the abhorred shears,
    And slits the thin-spun life.  ‘But not the praise,’
    Phoebus 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;
    But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
    And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
    As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
    much fame in heaven expect thy meed.’”

“Comus,” the richest fruit of Milton’s early genius, is the epitome of the man at the age at which he wrote it.  It bespeaks the scholar and idealist, whose sacred enthusiasm is in some danger of contracting a taint of pedantry for want of acquaintance with men and affairs.  The Elder Brother is a prig, and his dialogues with his junior reveal the same solemn insensibility to the humorous which characterizes the kindred genius of Wordsworth, and would have provoked the kindly smile of Shakespeare.  It is singular to find the inevitable flaw of “Paradise Lost” prefigured here, and the wicked enchanter made the real hero of the piece.  These defects are interesting, because they represent the nature of Milton as it was then, noble and disinterested to the height of imagination, but self-assertive, unmellowed, angular.  They disappear entirely when he expatiates in the regions of exalted fancy, as in the introductory discourse of the Spirit, and the invocation to Sabrina.  They recur when he moralizes; and his morality is too interwoven with the texture of his piece to be other than obtrusive.  He fatigues with virtue, as Lucan fatigues with liberty; in both instances the scarcely avoidable error of a young preacher.  What glorious morality it is no one need be told; nor is there any poem in the language where beauties of thought, diction, and description spring up more thickly than in “Comus.”  No drama out of Shakespeare has furnished such a number of the noblest familiar quotations.  It is, indeed, true that many of these jewels are fetched from the mines of other poets:  great as Milton’s obligations, to Nature were, his obligations to books were greater.  But he has made all his own by the alchemy of his genius, and borrows little but to improve.  The most remarkable coincidence is with a piece certainly unknown to him—­Calderon’s “Magico Prodigioso,” which was first acted in 1637, the year of the publication of “Comus,” a great year in the history of the drama, for the “Cid” appeared in it also.  The similarity of the situations of Justina tempted by the Demon, and the Lady in the power of Comus, has naturally begotten a like train of thought in both poets.

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

      Lady. Fool, do not boast
    Thou can’st not touch the freedom of my mind
    With all thy charms, although this corporal rind
    Thou hast immanacled, while Heaven sees good.”