idea, which may be said to be the informing principle of his prose
works, is that _inward liberty is the condition of true outward
liberty_. The latter cannot exist without the former. What is often
miscalled liberty is license; which only leads to a more degraded inward
servitude. For, in the absence of wholesome restraint, and of discipline
either self-imposed, or imposed by those in authority, men in their
weakness become more and more subjected to their lower nature. This idea
is beautifully presented in the following passage:

_From 'The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty.' Chap. I._

     'There is not that thing in the world of more grave and urgent
     importance throughout the whole life of man, than is
     DISCIPLINE. What need I instance? He that hath read with
     judgment of nations and commonwealths, of cities and camps, of
     peace and war, sea and land, will readily agree that the
     flourishing and decaying of all civil societies, all the
     moments and turnings of human occasions, are moved to and fro
     as upon the axle of discipline. So that whatsoever power or
     sway in mortal things weaker men have attributed to Fortune,
     I durst with more confidence (the honour of Divine Providence
     ever saved) ascribe either to the vigour or the slackness of
     discipline. Nor is there any sociable perfection in this life,
     civil or sacred, that can be above discipline; but she is that
     which with her musical chords preserves and holds all the
     parts thereof together. Hence in those perfect armies of Cyrus
     in Xenophon, and Scipio in the Roman stories, the excellence
     of military skill was esteemed, not by the not needing, but by
     the readiest submitting to the edicts of their commander. And
     certainly discipline is not only the removal of disorder; but
     if any visible shape can be given to divine things, the very
     visible shape and image of Virtue, whereby she is not only
     seen in the regular gestures and motions of her heavenly
     paces, as she walks, but also makes the harmony of her voice
     audible to mortal ears. Yea, the angels themselves, in whom no
     disorder is feared, as the apostle that saw them in his
     rapture describes, are distinguished and quaternioned into
     their celestial princedoms and satrapies, according as God
     himself has writ his imperial decrees through the great
     provinces of heaven. The state also of the blessed in
     paradise, though never so perfect, is not therefore left
     without discipline, whose golden surveying reed marks out and
     measures every quarter and circuit of New Jerusalem. Yet is it
     not to be conceived, that those eternal effluences of sanctity
     and love in the glorified saints should by this means be
     confined and cloyed with repetition of that which is
     prescribed, but that our happiness may orb itself into a
     thousand vagancies of glory and delight, and with a kind of
     eccentrical equation be, as it were, an invariable planet of
     joy and felicity; how much less can we believe that God would
     leave his frail and feeble, though not less beloved church
     here below, to the perpetual stumble of conjecture and
     disturbance in this our dark voyage, without the card and
     compass of discipline? Which is so hard to be of man's making,
     that we may see even in the guidance of a civil state to
     worldly happiness, it is not for every learned, or every wise
     man, though many of them consult in common, to invent or frame
     a discipline: but if it be at all the work of man, it must be
     of such a one as is a true knower of himself, and in whom
     contemplation and practice, wit, prudence, fortitude, and
     eloquence must be rarely met, both to comprehend the hidden
     causes of things, and span in his thoughts all the various
     effects that passion or complexion can work in man's nature;
     and hereto must his hand be at defiance with gain, and his
     heart in all virtues heroic; so far is it from the ken of
     these wretched projectors of ours, that bescrawl their
     pamphlets every day with new forms of government for our
     church. And therefore all the ancient lawgivers were either
     truly inspired, as Moses, or were such men as with authority
     enough might give it out to be so, as Minos, Lycurgus, Numa,
     because they wisely forethought that men would never quietly
     submit to such a discipline as had not more of God's hand in
     it than man's. To come within the narrowness of household
     government, observation will show us many deep counsellors of
     state and judges to demean themselves incorruptly in the
     settled course of affairs, and many worthy preachers, upright
     in their lives, powerful in their audience: but look upon
     either of these men when they are left to their own
     disciplining at home, and you shall soon perceive, for all
     their single knowledge and uprightness, how deficient they are
     in the regulating of their own family; not only in what may
     concern the virtuous and decent composure of their minds in
     their several places, but, that which is of a lower and easier
     performance, the right possessing of the outward vessel, their
     body, in health or sickness, rest or labour, diet or
     abstinence, whereby to render it more pliant to the soul, and
     useful to the commonwealth; which if men were but as good to
     discipline themselves, as some are to tutor their horses and
     hawks, it could not be so gross in most households. If then it
     appear so hard, and so little known how to govern a house
     well, which is thought of so easy discharge, and for every
     man's undertaking, what skill of man, what wisdom, what parts
     can be sufficient to give laws and ordinances to the elect
     household of God? If we could imagine that he had left it at
     random without his provident and gracious ordering, who is he
     so arrogant, so presumptuous, that durst dispose and guide the
     living ark of the Holy Ghost, though he should find it
     wandering in the field of Bethshemesh, without the conscious
     warrant of some high calling? But no profane insolence can
     parallel that which our prelates dare avouch, to drive
     outrageously, and shatter the holy ark of the church, not
     borne upon their shoulders with pains and labour in the word,
     but drawn with rude oxen, their officials, and their own brute
     inventions. Let them make shows of reforming while they will,
     so long as the church is mounted upon the prelatical cart, and
     not, as it ought, between the hands of the ministers, it will
     but shake and totter; and he that sets to his hand, though
     with a good intent to hinder the shogging of it, in this
     unlawful waggonry wherein it rides, let him beware it be not
     fatal to him, as it was to Uzza.'

The following are some of the many explicit statements of Milton's idea
of Liberty, which occur in his Prose Works. They may be said to be
variations on the saying of the Saviour (John viii. 31, 32), 'If ye
abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples; and ye shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free':

     'What though the brood of Belial, the draff of men, to whom no
     liberty is pleasing, but unbridled and vagabond lust without
     pale or partition, will laugh broad perhaps, to see so great a
     strength of scripture mustering up in favour, as they suppose,
     of their debaucheries; they will know better when they shall
     hence learn, that honest liberty is the greatest foe to
     dishonest licence.'

          —_The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce._

     'Real and substantial liberty is rather to be sought from
     within than from without; its existence depends, not so much
     on the terror of the sword, as in sobriety of conduct and
     integrity of life.'

          —_Second Defence of the People of England._

     'The exposition here alleged is neither new nor licentious, as
     some now would persuade the commonalty, although it be nearer
     truth that nothing is more new than those teachers themselves,
     and nothing more licentious than some known to be, whose
     hypocrisy yet shames not to take offence at this doctrine for
     licence, whereas indeed they fear it would remove licence, and
     leave them few companions.'

          —_Tetrachordon._

     'In every commonwealth, when it decays, corruption makes two
     main steps: first, when men cease to do according to the
     inward and uncompelled actions of virtue, caring only to live
     by the outward constraint of law, and turn this simplicity of
     real good into the craft of seeming so by law. To this
     hypocritical honesty was Rome declined in that age wherein
     Horace lived, and discovered it to Quinctius':

          'Whom do we count a good man, whom but he
           Who keeps the laws and statutes of the Senate?
           Who judges in great suits and controversies?
           Whose witness and opinion wins the cause?
           But his own house, and the whole neighbourhood
           Sees his foul inside through his whited skin.'

     'The next declining is, when law becomes now too strait for
     the secular manners, and those too loose for the cincture of
     law. This brings in false and crooked interpretations to eke
     out law, and invents the subtle encroachments of obscure
     traditions hard to be disproved.'

          —_Tetrachordon._

     'If men within themselves would be governed by reason, and not
     generally give up their understanding to a double tyranny of
     custom from without, and blind affections within, they would
     discern better what it is to favour and uphold the tyrant of a
     nation. But, being slaves within doors, no wonder that they
     strive so much to have the public state conformably governed
     to the inward vicious rule by which they govern themselves.
     For, indeed, none can love freedom heartily but good men; the
     rest love not freedom but licence, which never hath more scope
     or more indulgence than under tyrants. Hence is it that
     tyrants are not oft offended, nor stand much in doubt of bad
     men, as being all naturally servile; but in whom virtue and
     true worth most is eminent, them they fear in earnest, as by
     right their masters; against them lies all their hatred and
     suspicion. Consequently, neither do bad men hate tyrants, but
     have been always readiest, with the falsified names of loyalty
     and obedience, to colour over their base compliances.'

          —_The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates._

     'He who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires,
     and fears, is more than a king.'

     'For stories teach us, that liberty sought out of season, in a
     corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a further
     slavery; for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to
     be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it
     becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it
     completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know
     what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it
     wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them
     substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they
     merit, and the bad, the curb which they need. But to do this,
     and to know these exquisite proportions, the heroic wisdom
     which is required, surmounted far the principles of these
     narrow politicians: what wonder then if they sunk as these
     unfortunate Britons before them, entangled and oppressed with
     things too hard and generous, above their strain and temper?'

          —_The History of Britain_, Book iii.

     'But when God hath decreed servitude on a sinful nation,
     fitted by their own vices for no condition but servile, all
     estates of government are alike unable to avoid it.'

          —_The History of Britain_, Book v.

