Perhaps she will visit the poet on some hot summerday in the dark shade of sylvan solitude

,where no profaner eye may look," and let there

,,the waters murmuring,

With such concert as they keep,

Entice the dewy - feather'd sleep."

But nowhere does that thoughtful and serene Goddess rule more supreme than in the solemn stillness of the College cloisters; these the poet loves to pace rapt in deep meditation by the

,,antique pillars massy proof

And storied windows richly dight

Casting a dim religious light;"

and there he listens with devout attention to the pealing organ and full-voic'd choir. And may he in his old age pass from such places and scenes to some peaceful hermitage

,,till old experience do attain

To something like prophetic strain.“

It was a strange coincidence that the great Puritan poet wrote the last and by far the most beautiful of the dramatic entertainments so much in fashion at court and

among the cavaliers, viz. the Masks. Comus was written in the year 1634.) The Mask is the darling child of the English Renaissance; the pastoral drama of Italy with its mythological and allegorical allusions fostered its growth at the English court where noble lords and fine ladies liked to appear in mummeries in which splendid scenery, gay costumes, music, dancing, and poetry combined to produce a most striking effect. The greatest poet of the time, Ben Jonson, had to stoop to gratify the prevailing taste for these decorative representations, for which Inigo Jones himself could not refuse to construct the machinery. Milton, himself no mean musician, happened to be on terms of friendly intimacy with Henry Lawes, at that time the most celebrated composer of England. Lawes had been asked by the Earl of Bridgewater to furnish some music for the celebration of the noble earl's entry upon his office as President of Wales, a festival to be held at Ludlow Castle. The musician applied to his friend to write the words, and Milton produced the Mask which was performed by the children of the earl themselves. Maiden chastity triumphing over all temptation is the subject of the noble poem, the sweet loveliness, purity, and moral beauty of which forms the most striking contrast to the fierce and guilty passions represented in the contemporaneous dramas.

In a wild wood near Ludlow Castle in the West of England an Attendant Spirit appears, the tutelary genius of the children of the Earl of Bridgewater, who have lost themselves in the forest on their way home from the court in the darkness of the falling night. The bright aërial spirit explains his mission in a kind of prologue addressed to the spectators. He has descended to the earth to protect innocence from the wiles and temptations of Comus, the son of Bacchus and Circe, a sensual spirit who keeps his revels in these woods with a troop of strange monsters. These were once human beings, but by making them drink of a charmed cup he transformed them in such a manner that they carry on their human bodies the heads of wild beasts, and in this guise

,,they all their friends and native home forget,

To roll with pleasure in a sensual stye."

And in order better to protect the unwary wanderer the kind Attendant Spirit takes off

and puts on the

,,his sky-robes, spun out of Iris' woof

,weeds and likeness of a swain

That to the service of this house belongs,

Who with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied song

Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar."

With this prologue we enter into the world of pure poetry which was once opened up by Shakspeare in his Tempest and his Midsummernight's Dream, with which works Milton's Comus deserves to be ranked.

The merry god now enters with his charming-rod and his magic cup, followed by the riotous train of his revelers, singing of the sweet pleasures of love and wine and jollity, and summons elves and fairies to the ghostly dance,

,,Ere the blabbing eastern scout,

The nice morn, on the Indian steep
From her cabin'd loop-hole peep,

And to the tell-tale sun descry
Our conceal'd solemnity."

But soon they break off their dances and hide themselves in the bushes, for the Lady appears the lovely and innocent daughter of the Earl, now belated and lost in the forest and deserted moreover by her two brothers who have left her in search of the right way out of the wilderness. She feels the horror of the place, and all those shapes that used to haunt her childish fancy, throng around her, but she relies on God and her maiden innocence:

„O welcome, pure-eyed faith, white-handed hope,

Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings."

And to keep in heart amidst the terrors of the night she sings a song which perhaps her brothers may chance to hear, addressed to kind Echo the

,,sweet queen of parley, daughter of the sphere."

And now Comus stepping forth in the guise of a shepherd pretends to be enraptured with her accents ,,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!"

The maid asks after her brothers. He declares that he saw two youths in the forest whom he took for some gods; to these he offers to conduct her, and she trusting him accepts his, guidance.

