Since the foregoing remarks were in type, Comas has been
produced at Covent Garden. As a specacle it is gorgeous ; but viewed as a work of art, it wants unity of design, and is not characterized by the classic feeling of the poem, or by that refined taste which rejects all meretricious aids to effect : glitter and splendour predominate, instead of being kept subordinate to an entire conception. Thus, the dresses of the Bacchanals are too ornate : this is not only at variance with rustic pageantry, of which simplicity is the ruling principle, but the eye is fatigued by the redundancy of ornament. The red light, intended to represent the glow of sunset, is a very rude contrivance, and shows the want of some better arrangement for imitating atmospheric effects. The waterfall is the best piece of scenic illusion in the piece; and the descent of the two Syrens down the face of the cascade, their forms veiled as if by the spray, is at once ingenious and in accordance with nature : the scene altogether has the freshness of reality. What "real water" could compare in effect with this transparent sheet of painted gauze? Sabrina should have appeared in a similar manner, instead of rising from the ground in a shell car with a fountain canopy. The in- troduction of the angelic hosts in the last scene, driving down Comus and his rabble rout of Satyrs and Bacchanals, is a glaring incongruity, to say the least of it.
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