philosophical dialogue of the Angel and Adam, in the eighth book of Paradise Lost,' altogether proceeds on this doctrine. In the Smectymnus' he declares his initiation into the mysteries of this immaterial love. • Thus from the laureate fraternity of poets, riper years, and the ceaseless round of study and reading, led me to the shady spaces of philosophy; but chiefly to the divine volume of Plato, and his equal Xenophon; where, if I should tell ye what I learned of chastity and love, I mean that which is truly so,' &c. But in the dialogue just mentioned, where Adam asks his celestial guest, 'Whether angels are susceptible of love, whether they express their passion by looks only, or by a mixture of irradiation, by virtual or immediate contact?' our author seems to have overleaped the Platonic pale, and to have lost his way among the solemn conceits of Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas. It is no wonder that the angel blushed, as well as smiled, at some of these questions."

The incomparable poem of "Comus " thus ends :—

Mortals, that would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free;
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if Virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her.

Thyer says, that "the moral of this poem is very finely summed up in the six concluding lines. The thought contained in the last two might probably be suggested to our author by a passage in the Table of Cebes,' where Patience and Perseverance are represented stooping and stretching out their hands to help up those who are endeavouring to climb the craggy hill of Virtue, and yet are too feeble to ascend of themselves."

Mr. Francis Egerton (afterwards the last Earl of Bridgewater) has observed upon this, that, "had this ingenious critic duly reflected on the lofty mind of Milton, Smit with the love of sacred song,

and so often and so sublimely employed on topics of religion, he might readily have found a subject, to which the poet obviously and divinely alludes in these concluding lines, without fetching the thought from the Table of Cebes.' In the preceding attack I am convinced Mr. Thyer had no ill intention; but by overlooking so clear and pointed an allusion to a subject calculated to kindle that lively glow in the bosom of every Christian, which the poet intended to excite, and by referring it to an image in a profane author, he may, beside stifling the sublime effect so happily produced, afford a handle to some in these evil days,' who are willing to make the religion of Socrates and Cebes (or that of Nature) supersede the religion of Christ. The moral of this poem is, indeed, very finely summed up in the six concluding lines, in which, to wind up one of the most elegant productions of his genius,

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

threw up his last glance to Heaven, in rapt contemplation of that stupendous mystery, whereby He, the lofty theme of Paradise Regained, stooped from above all height, bowed the Heavens and came down on Earth,' to atone as man for the sins of men, to strengthen feeble Virtue by the influence of his grace, and to teach her to ascend his throne."

Numerous critics, from Toland to Todd, have given the character of this poem ; but Thomas Warton's is by far the best: Johnson, with some good passages, has intermixed much captious objection, and not a little vulgarity. He cannot refrain from a sort of coarse sneer, which affects to be humour.

"We must not," says Warton, "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." To this the critic adds many other excellent observations.

A Mask, written for a private theatre, and to be performed by highly-educated actors, is not like a play to be exhibited to a mixed and common audience : long speeches, therefore, of a tone too lofty for vulgar ears, are not here objectionable. Of the texture of the present composition every word is eminently poetical. Passages of similar beauty may be found in Shakspeare, and even in Fletcher,— but not a uniform and unbroken web. It is true that there is little passion in this dramatic poem; but none is pretended to: while it is enchantingly descriptive, it is at the same time philosophically calm. We are carried into a fairy region of good Spirits and bad: and every thing of rural scenery that is delightful, associated with wild and picturesque beliefs of an invisible world in mountains, valleys, forests, and rivers, is introduced to keep up the magic. Were it a mere description of inanimate nature, it would be comparatively dull. Here, too, a beautiful girl, of high rank, richly accomplished in mind, is introduced, to pour out under alarming circumstances a divine eloquence of exalted and affecting sentiment. Virtue and truth, and purity of intellect and heart, break out at every word. To these strains who can deny poetical invention? What definition of poetry can be given, by which this Mask can be excluded from a very high place? Is it not everywhere either brilliant and picturesque or lofty fiction? It is said that the characters have no passion; but how is passion a necessary ingredient of poetry? Poetry must create; but it may create beings of tranquil beauty, and calm exaltation. Cavillers say, that the Brothers ought not to philosophise, while the Sister is left alone in the dangers of a solitary forest: but their faith in a protecting Providence will not allow them to think her in great danger. It may be replied that this is an improbable degree of faith. Is it a poetical improbability? It seems as if such censors think that nothing must be represented which does not occur in every-day life. Poetry is literally, and to all extent, the reverse of this.

Minor bards may give occasional touches of outward poetry by illustrations of imagery and description; but the whole structure and soul of Milton's "Comus " is poetry: not the dress, but the intrinsic spirit, and the essence. The characters of the Attendant Spirit, and of Comus, are exquisite inventions. What is copied from observation, is not always poetry; therefore Dryden and Pope were very often not poets.

There are numerous ideas implanted in our nature, which are not bodily truths, but imaginative truths: even single epithets convey these, as is shown by every part of "Comus," while picturesque words point out the leading features of every rural object. No such words ever appear in Dryden or Pope, unless they are borrowed. Their descriptions are general and vague: they convey fine sounds, but no precise ideas. The true poet cannot avoid seeing: images haunt him; he cannot get rid of them: he does not call up his memory to produce empty words, but he draws from the visionary shapes before him.

While Milton was framing the "Comus," he, no doubt, lived in the midst of his own creation: he only clothed the tongues of his characters with what it appeared to him in his vision they actually spoke.

CHAPTER VII.

ON THE ARCADES.

THE "Arcades" was a Mask, which was part of an entertainment presented to Alice Spencer, Countess Dowager of Derby, and afterwards widow of Lord Chancellor Egerton, at Harefield in Middlesex, and acted by some noble persons of her family.

This celebrated lady was daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorp, who was then one of the richest commoners of England. Her first husband, Earl Ferdinando, was a most accomplished nobleman, who died in the flower of his age;-it is supposed by poison, because he would not enter into the plots of the Jesuits to claim the crown from Queen Elizabeth, on account of his royal descent; for which see the famous volume, called " Dolman's Conference," written by Parsons the Jesuit, and see also Hallam, and Hargrave.