confess, the least successful effort of the genius
of Milton.

The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian Masque, as the Samson is
framed on the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest
performance of the kind which exists in any language. It is as far
superior to The Faithful Shepherdess, as The Faithful Shepherdess is to
the Aminta, or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton
that he had here no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and loved
the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the same
veneration which he entertained for the remains of Athenian and Roman
poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections. The
faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which
his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style,
sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter
aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned
with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the
rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are
of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing
the severest test of the crucible.

Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction which he afterward
neglected in the Samson. He made his Masque what it ought to be,
essentially lyrical, and dramatic only in semblance. He has not
attempted a fruitless struggle against a defect inherent in the nature
of that species of composition; and he has therefore succeeded, wherever
success was not impossible. The speeches must be read as majestic
soliloquies; and he who so reads them will be enraptured with their
eloquence, their sublimity, and their music. The interruptions of the
dialogue, however, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break the
illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which are lyric in
form as well as in spirit. "I should much commend," says the excellent
Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to Milton, "the tragical part if the
lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs
and odes, whereunto, I must plainly confess to you, I have seen yet
nothing parallel in our language." The criticism was just. It is when
Milton escapes from the shackles of the dialogue, when he is discharged
from the labor of uniting two incongruous styles, when he is at liberty
to indulge his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises even