66 poem that he had liked so singularly well was by his neighbour and new acquaintance. The words he used may be quoted again. “A dainty piece of entertainment," he calls the Comus; "wherein I "should much commend the tragical part [¿.e. the dialogue] if the "lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Doric delicacy in your songs and odes; whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen "yet nothing parallel in our language." From such a man as Sir Henry Wotton, this was a certificate not to be despised. 66 When, in 1645, six years after his return from Italy, Milton, then in the very midst of his pamphleteering activity, and of the obloquy which it had brought him, consented to the publication by Moseley of the first Collective Edition of his Poems, Comus was still, in respect of length and merit, his chief poetical achievement. Accordingly, he not only reprinted it in that edition, but gave it the place of honour there. He put it last of the English Poems, as a considerable poem by itself, occupying as much space as all the rest together (pp. 67-120); and he gave it a separate title-page, thus :— "A Mask of the same Author, presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, then President of Wales: Anno Dom. 1645.' The title-page of Lawes's edition of 1637 was, of course, cancelled by this new one; but Lawes's Dedication of that edition to young Viscount Brackley was retained, and there was inserted also, by way of pendant to that Dedication, Sir Henry Wotton's courteous letter of April 13, 1638. The courteous old Sir Henry was then dead, but Milton rightly considered that his word from the grave might be important in the circumstances. And so this Second Edition of the Comus, thus distinguished and set off as part of the First Collective Edition of the Poems, served all the demand till 1673, when the Second Collective Edition of the Poems appeared. Comus was, of course, retained in that edition, as still the largest of Milton's Minor Poems; but it was made less mechanically conspicuous than in the earlier edition. It did not come last among the English Poems, being followed by two sets of Psalm-translations; and it had no separate title-page, but only the heading, "A Mask presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, etc." Lawes's Dedication of the edition of 1637 and Sir Henry Wotton's Letter of 1638 were likewise omitted. In none of the three early editions, it will be observed (Lawes's of 1637, Milton's of 1645, and Milton's of 1673), is the poem entitled COMUS. Nor is there any such title in Milton's original draft of the Masque among the Cambridge MSS., nor in that Bridgewater transcript which is supposed to have been the stage-copy. "A Mask presented," etc. such, with slight variations in the phrasing, was the somewhat vague name of the piece while Milton lived. It was really inconvenient, however, that such a poem should be without a briefer and more specific name. Accordingly, that of COMUS, from one of the chief persons of the drama, has been unanimously adopted. Although the word comus, or кopos, signifying "revel" or "carousal," or sometimes "a band of revellers," is an old Greek common noun, with various cognate terms (such as кwμá¿w, "to revel," and Koμodía, comedy), the personification or proper name COMUS appears to have been an invention of the later classic mythology. A passage is indeed cited from the Agamemnon of Eschylus (1191-1193) where koμos may be construed in a personal sense; but such a construction of that passage is rather forced. So far was Kopos from being a distinct deity among the older Greeks that the kμo or revels we most frequently hear of among them were revels in honour of Bacchus. Gradually, however, when mythology became more of a conscious poetical art, Comus emerged as a person, the God of Mirth, just as we might raise our common noun revel to the personage Revel by the use of a capital letter. In the Eikóves, or Descriptions of Pictures, by Philostratus, a Greek author of the third century of our era, COMUS is represented as a winged god, seen in one picture "drunk and languid after a repast, his head sunk on his breast, slumbering in a standing attitude, and his legs crossed" (Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Biog. and Myth.). But, in fact, poets were left at liberty to fancy Comus, or the god Revel, very much as their own notions of what constitutes mirth or revel might dictate; and the use of this liberty might perhaps be traced in the tradition of Comus, and the allusions to him in the poetry of different modern nations, down to Milton's time. He is an occasional personage among the English Elizabethan poets; and he figures especially in Ben Jonson's masque of "Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue," which was presented at Court before King James in 1619. In this masque of Ben Jonson's the scene was a mountain, all snow and frost atop, and the rest wood and rock. Just beneath the snowy top was a grove of ivy: "out of which, to a wild music of cymbals, flutes, and tabors, is brought forth COMUS, the god of "Cheer or the Belly, riding in triumph, his head crowned with roses " and other flowers, his hair curled: they that wait upon him crowned "with ivy, their javelins done about with it: one of them going with "Hercules's bowl borne before him, while the rest present him "[Comus] with this Hymn, full chorus :— "Room, room! make room for the Bouncing Belly, First father of sauce and deviser of jelly, Prime master of arts and the giver of wit, That found out the excellent engine the spit. Hail, hail, plump paunch! O the founder of taste An emptier of cups, be they even or odd: All which have now made thee so wide in the waist As scarce with no pudding thou art to be laced; But, eating and drinking until thou dost nod, Thou break'st all thy girdles, and break'st forth a god." This is Ben Jonson's ideal of Comus, or