The use of é and è to indicate stresses is inconsistent in thistext, as is the use of œ and æ ligatures. No changes havebeen made to the original. A transliteration of words and phrases inGreek is visible when the pointer ishovered over them.
WITH
INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
BY
WILLIAM BELL, M.A.
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND LOGIC, GOVERNMENT COLLEGE,LAHORE
London
MACMILLAN AND CO
AND NEW YORK
1891
[All rights reserved]
First Edition, 1890.
Reprinted, 1891.
Few poems have been more variously designated than Comus.Milton himself describes it simply as “A Mask”; by othersit has been criticised and estimated as a lyrical drama, a drama inthe epic style, a lyric poem in the form of a play, a phantasy,an allegory, a philosophical poem, a suite of speeches or majesticsoliloquies, and even a didactic poem. Such variety in the descriptionof the poem is explained partly by its complex charm and many-sidedinterest, and partly by the desire to describe it from that point ofview which should best reconcile its literary form with what we knowof the genius and powers of its author. Those who, like Dr. Johnson,have blamed it as a drama, have admired it “as a series oflines,” or as a lyric; one writer, who has found that itscharacters are nothing, its sentiments tedious, its storyuninteresting, has nevertheless “doubted whether there will everbe any similar poem which gives so true a conception of the capacityand the dignity of the mind by which it was produced”(Bagehot’s Literary Studies). Some who have praised it asan allegory see in it a satire on the evils both of the Church and ofthe State, while others regard it as alluding to the vices of theCourt alone. Some have found its lyrical parts the best,while others, charmed with its “divine philosophy,” havecommended those deep conceits which place it alongside of theFaerie Queen, as shadowing forth an episode in the education ofa noble soul and as a poet’s lesson against intemperance andimpurity. But no one can refuse to admit that, more than any other ofMilton’s shorter poems, it gives us an insight into the peculiargenius and character of its author: it was, in the opinion of Hallam,“sufficient to convince any one of taste and feeling that agreat poet had arisen in England, and one partly formed in a differentschool from his contemporaries.” It is true that in the earlypoems we do not find the whole of Milton, for he had yet to passthrough many years of trouble and controversy;