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All other original copies are filmed beginning on the first pegs with ment, and purity of diction remind us of Landor. These lucid intervals in his overweening vanity explain and justify the friendship of Spenser. Yet the reiteration of emphasis with which he insists on all the world's knowing that Nash had called him an ass, probably gave Shakespeare the hint for one of the most comic touches in the character of Dogberry. t The late Major C. G. Halpine, in a very interesting essay, makes it extremely probable that Rosalinde is the anagram of Rose Daniel, sister of the poet, and married to John Florio. He leaves little doubt, also, that the name of Spenser's wife (hitherto unknown) was Elizabeth Nagle. (See Atlantic Monthly, vol. ii., 674, November 1858.) Mr. Halpine informed me that he found the substance of his essay among the papers of his father, the late Rev. N. J. Halpine, of Dublin The latter published in the series of the Shakespeare Society a sprightly little tract, entitled " Oberon," which, if not quite convincing, is well worth reading for its ingenuity and research. 1/ SPENSER, •7 as secretary, and in that country he spent the rest of his life, with occasional flying visits to England to publish poems or in search of preferment. His residence in that country has been compared to that of Ovid in Pontus. And, no doubt, there were certain outward points of likeness. The Irishry by whom he was surrounded were to the full as savage, as hostile, and as tenacious of their ancestral habitudes as the Scythians* who made Tomi a prison, and the descendants of the earlier English settlers had degenerated as much as the Mix-Hellenes who disgusted the Latin poet. Spenser himself looked on his life in Ireland as a banishment. In his " Colin Clout's come Home again " he tells us that Sir Walter Raleigh, who visited hin in 1589, and heard what was then finished of the " Faery Queen " — " 'Oan to cast great liking to my lore And great disliking to my luckless lot, That banisht had myself, like wight forlore, Into that waste, where I was quite foigot. The which to leave thenceforth he counselled me, Unmeet for man in whom was aught regardful, And wend with him his Cynthia to see, Whose grace was great and bounty most rewardful." But Spenser was already living at Kilcolman Castle (which, with 3028 acres of land from the forfeited estates of the Earl of Desmond, was confirmed to him by grant two years later), amid scenery at once placid and noble, whose varied charm he felt profoundly. He could not complain with Ovid — " Non liber hie ullus, non qui mihi commodet aurem," for he was within reach of a cultivated society, which gave him the stimulus of hearty admiration both as poet and scholar. Above all, he was fortunate in a seclusion that prompted study and deepened meditation, while it enabled him to converse with his genius disengaged from those worldly influences which would have disenchanted it of its mystic enthusiasm, if they did * In his prose tract on Ireland, Spenser, perhaps with some memory of Ovid in his mind, derives the Irish mainly from the Scythians. "I i I I 5] / ', « \ I 'I ■ ■. '"1 . I? I 28 SPENSER. not muddle it ingloriously away. Surely this sequestered nest was more congenial to the brooding of those ethereal visions of the " Faery Queen " and to giving his " soul a loose " than " The smoke, the wealth, and noise of Home, And all the busy pageantry That wise men scorn and fools adore." Yet he longed for London, if not with the homesickness of Bussy-Rabutin in exile from the Parisian sun, yet enough to make him joyfully accompany Raleigh thither in the early winter of 1 589, carrying with him the first three books of the great poem begun ten years before. Horace's Jionum prematur in annum had been more than complied with, and the success was answerable to the well-seasoned material and conscientious faithfulness of the work. But Spenser did not stay long in London to enjoy his fame. Seen close at hand, with its jealousies, intrigues, and selfish basenesses, the court had lost the enchantment lent by the distance of Kilcolman. A nature so prone to ideal contemplation as Spenser's would be profoundly shocked by seeing too closely the ignoble springs of con- temporaneous policy, and learning by what paltry personal motives the noble opportunities of the world are at any given moment endangered. It is a sad discovery that history is so mainly made by ignoble men. " Vide qnesto globo Tal ch'ei sorrise del suo vil sembiante." In his "Colin Clout," written just after his return to Ireland, he speaks of the Court in a tone of contemptuous bitterness, in which, as it seems to me, there is more of the sorrow of disil- lusion than of the gall of personal disappointment. He speaks, so he tells us, — " To warn young shepherds' wandering wit Which, through report of that life's painted bliss, Abandon quiet home to seek for it And leave their lambs to loss misled amiss ; For, sooth to say, it is no sort of life For shepherd fit to live in that same place, \\ SFENSER, t9 Where each one seeks with malice and with strife To thrust down other into foul disgrace Himself to raise ; and he doth soonest rise That best can handle his deceitful wit In subtle shifts .... To which him needs a guileful lioUow heart Masked with fair dissembling courtesy, A filed tongue furnisht with terms of art, No art of scliool, but courtiers' schoolery. For arts of school have there small countenance, Counted but toys to busy idle brains. And there professors find small maintenance, But to be instruments of others' gains. Nor is there place for any gentle wit Unless to please it can itself apply. • • • • • Even such is all their vaunted vanity. Naught else but smoke that passeth soon away. • • • • • So they themselves for praise of fools do sell. And all their wealth for painting on a wall. • • • • • Whiles single Truth and simple Honesty Do wander up and down despised of all."* And, again, in his " Mother Hubberd's Tales," in the most pithy and masculine verses he ever wrote : — " Most miserable man, whom wicked Fate Hath brought to Court to sue for Had-I-wist That few have found and many one hath mist 1 Full little knowest thou that hast not tried What hell it is in suing long to bide ; To lose good days that might be better spent, To waste long nights in pensive discontent, To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow, To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow, To have tliy Prince's grace yet want her Peers', To have thy asking yet wait many years, To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares. To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs^, * Compare Shakespeare's IxvL Sonnet. -i '/! '/ 30 SPENSEH. To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To spend, to give, to want, to be undone. • ••••• Whoever leaves sweet home, where mean estate In safe assurance, without strife or hate, Finds all things needful for contentment meek, And will to court fur shadows vain to seek, That curse God send unto mine enemy »»# When Spenser had once got safely back to the secure retreat and serene companionship of his great poem, writh what pro- found and pathetic exultation must he have recalled the verses of Dante 1 — " Chi dietro a jura, e chi ad aforismi Sen giva, e chi seguendo sacerdozio, E chi regnar per forza e per sofismi, E chi rubare, e chi civil negozio, Chi nei diletti della came involto S' affaticava, e chi si dava all' ozio, Quando da tutte queste cose sciolto, Con Beatrice m' era suso in cielo Cotanto gloriosamente accolto."t What Spenser says of the indifference of the court to learning, and literature is the more remarkable because he himself was by no means an unsuccessful suitor. Queen Elizabeth bestowed on him a pension of fifty pounds, and shortly after he received * This poem, published in 1591, was, Spenser tells us in his dedication, "long sithens composed in the raw conceit of my youth." But he had evidently retouched it. The verses quoted show a firmer hand than is generally seen in it, and we are safe in assuming that they were added after his visit to England. Dr. Johnson epigrammatised Spenser's indict- ment into " There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail," but I think it loses in pathos more than it gains in point. t Paradiso, xl 4-12. Spenser was familiar with the " Divina Corn- media," though I do not remember that his commentators have pointed out his chief obligations to it. 1/ SPENSEH, 31 the grant of lands already mentioned. It is said, indeed, that Lord Burleigh in some way