WHIMS k 
 
 wmm 
 
 Sim 
 tan 
 
 iilaliaim 
 
 %ffi 
 
 'Ntmfttlftttti 
 
 lllllll" lUlllllllll'! 
 
 fSusnfii 
 
 i I I I i I II U 1 1 1 ' :• I I I I II I I i • 
 
 llfl/n/lllftp iHlllllliih: 
 
 iiiiiiniitiii. iiniiniiiiii 
 
 .../inimii: ifllllilHIllliiii; 
 
 imnmitin iiHiitfYtiiMii! tiuuim 
 
 '/j//f/imfiimimiiHiMiiinmfiiiiiiuimiiiim 
 
 /jJlilMliMliiiiniiiiiiiiiiiii'iMiiiiiniiliiMilMi 
 
 ii jii ill 
 
 flffUIHIIIflMhmilllll'lll! 
 
 - . I I ' I I It i I 1 l l 1 I I M I 
 
 iiimiiiiiimiinmiimini 
 i.'ffl » ijOhmiiirfii 1 1 1 1 ii 1 1 1 1 1 
 
 IIIIIHiillr 
 -illlllllllimil 
 
 uiiimntniimimim; 
 'Wlffllfffufffftf) i f ii 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 • i ii i 
 
 lllllllllillllllliiillllllMIHIIIIHIil 
 llllllllllllliijllllilillllilliii 
 
 • I'll!!:.: 
 
 iiiitmiimniittiiihii 
 
 ■immiiiimiiiiini 
 
 JlHIUIIIIIIIl/lllMlllllilllll 
 
 iiiiiiiiijiriOSumHiHiimiii 
 iiiiiiitiiti 
 
 lllflfMHHll 
 
 iiMiiniuii 
 
 iinmmmtliili; 
 
 HIIIIItlHil 
 
 /ill: 
 
 jimuiHiiiiiiiiii'iiiii 
 
 [iiitiimiiiiiiii- 
 
 (iiiiiiiiu 
 
 itiiiii 
 
 IIIUIIIIUII I. 
 
 tlimitflllllllllil 
 
 lllllllll !! : 
 
 niiiiiiui 
 iff 
 ...Jinuiiy 
 
 'HiHlilli:i|i 
 
 llliiil 
 
 lliltll 
 .,.11111111. .. 
 
 iniitiiim 
 
 ! 1 1 1 1 1 H 1 1 II I M 1 1 ' l 
 IflHIIII'lIIUIil 
 
 .nun 
 
 ni/lii 
 
 .iim 
 
 Mill 
 
 /iYn//iitiiiiirffiiiiiiiiirftiiitrri/i/iiri!i 
 
 ff iff iff' 
 
 f)f'ffftf(»f> I'M-- 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 hi 1 1 
 
 miiiii/iini/nfYriiiimii miiiiniimiimifiimiiiiiinii 
 irmmiDrr/niiii/iirrmiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii immmiin 
 
 I II 1 1 » 1 1 i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 i 1 1 ' '     I i I i l l : l i ! • 1 1 M I I ! i 1 1 < i   i i i , ' : 1 1 I . I 
 
 mm 
 
 
 [I flj I \ I ! I : 1 1 1 1 1 1 II 1 1 1 ' 
 
 I I III! II 
 
 mill iiiniiiin Minimum 
 
   mini in 
 
 muimmiii 
 milium
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 IMAGINATION AND FANCY 
 
 OR 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM THE ENGLISH POETS, 
 
 JHlustratfbe of tjiose jjfrst 3?rqufsftes of tljefr &rt; 
 
 WITH MARKINGS OF THE BEST PASSAGES, CRITICAL NOTICES 
 OP THE WRITERS, 
 
 AND AN ESSAY IN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 "WHAT IS POETRY?" 
 
 BY 
 
 LEIGH HUNT. 
 
 NEW EDITION, COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 GEORGE P. PUTNAM, 155 BROADWAY. 
 
 1848. 
 
 - . .
 
 . . - 
 
 • • • - - .
 
 ft 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
   
 
 Page 
 
 PREFACE ... iii. 
 
 | AN ANSWEB TO THE QUESTION, "WHAT IS POETEY V . . 1 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM SPENSER, WITH CRITICAL NOTICE . . 49 
 
 ARCHIMAGO'S HERMITAGE AND THE HOUSE OF MORPHEUS . 54 
 
 THE CAVE OF MAMMtJf AND GARDEN OF PROSERPINE . . 62 
 
 A GALLERY OF PICTURES FROM SPENSER ... .72 
 
 (Spenser considered as the Poet of the Painters.) 
 
 CHARISSA, OR CHARITY ... 77 
 
 HOPE ... 78 
 
 CUPID USURPING THE THRONE OF JUPITER . . . .78 
 
 £&MARRIAGE PROCESSION OF THE THAMES AND MEBWAY . . 79 
 
 CJSSIR GUYON BINDING FUROR . . 80 
 
 UNA, OR FAITH IN DISTRESS ....... 80 
 
 OS JUPITER AND MAIA 82 
 
 ^r, NIGHT AND THE WITCH DUESSA 83 
 
 3 VENUS IN SEARCH OF CUPID, COMING TO DIANA . . .85 
 
 MAY 86 
 
 AN ANGEL WITH A PILGRIM AND A FAINTING KNIGHT . . 87 
 
 AURORA AND TITHONUS ........ 88 
 
 THE BRIDE AT THE ALTAR 89 
 
 A NYMPH BATHING .89 
 
 E CAVE OF DESPAIR 90 
 
 A KNIGHT IN BRIGHT ARMOR, LOOKING INTO A CAVE . . 91 
 
 MALBECCO SEES HELLENORE DANCING WITH THE SATYRS . 92 
 LANDSCAPE, WITH DAMSELS CONVEYING A WOUNDED SQUIRE ON 
 
 HIS HORSE 93 
 
 THE NYMPHS AND GRACES DANCING TO A SHEPHERD'S PIPE; 
 
 OR, APOTHEOSIS OF A POET'S MISTRESS ... 93 
 
 I 27
 
 IV 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 A PLUME OF FEATHERS AND AN ALMOND TREE 
 ENCHANTED MUSIC 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM MARLOWE, WITH CRITICAL NOTICE 
 the jew of Malta's idea of wealth 
 a vision of helen .... 
 mythology and court amusements 
 beauty beyond expression 
 the passionate shepherd to his love 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM SHAKSPEARE AVITH CRITICAL NOTICE 
 
 WHOLE STORY OF THE TEMPEST 
 
 MACBETH AND THE WITCHES 
 
 THE QUARREL OF OBERON AND TITANIA 
 
 THE BRIDAL HOUSE BLESSED BY THE FAIRIES 
 
 LOVERS AND MUSIC ..... 
 
 ANTONY AND THE CLOUDS .... 
 
 YOUNG WARRIORS ...... 
 
 IMOGEN IN BED ...... 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM BEN JONSON, WITH CRITICAL NOTICE 
 
 TO CYNTHIA ; THE MOON ...... 
 
 THE LOVE-MAKING OF LUXURY 
 
 Page 
 . 95 
 
 . 96 
 
 . 97 
 . 100 
 . 102 
 103 
 . 103 
 . 104 
 
 • 100 
 
 . 108 
 
 . 116 
 
 . 121 
 
 , 130 
 
 . 131 
 
 . 136 
 
 . 137 
 
 . 138 
 
 . 140 
 . 142 
 . 142 
 
 TOWERING SENSUALITY 143 
 
 THE WITCH 145 
 
 A MEETING OF WITCHES 146 
 
 A CATCH OF SATYR3 148 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, WITH CRITICAL 
 
 NOTICE • 150 
 
 MELANCHOLY ... 152 
 
 A SATYR PRESENTS A BASKET OF FRUIT TO THE FAITHFUL 
 
 SHEPHERDESS .......... 153 
 
 A SPOT FOR LOVE TALES 155 
 
 MORNING 155 
 
 THE POWER OF LOVE . ....... 156 
 
 INVOCATION TO SLEEP 157 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM MIDDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER, WITH 
 
 CRITICAL NOTICE 15S 
 
 FLIGHT OF WITCHES .162
 
 CONTENTS. t 
 
 Page. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LADY AND THE ANGEL .... 164 
 
 LADIES DANCING .......... 166 
 
 APRIL AND WOMEN'S TEARS , ... 167 
 
 DEATH . 167 
 
 PATIENCE * 167 
 
 A WICKED DREAM ........ 168 
 
 NATURAL DEATH .... 169 
 
 FUNERAL DIRGE 170 
 
 DISSIMULATION 170 
 
 BEAUTEOUS MORAL EXAMPLE 171 
 
 UNLOVELINESS OF FROWNING ....... 171 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM MILTON, WITH CRITICAL NOTICE . . . 172 
 
 SATAN'S RECOVERY FROM HIS DOWNFALL 174 
 
 THE FALLEN ANGELS GATHERED AGAIN TO WAR . . .175 
 
 VULCAN ... 177 
 
 THE FALLEN ANGELS HEARD RISING FROM COUNCIL . . 177 
 
 SATAN ON THE WING FOR EARTH . . . . . .178 
 
 THE MEETING OF SATAN AND DEATH ..... 178 
 
 L' ALLEGRO 180 
 
 IL PENSEROSO 186 
 
 LYCIDAS 191 
 
 COM US THE SORCERER ......... 199 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM COLERIDGE, WITH CRITICAL NOTICE . 202 
 
 LOVE ; OR, GENEVIEVE ...... . 207 
 
 KUBLA KHAN 210 
 
 YOUTH AND AGE . . - 212 
 
 THE HEATHEN DIVINITIES MERGED INTO ASTROLOGY . . 213 
 
 WORK WITHOUT HOPE ......... 214 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM SHELLEY, WITH CRITICAL NOTICE . . 215 
 
 TO A SKYLARK 218 
 
 A GARISH DAY 223 
 
 CONTEMPLATION OF VIOLENCE 224 
 
 A ROCK AND CHASM 224 
 
 LOVELINESS INEXPRESSIBLE ........ 225 
 
 EXISTENCE IN SPACE . 225 
 
 DEVOTEDNESS UNREQUIRING 225
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 TO A LADY WITH A GUITAR 226 
 
 MUSIC, MEMORY, AND LOVE . 229 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM KEATS, WITH CRITICAL NOTICE . . . 230 
 
 THE EVE OF ST. AGNES 233 
 
 LONELY SOUNDS ... 249 
 
 ORION 249 
 
 CIRCE AND HER VICTIMS 249 
 
 A BETTER ENCHANTRESS IMPRISONED IN THE SHAPE OF A SER- 
 PENT 250 
 
 SATURN DETHRONED 250 
 
 THE VOICE OF A MELANCHOLY GODDESS SPEAKING TO SATURN. 251 
 
 A FALLEN GOD 251 
 
 OTHER TITANS FALLEN . .... 251 
 
 ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE .... ... 252 
 
 SONNET ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER . . 254
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This book is intended for all lovers of poetry and the sis- 
 ter arts, but more especially for those of the most poetical 
 sort, and most especially for the youngest and the oldest : 
 for as the former may incline to it for information's sake, 
 the latter will perhaps not refuse it their good-will for the 
 sake of old favorites. The Editor has often wished for 
 such a book himself; and as nobody will make it for him, 
 he has made it for others. 
 
 It was suggested by the approbation which the readers 
 of a periodical work bestowed on some extracts from the 
 poets, commented, and marked with italics, on a principle 
 of co-perusal, as though the Editor were reading the pas- 
 sages in their company. Those readers wished to have 
 more such extracts ; and here, if they are still in the mind, 
 they now possess them. The remarks on one of the 
 poems that formed a portion of the extracts (the Eve of 
 Saint Agnes), are repeated in the present volume. All the 
 rest of the matter contributed by him is new. He does not 
 expect, of course, that every reader will agree with the 
 preferences of particular lines or passages, intimated by 
 the italics. Some will think them too numerous ; sc me 
 perhaps too few ; many who chance to take up the book, 
 may wish there had been none at all ; but these will have
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 the goodness to recollect what has just been stated, — that 
 the plan was suggested by others who desired them. The 
 Editor, at any rate, begs to be considered as having mark- 
 ed the passages in no spirit of dictation to any one, much 
 less of disparagement to all the admirable passages not 
 marked. If he assumed anything at all (beyond what is 
 implied in the fact of imparting experience), it was the pro- 
 bable mutual pleasure of the reader, his companion ; just 
 as in reading out-loud, one instinctively increases one's em- 
 phasis here and there, and implies a certain accordance of 
 enjoyment on the part of the hearers. In short, all poetic 
 readers are expected to have a more than ordinary portion 
 of sympathy, especially with those who take pains to 
 please them ; and the Editor desires no larger amount of 
 it, than he gratefully gives to any friend who is good enough 
 to read out similar passages to himself. 
 
 The object of the book is threefold ; — to present the 
 public with some of the finest passages in English poetry, 
 50 marked and commented ; — to furnish such an account, 
 in an Essay, of the nature and requirements of poetry, as 
 may enable readers in general to give an answer on those 
 points to themselves and others ; — and to show, throughout 
 the greater part of the volume, what sort of poetry is to 
 be considered as poetry of the most poetical kind, or such 
 as exhibits the imagination and fancy in a state of pre- 
 dominance, undisputed by interests of another sort. Poe- 
 try, therefore, is not here in its compound state, great or 
 otherwise (except incidentally in the Essay), but in its ele- 
 ment, like an essence distilled. All the greatest poetry in- 
 cludes that essence, but the essence does not present itself 
 in exclusive combination with the greatest form of poetry. 
 It varies in that respect from the most tremendous to the
 
 PREFACE. i x 
 
 most playful effusions, and from imagination to fancy 
 through all their degrees ; — from Homer and Dante, to 
 Coleridge and Keats ; — from Shakspeare in King Lear, to 
 Shakspeare himself in the Midsummer Night's Dream; 
 from Spenser's Faerie Queene, to the Castle of Indolence ; 
 nay, from Ariel in the Tempest, to his somewhat pre- 
 sumptuous namesake in the Rape of the Lock. And pas- 
 sages, both from Thomson's delightful allegory, and Pope's 
 paragon of mock-heroics, would have been found in this 
 volume, but for that intentional, artificial imitation, even in 
 the former, which removes them at too great a distance 
 from the highest sources of inspiration. 
 
 With the great poet of the Faerie Queene the Editor has 
 taken special pains to make readers in general better ac- 
 quainted ; and in furtherance of this purpose he has ex- 
 hibited many of his best passages in remarkable relation 
 to the art of the Painter. 
 
 For obvious reasons no living writer is included ; and 
 some, lately deceased, do not come within the plan. The 
 omission will not be thought invidious in an Editor, who 
 has said more of his contemporaries than most men ; and 
 who would gladly give specimens of the latter poets in 
 future volumes. 
 
 One of the objects indeed of this preface is to state, that 
 should the Public evince a willingness to have more such 
 books, the Editor would propose to give them, in succes- 
 sion, corresponding volumes of the Poetry of Action and 
 Passion (Narrative ana Dramatic Poetry), from Chaucer 
 to Campbell (here mentioned because he is the latest de- 
 ceased poet) ; the Poetry of Contemplation, from Surrey 
 to Campbell ; — the Poetry of Wit and Humor, from Chau- 
 cer to Byron ; and the Poetry of Song, or Lyrical Poetry,
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 from Chaucer again (see in his Works his admirable and 
 only song, beginning 
 
 Hide, Absalom, thy gilded tresses clear), 
 
 to Campbell again, and Burns, and O'Keefe. These vo» 
 lumes, if he is not mistaken, would present the Public with 
 the only selection, hitherto made, of none but genuine poe- 
 try ; and he would take care, that it should be unobjection- 
 able in every other respect.* 
 
 Kensington, Sept. 10, 1844. 
 
 * While closing the Essay on Poetry, a friend lent me Coleridge's Bio* 
 graphia Literaria, which I had not seen for many years, and which I 
 mention, partly to notice a coincidence at page 31 of the Essay, not other- 
 wise worth observation ; and partly to do what I can towards extending the 
 acquaintance of the public with a book containing masterly expositions of 
 .he art of poetry.
 
 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 WHAT IS POETRY? 
 
 INCLUDING 
 
 REMARKS ON VERSIFICATION. 
 
