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of the vision before them; and then one voice breaks out from the rest in recognition of the Countess. This is the first Song :

"Look, Nymphs and Shepherds, look!
What sudden blaze of majesty
Is that," &c.

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This song ended, the nymphs and shepherds renew their approach to the object of their wonder; but, as they come forward, the Genins of the Wood [Lawes?] appears, and turning toward them speaks." The speech of this Genius of the Wood is in fifty-eight lines of rhymed couplets. In it the Genius first addresses the shepherds, or male performers in the masque, and tells them he recognises them, through their disguise, as noble Arcadians; then he addresses the nymphs in a similar strain; then, after introducing himself as the Genius of the Wood, describing his occupations in that capacity, and descanting on his particular affection for music and his desire to do his best in that art in praise of her whom he had often admired in secret as the Queen of the place, and whom his auditory have come to gaze upon, he offers to lead them to her. Accordingly, lute or otner instrument in hand, he advances, with this Song, sung probably in solo :—

"O'er the smooth enamelled green
Where no print of step hath been,
Follow me," &c.

Following him, accordingly, the masquers do obeisance to the Lady, and range themselves round her; whereupon there is a third and concluding song, sung probably by many voices, madrigal-wise, and ending with a repetition of the final words of the previous song :-

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The entertainment was probably not yet over: but whatever more of it there was, out-of-doors or indoors, was not of Milton'. composition.

The Countess-Dowager of Derby survived the Entertainment only a few years. She died at Harefield, January 26, 1636-7. Her estate of Harefield descended to Lady Chandos, then her only remaining daughter, and so came to her grandson Lord Chandos, and his heirs; but in 1675 it was purchased back by Sir Richard Newdegate, Bart., of Arbury, Warwickshire, whose family had been the original possessors of the property, but had parted with it in 1585. Accordingly, Harefield is now in possession of the Newdegates. The place is worth visiting, not only as the scene of the Arcades, but for other reasons. Harefield House indeed has disappeared. It was burnt down by accident in 1660. But the pedestrian on the road from Uxbridge to Rickmansworth may still identify the site of the House by one or two mounds and hollows, and a large cedar of Lebanon, on the quiet slopes behind Harefield Church; and in the church itself he may see, besides other antiquities of interest, the tomb of the heroine of the Arcades. It is a richly-sculptured and heraldically emblazoned marble monument, exhibiting the effigy of the Countess in a crimson robe and gilt coronet recumbent under a canopy of pale green and gold, and, on the side, effigies of her three daughters in relief and also painted. The Countess is represented as in her youth, beautiful, and with long fair hair. The three daughters have the same long fair hair and like features.

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"A Masque, presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, Lord President of Wales."

The history of this, the most important of all the minor poems of Milton, is closely connected with that of the Arcades, and our introduction to the Arcades is partly also an introduction to the Comus. What of more specific introduction is necessary remains to be given here.

One branch of the relatives of the venerable Countess-Dowager of Derby, the heroine of the Arcades, consisted, as we have seen, of the members of the noble family of Bridgewater :-to wit, John, 1st Earl of Bridgewater, the Countess's stepson, being the son of her second husband, Lord Chancellor Ellesmere ; this nobleman's wife, the Countess's second daughter, Lady Frances Stanley, by her first husband, Ferdinando, 5th Earl of Derby; and the numerous children born to this pair,-two of them daughters already married and with houses of their own, but other daughters still unmarried, and residing, together with their two boy-brothers, Viscount Brackley and Mr. Thomas Egerton, sometimes at their father's town-house in the Barbican, and sometimes at his country-seat of Ashridge in Hertfordshire. It is with these members of the Bridgewater family that we have chiefly to do in the Comus.

The Earl of Bridgewater, now about fifty-four years of age (he had been born in 1579), had a place among the nobility of the Court of Charles I. for which he was probably indebted to the fame and long services of his father, the Lord Chancellor. Already a Privy Councillor, &c., he had, on the 26th of June, 1631, been nominated by Charles to the high office of the Viceroyalty of Wales, or, as it was more formally called, the office of "Lord President of the Council in the Principality of Wales and the Marches of the same." This officeincluding military command and civil jurisdiction, not only over the Welsh principality itself, but also over the four contiguous English counties of Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, and Shropshire-had been filled, in Elizabeth's reign, by Sir Henry Sidney, the father of Sir Philip Sidney, and after him by Henry, 2nd Earl of Pembroke; and men of scarcely inferior note had held it since. The official seat of the Lord President was the town and castle of Ludlow in Shropshire, about twenty miles south from Shrewsbury, and beautifully situated in one of those tracts of green hilly country which mark the transition from England proper into Wales. The town, which was formerly walled, is mainly on an eminence near the junction of two streams, the Teme and the Corve, whose united waters flow on to meet the Severn in Worcestershire. On the highest ground of the town, and conspicuous to a great distance over the surrounding country, is Ludlow Church, a large building of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Near it, at a point where the ascending slope on which the town is built ends in a precipitous rock overhanging a steep valley through which the river runs, is Ludlow Castle, now a romantic ruin, but once a garrisoned place of strength, separately walled in from the town, and approached by a gateway from a kind of esplanade at the top of the main street. It was this Castle, with its outer court, inner court, keep, barracks, drawbridge, &c., that was more immediately the residence of the Presidents of Wales. The older portions of the Castle dated from the Conquest, when they had been built by the Conqueror's kinsman, Roger de Montgomery; and there was hardly a part of the edifice but had its interesting