hindered the advancement of the poet, who more than once directly alludes to him either in reproach or remonstrance. In "The Ruins of Time," after speaking of the death of Walsingham, " Since whose decease learning lies unregarded, And men of armes do wander unrewarded," he gives the following reason for their neglect : — " For he that now wields all things at his will, Scorns th' one and th' other in his deeper skill. grief of griefs I gall of all good hearts. To see that virtue should despised be Of him that first was raised for virtuous parts, And now, broad-sprea^ling like an aged tree. Lets none shoot up that nigh him planted he : let the man of whom the Muse is scorned Nor live nor dead be of the Muse adorned I " And in the introduction to the fourth book of the ** Faery Queen " he says again : — " The rugged forehead that with grave foresight Wields kingdoms' causes and affairs of state, M> looser rhymes, I wot, doth sharply wite For praising Love, as I have done of late,— By which frail youth is oft to folly led Through false allurement of that pleasing bait. That better were in virtues discipled Than with vain poems' weeds to have their ftmcies fed. " Such ones ill judge of love that cannot love Nor in their frozen hearts feel kindly flame ; Forthy they ought not thing unknown reprove, Ne natural affection faultless blame For fault of few that have abused the same : For it of honour and all virtue is The root, and brings forth glorious flowers of fame That crown true lovers with immortal bliss. The meed of them that love and do not live amiss." I I ( / 1 ^ lit V ; f I ft ill i, i Sa SrENSEJi, If Lord Burleigh could not relish such a dish of nightingales' tongues as the " Faery Queen," he is very much more to be pitied than Spenser. The sensitive purity of the poet might indeed well be wounded when a poem in which he proposed to himself "to discourse at large" of "the etiiick part of Moral Philosophy"* could be so misinterpreted. But Spenser speaks in the same strain, and without any other than a general application, in his "Tears of the Muses," and his friend Sidney undertakes the defence of poesy because it was undervalued. But undervalued by whom? By the only persons about whom he knew or cared anything, those whom we should now call Society, and who were then called the Court. The inference I would draw is that, among the causes which contributed to the marvellous efflorescence of genius in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the influence of direct patronage from above is to be reckoned at almost nothing.t Then, as when the same phenomenon has happened elsewhere, there must have been a sympathetic public. Literature, properly so called, draws its sap from the deep soil of human nature's common and everlasting sympathies, the gathered leaf-mould of countless generations [oi-ri irep "";" *o,ne and Fletcher wrote o^Phinehas Fletcher And why ? Brow ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^ because Spenser had ^[^^"^ Sb« '»"^'*-'° "'•''"' tvh inward impulse-an ms mrt " ^'S%^ atmosphere into which risks, into the fresh a.r f™"'^'^*^'^;; carbonic-acid gas w^ft rhymer after rhymer had been pu W ^^^ ^„ j^. Ib^ full force of his lungs -^ » wh^tmething truer and bette, edge of suffocation. His long^S ^^ i„„g before to l!s as honest as ^^-^^^fj^^ long after to make a. idealise the Germans, and Roussea angel of the savage. overlooks the whole chasB ""Ipenser Wmself supremdy over^o^ ^^^^^^^ ^ between himself and Chau<=".^' /^ ^m„„ „as afterwards l vTrgil. He called Chauc" maste^ as M^ ^^^^ ^^.g^;^, „f ^ y ««.. And, even «1>'1« ^^ ^S to nature and life-« forms, his =''™-*^* .fjThimself, and must be obviou conscious, 1 have no ^""^ ' to^^^e ends of his fingers virhoever reads with anything butt .^^^ j^^^, True that Sannazzaro had breughy P ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ r i C::- ^m^^ner he instinctively turned .c SPENSER. 39 to Chaucer, the first and then only great English poet. He has given common instead of classic names to his personages, for characters they can hardly be called. Above all, he has gone to the provincial dialects for words wherewith to enlarge and freshen his poetical vocabulary.* I look upon the " Shepherd's Calendar" as being no less a conscious and deliberate attempt at reform than Thomson's "Seasons" were in the topics, and Wordsworth's " Lyrical Ballads " in the language of poetry. But the great merit of these pastorals was not so much in their matter as their manner. They show a sense of style in its larger meaning hitherto displayed by no English poet since Chaucer. Surrey had brought back from Italy a certain inkling of it, so far as it is contained in decorum. But here was a new language, a choice and arrangement of words, a variety, [elasticity, and harmony of verse most grateful to the ears of [men. If not passion, there was fervour, which was perhaps as |near it as the somewhat stately movement of Spenser's mind [would allow him to come. Sidney had tried many experiments in versification, which are curious and interesting, especially his [attempts to naturalise the sliding rhymes of Sannazzaro in jEnglish. But there is everywhere the uncertainty of a 'prentice [hand. Spenser shows himself already a master, at least in iverse, and we ce: *race the studies of Milton, a yet greater [master, in the " Shepherd's Calendar" as well as in the " Faery * Sir Philip Sidney did not approve of this. " That same framing of his style to an old rustic language I dare not allow, since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sannazzaro in Italian, did affect it." (" Defence of Poesy.") Ben Jonson, on the other hand, said that Guarini I** kept not decorum in making shepherds speak as well as himself could." ("Conversations with Drummond.") I think Sidney was right, for the )oets' Arcadia is a purely ideal world, and should be treated accordingly. Jut whoever looks into the glossary appended to the " Calendar," by S. K., will be satisfied that Spenser's object was to find unhackneyed and )oetical words rather than such as should seem more on a level with the ipeakers. See also the "Epistle Dedicatory." I cannot help thinking ^hat E. K. was Spenser himself, with occasional interjections of Harvey. ^ho else could have written such English as many passages in this Spistle ? I*: I'll ll i f t u V /,{ »' 'II i' t ii. / I ! ! t 1 I/ i if ill 40 SPENSER. Queen." We have seen that Spenser, under the misleading influence of Sidney* and Harvey, tried his hand at English hexameters. But his great glory is that he taught his own language to sing and move to measures harmonious and noble. Chaucer had done much to vocalise it, as I have tried to show elsewhere,t but Spenser was to prove " That no tongue hath the muse's utterance heired For verse, and that sweet music to the ear Struck out of rhyme, so naturally as this." The " Shepherd's Calendar " contains, perhaps, the most picturesquely imaginative verse which Spenser has written. It is in the eclogue for February, where he tells us of the •* Faded oak Whose body is sere, whose branches broke, Whose naked arms stretch unto the fire." It is one of those verses that Joseph Warton would have liked in secret, that Dr. Johnson would have proved to be untrans- latable into reasonable prose, and which the imagination welcomes at once without caring wheth or it be exactly conform- able to barbara or celarent. Another pretty verse in the same eclogue — " But gently took that uugently came"— pleased Coleridge so greatly that he thought it was his own. But in general it is not so much the sentiments and images that are new as the modulation of the verses in which they float. The cold obstmction of two centuries' thaws, and the stream of speech, once more let loose, seeks out its old windings, or overflows musically in unpractised channels. The service which Spenser did to our literature by this exquisite sense of harmony is incalculable. His fine ear, abhorrent of * It was at Penshurst that he wrote the only speci;nen that has come down to us, and bad enough it is. I have said that some of Sidney's are pleasing. t See My Study Windows^ 264 seqq. »5 zr.-^ iixr^^^M. SPENSEJR. 