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THE PERSONS.

THE ATTENDANT SPIRIT, afterwards in the habit of

THYRSIS.

COMUS with his Crew.

THE LADY.

FIRST BROTHER.

SECOND BROTHER.

SABRINA the Nymph.

The chief persons who presented were,

THE LORD BRACKLY.

MR. THOMAS EGERTON, his brother.

THE LADY ALICE EGERTON.

THE Mask was presented in 1634, and consequently in the twenty-sixth year of our author's age. In the title page of the first edition, printed in 1637, it is said, that it was presented on Michaelmas night, and there was this motto,

Eheu quid volui misero mihi! floribus austrum

Perditus.

In this edition, and in that of Milton's poems in 1645, there was prefixed to the Mask the following dedication.

To the Right Honourable John Lord Viscount Brackly, son and heir apparent to the Earl of Bridgewater, &c.

MY LORD,

THIS poem, which received its first occasion of birth from yourself and others of your noble family, and much honour from your own person in the performance, now returns again to make a final dedication of itself to you. Although not openly acknowledged by the author, yet it is a legitimate offspring, so lovely, and so much desired, that the often copying of it hath tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction, and brought me to a necessity of producing it to the public view; and now to offer it up in all rightful devotion to

a This motto, from Virgil's second Eclogue, is delicately chosen, whether we consider it as spoken by the author himself, or by the editor. If by the former it appears to mean, "I "have, by giving way to this publication, let in the breath of public censure on these early "blossoms of my poetry, which "were before secure in the hands "of my friends, as in a private

"inclosure." If by the editor, the application is not very different: only to floribus we must then give an encomiastic sense. The choice of such a motto, so far from vulgar in itself, and in its application, was worthy Milton. Hurd.

b See note on Comus, 34.

It never appeared under Milton's name till the year 1645. T. Warton.

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those fair hopes, and rare endowments of your much promising youth, which give a full assurance, to all that know you, of a future excellence. Live, sweet Lord, to be the honour of your name, and receive this as your own, from the hands of him, who hath by many favours been long obliged to your most honoured parents, and as in this representation your attendant Thyrsis, so now in all real expression

Your faithful and most humble Servant,

H. LAWES".

In the edition of 1645 was also prefixed Sir Henry Wotton's letter to the author upon the following poem: but as we have inserted it in the Life of Milton, there is no occasion to repeat it here.

This Dedication from Lawes's edition, does not appear in the edition of Milton's Poems, printed under his own inspection, 1673; when Lord Brackly, under the title of Earl of Bridgewater,

was still living. Milton was perhaps unwilling to own his early connections with a family, conspicuous for its unshaken loyalty, and now highly patronised by K. Charles II. T. Warton.

PRELIMINARY NOTES.

LUDLOW CASTLE.

SOME idea of this venerable and magnificent pile, in which Comus was played with great splendour, in 1634, at a period when Masques were the most fashionable entertainment of our nobility, will probably gratify those, who read Milton with that curiosity which results from taste and imagination.

It was founded on a ridge of rock overlooking the river Corve, by Roger Montgomery, about the year 1112, in the reign of King Henry the First. But without entering into its more obscure and early annals, I will rather exhibit the state and condition in which it might be supposed to subsist, when Milton's drama was performed. Thomas Churchyard, in an old poem called the Worthines of Wales, printed in 1578, has a chapter entitled "The Castle of "Ludloe." In one of the state apartments, he mentions a superb escutcheon in stone of the arms of Prince Arthur, son of Henry the Seventh and an empalement of Saint Andrew's cross with Prince Arthur's arms, painted in the windows of the great hall. And in the hall and chambers, he says, there was a variety of rich workmanship, suitable to so magnificent a castle. "In it is a chapel," he adds," most trim and costly, so bravely wrought, so fayre and finely framed, &c." About the walls of this chapel were sumptuously painted, a great device, a worke most rich and rare," the arms of many of the kings of England, and of the lords of the castle, from Sir Walter Lacie, the first lord, &c. "The armes of "all these afore spoken of, are gallantly and cunningly sett out in "that chapell.-Now is to be rehearsed, that Sir Harry Sidney, being Lord President, buylt twelve roomes in the sayd castle, "which goodly buildings doth shewe a great beautie to the same. "He made also a goodly wardrobe underneath the new parlor, and repayred an old tower called Mortymer's tower, to kepe the aun"cient recordes in the same; and he repayred a fayre roume under "the court-house, and made a great wall about the wood-yard, "and built a most brave conduit within the inner court: and all

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