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legends and associations-legends and associations connected with the old wars of race between the Welsh and the Norman-English, or with those subsequent Wars of the Roses in which the Welsh had taken so active a share. there were shown in the Castle certain rooms called "the Princes' Apartments," where Edward, Prince of Wales, and his young brother, the sons of Edward IV., had lived from 1472 to 1483, when they left Ludlow on that fatal journey which ended in their murder in the Tower.

Although appointed Lord President of Wales in June 1631, the Earl of Bridgewater does not seem to have assumed his functions actively, or to have gone near Ludlow, till some time afterwards. On the 12th of May, 1633, his powers in his office were defined afresh by a Royal Letter of Instructions, which was also to regulate the future proceedings, judicial and administrative, of the Council over which he presided. This Council was ostensibly to consist of upwards of eighty persons named in the Letter, among whom were many bishops and the chief state-officers of England, besides a number of knights and gentlemen of the Welsh border.

In October 1633 the Earl sent his new Letter of Instructions to his Council at Ludlow, to be read and registered before his own arrival. At what time he followed in person we do not accurately know; but, when he did follow, the ceremonial of his inauguration was unusually splendid. He was attended "by a large concourse of the neighbouring nobility and gentry "-i.e., we may suppose, by all of his Council then in those parts, and by other persons of local consequence. He had brought his Countess with him, and probably his whole family, from London or Ashridge-including, as we certainly know, his youngest daughter, the Lady Alice Egerton, a beautiful young girl, fourteen or fifteen years old, and her two younger brothers, Viscount Brackley and Mr. Thomas Egerton. The festivities and hospitalities proper to such an occasion as the Earl's inauguration would naturally protract themselves over a considerable time. They did protract themselves, at all events, to Michaelmas-night, the 29th of September, 1634, when all Ludlow was astir with an unusual thing in those parts-nothing less than a complete masque, or poetical and musical entertainment, performed in the great hall of Ludlow Castle, by mem bers of the Earl's family, before the Earl and an audience of assembled guests.

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At this particular time, the English Court and aristocracy may be said to have been masque-mad. Nothing so magnificent, for example, in the shape of a pageant had ever been seen in England as that got up by the lawyers of the Four Inns of Court in February 1633-4, as an expression of their love and duty to their Majesties," i.e. to King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria. Months were spent in the preparation. Shirley was engaged to write the poetry; Mr. Simon Ivy and Mr. Henry Lawes to compose the music; Inigo Jones to construct the machinery: while some of the ablest and most eminent lawyers of the time, such as Selden, Attorney-General Noy, Bulstrode Whitelocke, and Mr. Hyde, acted zealously on the Committee of General Management. When the day came-Feb. 3--there was a gorgeous afternoon and evening procession of the masquers, with painted chariots, flaming torches, music, and wondrous grotesque accompaniments, from Holborn down Chancery Lane to Whitehall, the whole population of London having gathered along the route to see and to cheer; and, afterwards, in the Banqueting-house at Whitehall, the main masque itself, Shirley's Triumph of Peace, was performed before their Majesties with every possible magnificence. The whole affair cost the Four

Inns of Court 21,000l.; whereof 1,000l. were spent on the music-Lawes and his fellow-composer receiving 100l. apiece for their share. The actors in this masque were chiefly handsome lawyers of the Four Inns, whose names are now unknown. But, a fortnight later, in the same Banqueting-house at Whitehall, there was another masque, of scarcely inferior magnificence, given by their Majesties themselves, and in which the actors were the King, fourteen of the chief nobles, and ten young sons of noblemen. This was Carew's Calum Britannicum, performed on Shrove-Tuesday night, February 18, 1633-4. The music to this masque was by Henry Lawes; the machinery by Inigo Jones; and among the young noblemen who took juvenile parts in it were the Earl of Bridgewater's two sons, Viscount Brackley and Mr. Thomas Egerton, and their cousin Lord Chandos.