41 le misleading id at English light his own lus and noble, tried to show eired ps, the most has written. s of the Lild have liked o be untrans- 5 imagination ictly conform- in the same was his own. and images n which they laws, and the out its old lannels. The this exquisite abhorrent of that has come of Sidney's are barbarous dissonance, his dainty tongue that loves to prolong the relish of a musical phrase, made possible the transition from the cast-iron stiffness of " Ferrex and Porrex" to the Damascus pliancy of Fletcher and Shakespeare. It was he ithat "^Taught the dumb on high to cting, And heavy ignorance aloft to fly : That added feathers to the learned's wing, And gave to grace a double majesty." [I do not mean that in the "Shepherd's Calendar" he had ilready achieved that transmutation of language and metre by irhich he was afterwards to endow English verse with the most raried and majestic of stanzas, in which the droning old ilexandrine, awakened for the first time to a feeling of the )oetry that was in him, was to wonder, like M. Jorrdain, that le had been talking prose nil his life — but already he gave :lear indications of the tendency and premonitions of the )ower which were to carry it forward to ultimate perfection, harmony and alacrity of language like this were unexampled Enghsh verse : — " Ye dainty nymphs, that in this blessod brook Do bathe your breast, Forsake your watci-y bowers and hither look At my request. . . . And eke you virgins that on Pamass dwell. Whence floweth Helicon, the learned well, Help me to blaze Her wortliy praise, Which in her sex doth all excel." [ere we have the natural gait of the measure, somewhat formal lind slow, as befits an invocation ; and now mark how the fame feet shall be made to quicken their pace at the bidding of the tune : — *' Bring here the pink and purple columbine. With gilliflowers ; Bring coronations and sops in wine, Worne of paramours ; w n //I ^h 48 SPENSER. Strow me the ground with daflfadowndillies, And cowslips and kingcups and loved lilies ; The pretty paunce And the chevisance Shall match with the fair flowerdelice."* The argument prefixed by E. K. to the tenth Eclogue has a special interest for us, as showing how high a conception Spenser had of poetry and the poet's office. By Cuddy he evidently means himself, though choosing out of modesty another name instead of the familiar Colin. "In Cuddy is set forth the perfect pattern of a Poet, which, finding no maintenance of his state and studies, complaineth of the con- tempt of Poetry and the causes thereof, specially having been in all ages, and even amongst the most barbarous, always of singular account and honour, and being indeed so worthy and commendable an art, or rather no art, but a divine gift and heavenly instinct not to be gotten by labour and learnings but adorned with both, and poured into the wit by a certain * Of course dillies and lilies must be read with a slight accentuation of the last syllable (permissible then), in order to chime with delice. In the first line I have put here instead of hether, which (like other words where th comes between two vowels) was then very often a mono- syllable, in order to throw the accent back more strongly on hringy where it belongs. Spenser's innovation lies in making his verses by ear instead of on the finger-tips, and in valuing the stave more than any of the single verses that compose it. This is the secret of his easy superiority to all ethers in the stanza which he composed, and which bears his name. Milton (who got more of his schooling in those matters from Spenser than anywhere else) gave this principle a greater range, and applied it with more various mastery. I have little doubt that the tune of the last stanza cited above was clinging i- Shakespeare's ear when he wrote those exquisite verses in "Midsummer Night's Dream" ("I know a bank"), where our grave pentameter is in like manner surprised into a lyrica! movement. See also the pretty song in the eclogue for August. Ber Jonson, too, evidently caught some cadences from Spenser for his lyrics. I need hardly say that in those eclogues (May, for example) where Spensei thought he was imitating what wiseacres used to call the riding-rhyme o: Chaucer, he fails most lamentably. He had evidently learned to scan hi master's verses better when he wrote his '' Mother Hubberd's Tale." SPENSEH. 43 h Eclogue has 1 a conception By Cuddy he >ut of modesty "In Cuddy is ich, finding no leth of the con- ,lly having been trbarous, always ndeed so worthy ut a divine gift ur and learning, wit by a certain slight accentuation chime with delice, , which (like other u very often a mono- Dgly on bring, where verses hy ear instead ban any of the single asy superiority to all lich "bears his name, jrs from Spenser than and applied it with une of the last stanza hen he wrote those (" I know a hank'li rprised into a lyrical ue for August. Bei Spenser for his lyrici sample) where Spense: ill \\i(i riding-rhyme ublish." E. K., whoever he was, never carried out his (intention, and the book is no doubt lost ; a loss to be borne [with less equanimity than that of Cicero's treatise, De Gloria^ )nce possessed by Petrarch. The passage I have italicised is most likely an extract, and reminds one of the long-breathed )eriods of Milton. Drummond of Hawthornden tells us, "he [Ben Jonson] hath by heart some verses of Spenser's * Calen- iar,' about wine, between Coline and Percye" (Cuddie and *iers).* These verses are in this eclogue, and are worth quoting, both as having the approval of dear old Ben, the >est critic of the day, and because they are a good sample »f Spenser's earlier verse : — " Thou kenst not, Percie, how the rhyme should rage ; 0, if my temples were distained wi^h wine, And girt in garlands of wild ivy-twine, How I could rear the Muse on stately stage And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine With quaint Bellona in her equipage 1 " * Drummond, it will be remarked, speaking from memory, takes Cuddy be Colin. In Milton's ''Lycidas" there are reminiscences of this Bclogue as well as of that for May. The latter are the more evident, but think that Spenser's •' Cuddie, the praise is better than the price," iggested Milton's " But not the praise, Phcebus replied, and touched my trembling ears." Shakespeare had read and remembered this pastoral. Compare " But, ah, Meceenasis yci. d in clay. And great Augustus lon^ ago is dead. And all the worthies liggen wrapt in lead," rith " King Pandion, he is dead ; All thy friends are lapt in lead " is odd that Shakespeare, in his " iapt in ^ead," is more Spenserian than Ipenser himself, from whom he caught this " hunting of the letter." v A Hi 44 SPENSER. In this eclogue he gives hints of that spacious style which was to distinguish him, and which, Hke his own Fame, " With golden wings aloft doth fly Above the reach of ruinous decay, And with brave plumes doth b<*at the azure sky, Admired of base-born men from far away."* He was letting his wings grow, as Milton said, and foreboding the " Faery Queen " : — (I Lift thyself up out of the lowly dust • • « • • To 'doubted knights whose woundless armour rusts And helms unbruisM waxen daily brown : There may thy Muse display her fluttering wing, And stretch herself at large from East to West." Verses like these, especially the last (which Dry den would have liked), were such as English ears had not yet heard, and curiously prophetic of the maturer man. The language and verse of Spenser at his best have an ideal lift in them, and there is scarce any of our poets who can so hardly help being poetical. It was this instantly felt if not easily definable charm that forthwith won for Spenser his never-disputed rank as the chiel English poet of that age, and gave him a popularity which, during his life and in the following generation, was, in its select quality, without a competitor. It may be thought that I lay too much stress on this single attribute of diction. But apart from its importance in his case as showing their way to the poets who were just then learning the accidence of their art, and leaving them a material to work in already mellowed to theii hands, it should be remembered that it is subtle perfection ol phrase and that happy coalescence of music and meaning. where each reinforces the other, that define a man as poet and * "Ruins of Time." It is, perhaps, not considering too nicely to remark how often this image of wings recurred to Spenser's mind. A certain aerial latitude was essential to the large circlings of his style. ' I ', SPENSEH. 45 s style which ime, ky. ind foreboding ir rusts wing, est." rden would have yet heard, and e language and ift in them, and ardly help being able charm that rank as the chiel ►opularity which, was, in its select ght that I lay too But apart from way to the poets of their art, and nellowed to theii 3tle perfection ot ic and meaning, man as poet and make all cars converts and partisans. Spenser was an epicure in language. He loved "seldseen costly" words perhaps too well, and did not always distinguish between mere strangeness j and that novelty which is so agreeable as to cheat us with some charm of seeming association. He had not the concentrated power which can sometimes pack infinite riches in the little room of a single epithet, for his genius is rather for dilatation [than compression.