Thus they the Son of God, our Saviour meek, Sung victor, and, from heavenly feast refreshed, Brought on his way with joy. He, unobserved, Home to his mother's house private returned. THE END. INTRODUCTION TO SAMSON AGONISTES. MILTON is remembered mainly as an epic poet. But his final choice of the epic form for his greatest poem and its companion was the result of deliberation. Apparently it was even a departure from his original inclination, when in his early manhood he had debated with himself in what form of poetry his genius would have fullest scope. Two of his early English poems had not only been dramatic, but had actually been performed. The Arcades was " 'part of an entertainment presented to the Countess-Dowager of Derby at Harefield by some noble persons of her family," probably in the year 1633; and Comus, the finest and most extensive of all Milton's minor poems, was nothing else than an elaborate "masque," performed, in the following year, at Ludlow Castle, in Shropshire, before the Earl of Bridgewater, Lord President of Wales, by way of entertainment to the gentry of the neighbourhood. (See Introductions to these Poems.) Whether Milton was present at the performance of either the Arcades or the Comus is not known; but the fact of his writing two such dramatic pieces for actual performance by the members of a family with which he had relations of acquaintance shows that at that time,—i.e. when he was twenty-six years of age, he had no objection to this kind of entertainment, then so fashionable at Court and among noble families of literary tastes. That he had seen masques performed-masques of Ben Jonson, Carew, or Shirley-may be taken for granted; and we have his own assurance that, when at Cambridge, he attended dramatic representations there, got up in the colleges, and that, when in London, during his vacations from Cambridge, he used to go to the theatres (Eleg. i. 29-46). To the same effect VOL. III. G |