With a recollection of the Arcades, and probably of many other such private theatrical delights, traditional in the Bridgewater family; with the two young boys fresh from the glory of their small parts in the recent royal masque of Calum Britannicum; above all, with Lawes, the musical tutor of the family, radiant from his musical success in that masque and in its more gorgeous predecessor, the masque of The Triumph of Peace by the Four Inns of Court; -what more natural than that it should be resolved to seize the opportunity of the Earl's entry on his Welsh Presidency for a masque on a great scale that should astonish the Welsh and all the West of England? The youngsters and Lawes probably devised the thing; and, the Earl having given his consent, all was arranged. The preparations must have been begun months before the masque actually came off-probably while the family were yet in London. Lawes, of course, was to take care of the music and was to be general manager; and the other actors and singers were to be the young people of the family. But who should write the poetry? Who but Lawes's friend, Mr. Milton, who had already in the Arcades given such satisfactory proofs of his fitness for the kind of composition that was wanted? In fact, whether to please himself or to oblige Lawes, or to oblige the Earl of Bridgewater and his family on account of some bond of acquaintance with the family now not recoverable, Milton did undertake to write the masque. The composition of it, we must suppose, occupied him at Horton for several weeks, or even a month or two, during the early part of 1634.

On undertaking to write the masque, Milton would think of some appropriate story, to be shaped into a dramatic pastoral of the required kind, for representation on a stage in the hall of a great Castle by young lords and ladies, and with songs interspersed, to be sung by some of these performers to airs by his friend Lawes. The nature and circumstances of the occasion would be vividly present to his imagination-the Earl entering on his office as President of the ancient Principality; his retinue, with Welsh and West-of-England gentry among them; the town and castle of Ludlow, and their neighbourhood, as conceived by him from descriptions, or perhaps seen by him (who knows?) in some tour of his own into those parts; the proximity of the place to Welsh scenery, and the connexion of the occasion with ancient British memories and legends. He would, doubtless, co-operate with Lawes, and would give or receive hints. But how the actual story of Comus occurred to Milton-the story of the young lady parted from her two brothers at night in the depths of a wild wood, found there by Comus and his crew of evil revellers, and lured and detained by their enchantments, until the Brothers, instructed by a good Attendant Spirit in the shape of their father's faithful shepherd, Thyrsis,

rush in and rescue her-how this story occurred to Milton we can but vaguely curmise. He may have derived the conception of such a plot from some of his readings, and may have seen its fitness for his purpose. A somewhat different theory is that he only dramatised a real incident. The popular tradition round about Ludlow still is that the Lady Alice Egerton and her two young brothers, Viscount Brackley and Mr. Thomas Egerton, were actually benighted in Haywood Forest, near Ludlow, as they were on their way to Ludlow from a visit to the house of their relatives, the Egertons, in Herefordshire, and that the Lady Alice was for some time lost by her brothers in the forest. Milton, the tradition adds, had heard of this incident, and constructed his Comus upon it. To us, however, it appears more likely that the story of the loss of Lady Alice and her brothers in Haywood Forest grew out of the Comus than that the Comus grew out of the story. The story was current more than

a hundred years ago; but it consists with our knowledge of the way in which such legends arise to suppose that by that time the parting of the lady and her brothers in the masque had been translated, by prosaic gossip on the spot, into a literal incident in the lives of those for whom the masque was written.

In whatever way suggested, the masque was written with most definite attention to the purpose for which it was required. The characters to be represented were as follows:

THE ATTENDANT SPIRIT; first appearing as such, but afterwards in the dress of the shepherd THYRSIS.

COMUS, with his crew.

THE LADY.

FIRST BROther.

SECOND BROTHER.

SABRINA, the Nymph of the Severn river, with attendant Water-nymphs.

Here, if we omit the "crew of Comus" and Sabrina's "attendant waternymphs " -parts of mere dumb show, which may have been assigned to supernumeraries-there were six speaking and singing parts to be filled up. How were these parts cast? As to four of the parts we have definite information from Lawes. The part of THE LADY, which is the central part in the masque, was given to the Lady Alice Egerton; and the parts of the FIRST BROTHER and the SECOND BROTHER fell to Lady Alice's two boy-brothers, Viscount Brackley and Mr. Thomas Egerton. The important part of THE ATTENDANT SPIRIT, afterwards THYRSIS, was taken by Lawes himself. This leaves but two parts unassigned-those of COMUS and SABRINA. The part of COMUS is important, and a good actor was needed for it; that of SABRINA is less important, and required chiefly a good singer. There was, we may assume, among the connexions of the Bridgewater family, some handsome gentleman who did not object to act as the disreputable Riot-god, son of Bacchus and Circe, for the opportunity of luring av ay the sweet Lady Alice even for a little while; and among Lady Alice's sisters there were more than one fit for the part of the River-nymph.

Suppose Milton's MS. of the masque finished (the draft, in his own hand, now among the Cambridge MSS.); suppose that Lawes has copies for his own use and that of his pupils (one of those copies, perhaps that now in the Bridgewater Library, which Todd believed to be in Lawes's hand); suppose the rehearsals over; and suppose the memorable Michaelmas-night, Sept. 29, 1634, arrived. The great Hall of Ludlow Castle is filled with guests. It is a noble apartment,

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