* But he was, with the exception of Milton ind possibly Gray, the most learned of our poets. His |familiarity with ancient and modern literature was easy and intimate, and as he perfected himself in his art, he caught the fraud manner and high-bred ways of the society he frequented. Jut even to the last he did not quite shake off the blunt isticity of phrase that was habitual with the generation that )receded him. In the fifth book of the " Faery Queen," where ne is describing the passion of Britomart at the supposed llnfidelity of Arthegall, he descends to a Teniers-like realismt — Perhaps his most striking single epithet is the "sea-shouldering irhales," B. II. 12, zxiii. His ear seems to delight in prolongations. Tor example, he makes such words as glorious, gratioics, joyeouSy voior, chapelet dactyles, and that, not at the end of verses, where it rould not have been unusual, but in the first half of them. Milton mtrives a break (a kind of heave, as it were) in the uniformity of his ^erse by a practice exactly the opposite of this. He also shuns a hiatus rhich does not seem to have been generally displeasing to Spenser's r, though perhaps in +he compound epithet bees-alluring he intentionally raids it by the plural form. t " Like as a wayward child, whose sounder sleep Is broken with some fearful dream's affright, With froward will doth set himself to weep Ne can be stilled for all his nurse's might, But kicks and squalls and shrieks for fell desplght, Now scratching her and her loose locks misusing, Now seeking darkness and now seeking light, Then craving suck, and then the suck refusing." too nicely to S^® would doubtless have justified himself by the familiar example of lering jj^i^d. A vomer's comparing Ajax to a donkey in the eleventh book of the Iliad. f h's stvle. wt *^^° ^" *^® " Epithalamion " it grates our nerves to hear, 1 I i V'f u, ( ) >/ ,1 a \i !i I r 46 SPENSER. he whose verses generally remind us of the dancing Hours of Guido, where we catch but a glimpse of the real earth, and that far away beneath. But his habitual style is that of gracious loftiness and refined luxury. He first shows his mature hand in the " Muiopotmos," the most airily fanciful of his poems, a marvel for delicate concep* tion and treatment, whose breezy verse seems to float between a blue sky and golden earth in imperishable sunshine. No other English poet has found the variety and compass which enlivened the octave stanza under his sensitive touch. It can hardly be doubted that in Clarion, the butterfly, he has sym- bolised himself, and surely never was the poetic temperament so picturesquely exemplified : — " Over the fields, in his frank lustiness, And all the champain o'er, he soared light, And all the country wide he did possess. Feeding upon their pleasures bounteously. That none gainsaid and none did him envy. *' The woods, the rivers, and the meadows gi-een. With his air-cutting wings he measured wide. Nor did he leave the mountains bare unseen, Nor the rank grassy fens' delights untried ; But none of these, however sweet they been, Mote please his fancy, or him cause to abide ; His choiceful sense with every change doth flit ; No common things may please a wavering wit. •' To the gay gardens his unstaid desire Him wholly carried, to refresh his sprights ; There lavish Nature, in her best attire, Pours forth sweet odours and alluring sights. And Art, with her contciing doth aspire, To excel the natural with made delights ; And all that fair or pleasant may be found, In riotous excess doth there abound. " Pour not by ct ps, but by the bellyful, Pour out to all chat wull." Such examples serve to show how strong a dose of Spenser's aurw^ potdbile the language needed. SPENSER, " There he arriving, round about cloth flie, From bed to bed, from one to the other border, And takes survey with curio as busy eye, Of every flower and herb there set in order, Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly. Yet none of them he rudely doth disorder, Ne with his feet their silken leaves displace, But pastures on the pleasures of each plaoe. " And evermore with most variety And change of sweetness (for all change is sweet) He casts his glutton sense to satisfy, Now sucking of the sap of herbs most meet. Or of the dew which yet on them doth lie. Now in the same bathing his tender feet ; And then he percheth on some branch thereby To weather him and his moist wings to dry. " And then again he turneth to his play, To spoil [plunder] the pleasures of that paradise ; The wholesome sage, the lavender still grey. Rank -smelling rue, ^nd cummin good for eyes, The roses reigning in the pride of May, Sharp hyssop good for gi'een wounds' remedies Fair marigolds, and bees- alluring thyme, Sweet marjoram and daisies decking prime. *♦ Cool violets, and orpine grow;ng still, Embathed balm, and cheerful ^i^lingale. Fresh costmary and breathful camomill, Dull poppy and drink-quickening setuale. Vein-healing vervain and head-purging dill, Sound Si voury, and basil hporty-hale, Fat cole'irorts and comforting perseline, Cold lettuce, and refreshing rosemarine.* 47 * I could not bring myself to root out this odourous herb-garden, though make my extract too long. It is a pretty reminiscence of his master laucer, but is also very characteristic of Spenser himself. He coold }t help planting a flower or two among his serviceable plants, and after this abundance he is not satisfied, but begins the next stanza with [And whatso else. " / ' / ,1 l( 48 SPENSER, "And whatso else of virtue good or ill, Grow in this garden, fetched from fur away, Of every one he takes and tastes nt will, And on their pleasures greedily doth prey ; Then, when he hath both played and fed his fill, In the warm sun he doth himself embay, And there him rests in riotous suffisance Of all his gladfulness and kingly joyance. * What more felicity can fall to creature Than to enjoy delight with liberty, And to be lord of all the works of nature ? To reign in the air f'om earth to highest sky, To feed on flowers and weeds of glorious feature, To take whatever thing doth please the eye ? Who rests not pleased with such happiness. Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness." The " Muiopotmos " pleases us all the more that it vibrates in us a string of classical association by adding an episode to Ovid's story of Arachne. " Talkipg the other day with a friend (the late Mr. Keats) about Dante, he observed that whenever so great a poet told us anything in addition or continuation oi an ancient story, he had a right to be regarded as classical authority. For instance, said he, when he tells us of that characteristic death of Ulysses ... we ought to receive the information as authentic, and be glad that we have more news of Ulysses than we looked for."* We can hardly doubt that Ovid would have been glad to admit this exquisitely fantastic illumination into his margin. No German analyser of aesthetics has given us so convincing a definition of the artistic nature as these radiant verses. " To reign in the air" was certainly Spenser's function. And yet the commentators, who seem never willing to let their poet be a poet pure and simple, though, had he not been so, they would bave lost their only hold upon life, try to make out from his "Mother Hubberd's Tale" that he might have been a very sensible matter-of-fact man if he would. For my own part, i * Leigh Hunt's Indicator, xvii. SPENSER. 