 Poetry, strictly and artistically so called, that is to say, con- 
 sidered not merely as poetic feeling, which is more or less 
 shared by all the world, but as the operation of that feeling, 
 such as we see it in the poet's book, is the utterance of a pas- 
 sion for truth, beauty and power, embodying and illustrating its 
 conceptions by imagination and fancy, and modulating its lan- 
 guage on the principle of variety in uniformity. Its means 
 are whatever the universe contains ; and its ends, pleasure and 
 exaltation. Poetry stands between nature and convention, 
 keeping alive among us the enjoyment of the external and 
 spiritual world : it has constituted the most enduring fame of 
 nations ; and, next to Love and Beauty, which are its parents, 
 is the greatest proof to man of the pleasure to be found in all 
 things, and of the probable riches of infinitude. 
 
 Poetry is a passion,* because it seeks the deepest impressions; 
 and because it must undergo, in order to convey them. 
 
 It is a passion for truth, because without truth the impression 
 would be false or defective. 
 
 It is a passion for beauty, because its office is to exalt and re- 
 fine by means of pleasure, and because beauty is nothing but 
 the loveliest form of pleasure. 
 
 * Passio, suffering in a good sense, — ardent subjection of one's self to 
 emotion 
 
 2
 
 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 It is a passion for power, because power is impression tri- 
 umphant, whether over the poet, as desired by himself, or over 
 the reader, as affected by the poet. 
 
 It embodies and illustrates its impressions by imagination, or 
 images of the objects of which it treats, and other images 
 brought in to throw light on those objects, in order that it may 
 enjoy and impart the feeling of their truth in its utmost convic- 
 tion and affluence. 
 
 It illustrates them by fancy, which is a lighter play of imagi- 
 nation, or the feeling of analogy coming short of seriousness, 
 in order that it may laugh with what it loves, and show how it 
 can decorate it with fairy ornament. 
 
 It modulates what it utters, because in running the whole 
 round of beauty it must needs include beauty of sound ; and 
 because, in the height of its enjoyment, it must show the per- 
 fection of its triumph, and make difficulty itself become part of 
 its facility and joy. 
 
 And lastly, Poetry shapes this modulation into uniformity for 
 its outline, and variety for its parts, because it thus realizes the 
 last idea of beauty itself, which includes the charm of diversity 
 within the flowing round of habit and ease. 
 
 Poetry is imaginative passion. The quickest and subtlest 
 test of the possession of its essence is in expression ; the variety 
 of things to be expressed shows the amount of its resources ; 
 and the continuity of the song completes the evidence of its 
 strength and greatness. He who has thought, feeling, expres- 
 sion, imagination, action, character, and continuity, all in the 
 largest amount and highest degree, is the greatest poet. 
 
 Poetry includes whatsoever of painting can be made visible 
 to the mind's eye, and whatsoever of music can be conveyed by 
 sound and proportion without singing or instrumentation. But 
 it far surpasses those divine arts in suggestiveness, range, and 
 intellectual wealth ; — the first, in expression of thought, combi- 
 nation of images, and the triumph over space and time ; the 
 second, in all that can be done by speech, apart from the tones 
 and modulations of pure sound. Painting and music, however, 
 include all those portions of the gift of poetry that can be ex- 
 pressed and heightened by the visible and melodious. Painting,
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 
 
 in a certain apparent manner, is things themselves ; music, in a 
 certain audible manner, is their very emotion and grace. Mu- 
 sic and painting are proud to be related to poetry, and poetry 
 loves and is proud of them. 
 
 Poetry begins where matter of fact or of science ceases to be 
 merely such, and to exhibit a further truth ; that is to say, the 
 connexion it has with the world of emotion, and its power to 
 produce imaginative pleasure. Inquiring of a gardener, for in- 
 stance, what flower it is that we see yonder, he answers, " a 
 lily." This is matter of fact. The botanist pronounces it to 
 be of the order of " Hexandria Monogynia." This is matter 
 of science. It is the " lady " of the garden, says Spenser ; 
 and here we begin to have a poetical sense of its fairness and 
 grace. It is 
 
 The plant and flower of light, 
 
 says Ben Jonson ; and poetry then shows us the beauty of the 
 flower in all its mystery and splendor. 
 
 If it be asked, how we know perceptions like these to be true, 
 the answer is, by the fact of their existence, — by the consent 
 and delight of poetic readers. And as feeling is the earliest 
 teacher, and perception the only final proof, of things the most 
 demonstrable by science, so the remotest imaginations of the 
 poets may often be found to have the closest connexion with 
 matter of fact ; perhaps might always be so, if the subtlety of 
 our perceptions were a match for the causes of them. Con- 
 sider this image of Ben Jonson's — of a lily being a flower of 
 light. Light, undecomposed, is white ; and as the lily is white, 
 and light is white, and whiteness itself is nothing but light, the two 
 things, so far, are not merely similar, but identical. A poet might 
 add, by an analogy drawn from the connexion of light and 
 color, and there is a " golden dawn" issuing out of the white 
 lily, in the rich yellow of the stamens. I have no desire to 
 push this similarity further than it may be worth. Enough has 
 been stated to show that, in poetical as in other analogies, " the 
 same feet of Nature," as Bacon says, may be seen " treading in 
 different paths;" and tha^ the most scornful, that is to say,
 
 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 dullest disciple of fact, should be cautious how he betrays the 
 shallowness of his philosophy by discerning no poetry in its 
 depths. 
 
 But the poet is far from dealing only with these subtle and 
 analogical truths. Truth of every kind belongs to him, pro- 
 vided it can bud into any kind of beauty, Dr is capable of being 
 illustrated and impressed by the poetic faculty. Nay, the sim- 
 plest truth is often so beautiful and impressive of itself, that one 
 of the greatest proofs of his genius consists in his leaving it to 
 stand alone, illustrated by nothing but the light of its own tears 
 or smiles, its own wonder, might, or playfulness. Hence the 
 complete effect of many a simple passage in our old English 
 ballads and romances, and of the passionate sincerity in general 
 of the greatest early poets, such as Homer and Chaucer, who 
 flourished before the existence of a "literary world," and were 
 not perplexed by a heap of notions and opinions, or by doubts 
 how emotion ought to be expressed. The greatest of their suc- 
 cessors never write equally to the purpose, except when they 
 can dismiss everything from their minds but the like simple 
 truth. In the beautiful poem of " Sir Eger, Sir Graham, and 
 Sir Gray-Steel" (see it in Ellis's Specimens, or Laing's Early 
 Metrical Tales), a knight thinks himself disgraced in the eyes 
 of his mistress : 
 
 Sir Eger said, " If it be so, 
 Then wot I well I must forego 
 Love-liking, and manhood, all clean !" 
 The water rushed out of his een ! 
 
 Sir Gray-Steel is killed : — 
 
 Gray-Steel into his death thus throws (throes ?) 
 
 He waiters (welters — throws himself about) and the 
 
 grass tip draws ; 
 
 ***** 
 
 A little while then lay he still 
 (Friends that him saw, liked full ill) 
 And bled into his armor bright. 
 
 The abode of Chaucer's JReve, or Steward, in the Canterbury 
 Tales, is painted in two lines, which nobody ever wished 
 longer : —
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 
 
 His wonning (dwelling) was full fair upon an heath, 
 With greeny trees yshadowed was his place. 
 
 Every one knows the words of Lear, " most matter-of-fact, 
 most melancholy." 
 
 Pray do not mock me ; 
 I am a very foolish fond old man 
 Foursc6re and upwards : 
 
 Not an hour more, nor less ; and to deal plainly 
 I fear I am not in my perfect mind. 
 
 It is thus, by exquisite pertinence, melody, and the implied 
 power of writing with exuberance, if need be, that beauty and 
 truth become identical in poetry, and that pleasure, or at the 
 very worst, a balm in our tears, is drawn out of pain. 
 
 It is a great and rare thing, and shows a lovely imagination, 
 when the poet can write a commentary, as it were, of his own, 
 on such sufficing passages of nature, and be thanked for the 
 addition. There is an instance of this kind in Warner, an old 
 Elizabethan poet, than which I know nothing sweeter in the 
 world. He is speaking of Fair Rosamond, and of a blow given 
 her by Queen Eleanor. 
 
 With that she dash'd her on the lips, 
 
 So dyed double red: 
 Hard teas the heart that gave the blow, 
 
 Soft were those lips that bled. 
 
 There are different kinds and degrees of imagination, some 
 of them necessary to the formation of every true poet, and all of 
 them possessed by the greatest. Perhaps they may be enume- 
 rated as follows : — First, that which presents to the mind any 
 object or circumstance in every-day life ; as when we imagine 
 a man holding a sword, or looking out of a window ; — Second, 
 that which presents real, but not every-day circumstances ; as 
 King Alfred tending the loaves, or Sir Philip Sidney giving up 
 the water to the dying soldier ; — Third, that which combines 
 character and events directly imitated from ieal life, with imita- 
 tive realities of its own invention ; as the probable parts of the 
 histories of Priam and Macbeth, or what may L\e called natural
 
 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 fiction as distinguished from supernatural ; — Fourth, that which 
 conjures up things and events not to be found in nature ; as 
 Homer's gods, and Shakspeare's witches, enchanted horses and 
 spears, Ariosto's hippogriff, &c. ; — Fifth, that which, in order to 
 illustrate or aggravate one image, introduces another ; sometimes 
 in simile, as when Homer compares Apollo descending in his 
 wrath at noon-day to the coming of night-time : sometimes in 
 metaphor, or simile comprised in a word, as in Milton's " motes 
 that people the sunbeams ;" sometimes in concentrating into a 
 word the main history of any person or thing, past or even 
 future, as in the "starry Galileo" of Byron, and that ghastly 
 foregone conclusion of the epithet " murdered" applied to the 
 yet living victim in Keats's story from Boccaccio — 
 
 So the two brothers and their murder" d man 
 Rode towards fair Florence ; — 
 
 sometimes in the attribution of a certain representative quality 
 which makes one circumstance stand for others ; as in Milton's 
 grey-fly winding its " sultry horn," which epithet contains the 
 heat of a summer's day ; — Sixth, that which reverses this pro- 
 cess, and makes a variety of circumstances take color from one, 
 like nature seen with jaundiced or glad eyes, or under the influ- 
 ence of storm or sunshine ; as when in Lycidas, or the Greek 
 pastoral poets, the flowers and the flocks are made to sympathize 
 with a man's death ; or, in the Italian poet, the river flowing by 
 the sleeping Angelica seems talking of love — 
 
 Parea che 1' erba le fiorisse intorno, 
 E d' amor ragionasse quella riva ! — 
 
 Orlando Innamorato, Canto iii. 
 
 or in the voluptuous homage paid to the sleeping Imogen by the 
 very light in the chamber and the reaction of her own beauty 
 upon itself ; or in the " witch element" of the tragedy of Mac- 
 beth and the May-day night of Faust ; — Seventh, and last, that 
 which by a single expression, apparently of the vaguest kind, 
 not only meets but surpasses in its effect the extremest force of 
 the most particular description j as in that exquisite passage of
 
 WHAT IS POETRY? 
 
 Coleridge's Christabel, where "the unsuspecting object of the 
 witch's malignity is bidden to go to bed : — 
 
 Quoth Christabel, So let it be ! 
 And as the lady bade, did she. 
 Her gentle limbs did she undress, 
 And lay down in her loveliness ; — 
 
 a perfect verse surely, both for feeling and music. The very 
 smoothness and gentleness of the limbs is in the series of the let- 
 ter Vs. 
 
 I am aware of nothing of the kind surpassing the most lovely 
 inclusion of physical beauty in moral, neither can I call to mind 
 any instances of the imagination that turns accompaniments into 
 accessories, superior to those I have alluded to. Of the class of 
 comparison, one of the most touching (many a tear must it have 
 drawn from parents and lovers) is in a stanza which has been 
 copied into the " Friar of Orders Grey," out of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher : — 
 
 Weep no more, lady, weep no more, 
 
 Thy sorrow is in vain ; 
 For violets pluck' d the sweetest showers 
 Will ne'er make grow again. 
 
 And Shakspeare and Milton abound in the very grandest ; such 
 as Antony's likening his changing fortunes to the cloud-rack ; 
 Lear's appeal to the old age of the heavens ; Satan's appearance 
 in the horizon, like a fleet " hanging in the clouds ;" and the 
 comparisons of him with the comet and the eclipse. Nor un- 
 worthy of this glorious company, for its extraordinary combina- 
 tion of delicacy and vastness, is that enchanting one of Shelley's 
 in the Adonais : — 
 
 Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity. 
 
 I multiply these particulars in order to impress upon the reader's 
 mind the great importance of imagination in all its phases, as a 
 constituent part of the highest poetic faculty. 
 
 The happiest instance I remember of imaginative metaphor
 
 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 is Shakspeare's moonlight " sleeping" on a bank ; but half his 
 poetry may be said to be made up of it, metaphor indeed being 
 the common coin of discourse. Of imaginary creatures, none 
 out of the pale of mythology and the East, are equal, perhaps, 
 in point of invention, to Shakspeare's Ariel and Caliban ; though 
 poetry may grudge to prose the discovery of a Winged Woman, 
 especially such as she has been described by her inventor in the 
 story of Peter Wilkins ; and in point of treatment, the Mammon 
 and Jealousy of Spenser, some of the monsters in Dante, particu- 
 larly his Nimrod, his interchangements of creatures into one 
 another, and (if I am not presumptuous in anticipating what I 
 think will be the verdict of posterity) the Witch in Coleridge's 
 Christabel, may rank even with the creations of Shakspeare. 
 It may be doubted, indeed, whether Shakspeare had bile and 
 nightmare enough in him to have thought of such detestable hor- 
 rors as those of the interchanging adversaries (now serpent, now 
 man), or even of the huge, half-blockish enormity of Nimrod, — 
 in Scripture, the "-mighty hunter" and builder of the tower of 
 Babel, — in Dante, a tower of a man in his own person, standing 
 with some of his brother giants up to the middle in a pit in hell, 
 blowing a horn to which a thunder-clap is a whisper, and halloo 
 ing after Dante and his guide in the jargon of the lost tongue ! 
 The transformations are too odious to quote : but of the towering 
 giant we cannot refuse ourselves the " fearful joy" of a speci- 
 men. It was twilight, Dante tells us, and he and his guide Vir- 
 gil were silently pacing through one of the dreariest regions of 
 hell, when the sound of a tremendous horn made him turn all his 
 attention to the spot from which it came. He there discovered 
 through the dusk, what seemed to be the towers of a city. 
 Those are no towers, said his guide ; they are giants, standing 
 up to the middle in one of these circular pits. 
 
 Come quando la nibbia si dissipa, 
 
 Lo sguardo a poco a poco raffigura 
 
 Cid che cela 1' vapor che 1' acre stipa ; 
 Cosi forando 1' aer grossa e scura 
 
 Piu e piu appressando in ver lasponda, 
 
 Fuggemi errore, e giugnemi paura : 
 Perocche come in su la cerchia tonda
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 
 
 Montereggion di torri si corona, 
 
 Cosi la proda che '1 pozzo circonda 
 Torreggiavan di mezza la persona 
 
 Gli orribili giganti, cui minaccia 
 
 Giove del cielo ancora, quando tuona : 
 Ed io scorgeva gia' d'alcun la faccia, 
 
 Le spalle e '1 petto, e del ventre gran parte, 
 
 E per le coste giu ambo le braccia. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 La faccia sua mi parea lunga e grossa 
 Come la pina di san Pietro a Roma : 
 
 E a sua proporzion eran l'altr' ossa. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Rafel mai amech zabi almi 
 
 Comincio a gridar la riera bocca, 
 Cui non si convenien piii dolci salmi. 
 
 E '1 duca mio ver lui : anima sciocca, 
 Tienti col corno, e con quel ti disfoga, 
 Quand' ira o altra passion ti tocca. 
 
 Cercati al collo, e troverai la soga 
 Che '1 tien legato, o anima confusa, 
 E vedi lui che '1 gran petto ti doga. 
 
 Poi disse a me : egli stesso s' accusa : 
 Questi e Nembrotto, per lo cui mal coto 
 Pure un linguaggio nel mondo non s' usa. 
 
 Lasciamlo stare, e non parliamo a voto : 
 Che cosi e a lui ciascun linguaggio, 
 Come *1 suo ad altrui ch' a nullo e noto. 
 
 Inferno, Canto xxxi., ver. 34. 
 
