being
acted in London about the time Milton was writing his _Comus_, that the
poem by the Dutch Professor was republished at Oxford in 1634, and that
resemblances are evident between Milton's poem and those named. But
Professor Masson does well in warning us that "infinitely too much has
been made of such coincidences. After all of them, even the most ideal
and poetical, the feeling in reading _Comus_ is that all here is
different, all peculiar." Whatever Milton borrowed, he borrowed, as he
says himself, in order to better it.

It is interesting to consider the mutual relations of the poems written
by Milton at Horton. Everything that Milton wrote is Miltonic; he had
what has been called the power of transforming everything into himself,
and these poems are, accordingly, evidences of the development of
Milton's opinions and of his secret purpose. It has been said that
_L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ are to be regarded as "the pleadings, the
decision on which is in Comus"--_L'Allegro_ representing the Cavalier,
and _Il Penseroso_ the Puritan element. This is true only in a limited
sense. It is true that the Puritan element in the Horton series of poems
becomes more patent as we pass from the two lyrics to the mask of
_Comus_, and from _Comus_ to the elegy of _Lycidas_, just as, in the
corresponding periods of time, the evils connected with the reign of
Charles I. and with Laud's crusade against Puritanism were becoming more
pronounced. But we can hardly regard Milton as having expressed any new
decision in _Comus_: the decision is already made when "vain deluding
Joys" are banished in _Il Penseroso_, and "loathed Melancholy" in
_L'Allegro_. The mask is an expansion and exaltation of the delights of
the contemplative man, but there is still a place for the "unreproved
pleasures" of the cheerful man. Unless it were so, _Comus_ could not
have been written; there would have been no "sunshine holiday" for the
rustics and no "victorious dance" for the gentle lady and her brothers.
But in _Comus_ we realise the mutual relation of _L'Allegro_ and _Il
Penseroso_; we see their application to the joys and sorrows of the
actual life of individuals; we observe human nature in contact with the
"hard assays" of life. And, subsequently, in _Lycidas_ we are made to
realise that this human nature is Milton's own, and to understand how it
was that his Puritanism which, three years before, had permitted him to
write a cavalier mask, should,