But justice and some fatal curse annexed,
Deprives them of their outward liberty,
Their inward lost.'

ΙΟΟ

In the 'Samson Agonistes,' Samson says to the Chorus (vv. 268-276, and here Milton may be said virtually to speak, as he does throughout the drama, in propria persona):

'But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt And by their vices brought to servitude,

Than to love bondage more than liberty,
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty;
And to despise, or envy, or suspect

270

Whom God hath of his special favour raised
As their deliverer? if he aught begin,

How frequent to desert him, and at last
To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds?'

275

In the 'Paradise Regained,' Book ii. 410-486, Satan says to the Saviour:

'all thy heart is set on high designs,
High actions; but wherewith to be achieved?
Great acts require great means of enterprise;
Thou art unknown, unfriended, low of birth,
A carpenter thy father known, thyself
Bred up in poverty and straits at home,
Lost in a desert here, and hunger-bit.

410

415

Which way, or from what hope, dost thou aspire
To greatness? whence authority derivest ?
What followers, what retinue canst thou gain?
Or at thy heels the dizzy multitude,

420

Longer than thou canst feed them on thy cost?

Money brings honour, friends, conquest, and realms.
What raised Antipater, the Edomite,

And his son Herod placed on Judah's throne

Thy throne - but gold that got him puissant friends? 425
Therefore, if at great things thou wouldest arrive,

horus

eak, a

Get riches first, get wealth, and treasure heap,-
Not difficult, if thou hearken to me.
Riches are mine, fortune is in my hand;

430

an s

They whom I favour thrive in wealth amain,
While virtue, valour, wisdom, sit in want.'
To whom thus Jesus patiently replied:
'Yet wealth without these three is impotent
To gain dominion, or to keep it gained;
Witness those ancient empires of the earth,
In highth of all their flowing wealth dissolved.
But men endued with these have oft attained
In lowest poverty to highest deeds;
Gideon, and Jephtha, and the shepherd-lad,
Whose offspring on the throne of Judah sat
So many ages, and shalt yet regain

435

440

That seat, and reign in Israel without end.

Among the Heathen for throughout the world
To me is not unknown what hath been done
Worthy of memorial-

canst thou not remember

445

Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus?

For I esteem those names of men so poor,

Who could do mighty things, and could contemn

Riches, though offered from the hand of kings.

And what in me seems wanting, but that I
May also in this poverty as soon

450

Accomplish what they did? perhaps and more.

Extol not riches then, the toil of fools,

The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare; more apt

To slacken Virtue, and abate her edge,

455

Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.

What, if with like aversion I reject

Riches and realms! yet not, for that a crown,

Golden in shew, is but a wreath of thorns,

Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights, 460 To him who wears the regal diadem,

When on his shoulders each man's burden lies;

For therein stands the office of a king,

His honour, virtue, merit, and chief praise,
That for the public all this weight he bears.
Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king;
Which every wise and virtuous man attains:
And who attains not, ill aspires to rule
Cities of men, or headstrong multitudes,
Subject himself to anarchy within,

Or lawless passions in him, which he serves.
But to guide nations in the way of truth
By saving doctrine, and from error lead
To know, and knowing, worship God aright,
Is yet more kingly: this attracts the soul,
Governs the inner man, the nobler part;
That other o'er the body only reigns,
And oft by force, which to a generous mind
So reigning can be no sincere delight.
Besides, to give a kingdom hath been thought
Greater and nobler done, and to lay down
Far more magnanimous, than to assume.
Riches are needless then, both for themselves,
And for thy reason why they should be sought,
To gain a sceptre, oftest better missed.'

465

470

475

480

485

his spirit is better than There has always been realized in men's lives,

All this, it may be truly said, is nothing more than the old teaching of Solomon, ' He that ruleth he that taketh a city' (Prov. xvi. 32). truth enough in the world which, if would soon bring about the millennium. But, unfortunately, it has only been born in their brains.

Great writers owe their power among men, not necessarily so much to a wide range of ideas or to the originality of their ideas, as to the vitality which they are able to impart to some one comprehensive fructifying idea with which, through constitution of mind, or circumstances, they have become possessed. It is only when a man is really possessed with an idea (that is, if it does not run away with him), that he can express it with a quickening power, and ring all possible changes upon it.

The passages quoted sufficiently show the kind of liberty which Milton estimated above all others, and to the advancement of which he devoted his best powers, for twenty years, and those years the best, generally, of a man's life, for intellectual and creative work, namely, from thirty-two to fifty-two. The last eight of those years he worked in total darkness, not bating a jot of heart or hope, sustained by the consciousness of having lost his eyes 'overplied in Liberty's defence''the glorious liberty,' more especially, of the children of God,' 'the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,' without which, outward liberty he regarded as a temptation and a snare.

In addition to the absolute merit attaching to his labors in the cause of liberty, it must not be forgotten that he turned aside with a heroic self-denial, during all those years of his manhood's prime, from what he had, from his early years up, felt himself dedicated to, and toward fitting himself for the accomplishment of which, he had, with an unflagging ardor, trained and marshalled all his faculties.

COMUS

A Masque presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, then President of Wales

MASQUES, in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., were generally written for the entertainment of royalty and nobility. They were, besides, in most cases, presented by royal and noble persons. In their setting, they were in strong contrast to the public drama of the day, got up, as they were, with great magnificence of architecture, scenery, and appareling' (Ben Jonson's word for the apparatus of the scene), and frequently at an enormous expense. They were generally offset by grotesque and comic antimasques, which were played by. common actors, dancers, and buffoons, from the public theatres. Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream' was probably not written as a regular drama for the public stage, but as a masque, on the occasion of some noble marriage. The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe' presented by the 'rude mechanicals,' 'hard-handed men,' in the fifth act, is the antimasque. It offsets the Masque in a special way. The Masque makes great demands on the imagination in its presentation of the fairy world; the antimasque is absurdly realistic-nothing is left by the 'rude mechanicals' to the imagination.

The Masque of 'Comus' is the last notable, if not entirely the last, composition of the kind in English literature, and the loftiest and loveliest. It is a glorification of the power of purity and chastity over the impure and the unchaste; and the poet no doubt meant it as a reflection upon the license and excesses and revelries (of which Comus is a personification) of the profligate and extravagant court of the time, imported from