8-9, he was chiefly occupied
with the study of the Greek, Roman, Italian, and English literatures,
each of which has left its impress on _Comus_. He read widely and
carefully, and it has been said that his great and original imagination
was almost entirely nourished, or at least stimulated, by books: his
residence at Horton was, accordingly, pre-eminently what he intended it
to be, and what his father wisely and gladly permitted it to be--a time
of preparation and ripening for the work to which he had dedicated
himself. We are reminded of his own words in _Comus_:

And Wisdom's self
Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,
Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That, in the various bustle of resort,
Were all to-ruffled, and sometimes impaired.

We find in _Comus_ abundant reminiscences of Milton's study of the
literature of antiquity. "It would not be too much to say that the
literature of antiquity was to Milton's genius what soil and light are
to a plant. It nourished, it coloured, it developed it. It determined
not merely his character as an artist, but it exercised an influence on
his intellect and temper scarcely less powerful than hereditary
instincts and contemporary history. It at once animated and chastened
his imagination; it modified his fancy; it furnished him with his
models. On it his taste was formed; on it his style was moulded. From it
his diction and his method derived their peculiarities. It transformed
what would in all probability have been the mere counterpart of
Caedmon's Paraphrase or Langland's Vision into Paradise Lost; and what
would have been the mere counterpart of Corydon's Doleful Knell and the
satire of the Three Estates, into Lycidas and Comus." (_Quarterly
Review_, No. 326.)

But Milton has also told us that Spenser was his master, and the full
charm of _Comus_ cannot be realised without reference to the artistic
and philosophical spirit of the author of the _Faerie Queene_. Both
poems deal with the war between the body and the soul--between the lower
and the higher nature. In an essay on 'Spenser as a philosophic poet,'
De Vere says: "The perils and degradations of an animalised life are
shown under the allegory of Sir Guyon's sea voyage with its successive
storms and whirlpools, its 'rock of Reproach' strewn with wrecks and
dead men's bones, its 'wandering islands,' its 'quicksands of
Unthri