49 5 that it vibrates I an episode to lay with a friend d that whenever continuation ot ded as classical tells us of that t to receive the have more news ,rdly doubt that [uisitely fantastic us so convincing int verses. " To iction. And yet let their poet be ixi so, they would ike out from his ^ave been a very my own part, 1 am quite willing to confess that I like i-..n none the worse for being ////practical, and that my reading has convinced me that being too poetical is the rarest fault of poets. Practical men are not so scarce, one would think ; and I am not sure that the tree was a gainer when the hamadryad flitted and left it nothing but ship-timber. Such men as Spenser are not sent into the world to be part of its motive power. The blind old engine would not know the difference though we got up its I steam with attar of roses, nor make one revolution more to the minute for it. What practical man ever left such an heirloom |to his countrymen as the " Faery Queen?" Undoubtedly Spenser wished to be useful, and in the highest rocation of all, that of teacher, and Milton calls him " our sage md serious poet, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." And good Dr. Henry More iras of the same mind. I fear he makes his vices so beautiful low and then that we should not be very much afraid of them we chanced to meet them ; for he could not escape from his |;enius, which, if it led him as philosopher to the abstract Contemplation of the beautiful, left him as poet open to every ipression of sensuous delight. When he wrote the "Shep- lerd's Calendar" he was certainly a Puritan, and probably so »y conviction rather than from any social influences or thought ^f personal interests. There is a verse, it is true, in the second ^f the two detached cantos of " Mutability," " Like that ungracious crew which feigns demurest grace," fhich is supposed to glance at the straiter religionists, and rom which it has been inferred that he drew away from lem as he grew older. It is very likely that years and ridened experience of men may have produced in him their [atural result of tolerant wisdom which revolts at the hasty istructiveness of inconsiderate zeal. But with the more jnerous side of Puritanism I think he sympathised to the ^st. His rebukes of clerical worldliness are in the Puritan ^ne, and as severe a one as any is in " Mother Hubberd's 554 50 SPENSEH. \ V « I Tale," published in 15;!.* There is an iconoclastic relish in his account of Sir Guyon's demolishing the Bower of Bliss that makes us think he would not have regretted the plundered abbeys as perhaps Shakespeare did when he speaks of the winter woods as "bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang" : — " But ull thosti plcftHuiit bowers and palace brave Guyoii broke dowu with rigour pitiloas, Ne ought their goodly Wv.-kiiuinHhip might save Them from the tempest of lu: wratlifulness, But that tiieir bliss he turned to 'lalefulness ; Tlieir groves ho felled, their gardens did uelV-e, Their arbours spoil, their cabinets suppress, Their banquet-houses burn, their buildings rase, And of the fairest late now made the foulest idace." But whatever may have been Spenser's religious opinions (which do not nearly concern us here), the bent of his mind was toward a Platonic mysticism, a supramundane sphere where it could shape universal forms out of the primal elements of things, instead of being forced to put up with their fortuitous combinations in the unwilling material of mortal c'ay. He who, when his singing robes were on, could never be tempted nearer to the real world than under some subterfuge of pastoral or allegory, expatiates joyously in this untrammelled ether : — •'Lifting himself out of the lowly dust On golden plumes up to the purest sky." * Ben Jonson told Drummond " that in that paper Sir W. Raleigh li.ul of the allegories of his Faery Queen, by the Blatant Beast the Puritan^ were understood." But this is certainly wrong. Tliero were very dilferent shades of Puritanism, according to individual temperament, That of Winthroj) and Higginson had a mellowness of which Endicott an ; Standish were incapable. The gradual change of Milton's opinions wa- .'imilar to that which I suppose in Spenser. The passage in "Motlie: Hubberd " may have been aimed at the Pi-otestant clergy of Ireland (for lie Bays much the same thing in his " View of the State of Ireland "), but it is general in its terms. SPENSER, 5* ilic relish iu wcr of lil'»s3 ic plundered peaks of the te the sweet ve '.'•e. rase, t place." igious opinions of bis mind was ,e sphere where Kimal elements their fortuitous lortal c'ay. He ^ever be tempted subterfuge of us untrammelled Siv W. Kalelgli U;iil Beast tlio Puritiv'> Thero were vivj idual tempevaw^'i^^, wliich Eudicott aiv. Liltou's opinions ^^= |passa.^e in -Motb. 'rav of Ireland (for li' of Ireland"), ^^it It Nowhere does his j-cnius soar and bing with such continuous aspiration, nowhere is his |)hrasc so decorously stalely, though risin}? to an enthusiasm wliich reaches intensity while it sloj)s sliort of vehemence, as in his Hymns to Love and Beauty, especially the latter. There is an exulting' spurn of earth in it, as of a soul just loosed from its cage. I shall make no extracts from it, for it is ore of those intimately coherent and transcendentally logical poems that " movclh altogether if it move at all,"' the breaking off a fragment from which >vouId maim it as it would a perfect group of crystals. What- ever there is of sentiment and passion is for the most part purely disembodied and without sex, like that of angels I— a kind of poetry which has of late gone out of fashion, [whether to our gain or not may be questioned. Perhaps [one may venture to hint that the animal instincts are Ithose that stand i i least need of stimulation. Spenser's lotions of love were so nobly pure, so far from those of mr common ancestor who could hang by his tail, as not lo dis(jualify him for achieving the quest of the Holy Grail, and iccordingly it is not uninstructive to remember that he had trunk, among others, at French sources not yet deboshed with ibsinthc* Yet, with a purity like that of thrice-bolted snow, he iad none of its coldness. He is, of all our poets, the most truly knsuous, using the word as Milton probably meant it when he |aid thai poetry should be " simple, sensuous, and passionate." poet is innocently sensuous when his mind permeates and [lumines his senses ; when they, on the other hand, muddy the lind, he becomes sensual. Every one of Spenser's senses was |s exquisitely alive to the impressions of material, as every jrgan of his soul was to those of spiritual beauty. Accordingly, * Two ofliis eclogues, as T have said, are fi-oiii IMarot, and liis earliest lowu verses are translations from Bellay, a jiout "wlio Avas charming leuevev he had Die courage to phiy truant from a Lad scliool. AN'e must [>t suppose that an analysis of the liteiuturo of the daal-ntimdc will give all the elements ot the French character. It has been botii grave and Jofouud ; nay, it has even contrived to be "wise and lively at tlie same le, a combination so incomprehensible by the Teutonic races that they Ive labelled it levity. It puts them out as Nature did Fuseli. 52 SPENSER. if he painted the weeds of sensuality at all, he could not help making them "of glorious feature." It was this, it may be suspected, rather than his "praising love," that made Lord Burleigh shake his "rugged forehead." Spenser's gamut, indeed, is a wide one, ranging from a purely corporeal delight in "precious odours fetched from far away" upward to such refinement as \ \ 1 U " Upon her eyelids many graces sate Unaer the shadow of her even hrows," where the eye shares its pleasure with the mind. He is court- painter in ordinary to each of the senses in turn, and idealises these frail favourites of his majesty King Lusty Juventus, till they half believe themselves the innocent shepherdesses into which h*" travesties them. * In his great poem he had two objects in view — first, the ephemeral one of pleasing the court, and then that of recom- mending himself to the permanent approval of his own and following ages as a poet, and especially as a moral poet. To meet the first demand, he lays the scene of his poem in con- temporary England, and brings in all the leading personages of the day under the thin disguise of his knights and their squires and lady-loves. He says this expressly in the prologue to the second book : — * Taste must be partially excepted. It is remarkable how little eatin; and drinking there is in the " Faery Queen. " The only time he fairly set a table is in the house of Malbecco, where it is necessary to the Conduct o. the story. Yet taste is not wholly forgotten : — " In her left hand a cup of gold she held, And with her right the riper fruit did reacb . Whose sappy liquor, that with fulness 8vi\,id, Into her cup she scruzed with dainty breach Of bar fine fingers without foul impeach, That so fair wine-press made the wine more sweet." B. II., c. xii., Sd Taste can hardly compl&in of unhandsome treatment ! ould not help s, it may be ; made Lord nser's gainut, poreal deliglit Dward to such He is court- •n, and idealises ty Juvenius, till jpherdesses into view— first, the n that of reconv of his own and moral poet. To his poem in con- ing personages of , and their squires le prologue to the ible how little eatin: nly time he fairly sefc sary to the Conduct o; acb. g reach more sweet." Qtl SPENSER, 53 ** Of Faery Laiid