 I look'd again ; and as the eye makes out, 
 By little and little, what the mist conceal'd 
 In which, till clearing up, the sky was steep'd ; 
 So, looming through the gross and darksome air, 
 As we drew nigh, those mighty bulks grew plain, 
 And error quitted me, and terror join'd : 
 For in like manner as all round its height 
 Montereggione crowns itself with towers, 
 So tower'd above the circuit of that pit, 
 Though but half out of it, and half within, 
 The horrible giants that fought love, and still 
 Are threaten'd when he thunders. As we near'd 
 The foremost, I discern'd his mighty face, 
 His shoulders, breast, and more than half his trunk. 
 With both the arms down hanging by the sides. 
 His face appear'd to me, in length and breadth,
 
 IG AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 Huge as St. Peter's pinnacle at Rome, 
 
 And of a like proportion all his bones. 
 
 He open'd, as he went, his dreadful mouth, 
 
 Fit for no sweeter psalmody ; and shouted 
 
 After us, in the words of some strange tongue, 
 
 Rafel ma-ee amech zabee almee ! — 
 
 " Dull wretch !" my leader cried, "keep to thine born, 
 
 And so vent better whatsoever rage 
 
 Or other passion stuff thee. Feel thy throat 
 
 And find the chain upon thee, thou confusion ! 
 
 Lo ! what a hoop is clench'd about thy gorge." 
 
 Then turning to myself, he said, " His howl 
 
 Is its own mockery. This is Nimrod, he 
 
 Through whose ill thought it was that humankind 
 
 Were tongue-confounded. Pass him, and say naught : 
 
 For as he speaketh language known of none, 
 
 So none can speak save jargon to himself." 
 
 Assuredly it could not have been easy to find a fiction so un- 
 couthly terrible as this in the hypochondria of Hamlet. Even 
 his father had evidently seen no such ghost in the other world. 
 All his phantoms were in the world he had left. Timon, Lear, 
 Richard, Brutus, Prospero, Macbeth himself, none of Shaks- 
 peare's men had, in fact, any thought but of the earth they 
 lived on, whatever supernatural fancy crossed them. The 
 thincr fancied was still a thins of this world, "in its habit as it 
 lived," or no remoter acquaintance than a witch or a fairy. Its 
 lowest depths (unless Dante suggested them) were the cellars 
 under the stage. Caliban himself is a cross-breed between a 
 witch and a clown. No offence to Shakspeare ; who was not 
 bound to be the greatest of healthy poets, and to have every 
 morbid inspiration besides. What he might have done, had he 
 set his wits to compete with Dante, I know not : all I know is, 
 that in the infernal line he did nothing like him ; and it is not 
 to be wished he had. It is far better that, as a higher, more 
 universal, and more beneficent variety of the genus Poet, he 
 should have been the happier man he was, and left us the plump 
 cheeks on his monument, instead of the carking visage of the 
 great, but over-serious, and comparatively one-sided Florentine. 
 Even the imagination of Spenser, whom we take to have been 
 a " nervous gentleman" compared with Shakspeare, was visited
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 11 
 
 with no such dreams as Dante. Or, if it was, he did notchoo.se 
 to make himself thinner (as Dante says he did) with dwelling 
 upon them. He had twenty visions of nymphs and bowers, to 
 one of the mud of Tartarus. Chaucer, for all he was " a man 
 of this world " as well as the poets' world, and as great, per- 
 haps a greater enemy of oppression than Dante, besides being 
 one of the profoundest masters of pathos that ever lived, had 
 not the heart to conclude the story of the famished father and 
 his children, as finished by the inexorable anti-Pisan. But 
 enough of Dante in this place. Hobbes, in order to daunt the 
 reader from objecting to his friend Davenant's want of invention, 
 says of these fabulous creations in general, in his letter pre- 
 fixed to the poem of Gondibert, that " impenetrable armors, en- 
 chanted castles, invulnerable bodies, iron men, flying horses, 
 and a thousand other such things, are easily feigned by them 
 that dare.'' These are girds at Spenser and Ariosto. But, 
 with leave of Hobbes (who translated Homer as if on purpose 
 to show what execrable verses could be written by a philoso- 
 pher), enchanted castles and flying horses are not easily feigned, 
 as Ariosto and Spenser feigned them ; and that just makes all 
 the difference. For proof, see the accounts of Spenser's en- 
 chanted castle in Book the Third, Canto Twelfth, of the Fairy 
 Queen ; and let the reader of Italian open the Orlando Furioso 
 at its first introduction of the Hippogriff (Canto iii., st. 4), where 
 Bradamante, coming to an inn, hears a great noise, and sees all 
 the people looking up at something in the air ; upon which, 
 looking up herself, she sees a knight in shining armor riding 
 towards the sunset upon a creature with variegated wings, and 
 then dipping and disappearing among the hills. Chaucer's steed 
 of brass, that was 
 
 So horsly and so quick of" eye, 
 
 is copied from tue life. You might pat him and fori his brazen 
 muscles. Hobbes, in objecting to what he thought childish, 
 made a childish mistake. His criticism is just such as a boy 
 might pique himself upon, who was educated on mechanical 
 principles, and thought he had outgrown his Goody Two-shoes.
 
 12 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 With a wonderful dimness of discernment in poetic matters, 
 considering his acuteness in others, he fancies he has settled the 
 question by pronouncing such creations " impossible !" To the 
 brazier they are impossible, no doubt ; but not to the poet. 
 Their possibility, if the poet wills it, is to be conceded ; the 
 problem is, the creature being given, how to square its actions 
 with probability, according to the nature assumed of it. Hobbes 
 did not see, that the skill and beauty of these fictions lay in 
 bringing them within those very regions of truth and likelihood 
 in which he thought they could not exist. Hence the serpent 
 Python of Chaucer, 
 
 Sleeving against the sun upon a day, 
 
 when Apollo slew him. Hence the chariot-drawing dolphins of 
 Spenser, softly swimming along the shore lest they should hurt 
 themselves against the stones and gravel. Hence Shakspeare's 
 Ariel, living under blossoms, and riding at evening on the bat ; 
 and his domestic namesake in the " Rape of the Lock" (the 
 imagination of the drawing-room) saving a lady's petticoat from 
 the coffee with his plumes, and directing atoms of snuff into a 
 coxcomb's nose. In the " Orlando Furioso" (Canto xv., st. 
 65) is a wild story of a cannibal necromancer, who laughs at 
 being cut to pieces, coming together again like quicksilver, and 
 picking up his head when it is cut off, sometimes by the hair, 
 sometimes by the nose ! This, which would be purely childish 
 and ridiculous in the hands of an inferior poet, becomes inter- 
 esting, nay grand, in Ariosto's, from the beauties of his style. 
 and its conditional truth to nature. The monster has a fated 
 hair on his head, — a single hair, — which must be taken from it 
 before he can be killed. Decapitation itself is of no consequence, 
 without that proviso. The Paladin Astolfo, who has fought this 
 phenomenon on horseback, and succeeded in getting the head 
 and galloping off with it, is therefore still at a loss what to be 
 at. How is he to discover such a needle in such a bottle of 
 hay ? The trunk is spurring after him to recover it, and he 
 seeks for some evidence of the hair in vain. At length he be- 
 thinks himself of scalping the head. He does so ; and the mo-
 
 WHAT IS POETRY? 13 
 
 ment the operation arrives at the place of the hair, the face of 
 the head becomes pale, the eyes turn in their sockets, and tha lite- 
 less pursuer tumbles from his horse. 
 
 Si fece il viso allor pallido e brutto, 
 Travolse gli occhi, e dimostro a '1 occaso 
 Per manifesti segni esser condutto. 
 E '1 busto che seguia troncato al collo, 
 Di sella cadde, e die 1' ultimo crollo 
 
 Then grew the visage pale, and deadly wet ; 
 The eyes turned in their sockets, drearily ; 
 And all things show'd the villain's sun was set. 
 His trunk that was in chase, fell from its horse, 
 And giving the last shudder, was a corse. 
 
 It is thus, and thus only, by making Nature his companion 
 wherever he goes, even in the most supernatural region, that the 
 poet, in the words of a very instructive phrase, takes the world 
 alono- with him. It is true, he must not (as the Platonists would 
 say) humanize weakly or mistakenly in that region ; otherwise 
 he runs the chance of forgetting to be true to the supernatural 
 itself, and so betraying a want of imagination from that quar- 
 ter. His nymphs will have no taste of their woods and waters ; 
 his gods and goddesses be only so many fair or frowning ladies 
 and gentlemen, such as we see in ordinary paintings ; he will 
 be in no danger of having his angels likened to a sort of wild- 
 fowl, as Rembrandt has made them in his Jacob's Dream. His 
 Bacchus's will never remind us, like Titian's, of the force and 
 fury, as well as of the graces, of wine. His Jupiter will reduce 
 no females to ashes ; his fairies be nothing fantastical ; his 
 gnomes not " of the earth, earthy." And this again will be 
 wanting to Nature ; for it will be wanting to the supernatural, 
 as Nature would have made it, working in a supernatural direc- 
 tion. Nevertheless, the poet, even for imagination's sake, must 
 not become a bigot to imaginative truth, dragging it down into 
 the region of the mechanical and the limited, and losing sight of 
 its paramount privilege, which is to make beauty, in a human 
 sense, the lady and queen of the universe. He would gain 
 •■othing bv making his ocean-nymphs mere fishy creatures, upon
 
 14 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 the plea that such only could live in the water: his wood- 
 nymphs with faces of knotted oak ; his angels without breath 
 and song, because no lungs could exist between the earth's 
 atmosphere and the empyrean. The Grecian tendency in this 
 respect is safer than the Gothic ; nay, more imaginative ; for it 
 enables us to imagine beyond imagination, and to bring all things 
 healthily round to their only present final ground of sympathy 
 — the human. When we go to heaven, we may idealize in a 
 superhuman mode, and have altogether different notions of the 
 beautiful ; but till then, we must be content with the loveliest 
 capabilities of earth. The sea-nymphs of Greece were still 
 beautiful women, though they lived in the water. The gills and 
 fins of the ocean's natural inhabitants were confined to their 
 lowest semi-human attendants ; or if Triton himself was not 
 quite human, it was because he represented the fiercer part of 
 the vitality of the seas, as they did the fairer. 
 
 To conclude this part of my subject, I will quote from the 
 greatest of all narrative writers two passages ; — one exemplifying 
 the imagination which brings supernatural things to, bear on 
 earthly, without confounding them ; the other, that which paints 
 events and circumstances after real life. The first is where 
 Achilles, who has long absented himself from the conflict be- 
 tween his countrymen and the Trojans, has had a message from 
 heaven, bidding him re-appear in the enemy's sight, standing 
 outside the camp-wall upon the trench, but doing nothing more ; 
 that is to say, taking no part in the fight. He is simply to be 
 seen. The two armies down by the sea-side are contending 
 which shall possess the body of Patroclus ; and the mere sight 
 of the dreadful Grecian chief — supernaturally indeed impressed 
 upon them, in order that nothing may be wanting to the full 
 effect of his courage and conduct upon courageous men — is to 
 determine the question. We are to imagine a slope of ground 
 towards the sea, in order to elevate the trench ; the camp is 
 solitary ; the battle ("a dreadful roar of men," as Homer calls 
 it) is raging on the sea-shore ; and the goddess Iris has just 
 delivered her message, and disappeared. 
 
 A-vrap A^iAXeus upro An (f>i\os' ap^i 6' A0i?>"7 
 £2^o<j upBifioidi fiaX aiyi&a BvooavowoaV
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 15 
 
 A.ji(pi Se 01 K£tpa\r] vcipoi carets 5ia Qeaa>v 
 ~X.pvaeov, ck 5' avTov 8atc f\oya Ttaft(pavoo>aa^. 
 '£2? 6' 'ore Ktnrvos io)v e£ aarsog aidcp' 'iKrirai 
 Trj\oOcv ck vrioov, Tt\v 5r\ioi ajia^ijia^ovrat, 
 'Oitc iravrijiLepiot o-rvytpoi Kpivovrai April 
 Actcos ck tripcrcpov' ajia 6' ijtXio) KtxraSvvTi 
 Tlvpaoi ti tp\cyc9ovcriP cirTiTpijioi, vtyoae 5' avyri 
 liyvcrai aiaaovaa, TTipiKTiovcacriv iScadai, 
 A< kcv tcos aw vrivaiv apt); a\KTr)pc; iKtovTttl' 
 'S2j an-' A^iXX^of KC<pa\rts crcXaj aiQcp' iKavcv. 
 
 Sr») 5' ctti raippov tbjv axo tci^cos' ov6' cs Avaiouj 
 \Lt(TyCTO' ftrjTpaq yap TrVKivr/v ojtti^ct' cpcr/ir/v. 
 Ev0a cttoj rjva' anarepde 6c IlaAXas A-Oqi'i] 
 $0£y|ar' - arap Tpojcaatv cv aatrcTOV wpac KV&oifiov 
 '£2? 5' or api^rfKn <p<t>vn, brc t <a%£ aakiriy^ 
 A.OTV TTcpiir\oficvo>v irjioiv vtto QvpopaiCTCWv' 
 'Q,i tot' apt$rj\ri (poivr] yever' Aia/a<5ao. 
 'Oi 6' &)$ ovv aiov ona voKksov Aia<ci<5ao, 
 TIaaiv opivQrj Ovj-ioi' a.Tap KaWiTpiyc; 'nrrroi 
 At// o^za Tpoirsov' oaaovTO yap a\yca Ov/tw. 
 'lELviovoi 6' CKrrXriyzv, cttci tSov aKaparov izvp 
 Acivov VTtcp KC(j>a\r\s fxcyaBojWV WqXcitovoq 
 Aaiojicvov' to 5c Sate dca yXavKtoiri; Adr/vr/. 
 TptS jiCV viicp Taij>pov fityaX ia%c 5ios A^iXXeus, 
 
 TfHf 5c KVKr/Oniav TpMEf, K^CLTOl t' CTTlKOVpOl. 
 
 TSifda 5c Ktti tot o\iivto 5vo}6sKa tpwTts aptoroi 
 A/i'/u cipois o^ccaaa Kai cy-^emv. 
 
 Iliad, Lib. xviii., v. 903. 
 
 ut up Achilles rose, the lov'd of heaven ; 
 And Pallas on his mighty shoulders cast 
 The shield of Jove; and round about his head 
 She put the glory of a golden mist, 
 From which there burnt a fiery-flaming light. 
 And as, when smoke goes heaven-ward from a town, 
 In some far island which its foes besiege, 
 Who all day long with dreadful martialness 
 Have pour'd from their own town ; soon as the sun 
 Has set, thick lifted fires are visible, 
 Which, rushing upward, make a light in the sky, 
 Vnd let the neighbors know, who may perhaps 
 
 'flting help across the sea ; so from the head 
 
 f great Achilles went up an effulgence. 
 
 pon the trench he stood, without the wall, 
 it mix'd not with the Greeks, for he rever'd
 
 16 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 His mother's word ; and so, thus standing there, 
 
 He shouted ; and Minerva, to his shout, 
 
 Added a dreadful cry ; and there arose 
 
 Among the Trojans an unspeakable tumult. 
 
 And as the clear voiae of a trumpet, blown 
 
 Against a town by spirit-withering foes, 
 
 So sprang the clear voice of ^Eacides. 
 
 And when they heard the brazen cry, their hearts 
 
 All leap'd within them ; and the' proud-maned horses 
 
 Ran with the chariots round, for they foresaw 
 
 Calamity ; and the charioteers were smitten, 
 
 When they beheld the ever-active fire 
 
 Upon the dreadml head of the great-minded one 
 
 Burning ; for bright-eyed Pallas made it burn. 
 
 Thrice o'er the trench divine Achilles shouted ; 
 
 And thrice the Trojans and their great allies 
 
 Roil'd back ; and twelve of all their noblest men 
 
 Then perished, crush'd by their own arms and chariots. 
 
 Of course there is no further question about the body of Patro- 
 clus. It is drawn out of the press, and received by the awful 
 hero with tears. 
 
 The other passage is where Priam, kneeling before Achilles, 
 and imploring him to give up the dead body of Hector, reminds 
 him of his own father ; who, whatever (says the poor old king) 
 may be his troubles with his enemies, has the blessing of know- 
 ing that his son is still alive, and may daily hope to see him 
 return. Achilles, in accordance with the strength and noble 
 honesty of the passions in those times, weeps aloud himself at 
 this appeal, feeling, says Homer, " desire" for his father in his 
 very " limbs." He joins in grief with the venerable sufferer, 
 and can no longer withstand the look of " his great head and 
 his grey chin." Observe the exquisite introduction of this last 
 word. It paints the touching fact of the chin's being implor- 
 ingly thrown upward by the kneeling old man, and the very 
 motion of his beard as he speaks. 
 
