III. The Triumph: lines 959-1023.
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n the first scene, after a kind of prologue (lines 1-92), the interestrises as we are introduced first to Comus and his rout, then to the Ladyalone and "night-foundered," and finally to Comus and the Lady incompany. At the same time the nature of the Lady's trial and hersubsequent victory are foreshadowed in a conversation between thebrothers and the attendant Spirit. This is one of the more Miltonicparts of the mask: in the philosophical reasoning of the elder brother,as opposed to the matter-of-fact arguments of the younger, we trace theyoung poet fresh from the study of the divine volume of Plato, andfilled with a noble trust in God. In the second scene we breathe theunhallowed air of the abode of the wily tempter, who endeavours, "underfair pretence of friendly ends," to wind himself into the pure heart ofthe Lady. But his "gay rhetoric" is futile against the "sun-clad powerof chastity"; and he is driven off the scene by the two brothers, whoare led and instructed by the Spirit disguised as the shepherd Thyrsis.But the Lady, having been lured into the haunt of impurity, is leftspell-bound, and appeal is made to the pure nymph Sabrina, who is "swiftto aid a virgin, such as was herself, in hard-besetting need." It is inthe contention between Comus and the Lady in this scene that theinterest of the mask may be said to culminate, for here its purposestands revealed: "it is a song to Temperance as the ground of Freedom,to temperance as the guard of all the virtues, to beauty as secured bytemperance, and its central point and climax is in the pleading of thesemotives by the Lady against their opposites in the mouth of the Lord ofsensual Revel." _Milton: Classical Writers_. In the third scene the LadyAlice and her brothers are presented by the Spirit to their noble fatherand mother as triumphing "in victorious dance o'er sensual folly andintemperance." The Spirit then speaks the epilogue, calling upon mortalswho love true freedom to strive after virtue: Love Virtue; she alone is free.She can teach ye how to climbHigher than the sphery chime;Or, if Virtue feeble were,Heaven itself would stoop to her. The last couplet Milton afterwards, on his Italian journey, entered inan album belonging to an Italian named Cerdogni, and underneath it thewords, _Coelum non animum muto dum trans mare curro_, and hissignature, Joannes Miltonius, Anglus. The juxtaposition of these versesis significant: though he had left his own land Milton had not becomewhat, fifty or sixty years before, Roger Ascham had condemned as an"Italianated Englishman." He was one of those "worthy Gentlemen ofEngland, whom all the Siren tongues of Italy could never untwine fromthe mast of God's word; nor no enchantment of vanity overturn them fromthe fear of God and love of honesty" (Ascham's _Scholemaster_). And onemight almost infer that Milton, in his account of the sovereign plantHaemony which was to foil the wiles of _Comus_, had remembered not onlyHomer's description of the root Moly "that Hermes once to wise Ulyssesgave,"{16:A} but also Ascham's remarks thereupon: "The true medicineagainst the enchantments of Circe, the vanity of licentious pleasure,the enticements of all sin, is, in Homer, the herb Moly, with the blackroot and white flower, sour at first, but sweet in the end; which Hesiodtermeth the study of Virtue, hard and irksome in the beginning, but inthe end easy and pleasant. And that which is most to be marvelled at,the divine poet Homer saith plainly that this medicine against sin andvanity is not found out by man, but given and taught by God." Milton's_Comus_, like his last great poems, is a poetical expression of the samebelief. "His poetical works, the outcome of his inner life, his life ofartistic contemplation, are," in the words of Prof. Dowden, "variousrenderings of one dominant idea--that the struggle for mastery betweengood and evil is the prime fact of life; and that a final victory of therighteous cause is assured by the existence of a divine order of theuniverse, which Milton knew by the name of 'Providence.'" FOOTNOTES: {16:A} It is noteworthy that Lamb, whose allusiveness is remarkable,employs in his account of the plant Moly almost the exact words ofMilton's description of Haemony; compare the following extract from _TheAdventures of Ulysses_ with lines 629-640 of _Comus_: "The flower of theherb Moly, which is sovereign against enchantments: the moly is a smallunsightly root, its virtues but little known, and in low estimation; thedull shepherd treads on it every day with his clouted shoes, but it bearsa small white flower, which is medicinal against charms, blights,mildews, and damps."
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