We have no information how _Comus_ was received when represented at
Ludlow, but it found a public of readers. For Lawes, who had the MS.
in his hands, was so importuned for copies that, in 1637, he caused an
edition to be printed off. Not surreptitiously; for though Lawes does
not say, in the dedication to Lord Brackley, that he had the author's
leave to print, we are sure that he had it, only from the motto. On
the title page of this edition (1637), is the line,--

Eheu! quid volui miscro mihi! floribus anstrum
Perditus--

The words are Virgil's, but the appropriation of them, and their
application in this "second intention" is too exquisite to have been
made by any but Milton.To the poems of the Horton period belong also
the two pieces _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, and _Lycidas_. He was
probably in the early stage of acquiring the language, when he
superscribed the two first poems with their Italian titles. For there
is no such word as "Penseroso," the adjective formed from "Pensiero"
being "pensieroso". Even had the word been written correctly, its
signification is not that which Milton intended, viz. thoughtful, or
contemplative, but anxious, full of cares, carking. The rapid
purification of Milton's taste will be best perceived by comparing
_L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ of uncertain date, but written after
1632, with the _Ode on the Nativity_, written 1629. The Ode, notwith-
standing its foretaste of Milton's grandeur, abounds in frigid conceits,
from which the two later pieces are free. The Ode is frosty, as written
in winter, within the four walls of a college chamber. The two idylls
breathe the free air of spring and summer, and of the fields round
Horton. They are thoroughly naturalistic; the choicest expression our
language has yet found of the fresh charm of country life, not as that