 '£2$ apa (poivrjaas atrefin irpof fnaKpov O\vfiirov 
 "Ep^/cias - npia/jof <5' tf iOTr&)i> a\ro ^a/ia^c, 
 ISaiov 6c k<xt avdi Xurei'" b Sc fii/juicp cpVKoyv 
 'l7r7roi>{ rifiiovovf re' ycpuv <T idv( Kiev oiKOV t 
 Trj p' A^iXcuj l^ctTKC, An <pi\oi' cv it jiw avrov 
 'Evp' irapot &' axavevdt Kadctaro' to St <5o' oia),
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 17 
 
 'Hpcoj AvTOficSbyv re Kai AXki^io;, o$os Apioj, 
 
 THoiirvvov -rrapcovrc' vcov o" awcXriycv e6co6qs 
 
 Eadoyv Kai irtvwv, cri Kai iraptKCtro rpawe^a. 
 
 Tovs 6' c\ad' titxc\8u>v Ylpia/xos jieyas, ay%i 6' apa eras 
 
 Xcfxrii/ A^iXXrws Aa/?£ yovvara, Kai kvoc %eipas 
 
 Actvas, av6poipovovs, a'l ol no\cas kt<xvov vias. 
 
 'Q.S o" brav av6p' arrj TTVKtvr] \afir), bar' evt varpr) 
 
 Qutra KaraKrcivas, aXXmv c^ikcto 6r\p.ov, 
 
 A.v6pos es atyvciov, Oaji(ios 6' £%£! cio-opocovras, 
 
 'Q? A^iXeus dapPrio-ev, iSiov Ylpia/nov 6coei6ca' 
 
 Qafifiriaav 6c Kai aWot, ££ aXXijXouj <Jc iSovto. 
 
 Tov Kai Xiucojjlcvos Tlpiapos irpos jxvQov ccincp' 
 
 Me»j<ra( irarpos acio, Scots ctticikcX A%iXXe», 
 TrtXiKOV, liidTTtp eyiov, oXooj titi yripaos ovSco. 
 Km jitv irov kcivov ncpivaicrai ajupts eovres 
 Teipova', ovScti; cariv apr\v Kai \oiyov ajivvat' 
 AXX' >jroi kcivos ye, acQcv ^wovros aKovwv, 
 Xaipa t cv Bvjib), cm t ckitcrai rjfiara navra 
 Oxptudat (piKov viov euro TpoitjOev tovra' 
 A.vrap cya Travairorjios, cnci tckov vias apiorovf 
 Tpoir/ tv cvpciri, tiov o" ovriva tyr\jn \e\ct<pdai. 
 YLtvTTjKOVTa /not rjaav, or r]\v9ov vies A^aicoi/* 
 EvvcaKatScKa ficv poi tr/s ck i/tjSvos rjtrav, 
 Tod? 6' aWovs \ioi ctiktov evi ftcyapoici yvvaiKCS. 
 Tiiiv ftev ttoWuv dovpos A.prjs vtto yovvar' c\vacv" 
 '&2$ 6c jtoi oiostr\v, ctpvTO 6c atJTV Kai avrovs, 
 Tov ovirpojnv KTCivas, ajxvvoyLCvov ircpi narp-qs, 
 'Exropa' tov vvv £ivc% iKavoi vrjas A-^aitav, 
 Awo^ievoj vapa acio, <pcpo> 6' aircptici anoiva. 
 AXX' ai6tio Qtovs, A^iXfti, avrov r' tXerio-ov, 
 M.VTiaantvos gov itarpos' syoi 6' tSttivortpos ftp, 
 EtXiji* S , dt ovtto> tis tTTi^dovio; ffporos aWog, 
 A.v6pos Trai6o<povoio won arojia %£'(?' opeyiyQai. 
 
 'Qs <paro' tu) 6' apa irarpos v<j>' tpepov wpat yooio. 
 A.ipajtevos 6' apa %tipos, a-moaaro rjKa yepovra. 
 Tto 6c ftvrio-apsvo), b jicv 'Exropof ai>6po(pnvoio t 
 KXai' a6tva, Trpoirapotdc tto6wv A^iXiyoy t\vadtis' 
 A.VTap A%(XX£U{ KXaicv cov warep', aWore 6' avTi 
 TlarpoK\ov' roiv 6s cfTOva-^n Kara 6<i>p.aT opiopti. 
 A.vr#p cnti /'m yooio TtrapirtTO 6ios A^iXXtwf, 
 Kae 6i aizo Trpairi6oiv r)X0' tjxtpos r>6 airo yvtwv, 
 A.vtik' ann Qpuvov oipro, yepovra 6c X tl P° s al '" rr '/i 
 OiKTtipaiv ffoXioi/ te Kapn, tto\iov re yc ClOV. 
 
 Iliad, Lib. xxiv., v. 46S. 
 
 n
 
 18 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 So saying, Mercury vanished up to heaven : 
 
 And Priam then alighted from his chariot, 
 
 Leaving Idoeus with it, who remain'd 
 
 Holding the mules and horses ; and the old man 
 
 Went straight in-doors, where the belov'd of Jove 
 
 Achilles sat, and found him. In the room 
 
 Were others, but apart ; and two alone, 
 
 The hero Automedon, and Alcimus, 
 
 A branch of Mars, stood by him. They had been 
 
 At meals, and had not yet removed the board. 
 
 Great Priam came, without their seeing him, 
 
 And kneeling down, he clasp'd Achilles' knees, 
 
 And kiss'd those terrible, homicidal hands, 
 
 Which had deprived him of so many sons. 
 
 And as a man who is press'd heavily 
 
 For having slain another, flies away 
 
 To foreign lands, and comes into the house 
 
 Of some great man, and is beheld with wonder, 
 
 So did Achilles wonder to see Priam ; 
 
 And the rest wonder'd, looking at each other. 
 
 But Priam, praying to him, spoke these words : - 
 
 " God-like Achilles, think of thine own father! 
 
 To the same age have we both come, the same 
 
 Weak pass ; and though the neighboring chiefs may vefc 
 
 Him also, and his borders find no help, 
 
 Yet when he hears that thou art still alive, 
 
 He gladdens inwardly, and daily hopes 
 
 To see his dear son coming back from Troy. 
 
 But I, bereav'd old Priam ! I had once 
 
 Brave sons in Troy, and now I cannot say 
 
 That one is left me. Fifty children had I, 
 
 When the Greeks came ; nineteen were of one womb ; 
 
 The rest my women bore me in my house. 
 
 The knees of many of these fierce Mars has loosen'd ; 
 
 And he who had no peer, Troy's prop and theirs, 
 
 Him hast thou kill'd now, fighting for his country, 
 
 Hector ; and for his sake am I come here 
 
 To ransom him, bringing a countless ransom. 
 
 But thou, Achilles, fear the gods, and think 
 
 Of thine own father, and have mercy on me ; 
 
 For I am much more wretched, and have borne 
 
 What never mortal bore, I think, on earth, 
 
 To lift unto my lips the hand of him 
 
 Wio slew my boys."
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 19 
 
 He ceased ; and there arose 
 Sharp longing in Achilles for his father; 
 And taking Priam by the hand, he gently 
 Put him away ; for both shed tears to think 
 Of other times ; the one, most bitter ones 
 For Hector, and with wilful wretchedness 
 Lay right before Achilles : and the other, 
 For his own father now, and now his friend ; 
 And the whole house might hear them as they moan'd. 
 But when divine Achilles had refresh'd 
 His soul with tears, and sharp desire had left 
 His heart and limbs, he got up from his throne, 
 And rais'd the old man by the hand, and took 
 Pity on his grey head and his grey chin. 
 
 O lovely and immortal privilege of genius ! that can stretch 
 its hand out of the wastes of time, thousands of years back, 
 and touch our eyelids with tears. In these passages there is not 
 a word which a man of the most matter-of-fact understanding 
 might not have written, if he had thought of it. But in poetry, 
 feeling and imagination are necessary to the perception and 
 presentation even of matters of fact. They, and they only, see 
 what is proper to be told, and what to be kept back ; what is 
 pertinent, affecting, and essential. Without feeling, there is a 
 want of delicacy and distinction ; without imagination, there is 
 no true embodiment. In poets, even good of their kind, but 
 without a genius for narration, the action would have been en- 
 cumbered or diverted with ingenious mistakes. The over-con- 
 templative would have given us too many remarks ; the over- 
 lyrical, a style too much carried away ; the over-fanciful, con- 
 ceits and too many similes ; the unimaginative, the facts without 
 the feeling, and not even those. We should have been told 
 nothing of the " grey chin," of the house hearing them as they 
 moaned, or of Achilles gently putting the old man aside ; much 
 less of that yearning for his father, which made the hero trem- 
 ble in every limb. Writers without the greatest passion and 
 power do not feel in this way, nor are capable of expressing the 
 feeling ; though there is enough sensibility and imagination all 
 over the world to enable mankind to be moved by it, when the 
 poet strikes his truth into their hearts. 
 
 The reverse of imagination is exhibited in pure absence of
 
 20 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 ideas, in commonplaces, and, above all, in conventional meta. 
 phor, or such images and their phraseology as have become the 
 common property of discourse and writing. Addison's Cato is 
 full of them. 
 
 Passion unpitied and successless love 
 Plant daggers in my breast. 
 
 I've sounded my Numidians, man by man, 
 And find them ripe for a revolt. 
 
 The virtuous Marcia towers above her sex. 
 
 Of the same kind is his " courting the yoke" — " distracting my 
 very heart" — "calling up all" one's " father" in one's soul — 
 "working every nerve" — "copying a bright example;" in 
 short, the whole play, relieved now and then with a smart sen- 
 tence or turn of words. The following is a pregnant example 
 of plagiarism and weak writing. It is from another tragedy of 
 Addison's time, — the Mariamne of Fenton : — 
 
 Mariamne, with superior charms, 
 Triumphs o'er reason : in her look she bears 
 A paradise of ever-blooming sweets ; 
 Fair as the first idea beauty prints 
 In her young lover's soul ; a winning grace 
 Guides every gesture, and obsequious love 
 Jlttends on all her steps. 
 
 " Triumphing o'er reason" is an old acquaintance of every- 
 body's. " Paradise in her look " is from the Italian poets through 
 Dryden. " Fair as the first idea," &c, is from Milton spoilt ; 
 " winning grace" and "steps" from Milton and Tibullus, both 
 spoilt. Whenever beauties are stolen by such a writer, they are 
 sure to be spoilt ; just as when a great writer borrows, he 
 improves. 
 
 To come now to Fancy, — she is a younger sister of Imagina- 
 tion, without the other's weight of thought and feeling. Imagi- 
 nation indeed, purely so called, is all feeling ; the feeling of the 
 subtlest and most affecting analogies ; the perception of sympa- 
 thies in the natures of things, or in their popular attributes. 
 Fancy is sporting with their resemblance, real or supposed, and 
 • ith ai" v orirl fantastical creations.
 
 WHAT IS POETRY? 2\ 
 
 Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid 
 Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, 
 And, like a dew-drop from the lion's mane, 
 Be shook to air. 
 
 Troilus and Cressida, Act iii., sc. 3. 
 
 That is imagination ; — the strong mind sympathizing with the 
 strong beast, and the weak love identified with the weak dew- 
 drop. 
 
 Oh ! — and I forsooth 
 In love ! I that have been love's whip ! 
 A very beadle to a humorous sigh ! — 
 A domineering pedant o'er the boy, — 
 This whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy, — 
 This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid, 
 Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms, 
 The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans, &c. 
 
 Love's Labor's Lost, Act iii., sc. 1. 
 
 That is fancy ; — a combination of images not m their nature 
 connected, or brought together by the feeling, but by the will 
 and pleasure ; and having just enough hold of analogy to betray 
 it into the hands of its smiling subjector. 
 
 Silent icicles 
 Quietly shining to the quiet ??won. 
 
 Coleridge's Frost at Midnight. 
 
 That, again, is imagination ; — analogical sympathy ; and exqui- 
 site of its kind it is. 
 
 " You are now sailed into the north of my lady's opinion ; where you 
 
 will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman' s beard, unless you do redeem it by 
 
 some laudable attempt." 
 
 Twelfth Night, Act iii , sr. 2. 
 
 And that is fancy ; — one image capriciously suggested by an- 
 other, and but half connected with the subject of discourse ; 
 nay, half opposed to it; for in the gaiety of the speaker's ani- 
 mal spirits, the " Dutchman's beard" is made to represent the 
 lady! 
 
 Imagination belongs to Tragedy, or the serious muse ; Fancy
 
 22 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 to the comic. Macbeth, Lear, Paradise Lost, the poem of 
 Dante, are full of imagination : the Midsummer Night's Dream 
 and the Rape of the Lock, of fancy : Romeo and Juliet, the 
 Tempest, the Fairy Queen, and the Orlando Furioso, of both. 
 The terms were formerly identical, or used as such ; and neither 
 is the best that might be found. The term Imagination is too 
 confined : often too material. It presents too invariably the idea 
 of a solid body ; — of " images" in the sense of the plaster-cast 
 cry about the streets. Fancy, on the other hand, while it 
 means nothing but a spiritual image or apparition {<l>avTaa\i,u, 
 appearance, phantom), has rarely that freedom from visibility 
 which is one of the highest privileges of imagination. Viola, in 
 Twelfth Night, speaking of some beautiful music, says : — 
 
 It gives a very echo to the seat, 
 Where Love is throned. 
 
 In this charming thought, fancy and imagination are combined ; 
 yet the fancy, the assumption of Love's sitting on a throne, 
 is the image of a solid body ; while the imagination, the sense of 
 sympathy between the passion of love and impassioned music, 
 presents us no image at aH. Some new term is wanting to 
 express the more spiritual sympathies of what is called Imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 One of the teachers of Imagination is Melancholy ; and like 
 Melancholy, as Albert Durer has painted her, she looks out 
 among the stars, and is busied with spiritual affinities and the 
 mysteries of the universe. Fancy turns her sister's wizard in- 
 struments into toys. She takes a telescope in her hand, and 
 puts a mimic star on her forehead, and sallies forth as an em- 
 blem of astronomy. Her tendency is to the child-like and sport- 
 ive. She chases butterflies, while her sister takes flight with 
 angels. She is the genius of fairies, of gallantries, of fashions ; 
 of whatever is quaint and light, showy and capricious ; of the 
 poetical part of wit. She adds wings and feelings to the images 
 of wit; and delights as much to people nature with smiling 
 ideal sympathies, as wit does to bring antipathies together, and 
 make them strike light on absurdity. Fancy, however, is not
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 23 
 
 incapable of sympathy with Imagination. She is often found in 
 her company ; always, in the case of the greatest poets ; often 
 in that of less, though with them she is the greater favorite. 
 Spenser has great imagination and fancy too, but more of the 
 latter ; Milton both aLso, the very greatest, but with imagination 
 predominant ; Chaucer, the strongest imagination of real life, 
 beyond any writers but Homer, Dante, and Shakspeare, and in 
 comic painting inferior to none ; Pope has hardly any imagina- 
 tion, but he has a great deal of fancy ; Coleridge little fancy, 
 but imagination exquisite. Shakspeare alone, of all poets that 
 ever lived, enjoyed the regard of both in equal perfection. A 
 whole fairy poem of his writing will be found in the present 
 volume. See also his famous description of Queen Mab and her 
 equipage, in Romeo and Juliet : — 
 
 Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs ; 
 
 The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers ; 
 
 Her traces of the smallest spider's web ; 
 
 Her collars of the moonshine's watery beams, &c. 
 
 That is Fancy, in its playful creativeness. As a small but 
 pretty rival specimen, less known, take the description of a 
 fairy palace from Drayton's Nymphidia : — 
 
 This palace standeth in the air, 
 By necromancy placed there, 
 That it no tempest needs to fear, 
 
 Which way soe'er it blow it : 
 And somewhat southward tow'rd the noon, 
 Whence lies a way up to the moon, 
 And thence the Fairy can as soon 
 
 Pass to the earth below it. 
 The walls of spiders' legs are made, 
 Well morticed and finely laid : 
 He was the master of his trade, 
 
 It curiously that builded : 
 The windows of the eyes of cats : 
 
 (because they see best at night) 
 
 And for the roof instead of slats 
 Is cover'd with the skins of bats 
 With moonshine that are gilded.
 
 24 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 Here also is a fairy bed, very delicate, from the same poet's 
 Muse's Elysium. 
 
 Of leaves of roses, white and red, 
 Shall be the covering of the bed ; 
 The curtains, vallens, tester all, 
 Shall be the flower imperial ; 
 And for the fringe it all along 
 With azure hare-bells shall be hung. 
 Of lilies shall the pillows be 
 With down stuft of the butterfly. 
 
