No date; circa 1921.   Large 7 1/2" x 10" gift book design.  Dk. green full-cloth boards, gilt embossed cover and spine design, titles, moderate shelf wear, some spine rub.   Front board features stylized cover titles and several ogre-like  creatures including donkey, goat, wolf and owl.   Colour frontispiece plate w/caption: "All amidst the Gardens fair, Of Hesperus, and his daughters three, That sing about the golden tree."   Fine tissue guard w/printed caption.  Thick, deckled pages very good, clean.  Green pictorial endpapers with white silhouettes of four maidens bounding past tree and small satyr-like beings in chase.  Bind good; hinges intact. 

Features twenty-two tipped-in color plates on thick matte pages by the wondrous illustrator, Arthur Rackham.  Each plate beautifully rich with subdued colors and featuring Rackham at his most magically best; fine tissue guards w/printed captions.   Illustrations produced by the Hentschel Colour-Type Process.  Additionally, includes full and partial page b&w imagery, headers, tailpieces, and decorative designs throughout.  Rare near very good example of fine book craftsmanship. 

Full title of John Milton's Comus: 'A Mask presented at Ludlow Castle 1634: on Michelmas night, before the right honorable John, Earl of Bridgewater, Viscount Brackley, Lord President of Wales, and one of His Majesty's most honorable privy council'.  Here, in John Milton's masque Comus, the god is described as the son of Bacchus and Circe, a post-classical invention.  The tale concerns two brothers and their sister, simply called "the Lady", lost in a journey through the woods.  When the Lady becomes fatigued, the brothers wander off in search of sustenance. 

While alone, she encounters the debauched Comus, a character inspired by the god of revelry, disguised as a villager who claims he will lead her to her brothers.  Deceived by his amiable countenance, the Lady follows him, only to be captured, brought to his pleasure palace and victimised by his necromancy.  Printed in Great Britain by The Cornwall Press, Ltd., Paris Garden, Stamford Street, London.  4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall.   76 pages.  Insured post.