Sabrina, the “goddess of the silver lake,” is invoked, and rises out of the “cool, translucent wave,” chiefly to confer a crowning grace upon the scene and afford further opportunity for the exercise of the imaginative powers of the poet. There can be said to be little plan, or intention of plan or plot about the piece. But whatever may be wanting in beauty or ingenuity of design, is amply compensated by the sterling value of the thoughts, the exquisite character of the imagery, the richness of the coloring, and the purity of the tone of sentiment. Many a “household word” is here recognized. Many a stem, from which we plucked flowers for our herbarium, grew here. Beautiful gems, that have been set here and there in the bosom of congenial prose, or, like current coin, from hand to hand, that have circulated from mouth to mouth, in elegant society, were formed in this mine. Those “thousand liveried angels” that lackey a pure and gentle spirit, the “airy tongues, that syllable men’s names,” that “charming, divine philosophy,” which is “musical as Apollo’s lute,” the vision of those serene and celestial regions, that glow “above the smoke and stir of this dim spot, which men call earth,” the view of a sable cloud, turning its “silver lining on the night,” these, and many kindred images and sentiments of beauty, have their original expression in the Comus, as others do in other works of the immortal poet, who sought not merely to weave splendid visions of the imagination, but to embalm sublime truths for the nourishment of humanity in all ages, and to vindicate the ways of God to man.
Here, too, we find some of those sententious generics of history or geography, of fable or fancy; those classic touches; those suggestive single words, which instantly bring up before the mind, a train of ideas, or a treasure of knowledge connected with the past.
These habits of thought and composition are fully developed in Paradise Lost. “The poetry of Milton,” says an eminent critic, “differs from that of Dante, as the hieroglyphics of Egypt, differ from the picture-writing of Mexico. The images which Dante employs speak for themselves; they stand simply for what they are. Those of Milton have a signification which is often discernible only, to the initiated. Their value depends less on what they directly represent, than on what they remotely suggest.” Numerous instances of this might be adduced. It has been called electrifying the mind through a conductor. The mind of the reader must in some good measure co-operate with that of the author. We must be ready to fill up the outline which he sketches; to respond with our melody to the key-note, which he strikes. There must be some music in the soul that is to appreciate the genius of Milton. Addison never earned a purer glory, than when he set forth his merits as by a charmed pen. Those words of enchantment—those forms of beauty created by the imagination of the poet, deeply impressed a congenial mind.
The Comus is constructed on the plan of the Italian masque, and belongs to that class of poems, which do not depend for their interest on any complication of plot or conflicts of intense passion, on dramatic unities or strange developments; startling scenes and horrible catastrophes. The poem rather claims and commands our admiration for the Doric simplicity of its structure, than for any gay and glittering forms of poetic architecture. Though dramatic in its plan, the Mask—while it has the simplest form of the drama—is essentially lyric, especially in the carol of the Water Nymph and the song of the attendant spirit, which constitutes a kind of delicious epilogue to the piece, and concludes with a beautiful moral lesson:
Mortals, that would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free:
She can teach you how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.