 Of fancy, so full of gusto as to border on imagination, Sir John 
 Suckling, in his " Ballad on a Wedding," has given some of the 
 most playful and charming specimens in the language. They 
 glance like twinkles in the eye, or cherries bedewed • 
 
 Her feet beneath her petticoat, 
 Like little mice stole in and out, 
 
 As if they fear 1 d the light ; 
 But oh ! she dances such a way ! 
 No sun upon an Easter day, 
 
 Is half so fine a sight. 
 
 '.-,' 
 
 It is very daring, and has a sort of playful grandeur, to compare 
 a lady's dancing with the sun. But as the sun has it all to him- 
 self in the heavens, so she, in the blaze of her beauty, on earth. 
 This is imagination fairly displacing fancy. The following has 
 enchanted everybody : — 
 
 Her lips were red, and one was thin, 
 Compared with that was next her chin, 
 Some bee had stung it newly. 
 
 Every reader has stolen a kiss at that lip, gay or grave. 
 
 With regard to the principle of Variety in Uniformity by 
 which verse ought to be modulated, and one-ness of impression 
 diversely produced, it has been contended by some, that Poetry 
 need not be written in verse at all ; that prose is as good a me- 
 dium, provided poetry be conveyed through it; and that to think 
 otherwise is to confound letter with spirit, or form with essence. 
 But the opinion is a prosaical mistake. Fitness and unfitness for
 
 WHAT 13 POETRY ? 2o 
 
 song, or metrical excitement, just make all the difference between 
 a poetical and prosaical subject ; and the reason why verse is 
 necessary to the form of poetry, is, that the perfection of poetical 
 spirit demands it; that the circle of enthusiasm, beauty, and 
 power, is incomplete without it. I do not mean to say that a 
 poet can never show himself a poet in prose ; but that, being one, 
 his desire and necessity will be to write in verse; and that, if he 
 were unable to do so, he would not, and could not, deserve his 
 title. Verse to the true poet is no clog. It is idly called a 
 trammel and a difficulty. It is a help. It springs from the 
 same enthusiasm as the rest of his impulses, and is necessary to 
 their satisfaction and effect. Verse is no more a clog than the 
 condition of rushing upward is a clog to fire, or than the round- 
 ness and order of the globe we live on is a clog to the freedom 
 and variety that abound within its sphere. Verse is no domi- 
 nator over the poet, except inasmuch as the bond is reciprocal, 
 and the poet dominates over the verse. They are lovers play- 
 fully challenging each other's rule, and delighted equally to rule 
 and to obey. Verse is the final proof to the post that his mastery 
 over his art is complete. It is the shutting up of his powers in 
 " measureful content ;" the answer of form to his spirit ; of strength 
 and ease to his guidance. It is the willing action, the proud and 
 fiery happiness, of the winged steed on whose back he has vaulted, 
 
 To witch the world with wondrous horsemanship. 
 
 Verse, in short, is that finishing, and rounding, and " tuneful 
 planetting" of the poet's creations, which is produced of neces- 
 sity by the smooth tendencies of their energy or inward working, 
 and the harmonious dance into which they are attracted round 
 the orb of the beautiful. Poetry, in its complete sympathy with 
 beauty, must, of necessity, leave no sense of the beautiful, and 
 no power over its forms, unmanifested ; and verse flows as 
 inevitably from this condition of its integrity, as other laws of 
 proportion do from any other kind of embodiment of beauty (say 
 that of the human figure), however free and various the move- 
 ments may be that play within their limits. What great poet 
 ( ver wrote his poems in prose ? or where is a good prose poem, 
 of any length, to be found ? The poetry of the Bible is under-
 
 2G AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 stood to be in verse, in the original. Mr. Hazlitt has said a 
 good word for those prose enlargements of some fine old song, 
 which are known by the name of Ossian ; and in passages they 
 deserve what he said ; but he judiciously abstained from saying 
 anything about the form. Is Gesner's D°ath of Abel a poem ? 
 or Hervey's Meditations ? The Pilgrim's Progress has been 
 called one ; and, undoubtedly, Bunyan had a genius which 
 tended to make him a poet, and one of no mean order; and yet 
 it was of as ungenerous and low a sort as was compatible with 
 so lofty an affinity ; and this is the reason why it stopped where 
 it did. He had a craving after the beautiful, but not enough of 
 it in himself to echo to its music. On the other hand, the pos- 
 session of the beautiful will not be sufficient without force to 
 utter it. The author of Telemachus had a soul full of beauty 
 and tenderness. He was not a man who, if he had had a wife 
 and children, would have run away from them, as Bunyan's 
 hero did, to get a place by himself in heaven. He was "a little 
 lower than the angels," like our own Bishop Jewells and Berke- 
 leys ; and yet he was no poet. He was too delicately, not to 
 say feebly, absorbed in his devotions, to join in the energies of 
 the seraphic choir. 
 
 Every poet, then, is a versifier; every fine poet an excellent 
 one ; and he is the best whose verse exhibits the Greatest 
 amount of strength, sweetness, straightforwardness, unsuperflu- 
 ousness, variety, and one-ness ; one-ness, that is to say, consist- 
 ency, in the general impression, metrical and moral ; and variety, 
 or every pertinent diversity of tone and rhythm, in the process, 
 Strength is the muscle of verse, and shows itself in the numbei 
 and force of the marked syllables ; as, 
 
 Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds. 
 
 Paradise last. 
 
 Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheav'd 
 His vastness. 
 
 Id. 
 
 Blow winds and crack your cheeks ? rage ! blow ! 
 
 You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout, 
 
 Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks •
 
 WHAT IS POETRY 27 
 
 You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, 
 Vaunt couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, 
 Singe my white head ! and thou, all-shaking th tinder, 
 Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world ! 
 
 Lear. 
 
 Unexpected locations of the accent double this force, and 
 render it characteristic of passion and abruptness. And here 
 comes into play the reader's corresponding fineness of ear, and 
 his retardations and accelerations in accordance with those of 
 the poet : — 
 
 Then in the keyhole turns 
 The intricate wards, and every bolt and bar 
 Unfastens. On a sudden open fly 
 . With impetuous recoil and jarring sound 
 The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate 
 Harsh thunder. 
 
 Par. Lost, Book II. 
 
 Abominable — unutterable — and worse 
 Than fables yet have feigned. 
 
 Wallowing unwieldy — enormous in their gait. 
 
 Id. 
 
 Id. 
 
 Of unusual passionate accent, there is an exquisite specimen 
 in the Fairy Queen, where Una is lamenting her desertion by 
 the Red-Cross Knight : — 
 
 But he, my lion, and my noble lord, 
 How does he find in cruel heart to hate 
 Her that him lov'd, and ever most ador'd 
 As the gbd of my life 1 Why hath he me abhorr'd ? 
 
 See the whole stanza, with a note upon it, in the present 
 volume. 
 
 The abuse of strength is harshness and heaviness ; the re- 
 verse of it is weakness. There is a noble sentiment, — it ap- 
 pears both in Daniel's and Sir John Beaumont's works, but is 
 most probably the latter's, — which is a perfect outrage ot 
 strength in the sound of the words : —
 
 28 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 Only the firmest and the consta?ifst hearts 
 God sets to act the stoufst and hardest parts. 
 
 Stoutest and constant'st for "stoutest" and " most constant !" 
 It is as bad as the intentional crabbedness of the line in Hudi- 
 bras ; 
 
 He that hangs or beats onfs brains, 
 The devil's in hirn if he feigns. 
 
 Beats out's brains, for " beats out his brains." Of heaviness, 
 Davenant's " Gondibert " is a formidable specimen, almost 
 throughout : — 
 
 & 
 
 With silence (order's help, and mark of care) 
 
 They chide that noise which heedless youth affect; 
 Still course for use, for health they clearness wear, 
 
 And save in well-fix'd arms, all nk-eness check'd. 
 They thought, those that, unarmed, expos' d frail life, 
 
 But naked nature valiantly betray'd ; 
 Who was, though naked, safe, till pride made strife, 
 
 But made defence must use, now danger's made. 
 
 And so he goes digging and lumbering on, like a heavy 
 preacher thumping the pulpit in italics, and spoiling many in- 
 genious reflections. 
 
 Weakness in versification is want of accent and emphasis. 
 It generally accompanies prosaicalness, and is the consequence 
 of weak thoughts, and of the affectation of a certain well-bred 
 enthusiasm. The writings of the late Mr. Hayley were re- 
 markable for it ; and it abounds among the lyrical imitators of 
 Cowley, and the whole of what is called our French school of 
 poetry, when it aspired above its wit and "sense." It some- 
 times breaks down in a horrible, hopeless manner, as if giving 
 way at the first step. The following ludicrous passage in Con- 
 greve, intended to be particularly fine, contains an instance : — 
 
 And lo ! Silence himself is here ; 
 Methinks I see the midnight god appear. 
 In all his downy pomp array'd, 
 Behold the reverend shade.
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 29 
 
 An ancient sigh he sits upon ! ! ! 
 Whose memory of sound is long since gone, 
 And purposely annihilated for his throne ! ! 
 
 Ode on the singing of J\Irs. Arabella Hunt. 
 
 See also the would-be enthusiasm of Addison about music : 
 
 For ever consecrate the day 
 To music and Cecilia ; 
 Music, the greatest good that mortals know, 
 And all of heaven we have below, 
 Music can noble hints impart !! ! 
 
 It is observable that the unpoetic masters of ridicule are apt 
 to make the most ridiculous mistakes, when they come to affect 
 a strain higher than the one they are accustomed to. But no 
 wonder. Their habits neutralize the enthusiasm it requires. 
 
 Sweetness, though not identical with smoothness, any more 
 than feeling is with sound, always includes it; and smoothness 
 is a thing so little to be regarded for its own sake, and indeed so 
 worthless in poetry but for some taste of sweetness, that I have 
 not thought necessary to mention it by itself; though such an 
 all-in-all in versification was it regarded not a hundred vears 
 back, that Thomas Warton himself, an idolator of Spenser, ven- 
 tured to wish the following line in the Fairy Queen, 
 
 And was admired much of fools, ivbmen, and boys — 
 
 altered to 
 
 And was admired much of women, fools, and boys — 
 
 thus destroying the fine scornful emphasis on the first syllable of 
 "women!" (an ungallant intimation, by the way, against the 
 fair sex, very startling in this no less woman-loving than great 
 poet.) Any poetaster can be smooth. Smoothness abounds in 
 all small poets, as sweetness does in the greater. Sweetness is 
 the smoothness of grace and delicacy, — of the sympathy with 
 the pleasing and lovely. Spenser is full of it, — Shakspeare — 
 Beaumont and Fletcher — Coleridge. Of Spenser's and Cole- 
 ridge's versification it is the prevailing characteristic. Its main 
 secrets are a smooth nr*™-* -sion between varietv and sameness-
 
 30 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 and a voluptuous sense of the continuous, — "linked sweetness 
 long drawn out." Observe the first and last lines of the stanza 
 in the Fairy Queen, describing a shepherd brushing away the 
 gnats ; — the open and the close e's in the one, 
 
 As gentle shepherd in sweet eventide — 
 
 and the repetition of the word oft, and the fall from the vowel 
 a, into the two u's in the other, — 
 
 She brusheth oft, and oft doth mar their murmurings. 
 
 So in his description of two substances in the handling, both 
 equally smooth ; — 
 
 Each smoother seems than each, and each than each seems smoother. 
 
 An abundance of examples from his poetry will be found in 
 the volume before us. His beauty revolves on itself with con- 
 scious loveliness. And Coleridge is worthy to be named with 
 him, as the reader will see also, and has seen already. Let 
 him take a sample meanwhile from the poem called the Day- 
 Dre-am ! Observe both the variety and sameness of the vowels, 
 and the repetition of the soft consonants : — 
 
 My eyes make pictures when they're shut : — 
 
 I see a fountain, large and fair, 
 A willow and a ruin'd hut, 
 
 And thee and me and Mary there. 
 O Mary ! make thy gentle lap our pillow ; 
 Bend o'er us, like a bower, my beautiful green willow. 
 
 By Slraightforivardness is meant the flow of words in their 
 natural order, free alike from mere prose, and from those inver- 
 sions to which bad poets recur in order to escape the charge of 
 prose, but chiefly to accommodate their rhymes. In Shadwell's 
 play of Psyche, Venus gives the sisters of the heroine an an- 
 swer, of which the following is the entire substance, literally, 
 in so many words. The author had nothing better for her to 
 say: 
 
 " I receive your prayers with kindness, and will give success to your
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 31 
 
 nopes. I have seen, with anger, mankind adore your sister's beauty and 
 deplore her scorn : which they shall do no more. For I'll so resent their 
 idolatry, as shall content your wishes to the full." 
 
 Now in default of all imagination, fancy, and expression, 
 how was the writer to turn these words into poetry or rhyme ? 
 Simply by diverting them from their natural order, and twisting 
 the halves of the sentences each before the other. 
 
 With kindness I your prayers receive, 
 
 And to your hopes success will give. 
 I have, with anger, seen mankind adore 
 Your sister's beauty and her scorn deplore ; 
 
 Which they shall do no more. 
 For their idolatry I'll so resent, 
 As shall your wishes to the full content ! ! 
 
 This is just as if a man were to allow that there was no 
 poetry in the words, "How do you find yourself?" "Very 
 well, I thank you ;" but to hold them inspired, if altered into 
 
 Yourself how do you find ? 
 Very well, you I thank. 
 
 It is true, the best writers in Shadwell's age were addicted to 
 these inversions, partly for their own reasons, as far as rhyme 
 was concerned, and partly because they held it to be writing in 
 the classical and Virgilian manner. What has since been 
 called Artificial Poetry was then flourishing, in contradistinction 
 to Natural ; or Poetry seen chiefly through art and books, and 
 not in its first sources. But when the artificial poet partook of 
 the natural, or, in other words, was a true poet after his kind, 
 his best was always written in the most natural and straight- 
 forward manner. Hear Shadwell's antagonist Dryden. Not a 
 particle of inversion, beyond what is used for the sake of em. 
 phasis in common discourse, and this only in one line (the last 
 but three), is to be found in his immortal character of the Duke 
 of Buckingham : — 
 
 A man so various, that he seemed to be 
 Not one, but all mankind's epitome :
 
 32 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, 
 Was everything by starts, and nothing long ; 
 But in the course of one revolving moon 
 Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon : 
 Then all for women, rhyming, dancing, drinking, 
 Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking 
 Blest madman! who could every hour employ 
 With something new to wish or to enjoy ! 
 Railing and praising were his usual themes; 
 And both, to show his judgment, in extremes : 
 So over violent, or over civil, 
 That every man with him was god or devil. 
 In squandering wealth was his peculiar art; 
 JVothing went unrewarded, but desert. 
 Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, 
 He had his jest, and they had his estate. 
 
 Inversion itself was often turned into a grace in these poets, 
 and may be in others, by the power of being superior to it ; 
 using it only with a classical air, and as a help lying next to 
 them, instead of a salvation which they are obliged to seek. In 
 jesting passages also it sometimes gave the rhyme a turn agree- 
 ably wilful, or an appearance of choosing what lay in its way ; 
 as if a man should pick up a stone to throw at another's head, 
 where a less confident foot would have stumbled over it. Such 
 is Dr}'den's use of the word might — the mere sign of a tense — 
 in his pretended ridicule of the monkish practice of rising to 
 sing psalms in the night. 
 
 And much they griev'cl to see so nigh their hall 
 The.bird that warn'd St. Peter of his fall ; 
 That he should raise his mitred crest on high, 
 And clap his wings and call his family 
 To sacred rites; and vex th' ethereal powers 
 With midnight matins at uncivil hours ; 
 Nay more, his quiet neighbors should molest 
 Just in the sweetness of their morning rest. 
 
 (What a line full of " another doze " is that !) 
 
 Beast of a bird, ! supinely, when he might 
 Lie snug and sleep, to rise before the light!
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 33 
 
 What if his dull forefathers used that cry ? 
 Could he not let a bad example die ? 
 
 I the more gladly quote instances like those of Dryden, to 
 illustrate the points in question, because they are specimens of 
 the very highest kind of writing in the heroic couplet upon sub- 
 jects not heroical. As to prosaicalness in general, it is sometimes 
 indulged in by young writers on the plea of its being natural ; 
 but this is a mere confusion of triviality with propriety, and is 
 usually the result of indolence. 
 