_Peroration of 'The Second Defence of the People of England'_

     'It is of no little consequence, O citizens, by what
     principles you are governed, either in acquiring liberty, or
     in retaining it when acquired. And unless that liberty which
     is of such a kind as arms can neither procure nor take away,
     which alone is the fruit of piety, of justice, of temperance,
     and unadulterated virtue, shall have taken deep root in your
     minds and hearts, there will not long be wanting one who will
     snatch from you by treachery what you have acquired by arms.
     War has made many great whom peace makes small. If after being
     released from the toils of war, you neglect the arts of peace,
     if your peace and your liberty be a state of warfare, if war
     be your only virtue, the summit of your praise, you will,
     believe me, soon find peace the most adverse to your
     interests. Your peace will be only a more distressing war; and
     that which you imagined liberty will prove the worst of
     slavery. Unless by the means of piety, not frothy and
     loquacious, but operative, unadulterated, and sincere, you
     clear the horizon of the mind from those mists of superstition
     which arise from the ignorance of true religion, you will
     always have those who will bend your necks to the yoke as if
     you were brutes, who, notwithstanding all your triumphs, will
     put you up to the highest bidder, as if you were mere booty
     made in war; and will find an exuberant source of wealth in
     your ignorance and superstition. Unless you will subjugate the
     propensity to avarice, to ambition, and sensuality, and expel
     all luxury from yourselves and your families, you will find
     that you have cherished a more stubborn and intractable despot
     at home, than you ever encountered in the field; and even your
     very bowels will be continually teeming with an intolerable
     progeny of tyrants. Let these be the first enemies whom you
     subdue; this constitutes the campaign of peace; these are
     triumphs, difficult indeed, but bloodless; and far more
     honorable than those trophies which are purchased only by
     slaughter and by rapine. Unless you are victors in this
     service, it is in vain that you have been victorious over the
     despotic enemy in the field. For if you think that it is a
     more grand, a more beneficial, or a more wise policy, to
     invent subtle expedients for increasing the revenue, to
     multiply our naval and military force, to rival in craft the
     ambassadors of foreign states, to form skillful treaties and
     alliances, than to administer unpolluted justice to the
     people, to redress the injured and to succour the distressed,
     and speedily to restore to every one his own, you are involved
     in a cloud of error; and too late will you perceive, when the
     illusion of those mighty benefits has vanished, that in
     neglecting these, which you now think inferior considerations,
     you have only been precipitating your own ruin and despair.
     The fidelity of enemies and allies is frail and perishing,
     unless it be cemented by the principles of justice; that
     wealth and those honours, which most covet, readily change
     masters; they forsake the idle, and repair where virtue, where
     industry, where patience flourish most. Thus nation
     precipitates the downfall of nation; thus the more sound part
     of one people subverts the more corrupt; thus you obtained the
     ascendant over the royalists. If you plunge into the same
     depravity, if you imitate their excesses, and hanker after the
     same vanities, you will become royalists as well as they, and
     liable to be subdued by the same enemies, or by others in your
     turn; who, placing their reliance on the same religious
     principles, the same patience, the same integrity and
     discretion which made you strong, will deservedly triumph over
     you who are immersed in debauchery, in the luxury and the
     sloth of kings. Then, as if God was weary of protecting you,
     you will be seen to have passed through the fire that you
     might perish in the smoke; the contempt which you will then
     experience will be great as the admiration which you now
     enjoy; and, what may in future profit others, but cannot
     benefit yourselves, you will leave a salutary proof what great
     things the solid reality of virtue and of piety might have
     effected, when the mere counterfeit and varnished resemblance
     could attempt such mighty achievements, and make such
     considerable advances towards the execution. For, if either
     through your want of knowledge, your want of constancy, or
     your want of virtue, attempts so noble, and actions so
     glorious, have had an issue so unfortunate, it does not
     therefore follow that better men should be either less daring
     in their projects or less sanguine in their hopes. But from
     such an abyss of corruption into which you so readily fall, no
     one, not even Cromwell himself, nor a whole nation of
     Brutuses, if they were alive, could deliver you if they would,
     or would deliver you if they could. For who would vindicate
     your right of unrestrained suffrage, or of choosing what
     representatives you liked best, merely that you might elect
     the creatures of your own faction, whoever they might be, or
     him, however small might be his worth, who would give you the
     most lavish feasts, and enable you to drink to the greatest
     excess? Thus not wisdom and authority, but turbulence and
     gluttony, would soon exalt the vilest miscreants from our
     taverns and our brothels, from our towns and villages, to the
     rank and dignity of senators. For should the management of the
     republic be entrusted to persons to whom no one would
     willingly entrust the management of his private concerns; and
     the treasury of the state be left to the care of those who had
     lavished their own fortunes in an infamous prodigality? Should
     they have the charge of the public purse, which they would
     soon convert into a private, by their unprincipled
     peculations? Are they fit to be the legislators of a whole
     people who themselves know not what law, what reason, what
     right and wrong, what crooked and straight, what licit and
     illicit means? who think that all power consists in outrage,
     all dignity in the parade of insolence? who neglect every
     other consideration for the corrupt qualification of their
     friendships, or the prosecution of their resentments? who
     disperse their own relations and creatures through the
     provinces, for the sake of levying taxes and confiscating
     goods; men, for the greater part, the most profligate and
     vile, who buy up for themselves what they pretend to expose to
     sale, who thence collect an exorbitant mass of wealth, which
     they fraudulently divert from the public service; who thus
     spread their pillage through the country, and in a moment
     emerge from penury and rags to a state of splendour and of
     wealth? Who could endure such thievish servants, such
     vicegerents of their lords? Who could believe that the masters
     and the patrons of a banditti could be the proper guardians of
     liberty? or who would suppose that he should ever be made one
     hair more free by such a set of public functionaries, (though
     they might amount to five hundred elected in this manner from
     the counties and boroughs,) when among them who are the very
     guardians of liberty, and to whose custody it is committed,
     there must be so many, who know not either how to use or to
     enjoy liberty, who neither understand the principles nor merit
     the possession? But, what is worthy of remark, those who are
     the most unworthy of liberty are wont to behave most
     ungratefully towards their deliverers. Among such persons, who
     would be willing either to fight for liberty, or to encounter
     the least peril in its defence? It is not agreeable to the
     nature of things that such persons ever should be free.
     However much they may brawl about liberty, they are slaves,
     both at home and abroad, but without perceiving it; and when
     they do perceive it, like unruly horses that are impatient of
     the bit, they will endeavour to throw off the yoke, not from
     the love of genuine liberty, (which a good man only loves and
     knows how to obtain,) but from the impulses of pride and
     little passions. But though they often attempt it by arms,
     they will make no advances to the execution; they may change
     their masters, but will never be able to get rid of their
     servitude. This often happened to the ancient Romans, wasted
     by excess, and enervated by luxury: and it has still more so
     been the fate of the moderns; when, after a long interval of
     years, they aspired, under the auspices of Crescentius
     Nomentanus, and afterwards of Nicolas Rentius, who had assumed
     the title of Tribune of the People, to restore the splendour
     and reëstablish the government of ancient Rome. For, instead
     of fretting with vexation, or thinking that you can lay the
     blame on any one but yourselves, know that to be free is the
     same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and
     just, to be frugal and abstinent, and, lastly, to be
     magnanimous and brave; so to be the opposite of all these is
     the same as to be a slave; and it usually happens, by the
     appointment, and as it were retributive justice, of the Deity,
     that that people which cannot govern themselves, and moderate
     their passions, but crouch under the slavery of their lusts,
     should be delivered up to the sway of those whom they abhor,
     and made to submit to an involuntary servitude. It is also
     sanctioned by the dictates of justice and by the constitution
     of nature, that he who from the imbecility or derangement of
     his intellect, is incapable of governing himself, should, like
     a minor, be committed to the government of another; and least
     of all should he be appointed to superintend the affairs of
     others or the interest of the state. You, therefore, who wish
     to remain free, either instantly be wise, or, as soon as
     possible, cease to be fools; if you think slavery an
     intolerable evil, learn obedience to reason and the government
     of yourselves; and, finally, bid adieu to your dissensions,
     your jealousies, your superstitions, your outrages, your
     rapine, and your lusts. Unless you will spare no pains to
     effect this, you must be judged unfit, both by God and
     mankind, to be entrusted with the possession of liberty and
     the administration of the government; but will rather, like a
     nation in a state of pupilage, want some active and courageous
     guardian to undertake the management of your affairs. With
     respect to myself, whatever turn things may take, I thought
     that my exertions on the present occasion would be serviceable
     to my country; and, as they have been cheerfully bestowed, I
     hope that they have not been bestowed in vain. And I have not
     circumscribed my defence of liberty within any petty circle
     around me, but have made it so general and comprehensive, that
     the justice and the reasonableness of such uncommon
     occurrences, explained and defended, both among my countrymen
     and among foreigners, and which all good men cannot but
     approve, may serve to exalt the glory of my country, and to
     excite the imitation of posterity. If the conclusion do not
     answer to the beginning, that is their concern; I have
     delivered my testimony, I would almost say, have erected a
     monument, that will not readily be destroyed, to the reality
     of those singular and mighty achievements which were above all
     praise. As the epic poet, who adheres at all to the rules of
     that species of composition, does not profess to describe the
     whole life of the hero whom he celebrates, but only some
     particular action of his life, as the resentment of Achilles
     at Troy, the return of Ulysses, or the coming of Æneas into
     Italy; so it will be sufficient, either for my justification
     or apology, that I have heroically celebrated at least one
     exploit of my countrymen; I pass by the rest, for who could
     recite the achievements of a whole people? If, after such a
     display of courage and of vigour, you basely relinquish the
     path of virtue, if you do anything unworthy of yourselves,
     posterity will sit in judgment on your conduct. They will see
     that the foundations were well laid; that the beginning (nay,
     it was more than a beginning) was glorious; but with deep
     emotions of concern will they regret, that those were wanting
     who might have completed the structure. They will lament that
     perseverance was not conjoined with such exertions and such
     virtues. They will see that there was a rich harvest of glory,
     and an opportunity afforded for the greatest achievements, but
     that men only were wanting for the execution; while they were
     not wanting who could rightly counsel, exhort, inspire, and
     bind an unfading wreath of praise round the brows of the
     illustrious actors in so glorious a scene.'

This informing idea of the Prose Works comes out explicitly in the
second of the sonnets,

_On the Detraction which followed upon my Writing Certain Treatises_

     'I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
      By the known rules of ancient liberty,
      When straight a barbarous noise environs me
      Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs:
      As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs           5
      Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny,
      Which after held the sun and moon in fee.
      But this is got by casting pearl to hogs,
      That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
      And still revolt when truth would set them free.            10
      Licence they mean when they cry liberty;
      For who loves that must first be wise and good;
      But from that mark how far they rove we see,
      For all this waste of wealth, and loss of blood.'

Again it appears, and in the most explicit form, in the 'Paradise Lost,'
Book xii. 82-101. The angel Michael, in his discourse with Adam, on the
mount of speculation, says:

                       'yet know withal,
     Since thy original lapse, true liberty
     Is lost, which always with right reason dwells
     Twinned, and from her hath no dividual being.                85
     Reason in man obscured, or not obeyed,
     Immediately inordinate desires
     And upstart passions catch the government
     From Reason, and to servitude reduce
     Man, till then free. Therefore, since he permits             90
     Within himself unworthy powers to reign
     Over free reason, God, in judgment just,
     Subjects him from without to violent lords,
     Who oft as undeservedly enthral
     His outward freedom. Tyranny must be,                        95
     Though to the tyrant thereby no excuse.
     Yet sometimes nations will decline so low
     From virtue, which is reason, that no wrong,
     But justice and some fatal curse annexed,
     Deprives them of their outward liberty,                     100
     Their inward lost.'

In the 'Samson Agonistes,' Samson says to the Chorus (vv. 268-276, and
here Milton may be said virtually to speak, as he does throughout the
drama, in _propria personâ_):

     'But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt
      And by their vices brought to servitude,
      Than to love bondage more than liberty,                    270
      Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty;
      And to despise, or envy, or suspect
      Whom God hath of his special favour raised
      As their deliverer? if he aught begin,
      How frequent to desert him, and at last                    275
      To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds?'