Now the two brothers appear, youths of genuine nobility of soul, and express their anxiety about their sister; but the Elder Brother takes confidence in her goodness and virtue

,,He that has light within his own clear breast,

May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day;

But he, that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;

Himself is his own dungeon."

The younger brother however only sees the dangers to which her beauty will expose her; the elder believes in the hidden strength of chastity; a pure virgin is as safe as if she were armed with the Aegis of Pallas. Their discussion is interrupted by the appearance of the Attendant Spirit in the garb of Thyrsis, one of the shepherds on their father's estate. He tells them of the great danger

their sister is running from Comus and his cup; he describes the wild noise of the rout of the wanton god, but he adds that he also heard the singing of their sister.

,,At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound

Rose like a steam of rich distill'd perfumes,

And stole upon the air.

And, o poor hapless nightingale, thought I,

How sweet thou sing'st, how near the deadly snare!"

And he tells them that Comus has led their sister to his palace and will there force her to drink of his cup. But he knows of a charm to resist the power of Comus, a precious root which will allow them to brave the enchanter's spell; and thus armed they start in search of the enemy.

The scene now changes. The palace of Comus appears before us, tables are spread with all dainties, a soft music is heard; the Lady is seen sitting in an enchanted chair, the rout of Comus crowds around her, and the jolly god himself presses her to drink of his delicious cup which will refresh her, he says, after the toilsome journey. But she spurns him, because he has lied to her,

,,none

But such as are good men can give good things."

The discussion which follows between them is somewhat cold and more like a debate in the schools full of learned argument and close reasoning. Comus speaks on the side of Epicurean philosophy; the Lady argues like a Stoic and a Christian. Comus speaking in favour of sensual enjoyment maintains that we honour God best by making use of his gifts; for this reason beauty should also be enjoyed and made common, not hoarded up and hidden. The Lady refutes such fallacies; one of her arguments being that the luxury of the few means the want of the many

Comus however persists in forcing his cup upon her, when suddenly the brothers of the lady rush in with drawn swords, snatch the glass out of his hand, and break it on the ground; Comus and his rout make a show of resistance, but are soon driven out. But before leaving Comus touched the lady with his wand; so that she now sits spell-bound and lifeless. Again the Attendant Spirit comes to the rescue. Only a virgin, he says, can break the spell which binds a virgin; and so he proposes to call to her assistance a fair and stainless maiden, Sabrina, grand-daughter of Brute, the old king of the Britons. Harassed by her wicked step-mother Guendolen she had once drowned herself in the river Severn, but the waternymphs having revived her, she still lives as the kind guardian-spirit of that river, the favourite of the innocent country people who

Her the Attendant Spirit conjures up from the deep in beautiful invocation, and she appears,

,,For maidenhood she loves and will be swift

To aid a virgin, such as was herself."

She succeeds in releasing the Lady from her trance; the Spirit now offers to take her away from this dangerous neighbourhood and to bring her safely home to her parents. The scene represents Ludlow Castle, where the Spirit finally restores the recovered children to their parents

,,Heaven hath timely tried their youth,
Their faith, their patience, and their truth,
And sent them here through hard assays
With a crown of deathless praise.

To triumph in victorious dance

O'er sensual folly and intemperance."

The dances being ended the benignant Spirit takes a gracious leave bestowing his blessings on the reunited family in verses which through their sweet freshness and rustic charm call to mind Puck's epilogue in the Midsummernight's Dream. He finishes the piece with an exhortation to love virtue which has proved victorious over impurity und intemperance:

,,Mortals that would follow me,
Love virtue, she alone is free;
She can teach thee how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;

Or if virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her."

Lycidas marks perhaps the high tide of Miltons poetry; it appeared in 1637_on the eve of the outbreak of the great national struggle. The poet still adopts the fiction of shepherd life, his verses are still sweet with the charms of the sights and sounds and smells of the country, but a sterner mood begins to appear revealing the mighty passion that is stirring in him.

The poem is a monody or dirge on the death of Milton's college friend Edward King, a young clergyman who was drowned in a rotten ship on his passage from Chester to Ireland off the coast of North Wales in 1637.

Having in the character of a fellow shepherd, lamented over the loss of his friend, with whom he was,,nursed on the self-same hill", he complains of the tragical lot of fame--loving men,,Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise

(That last infirmity of noble minds)

To scorn delights and live laborious days:

But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,

And think to burst out into sudden blaze,

Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life."

