for the construction of a world of its own, we cannot gaze without wonder at that proud magnificence of intellect which, rushing like some mighty river through extended lakes and receiving into its bosom the contributory waters of a thousand regions, preserves its course, its name, and its character entire. With Milton, from whatever mine the ore may originally be derived, the coin issues from his mint with his own image and superscription; and passes into currency with a value peculiar to itself. To speak accurately, the mind of Shakspeare could not create; and that of Milton invented with equal or with nearly equal power and effect. If we admit in the "Tempest," or the "Midsummer's Night's Dream," a higher flight of the inventive faculty, we must allow a less interrupted stretch of it in the Comus. In this poem there may be something which might have been corrected by the revising judgment of its author: but its errors, in thought or in language, are so few and trivial that they must be regarded as the inequality of the plumage, and not as the depression or the unsteadiness of the wing. The most splendid results of Shakspeare's poetry are still pressed and separated by some interposing defect: but the poetry of the Comus may be contemplated as a series of gems strung on golden wire, where the sparkle shoots along the line with scarcely the intervention of a single opake spot.

This exquisite piece has been pronounced to be undramatic: the mode in which its story is opened has been censured as absurd; and its

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speeches have been condemned as too long, too nicely balanced, and too tediously" moral for the production of stage-interest. With reference to our theatre, though even on our stage Comus 50 has been more than tolerated, these censures may be admitted as just. But Milton when he wrote his Masque had no view to the modern scene; and, writing for one specific object and in a peculiar walk of composition, he might feel himself to be liberated from many of those rules which adapt the regular drama to the attainment of its ends. He knew that a Masque was an entertainment addressed immediately and solely to the imagination; that it was the appropriate organ of fancy; and, while it presented pleasing and striking images to the mind, that it affected no controll over the passions nor any rigid observance of poetic truth. By him it was made the vehicle of pure poetry carrying the most sublime morality in her embrace, and solicitous, not to agitate, but to amuse, exalt, and refine. He has observed, however, with considerable fidelity, the practice of the Grecian dramatists; and, when he unfolds the story of his scene in a speech delivered in the solitude of a wild wood (and this certainly is the most reprehensible circumstance in the conduct of his fable), he is guilty only of the same trespass against common seuse which his favorite Euripides has frequently committed. The length and even poise of the speeches in Comus are, also, formed on the same

5o Comus was acted at Drury Lane, in March, 1738, with much applause for several successive nights.

model; and, when we recollect how often the dialogue on the Athenian stage is conducted through an entire scene in replies and retorts consisting each of a single line, we shall not be surprised at the same short and equally measured conversation when it occurs between Comus and the Lady.

It seems impossible for poetry to go beyond her excursions in "this wilderness of sweets.' She treads sometimes on the very fearful and giddy edge of a precipice; and, while we admire her boldness, we are doubtful of her safety. In that exquisite passage

How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smiled,

if our rapture would suffer us to be sufficiently composed to consult our reason, we might, perhaps, justly question the propriety of the length to which the poet's fancy has carried him. Darkness may aptly be represented by the blackness of the raven; and the stillness of that darkness may be paralleled by an image borrowed from the object of another sense-by the softness of down; but it is surely a transgression, which stands in need of pardon, when, proceeding a step further and accumulating personifications, we invest this raven-down with life and make it to smile. Another passage, which represents the effect of the Lady's singing with a different allusion, is not liable to any objection, and is altogether admirable:

At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound
Rose, like a steam of rich distill'd perfumes,
And stole upon the air.

Henry Lawes the musician, who composed the music for this poem and who was himself no indifferent poet, acted the part of the attendant Spirit, and was designed in that piece under the character of Thyrsis

Whose artful strains have oft delay'd

The huddling brook to hear his madrigal.

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He was retained as a domestic in the Earl of Bridgewater's family, where he was the musical instructor of the Lady Alice. He was the friend of Waller, and the theme of his Muse: but this composer's most distinguishing honors are derived from his connexion with the Comus, and its author. Of the former of these he was the first publisher 51, and by the latter he was made an object of particular regard, of high and specific panegyric 52. In his dedication of the first edition of Comus, to the Lord Brackley who had represented the elder brother, Lawes speaks of the work as not openly acknowledged by its author; and the motto, undoubtedly prefixed to it by Milton itself,

Eheu! quid volui misero mihi! floribus Austrum
Perditus,

Ah! what could I intend! undone, I find
My flowers submitted to the withering wind,

elegantly and happily intimates the sensibility of a young writer trembling on the edge of the

51 In 1657.

52 See Milton's 13th Sonnet.

press, and fearful lest the tenderness of his blossoms should be blighted by the breath of the public 53.

The Lycidas was written, as there is reason to believe, at the solicitation of the author's College, to commemorate the death of Mr. Edward King, one of its fellows, and a son of Sir John King, Knt. Secretary for Ireland in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. This young man, whose vessel 54 foundered, as she was sailing from Chester to Ireland, in a calm sea and not far from land, was so highly esteemed by the whole University, for his learning, piety, and talents, that his death was deplored as a public loss, and Cambridge invited her Muses to celebrate and lament him. In the collection of poems, which was published on this occasion in 1638, Milton's Lycidas occupies the last and, as it was no doubt intended to be, the most honorable place.

53 From a letter of our author's to his friend, Alex. Gill, dated Dec. 4, 1634, we find that in the same year, in which the poet finished Comus, he made that version of the 114th Psalm into Greek hexameters, which he afterwards published with his other poems. It was thrown off, as he tells his correspondent, without any thought or intention of mind, and as it were with some sudden and strange impulse, before day-light in his bed. "Nullo certè animi proposito, sed subito nescio quo impetu, ante lucis exortum, ad Græci carminis heroici legem, in lectulo ferè concinnabam." Epis. fam. 5.

54 I will here rectify an inaccuracy in Mr. Warton's relation of the shipwreck of Mr. King. Mr. W. says, "When in calm weather, not far from the English coast, the ship, a very crazy vessel, a fatal and perfidious bark, struck on a rock, and suddenly sunk to the bottom with all that were on board, not one escaping." [See Milton's Juven. Poems, 2d ed. p. 38.] A more correct account of this disaster, given by Hogg, who in 1694 published a Latin translation, or rather paraphrase of the Lycidas, informs us that several escaped in the boat from the sinking vessel; but that Mr. King and some others, fatally unmoved by the importunities of their associates, continued on board and perished. This melancholy event happened on the 10th of August, 1637.