In the 'Paradise Regained,' Book ii. 410-486, Satan says to the Saviour:

         'all thy heart is set on high designs,                  410
     High actions; but wherewith to be achieved?
     Great acts require great means of enterprise;
     Thou art unknown, unfriended, low of birth,
     A carpenter thy father known, thyself
     Bred up in poverty and straits at home,                     415
     Lost in a desert here, and hunger-bit.
     Which way, or from what hope, dost thou aspire
     To greatness? whence authority derivest?
     What followers, what retinue canst thou gain?
     Or at thy heels the dizzy multitude,                        420
     Longer than thou canst feed them on thy cost?
     Money brings honour, friends, conquest, and realms.
     What raised Antipater, the Edomite,
     And his son Herod placed on Judah's throne—
     Thy throne—but gold that got him puissant friends?         425
     Therefore, if at great things thou wouldest arrive,
     Get riches first, get wealth, and treasure heap,—
     Not difficult, if thou hearken to me.
     Riches are mine, fortune is in my hand;
     They whom I favour thrive in wealth amain,                  430
     While virtue, valour, wisdom, sit in want.'
     To whom thus Jesus patiently replied:
     'Yet wealth without these three is impotent
     To gain dominion, or to keep it gained;
     Witness those ancient empires of the earth,                 435
     In highth of all their flowing wealth dissolved.
     But men endued with these have oft attained
     In lowest poverty to highest deeds;
     Gideon, and Jephtha, and the shepherd-lad,
     Whose offspring on the throne of Judah sat                  440
     So many ages, and shalt yet regain
     That seat, and reign in Israel without end.
     Among the Heathen—for throughout the world
     To me is not unknown what hath been done
     Worthy of memorial—canst thou not remember                 445
     Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus?
     For I esteem those names of men so poor,
     Who could do mighty things, and could contemn
     Riches, though offered from the hand of kings.
     And what in me seems wanting, but that I                    450
     May also in this poverty as soon
     Accomplish what they did? perhaps and more.
     Extol not riches then, the toil of fools,
     The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare; more apt
     To slacken Virtue, and abate her edge,                      455
     Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.
     What, if with like aversion I reject
     Riches and realms! yet not, for that a crown,
     Golden in shew, is but a wreath of thorns,
     Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights,      460
     To him who wears the regal diadem,
     When on his shoulders each man's burden lies;
     For therein stands the office of a king,
     His honour, virtue, merit, and chief praise,
     That for the public all this weight he bears.               465
     Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules
     Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king;
     Which every wise and virtuous man attains:
     And who attains not, ill aspires to rule
     Cities of men, or headstrong multitudes,                    470
     Subject himself to anarchy within,
     Or lawless passions in him, which he serves.
     But to guide nations in the way of truth
     By saving doctrine, and from error lead
     To know, and knowing, worship God aright,                   475
     Is yet more kingly: this attracts the soul,
     Governs the inner man, the nobler part;
     That other o'er the body only reigns,
     And oft by force, which to a generous mind
     So reigning can be no sincere delight.                      480
     Besides, to give a kingdom hath been thought
     Greater and nobler done, and to lay down
     Far more magnanimous, than to assume.
     Riches are needless then, both for themselves,
     And for thy reason why they should be sought,               485
     To gain a sceptre, oftest better missed.'

All this, it may be truly said, is nothing more than the old teaching of
Solomon, 'He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a
city' (Prov. xvi. 32). There has always been truth enough in the world
which, if realized in men's lives, would soon bring about the
millennium. But, unfortunately, it has only been born in their brains.

Great writers owe their power among men, not necessarily so much to a
wide range of ideas or to the originality of their ideas, as to the
vitality which they are able to impart to some one comprehensive
fructifying idea with which, through constitution of mind, or
circumstances, they have become _possessed_. It is only when a man is
really possessed with an idea (that is, if it does not run away with
him), that he can express it with a quickening power, and ring all
possible changes upon it.

The passages quoted sufficiently show the _kind_ of liberty which Milton
estimated above all others, and to the advancement of which he devoted
his best powers, for twenty years, and those years the best, generally,
of a man's life, for intellectual and creative work, namely, from
thirty-two to fifty-two. The last eight of those years he worked in
total darkness, not bating a jot of heart or hope, sustained by the
consciousness of having lost his eyes 'overplied in Liberty's
defence'—'the glorious liberty,' more especially, 'of the children of
God,' 'the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,' without which,
outward liberty he regarded as a temptation and a snare.

In addition to the absolute merit attaching to his labors in the cause
of liberty, it must not be forgotten that he turned aside with a heroic
self-denial, during all those years of his manhood's prime, from what he
had, from his early years up, felt himself dedicated to, and toward
fitting himself for the accomplishment of which, he had, with an
unflagging ardor, trained and marshalled all his faculties.

COMUS

_A Masque presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of
Bridgewater, then President of Wales_

Masques, in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., were
generally written for the entertainment of royalty and nobility. They
were, besides, in most cases, presented by royal and noble persons. In
their setting, they were in strong contrast to the public drama of the
day, got up, as they were, with great magnificence of architecture,
scenery, and 'appareling' (Ben Jonson's word for the apparatus of the
scene), and frequently at an enormous expense. They were generally
offset by grotesque and comic antimasques, which were played by common
actors, dancers, and buffoons, from the public theatres. Shakespeare's
'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was probably not written as a regular drama
for the public stage, but as a masque, on the occasion of some noble
marriage. 'The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus
and Thisbe' presented by the 'rude mechanicals,' 'hard-handed men,' in
the fifth act, is the antimasque. It offsets the Masque in a special
way. The Masque makes great demands on the imagination in its
presentation of the fairy world; the antimasque is absurdly
realistic—nothing is left by the 'rude mechanicals' to the imagination.

The Masque of 'Comus' is the last notable, if not entirely the last,
composition of the kind in English literature, and the loftiest and
loveliest. It is a glorification of the power of purity and chastity
over the impure and the unchaste; and the poet no doubt meant it as a
reflection upon the license and excesses and revelries (of which Comus
is a personification) of the profligate and extravagant court of the
time, imported from 'Celtic and Iberian fields.' The now obvious
attitude of the composition was perhaps not at all suspected when it was
performed at Ludlow Castle.

There is nothing in the Masque of 'Comus' that is even suggestive of the
antimasque of the earlier masques, unless it be where the Country
Dancers come in before the entrance of the Attendant Spirit with the two
Brothers and the Lady, who catch the dancers at their sport. The
Attendant Spirit addresses them in the song (vv. 958-965):

     'Back, shepherds, back! Enough your play
      Till next sunshine holiday.
      Here be, without duck or nod,
      Other trippings to be trod
      Of lighter toes,' etc.

The subject of 'Comus' was too serious to be offset or parodied in any
way by an antimasque; and, furthermore, Milton was not the man for
anything of the kind. His theme excluded all humor, even if he had had
any to expend upon it. Its seriousness must have been deepened for him
by what he no doubt already felt in regard to the Court and the Church,
that both were corrupt, and that both were leagued in their despotic
tendencies, or rather in their actual despotic characters.

The traditional story that the two sons of the Earl of Bridgewater, the
Lord Brackley and Mr. Thomas Egerton, and their sister, the Lady Alice
Egerton, were lost in Haywood Forest on their way to Ludlow Castle from
Herefordshire, where they had been visiting their relatives, the
Egertons, and that the Lady Alice was for a time separated from her
brothers, they having gone to discover the right path, may have had its
origin in the Masque. This seems more likely than that the Masque had
its origin in the story.

In the talk of the two Brothers in regard to their lost sister, the idea
of the Masque is explicitly presented by the elder Brother. He had said:

     'My sister is not so defenceless left
      As you imagine; she has a hidden strength
      Which you remember not.'

The second Brother replies:

             'What hidden strength,
     Unless the strength of Heaven, if you mean that?'

And then the elder Brother gives expression, in a long speech, the gem
of the Masque (vv. 418-475), to the power of chastity and purity over
the unchaste and the impure.

In the service of this idea, the poet started, no doubt, with Comus, the
personification of unchaste and impure revelry (κῶμος), and therefrom
constructed his plot, in which a pure maiden is brought within range of
the wiles and temptations of the enchanter. And as the daughter of the
noble family for which the Masque was written was to play the part of
the tempted maiden, in the presentation of the Masque, the incident of
her being temporarily and necessarily left alone by her brothers in the
forest, would be readily suggested to the poet. It afforded him, too, an
opportunity of paying a high compliment to the children of the Earl of
Bridgewater.

The traditional story may therefore be safely regarded as a figment.

Henry Lawes, the most prominent music teacher of the time, in noble and
wealthy families, and with a high reputation as a musical composer,
furnished the music for the Masque, and took the part of the Attendant
Spirit, first appearing as such, and afterward in the guise of the old
and faithful shepherd Thyrsis. It is not known by whom the parts of
Comus and Sabrina were taken.

Lawes had been one of Milton's musical friends from early boyhood.

Milton addressed the following sonnet to him, which was prefixed to
'Choice Psalmes . . . by Henry and William Lawes, brothers, 1648.' In
Milton's volume of poems published in 1645, Lawes is represented as
'Gentleman of the king's chapel and one of His Majesty's private music.'

_To Mr. H. Lawes, on his Airs_ (1646)

     'Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song
      First taught our English music how to span
      Words with just note and accent, not to scan
      With Midas' ears, committing short and long,
      Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng,            5
      With praise enough for envy to look wan;
      To after-age thou shalt be writ the man,
      That with smooth air could humour best our tongue.
      Thou honourest verse, and verse must lend her wing
      To honour thee, the priest of Phœbus' quire,             10
      That tunest their happiest lines in hymn or story.
      Dante shall give fame leave to set thee higher
      Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing,
      Met in the milder shades of Purgatory.'

THE PERSONS

     THE ATTENDANT SPIRIT, afterward in the habit of THYRSIS.
     COMUS, with his Crew.
     THE LADY.
     FIRST BROTHER.
     SECOND BROTHER.
     SABRINA, the Nymph.

The Chief Persons which presented were:

     The Lord Brackley;
     Mr. Thomas Egerton, his Brother;
     The Lady Alice Egerton.

_The First Scene discovers a Wild Wood._

_The ATTENDANT SPIRIT descends or enters._

     Before the starry threshold of Jove's court
     My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
     Of bright aerial spirits live insphered
     In regions mild of calm and serene air,
     Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot                     5
     Which men call Earth, and, with low-thoughted care,
     Confined and pestered in this pinfold here,
     Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being,
     Unmindful of the crown that virtue gives,
     After this mortal change, to her true servants,              10
     Amongst the enthronèd Gods on sainted seats.
     Yet some there be that by due steps aspire
     To lay their just hands on that golden key
     That opes the palace of eternity.
     To such my errand is; and, but for such,                     15
     I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds
     With the rank vapours of this sin-worn mould.
       But to my task. Neptune, besides the sway
     Of every salt flood and each ebbing stream,
     Took in by lot, 'twixt high and nether Jove,                 20
     Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles
     That, like to rich and various gems, inlay
     The unadornèd bosom of the deep;
     Which he, to grace his tributary gods,
     By course commits to several government,                     25
     And gives them leave to wear their sapphire crowns
     And wield their little tridents. But this Isle,
     The greatest and the best of all the main,
     He quarters to his blue-haired deities;
     And all this tract that fronts the falling sun               30
     A noble Peer of mickle trust and power
     Has in his charge, with tempered awe to guide
     An old and haughty nation proud in arms:
     Where his fair offspring, nursed in princely lore,
     Are coming to attend their father's state,                   35
     And new-intrusted sceptre. But their way
     Lies through the perplexed paths of this drear wood,
     The nodding horror of whose shady brows
     Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger;
     And here their tender age might suffer peril,                40
     But that, by quick command from sovran Jove,
     I was despatched for their defence and guard.
     And listen why; for I will tell you now
     What never yet was heard in tale or song,
     From old or modern bard, in hall or bower.                   45
       Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape
     Crushed the sweet poison of misusèd wine,
     After the Tuscan mariners transformed,
     Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,
     On Circe's island fell. (Who knows not Circe,                50
     The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup
     Whoever tasted lost his upright shape,
     And downward fell into a grovelling swine?)
     This Nymph, that gazed upon his clustering locks,
     With ivy berries wreathed, and his blithe youth,             55
     Had by him, ere he parted thence, a son
     Much like his father, but his mother more,
     Whom therefore she brought up, and Comus named:
     Who, ripe, and frolic of his full-grown age,
     Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields,                        60
     At last betakes him to this ominous wood,
     And, in thick shelter of black shades imbowered,
     Excels his mother at her mighty art,
     Offering to every weary traveller
     His orient liquor in a crystal glass,                        65
     To quench the drouth of Phœbus; which as they taste
     (For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst),
     Soon as the potion works, their human count'nance,
     The express resemblance of the gods, is changed
     Into some brutish form of wolf or bear,                      70
     Or ounce, or tiger, hog, or bearded goat,
     All other parts remaining as they were.
     And they, so perfect is their misery,
     Not once perceive their foul disfigurement,
     But boast themselves more comely than before,                75
     And all their friends and native home forget,
     To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.
     Therefore, when any favoured of high Jove
     Chances to pass through this adventurous glade,
     Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star                      80
     I shoot from heaven, to give him safe convoy,
     As now I do. But first I must put off
     These my sky robes, spun out of Iris' woof,
     And take the weeds and likeness of a swain
     That to the service of this house belongs,                   85
     Who, with his soft pipe, and smooth-dittied song,
     Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar,
     And hush the waving woods; nor of less faith,
     And in this office of his mountain watch
     Likeliest, and nearest to the present aid                    90
     Of this occasion. But I hear the tread
     Of hateful steps; I must be viewless now.

