JOHN MILTON A5 
after these two added centuries of printing. To 
Greek history, from early times to the fall of Constan- 
tinople, he also gave much attention. 
It was at Horton that Milton’s first great poems 
were written. More or less meritorious verse in 
Greek, Latin, and English he had written at Cam- 
bridge; and in the Christmas hymn, written in his 
twenty-first year, — 
“It was the winter wild, 
While the heaven-born child 
All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies,” 
there are some stanzas of magnificent promise. But 
his first important work was “Comus,” a mask per- 
formed at Ludlow Castle in 1634. The mask was a 
kind of dramatic entertainment, in which scenery and 
gorgeous costumes formed a setting for dialogue alter- 
nating with music. It was fashionable in England 
from the time of Edward III. to the time of Charles I. 
Some of the finest specimens of the mask were written 
by Ben Jonson, who was still living in 1634. With 
further development the mask would probably have 
become opera, but its career was suddenly cut short 
by Puritanism. ‘“Comus” seems to have been the 
last one that was performed. The eminent composer, 
Henry Lawes, had undertaken to furnish music for a 
mask; he asked his friend Milton to write the words, 
and the result was “Comus,” a piece of poetry more 
exquisite than had ever before been written in Eng- 
land save by Shakespeare. There is an ethereal 
delicacy about it that reminds one of the quality of 
mind shown in such plays as the “ Tempest ” and the 
“Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The late Mark Patti- 
