[355] Specific references will be found scattered through Masson’s notes.  To supplement his work I may refer to some interesting remarks on Comus as a masque, and a useful comparison with Peele’s play, by M. W. Samson, of Indiana University, in the introduction to his edition of Milton’s Minor Poems, New York, 1901.  Here, as elsewhere in the case of Milton’s Works, I follow H. C. Beeching’s admirable text, Oxford, 1900.

[356] Not wishing to pursue this point further, I may be allowed to refer to certain candid and judicious remaries in Saintsbury’s Elizabethan Literature, p. 387.

[357] I am perfectly aware of, and in writing the above have made every allowance for, three considerations which may be urged in explanation of the passages in question.  In the first place, it must be remembered that the age was an outspoken one, and used to giving free expression to thoughts and feelings which we are in the habit of passing over in silence.  Secondly, the age was unquestionably one of considerable licence, which must be held to have warranted somewhat direct speaking on the part of those who held to a stricter code of morals; and, moreover, it must be conceded that the Puritan failing of self-righteous protestation was as a rule combined with very genuine practice of the professed virtues.  Thirdly, there is the fact that the age of thirteen was at that time, by common consent, regarded as already mature womanhood.  On one and all of these heads a good deal might be written, but it would only extend yet further a discussion which has already, it may be, exceeded reasonable limits.

[358] I ought, perhaps, to apologize for thus alluding to these poems as subsequent to Comus, seeing that criticism usually places them some years earlier.  There is, however, no external evidence of any kind, and to me the internal evidence of style points strongly to a later date.  Possibly, since they are not fonnd in the Trinity MS., they were composed during Milton’s travels, which would place them after Lycidas even, somewhere about 1638 or 1639.  One of the ablest of our living critics, himself a close and original student of Milton, writes in a private letter:  ’I long ago heard a good critic say that Comus seemed to him prentice work beside L’Allegro and Il Penseroso; and these do seem to me, I must confess, the maturer poems.’  The point was raised by F. Byse in the Modern Language Quarterly for July, 1900, iii. p. 16.

[359] Conversations, IV and III, Shakespeare Society, 1842, pp. 4 and 2.

[360] Those who wish to pursue the subject further will find the necessary references in Sommer’s Erster Versuch ueber die Englische Hirtendichtung, and a full discussion in an elaborate ’Inquiry into the propriety of the rules prescribed for Pastoral Poetry,’ prefixed to the edition of Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd, published at Edinburgh in 1808.  Some judicious remarks will also be found in the Introduction to Chambers’ English Pastorals, pp. xliv, &c.