 Unsuperjluousness is rather a matter of style in general, than 
 of the sound and order of words : and yet versification is so 
 much strengthened by it, and so much weakened by its opposite, 
 that it could not but come within the category of its requisites. 
 When superfluousness of words is not occasioned by overflowing 
 animal spirits, as in Beaumont and Fletcher, or by the very 
 genius of luxury, as in Spenser (in which cases it is enrichment 
 as well as overflow), there is no worse sign for a poet altogether, 
 except pure barrenness. Every word that could be taken away 
 from a poem, unreferable to either of the above reasons for it, is 
 a damage ; and many such are death ; for there is nothing that 
 posterity seems so determined to resent as this want of respect 
 for its time and trouble. The world is too rich in books to en- 
 dure it. Even true poets have died of this Writer's Evil. 
 Trifling ones have survived, with scarcely any pretensions but 
 the terseness of their trifles. What hope can remain for wordy 
 mediocrity ? Let the discerning reader take up any poem, pen 
 in hand, for the purpose of discovering how many words he can 
 strike out of it that give him no requisite ideas, no relevant ones 
 that he cares for, and no reasons for the rhyme beyond its ne- 
 cessity, and he will see what blot and havoc he will make in 
 many an admired production of its day, — what marks of its 
 inevitable fate. Bulky authors in particular, however safe they 
 may think themselves, would do well to consider what parts of 
 their cargo they might dispense with in their proposed voyage 
 down the gulfs of time ; for many a gallant vessel, thought in- 
 destructible in its age, has perished ; — many a load of words, 
 expected to be in eternal demand, gone to join the wrecks of 
 
 4
 
 34 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 self-love, or rotted in the warehouses of change and vicissitude. 
 I have said the more on this point, because in an age when the 
 true inspiration has undoubtedly been re-awakened by Coleridge 
 and his fellows, and we have so many new poets coming for- 
 ward, it may be as well to give a general warning against that 
 tendency to an accumulation and ostentation of thoughts, which 
 is meant to be a refutation in full of the pretensions of all 
 poetry less cogitabund, whatever may be the requirements of its 
 class. Young writers should bear in mind, that even some of 
 the very best materials for poetry are not poetry built ; and that 
 the smallest marble shrine, of exquisite workmanship, outvalues 
 all that architect ever chipped away. Whatever can be dis- 
 pensed with is rubbish. 
 
 Variety in versification consists in whatsoever can be done for 
 the prevention of monotony, by diversity of stops and cadences, 
 distribution of emphasis, and retardation and acceleration of 
 time ; for the whole real secret of versification is a musical 
 secret, and is not attainable to any vital effect, save by the ear 
 of genius. All the more knowledge of feet and numbers, of 
 accent and quantity, will no more impart it, than a knowledge 
 of the " Guide to Music" will make a Beethoven or a Paisiello. 
 It is a matter of sensibility and imagination; of the beautiful in 
 poetical passion, accompanied by musical ; of the imperative 
 necessity for a pause here, and a cadence there, and a quicker 
 or slower utterance in this or that place, created by analogies 
 of sound with sense, by the fluctuations of feeling, by the de- 
 mands of the gods and graces that visit the poet's harp, as the 
 winds visit that of iEolus. The same time and quantity which 
 are occasioned by the spiritual part of this secret, thus become 
 its formal ones, — not feet and syllables, long and short, iambics 
 or trochees ; which are the reduction of it to its less than dry 
 bones. You might get, for instance, not only ten and eleven, 
 but thirteen or fourteen syllables into a rhyming, as well as 
 blank, heroical verse, if time and the feeling permitted ; and in 
 irregular measure this is often done ; just as musicians put 
 twenty notes in a bar instead of two, quavers instead of minims, 
 according as the feeling they are expressing impels them to fill 
 up the time with short and hurried notes, or with long ; or as
 
 WHAT IS POETRY? 35 
 
 the choristers in a cathedral retard or precipitate the words of 
 the chaunt, according as the quantity of its notes, and the colon 
 which divides the verse of the psalm, conspire to demand it. 
 Had the moderns borne this principle in mind when they settled 
 the prevailing systems of verse, instead of learning them, as 
 they appear to have done, from the first drawling and one-sylla- 
 bled notation of the church hymns, we should have retained all 
 the advantages of the more numerous versification of the an- 
 cients, without being compelled to fancy that there was no alter- 
 native for us between our syllabioal uniformity and the hexame- 
 ters or other special forms unsuited to our tongues. But to 
 leave this question alone, we will present the reader with a few 
 sufficing specimens of the difference between monotony and 
 variety in versification, first from Pope, Dryden, and Milton, 
 and next from Gay and Coleridge. The following is the boasted 
 melody of the nevertheless exquisite poet of the " Rape of the 
 Lock," — exquisite in his wit and iancy, though not in his num- 
 bers. The reader will observe that it is literally see-saw, like 
 the rising and falling of a plank, with a light person at one end 
 who is jerked up in the briefer time, and a heavier one who is 
 set down more leisurely at the other. It is in the otherwise 
 charming description of the heroine of that poem : — 
 
 On her white breast — a sparkling cross she wore, 
 Which Jews might kiss — and infidels adore ; 
 Her lively looks — a sprightly mind disclose, 
 Quick as her eyes — and as unfix'd as those ; 
 Favors to none — to all she smiles extends, 
 Oft she rejects — but never once offends ; 
 Bright as the sun — her eyes the gazers strike, 
 And like the sun — they shine on all alike ; 
 Yet graceful ease — and sweetness void of pride, 
 Might hide her faults — if bolles had faults to hide ; 
 If to her share — some female errors fall, 
 Look on her face — and you'll forget them all. 
 
 Compare with this the description of Iphigenia in one of Dry- 
 den's stories from Boccaccio : — 
 
 It happen'd — on a summer's holiday, "] 
 
 That to the greenwood shade — he took his way, > 
 
 For Cymon shunn'd the church — and used not much to pray, J
 
 36 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 His quarter-staff — which he could ne'er forsake, 
 Hung half before — and half behind his back : 
 He trudg'd along — not knowing what he sought, 
 And whistled as he went — for want of thought. 
 
 By chance conducted — or by thirst constrain'd, 
 
 The deep recesses of a grove he gain'd ; — 
 
 Where — in a plain defended by a wood, "j 
 
 Crept through the matted grass — a crystal flood, > 
 
 By which — an alabaster fountain stood ; J 
 
 And on the margent of the fount was laid — 
 
 Attended by her slaves — a sleeping maid ; 
 
 Like Dian and her nymphs — when, tir'd with sport, 
 
 To rest by cool Eurotas they resort. — 
 
 The dame herself — the goddess well expressM 
 
 Not more distinguished by her purple vest— 
 
 Than by the charming features of the face — 
 
 And e'en in slumber — a superior grace : 
 
 Her comely limbs — compos'd with decent care, "> 
 
 Her body shaded — by a light cymarr, > 
 
 Her bosom to the view — was only bare ; J 
 
 Where two beginning paps were scarcely spied — 
 
 For yet their places were but signified. — 
 
 The fanning wind upon her bosom blows — i 
 
 To meet the fanning wind — the bosom rose ; > 
 
 The fanning wind — and purling stream — continue her repose. J 
 
 For a further variety take, from the same author's Theodore 
 and Honoria, a passage in which the couplets are run one into 
 the other, and all of it modulated, like the former, according to 
 the feeling demanded by the occasion ; 
 
 Whilst listening to the murmuring leaves he stood — 
 More than a mile immers'd within the wood — 
 At once the wind was laid.] — The whispering sound 
 Was dumb. | — A rising earthquake rock'd the ground. 
 With deeper brown the grove was overspread — ^ 
 A sudden horror seiz'd his giddy head — > 
 
 And his ears tinkled — and his color fled. J 
 
 Nature was in alarm — Some danger nigh 
 Seem'd threaten'd — though unseen to mortal eye. 
 Unus'd to fear — he summon'd all his soul, 
 And stood collected in hin.self — and whole : 
 Not long. —
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 37 
 
 But for a crowning specimen of variety of pause and accent, 
 apart from emotion, nothing can surpass the account, in Para- 
 dise Lost, of the Devil's search for an accomplice ; — 
 
 There was a place, 
 Now not — though Sin — not Time — first wrought the chang-t 
 Where Tigris — at the foot of Paradise, 
 Into a gulf — shot under ground — till part 
 Rose up a fountain by the Tree of Life. 
 In with the river sunk — and with it rbse 
 Satan — involv'd in rising mist — then sought 
 Where to lie hid. — Sea he had search'd — and land 
 From Eden over Pdntus — and the pool 
 Maeotis — up beyond the river Ob ; 
 Downward as far antarctic ; — and in length 
 West from Orontes — to the ocean barr'd 
 At Darien — thence to the land where flows 
 Ganges and Indus. — Thus the orb he roam'd 
 With narrow search ; — and with inspection deep 
 Consider'd every creature — which of all 
 Most opportune mia;ht serve his wiles — and found 
 The serpent — subtlest beast of all the field. 
 
 If the reader cast his eye again over this passage, he will not 
 find a verse in it which is not varied and harmonized in the most 
 remarkable manner. Let him notice in particular that curious 
 balancing of the lines in the sixth and tenth verses : — 
 
 In with the river sunk, &c, 
 
 and 
 
 Up beyond the river Ob. 
 
 It might, indeed, be objected to the versification of Milton, 
 that it exhibits too constant a perfection of this kind. -It some- 
 times forces upon us too great a sense of consciousness on the 
 part of the composer. We miss the first sprightly runnings of 
 verse, — the ease and sweetness of spontaneity. Milton, I think, 
 also too often condenses weight into heaviness. 
 
 Thus much concerning the chief of our two most popular 
 measures. The other, called octosyllabic, or the measure of 

 
 38 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 eight syllables, offered such facilities for namby-pamby, that it 
 had become a jest as early as the time of Shakspeare, who 
 makes Touchstone call it the " butterwoman's rate to market," 
 and the " very false gallop of verses." It has been advocated, 
 in opposition to the heroic measure, upon the ground that ten 
 syllables lead a man into epithets and other superfluities, while 
 eight syllables compress him into a sensible and pithy gentle- 
 man. But the heroic measure laughs at it. So far from com- 
 pressing, it converts one line into two, and sacrifices everything 
 to the quick and importunate return of the rhyme. With Dry- 
 den, compare Gay, even in the strength of Gay, — 
 
 The wind was high — the window shakes ; 
 With sudden start the miser wakes ; 
 Along the silent room he stalks, 
 
 (A miser never "stalks;" but a rhyme was desired for 
 "walks") 
 
 Looks back, and trembles as he walks : 
 Each lock and every bolt he tries, 
 In every creek and corner pries. 
 Then opes the chest with treasure stor'd, 
 And stands in rapture o'er his hoard ; 
 
 (" Hoard" and " treasure stor'd" are just made for one 
 another) 
 
 But now, with sudden qualms possess'd, 
 He wrings his hands, he beats his breast ; 
 By conscience stung, he wildly stares, 
 And thus his guilty soul declares. 
 
 And so he denounces his gold, as miser never denounced it ; 
 and sighs, because 
 
 Virtue resides on earth no more ! 
 
 Coleridge saw the mistake which had been made with regard 
 to this measure, and restored it to the beautiful freedom of which 
 it was capable, by calling to mind the liberties allowed its old
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 39 
 
 musical professors the minstrels, and dividing it by time instead 
 of syllables ; — by the beat of four into which you might get as 
 many syllables as you could, instead of allotting eight syllables 
 to the poor time, whatever it might have to say. Fie varied it 
 further with alternate rhymes and stanzas, with rests and omis- 
 sions precisely analogous to those in music, and rendered it alto- 
 gether worthy to utter the manifold thoughts and feelings of 
 himself and his lady Christabel. He even ventures, with an 
 exquisite sense of solemn strangeness and license (for there is 
 witchcraft going forward), to introduce a couplet of blank verse, 
 itself as mystically and beautifully modulated as anything in 
 the music of Gliick or Weber. 
 
 'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, 
 
 And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock ; 
 
 Tu-whit ! — Tu-whoo ! 
 
 And hark, again ! the crowing cock, 
 
 How drowsily he crew. 
 
 Sir Leoline, the baron rich, 
 
 Hath a toothless mastiff bitch ; 
 
 From her kennel beneath the rock 
 
 She maketh answer to the clock 
 
 Fbur fdr thS quarters and twelve f Or the~ hour , 
 
 Ever and aye, by shine and shower, 
 
 Sixteen short howls, not over loud : 
 
 Some say, she sees my lady's shroud. 
 
 7s the night chilly and dark ! 
 The night is chilly, but nbt dark. 
 The thin grey cloud is spread on high, 
 It covers, but not hides, the sky. 
 The moon is behind, and at the full, 
 And yet she looks both small and dull. 
 The night is chilly, the cloud is grey ; 
 
 (These are not superfluities, but mysterious returns of im- 
 portunate feeling) 
 
 Tis a month before the month of May, 
 And the sp?-ing comes slowly up this way. 
 The lovely lady, Christabel, 
 Whom her father loves so well, 
 What makes her in the wood so late, 
 A furlong from the castle-gate ?
 
 40 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 She had dreams all yesternight 
 
 Of her own betrothed knight; 
 
 And she in the midnight wood will pray 
 
 For the weal of her lover that's far away. 
 
 She stole along, she nothing spoke, 
 The sighs she heav'd were soft and low 
 And naught was green upon the oak, 
 
 But moss and rarest misletoe ; 
 
 She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, 
 
 And in silence prayeth she. 
 
 The lady sprang up suddenly, 
 
 The lovely lady, Christabel ! 
 
 It moan'd as near as near can be, 
 
 But what it is, she cannot tell, 
 
 On the other side it seems to be 
 
 Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree 
 
 The night is chill, the forest bare ; 
 Is it the wind that moaneth bleak ' 
 
 (This " bleak moaning " is a witch's) 
 
 There is not wind enough in the air 
 To move away the ringlet curl 
 From the lovely lady's cheek — 
 There is not wind enough to twirl 
 The bne red leaf, the last 6f Its clan, 
 That dance's as bftSn as dance it can, 
 Hanging sd light and hanging sd high, 
 On the tbpmost twig that lodks up St thS sky 
 
 Hush, beating heart of Christabel ! 
 Jesu Maria, shield her well ! 
 She folded her arms beneath her cloak, 
 And stole to the other side of the oak. 
 What sees she there ? 
 
 There she sees a damsel bright, 
 Dressed in a robe of silken white, 
 That shadowy in the moonlight shone : 
 The neck that made that white robe wan, 
 Her stately neck and arms were bare : 
 Her blue-vein'd feet unsandall'd were ; 
 And wildly glitter'd, here and there, 
 The gems entangled in her hair.
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 41 
 
 I guess 'twas frightful there to see 
 Jl lady so richly clad as she — 
 Beautiful exceedingly. 
 
 The principle of Variety in Uniformity is here worked out in 
 a style "beyond the reach of art." Every thing is diversified 
 according to the demand of the moment, of the sounds, the 
 sights, the emotions; the very uniformity of the outline is gently 
 varied ; and yet we feel that the whole is one and of the same 
 character, the single and sweet unconsciousness of the heroine 
 making all the rest seem more conscious, and ghastly, and ex- 
 pectant. It is thus that versification itself becomes part of the 
 sentiment of a poem, and vindicates the pains that have been 
 taken to show its importance. I know of no very fine versifica- 
 tion unaccompanied with fine poetry ; no poetry of a mean order 
 accompanied with verse of the highest. 
 
 As to Rhyme, which might be thought too insignificant to 
 mention, it is not at all so. The universal consent of modern 
 Europe, and of the East in all ages, has made it one of the mu- 
 sical beauties of verse for all poetry but epic and dramatic, and 
 even for the former with Southern Europe, — a sustainment for 
 the enthusiasm, and a demand to enjoy. The mastery of it con- 
 sists in never writing it for its own sake, or at least never ap- 
 pearing to do so ; in knowing how to vary it, to give it novelty, 
 to render it more or less strong, to divide it (when not in coup- 
 lets) at the proper intervals, to repeat it many times where lux- 
 ury or animal spirits demand it (see an instance in Titania's 
 speech to the Fairies), to impress an affecting or startling remark 
 with it, and to make it, in comic poetry, a new and surprising 
 addition to the jest. 
 
 Large was his bounty and his soul sincere, 
 
 Heav'n did a recompense as largely send ; 
 He gave to misery all he had, a tear ; 
 
 He gain'd from heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend. 
 
 Gray's Elegy. 
 
