hose who, like Dr. Johnson, have blamed it as a
drama, have admired it "as a series of lines," or as a lyric; one
writer, who has found that its characters are nothing, its sentiments
tedious, its story uninteresting, has nevertheless "doubted whether
there will ever be any similar poem which gives so true a conception of
the capacity and the dignity of the mind by which it was produced"
(Bagehot's _Literary Studies_). Some who have praised it as an allegory
see in it a satire on the evils both of the Church and of the State,
while others regard it as alluding to the vices of the Court alone. Some
have found its lyrical parts the best, while others, charmed with its
"divine philosophy," have commended those deep conceits which place it
alongside of the _Faerie Queen_, as shadowing forth an episode in the
education of a noble soul and as a poet's lesson against intemperance
and impurity. But no one can refuse to admit that, more than any other
of Milton's shorter poems, it gives us an insight into the peculiar
genius and character of its author: it was, in the opinion of Hallam,
"sufficient to convince any one of taste and feeling that a great poet
had arisen in England, and one partly formed in a different school from
his contemporaries." It is true that in the early poems we do not find
the whole of Milton, for he had yet to pass through many years of
trouble and controversy; but _Comus_, in a special degree, reveals or
foreshadows much of the Milton of _Paradise Lost_. Whether we regard its
place in Milton's life, in the series of his works, or in English
literature as a whole, the poem is full of significance: it is worth
while, therefore, to consider how its form was determined by the
external circumstances and previous training of the poet; by his
favourite studies in poetry, philosophy, history, and music; and by his
noble theory of life in general, and of a poet's life in particular.

The mask was represented at Ludlow Castle on September 29th, 1634; it
was probably composed early in that year. It belongs, therefore, to that
group of poems (_L'Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, _Arcades_, _Comus_, and
_Lycidas_) written by Milton while living in his father's house at
Horton, near Windsor, after having left the University of Cambridge in
July, 1632. As he was born in 1608, he would be twenty-five years of age
when this poem was composed. During his stay at Horton (1632-39), which
was broken only by a journey to Italy in 163