          _COMUS enters, with a charming rod in one hand, his glass
          in the other; with him a rout of monsters, headed like
          sundry sorts of wild beasts, but otherwise like men and
          women, their apparel glistering. They come in making a
          riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hands._

     _Comus._ The star that bids the shepherd fold
     Now the top of heaven doth hold;
     And the gilded car of day                                    95
     His glowing axle doth allay
     In the steep Atlantic stream;
     And the slope sun his upward beam
     Shoots against the dusky pole,
     Pacing toward the other goal                                100
     Of his chamber in the east.
     Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast,
     Midnight shout and revelry,
     Tipsy dance and jollity.
     Braid your locks with rosy twine,                           105
     Dropping odours, dropping wine.
     Rigour now is gone to bed;
     And Advice with scrupulous head,
     Strict Age, and sour Severity,
     With their grave saws, in slumber lie.                      110
     We, that are of purer fire,
     Imitate the starry quire,
     Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,
     Lead in swift round the months and years.
     The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,            115
     Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;
     And on the tawny sands and shelves
     Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.
     By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
     The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim,                  120
     Their merry wakes and pastimes keep;
     What hath night to do with sleep?
     Night hath better sweets to prove;
     Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.
     Come, let us our rites begin,                               125
     —'Tis only daylight that makes sin—
     Which these dun shades will ne'er report.
     Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,
     Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame
     Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame,                 130
     That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb
     Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,
     And makes one blot of all the air!
     Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,
     Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and befriend               135
     Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end
     Of all thy dues be done, and none left out;
     Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
     The nice Morn on the Indian steep,
     From her cabined loop-hole peep,                            140
     And to the tell-tale Sun descry
     Our concealed solemnity.
     Come, knit hands, and beat the ground
     In a light fantastic round.

          _The Measure._

     Break off, break off! I feel the different pace             145
     Of some chaste footing near about this ground.
     Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees;
     Our number may affright. Some virgin sure
     (For so I can distinguish by mine art)
     Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms,                 150
     And to my wily trains: I shall ere long
     Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed
     About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl
     My dazzling spells into the spungy air,
     Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,              155
     And give it false presentments, lest the place
     And my quaint habits breed astonishment,
     And put the damsel to suspicious flight;
     Which must not be, for that's against my course.
     I, under fair pretence of friendly ends,                    160
     And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,
     Baited with reasons not unplausible,
     Wind me into the easy-hearted man,
     And hug him into snares. When once her eye
     Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,                     165
     I shall appear some harmless villager
     Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.
     But here she comes; I fairly step aside,
     And hearken, if I may her business hear.

          _The LADY enters._

     _Lady._ This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,        170
     My best guide now. Methought it was the sound
     Of riot and ill-managed merriment,
     Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe
     Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,
     When, for their teeming flocks, and granges full,           175
     In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,
     And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth
     To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence
     Of such late wassailers; yet, oh! where else
     Shall I inform my unacquainted feet                         180
     In the blind mazes of this tangled wood?
     My brothers, when they saw me wearied out
     With this long way, resolving here to lodge
     Under the spreading favour of these pines,
     Stepped, as they said, to the next thicket-side             185
     To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit
     As the kind hospitable woods provide.
     They left me then when the gray-hooded Even,
     Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed,
     Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phœbus' wain.           190
     But where they are, and why they came not back,
     Is now the labour of my thoughts. 'Tis likeliest
     They had engaged their wandering steps too far;
     And envious darkness, ere they could return,
     Had stole them from me. Else, O thievish Night,             195
     Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end,
     In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars
     That Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps
     With everlasting oil to give due light
     To the misled and lonely traveller?                         200
     This is the place, as well as I may guess,
     Whence even now the tumult of loud mirth
     Was rife, and perfect in my listening ear;
     Yet nought but single darkness do I find.
     What might this be? A thousand fantasies                    205
     Begin to throng into my memory,
     Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,
     And airy tongues that syllable men's names
     On sands and shores and desert wildernesses.
     These thoughts may startle well, but not astound            210
     The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended
     By a strong siding champion, Conscience.
     O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,
     Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings,
     And thou unblemished form of Chastity!                      215
     I see ye visibly, and now believe
     That He, the Supreme Good, to 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 unassailed. . . .                220
     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.                   225
     I cannot hallo to my brothers, but
     Such noise as I can make to be heard farthest
     I'll venture; for my new enlivened spirits
     Prompt me, and they perhaps are not far off.

          _Song._

          Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen         230
              Within thy airy shell
          By slow Meander's margent green,
          And in the violet-embroidered vale,
              Where the love-lorn nightingale
          Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well:            235
          Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair
                That likest thy Narcissus are?
                Oh, if thou have
              Hid them in some flowery cave,
                Tell me but where,                               240
            Sweet Queen of Parley, Daughter of the Sphere!
            So mayst thou be translated to the skies,
          And give resounding grace to all Heaven's harmonies!

     _Comus._ Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould
     Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?                  245
     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,                250
     At every fall smoothing the raven down
     Of darkness till it smiled! I have oft heard
     My mother Circe with the Sirens three,
     Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades,
     Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs,               255
     Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul,
     And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept,
     And chid her barking waves into attention,
     And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause.
     Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense,              260
     And in sweet madness robbed it of itself;
     But such a sacred and home-felt delight,
     Such sober certainty of waking bliss,
     I never heard till now. I'll speak to her,
     And she shall be my queen.—Hail, foreign wonder!           265
     Whom, certain, these rough shades did never breed,
     Unless the goddess that in rural shrine
     Dwell'st here with Pan or Sylvan, by blest song
     Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog
     To touch the prosperous growth of this tall wood.           270

     _Lady._ Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise
     That is addressed to unattending ears.
     Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift
     How to regain my severed company,
     Compelled me to awake the courteous Echo                    275
     To give me answer from her mossy couch.

     _Comus._ What chance, good Lady, hath bereft you thus?

     _Lady._ Dim darkness and this leavy labyrinth.

     _Comus._ Could that divide you from near-ushering guides?

     _Lady._ They left me weary on a grassy turf.                280

     _Comus._ By falsehood, or discourtesy, or why?

     _Lady._ To seek i' the valley some cool friendly spring.

     _Comus._ And left your fair side all unguarded, Lady?

     _Lady._ They were but twain, and purposed quick return.

     _Comus._ Perhaps forestalling night prevented them.         285

     _Lady._ How easy my misfortune is to hit!

     _Comus._ Imports their loss, beside the present need?

     _Lady._ No less than if I should my brothers lose.

     _Comus._ Were they of manly prime, or youthful bloom?

     _Lady._ As smooth as Hebe's their unrazored lips.           290

     _Comus._ Two such I saw, what time the laboured ox
     In his loose traces from the furrow came,
     And the swinked hedger at his supper sat.
     I saw them under a green mantling vine,
     That crawls along the side of yon small hill,               295
     Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots;
     Their port was more than human, as they stood.
     I took it for a faery vision
     Of some gay creatures of the element,
     That in the colours of the rainbow live,                    300
     And play i' the plighted clouds. I was awe-strook,
     And, as I passed, I worshipped. If those you seek,
     It were a journey like the path to Heaven
     To help you find them.

     _Lady._                Gentle villager,
     What readiest way would bring me to that place?             305

     _Comus._ Due west it rises from this shrubby point.

     _Lady._ To find out that, good shepherd, I suppose,
     In such a scant allowance of star-light,
     Would overtask the best land-pilot's art,
     Without the sure guess of well-practised feet.              310

     _Comus._ I know each lane, and every alley green,
     Dingle, or bushy dell, of this wild wood,
     And every bosky bourn from side to side,
     My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood;
     And, if your stray attendance be yet lodged,                315
     Or shroud within these limits, I shall know
     Ere morrow wake, or the low-roosted lark
     From her thatched pallet rouse. If otherwise,
     I can conduct you, Lady, to a low
     But loyal cottage, where you may be safe                    320
     Till further quest.

     _Lady._             Shepherd, I take thy word,
     And trust thy honest-offered courtesy;
     Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds,
     With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls
     And courts of princes, where it first was named,            325
     And yet is most pretended. In a place
     Less warranted than this, or less secure,
     It cannot be, that I should fear to change it.
     Eye me, blest Providence, and square my trial
     To my proportioned strength! Shepherd, lead on.             330

          _Enter the TWO BROTHERS._

     _Eld. Bro._ Unmuffle, ye faint stars; and thou, fair moon,
     That wont'st to love the traveller's benison,
     Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,
     And disinherit Chaos, that reigns here
     In double night of darkness and of shades;                  335
     Or, if your influence be quite dammed up
     With black usurping mists, some gentle taper,
     Though a rush-candle from the wicker hole
     Of some clay habitation, visit us
     With thy long-levelled rule of streaming light,             340
     And thou shalt be our Star of Arcady,
     Or Tyrian Cynosure.

     _Sec. Bro._         Or, if our eyes
     Be barred that happiness, might we but hear
     The folded flocks, penned in their wattled cotes,
     Or sound of pastoral reed with oaken stops,                 345
     Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock
     Count the night-watches to his feathery dames,
     'Twould be some solace yet, some little cheering,
     In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs.
     But, oh, that hapless virgin, our lost sister!              350
     Where may she wander now, whither betake her
     From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles?
     Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now,
     Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm
     Leans her unpillowed head, fraught with sad fears.          355
     What if in wild amazement and affright,
     Or, while we speak, within the direful grasp
     Of savage hunger, or of savage heat!

     _Eld. Bro._ Peace, brother: be not over-exquisite
     To cast the fashion of uncertain evils;                     360
     For, grant they be so, while they rest unknown,
     What need a man forestall his date of grief,
     And run to meet what he would most avoid?
     Or, if they be but false alarms of fear,
     How bitter is such self-delusion!                           365
     I do not think my sister so to seek,
     Or so unprincipled in virtue's book,
     And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever,
     As that the single want of light and noise
     (Not being in danger, as I trust she is not)                370
     Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts,
     And put them into misbecoming plight.
     Virtue could see to do what Virtue would
     By her own radiant light, though sun and moon
     Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self                375
     Oft seeks to sweet retirèd 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.                380
     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.