 The fops are proud of scandal ; for they cry 
 At every lewd, low character, " That's I" 
 
 Dryden's Prologue to the Pilgrim
 
 4'2 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 What makes all doctrines plain and clear ? 
 About two hundred pounds a year. 
 And that which was proved true before, 
 Prove false again ? Two hundred more. 
 
 Compound for sins they are inclin'd to, 
 By damning those they have no mind to. 
 
 Stor'd with deletery med'cines, 
 
 Hudibras. 
 
 Which whosoever took is dead since. 
 
 Id. 
 
 Sometimes it is a grace in a master like But er to force his 
 rhyme, thus showing a laughing wilful power over the most 
 stubborn materials : — 
 
 Win 
 The women, and make them draw in 
 The men, as Indians wjth & female 
 Tame elephant inveigle the male. 
 
 Hudibras. 
 
 He made an instrument to know 
 
 If the moon shines at full or no ; 
 
 That would, as soon as e'er she shone, straight 
 
 Whether 'twere day or night demonstrate ; 
 
 Tell what her diameter to an inch is, 
 
 And prove that she's not made of green cheese. 
 
 Id. 
 
 Pronounce it, by all means, grinches, to make the joke more 
 wilful. The happiest triple rhyme, Derhaps, that ever was 
 written, is in Don Juan : — 
 
 But oh ! ye lords of ladies intellectual, 
 
 Inform us truly, — haven't they hen-peck'd you all 1 
 
 The sweepingness of the assumption completes the flowing 
 breadth of effect. 
 
 Dryden confessed that a rhyme often gave him a thought. 
 Probably the happy word " sprung," in the following passage 
 from Ben Jonson, was suggested by it ; but then the poet must 
 have had the feeling in him.
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 43 
 
 — Let our trumpets sound, 
 And cleave both air and ground 
 With beating of our drums. 
 
 Let every lyre be strung, 
 Harp, lute, theorbo, sprung 
 With touch of dainty thumbs. 
 
 Boileau's trick for appearing to rhyme naturally was to com- 
 pose the second line of his couplet first ! which gives one the 
 crowning idea of the " artificial school of poetry." Perhaps 
 the most perfect master of rhyme, the easiest and most abundant, 
 was the greatest writer of comedy that the world has seen, — 
 Moliere. 
 
 If a young reader should ask, after all, What is the quickest 
 way of knowing bad poets from good, the best poets from the 
 next best, and so on ? the answer is, the only and two-fold way ; 
 first, the perusal of the best poets with the greatest attention ; 
 and, second, the cultivation of that love of truth and beauty 
 which made them what they are. Every true reader of poetry 
 partakes a more than ordinary portion of the poetic nature ; and 
 no one can be completely such, who does not love, or take an 
 interest in, everything that interests the poet, from the firmament 
 to the daisy, — from the highest heart of man to the most pitiable 
 of the low. It is a good practice to read with pen in hand, 
 marking what is liked or doubted. It rivets the attention, re- 
 alizes the greatest amount of enjoyment, and facilitates refer- 
 ence. It enables the reader also, from time to time, to see what 
 progress he makes with his own mind, and how it grows up 
 towards the stature of its exalter. 
 
 If the same person should ask, What class of poetry is the 
 highest ? I should say, undoubtedly, the Epic ; for it includes 
 the drama, with narration besides ; or the speaking and action 
 of the characters, with the speaking of the poet himself, whose 
 utmost address is taxed to relate all well for so long a time, par- 
 ticularly in the passages least sustained by enthusiasm. Whether 
 this class lias included the greatest poet, is another question still 
 under trial ; for Shakspeare perplexes all such verdicts, even 
 when the claimant is Homer; though, if a judgment may be 
 drawn from his early narratives (Venus and Adonis, and the
 
 44 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION 
 
 Rape of Lucrece), it is to be doubted whether even Shakspeare 
 could have told a story like Homer, owing to that incessant ac- 
 tivity and superfcetation of thought, a little less of which might 
 be occasionally desired even in his plays ; — if it were possible, 
 once possessing anything of his, to wish it away. Next to 
 Homer and Shakspeare come such narrators as the less univer- 
 sal, but still intenser Dante ; Milton, with his dignified imagina- 
 tion ; the universal, profoundly simple Chaucer ; and luxuriant, 
 remote Spenser — immortal child in poetry's most poetic solitudes : 
 then the great second-rate dramatists ; unless those who are 
 better acquainted with Greek tragedy than I am, demand a place 
 for them before Chaucer : then the airy yet robust universality 
 of Ariosto ; the hearty, out-of-door nature of Theocritus, also a 
 universalist ; the finest lyrical poets (who only take short flights, 
 compared with the narrators) ; the purely contemplative poets 
 who have more thought than feeling ; the descriptive, satirical, 
 didactic, epigrammatic. It is to be borne in mind, however, 
 that the first poet of an inferior class may be superior to follow- 
 ers in the train of a higher one, though the superiority is by no 
 means to be taken for granted ; otherwise Pope would be supe- 
 rior to Fletcher, and Butler to Pope. Imagination, teeming with 
 action and character, makes the greatest poets ; feeling and 
 thought the next ; fancy (by itself) the next ; wit the last. 
 Thought by itself makes no poet at all ; for the mere conclu- 
 sions of the understanding can at best be only so many intellec- 
 tual matters of fact. Feeling, even destitute of conscious 
 thought, stands a far better poetical chance ; feeling being a sort 
 of thought without the process of thinking, — a grasper of the 
 truth without seeing it. And what is very remarkable, feeling 
 seldom makes the blunders that thought does. An idle distinc- 
 tion has been made between taste and judgment. Taste is the 
 very maker of judgment. Put an artificial fruit in your mouth, 
 or only handle it, and you will soon perceive the difference be- 
 tween judging from taste or tact, and judging from the abstract 
 figment called judgment. The latter does but throw you into 
 guesses and doubts. Hence the conceits that astonish us in the 
 gravest, and even subtlest thinkers, whose taste is not propor- 
 tionate to their mental perceptions ; men like Donne, for instance ;
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 45 
 
 who, apart from accidental personal impressions, seem to look at 
 nothing as it really is, but only as to what may be thought of it. 
 Hence, on the other hand, the delightfulness of those poets who 
 never violate truth of feeling, whether in things real or imagi- 
 nary ; who are always consistent with their object and its re- 
 quirements ; and who run the great round of nature, not to 
 perplex and be perplexed, but to make themselves and us happy. 
 And luckily, delightfulness is not incompatible with greatness, 
 willing soever as men may be in their present imperfect state to 
 set the power to subjugate above the power to please. Truth, 
 of any great kind whatsoever, makes great writing. This is 
 the reason why such poets as Ariosto, though not writing with a 
 constant detail of thought and feeling like Dante, are justly 
 considered great as well as delightful. Their greatness proves 
 itself by the same truth of nature, and sustained power, 
 though in a different way. Their action is not so crowded 
 and weighty ; their sphere has more territories less fertile ; 
 but it has enchantments of its own, which excess of thought 
 would spoil, — luxuries, laughing graces, animal spirits ; 
 and not to recognize the beauty and greatness of these, treated 
 as they treat them, is simply to be defective in sympathy. Ev- 
 ery planet is not Mars or Saturn. There is also Venus and 
 Mercury. There is one genius of the south, and another of the 
 north, and others uniting both. The reader who is too thought- 
 less or too sensitive to like intensity of any sort, and he who is 
 too thoughtful or too dull to like anything but the greatest possi- 
 ble stimulus of reflection or passion, are equally wanting in 
 complexional fitness for a thorough enjoyment of books. Ari- 
 osto occasionally says as fine things as Dante, and Spenser as 
 Shakspeare ; but the business of both is to enjoy ; and in order 
 to partake their enjoyment to its full extent, you must feel what 
 poetry is in the general as well as the particular, must be aware 
 that there are different songs of the spheres, some fuller of notes, 
 and others of a sustained delight ; and as the former keep you 
 perpetually alive to thought or passion, so from the latter you 
 receive a constant harmonious sense of truth and beauty, more 
 agreeable perhaps on the whole, though less exciting. Ariosto, 
 for instance, does not tell a story with the brevity and concen-
 
 46 AN ANSWER 10 THE QUESTION 
 
 trated passion of Dante ; every sentence is not so full of matter, 
 nor the style so removed from the indifference of prose ; yet you 
 are charmed with a truth of another sort, equally characteristic 
 of the writer, equally drawn from nature, and substituting a 
 healthy sense of enjoyment for intenser emotion. Exclusiveness 
 of liking for this or that mode of truth, only shows, either that a 
 reader's perceptions are limited, or that he would sacrifice 
 truth itself to his favorite form of it. Sir Walter Raleigh, who 
 was as tranchant with his pen as his sword, hailed the Faerie 
 Queene of his friend Spenser in verses in which he said that 
 " Petrarch" was thenceforward to be no more heard of ; and 
 that in all English poetry, there was nothing he counted " of any 
 price" but the effusions of the new author. Yet Petrarch is stili 
 living ; Chaucer was not abolished by Sir Walter ; and Shaks- 
 peare is thought somewhat valuable. A botanist might as well 
 have said, that myrtles and oaks were to disappear, because 
 acacias had come up. It is with the poet's creations, as with 
 nature's, great or small. Wherever truth and beauty, whatever 
 their amount, can be worthily shaped into verse, and answer to 
 some demand for it in our hearts, there poetry is to be found ; 
 whether in productions grand and beautiful as some great 
 event, or some mighty, leafy solitude, or no bigger and more 
 pretending than a sweet face or a bunch of violets ; whether in 
 Homer's epic or Gray's Elegy, in the enchanted gardens of 
 Ariosto and Spenser, or the very pot-herbs of the Schoolmistress 
 of Shenstone, the balms of the simplicity of a cottage. Not to 
 know and feel this, is to be deficient in the universality of Na- 
 ture herself, who is a poetess on the smallest as well as the 
 largest scale, and who calls upon us to admire all her produc- 
 tions : not indeed with the same degree of admiration, but with 
 no refusal of it, except to defect. 
 
 I cannot draw this essay towards its conclusion better than 
 with three memorable words of Milton ; who has said, that poetry, 
 in comparison with science, is " simple, sensuous, and passion- 
 ate." By simple, he means unperplexed and self-evident ; by 
 sensuous, genial and full of imagery ; by passionate, excited 
 and enthusiastic. I am aware that different constructions have 
 been put on some of these words ; but the context seems to me
 
 WHAT IS POETRY ? 47 
 
 to necessitate those before us. I quote, however, not from the 
 original, but from an extract in the Remarks on Paradise Lost 
 by Richardson. 
 
 What the poet has to cultivate above all things is love and 
 truth ; — what he has to avoid, like poison, is the fleeting and the 
 false. He will get no good by proposing to be " in earnest at 
 the moment." His earnestness must be innate and habitual ; 
 born with him, and felt to be his most precious inheritance. " I 
 expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings," says 
 Coleridge, in the Preface to his Poems ; " and I consider my- 
 self as having been amply repaid without either. Poetry has 
 been to me its ' own exceeding great reward :' it has soothed my 
 afflictions ; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has 
 endeared solitude ; and it has given me the habit of wishing to 
 discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and sur- 
 rounds me." — Pickering's edition, p. 10. 
 
 " Poetry," says Shelley, " lifts the veil from the hidden 
 beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they 
 were not familiar. It reproduces all that it represents ; and the 
 impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward 
 in the minds of those who have once contemplated them, as me- 
 morials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself 
 over all thoughts and actions with which it co-exists. The 
 great secret of morals is love, or a going out of our own nature, 
 and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which ex- 
 ists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be 
 greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively ; he 
 must put himself in the place of another, and of many others : 
 the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. 
 The great instrument of moral good is imagination ; and poetry 
 administers to the effect by acting upon the cause." — Essays 
 and Letters, vol i., p. 16. 
 
 I would not willingly say anything after perorations like 
 these ; but as treatises on poetry may chance to have auditors 
 who think themselves called upon to vindicate the superiority of 
 what is termed useful knowledge, it may be as well to add, that 
 if the poet may be allowed to pique himself on any one thing 
 more than another, compared with those who undervalue him,
 
 43 AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION WHAT IS POETRY ? 
 
 it is on that power of undervaluing nobody, and no attainments 
 different from his own, which is given him by the very faculty 
 of imagination they despise. The greater includes the less. 
 They do not see that their inability to comprehend him argues 
 the smaller capacity. No man recognizes the worth of utility 
 more than the poet : he only desires that the meaning of the 
 term may not come short of its greatness, and exclude the no- 
 blest necessities of his fellow-creatures. He is quite as much 
 pleased, for instance, with the facilities for rapid conveyance 
 afforded him by the railroad, as the dullest confiner of its ad- 
 vantages to that single idea, or as the greatest two-idead man 
 who varies that single idea with hugginc; himself on his " but- 
 
 O Do o 
 
 tons " or his good dinner. But he sees also the beauty of the 
 country through which he passes, of the towns, of the heavens, 
 of the steam-engine itself, thundering and fuming along like a 
 magic horse, of the affections that are carrying, perhaps, hall 
 the passengers on their journey, nay, of those of the great two- 
 idead man ; and, beyond all this, he discerns the incalculable 
 amount of good, and knowledge, and refinement, and mutual 
 consideration, which this wonderful invention is fitted to circu- 
 late over the globe, perhaps to the displacement of war itself, 
 and certainly to the diffusion of millions of enjoyments. 
 
 " And a button-maker, after all, invented it !" cries our 
 friend. 
 
 Pardon me — it was a nobleman. A button-maker may be a 
 very excellent, and a very poetical man, too, and yet not have 
 been the first man visited by a sense of the gigantic powers of 
 the combination of water and fire. It was a nobleman who first 
 thought of this most poetical bit of science. It was a nobleman 
 who first thought of it, — a captain who first tried it, — and a but- 
 ton-maker who perfected it. And he who put the nobleman on 
 such thoughts, was the great philosopher, Bacon, who said that 
 poetry had " something divine in it," and was necessary to the 
 satisfaction of the human mind.
 
 SPENSER. 49 
 
 SPENSER, 
 
 BORN, PROBABLY, ABOUT THE YEAR 1553- 
 DIED, 1598. 
 
 Three things must be conceded to the objectors against this 
 divine poet ; first, that he wrote a good deal of allegory ; second, 
 Jhat he has a great many superfluous words ; third, that he was 
 very fond of alliteration. He is accused also (by little boys) of 
 obsolete words and spelling ; and it must be added, that he often 
 forces his rhymes ; nay, spells them in an arbitrary manner on 
 purpose to make them fit. In short, he has a variety of faults, 
 real or supposed, that would be intolerable in writers in general. 
 This is true. The answer is, that his genius not only makes 
 amends for all, but overlays them, and makes them beautiful, 
 with " riches fineless." When acquaintance with him is once 
 begun, he repels none but the anti-poetical. Others may not be 
 able to read him continuously ; but more or less, and as an 
 enchanted stream " to dip into," they will read him always. 
 
 In Spenser's time, orthography was unsettled. Pronunciation 
 is always so. The great poet, therefore, sometimes spells his 
 words, whether rhymed or otherwise, in a manner apparently 
 arbitrary, for the purpose of inducing the reader to give them the 
 sound fittest for the sense. Alliteration, which, as a ground of 
 melody, had been a principle in Anglo-Saxon verse, continued 
 such a favorite with old English poets whom Spenser loved, that, 
 as late as the reign of Edward the Third, it stood in the place 
 of rhyme itself. Our author turns it to beautiful account. 
 Superfluousness, though eschewed with a fine instinct by Chau- 
 cer in some of his latest works, where the narrative was fullest 
 of action and character, abounded in his others; and, in spite of 
 
 5
 
 60 SPENSER. 
 
 the classics, it had not been recognized as a fault in Spenser's 
 time, when books were still rare, and a writer thought himself 
 bound to pour out all he felt and knew. It accorded also with 
 his genius ; and in him is not an excess of weakness, but of will 
 and luxury. And as to allegory, it was not only the taste of 
 the day, originating in gorgeous pageants of church and state, 
 but in Spenser's hands it became such an embodiment of poetry 
 itself, that its objectors really deserve no better answer than has 
 been given them by Mr. Hazlitt, who asks, if they thought the 
 allegory would " bite them." The passage will be found a 
 little further on. 
 
