Miltons Comus | Page 2

while, therefore, to consider how its form was determined by the external circumstances and previous training of the poet; by his favourite studies in poetry, philosophy, history, and music; and by his noble theory of life in general, and of a poet's life in particular.
The mask was represented at Ludlow Castle on September 29th, 1634; it was probably composed early in that year. It belongs, therefore, to that group of poems (_L'Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, _Arcades_, _Comus_, and _Lycidas_) written by Milton while living in his father's house at Horton, near Windsor, after having left the University of Cambridge in July, 1632. As he was born in 1608, he would be twenty-five years of age when this poem was composed. During his stay at Horton (1632-39), which was broken only by a journey to Italy in 1638-9, he was chiefly occupied with the study of the Greek, Roman, Italian, and English literatures, each of which has left its impress on _Comus_. He read widely and carefully, and it has been said that his great and original imagination was almost entirely nourished, or at least stimulated, by books: his residence at Horton was, accordingly, pre-eminently what he intended it to be, and what his father wisely and gladly permitted it to be--a time of preparation and ripening for the work to which he had dedicated himself. We are reminded of his own words in _Comus_:
And Wisdom's self?Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,?Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,?She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,?That, in the various bustle of resort,?Were all to-ruffled, and sometimes impaired.
We find in _Comus_ abundant reminiscences of Milton's study of the literature of antiquity. "It would not be too much to say that the literature of antiquity was to Milton's genius what soil and light are to a plant. It nourished, it coloured, it developed it. It determined not merely his character as an artist, but it exercised an influence on his intellect and temper scarcely less powerful than hereditary instincts and contemporary history. It at once animated and chastened his imagination; it modified his fancy; it furnished him with his models. On it his taste was formed; on it his style was moulded. From it his diction and his method derived their peculiarities. It transformed what would in all probability have been the mere counterpart of Caedmon's Paraphrase or Langland's Vision into Paradise Lost; and what would have been the mere counterpart of Corydon's Doleful Knell and the satire of the Three Estates, into Lycidas and Comus." (_Quarterly Review_, No. 326.)
But Milton has also told us that Spenser was his master, and the full charm of _Comus_ cannot be realised without reference to the artistic and philosophical spirit of the author of the _Faerie Queene_. Both poems deal with the war between the body and the soul--between the lower and the higher nature. In an essay on 'Spenser as a philosophic poet,' De Vere says: "The perils and degradations of an animalised life are shown under the allegory of Sir Guyon's sea voyage with its successive storms and whirlpools, its 'rock of Reproach' strewn with wrecks and dead men's bones, its 'wandering islands,' its 'quicksands of Unthriftihead,' its 'whirlepoole of Decay,' its 'sea-monsters,' and lastly, its 'bower of Bliss,' and the doom which overtakes it, together with the deliverance of Acrasia's victims, transformed by that witch's spells into beasts. Still more powerful is the allegory of worldly ambition, illustrated under the name of 'the cave of Mammon.' The Legend of Holiness delineates with not less insight those enemies which wage war upon the spiritual life." All this Milton had studied in the _Faerie Queene_, and had understood it; and, like Sir Guyon, he felt himself to be a knight enrolled under the banner of Parity and Self-Control. So that, in _Comus_, we find the sovereign value of Temperance or Self-Regulation--what the Greeks called +s?phrosynê+--set forth no less clearly than in Spenser's poem: in Milton's mask it becomes almost identical with Virtue itself. The enchantments of Acrasia in her Bower of Bliss become the spells of Comus; the armour of Belphoebe becomes the "complete steel" of Chastity; while the supremacy of Conscience, the bounty of Nature and man's ingratitude, the unloveliness of Mammon and of Excess, the blossom of Courtesy oft found on lowly stalk, and the final triumph of Virtue through striving and temptation, all are dwelt upon.
It is the mind that maketh good or ill,?That maketh wretch or happie, rich or poore:
so speaks Spenser; and Milton similarly--
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.
In endeavouring still further to trace, by means of verbal or structural resemblances, the sources