And Then follows that wonderful passage in which he introduces St. Peter bewailing the death of his shepherd, whom he could ill spare at a time when so many hirelings

,,for their bellies' sake

Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold."

And now the poet describes the corrupted state of the English church in burning words, showing how the clergy look on indifferently how their flocks,,rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread", whilst at the same time the Church of Rome encroaches daily on the Protestant church

,,Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw

Daily devours apace, and nothing said."

The passage ends with a strange and awful allusion to future revenge; the horror the words inspire is enhanced by their obscurity; but for us who know what followed the death of Strafford and Laud and the King, these two lines have all the force and reality of the predictions of the Hebrew prophets,

,,But that two-handed engine at the door

Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."

But this burst of fierce passion in the poem passes like a sudden squall, and then the poet heaps the sweetest springflowers of hill and dale on the head of his departed friend, but alas! in the meantime the body of Lycidas is wafted along by dolphins. At last, however, Milton rouses himself out of his grief; his friend lives still, like the evening star he set in the sea, like the morning star he will rise from the ocean,,through the dear might of him that walked the waves“. With this comfort the poet ends his lament, and as the soldiers follow the bier of a fallen hero with the sound of muffled drums, but return from his grave with stirring martial music, so the poet at last rises with fresh hope and renewed strength to betake himself

,,to-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new!so

Luisenschule 1886.

2

a

but nearly thirty years were to pass, before this promise was fulfilled; between 1637 and 1667 between the appearance of Lycidas and of Paradise Lost, there is a gulf, great revolution lies between which overthrew the kingdom of Charles and the Commonwealth of Cromwell, and changed the whole tenor and harmony of Milton's life, transforming the bright and genial youth of widest sympathies into a stern and austere old man with burning love and hate, his thoughts and feelings running in a narrow but deep channel with a fierce and irresistible current. We will try to trace this wonderful transformation. It was on his Italian journey when he contrasted the state of Roman Catholic Europe with that of England, that Milton became proudly conscious of the political and religious independence of his own country and that he fully awoke to the danger of that oppression with which the Stuarts threatened its ancient liberties. A foreign tour was to complete that scheme of self-education and preparation for some great task which the poet had laid down for himself. His father generously made the heavy pecuniary sacrifice which such a journey at that time imposed. Milton left England in April 1638, passing through Paris, Nice, and Genoa, and spent the months of August and September in Florence. Though the sun of the great Italian Renaissance had set, the sky was still glowing in all the glorious tints of a magnificent sunset. Milton had read all the great Italian authors of the past, he even spoke and wrote the sweet Tuscan language with facility, nay he was able to write Italian sonnets which the polite scholars of Florence admired. His eye drank in the loveliness of Italian scenery and the luxuriance of southern vegetation, his ear was ravished with the mellow charms of the poetry and music of the compatriots of Tasso, but not for a moment did he deny the lofty independence of the Englishman and the protestant, nay he could hardly be restrained from giving utterance to his contempt and hate of popery under the eyes of the Roman inquisition. In Florence he saw the most famous victim of the tyranny of the Jesuits Galileo, blind, old and infirm, but in full possession of his faculties; at Naples he was introduced to the aged Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa, the patron and biographer of Tasso. Milton returned to England by Venice and Geneva in August 1639.

2. The great Rebellion and the Commonwealth, Milton estranged from Poetry 1639-1660.

The condition of his country engrossed Milton's whole attention, nay he had returned on purpose to take a share in the great struggle which he felt to be at hand. The despotism under which England had lain prostrate since 1629 was on the point of breaking down. The Scotch rebellion had forced Charles to appeal for help to his people; after a lapse of II years England saw once more a parliament assembled Nov. 1640 —, then the great struggle for power began. The revenge of the people fell on the instruments of the tyranny, Strafford and Laud, and the attempt of the King to abolish the old constitutional liberty of the English people was answered by the successful attempt of Parliament to cancel the old constitutional prerogatives of the Crown. The King finding his legitimate authority attacked, appealed to arms and the Civil War began in 1642. The Puritans were victorious on the battlefield, but it proved impossible t stop on the inclined plane of political and religious revolution; the partisans of a limite