But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
much fame in heaven expect thy meed.'"

"Comus," the richest fruit of Milton's early genius, is the epitome of
the man at the age at which he wrote it. It bespeaks the scholar and
idealist, whose sacred enthusiasm is in some danger of contracting a
taint of pedantry for want of acquaintance with men and affairs. The
Elder Brother is a prig, and his dialogues with his junior reveal the
same solemn insensibility to the humorous which characterizes the
kindred genius of Wordsworth, and would have provoked the kindly smile
of Shakespeare. It is singular to find the inevitable flaw of "Paradise
Lost" prefigured here, and the wicked enchanter made the real hero of
the piece. These defects are interesting, because they represent the
nature of Milton as it was then, noble and disinterested to the height
of imagination, but self-assertive, unmellowed, angular. They disappear
entirely when he expatiates in the regions of exalted fancy, as in the
introductory discourse of the Spirit, and the invocation to Sabrina.
They recur when he moralizes; and his morality is too interwoven with
the texture of his piece to be other than obtrusive. He fatigues with
virtue, as Lucan fatigues with liberty; in both instances the scarcely
avoidable error of a young preacher. What glorious morality it is no one
need be told; nor is there any poem in the language where beauties of
thought, diction, and description spring up more thickly than in
"Comus." No drama out of Shakespeare has furnished such a number of the
noblest familiar quotations. It is, indeed, true that many of these
jewels are fetched from the mines of other poets: great as Milton's
obligations, to Nature were, his obligations to books were greater. But
he has made all his own by the alchemy of his genius, and borrows little