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Milton was a great admirer of Jonson: his "Comus" is written very much in imitation of our poet's masques; but is not so fitted as they are for dramatic action. Some will remember in "Penseroso" these lines:

Hurd has remarked that it is an imitation of the following passage in Jonson's "Vision of Delight," and Milton has not, we think, improved on the original:

As a translator he must not be forgotten. He has left a version of Horace's "Ars Poetica," and a few of the odes. The former is marvellously literal, and not so tame as might therefore be supposed. In the latter there is little to praise; but he has excelled these regular translations in passages of the masques and elsewhere, which he has borrowed from ancient authors and literally rendered. It is strange that Hurd, in his letter to Mason on