yet if he more inquire, By certain signs, here set in sundry place, He may it find ; . . . And thou, fairest princess under sky, In this fair mirror mayst hehold thy face And thine own realms in land of Faery." Many of his personages we can still identify, and all of them were once as easily recognisable as those of Mademoiselle de Scuddry. This, no doubt, added greatly to the immediate piquancy of the allusions. The interest they would excite may be inferred from the fact that King James, in 1596, wished to have the author prosecuted and punished for his indecent handling of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, under the name of Duessa. * To suit the wider application of his plan's other and more important half, Spenser made all his characters double their parts, and appear in his allegory as the impersonations of abstract moral qualities. When the cardinal and theological virtues tell Dante, " Noi siam qui ninfe e in ciel siamo stelle," the sweetness of the verse enables the fancy, by a slight gulp, to swallow without solution the problem of being in two places at the same time. But there is something fairly ludicrous in such a duality as that of Prince Arthur and the Earl of Leicester, Arthegall and Lord Grey, and Belphcebe and Elizabeth. " In this same interlude it doth befall That I, one Snout by name, present a wall." * Had the poet lived longer, he might perhaps have verified his friend Raleigh's saj !ng, that " whosoever in writing modem history shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out hia teeth." The passage is one of the very few disgusting ones in the ** Faery Queen." Spenser was copying Ariosto ; but the Italian poet, with the discreeter taste of hia race, keeps to generalities. Spenser goes into particulars which can only he called nasty. He did this, no doubt, to pleasure his mistress, Mary's rival , and this gives us a measure of the brutal coarseness of contemporary manners. It becomes only the more marvellous that the fine flower of his genius could have transmuted the juices of such a soil into the purity and i sweetness which are its own peculiar properties. i-l )■ I' ii i' M SPENSER. The rcnlity seems to heighten the improbability, ah'e.idy hard enou<^h to manage. But Spenser had fortunately almost as little sense of humour as Wordsworth,* or he could never have carried his poem on with enthusiastic good faith so far as he did. It is evident that to him the Land of Faery was an unreal world of picture and illusion, " The world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome tnrmoil," in which he could shut himself up from the actual, with its shortcomings and failures. " The ways throngh whicli my weary steps I gnide In this delightful laml of Faery Are so exceedirg spacious and wide, And sprinkh.'d with such sweet variety Of all til at pleasant is to ear and eye, Tliat T, nigh ravisht with rare thoughts' delight, ISvj tedious travail ao forget thereby, And, when I 'gin to fjcl decay of might, It strength to me supplies, arl cheers my dulled spright." Spenser seems here to confess a little weariness ; but the alacrity of his mind is so great that, even where his inventi. fails a httle, v/e do not share his feeling nor suspect it, charmed as we are by the variety and sweep of his measure, the beauty or vigour of his similes, the musical felicity of his diction, and the mellow versatility o^ his pictures. In this last quality Ariosto, whose emulous pupil he was, is as Bologna to Venice in the comparison. That, when the personal allusions have lost their meaning and the allegory has become a burden, the book should continue to be read with delight, is proof enough, were any wanting, how full of life and light and the other-worldliness of poetry it must be. As a narrative it has, I think, every fault * There is a gleam of humour in one of the couplets of " Mothoi Hnbberd's Tale," where the Fox, persuading the Ape that they shouM disguise themselves as discharged soldiers in order to beg the moro successfully, says — " Be you the soldier, for you likest are For manly semblance and small skill in war." SPENSER. 55 of which that kind of writing is caprible. The characters are vague, and, even were they not, they drop out of the story so often and remain out of it so long, that we have forgotten who they arc when we meet them again ; the episodes hinder the advance of the action instead of relieving it with variety of incident or novelty of situation ; the plot, if plot it may be called, " Tliat shape has none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb," recalls drearily our ancient enemy, the Metrical Romance ; while the fighting, which, in those old poems, was tediously sincere, is between shadow and shadow, where we know that neither can harm the other, though we are tempted to wish he might. Hazlitt bids us not mind the allegory, and says that it won't bite us nor meddle with us if we do not meddle with it. But how if it bore us, which after all is the fatal question } The truth is that it is too often forced upon s against our will, as people were formerly driven to church till hey began to look on a day of rest as a penal institution, and ;o transfer to the Scriptures that suspicion of defective inspira- lon which was awakened in them by the preaching. The true ype of the allegory is the " Odyssey," which we read without uspicion as pure poem, and then find a new pleasure in divining its double meaning, as if we somehow got a better bargain of our author than he meant to give us. But this complex feeling must not be so exacting as lo prevent our lapsing into the old Arabian Nights simplicity of interest again. The moral of a poem should be suggested, as when in some mediaeval church we cast down our eyes to muse over a fresco of Giotto, and are reminded ol the transitoriness of life by the mortuary tablets under our feet. The vast superiority of Bunyan over Spenser lies in the fact that we help to make his allegory out of our own experience. Instead of striving to embody abstract passions and temptations, he has given us his own in all their pathetic simplicity. He is the Ulysses of his wn prose-epic. This is the secret of his power and his charm '/J I If /I / ' * 1 i^ ' \< 11 56 SPENSER, that, while the representation of what may happen to all men comes home to none of us in particular, the story of any one man's real experience finds its startling parallel in that of every one of us. The very homeliness of Bunyan's names and the evcrydayness of his scenery, too, put us off our guard, and we soon find ourselves on as easy a footing with his allegorical beings as we might be with Adam or Socrates in a dream. In- deed, he has prepared us for such incongruities by telling us at setting out that the story was of a dream. The long nights of Bedford jail had so intensified his imagination, and made the figures with which it peopled his solitude so real to him, that the creatures of his mind become things^ as clear to the memory as if we had seen them. But Spenser's are too often mere names, with no bodies to back them, entered on the Muses* muster-roll by the specious trick of personification. There is, likewise, in Bunyan, a childlike simplicity and taking- for-granted which win our confidence. His Giant Despair,* for example, is by no means the Ossianic figure into which artists who mistake the vague for the sublime have mis- conceived it. He is the ogre of the fairy-tales, with his malicious wife ; and he comes forth to us from those regions of early faith and wonder as something beforehand accepted by the imagination. These figures of Bunyan's are already familiar inmates of the mind, and, if there be any sublimity in him, it is the daring frankness of his verisimilitude. Spenser's giants are those of the later romances, except that grand figure with the balances in the second Canto of Book V., the most original of all his conceptions, yet no real giant, but a pure eidolon of the mind. As Bunyan rises not seldom to a natural poetry, so Spenser sinks now and then, through the fault of his topics, tc unmistakable prose. Take his description of the House of Alma,t for instance : — * Bunyan probably took the hint of the Giant's suicidal offer of " knife, halter, or poison," from Spenser's "swords, ropes, poison," in "Faery Queen," B. T., c. ix., 1. f Book IT., c. ix. SPENSER, 57 n to all men •y of any one that of every ttnes and the Tuard, and we lis allegorical a dream. IR- )y telling us at long nights of and made the il to him, that clear to the 5 are too often mtered on the personification, nty and taking- iiant Despair,* rure into