MILTON'S COMUS, L'ALLEGRO,

AND

IL PENSEROSO.

WITH

NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES ETC.

ADAPTED FOR USE IN TRAINING COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS.

BY THE

REV. JOHN HUNTER, M.A.

Instructor of Candidates for the Civil Service and other Public Examinations.

NEW EDITION.

LONDON:

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

IN the Comus, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso, we have poetry
of an older kind-older both in language and sentiment—
than in the Paradise Lost of the same author. Between
the production of the former poems and that of the latter,
an interval of about thirty years, occupied with affairs of
state and with political controversy, produced a great
change in the spirit with which Milton had regarded

Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.

To be acquainted, therefore, with the poetry of his earlier days, especially his Comus, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso, is to possess a necessary means of duly estimating his poetical character.

The First and Second Books of Milton's Paradise Lost having been already published with Notes for the use of teachers and students, it has seemed expedient to issue with the same design the best of his Minor Poems, both as containing a treasury of thought productive of the highest utility and enjoyment to the literary mind, and as being often included among the subjects prescribed to candidates for public examinations.

The present work will, it is hoped, be found to explain many difficulties both of language and allusion occurring in these poems, and to promote an appreciation of many beauties that might escape notice in an ordinary perusal.

LONDON: March 1864.

REMARKS OF VARIOUS AUTHORS

ON

MILTON'S

COMUS, L'ALLEGRO, AND IL PENSEROSO

'Ir was in the year 1634 that his Masque was presented at Ludlow Castle. There was formerly a President of Wales, and a sort of a court kept at Ludlow, which has since been abolished; and the president at that time was the Earl of Bridgewater, before whom Milton's Masque was presented on Michaelmas night; and the principal parts, those of the two brothers, were performed by his Lordship's sons, the Lord Brackly and Mr. Thomas Egerton; and that of the lady by his Lordship's daughter, the Lady Alice Egerton. The occasion of this poem seemeth to have been merely an accident of the two brothers and the lady having lost one another in their way to the castle, and it is written very much in imitation of Shakespeare's Tempest, and the Faithful Shepherdess of Beaumont and Fletcher; and though one of the first, is yet one of the most beautiful of Milton's compositions. It was for some time handed about only in manuscript, but afterwards, to satisfy the importunity of friends, and to save the trouble of transcribing it, it was printed at London, though without the author's name, in 1637, with a dedication to the Lord Brackly, by Mr. H. Lawes, who composed the music, and played the part of the attendant spirit.'-NEWTON'S Life of Milton.

'In 1738 Comus was presented on the stage at Drury Lane, with musical accompaniments by Dr. Arne, and the applica