n in his high office. Milton was told of her adventures by
Henry Lawes, the musician, and he wrote the 'Masque of Comus' to
delight her and her friends. Have you read 'Comus'?"

"No," said Cynthia, almost timidly, for she was beginning to fear this
masterful man whose enthusiasm caught her to his very soul at such
moments.

"Ah, but you shall. It ranks high among the miracles of English poetry
wrought by Milton. Many a mile from Ludlow have I called to mind one
of its incomparable passages:

A thousand phantasies
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.

And now you, the heroine of the masque, must try to imagine that you
are lost in a wild wood represented by a carpet spread here, in the
center of the hall. Seated there on a dais, is your father the Earl,
surrounded by his officers and retainers. Near you are your brothers,
Lord Brackley and Thomas Egerton, so blinded by sprites that they
cannot see you, though keen enough to note the bright eyes and
flushed cheeks of other ladies of high degree bidden to Ludlow from
neighboring shires for the merry-making. And mark you, this is no rude
gathering of unlettered squires and rough men-at-arms. How is it
possible that an uncultured throng should listen rapturously to the
noblest performance of the kind that exists in any language, wherein
each speech is a majestic soliloquy, eloquent, sublime, with an
uncloying word-music acclaimed by three centuries?"

The sheer wonder in Cynthia's face warned him that this brief
excursion into the pages of Macaulay had better cease, so he focused
his thoughts on the actual representation of the masque in which he
had taken part ten years ago at Fairholme.

"I must ask you to concede that the lords and ladies, the civic
dignitaries and their wives, for whose amusement Milton spread the
pinions of his genius, were far better equipped to understand his
lyric flights than any similar assemblage that could be collected
haphazard in some modern castle. They did not pretend--they knew.
Even you, Lady Alice, could frame a neat verse in Latin and cap some
pleasant jest with a line from Homer. When Milton dreamed aloud of
bathing in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, of inhaling the scents of
nard and cassia, 'which the musky wings of the Zepyhr scatter through
the cedared al