THE COMUS OF MILTON.

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BY REV. J. N. DANFORTH.

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Genius, in whatever age of the world it has appeared, has commanded the respect and homage of mankind. Mind, in every stage of development, and in every altitude of attainment, must be an object of profound interest to mind. When, therefore, a mind of so high an order as that of John Milton, appears before men, the fact constitutes an era in the history of intellect and imagination, and all the productions of such a mind are scanned and studied with a diligence proportioned to the dignity and fame of the author. The principal monument or statue in honor of the departed, of course attracts the most profound contemplation, but around it the genius of the artist may have wrought some beautiful adjunct figures, worthy of their share of admiration. Thus, while the Paradise Lost stands in superior beauty and grandeur, a fitting monument of the transcendent mind of the author, there are minor productions of the same imagination, which are finely conceived, and exquisitely wrought. Among these may be mentioned Comus, a “Mask,” or Dialogue composed in dramatic form with no particular attention to rules or probabilities, and therefore affording the imagination of the poet considerable freedom in the exercise of its pencil. This was one of the earliest productions of the muse of Milton, one in the progress of which he tried the strength of those pinions, which were destined to bear him beyond this ‘visible diurnal sphere,’ into those spiritual and sublime regions, till then unknown to the adventurous flight of the poet. Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, declares this to be “the greatest of his juvenile performances, in which may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise Lost.” The characters are six only in number, the Attendant Spirit, Comus and his crew, a Virgin Lady, her two brothers, and Sabrina, a nymph.—The scene is a wild-wood, and the poem opens with a long soliloquy from the attendant spirit, followed by the entrance of the wizard Comus, and the strange, unearthly beings of monstrous forms, now encountered by the lady, who has lost her way in the woods, and who is subjected to the severe trial of their foul incantations. The two brothers set forth in pursuit of their lost sister, and succeed in finding her, happy that she has survived unharmed, all the arts of the wicked and the seductive.

Sabrina, the “goddess of the silver lake,” is invoked, and rises out of the “cool, translucent wave,” chiefly to confer a crowning grace upon the scene and afford further opportunity for the exercise of the imaginative powers of the poet. There can be said to be little plan, or intention of plan or plot about the piece. But whatever may be wanting in beauty or ingenuity of design, is amply compensated by the sterling value of the thoughts, the exquisite character of the imagery, the richness of the coloring, and the purity of the tone of sentiment. Many a “household word” is here recognized. Many a stem, from which we plucked flowers for our herbarium, grew here. Beautiful gems, that have been set here and there in the bosom of congenial prose, or, like current coin, from hand to hand, that have circulated from mouth to mouth, in elegant society, were formed in this mine. Those “thousand liveried angels” that lackey a pure and gentle spirit, the “airy tongues, that syllable men’s names,” that “charming, divine philosophy,” which is “musical as Apollo’s lute,” the vision of those serene and celestial regions, that glow “above the smoke and stir of this dim spot, which men call earth,” the view of a sable cloud, turning its “silver lining on the night,” these, and many kindred images and sentiments of beauty, have their original expression in the Comus, as others do in other works of the immortal poet, who sought not merely to weave splendid visions of the imagination, but to embalm sublime truths for the nourishment of humanity in all ages, and to vindicate the ways of God to man.

Here, too, we find some of those sententious generics of history or geography, of fable or fancy; those classic touches; those suggestive single words, which instantly bring up before the mind, a train of ideas, or a treasure of knowledge connected with the past.

These habits of thought and composition are fully developed in Paradise Lost. “The poetry of Milton,” says an eminent critic, “differs from that of Dante, as the hieroglyphics of Egypt, differ from the picture-writing of Mexico. The images which Dante employs speak for themselves; they stand simply for what they are. Those of Milton have a signification which is often discernible only, to the initiated. Their value depends less on what they directly represent, than on what they remotely suggest.” Numerous instances of this might be adduced. It has been called electrifying the mind through a conductor. The mind of the reader must in some good measure co-operate with that of the author. We must be ready to fill up the outline which he sketches; to respond with our melody to the key-note, which he strikes. There must be some music in the soul that is to appreciate the genius of Milton. Addison never earned a purer glory, than when he set forth his merits as by a charmed pen. Those words of enchantment—those forms of beauty created by the imagination of the poet, deeply impressed a congenial mind.

The Comus is constructed on the plan of the Italian masque, and belongs to that class of poems, which do not depend for their interest on any complication of plot or conflicts of intense passion, on dramatic unities or strange developments; startling scenes and horrible catastrophes. The poem rather claims and commands our admiration for the Doric simplicity of its structure, than for any gay and glittering forms of poetic architecture. Though dramatic in its plan, the Mask—while it has the simplest form of the drama—is essentially lyric, especially in the carol of the Water Nymph and the song of the attendant spirit, which constitutes a kind of delicious epilogue to the piece, and concludes with a beautiful moral lesson:

Mortals, that would follow me,

Love Virtue; she alone is free:

She can teach you how to climb

Higher than the sphery chime;

Or if Virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her.

Indeed, the whole design and execution of the poem is evidential of that purity of mind, that chasteness of the imagination, so nobly distinguishing all the productions of this first of poets.