     _Sec. Bro._                 'Tis most true                  385
     That musing meditation most affects
     The pensive secrecy of desert-cell,
     Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds,
     And sits as safe as in a senate-house;
     For who would rob a hermit of his weeds,                    390
     His few books, or his beads, or maple dish,
     Or do his grey hairs any violence?
     But Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree
     Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard
     Of dragon-watch with unenchanted eye,                       395
     To save her blossoms, and defend her fruit,
     From the rash hand of bold Incontinence.
     You may as well spread out the unsunned heaps
     Of miser's treasure by an outlaw's den,
     And tell me it is safe, as bid me hope                      400
     Danger will wink on Opportunity,
     And let a single helpless maiden pass
     Uninjured in this wild surrounding waste.
     Of night or loneliness it recks me not;
     I fear the dread events that dog them both,                 405
     Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person
     Of our unownèd sister.

     _Eld. Bro._            I do not, brother,
     Infer as if I thought my sister's state
     Secure without all doubt or controversy;
     Yet, where an equal poise of hope and fear                  410
     Does arbitrate the event, my nature is
     That I incline to hope rather than fear,
     And gladly banish squint suspicion.
     My sister is not so defenceless left
     As you imagine; she has a hidden strength,                  415
     Which you remember not.

     _Sec. Bro._             What hidden strength,
     Unless the strength of Heaven, if you mean that?

     _Eld. Bro._ I mean that too, but yet a hidden strength,
     Which, if Heaven gave it, may be termed her own.
     'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity;                        420
     She that has that, is clad in complete steel,
     And, like a quivered nymph with arrows keen,
     May trace huge forests, and unharboured heaths,
     Infámous hills, and sandy perilous wilds;
     Where, through the sacred rays of chastity,                 425
     No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaineer,
     Will dare to soil her virgin purity.
     Yea, there where very desolation dwells,
     By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades,
     She may pass on with unblenched majesty,                    430
     Be it not done in pride, or in presumption.
     Some say no evil thing that walks by night,
     In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen,
     Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost,
     That breaks his magic chains at curfew time,                435
     No goblin or swart faery of the mine,
     Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity.
     Do ye believe me yet, or shall I call
     Antiquity from the old schools of Greece
     To testify the arms of chastity?                            440
     Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow,
     Fair silver-shafted queen for ever chaste,
     Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness
     And spotted mountain-pard, but set at nought
     The frivolous bolt of Cupid; gods and men                   445
     Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods.
     What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield
     That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin,
     Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone,
     But rigid looks of chaste austerity,                        450
     And noble grace that dashed brute violence
     With sudden adoration and blank awe?
     So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity
     That, when a soul is found sincerely so,
     A thousand liveried angels lackey her,                      455
     Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
     And in clear dream and solemn vision
     Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear;
     Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
     Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape,                  460
     The unpolluted temple of the mind,
     And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,
     Till all be made immortal. But, when lust,
     By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
     But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,                     465
     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                470
     Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres,
     Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave,
     As loth to leave the body that it loved,
     And linked itself by carnal sensuality
     To a degenerate and degraded state.                         475

     _Sec. Bro._ How charming is divine Philosophy!
     Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
     But musical as is Apollo's lute,
     And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets,
     Where no crude surfeit reigns.

     _Eld. Bro._                    List! list! I hear           480
     Some far-off hallo break the silent air.

     _Sec. Bro._ Methought so too; what should it be?

     _Eld. Bro._                                      For certain,
     Either some one, like us, night-foundered here,
     Or else some neighbour woodman, or, at worst,
     Some roving robber calling to his fellows.                  485

     _Sec. Bro._ Heaven keep my sister! Again, again, and near!
     Best draw, and stand upon our guard.

     _Eld. Bro._                          I'll hallo.
     If he be friendly, he comes well: if not,
     Defence is a good cause, and Heaven be for us!

          _Enter the ATTENDANT SPIRIT, habited like a shepherd._

     That hallo I should know. What are you? Speak!              490
     Come not too near; you fall on iron stakes else.

     _Spir._ What voice is that? my young Lord? speak again.

     _Sec. Bro._ O brother, 'tis my father's shepherd, sure.

     _Eld. Bro._ Thyrsis! whose artful strains have oft delayed
     The huddling brook to hear his madrigal,                    495
     And sweetened every musk-rose of the dale.
     How camest thou here, good swain? hath any ram
     Slipped from the fold, or young kid lost his dam,
     Or straggling wether the pent flock forsook?
     How couldst thou find this dark sequestered nook?           500

     _Spir._ O my loved master's heir, and his next joy,
     I came not here on such a trivial toy
     As a strayed ewe, or to pursue the stealth
     Of pilfering wolf; not all the fleecy wealth
     That doth enrich these downs is worth a thought             505
     To this my errand, and the care it brought.
     But, oh! my virgin Lady, where is she?
     How chance she is not in your company?

     _Eld. Bro._ To tell thee sadly, Shepherd, without blame
     Or our neglect, we lost her as we came.                     510

     _Spir._ Ay me unhappy! then my fears are true.

     _Eld. Bro._ What fears, good Thyrsis? Prithee briefly shew.

     _Spir._ I'll tell ye. 'Tis not vain or fabulous
     (Though so esteemed by shallow ignorance)
     What the sage poets, taught by the heavenly Muse,           515
     Storied of old in high immortal verse,
     Of dire Chimeras and enchanted isles,
     And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to Hell;
     For such there be, but unbelief is blind.
       Within the navel of this hideous wood,                    520
     Immured in cypress shades, a sorcerer dwells,
     Of Bacchus and of Circe born, great Comus,
     Deep skilled in all his mother's witcheries,
     And here to every thirsty wanderer
     By sly enticement gives his baneful cup,                    525
     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
     Charáctered in the face. This have I learnt                 530
     Tending my flocks hard by i' the hilly crofts
     That brow this bottom-glade; whence, night by night,
     He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl
     Like stabled wolves, or tigers at their prey,
     Doing abhorrèd rites to Hecate                              535
     In their obscurèd haunts of inmost bowers.
     Yet have they many baits and guileful spells
     To inveigle and invite the unwary sense
     Of them that pass unweeting by the way.
     This evening late, by then the chewing flocks               540
     Had ta'en their supper on the savoury herb
     Of knot-grass dew-besprent, and were in fold,
     I sat me down to watch upon a bank
     With ivy canopied, and interwove
     With flaunting honey-suckle, and began,                     545
     Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy,
     To meditate my rural minstrelsy,
     Till fancy had her fill. But ere a close,
     The wonted roar was up amidst the woods,
     And filled the air with barbarous dissonance;               550
     At which I ceased, and listened them a while,
     Till an unusual stop of sudden silence
     Gave respite to the drowsy-flighted steeds
     That draw the litter of close-curtained Sleep.
     At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound                   555
     Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,
     And stole upon the air, that even Silence
     Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might
     Deny her nature, and be never more,
     Still to be so displaced. I was all ear,                    560
     And took in strains that might create a soul
     Under the ribs of Death. But, oh! ere long
     Too well I did perceive it was the voice
     Of my most honoured Lady, your dear sister.
     Amazed I stood, harrowed with grief and fear;               565
     And "O poor hapless nightingale," thought I,
     "How sweet thou sing'st, how near the deadly snare!"
     Then down the lawns I ran with headlong haste,
     Through paths and turnings often trod by day,
     Till, guided by mine ear, I found the place                 570
     Where that damned wizard, hid in sly disguise
     (For so by certain signs I knew), had met
     Already, ere my best speed could prevent,
     The aidless innocent lady, his wished prey,
     Who gently asked if he had seen such two,                   575
     Supposing him some neighbour villager.
     Longer I durst not stay, but soon I guessed
     Ye were the two she meant; with that I sprung
     Into swift flight, till I had found you here,
     But further know I not.

     _Sec. Bro._             O night and shades,                 580
     How are ye joined with Hell in triple knot
     Against the unarmed weakness of one virgin,
     Alone and helpless! Is this the confidence
     You gave me, brother?

     _Eld. Bro._           Yes, and keep it still;
     Lean on it safely; not a period                             585
     Shall be unsaid for me. Against the threats
     Of malice or of sorcery, or that power
     Which erring men call Chance, this I hold firm:
     Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt,
     Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled;              590
     Yea, even that which Mischief meant most harm
     Shall in the happy trial prove most glory.
     But evil on itself shall back recoil,
     And mix no more with goodness, when at last,
     Gathered like scum, and settled to itself,                  595
     It shall be in eternal restless change
     Self-fed, and self-consumed. If this fail,
     The pillared firmament is rottenness,
     And earth's base built on stubble. But come, let's on!
     Against the opposing will and arm of Heaven                 600
     May never this just sword be lifted up;
     But for that damned magician, let him be girt
     With all the grisly legiöns that troop
     Under the sooty flag of Acheron,
     Harpies and Hydras, or all the monstrous forms              605
     'Twixt Africa and Ind, I'll find him out,
     And force him to return his purchase back,
     Or drag him by the curls to a foul death,
     Cursed as his life.

     _Spir._             Alas! good venturous youth,
     I love thy courage yet, and bold emprise;                   610
     But here thy sword can do thee little stead.
     Far other arms and other weapons must
     Be those that quell the might of hellish charms.
     He with his bare wand can unthread thy joints,
     And crumble all thy sinews.

     _Eld. Bro._                 Why, prithee, Shepherd,         615
     How durst thou then thyself approach so near
     As to make this relation?

     _Spir._                   Care and utmost shifts
     How to secure the Lady from surprisal
     Brought to my mind a certain shepherd-lad,
     Of small regard to see to, yet well skilled                 620
     In every virtuous plant and healing herb
     That spreads her verdant leaf to the morning ray.
     He loved me well, and oft would beg me sing;
     Which when I did, he on the tender grass
     Would sit, and hearken e'en to ecstasy,                     625
     And in requital ope his leathern scrip,
     And show me simples of a thousand names,
     Telling their strange and vigorous faculties.
     Amongst the rest a small unsightly root,
     But of divine effect, he culled me out.                     630
     The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it,
     But in another country, as he said,
     Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil,
     Unknown, and like esteemed, and the dull swain
     Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon;                  635
     And yet more med'cinal is it than that Moly
     That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave.
     He called it Hæmony, and gave it me,
     And bade me keep it as of sovereign use
     'Gainst all enchantments, mildew blast or damp,             640
     Or ghastly Furies' apparitiön.
     I pursed it up, but little reckoning made,
     Till now that this extremity compelled.
     But now I find it true; for by this means
     I knew the foul enchanter, though disguised,                645
     Entered the very lime-twigs of his spells,
     And yet came off. If you have this about you
     (As I will give you when we go), you may
     Boldly assault the necromancer's hall;
     Where if he be, with dauntless hardihood                    650
     And brandished blade rush on him, break his glass,
     And shed the luscious liquor on the ground;
     But seize his wand. Though he and his curst crew
     Fierce sign of battle make, and menace high,
     Or, like the sons of Vulcan, vomit smoke,                   655
     Yet will they soon retire, if he but shrink.

     _Eld. Bro._ Thyrsis, lead on apace; I'll follow thee;
     And some good angel bear a shield before us!

          _The Scene changes to a stately palace, set out with all
          manner of deliciousness: soft music, tables spread with
          all dainties. COMUS appears with his rabble, and the LADY
          set in an enchanted chair, to whom he offers his glass,
          which she puts by, and goes about to rise._

     _Comus._ Nay, Lady, sit. If I but wave this wand,
     Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster,                660
     And you a statue, or as Daphne was,
     Root-bound, that fled Apollo.

