I see ye visibly, and now believe

That He, the Supreme good, t' whom all things ill
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,

Would send a glistering guardian, if need were,
To keep my life and honour unassail'd.
Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

I did not err; there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove."1

She calls her brothers in "a soft and solemn-breathing
sound," which "rose like a steam of rich distill'd per-
fumes, and stole upon the air," 2 across the "violet-em-
broider'd vale," to the dissolute god whom she enchants.
He comes disguised as a "gentle shepherd," and says:
"Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould
Breathe such divine, enchanting ravishment?
Sure something holy lodges in that breast,
And with these raptures moves the vocal air
To testify his hidden residence.

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! I have oft heard
My mother Circe with the syrens three,
Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades,

Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs;
Who, as they sung, would take the prison'd soul,

And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept,

And chid her barking waves into attention. .
But such a sacred and home-felt delight,

Such sober certainty of waking bliss,

I never heard till now."3

1 Comus, l. 213–225.

Ibid. l. 555-557.

• Ibid. 1. 244–264.

They were heavenly songs which Comus heard; Milton describes, and at the same time imitates them; he makes us understand the saying of his master Plato, that virtuous melodies teach virtue.

Circe's son has by deceit carried off the noble lady, and seats her, with "nerves all chained up," in a sumptuous palace before a table spread with all dainties. She accuses him, resists, insults him, and the style assumes an air of heroical indignation, to scorn the offer of the tempter.

"When lust,

By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts;
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp,
Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres
Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loth to leave the body that it loved."1

"A cold shuddering dew dips all o'er" Comus; he presents a cup of wine; at the same instant the brothers, led by the attendant Spirit, rush upon him with swords drawn. He flees, carrying off his magic wand. Το free the enchanted lady, they summon Sabrina, the benevolent naiad, who sits

"Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,

In twisted braids of lilies knitting

The loose train of thy (her) amber-dropping hair."2

The "goddess of the silver lake" rises lightly from her

1 Comus, l. 463-473. It is the elder brother who utters these lines when speaking of his sister-TR.

VOL. IL

Ibid. l. 861-863.

coral-paven bed," and her chariot "of turkis blue and emerald-green," sets her down

"By the rushy-fringed bank,

Where grows the willow, and the osier dank."1

Sprinkled by this cool and chaste hand, the lady leaves the "venom'd seat" which held her spell-bound; the brothers, with their sister, reign peacefully in their father's palace; and the Spirit, who has conducted all, pronounces this ode, in which poetry leads up to philosophy; the voluptuous light of an Oriental legend beams on the Elysium of the good, and all the splendours of nature assemble to render virtue more seductive.

"To the ocean now I fly,

And those happy climes that lie
Where day never shuts his eye
Up in the broad fields of the sky :
There I suck the liquid air

All amidst the gardens fair

Of Hesperus, and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree:
Along the crisped shades and bowers
Revels the spruce and jocund spring;
The Graces, and the rosy-bosom'd Hours,
Thither all their bounties bring;

There eternal Summer dwells,

And west winds, with musky wing,

About the cedar'n alleys fling

Nard and cassia's balmy smells.

Iris there with humid bow

Waters the odorous banks, that blow

Flowers of more mingled hew

Than her purfled scarf can shew;

1 Comus, l. 890.

And drenches with Elysian dew

(List, mortals, if your ears be true)
Beds of hyacinth and roses,
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound
In slumber soft; and on the ground
Sadly sits the Assyrian queen :
But far above in spangled sheen
Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced
Holds his dear Psyche sweet entranced
After her wandering labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal bride,
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn.
But now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly, or I can run

Quickly to the green earth's end,

Where the bow'd welkin slow doth bend;
And from thence can soar as soon

To the corners of the moon.
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."1

Ought I to have pointed out the awkwardnesses, strangenesses, exaggerated expressions, the inheritance of the Renaissance, a philosophical quarrel, the work of a reasoner and a Platonist? I did not perceive these faults. All was effaced before the spectacle of the bright Comus, l. 976-1023.

Renaissance, transformed by austere philosophy, and of sublimity worshipped upon an altar of flowers.

That, I think, was his last profane poem. Already, in the one which followed, Lycidas, celebrating in the style of Virgil the death of a beloved friend,' he suffers Puritan wrath and prepossessions to shine through, inveighs against the bad teaching and tyranny of the bishops, and speaks of " that two-handed engine at the door, ready to smite (but) once, and smite no more." On his return from Italy, controversy and action carried him away; prose begins, poetry is arrested. From time to time a patriotic or religious sonnet breaks the long silence; now to praise the chief Puritans, Cromwell, Vane, Fairfax; now to celebrate the death of a pious lady, or the life of a "virtuous young lady;" once to pray God "to avenge his slaughter'd saints," the unhappy Protestants of Piedmont, "whose bones lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold;" again, on his second wife, dead a year after their marriage, his wellbeloved" saint ""brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave, came, vested all in white, pure as her mind;" loyal friendships, sorrows bowed to or subdued, aspirations generous or stoical, which reverses did but purify. Old age came; cut off from power, action, even hope, he returned to the grand dreams of his youth. As of old, he went out of this lower world in search of the sublime; for the actual is petty, and the familiar seems dull. He selects his new characters on the verge of sacred antiquity, as he selected his old ones on the verge of fabulous antiquity, because distance adds to their stature; and habit, ceasing to measure, ceases also to depreciate them. Just now we had creatures of fancy:

...

1 Edward King died in 1637.