‘Two such I saw, what time the labour’d ox In his loose traces from the furrow came, And the swinkt hedger at his supper sat; I saw them under a green mantling vine That crawls along the side of yon small hill, Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots: Their port was more than human as they stood: I took it for a fairy vision Of some gay creatures of the element, That in the colours of the rainbow live And play in th’ plighted clouds. I was awe-struck, And as I pass’d, I worshipp’d.’ To those of our readers who may not be acquainted with Comus, these exquisite passages will be quite new, though they may have lately heard them on the stage. There was an evident want of adaptation to theatrical representation in the last scene, where Comus persists in offering the Lady the cup, which she as obstinately rejects, without any _visible_ reason. In the poetical allegory, it is the poisoned cup of pleasure: on the stage, it is a goblet filled with wine, which it seems strange she should refuse, as the person who presents it to her, has certainly no appearance of any dealings with the devil. Milton’s Comus is not equal to Lycidas, nor to Samson Agonistes. It wants interest and passion, which both the others have. Lycidas is a fine effusion of classical sentiment in a youthful scholar: his Samson Agonistes is almost a canonisation of all the high moral and religious prejudices of his maturer years. _We_ have no less respect for the memory of Milton as a patriot than as a poet. Whether he was a _true_ patriot, we shall not enquire: he was at least a _consistent_ one. He did not retract his defence of the people of England; he did not say that his sonnets to Vane or Cromwell were meant ironically; he was not appointed Poet-Laureat to a Court which he had reviled and insulted; he accepted neither place nor pension; nor did he write paltry sonnets upon the ‘Royal fortitude’ of the House of Stuart, by which, however, they really lost something.[34] MR. KEAN’S LEON _The Examiner._ _July 2, 1815._