     _Lady._                       Fool, do not boast.
     Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind
     With all thy charms, although this corporal rind
     Thou hast immanacled, while Heaven sees good.               665

     _Comus._ Why are you vext, Lady? why do you frown?
     Here dwell no frowns, nor anger; from these gates
     Sorrow flies far. See, here be all the pleasures
     That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts,
     When the fresh blood grows lively, and returns              670
     Brisk as the April buds in primrose season.
     And first behold this cordial julep here,
     That flames and dances in his crystal bounds,
     With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed.
     Not that Nepenthes, which the wife of Thone                 675
     In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena,
     Is of such power to stir up joy as this,
     To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst.
     Why should you be so cruel to yourself,
     And to those dainty limbs which Nature lent                 680
     For gentle usage and soft delicacy?
     But you invert the covenants of her trust,
     And harshly deal, like an ill borrower,
     With that which you received on other terms,
     Scorning the unexempt conditiön                             685
     By which all mortal frailty must subsist,
     Refreshment after toil, ease after pain,
     That have been tired all day without repast,
     And timely rest have wanted. But, fair virgin,
     This will restore all soon.

     _Lady._                     'Twill not, false traitor!      690
     'Twill not restore the truth and honesty
     That thou hast banished from thy tongue with lies.
     Was this the cottage and the safe abode
     Thou told'st me of? What grim aspects are these,
     These oughly-headed monsters? Mercy guard me!               695
     Hence with thy brewed enchantments, foul deceiver!
     Hast thou betrayed my credulous innocence
     With vizored falsehood and base forgery?
     And wouldst thou seek again to trap me here
     With liquorish baits, fit to ensnare a brute?               700
     Were it a draught for Juno when she banquets,
     I would not taste thy treasonous offer. 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.                       705

     _Comus._ O foolishness of men! that lend their ears
     To those budge doctors of the Stoic fur,
     And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub,
     Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence!
     Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth                710
     With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,
     Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks,
     Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable,
     But all to please and sate the curious taste?
     And set to work millions of spinning worms,                 715
     That in their green shops weave the smooth-haired silk,
     To deck her sons; and that no corner might
     Be vacant of her plenty, in her own loins
     She hutched the all-worshiped ore and precious gems,
     To store her children with. If all the world                720
     Should, in a pet of temperance, feed on pulse,
     Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze,
     The All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised,
     Not half his riches known, and yet despised;
     And we should serve him as a grudging master,               725
     As a penurious niggard of his wealth,
     And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons,
     Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight,
     And strangled with her waste fertility;
     The earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with plumes,  730
     The herds would over-multitude their lords;
     The sea o'erfraught would swell, and the unsought diamonds
     Would so emblaze the forehead of the deep,
     And so bestud with stars, that they below
     Would grow inured to light, and come at last                735
     To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows.
     List, Lady; be not coy, and be not cozened
     With that same vaunted name, Virginity.
     Beauty is Nature's coin; must not be hoarded,
     But must be current; and the good thereof                   740
     Consists in mutual and partaken bliss,
     Unsavoury in the enjoyment of itself.
     If you let slip time, like a neglected rose
     It withers on the stalk with languished head.
     Beauty is Nature's brag, and must be shown                  745
     In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities,
     Where most may wonder at the workmanship.
     It is for homely features to keep home;
     They had their name thence; coarse complexions
     And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply                 750
     The sampler, and to tease the huswife's wool.
     What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that,
     Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the morn?
     There was another meaning in these gifts;
     Think what, and be advised; you are but young yet.          755

     _Lady._ I had not thought to have unlocked my lips
     In this unhallowed air, but that this juggler
     Would think to charm my judgment, as mine eyes,
     Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb.
     I hate when vice can bolt her arguments,                    760
     And virtue has no tongue to check her pride.
     Impostor! do not charge most innocent Nature,
     As if she would her children should be riotous
     With her abundance. She, good cateress,
     Means her provision only to the good,                       765
     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                        770
     Now heaps upon some few with vast excess,
     Nature's full blessings would be well dispensed
     In unsuperfluous even proportiön,
     And she no whit encumbered with her store;
     And then the Giver would be better thanked,                 775
     His praise due paid: for swinish Gluttony
     Ne'er looks to Heaven amidst his gorgeous feast,
     But with besotted base ingratitude
     Crams, and blasphemes his Feeder. Shall I go on?
     Or have I said enow? To him that dares                      780
     Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words
     Against the sun-clad power of Chastity,
     Fain would I something say;—yet to what end?
     Thou hast nor ear, nor soul, to apprehend
     The sublime notion and high mystery                         785
     That must be uttered to unfold the sage
     And serious doctrine of Virginity;
     And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know
     More happiness than this thy present lot.
     Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric,                      790
     That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence;
     Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced.
     Yet should I try, the uncontrollèd worth
     Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits
     To such a flame of sacred vehemence,                        795
     That dumb things would be moved to sympathize,
     And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and shake,
     Till all thy magic structures, reared so high,
     Were shattered into heaps o'er thy false head.

     _Comus._ She fables not. I feel that I do fear              800
     Her words set off by some superior power;
     And, though not mortal, yet a cold shuddering dew
     Dips me all o'er, as when the wrath of Jove
     Speaks thunder and the chains of Erebus
     To some of Saturn's crew. I must dissemble,                 805
     And try her yet more strongly.—Come, no more!
     This is mere moral babble, and direct
     Against the canon-laws of our foundation.
     I must not suffer this; yet 'tis but the lees
     And settlings of a melancholy blood.                        810
     But this will cure all straight; one sip of this
     Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight
     Beyond the bliss of dreams. Be wise, and taste.

         _The BROTHERS rush in with swords drawn, wrest his glass
         out of his hand, and break it against the ground; his rout
         make sign of resistance, but are all driven in. The
         ATTENDANT SPIRIT comes in._

     _Spir._ What! have you let the false enchanter scape?
     Oh, ye mistook; ye should have snatched his wand,           815
     And bound him fast. Without his rod reversed,
     And backward mutters of dissevering power,
     We cannot free the Lady that sits here
     In stony fetters fixed, and motionless.
     Yet stay: be not disturbed; now I bethink me,               820
     Some other means I have which may be used,
     Which once of Melibœus old I learnt,
     The soothest shepherd that e'er piped on plains.
       There is a gentle nymph not far from hence,
     That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream:        825
     Sabrina is her name: a virgin pure;
     Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine,
     That had the sceptre from his father Brute.
     She, guiltless damsel, flying the mad pursuit
     Of her enragèd stepdame, Guendolen,                         830
     Commended her fair innocence to the flood,
     That stayed her flight with his cross-flowing course.
     The water-nymphs, that in the bottom played,
     Held up their pearlèd wrists, and took her in,
     Bearing her straight to aged Nereus' hall;                  835
     Who, piteous of her woes, reared her lank head,
     And gave her to his daughters to imbathe
     In nectared lavers strewed with asphodil,
     And through the porch and inlet of each sense
     Dropt in ambrosial oils, till she revived,                  840
     And underwent a quick immortal change,
     Made Goddess of the river. Still she retains
     Her maiden gentleness, and oft at eve
     Visits the herds along the twilight meadows,
     Helping all urchin blasts, and ill-luck signs               845
     That the shrewd meddling elf delights to make,
     Which she with precious vialed liquors heals;
     For which the shepherds at their festivals
     Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays,
     And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream             850
     Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils.
     And, as the old swain said, she can unlock
     The clasping charm, and thaw the numbing spell,
     If she be right invoked in warbled song;
     For maidenhood she loves, and will be swift                 855
     To aid a virgin, such as was herself,
     In hard-besetting need. This will I try,
     And add the power of some adjuring verse.

          _Song._

          Sabrina fair,
            Listen where thou art sitting                        860
          Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
            In twisted braids of lilies knitting
          The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair;
            Listen for dear honour's sake,
            Goddess of the silver lake,                          865
                Listen and save!

     Listen and appear to us,
     In name of great Oceanus.
     By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace,
     And Tethy's grave majestic pace;                            870
     By hoary Nereus' wrinkled look,
     And the Carpathian wizard's hook;
     By scaly Triton's winding shell,
     And old soothsaying Glaucus' spell;
     By Leucothea's lovely hands,                                875
     And her son that rules the strands;
     By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet,
     And the songs of Sirens sweet;
     By dead Parthenope's dear tomb,
     And fair Ligea's golden comb,                               880
     Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks,
     Sleeking her soft alluring locks;
     By all the nymphs that nightly dance
     Upon thy streams with wily glance;
     Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head                         885
     From thy coral-paven bed,
     And bridle in thy headlong wave,
     Till thou our summons answered have.
                         Listen and save!

          _SABRINA rises, attended by water-nymphs, and sings._

     By the rushy-fringèd bank,                                  890
     Where grows the willow and the osier dank,
       My sliding chariot stays,
     Thick set with agate, and the azurn sheen
     Of turkis blue, and emerald green,
       That in the channel strays;                               895
     Whilst, from off the waters fleet,
     Thus I set my printless feet
     O'er the cowslip's velvet head,
       That bends not as I tread.
     Gentle swain, at thy request                                900
       I am here!

     _Spir._ Goddess dear,
     We implore thy powerful hand
     To undo the charmèd band
     Of true virgin here distrest                                905
     Through the force and through the wile
     Of unblest enchanter vile.

     _Sabr._ Shepherd, 'tis my office blest
     To help ensnarèd chastity.
     Brightest Lady, look on me.                                 910
     Thus I sprinkle on thy breast
     Drops that from my fountain pure
     I have kept of precious cure;
     Thrice upon thy finger's tip,
     Thrice upon thy rubied lip;                                 915
     Next this marble venomed seat,
     Smeared with gums of glutinous heat,
     I touch with chaste palms moist and cold.
     Now the spell hath lost his hold;
     And I must haste ere morning hour                           920
     To wait in Amphitrite's bower.

          _SABRINA descends, and the LADY rises out of her seat._

     _Spir._ Virgin, daughter of Locrine,
     Sprung of old Anchises' line,
     May thy brimmèd waves for this
     Their full tribute never miss                               925
     From a thousand petty rills,
     That tumble down the snowy hills;
     Summer drouth, or singèd air
     Never scorch thy tresses fair,
     Nor wet October's torrent flood                             930
     Thy molten crystal fill with mud;
     May thy billows roll ashore
     The beryl, and the golden ore;
     May thy lofty head be crowned
     With many a tower and terrace round,                        935
     And here and there thy banks upon
     With groves of myrrh and cinnamon.
       Come, Lady; while Heaven lends us grace,
     Let us fly this cursed place,
     Lest the sorcerer us entice                                 940
     With some other new device.
     Not a waste or needless sound,
     Till we come to holier ground.
     I shall be your faithful guide
     Through this gloomy covert wide;                            945
     And not many furlongs thence
     Is your Father's residence,
     Where this night are met in state
     Many a friend to gratulate
     His wished presence, and beside                             950
     All the swains that there abide
     With jigs, and rural dance resort.
     We shall catch them at their sport,
     And our sudden coming there
     Will double all their mirth and cheer.                      955
     Come, let us haste; the stars grow high,
     But Night sits monarch yet in the mid-sky.