There is no reason why Shakspeare should not have maintained the same elevated tone of morality and purity in his immortal works, but that he was destitute of those religious principles, which purify the heart, and, indeed, clarify all the powers of the mind. The polluting habits of his early life, so closely connected with the stage, when it was in its deepest debasement, contributed to this malformation of his moral character. Let it not be said it was rather the “fault of the age” than of the individual. Milton was of that age. There was little more than a generation between them. But the poet was not ensnared either with the conspicuous examples of vice before him or around him. In the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, he shone as a light of superior brilliancy, entering upon the responsibilities and trials of life, with a heart full of love for freedom, and of hatred of tyrants, just at that illustrious period of the world, when the genius of Liberty had set her foot on these North American shores.

All republicans have a special interest in studying the genius and character of Milton. He took no pleasure as did the great dramatic poet, in exalting the prerogatives, or setting forth the splendors of royalty. For this he was calumniated by his enemies, and even Johnson, the inveterate old tory, joins in the censure of the politician and civilian, while he praises the poet in such language as this: “He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that nature had bestowed upon him, more bountifully than upon others; the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful.” He could not stoop to trifle among kings and queens, or attempt to make them conspicuous by his eulogies or representations. He rose to the sublimities of supernal worlds. “He sent his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence and furnish sentiment and action to superior beings, to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven.”

His communion with the pure, the spiritual, the invisible, strengthened the principles of conduct he had adopted in his anticipation of the judgment of posterity, and especially in his consciousness of being “in his great Taskmaster’s eye.”

In Comus, his youthful imagination luxuriates amid the freshness of its own beautiful creations, amid the wealth which was destined to enrich the world. Upon the ground of a pure moral sentiment the flowers of poesy are distributed in the most free and graceful manner. There is no pandering to the baser passions of the human heart; no prostitution of the charms of his muse to the purposes of a secret, sinful gratification on the part of his readers; no seductive attempt to “impair the strength of better thoughts,” or to weaken the sanctions of that immutable law, which binds together virtue and happiness, vice and misery. His amaranthine wreath maybe wet with the “dew of heaven,” such as descended on his own Paradise, but is never stained with tears such as innocence weeps, when corrupted by guilt. “His diadem of beauty,” is set with gems of the purest water, and most sparkling colors. The “Lady,” who is wandering in the recesses of the forest, apprehensive perhaps, of being assailed by prowling foes, appeals in fervent language:

Oh welcome, pure-eyed Faith; whitehanded Hope,

Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings!

And thou, unblemished form of Chastity!

I see ye visibly——

The high lesson breathed through many a glowing line of this exquisite poem, is the dignity of virtue, the conservative power of innocence, the majesty of woman, even in her weakness, that weakness itself becoming strength, when blended with a purity, before which the eye of profligacy quails with very shame at the suggestions of a guilty heart. In the picture of Comus, the fabled son of Bacchus and Circe, and the assailant of the virtuous lady, drawn by the attendant spirit, there is a powerful argument for temperance, a virtue so warmly applauded and so little practiced among men. Comus,

—To every thirsty wanderer

By sly enticement gives his baneful cup,

With many murmurs mixed, whose pleasing poison

The visage quite transforms of him that drinks,

And the inglorious likeness of a beast

Fixes instead, unmoulding reason’s mintage

Charactered in the face.—

The imagination of Milton delighted to portray the moral virtues, often grouping them in fine proportions and expressive relations. They appear in the midst of exquisite poetry, gorgeous imagery, and all manner of glowing thoughts, like beautiful forms of statuary revealing themselves amidst the luxuriant vines and verdant foliage of a summer garden.

The scene in the palace between the Virgin Lady and Comus affords occasion for the utterance of noble sentiments in language worthy of them. She is supposed to sit in the enchanted chair, her eye resting upon the dainties of a delicious feast, her ear greeted with strains of the softest music, all the senses, in fine, addressed in the most tempting manner, when the Enchanter with his wand appears before her, and proffers his glass—the true “Circean cup,” which, being tasted, first intoxicates, then ruins. It is the intoxication of pleasure in all its forms and fascinations. This may be called a fable, but it stands for truth and reality too sadly and fatally experienced by the children of humanity.

The Enchanter opens his assault: “If I but wave this wand, your nerves are all chained up in alabaster.” The lady nobly replies:

Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind

With all thy charms, although this corporeal rind

Thou hast immanacled, while Heaven sees good.

The contest proceeds, and it is one between Truth and Falsehood, Light and Darkness, Principle and Profligacy, the Powers Supreme, and the Infernal Crew. The germ of one portion of Paradise Lost is here. Those conflicts between mighty opposing Powers, which constitute so much of the sublime interest of that great Epic, are here typified and foreshadowed. Some poets would have invested this incantation of virgin purity with the “armor of tears,” the resistless eloquence of entreaty, disarming the sturdiest foe. But no such tender, melting scenes seem to have been embraced within the design of the poet. His heroine belongs to a severer order of the chaste sisterhood. There is a sternness in her purity, before which even the Enchanter with his wand is compelled to cower. He plies her with his enchantments, presses her with arguments worthy of the father of lies, with sophistry becoming the most subtle and accomplished deceiver, with flattery that would turn an ordinary brain. To all this she replies with all the energy of indignant virtue: “False traitor,” and charges home the guilt of his incantations, spurning the offer of all his delicacies and luxuries:

—None

But such as are good men can give good things,

And that which is not good, is not delicious

To a well-governed and wise appetite.