which ime have mis- ■tales, with his n those regions and accepted by already familiar nity in him, it is Ipenser's giants rand figure with he most original a pure eidolon . natural poetry, ,ult of his topics, of the House of idal offer of " knife, )oison," m " Faery " The master cook was cald Concoction, A careful man, and full of comely guise ; The kitchen-clerk, that hight Digestion, Did order all the achates in seemly wise." And so on through all the organs of the body. The author of Eccelsiastes understood these matters better in that last pathetic chapter of his, blunderingly translated as it apparently is. This, I admit, is the worst failure of Spenser in this kind ; though, even here, when he gets on to the organs of the n.ind, I the enchantments of his fancy and style come to the rescue and put us in good-humour again, hard as it is to conceive of armed knights entering the chamber of the mind, and talking iwith such visionary damsels as Ambition and Shamefastress. jNay, even in the most prosy parts, unless my partiality {deceive me, there is an infantile confidence in the magical )wers of Prosopopoeia which half beguiles us, as of children lYio play that everything is something else, and are quite itisfied with the transformation. The problem for Spenser was a double one : how to commend >oetry at all to a generation which thought it effeminate ifling,* and how he, Master Edmund Spenser, of imagination U compact, could commend his poetry to Master John Bull, 16 most practical of mankind in his habitual mood, but at lat moment in a passion of religious anxiety about his soul. Imne iulit puncium qui miscuit utile dulci was not only irrefragable axiom because a Latin poet had said it, jut it exactly met the case in point. He would convince the :orners that poetry might be seriously useful, and show Master Jull his new way of making fine words butter parsnips, in rhymed moral primer. Allegory, as then practised, was lagination adapted for beginners, in words of one syllable and llustrated with cuts, and would thus serve both his ethical and pictorial purpose. Such a primer, or a first instalment of it, he roceeded to put forth ; but he so bordered it with bright- • See Sidney's Defence and Puttenham's Art I , SPENSER, coloured fancies, he so often filled whole pages and crowded the text hard in others with the gay frolics of his pencil, that, as in the Grimani missal, the holy function of the book is forgotten in the ecstasy of ils adornment. Worse than all, does not his brush linger more lovingly along the rosy contours of his sirens than on the modest wimples of the Wise Virgins ? " The general end of the book," he tells us in his Dedication to Sir Waller Raleigh, " is to fashion a gentleman of noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline." But a little further or he evidently has a qualm, as he thinks how generously he had interpreted his promise of cuts : "To some I know this method will seem displeasant, which had rather have good discipline delivered plainly in way of precepts or sermoned at large,* as they use, than thus cloudily enwrapped in allegorical devices." Lord Burleigh was of this way of thinking, undoubtedly, but how could poor Clarion help it ? Has he not said, " And whatso else, of virtue good or ill, Grew in that garden, fetclit from far away, Of every one lie takes and tastes at will, And on their pleasures greedily doth prey ? " One sometimes feels in reading him as if he were the pure sense of the beautiful incarnated to the one end that he might interpret it to our duller perceptions. So exquisite was his sensibility,t that with him sensation and intellection seem identical, and we "can almost say his body thought." This subtle interfusion of sense with spirit it is that gives his poetry a crystalline purity without lack of warmth. He is full of feeling, and yet of such a kind that we can neither say it is mere intellectual perception of what is fair and good, nor yet associate it with that throbbing fervour which leads us to call sensibility by the physical name of heart. * We can fancy how he would have done this by Jeremy Taylor, who was a kind of Spenser in a cassock. t Of this he himself gives a striking hint, where speaking in his owr person he suddenly breaks in on his narrative with the passionate cry, " All, dearest God, rae grant I dead be not defouled." " Faery Queen," B. I., c, x.^ 43, SPENSER, 59 [ind crowded cncil, that, as k is forgotten , does not his s of his sirens rgins? "The dication to Sir oble person in further or he srously he had DW this method rood discipline id at large,* as orical devices." idoubtedly, but lid, way, prey \ were the pure ..d that he might Ixquisite was his ntellection seem thought." This gives his poetry He is full of [her say it is mere good, nor yet leads us to call 1 Jeremy Taylor, wlio speaking in his ovn; le passionate cry, llefouled." [en,"B. I.,c. x.^43, Charles Lamb made the most pithy criticism of Spenser when he cal'^^d him the poets' poet. We may fairly leave the allegory on one side, for perhaps, after all, he adopted it only for the I reason that it was in fashion, and put it on as he did his ruff, not because it was becoming, but because it was the only wear. IThc true use of him is as a galleiy of pictures which we visit as [the mood takes us, and where we spend an hour or two at a time, long enough to sweeten our perceptions, not so long as to :loy them. lie makes one think always of Venice ; for not )nly is his style Venetian,* but as the gallery there is housed in [he shell of an abandoned convent, so his in that of a deserted lllegory. And again, as at Venice you swim in a gondola from lian IJellini to Titian, .and from Titian to Tintorct, so in him, irhcrc other cheer is wanting, the gentle sway of his measure, |ikc the rhythmical impulse of the oar, floats you luUingly along )m picture to picture. " If all the pens that ever })oet held Had fed tlio feeling of their master's thonf,^hts, And every sweetness tliat inspired their hearts nieir minds and muses on admired themes, If all the heavenly quintessence they still From their immortal flowers ol' poesy, Was not this picture painted by Paul Veronese, for example ? " Arachne figured how Jove did abuse Enropa like a bull, and on his back Her through the sea did bear : . . . She seemed still back unto the land to look, And her playfellows' aid to call, and fear The dashing of the waves, that up she took, Her dainty feet, and garments gathered near. . , . liefuto the bull she pictured winged Love, With his young brother Sport, . . . And many nymphs about them flocking round, And many Tritons which their horns did souud." Muiojwtmos, 281-206. Jpcnser begins a complimentary sonnet prefixed to tlie " Conmiouwcalth CoverniiiLiit of Venice" (1599) with this beautiful verse, " Fair Venice, flower of the last world's delight' Perhaps we shoidd read "lost" ? * ,! SPENSER. If theso had made one poem's period, i\ nd all combined in beauty's worthiness ; Yet shouid there hover in their restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder at tho best, Which into v/ords no virtue can digest." * Spenser, at his ])est. has come as near to expressing this unattainable something as any other poet. He is so purely poet that with him the meaning does not so often modulate the music of the verse as the music makes great part of the meaning and leads the thought along its pleasant paths. No poet is so splendidly superfluous as he ; none knows so well that in poetry enough is not only not so good as a fea'",t, but a beggarly pf. simony. He spends himself in a careless abundance only to be justified by incomes of immortal youth. ■' Pensler canuto nfe molto n6 p )co Si pud quivi albergare iu alcun cuore ; Non entra quivi disagio n^ inopia, Ma vi sta ogn'or col como pien la Copia." t This delicious abundance and overrunning luxury of Spenser appear in the very structure of his verse. He found the ottav& rima too monotonously iterative ; so, by changing the order o his rhymes, he shifted the couplet from the end of the stave where it always seems to put on the brakes with a jar, to tlie middle, where it may serve at will as a brace or a bridge ; lis found it not roomy enough, so first ran it over into another line and then ran that added line into an alexandrine, in which ths melody of one stanza seems forever longing and feeling forwarc after that which is to follow. There is no ebb and flow in h; metre more than on the shores of the Adriatic, I i^t wave follof wave with equable gainings and recessions, the one sliding bad in fluent music to be mingled with and carried