that group of poems (L’Allegro, Il Penseroso, Arcades, Comus, and Lycidas) written by Milton while living in his father’s house at Horton, near Windsor, after having left the University of Cambridge in July, 1632. As he was born in 1608, he would be twenty-five years of age when this poem was composed. During his stay at Horton (1632-39), which was broken only by a journey to Italy in 1638-9, he was chiefly occupied with the study of the Greek, Roman, Italian, and English literatures, each of which has left its impress on Comus. He read widely and carefully, and it has been said that his great and original imagination was almost entirely nourished, or at least stimulated, by books: his residence at Horton was, accordingly, pre-eminently what he intended it to be, and what his father wisely and gladly permitted it to be—a time of preparation and ripening for the work to which he had dedicated himself. We are reminded of his own words in Comus:

And Wisdom’s self

Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,

Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,

She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,

That, in the various bustle of resort,

Were all to-ruffled, and sometimes impaired.

We find in Comus abundant reminiscences of Milton’s study of the literature of antiquity. “It would not be too much to say that the literature of antiquity was to Milton’s genius what soil and light are to a plant. It nourished, it coloured, it developed it. It determined not merely his character as an artist, but it exercised an influence on his intellect and temper scarcely less powerful than hereditary instincts and contemporary history. It at once animated and chastened his imagination; it modified his fancy; it furnished him with his models. On it his taste was formed; on it his style was moulded. From it his diction and his method derived their peculiarities. It transformed what would in all probability have been the mere counterpart of Caedmon’s Paraphrase or Langland’s Vision into Paradise Lost; and what would have been the mere counterpart of Corydon’s Doleful Knell and the satire of the Three Estates, into Lycidas and Comus.” (Quarterly Review, No. 326.)

But Milton has also told us that Spenser was his master, and the full charm of Comus cannot be realised without reference to the artistic and philosophical spirit of the author of the Faerie 

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