Comus affects to despise the philosophy that is taught from the cynic tub of Diogenes, and ranges over all Nature for proof that men were intended to revel on her bounties, to “live while they live;” in fact to do what those Epicurean philosophers taught, who said, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” Nay, he dares to asperse the purity, and insult the majesty of Beauty itself:

Beauty is nature’s coin, must not be hoarded,

But must be current; and the good thereof

Consists in mutual and partaken bliss—

Now does the Lady rebuke him with all the true natural authority of virtue for obtruding his false rules “pranked in reason’s garb,” and in the true spirit of Satan bolting out his practical heresies with a fluency quite beyond the capabilities of the tongue of Virtue. It is true that in this interview there appears to be, so far as the Virgin Lady is concerned, a singular union of the romantic and the sensible, indeed such a preponderance of the latter as would have been quite inconsistent with the style and spirit of the drama, as authenticated by the masters of the histrionic art. Nevertheless, so great a genius as Milton had a right to choose in what form he would embody—through what channel he would pour the exalted sentiments and burning thoughts which it is the prerogative of genius to supply. If it pleased him to set before us naked creations of loveliness, or solitary symbols of vice and deformity, rather in the style of the statuary than of the painter of scenes, then let us be thankful for the gift, and honor the memory of the giver. Comus is rebuked by the Lady in such language as this:

Nature

Means her provision only to the good,

That live according to her sober laws,

And holy dictate of spare temperance:

If every just man that now pines with want,

Had but a moderate and beseeming share

Of that which lewdly-pampered luxury

Now heaps upon some face with vast excess,

Nature’s full blessings would be well dispensed

In unsuperfluous even proportion,

And she no whit encumbered with her store.

That strain continues until the guilty wizard stands abashed, like Satan before the immaculate angel of the covenant, feeling how awful virtue is: Comus confesses his fears of self-condemnation. He felt “her words set off by some superior power,” and in spite of his professed exemption from mortal ills, acknowledges “a cold shuddering dew dips me all o’er.” Still he resolves to dissemble, and as he is proceeding with his speech, in rush the brothers of the lady to the rescue, and scatter all things around them.

The attendant Spirit again appears on the stage, to exercise her guardian offices, and speaks at length. All the speakers are imbued with classical knowledge, and abound in classical allusions. This is just Miltonic. They are learned in Latin and Greek. And why should Milton consult the verisimilitudes of the stage? In the compass of thirteen lines of a song by the attendant Spirit, there are several classical or fabulous names, among them Neptune, Nereus, Triton, Glaucus, Thetis, Parthenope. How finely does he interweave them with the thread of his song, even, by his poetic art, imparting to them a portion of the melody that is vocal in his verse. He seems capable of setting to music the whole catalogue of the Pantheon, the Stoa, the Academy, and the Temples, whose sublime and impressive architecture itself suggests an analogy to poetry of a high order. Then the Nereids, the Dryads, the Fauns will always be poetical in an humbler sense, so long as the woods and the waters shall be grateful to the senses or pleasing to the imagination. Even the horrid Satyrs are welcomed among his guests.

This poem is full of MUSIC, reminding us as well of the beautiful bond—the indissoluble vinculum—that unites the sister arts, as of the author’s passion for the science and the symphonies of sweet sounds. A good recitation of his Ode on the Nativity is equal to a grand overture on the organ. He was an Epic all over. To quote from this very Comus, he could originate “strains that might create a soul under the ribs of death.” If he did not absolutely invent the exquisite epithet “rosy bosomed hours,” (it being derived from the Rododatetylos Eos, “rosy-fingered Aurora” of Homer,) he interwove it most gracefully in his song, as he did all thoughts, images, and words which he deemed worthy of adaptation into the magic structure of his works. They were so many living, many-colored stones in that glorious temple of poesy, (be it reverentially spoken,) “not made with hands,” but elaborated and elevated to its towering height by those marvelous intellectual powers which are as much the gift of God as inspiration itself, and far more identified with the MAN than inspiration possibly could be. Oh, how solemn the spectacle, to contemplate such a genius with his eye fixed, like that of an ancient prophet, in a vision of spiritual worlds, peopled, not with the ordinary phantoms of an earthly imagination, but with beings of immortal mould and unmeasured power; his ear open to catch the “ninefold harmony” of the celestial orders, as they sing and praise the glorious Creator; his march above the ordinary walks of humanity; his very soul taking wings, and like the eagle soaring “with no middle flight,” but passing “the flaming bounds of time and space,” and ascending from sphere to sphere until he reaches the throne of the Eternal, there to hold high communion with the Invisible God, and the august and awful associations that surround him, whom “No eye hath seen nor can see, to whom be honor and power everlasting.”