These considerations have an important bearing upon the other objection which I ventured to bring forward, that of moralizing; for it cannot be argued, I imagine, that the direct expression of philosophical or ethical ideas is in any way illegitimate in the masque proper, any more than it is in the choric ode.  But, as I have said, Milton—­no doubt intentionally, though the point is irrelevant—­has raised dramatic issues and dramatic emotions, and consequently by the laws of the drama, that is, by his success in satisfying those emotions, he must be judged.  All speeches therefore introduced with a directly moral and philosophical rather than a dramatic end must be pronounced artistic solecisms.  Whether Milton has been guilty of such undramatic interpolations, such lapses from the one end of art, may be left to the individual judgement of each reader to determine; for my own part I cannot conceive that any doubt should exist.

But even if we pass over what some readers will be inclined to dismiss as a mere theoretical objection, there are other charges which these same passages will have to meet.  Those who have borne with me in my remarks on the Aminta and the Faithful Shepherdess, will probably also agree with me here, when I say that to me at least there is something not altogether pleasing in Milton’s presentment of virtue.  I should add at once, that to place Milton’s poem on an ethical level with either of the above-mentioned pieces would, of course, be preposterous.  It is impossible to doubt the severe chastity of Milton’s own ideal, and to compare it for one moment to the conventional onesta which replaced virtue in Tasso’s world, or with the nauseous unreality of the puppet Fletcher sought to enthrone in its place, would be to commit an uncritical outrage.  Nevertheless, the expression Milton chose to give to his ideal cannot, therefore, lay claim to privilege.  That expression had become intimately associated with pastoral convention, and he accepted it along with much else from his predecessors.  I am not aware of any reason why spectators should have been prejudiced otherwise than in favour of the Lady Alice Egerton; but she is, nevertheless, careful to take the first opportunity of informing them, with much earnest protestation, of her quite remarkable purity and virtue, implying as it were a naive surprise at having arrived unsullied at the perilous age of thirteen.  The stilted affectation of this self-conscious innocence is perhaps less evident in the scene in which we should most readily look for it—­that, namely, in which the Lady defends herself from the persuasions of the Sorcerer, where a certain fervour of feeling raises her utterances above a merely colourless level—­than in the long soliloquy in which she indulges on first appearing on the stage.  Something of the same disagreeable quality is present in the rather mawkish discussion between her two young brothers.  Milton, who is entirely untouched, either