passed his hours in converse with the mighty dead, or with the wise and virtuous living; while, unmolested by any agitating or painful passions, he penetrated science with his intellect or traversed fairy regions with his fancy, he enjoyed an interval of happiness on which, amid the asperities of his later years, he must frequently have looked back with emotions nearly similar to those of the traveller, who, wandering over the moors of Lapland and beaten by an arctic storm, reflects on the blue skies, the purple clusters, and the fragrant orange groves of Italy. To this favored period of our author's life are we indebted for some of the most exquisite productions of his genius. The Comus, in 1634, and the Lycidas, in 1637, were unquestionably written at Horton; and there is the strongest internal evidence to prove that the Arcades, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso were also composed in this rural scene and this season of delightful leisure. It is probable, indeed, that the composition of the "Arcades" preceded that of the Comus;" as the Countess Dowager of Derby 45, for whom it was written, seems, from her residence at Harefield in the vicinity of Horton, and from her double alliance with the family of Eger 66 45 Alice, Countess Dowager of Derby, was the sixth daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe in Northamptonshire, and married Lord Strange, who by the death of his father in 1594 became Earl of Derby, and died in the following year. She afterwards married the Lord Chancellor Egerton, who died in 1617: her daughter, Frances, married the chancellor's son, John Earl of Bridgewater, Lord President of Wales. She was of the same family with Spenser the poet; and had been his patroness and his theme of praise before she was celebrated by the Muse of Milton. ton, to have been the connecting link between the author and the Earl of Bridgewater, the immediate patron of Comus. These pieces have been so frequently made the subjects of critical remark, that a long suspension of our narrative would not be compensated by any novelty in the observations which could be offered on them. The Arcades 47 is 45. The Earl of Bridgewater was the proprietor also of Horton. 47 I am rather surprised that Mr. Warton, who, with his brother commentators, frequently detects imitation in a single and sometimes not an uncommon word, should omit to notice, in the speech of the Genius, an open trespass on the property of Shakspeare. The Genius says, I see bright honor sparkle in your eyes: and Helena, in "All's well that ends well," addressing one of the young lords, from whom she was to select her husband, uses nearly the same expression The honor, sir, which flames in your fair eyes, The readers of Milton's juvenile poetry are under considerable obligations to Mr. Warton; but this gentleman, like other commentators, sometimes employs much perverse ingenuity in making what is plain obscure, what is good bad. Accumulating passages, in a note on verse 81 of this piece And so attend ye on her glittering state, to prove that the word "state" was used by our old poets to express that particular part of the royal apparatus, a canopy (in not one of which passages, by the bye, may "state" be considered as possessing any meaning different from what would be assigned to it by a modern poet), he tells us that in this sense (of canopy), is "state," to be understood in the description of the swan in the 7th book of Paradise Lost: The swan with arched neck Between her white wings mantling, proudly rows i. e. the swan with arched neck, between the mantling of her white wings, proudly rows her canopy (her head and bent neck), with her feet for oars. Having established this sense of the passage, he very properly accuses the great poet of an affected and unnatural conceit!!! If this be not ingenuity become mad, mischievous, and dull-I will appeal, from the black letter critics, to all the readers of taste, "From old Bellerium to the northern main." evidently nothing more than the poetic part of an entertainment, the bulk of which was formed of prose dialogue and machinery. But, whatever portion it constituted of the piece, it was of sufficient consequence to impart a value to the whole; and it discovers a kindred though inferior lustre to that richest produce of the mines of fancy, the dramatic poem of Comus. The Masque of Comus was acted before the Earl of Bridgewater, the president of Wales, in 1634, at Ludlow Castle; and the characters of the Lady and the two Brothers were represented by the Lady Alice Egerton, then about thirteen years of age, and her two brothers, Lord Brackley and the Hon. Thomas Egerton, who were still younger. The story of this piece is said to have been suggested by the circumstance of the Lady Alice having been separated from her company in the night and having wandered for some time by herself in the forest of Haywood, as she was returning from a distant visit to meet her father, on his taking possession of his newly intrusted sceptre. On this small base of fact a most sumptuous and beautiful edifice of fancy has been constructed. Comus (KOMOZ, compotatio convivialis, as it is rendered by Stephens), had been personified by Philostratus 49, the historian of Apollonius of 48 See Warton's note on Comus, (1. 34.) referring to the authority of a MS. by Oldys. 49 Ο δαιμων ὁ Κῶμος, παρ' ου τὸ κωμάζειν εν ἀνθρώποις, ἐφέσηκεν ἐν θαλάμω Jugais, &c.-Philostra. Icon. 3. Mr. Warton has anticipated me in this reference to the Icones of Philostratus; a circumstance of which I was not aware when I made it. But I Tyana; and the jolly God had been already introduced upon our stage, in a Masque, by Ben Jonson: but it remained for Milton to develope his form and character, to give him a lineage and an empire, and to make him the hero of the most exquisite dramatic poem, which, perhaps, the genius of man has ever produced. Among the compositions of our own country, it certainly stands unrivalled for its affluence in poetic imagery and diction; and, as an effort of the creative power, it can be paralleled only by the Muse of Shakspeare, by whom in this respect it is possibly exceeded. With Shakspeare the whole, excepting some rude outlines or suggestions of the story, is the cite this author, as the only one, within the pale of the classics, in whose page I can discover any distinct personification of Comus. In the former editions of the present work, I concurred with Mr. W. in thinking that Comus was personified by Eschylus in a passage of the Agamemnon. I have since, however, been convinced of my mistake in this instance; and am now satisfied that xos, in the place in question, is to be construed in connexion with σvyyóvwv givvwv, and means a revelling band (an idea which no one word in our language will adequately express) of the kindred Furies. Though thus taken from our immediate purpose, the passage, to which we refer in the Agamemnon, shall yet be cited, and a corrected translation of it be subjoined. For my present right view of it, I stand indebted to the sagacity and the accurate erudition of my son, John Sym inons. Τὴν γας στέγην τὴν δ ̓ ἔποτ ̓ ἐκλέιπει χορὸς Πρώταρχον ἄτην The band of Furies, with their voices tuned In dreadful harmony, shall never quit These fatal walls: and now, with human blood Drunk and made wild, here sport the kindred Fiends In a fell masque, rejoicing to destroy: And, still the baleful inmates of this house, With notes of horror and Tartarean din, Sing the first crime of this devoted race. immediate emanation of his own mind: but Milton's erudition precluded him from this extreme originality; and was perpetually supplying him with thoughts, which would sometimes obtain the preference from his judgment, and would sometimes be mistaken for her own property by his invention. Original, however, he is; and, of all the sons of song, inferior in this requisite of genius to Shakspeare alone. Neither of these wonderful men was so far privileged above his species as to possess other means of acquiring knowledge than through the inlets of the senses, and by the subsequent operations of the mind on this first mass of ideas. The most exalted of human intelligences cannot form one mental phantasm uncompounded of this visible world. Neither Shakspeare nor Milton could conceive a sixth corporeal sense, or a creature absolutely distinct from the inhabitants of our earth. A Caliban or an Ariel, a demon or an angel are only several compositions and modifications of our animal creation; and heaven and hell can be built with nothing more than our terrestrial elements, newly arranged and variously combined. The distinction, therefore, between one human intelligence and another must be occasioned solely by the different degrees of clearness, force, and quickness with which it perceives, retains, and combines. On the superiority in these mental faculties, it would be difficult to decide between those extraordinary men who are the immediate subjects of our remark: for if we are astonished at that power which, from a single spot as it were, could collect sufficient materials |