How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness, till it smiled. Thinking Comus an honest shepherd, the Lady follows him: her brothers enter in search of her, the Spirit warns them of her danger, and gives them such virtuous herbs as Hermes gives to Odysseus in Circe's isle. Armed with these they scatter the satyrs of Comus, but only Sabrina, nymph of the Severn, called and replying in lyrics of ineffable beauty can release the Lady from the enchanted chair of Comus. The majesty, delicacy, and beauty of the ideas are matched by the exquisite music of the blank verse and lyric passages, for at the age of 26 and in his poetic prime of youth, Milton was already a master of every technical resource of poetry; of everything, except humour and the power of creating human characters. He might compose poetry more august and sustained than "Comus," but he never could be a better poet man he was in 1634. Sanity, order, form, absence of vain conceit and ingenious antithesis were as natural to Milton as they were unknown to Donne and the Fletchers. Milton's next great poem, "Lycidas," was composed shortly before he left Horton, early in 1638, on a visit to Italy. The occasion, which other Cambridge poets celebrated, was the death of a friend, Edward King, drowned in crossing the Irish Channel. We do not know from external evidence that Milton was more attached to King, personally, than Shelley was to Keats. "Lycidas" is not a cry from an almost broken heart, as are parts of the "In Memoriam" of Tennyson. It has been said that admiration of "Lycidas" is a test of a man's capacity for appreciating poetry,--a hard saying for Dr. Johnson. That Milton had a true affection for King the classic allusions and the pastoral guise of his ode may cause some to doubt. But there is deep natural feeling in the plangent words, But oh! the heavy change now thou art gone, Now thou art gone and never must return! The story disguised as a friendship between Theocritean shepherds is really that of a college friendship between two boyish poets, and no later friendships can be so tender, close, dear; the lost voice ever echoing in the memory. The verse is a solemn music: the mingling of the figures of classical mythology with St. Peter, and with Camus, "reverend sire," vexed Dr. Johnson, but he would have been equally vexed by the only Oxford pendant to this Cambridge lament, the "Thyrsis" of Matthew Arnold. Indeed what really annoyed the good Doctor was the certainly regrettable introduction of an attack on his beloved Church of England, and the ominous mention of "that two-handed engine at the door," which did not strike once, but often, nor only at the neck of an Archbishop, but slew Strafford, Hamilton, and the King.