ken
the same; as Jonson had taken the praise of Temperance, which is also
partly Milton's subject, in _Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue_, in which a
grosser Comus is one of the characters. But to get any parallel to the
power of conviction with which Milton handles it one has to go behind
Jonson, whose mask is an entirely superficial performance, and even
behind Fletcher, in whose _Shepherdess_ the many beautiful and moving
touches are lost in a crowd of characters and a wilderness of
artificial intrigue; one has to go back to the man whom Milton once
called his "original," to the author of the _Faerie Queen_. No one but
Spenser could have anticipated the scene between Comus and the Lady,
where indeed {116} Milton, like Spenser in the bower of Acrasia, has
lavished such wealth upon his sinner that he has hardly been able to
give a due over-balance to his saint. Yet she is no lay figure, and
one is not surprised that Comus should twice show his consciousness
that she has within her some holy, some more than mortal power. Milton
has given her a song of such astonishing music that one wonders whether
the composer Lawes, for whom the whole was written, could touch it
without injury--

"Sweet Echo, sweetest Nymph, that liv'st unseen
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;
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair
That likest thy Narcissus are?
O, if thou have
Hid them in some flowery cave,
Tell me but where,
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."

The lyrics were the chief beauty of the old masks, but the best of them
sink into {117} insignificance before such a masterpiece of art as
this. Perhaps nothing in a modern language comes nearer to giving the
peculiar effect which is the glory of Pindar. Of course there is in it
more of the fanciful, and more of the romantic, than there was in
Pindar; and its style is tenderer, prettier and perhaps altogether
smaller than his. But the elaborate and intricate perfection of its
art and language, the way in which the intellect in it serves the
imagination, is exactly Pindar. In any case it is certainly one of the
most entirely beautiful of English lyrics. One listens with delight to
the musician