          _The Scene changes, presenting Ludlow town and the
          President's castle; then come in country dancers; after
          them the ATTENDANT SPIRIT, with the TWO BROTHERS and the
          LADY._

          _Song._

     _Spir._ Back, shepherds, back! enough your play,
     Till next sunshine holiday.
     Here be, without duck or nod,                               960
     Other trippings to be trod
     Of lighter toes, and such court-guise
     As Mercury did first devise
     With the mincing Dryades
     On the lawns and on the leas.                               965

          _This second Song presents them to their Father and
          Mother._

     Noble Lord, and Lady bright,
     I have brought ye new delight.
     Here behold so goodly grown
     Three fair branches of your own.
     Heaven hath timely tried their youth,                       970
     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.                        975

          _The dances ended, the SPIRIT epiloguizes._

     _Spir._ 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,                                980
     All amidst the gardens fair
     Of Hesperus, and his daughters three
     That sing about the golden tree.
     Along the crispèd shades and bowers
     Revels the spruce and jocund Spring;                        985
     The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours
     Thither all their bounties bring.
     There eternal Summer dwells,
     And west-winds with musky wing
     About the cedarn alleys fling                               990
     Nard and cassia's balmy smells.
     Iris there with humid bow
     Waters the odorous banks, that blow
     Flowers of more mingled hue
     Than her purfled scarf can shew,                            995
     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,                             1000
     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                     1005
     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,                         1010
     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 bowed welkin slow doth bend,                     1015
     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                              1020
     Higher than the sphery chime;
     Or, if Virtue feeble were,
     Heaven itself would stoop to her.

LYCIDAS

The poem of Lycidas was occasioned by the death of Milton's College
friend, Edward King, son of Sir John King, Knight, Privy Councillor for
Ireland, and Secretary to the Irish Government. King was admitted on the
9th of June, 1626, at the age of fourteen, to Christ's College,
Cambridge, about sixteen months after Milton's admission. Milton left
College after receiving his Master's degree in July, 1632; so that at
this date, he and King had been at College together about six years.
King was made a Fellow of his College in June, 1630, in conformity with
a royal mandate, secured, it may have been, through Sir John's influence
at court, due to his official position. He had also been Privy
Councillor for the Kingdom of Ireland, to their majesties, Elizabeth and
James.

Milton's claim, as a scholar, to the Fellowship must have been far
superior to King's, and he was ahead of him in his College course. But
Fellowships went a good deal by political and ecclesiastical influence;
and, furthermore, it is not likely that Milton would have accepted a
Fellowship at the time, if it had been offered to him, involving, as it
did, the taking of orders, against which Milton's mind must already at
that time have been decided, though he had been sent to the University
with the Church in view.

King received his Master's degree in July, 1633, and continued his
connection with the College as fellow, tutor, and, in 1634-35, as
'prælector.' He was noted for his amiability and purity of character and
genuine piety; and Milton was probably drawn to him more by these
qualities than by his intellectual and poetical abilities. He left
numerous Latin compositions (published in various collections), which,
according to Masson, have no remarkable poetical merit. But their
subjects, all, with one exception, royal occasions, did not afford
opportunities for the display of poetic genius,—the birth of the
Princess Mary, the king's recovery from the smallpox, the king's safe
return from Scotland, July, 1633, commendatory iambics prefixed to a
Latin comedy, _Senile Odium_, performed in Queen's College, the birth of
Prince James, Duke of York, the birth of the Princess Elizabeth, and the
birth of the Princess Anne.

King was preparing himself for the Church; and it may be inferred from
Milton's poem that he regarded him as worthy, in an eminent degree, to
discharge the responsible duties of a Christian minister.

In the Long Vacation of 1637, King set out to visit his family and
friends in Ireland. He embarked at Chester for Dublin. When but a short
distance from the Welsh coast, the weather being at the time, as appears
from Milton's poem, perfectly calm, the ship (it is alluded to as a
'fatal and perfidious bark') struck on a rock and soon went down, only a
few of the passengers being rescued.

A volume of 'In Memoriam' poems, by members of different Colleges of the
University, and others, twenty in Latin, three in Greek, and thirteen in
English, was printed at the University Press and published early in the
following year (1638). The Latin and Greek part of the volume bore the
title, 'Justa Edovardo King naufrago, ab amicis mœrentibus, amoris et
μνείας χάριν. _Si recte calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est._
Petron. Arb. Cantabrigiæ, apud Thomam Buck et Rogerum Daniel, celeberrimæ
Academiæ typographos. 1638.'

The English part bore the title, 'Obsequies to the memorie of Mr. Edward
King, Anno Dom. 1638. Printed by Th. Buck and R. Daniel, printers to
the Vniversitie of Cambridge, 1638.'

Prefixed to the volume is a brief Latin inscriptive panegyric, in which
King's last moments are described: 'haud procul a littore Britannico,
navi in scopulum allisa et rimis ex ictu fatiscente, dum alii vectores
vitæ mortalis frustra satagerent, immortalem anhelans in genu provolutus
oransque una cum navigio ab aquis absorptus, animam deo reddidit iiii
eid. Sextilis anno Salutis MDCXXXVII, Ætatis xxv.'

The extracts given by Masson, from the English poems, have no poetic
merit, nor merit of any kind, being clumsy tissues of far-fetched,
cold-blooded conceits, of which the following, from three of the
contributions, are not unfair specimens. There could not have been an
excess of poetical ability in the University at the time.

     'I am no poet here; my pen's the spout
      Where the rain-water of my eyes runs out.
      In pity of that name whose fate we see
      Thus copied out in grief's Hydrographie.'

                     'Since first the waters gave
      A blessing to him which the soul did save,
      They loved the holy body still too much,
      And would regain some virtue from a touch.'

     'Weep forth your tears, then; pour out all your tide;
      All waters are pernicious since King died.'

The writers must all have sat at the feet and learned of John Donne,
whose coldly ingenious conceits had for some time been passing for
poetry.

Milton might well lament, in the person of his bereaved shepherd, the
sad decline of poetry, since the Elizabethan days.

     'Alas! what boots it with uncessant care
      To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade,
      And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
      Were it not better done, as others use,
      To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
      Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?

Milton's poem comes last in the collection, without title, and with
simply the initials I. M. appended. It presents a strange contrast to
the worthless productions which precede it. Unless the other writers'
poetic appreciation was very far in advance of their poetic power, as
exhibited in their several contributions, they could have had but little
appreciation of the merits of Milton's poem. There is no reason for
supposing that King's death caused Milton a deep personal grief, such as
that which was caused by the death of Charles Diodati, and to which the
_Epitaphium Damonis_ bears testimony.

Milton had no doubt cherished for King a deep regard, as one
exceptionally fitted, by his purity of character, and sincere piety, for
the sacred office. And the presentation, in his elegiac ode, of these
qualities, afforded an occasion for giving an expression to what was
evidently a greater grief to him than the death of his College friend,
namely, the condition of the Church, which he regarded as corrupt in
itself, and as in league with the despotic tendencies of the political
power. All the 'higher strains' of the ode are inspired by a holy
indignation toward the time-serving ecclesiastics, whose unworthiness,
as shepherds of Christ's flock, he sets forth in the burning
denunciations attributed to St. Peter, as the type of true episcopal
power,—denunciations which are prophetic of those he is destined to
pronounce in a few years, in his polemic prose works, against the more
developed ecclesiastical and political abuses of the time, as one
specially commissioned by God, so to do, in the words delivered to the
prophet: 'Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and
declare unto my people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob
their sins.'

When the poem was republished with the author's full name, in 1645, it
had the following heading: 'In this Monody the author bewails a learned
friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish
seas, 1637; and, by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted
Clergy, then in their height.'

This heading would, no doubt, have caused the rejection of the poem by
the Cambridge authorities. Milton's hostility to the hierarchy of
England was little suspected then: he was no doubt regarded as a loyal
and dutiful son of his _Alma Mater_, and, besides, it is not likely that
the several contributions to the King Memorial were looked into very
closely by the Committee of Examination.

The death of the Shepherd Lycidas is made to image forth the death of a
pure priesthood. It is possible that Milton may have seen an
etymological significance in the name Lycidas (which the philology of
the present day would not admit) and which caused him to adopt the name
as bearing upon the ecclesiastical import of the poem. The name for him
may have signified a _wolf-seer_, to look out for the wolf being one of
the most important duties of the shepherd who has the care of the sheep
and of the spiritual shepherd or pastor who watches over Christ's flock.

'The pilot of the Galilean lake,' St. Peter, 'the type and head of true
episcopal power,' is introduced among the mourners of the death of King,
denouncing the lewd hirelings of the priesthood of the time.

     'How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
      Enow of such as, for their bellies' sake,
      Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!
      Of other care they little reckoning make
      Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast,
      And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
      Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
      A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least
      That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!
      What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
      And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
      Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
      The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
      But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
      Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
      Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
      Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
      But that two-handed engine at the door
      Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.'

The two last verses some commentators have explained as a prophecy of
the execution of Archbishop Laud, which took place on the 10th of
January, 1644, six years after the publication of 'Lycidas.' Warton thus
paraphrases the lines: 'But there will soon be an end of all these
evils; the axe is at hand, to take off the head of him who has been the
great abettor of these corruptions of the gospel. This will be done by
one stroke.'

If this is the meaning of the passage, it was certainly a very
remarkable prophecy, when it was written, for the king and the
archbishop were then at the height of their power, and there was little
or nothing to indicate its overthrow.

The passage admits of a more probable explanation. The two-handed
engine, the epithet 'two-handed' meaning that its length and weight
required it to be grasped with both hands, refers to the sword of St.
Michael, the guardian and protector of the Church. In the 6th Book of
the 'Paradise Lost' (vv. 250-253) it is said of the sword of Michael
that it

                         'Smote and felled
     Squadrons at once; with huge two-handed sway
     Brandished aloft, the horrid edge came down
     Wide-wasting.'

The poet in this passage therefore means to say that St. Michael's sword
is to smite off the head of Satan, who, at the door of Christ's fold,
is, 'with privy paw,' daily devouring the hungry sheep.

In a sublime invocation to the Son of God, at the conclusion of the
fourth section of 'Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against
Smectymnuus,' Milton says: 'As thou didst dignify our fathers' days with
many revelations above all the foregoing ages, since thou tookest the
flesh, so thou canst vouchsafe to us (though unworthy) as large a
portion of thy spirit as thou pleasest; for who shall prejudice thy
all-governing will? Seeing the power of thy grace is not passed away
with the primitive times, as fond and faithless men imagine, but thy
kingdom is now at hand, and thou _standing at the door_. Come forth out
of thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the earth! put on
the visible robes of thy imperial majesty, take up that unlimited
sceptre which thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed thee; for now the
voice of thy bride calls thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed.'

The view taken is strengthened by another disputed passage of the poem,
a few verses farther on. The poet is addressing his drowned friend,
whose body he imagines to be tossed about by the waves (vv. 154-163):

     'Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
      Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled;
      Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
      Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
      Visitest the bottom of the monstrous world;
      Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
      Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
      Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
      Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold,
      Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.'

By 'the fable of Bellerus old,' is meant St. Michael's Mount at the
Land's End in Cornwall, anciently named Bellerium, from Bellerus, a
Cornish giant, where the Vision of St. Michael was, by the old fable,
represented to sit, looking toward far Namancos and the hold of Spanish
Bayona.

Much of the deeper meaning of the poem centres in the three last verses
of the passage quoted:

     'Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
      Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold,
      Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.'

