GENIUS, in whatever age of the world it has appeared, has commanded the respect and homage of mankind. MIND, in every stage of development, and in every altitude of attainment, must be an object of profound interest to mind. When, therefore, a mind of so high an order as that of JOHN MILTON, appears before men, the fact constitutes an era in the history of intellect and imagination, and all the productions of such a mind are scanned and studied with a diligence proportioned to the dignity and fame of the author. The principal monument or statue in honor of the departed, of course attracts the most profound contemplation, but around it the genius of the artist may have wrought some beautiful adjunct figures, worthy of their share of admiration. Thus, while the Paradise Lost stands in superior beauty and grandeur, a fitting monument of the transcendent mind of the author, there are minor productions of the same imagination, which are finely conceived, and exquisitely wrought. Among these may be mentioned COMUS, a “Mask,” or Dialogue composed in dramatic form with no particular attention to rules or probabilities, and therefore affording the imagination of the poet considerable freedom in the exercise of its pencil. This was one of the earliest productions of the muse of Milton, one in the progress of which he tried the strength of those pinions, which were destined to bear him beyond this ‘visible diurnal sphere,’ into those spiritual and sublime regions, till then unknown to the adventurous flight of the poet. Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, declares this to be “the greatest of his juvenile performances, in which may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise Lost.” The characters are six only in number, the Attendant Spirit, Comus and his crew, a Virgin Lady, her two brothers, and Sabrina, a nymph.—The scene is a wild-wood, and the poem opens with a long soliloquy from the attendant spirit, followed by the entrance of the wizard Comus, and the strange, unearthly beings of monstrous forms, now encountered by the lady, who has lost her way in the woods, and who is subjected to the severe trial of their foul incantations. The two brothers set forth in pursuit of their lost sister, and succeed in finding her, happy that she has survived unharmed, all the arts of the wicked and the seductive.