forward b Marlowe's "Tamburlaine," Part I., Art v,> 2. " Greyheaded Thought, nor much nor little, may Take up its lodging here in any heart ; Unea&ti nor Lack can enter at this door ; But here dwells full-horned Plenty evermore." Qrl, fw., c. vi., 73. SPENSP.R. 6t expressing this He is so purely ten modulate the jeat part of the asant paths. No ne knows so well 3d as a fea'it, but self in a careless inimortal youth. re ; Jopia." t luxury of Spensei le found the ottan anging the order o; e end of the stave, ^s with a jar, to tb Lce or a bridge ; b er into another line idrins, in which tli; and feeling forwari ebb and flow in h ticj I iTt wave follow the one sliding bac carried loirward t r littls, may Lrt ; ioor ; evermore." Qrl. Fw.y c vi., 73' the next. In all this there is soothingness indeed, but no slumberous monotony ; for Sper^er was no mere metrist, but a great composer. By the variety of his pauses — now at the close of the first or second foot, now of the third, and again of the fourth— he gives spirit and energy to a measure whose tendency it certainly is to become languorous. He knew how to make it rapid and passionate at need, as in such verses as, '* But lie, my lion, and my noble lord, How does he tind in cruel heart to hate Her that him loved and ever most adored As the God of my life ? Why hath he me abhorred ? "* Or this, «' Come hither, come hither, 0, come hastily !"t Jjoseph Warton objects to Spenser's stanza, that its " constraint 'led him into many absurdities." Of these he instances three, €f which I shall notice only one, since the two others (which suppose him at a loss for words and rhymes) will hardly seem valid to any one who knows the poet. It is that it " obliged ihim to dilate the thing to be expressed, however unimportant, with trifling and tedious circumlocutions — namely, * Faery Queen,' II., ii., 44 : — * Now hath fair Phoebe with her silver face Thrice seen the shadows of this nether world, Sith last I left that honourable place, In which her royal presence is enrolled.' That is, it is three months since I left her palace."J But Dr. Warton should have remembered (what he too often forgets in his own verses) that, in cpite of Dr. Johnson's dictum, poetry is * B. 1., c. iii., 7. Leigh Hunt, one of the most sympathetic of critics, has remarked the passionate change from the third to the first person in the last two verses. t B. IL, c. viii.,3. X Observations on Fa"/ry Queen, vol. i., pp. 158, 159. Mr. Hughes also objects to Spenser's measure, that it is "closed always by a full-stop, in the same place, by which every stanza is made as it were a distinct .11 i * / ( I ^ ■\ I t% SPENSER, not prose, and that verse only loses its advantage over the hitter l)v invading its province.* Verse itself is an absurdity, except as an expression of some higher movement of the mind, or as an expedient to lift other minds to the same ideal level. It is the cothurnus which gives language an heroic stature. 1 have said that one leading characteristic of Spenser's style was its spaciousness, that he habitually dilates rather than com- presses. But his way of measuring time was perfectly natural in an age when everybody did not carry a dial in his poke as now. He is the last of the poets who went (without affecta- tion) by the great clock of the firmament. Dante, the misar of words, who gc^s by the same timepiece, is full of these round- about ways of telling us the hour. It had nothing to do with Spenser's stanza, and I for one should be sorry to lose these stately revolutions of the siipcrnc mote. Time itself becomes more noble when so measured ; we never knew before of how precious a mnnnodity we had the wasting. Who would prefer the plain time of day t»> this ? or this ? " Now wlu'ii Akk'ljarau was iiiounted high Above tlio btarry Cassiopeia's chair ; " " By this tlio nortliorn wagoner had set His seveii-lolil teimi hejijnd the steadfast star paragraph." (Todd's Spenser, II., xli.) But he could hardly have read the pooiu attentively, for there are numerous Instances to tlie contrary. Spenser was a consummate master of versiilcation, and not only diil Marlowe and Sludcespeare learn of him, but I have little doubt that, IjuI for the "Faery Queen," wo shoidd never have liad the varied majesty ol Milton's blank-vcise. * As where Dr. Warton himself says : — " How nearly had my sphlt j)ast, Till stopt |jy I.ietcalf's skilful hand, To deatli'.s dark regions wide and waste And the black river's mournful strand, • Or to," etc., to the end of the next stanza. That is, I hail died but for Dr. Mctcalf's boluses. or this ? I lor Dr. Mctcair.s SPENSEIi. 63 Tliftt was ill ocoiin's waves yet never wet, I5iit lirm is lixt juul .semletli liglit from far To all that iu tlic wide ileep waiulcriuK are ; " "At last the golden oriental gate Of greatest heaven 'gan to open fair, And l'}iaibus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate. Came dancing forth, sliaking liis dewy hair -^ Antl luirls his glistening beams throngli dewy air." The generous indcfiniteness, which treats an hour more or less as of no account, is in keeping with that sense of e^idicss leisures which it is one chief merit of the poem to suggest. Ikit Spenser's dilatation extends to thoughts as well as to phrases and images, lie does not love the concise. Yet his dilatation is not mere distension, but the expansion of natural I growth in the rich soil of his own mind, wherein the merest stick of a verse puts forth leaves and blossoms. Here is one of his, suggested by Homer :* — •* Ui)OU the top of all his lofty crest A bunch of hairs discolouretl diversely, Witii sprinkled pearl and gold full richly drest, Did sliake, and seemed to dance for jollity ; Like to an almond-true ymouuted high On top of green Selinus all alone With blossoms brave bedeckec^ daintily. Whose tender locks do tremble every one At every little breath that under heaveu is blown." And this is the way he reproduces five pregnant verses of I Dante : — " Seggendo iu piume In fanui non si vieii, ne sotto coltre, * Iliad, xvii., 55 seqq. Referred to in Upton's note on " Faery iQiieen," B. I., c. vii., 32. Into what a breezy couplet trailing olf with an |n](X;indrine has Homer's irvoial iravToitjjv dpifnov expantled ! Cliapman |iiiifi)i'tuiiately lias slurred this passage iu his version, and Pope tittivated lit more than usual in his. I have no otlier translation at hand. Marlowe Iva.s so taken by this passage in Spenser that he put it bodily into his \Tainbiuiaine. rTTsessRsasiaaRffisn it 11 .1 \ '/> i! 64 SPENSER. Bonzala qual chi sua vita cotiHuma, Cotul vustigio in tuna di hu lancia (jual fumo iu aero ud iu acqua la Buhiumo."* " Whoso in pomp of proud estate, (iuoth she, Does swim, and bathes himself in courtly bliss, Does waste his days iu dark obscurity And in oblivion ever burieii is ; Where ease abounds it's eath to do amiss : But who his limbs with labours and his mind Behaves with cares, cannot so easy miss. Abroad in arms, at home in studious kind. Who seeks with painful toil shall Honour soonest And. " In woods, iu waves, in wars, she wonts to dwell, And will be found with peril and with paiD| Ne can the man that moulds in idle cell Unto her happy mansion attain ; Before her gate high God did Sweat ordain, And wakeful watches ever to abide ; But easy is the way and passage plain To pleasure's palace ; it may soon be spied, And day and night lier doors to all stand open wide."f Spenser's mind always demands this large elbow-room. His thoughts are never pithily expressed, but with a stately and sonorous proclamation, as if under the open sky, that seems to me very noble. For example — li^emOf xxiv., 46-52. " For sitting upon down, Or under qnilt, one cometh not to fame, Withouten which whoso his life consumeth Such vestige leaveth of himself on earth As smoke in air or in the water foam/ -Longfellow. It shows how little Dante was read during the last century that none of the commcitators on Spenser notice his most important obligations to the great Tuscan. t "Faery Queen," B. II., c. iii., 40, 41. I —Longfellow. SPENSER, 65 " Tli« noblo heart thnt harbours virtuous thought And is with ohiM of glorious-greut intent Can never rest until it forth have brouglit The etorniil brood of glory excellent."* )nc's very soul seems to dilate with that last verse. And here a passage which Milton had read and remembered :— " And is there care In Heaven ? and is there love In lieavenly spirits to these creatures base, Tliat may oompussiou of their evils move ? There is : else much more wretched were the case Of man than beasts : but 0, the exceeding grace Of higliest Go