Revel, very characteristic of Ben himself, and sustained through the rest of the short masque. Milton may have read that masque and helped himself to any suggestion it could give him. How little that can have been will appear to any one who will take the trouble to read the masque in Ben Jonson's Works. A work to which it is more likely that Milton was in some small degree indebted is a Latin extravaganza, called "Comus, sive Phagesiposia Cimmeria: Somnium," by the Dutch Erycius Puteanus. This writer, whose real name was Hendrik van der Putten, was born at Venlo in Holland in 1574, and, after having been for some time in Italy, became Professor of Eloquence and Classical Literature at Louvain, where he died in 1646. He was "the author of an infinity of books," says Bayle (Dict: Art. Puteanus); among which was the one whose title we have given. It was first published in 1608; but there were subsequent editions, including one brought out at Oxford in 1634, the very year of Milton's masque. "The subject of the piece "of Erycius Puteanus, which is written mostly in prose, with a mix"ture of verse, is the description of a dream in which Comus, the "genius of Love and Cheerfulness, appears to the author, declares "himself the lord of the whole wide realm of pleasure, and briefly "expounds his voluptuous idea of life. As the amazed author is 66 66 66 "wishing himself wings that he might quickly be off, he is veiled in a cloud, and carried away into the region of Night, the land of the "Cimmerians. The cloud parting, he sees in a retreating valley a "wondrous structure, the palace of Comus. His friend Aderba now comes up, and both go in to mingle with the crew of bacchants rioting within. There follow them Night, Darkness, Sleep, Silence, "Fear and Horror; who, however, at the entrance, are scared away by the light of torches and the flash of metal. Within are found "the godheads of Love, Pleasure, Joy, Rapture, and Delight, with "Jest and Laughter. A feast is celebrated, the guests at which are masked; but those that one takes for men are Daunian and Getu"lian wolves, dangerous monsters by their bite, hiding their true "nature under masks and hypocritical appearances. After this, the "two find, at the door to a sanctuary, a youth standing with amphora "and cups, which he tenders to those entering. The two enter with "the rest, after having drunk of the wine. Aderba, anxious to know "who are the gods there worshipped, learns on inquiry that they are "Hortorum Deus, Virginensis, Subjugus, Prema, Pertunda. Comus, "whose image represents him half in light, half in darkness, as "in the struggle of night with tapers, is found at a brilliant table "surrounded by all the refinements of luxury. There arrives now a "friend of the two that have hitherto been spectators, called Tabutius, " and, afterwards, yet another, named Hyläus. Tabutius, an old man, "who has acquired wisdom from a joyfully spent youth, explains in "detail that Comus is a tyrant over fresh youth and manhood, who, "by pretence of friendliness and false show of pleasure, captivates "souls, but enervates them, banishing candid Sincerity, and giving reception on the contrary to Seeming and Deceit, and that his companions, Luxury and Lust, enslave men and stifle in them everything noble. The festival dedicated to the honour of Comus "takes the name of Phagesia or Phagesiposia, and consists in a mere "banquet; but, after it, Lust is honoured with drunken dances. "During the feast Comus sings an ode on the mysteries of his worship, composed throughout in Catalectic Iambic Dimeters [Latin Anacreontics]. Then Tabutius begins to moralize prolixly, and " continues with slight interruptions. The themes which he handles "are drunkenness, excess in eating, frequent banquets, ill assortment "of guests, conversation at table; then dancing, costliness of apparel, "and the like. From page to page the expositions protract them 66 "selves. The end comes in the form of a boundless banquet led on "with noise and fury. When all is going topsy-turvy, Comus, who "has seen himself despised, disappears, with Luxury and Lust. Night breaks, and the dreamer awakes at length to the renewed "enjoyment of light." 1 The Comus of the Latin Extravaganza of the Dutch Puteanus, it will be seen, is a more graceful and mystic personage than the lumbering god of good cheer in Ben Jonson's masque. He also, like Ben Jonson's Comus, is represented with curled and rose-crowned hair; but he is "soft-gestured and youthful," and personates a more subtle notion of Revel. Now, there certainly are touches of likeness between Puteanus's god, his guise and retinue, and the Comus of Milton, with his charming-rod and glass, and his rout of men and women headed like sundry sorts of wild beasts; and, as may be pointed out in the Notes, there are occasional phrases in Milton's masque so like suggestions from passages in the prose or the verse of Puteanus's little performance that it is difficult to imagine that Milton had not read those passages. Indeed, Ben Jonson may have read them too. all, however, Milton's Comus is a creation of his own, for which he was as little indebted intrinsically to Puteanus as to Ben Jonson. Here is his myth of the birth and life of Comus, put into the mouth of the Attendant Spirit at the opening of the masque, and introduced, it will be observed, with words which distinctly claim the myth as of his own invention : : "I will tell you now What never yet was heard in tale or song, And downward fell into a grovelling swine?). This Nymph, that gazed upon his clustering locks 1 I have abridged this sketch of the plot of the Extravaganza of Puteanus from a learned little book by Dr. Immanuel Schmidt, published at Berlin 1860, under the title of Milton's Comus; uebersetzt, und mit einer erläuternden Abhandlung begleitet. Todd refers to Puteanus and quotes a few passages from him, but gives no such coherent account of the story. |