The annotators say nothing, so far as I know, about the application of
the great Vision of the guarded mount to the ecclesiastical meaning of
the poem. The meaning I take to be this: in making the Archangel
Michael, the guardian and defender of the Church of Christ, look toward
Namancos and Bayona's hold, _i.e._ toward Spain, the great stronghold,
at the time, of Papacy, and which, in the reign of Elizabeth, had
threatened England with invasion and with the imposition of the Roman
Catholic religion, the poet would evidently imply the Archangel's
watchfulness over the Church against foreign foes. But the danger is not
from _without_ (this I take to be the idea shadowed forth), the danger
is not from without—it lies _within_ the Church. Milton, or rather
'Milton transformed in his imagination, for the time, into a poetic
shepherd,' therefore says:

     'Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.'

Lycidas, who is made to represent, allegorically, the good shepherd that
careth for the sheep and looketh out for the wolf, is _dead_; and the
lewd hirelings who, for their bellies' sake, have crept into the fold,
and to whom the hungry sheep look up and are not fed, have themselves
become grim wolves, and with privy paw seize upon and devour the flock.

'Lycidas' was the last of Milton's poems produced during his residence
under his father's roof at Horton, in Buckinghamshire. He set out soon
after on his continental tour. Perhaps the 'fresh woods and pastures
new,' in the last verse of the poem, refers to this contemplated tour.
On his return to his native land, he had to bid farewell, a long
farewell, to the loved haunts of the Muses, and gird himself to fight
the battle of civil and religious liberty.

     Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
     Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
     I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
     And with forced fingers rude
     Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.                5
     Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
     Compels me to disturb your season due;
     For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
     Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
     Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew                      10
     Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme.
     He must not float upon his watery bier
     Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
     Without the meed of some melodious tear.
       Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well                    15
     That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
     Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
     Hence with denial vain and coy excuse—
     So may some gentle Muse
     With lucky words favour _my_ destined urn,                   20
     And as he passes turn,
     And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud—
     For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
     Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill;
     Together both, ere the high lawns appeared                   25
     Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,
     We drove a-field, and both together heard
     What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn,
     Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
     Oft till the star that rose at evening, bright,              30
     Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.
     Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
     Tempered to the oaten flute;
     Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
     From the glad sound would not be absent long;                35
     And old Damœtas loved to hear our song.
       But, oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone,
     Now thou art gone and never must return!
     Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves
     With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,              40
     And all their echoes, mourn.
     The willows, and the hazel copses green,
     Shall now no more be seen
     Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
     As killing as the canker to the rose,                        45
     Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
     Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
     When first the white-thorn blows;
     Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.
       Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep           50
     Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?
     For neither were ye playing on the steep
     Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
     Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
     Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.                55
     Ay me! I fondly dream
     'Had ye been there,' . . . for what could that have done?
     What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
     The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
     Whom universal nature did lament,                            60
     When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
     His gory visage down the stream was sent,
     Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
     Alas! what boots it with uncessant care
     To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade,              65
     And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
     Were it not better done, as others use,
     To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
     Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
     Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise            70
     (That last infirmity of noble mind)
     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 abhorrèd shears,               75
     And slits the thin-spun life. 'But not the praise,'
     Phœbus replied, and touched my trembling ears:
     'Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
     Nor in the glistering foil
     Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies,              80
     But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
     And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
     As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
     Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.'
     O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood,                85
     Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds,
     That strain I heard was of a higher mood.
     But now my oat proceeds,
     And listens to the Herald of the Sea,
     That came in Neptune's plea.                                 90
     He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
     What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?
     And questioned every gust of rugged wings
     That blows from off each beakèd promontory.
     They knew not of his story;                                  95
     And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
     That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed:
     The air was calm, and on the level brine
     Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
     It was that fatal and perfidious bark,                      100
     Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
     That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
       Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
     His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
     Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge                 105
     Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.
     'Ah! who has reft,' quoth he, 'my dearest pledge?'
     Last came, and last did go,
     The Pilot of the Galilean Lake;
     Two massy keys he bore of metals twain                      110
     (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).
     He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:
     'How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
     Enow of such as, for their bellies' sake,
     Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!                115
     Of other care they little reckoning make
     Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast,
     And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
     Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
     A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least          120
     That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!
     What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
     And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
     Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
     The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,                  125
     But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
     Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
     Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
     Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
     But that two-handed engine at the door                      130
     Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.'
       Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past
     That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
     And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
     Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.               135
     Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
     Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
     On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
     Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
     That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers,            140
     And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
     Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
     The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
     The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
     The glowing violet,                                         145
     The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
     With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
     And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
     Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
     And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,                150
     To strew the laureate herse where Lycid lies.
     For so, to interpose a little ease,
     Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise,
     Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
     Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled;               155
     Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
     Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
     Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;
     Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
     Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,                      160
     Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
     Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold:
     Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth:
     And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
       Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,             165
     For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
     Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.
     So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
     And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
     And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore             170
     Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
     So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
     Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
     Where, other groves and other streams along,
     With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,                   175
     And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
     In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
     There entertain him all the Saints above,
     In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
     That sing, and singing in their glory move,                 180
     And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
     Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
     Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,
     In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
     To all that wander in that perilous flood.                  185

       Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
     While the still morn went out with sandals grey:
     He touched the tender stops of various quills,
     With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
     And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,            190
     And now was dropt into the western bay.
     At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
     To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

     SAMSON AGONISTES

     _A DRAMATIC POEM_

     THE AUTHOR

     JOHN MILTON

     Aristot. Poet. Cap. 6.

     Τραγῳδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας, etc.

     Tragœdia est imitatio actionis seriæ, etc., per misericordiam
     et metum perficiens talium affectuum lustrationem.

SAMSON AGONISTES

'_The intensest utterance of the most intense of English Poets_'

In his 'Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty,' Milton makes
the following remarkable allegorical application of the story of Samson
to a king and his prelates. It is contained in 'THE CONCLUSION. _The
Mischief that Prelaty does to the State_':

'I shall shew briefly, ere I conclude, that the prelates, as they are to
the subjects a calamity, so are they the greatest underminers and
betrayers of the monarch, to whom they seem to be most favourable. I
cannot better liken the state and person of a king than to that mighty
Nazarite Samson; who being disciplined from his birth in the precepts
and the practice of temperance and sobriety, without the strong drink of
injurious and excessive desires, grows up to a noble strength and
perfection with those his illustrious and sunny locks, the laws, waving
and curling about his godlike shoulders. And while he keeps them about
him undiminished and unshorn, he may with the jawbone of an ass, that
is, with the word of his meanest officer, suppress and put to confusion
thousands of those that rise against his just power. But laying down his
head among the strumpet flatteries of prelates, while he sleeps and
thinks no harm, they wickedly shaving off all those bright and weighty
tresses of his law, and just prerogatives, which were his ornament and
strength, deliver him over to indirect and violent counsels, which, as
those Philistines, put out the fair and far-sighted eyes of his natural
discerning, and make him grind in the prison house of their sinister
ends and practices upon him; till he, knowing this prelatical razor to
have bereft him of his wonted might, nourish again his puissant hair,
the golden beams of law and right; and they, sternly shook, thunder
with ruin upon the heads of those his evil counsellors, but not without
great affliction to himself. This is the sum of their loyal service to
kings; yet these are the men that still cry, The king, the king, the
Lord's anointed! We grant it; and wonder how they came to light upon
anything so true; and wonder more, if kings be the Lord's anointed, how
they dare thus oil over and besmear so holy an unction with the corrupt
and putrid ointment of their base flatteries; which, while they smooth
the skin, strike inward and envenom the lifeblood. What fidelity kings
can expect from prelates, both examples past, and our present experience
of their doings at this day, whereon is grounded all that hath been
said, may suffice to inform us. And if they be such clippers of regal
power, and shavers of the laws, how they stand affected to the lawgiving
parliament, yourselves, worthy peers and commons, can best testify; the
current of whose glorious and immortal actions hath been only opposed by
the obscure and pernicious designs of the prelates, until their
insolence broke out to such a bold affront, as hath justly immured their
haughty looks within strong walls.'

'The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty' was published in
1641, nearly eight years before Charles I. was beheaded, and just thirty
years before the publication of 'Samson Agonistes.' He little dreamed
that the reigning king would, in less than eight years, be put to death,
and that he should play such a rôle in the subsequent state of things,
should have such experiences and such disappointments and sorrows as
would make the fortunes of Samson the prototype of a great final
creation embodying allegorically his own strangely similar fortunes.

In Milton's MS. jottings of subjects for a tragedy or an epic poem, in
the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, made in 1640 and some time
following, and occupying seven pages of folio-sized paper, is included
(No. 19 of the list of Old Testament subjects) 'Samson Pursophorus or
Hybristes' [_i.e._ Samson the Firebrand-bringer or Violent, as Masson
explains], 'or Samson Marrying, or Ramath-Lechi: Judges xv.'

Nothing, of course, could have been more remote from Milton's mind than
that thirty years after this jotting, his swan-song would be given to
the world, in which Samson, blind and among the Philistines, would
allegorically reflect his own condition, in the last years of his life.

'The parallelisms in the fortunes of Samson and Milton have been noticed
by almost every editor and every critic of the 'Samson Agonistes.' They
are too obvious to escape the notice of the most careless reader who
knows anything of the life of Milton. Samson is Milton in the polemic
and in the post-Restoration period of his life. In all literature there
is not a nobler, more exalting and pathetic egotism, than the 'Samson
Agonistes' exhibits—an egotism for which every lover of the great poet
must be abundantly thankful. 'How very much,' Walter Savage Landor
justly remarks, 'would literature have lost, if this marvellously great
and admirable man had omitted the various references to himself and his
contemporaries!'

Of the numerous autobiographical passages in the 'Samson Agonistes,'
which editors have noted, those most distinctly so are the following:
vv. 40, 41; 67-109; 191-193; 219-226; 241-255; 268-276; 563-572;
590-598; 695-702; 760, 761; 1025-1060; 1418-1422; 1461-1471; 1687-1707.

These passages show that the allegorical significance of the 'Samson
Agonistes' bears not only upon Milton's individual life and experiences,
but also upon the backsliding of the English people, in their
restoration of monarchy. The misgivings to which Milton gave expression
in his 'Ready and easy way to establish a free commonwealth, and the
excellence thereof, compared with the inconveniences and dangers of
readmitting kingship in this nation,' were realized in less than three
months after its publication late in February or early in March, 1660.
Charles II. entered London May 29, 1660. These misgivings are expressed,
or, at least, implied, in the following passage of 'The ready and easy
way.' The involved construction of the language in this pamphlet shows
that it must have been very hastily dictated by the blind poet:

'After our liberty and religion thus prosperously fought for, gained,
and many years possessed, except in those unhappy interruptions, which
God hath removed; now that nothing remains, but in all reason the
certain hopes of a speedy and immediate settlement for ever in a firm
and free commonwealth, for this extolled and magnified nation,
regardless both of honour won, or deliverances vouchsafed from heaven,
to fall back, or rather to creep back so poorly, _as it seems the
multitude would_, to their once abjured and detested thraldom of
kingship, to be ourselves the slanderers of our own just and religious
deeds, though done by some to covetous and ambitious ends, yet not
therefore to be stained with their infamy, or they to asperse the
integrity of others; and yet these now by revolting from the conscience
of deeds well done, both in church and state, to throw away and forsake,
or rather to betray, a just and noble cause for the mixture of bad men
who have ill-managed and abused it (which had our fathers done
heretofore, and on the same pretence deserted true religion, what had
long ere this become of our gospel, and all protestant reformation so
much intermixed with the avarice and ambition of some reformers?), and
by thus relapsing, to verify all the bitter predictions of our