fore the
earl of Bridgewater and his friends. There is a tradition that the earl's
three children had been lost in the woods, and, whether true or not, Milton
takes the simple theme of a person lost, calls in an Attendant Spirit to
protect the wanderer, and out of this, with its natural action and
melodious songs, makes the most exquisite pastoral drama that we possess.
In form it is a masque, like those gorgeous products of the Elizabethan age
of which Ben Jonson was the master. England had borrowed the idea of the
masque from Italy and had used it as the chief entertainment at all
festivals, until it had become to the nobles of England what the miracle
play had been to the common people of a previous generation. Milton, with
his strong Puritan spirit, could not be content with the mere entertainment
of an idle hour. "Comus" has the gorgeous scenic effects, the music and
dancing of other masques; but its moral purpose and its ideal teachings are
unmistakable. "The Triumph of Virtue" would be a better name for this
perfect little masque, for its theme is that virtue and innocence can walk
through any peril of this world without permanent harm. This eternal
triumph of good over evil is proclaimed by the Attendant Spirit who has
protected the innocent in this life and who now disappears from mortal
sight to resume its life of joy:

Mortals, that would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free.
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.

While there are undoubted traces of Jonson and John Fletcher in Milton's
"Comus," the poem far surpasses its predecessors in the airy beauty and
melody of its verses.

In the next poem, "Lycidas," a pastoral elegy written in 1637, and the last
of his Horton poems, Milton is no longer the inheritor of the old age, but
the prophet of a new. A college friend, Edward King, had been drowned in
the Irish Sea, and Milton follows the poetic custom of his age by
representing both his friend and himself in the guise of shepherds leading
the pastoral life. Milton also uses all the symbolism of his predecessors,
introducing fauns, satyrs, and sea nymphs; but again the Puritan is not
content with heathen symbolism, and so introduces a new symbol of the
Christian shepherd responsible for the souls of men, whom he likens to
hungry sheep that look up and are not fed. The Puritans and Royalists at
this