their way in a wood. The two brothers leave their sister in order to recover the track. During their absence Comus, the ill-conducted reveller, who haunts the wood, discovers the sister where she had been left. Comus is a master of sorcery, and is bent on bringing all whom he meets under the yoke of a riotous life, and to this end does not scruple to use his magic arts. He can establish his sway over any one who will drink of the enchanted cup he offers. Against his blandishments and flatteries the sister is firm. Finding himself baffled in his endeavour to make the lady drink of his cup, Comus resorts to the use of his magic wand. He cannot conquer her will, but he can paralyse her action. By his enchantments the lady is

In stony fetters fixed and motionless.

But though thus spell-bound at his will, he is impotent in his persuasions. She still retains her will to resist him and still refuses to drink the cup of his enchantment. Guided by a good spirit who is the guardian angel of the piece, the brothers arrive while Comus is urging his last persuasions. Comus flies, but the lady is still the victim of his spells and remains chained to her chair. The enchanter has taken his magic

wand with him. To release the lady, the aid of the nymph Sabrina is sought; the lady is released, and the mask ends with an epilogue spoken by the attendant or guardian spirit.

The play illustrates the power of simplehearted virtue. The lady is left alone; her brothers, her natural protectors, are no longer at her side. She encounters the evil genius of the world, the heedless, pleasure-loving, magicgifted Comus. But powerful as he is and able to restrain her action, he is powerless against the firm will and the clear insight which a pure heart possesses. It is the wide and lucid vision of the pure soul which is perhaps chiefly dwelt upon by the poet. He puts into the lips of the lady the words of celestial wisdom; she shows a power of perception which belongs only to the pure-hearted, and it is her pure-heartedness which makes her put aside the magic cup. She thus escapes degradation.

The power of the enchanted cup which Comus offers is such that it transforms those who drink it. He offers

to every weary traveller

His orient liquor in a crystal glass,

To quench the drouth of Phoebus; which as they taste
(For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst)
Soon as the potion works, their human count'nance,

The express resemblance of the gods, is changed
Into some brutish form of wolf or bear,

Or ounce or tiger, hog, or bearded goat.

This idea of human beings so transformed belongs to the folk-lore of the ancient world. Ovid has incorporated in his "Metamorphoses' many of these old stories. He tells how Cadmus was metamorphosed into a serpent, Actæon into a stag, Io into a heifer, Daphne into a laurel, Hyacinthus into a flower, Egeria into a fountain, the Cercopians into apes. The idea therefore of men and women being transformed into creatures of a lower order was a familiar one. It would take too long to enter into a discussion of the origin of this idea. It expresses, however, a certain great moral truth. Men may lose the characteristics of their dignity and superiority. They may lose what is specially their glory. They may sink below the level of their order. Nebuchadnezzar falls and takes his place among the beasts of the field. Man being in honour abideth not, but becomes like the beasts that perish. It is a curious modern comment or illustration of this ancient belief that the records of lunacy tell us that inmates of asylums sometimes exhibit a tendency towards animalism, or imagine themselves to be metamorphosed.

The insane have fancied themselves to be animals or to be fragile vases which stood in imminent peril of being broken. One lady was known who believed herself to be a teapot, and stood with her arm looped to her side, like the handle of the teapot, and so waited "to be poured out." Thus insanity produces the sense or fancy of a deteriorated order. A mad idea that they are or wish to be some lower creature possesses the insane. Is there not a symptom of this in the petition of the Gadarene demoniac, "Suffer us to enter into the swine"?

Thus the fact of human deterioration towards animalism is a commonplace of all literature, ancient and modern, sacred and profane. The interpretation, however, of the fact is not always the same and it is the different ethical conception entertained by the classical and the Christian poet respectively which is full of suggestion.

This difference is marked in two ways. The causes of the transformation are different, and so are the results.

In Ovid the transformation is generally due to some inevitable circumstance. The victim acts in ignorance and finds to his dismay that he has unwittingly been guilty of some desecration or violation of divine order. Acteon is changed

into a stag by the indignant goddess Diana, because by accident he chanced to see the goddess bathing.

Acteon was the first of all his race,

Who grieved his grandsire in his borrowed face;
Condemned by stern Diana to bemoan

The branching horns and visage not his own;
To shun his once-loved dogs, to bound away,
And from their huntsman to become their prey,
And yet consider why the change was wrought,
You'll find it his misfortune, not his fault;
Or, if a fault, it was the fault of chance;
For how can guilt proceed from ignorance?

Ovid, Metam., Book iii. 188-198.
(Addison's Translation.)

Aglauros turned to a statue may indeed be reckoned to be punished for her petulance and jealousy, and Ocyrrhoe for presumptuous reading of the future; and Battus for his double-dealing is transformed into a touchstone. But the moral causes of the transformation do not hold a conspicuous place in the poet's thoughts. Like so many of the ancients, misfortunes are to him mainly the work of the gods whose tempestuous quarrels are unwittingly interfered with by mortals; and these unhappy mortals, being involved in celestial disputes of which they know nothing, are made the victims of celestial malignity.

In Milton we reach a purer ethical idea. To