 Spenser's great characteristic is poetic luxury. If you goto 
 him for a story, you will be disappointed ; if for a style, clas- 
 sical or concise, the point against him is conceded; if for pathos, 
 you must weep for personages half- real and too beautiful ; if for 
 mirth, you must laugh out of good breeding, and because it 
 pleaseth the great, sequestered man, to be facetious. But if you 
 love poetry well enough to enjoy it for its own sake, let no evil 
 reports of its " allegory" deter you from his acquaintance, for 
 great will be your loss. His allegory itself is but one part 
 allegory, and nine parts beauty and enjoyment ; sometimes an 
 excels of flesh and blood. His forced rhymes, and his sentences 
 written to fill up, which in a less poet would be intolerable, are 
 accompanied with such endless grace and dreaming pleasure, 
 fit to 
 
 Make heaven drowsy with the harmony, 
 
 that although it is to be no more expected of anybody to read 
 him through at once, than to wander days and nights in a forest, 
 thinking of nothing else, yet any true lover of poetry, when he 
 comes to know him, would as soon quarrel with repose on the 
 summer grass. You may get up and go away, but will return 
 next day at noon to listen to his waterfalls, and to see, " with 
 half-shut eye," his visions of knights and nymphs, his gods and 
 goddesses, whom he brought down to earth in immortal beauty. 
 Spenser, in some respects, is more southern than the south 
 itself. Dante, but for the covered heat which occasionally con-
 
 SPENSER. 51 
 
 centrates the utmost sweetness as well as venom, would be quite 
 n®rthern compared with him. He is more luxurious than Ari- 
 osto or Tasso, more haunted with the presence of beauty. His 
 wholesale poetical belief, mixing up all creeds and mythologies, 
 but with less violence, resembles that of Dante and Boccaccio ; 
 and it gives the compound the better warrant in the more agree- 
 able impression. Then his versification is almost perpetual 
 honey. 
 
 Spenser is the farthest removed from the ordinary cares and 
 haunts of the world of all the poets that ever wrote, except perhaps 
 Ovid ; and this, which is the reason why mere men of business and 
 the world do not like him, constitutes his most bewitching charm 
 with the poetical. He is not so great a poet as Shakspeare or 
 Dante ; — he has less imagination, though more fancy, than Mil- 
 ton. He does not see things so purely in their elements as 
 Dante ; neither can he combine their elements like Shakspeare, 
 nor bring such frequent intensities of words, or of wholesale 
 imaginative sympathy, to bear upon his subject as any one of 
 them ; though he has given noble diffuser instances of the latter 
 in his Una, and his Mammon, and his accounts of Jealousy and 
 Despair. 
 
 But when you are " over-informed " with thought and passion 
 in Shakspeare, when Milton's mighty grandeurs oppress you, or 
 are found mixed with painful absurdities, or when the world is 
 vexatious and tiresome,, and you have had enough of your own 
 vanities or struggles in it, or when " house and land " them- 
 selves are "gone and spent," and your riches must lie in the 
 regions of the " unknown," then Spenser is " most excellent." 
 His remoteness from every-day life is the reason perhaps why 
 Somers and Chatham admired him ; and his possession of every 
 kind of imaginary wealth completes his charm with his brother 
 poets. Take him in short for what he is, whether greater or less 
 than his fellows, the poetical faculty is so abundantly and beau- 
 tifully predominant in him above every other, though he had pas- 
 sion, and thought, and plenty of ethics, and was as learned a 
 man as Ben Jonson, perhaps as Milton himself, that he has 
 always been felt by his countrymen to be what Charles Lamb 
 called him, the " Poet's Poet." He has had more idolatry and
 
 52 SPENSER. 
 
 imitation from his brethren than all the rest put together. The 
 old undramatic poets, Drayton, Browne, Drummond, Giles and 
 Phineas Fletcher, were as full of him as the dramatic were of 
 Shakspeare. Milton studied and used him, calling him the 
 " sage and serious Spenser;" and adding, that he "dared be 
 known to think him a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." 
 Cowley said that he became a poet by reading him. Dryden 
 claimed him for a master. Pope said he read him with as much 
 pleasure when he was old, as young. Collins and Gray loved 
 him ; Thomson, Shenstone, and a host of inferior writers, ex- 
 pressly imitated him ; Burns, Byron, Shelley, and Keats made 
 use of his stanza ; Coleridge eulogized him ; and he is as dear 
 to the best living poets as he was to their predecessors. Spenser 
 has stood all the changes in critical opinion ; all the logical and 
 formal conclusions of the understanding, as opposed to imagina- 
 tion and lasting sympathy. Plobbes in vain attempted to depose 
 him in favor of Davenant's Gondibert. Locke and his friend 
 Molyneux to no purpose preferred Blackmore ! Hume, acute 
 and encroaching philosopher as he was, but not so universal in 
 his philosophy as great poets, hurt Spenser's reputation with 
 none but the French (who did not know him) ; and, by way of 
 involuntary amends for the endeavor, he set up for poets such 
 men as Wilkie and Blacklock ! In vain, in vain. " In spite of 
 philosophy and fashion," says a better critic of that day (Bishop 
 Hurd), "'Faerie Spenser' still ranks highest amongst the 
 poets ; I mean with all those who are either of that house, or 
 have any kindness for it. Earth-born critics may blaspheme ; 
 
 But all the gods are ravish'd with delight 
 
 Of his celestial song and music's wondrous might." 
 
 Remarks on the Plan and Conduct of the Faerie Queene (inTodd's edition of Spenser, vol. 
 
 ii., p. 183). 
 
 " In reading Spenser," says Warton, " if the critic is not 
 satisfied, yet the reader is transported." (Id., p. 65.) 
 
 " Spenser," observes Coleridge, * has the wit of the southern, 
 with the deeper inwardness of the northern genius. Take espe- 
 cial note of the marvellous independence and true imaginative 
 absence of all particular space or time in the Faerie Queene.
 
 SPENSER. 53 
 
 It is in the domains neither of history nor geography : it is 
 ignorant of all artificial boundary, all material obstacles ; it ia 
 truly in land of Faerie, that is, of mental space. The poet has 
 placed you in a dream, a charmed sleep : and you neither wish 
 nor have the power to inquire, where you are, or how you got 
 there." Literary Remains, vol. i., p. 94. 
 
 " In reading the Faerie Queene," says Hazlitt, " you see a 
 little withered old man by a wood-side opening a wicket, a giant, 
 and a dwarf lagging far behind, a damsel in a boat upon an en- 
 chanted lake, wood-nymphs and satyrs : and all of a sudden you 
 are transported into a lofty palace, with tapers burning, amidst 
 knights and ladies, with dance and revelry, and song, ' and mask 
 and antique pageantry.'- — But some people will say that all this 
 may be very fine, but they cannot understand it on account of 
 the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if they 
 thought it would bite them ; they look at it as a child looks at a 
 painted dragon, and think that it will strangle them in its shining 
 folds. This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the alle- 
 gory, the allegory will not meddle with them. Without minding 
 it at all the whole is as plain as a pike-staff. It might as well 
 be pretended, that we cannot see Poussin's pictures for the alle- 
 gory, as that the allegory prevents us from understanding 
 Spenser." Lectures on the English Poets (Templeman's Edi 
 tion, 12mo., p. 67).
 
 54 SPENSER. 
 
 ARCHIMAGO'S HERMITAGE, 
 
 AND 
 
 THE HOUSE OF MORPHEUS. 
 
 Archimago, a hypocritical magician, lures Una and the Red-cross Knight 
 into his abode; and while they are asleep, sends to Morpheus, the god of 
 sleep, for a false dream, to produce discord between them. 
 
 A little lowly hermitage it was 
 Down in a dale, hard by a forest's side, 
 Far from resort of people, that did pass 
 In travel to and fro : a little wide 
 There was a holy chapel edified, 
 Wherein the hermit duly wont to say 
 His holy things each morn and eventide ; 
 Thereby a crystal stream did gently play 
 Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alwayA 
 
 Arrived there the little house they fill,2 
 Nor look for entertainment where none was ,3 
 Rest is their feast, and all things at their will . 
 The noblest mind the best contentment has.* 
 With fair discourse the evening so they pass, 
 For that old man of pleasing words had store, 
 And well could file his tongue as smooth as glass : 
 He told of saints and popes, and evermore 
 He strew' d an Ave Mary, after and before. 
 
 The drooping night thus creepeth on them fast ; 
 
 And the sad humor, loading their eye-lids, 
 
 As messenger of Morpheus, on them cast 
 
 Sweet slumbering dew ; the which to sleep them bids 
 
 Unto their lodgings then his guests he rids ; 
 
 Where, when all drown'd in deadly sleep he finds, 
 
 He to his study goes, and their amids' 
 
 His magic books and arts of sundry kinds, 
 
 He seeks out mighty charms to trouble sleepy minds.
 
 SPENSER. 55 
 
 Then choosing out few words most horrible 
 (Let none them read!) 5 thereof did verses frame, 
 With which, and other spells like terrible, 
 He bad awake black Pluto's grisly dame, 
 And cursed Heaven ; and spake reproachful shame 
 Of highest God, the Lord of life and light: 
 A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by name 
 Great Gorgon, 6 prince of darkness and dead night ; 
 At which Cocytus quakes, and Styx is put to flight. 
 
 And forth he call'd out of deep darkness dread 
 Legions of sprites, the which, like little flies,' 
 Fluttering about his ever damned head, 
 Await where to their service he applies^ 
 To aid his friends, or fray his enemies ; 
 Of those he chose out two, the falsest two 
 And fittest for to forge true-seeming lies ; 
 The one of them he gave a message to, 
 The other by himself staid other work to do 
 
 He maketh speedy way through spersed air, 
 And through the world of waters wide and deep? 
 To Morpheus' house doth hastily repair. — 9 
 Amid the bowels of the earth full steep, 
 And low, where dawning day doth never peep, 
 His dwelling is ; there Tethys his wet bed 
 Doth ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steep 
 In silver dew his ever-drooping head, 
 While sad night over him her mantle black doth spread 
 
 Whose double gates he findeth locked fast ; 
 The one fair fram'd of burnish'd ivory, 
 The other all with silver overcast ; 
 And wakeful dogs before them far do lie, 
 Watching to banish Care their enemy, 
 Who oft is wont to trouble gentle Sleep, 
 By them the sprite doth pass in quietly 
 And unto Morpheus comes, whom drowned deep 
 In drowsy fit he finds ; of nothing he takes keep. 
 
 And more to lull him in his slumber soft, 
 
 A trickling stream, from high rock tumbling down, 
 
 And ever drizzling ram upon the loft, 
 
 Jtfix'd with a murmuring wind, much like the sou 
 
 Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoun :
 
 56 SPENSER. 
 
 JVo other noise, nor people's troublous cries, 
 As still are wont f annoy the walled town, 
 Might there be heard ; but careless Quiet lies, 
 Wrapt in eternal silence, far from enemies. l & 
 
 The messenger approaching to him spake 
 
 But his waste words return'd to him in vain 
 
 So sound he slept, that naught might him awake. 
 
 Then rudely he him thrust, and push'd with pain, 
 
 Whereat he 'gan to stretch : but he again 
 
 Shook him so hard, that forced him to speak 
 
 As one then in a dream, whose drier brain 
 
 Is tost with troubled sights and fancies weak, 
 
 He mumbled soft, but would not all his silence break 
 
 The sprite then 'gan more boldly him to wake, 
 And threaten'd unto him the dreaded name 
 Of Hecate : whereat he 'gan to quake, 
 And lifting up his lumpish head, with blame 
 Half angry ask£d him, for what he came. 
 " Hither," quoth he, " me Archimago sent : 
 He that the stubborn sprites can wisely tame ; 
 He bids thee to him send for his intent 
 A fit false dream, that can delude the sleeper's sent." 11 
 
 The god obeyed ; and calling forth straightway 
 A divers dream 12 out of his prison dark, 
 Deliver' d it to him, and down did lay 
 His heavy head, devoid of careful cark ; 
 Whose senses all were straight benumb'd and stark. 
 He, back returning by the ivory door, 
 Remounted up as light as cheerful lark ; 
 JLnd on his little wings the dream he bore 
 In haste unto his lord, where he him left afore. 
 
 1 Welle-d forth alway. 
 
 The modulation of this charming stanza is exquisite. Let 
 us divide it into its pauses, and see what we have been hear- 
 ing :— 
 
 A little lowly hermitage it was | 
 Down in a dale, | hard by a forest's side, | 
 Far from resort of people | that did pass 
 In travel to and fro : | a little wide j
 
 SPENSER. 57 
 
 There was a holy chapel edified, | 
 Wherein the hermit duly wont to say 
 His holy things | each morn and eventide ; 
 Thereby a crystal stream did gently play | 
 Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alway. 
 
 Mark the variety of pauses, of the accentuation of the sylla- 
 bles and of the intonation of the vowels ; all closing in that ex- 
 quisite last line, as soft and continuous as the water it describes. 
 The repetition of the words little and holy' add to the sacred 
 snugness of the abode. We are to fancy the little tenement on 
 the skirts of a forest, that is to say, within, but not deeply 
 within, the trees ; the chapel is near it, but not close to it, 
 more embowered ; and the rivulet may be supposed to circuit 
 both chapel and hermitage, running partly under the trees be- 
 tween mossy and flowery banks, for hermits were great cullers 
 of simples ; and though Archimago was a false hermit, we are 
 to suppose him living in a true hermitage. It is one of those 
 pictures which remain for ever in the memory ; and the suc- 
 ceeding stanza is worthy of it. 
 
 2 Arrived there the little house they fiU. 
 
 Not literally the house, but the apartment as a specimen of 
 the house ; for we see by what follows that the hermitage must 
 have contained at least four rooms ; one in which the knight 
 and the lady were introduced, two more for their bed-chambers, 
 and a fourth for the magician's study. 
 
 3 Nor look for entertainment where none was. 
 
 " Entertainment" is here used in the restricted sense of treat- 
 ment as regards food and accommodation ; according to the 
 old inscription over inn-doors — " Entertainment for man and 
 horse." 
 
 4 The noblest mind the best contentment has. 
 
 This is one of Spenser's many noble sentiments expressed in 
 as noble single lines, as if made to be recorded in the copy-books
 
 58 SPENSER. 
 
 of full-grown memories. As, for example, one which he is fond 
 of repeating : — 
 
 No service loathsome to a gentle kind. 
 Entire affection scorneth nicer hands. 
 True love loathes disdainful nicety. 
 
 A.nd that fine Alexandrine, — 
 
 Weak body well is chang'd for mind's redoubled force. 
 
 And another, which Milton has imitated in Comus — 
 
 Virtue gives herself light in darkness for to wade. 
 
 5 " Let none them read." — As if we could ! And yet while we 
 smile at the impossibility, we delight in this solemn injunction of 
 the Poet's, so child-like, and full of the imaginative sense of the 
 truth of what he is saying. 
 
 6 A bold bad man that dared to call by name 
 Great Gorgon. 
 
 This is the ineffable personage, whom Milton, with a propriety 
 equally classical and poetical, designates as 
 
 The dreaded name 
 
 Of Demogorgon. 
 
 Par. Lost, Book ii., v. 9G5. 
 
 Ancient believers apprehended such dreadful consequences 
 from the mention of him, that his worst and most potent invokers 
 are represented as fearful of it; nor am I aware that any poet, 
 Greek or Latin, has done it, though learned commentators on 
 Spenser imply otherwise. In the passages they allude to, in 
 Lucan and Statius, there is no name uttered. The adjuration 
 is always made by a periphrasis. This circumstance is noticed 
 by Boccaccio, who has given by far the best, and indeed, I be- 
 lieve, the only account of this very rare god, except what is 
 abridged from his pages in a modern Italian mythology, and fur- 
 nished by his own authorities, Lactantius and Theodontus, the 
 latter an author now lost. Ben Jonson calls him " Boccaccio's 
 Demogorgon." The passage is in the first book of his Genea-
 
 SPENSER. 59 
 
 logia Deorum, a work of prodigious erudition for that age, and 
 full of the gusto of a man of genius. According to Boccaccio, 
 Demogorgon (Spirit Earthworker) was the great deity of the 
 rustical Arcadians, and the creator of all things out of brute 
 matter. He describes him as a pale and sordid-looking wretch, 
 inhabiting the centre of the earth, all over moss and dirt, squal- 
 idly wet, and emitting an earthy smell ; and he laughs at the 
 credulity of the ancients in thinking to make a god of such a fel- 
 low. He is very glad, however, to talk about him ; and doubt- 
 less had a lurking respect for him, inasmuch as mud and dirt 
 are among the elements of things material, and therefore par- 
 take of a certain mystery and divineness. 
 
 7 Legions of sprites, the which like little flies. 
 
 Flies are old embodiments of evil spirits ; — Anacreon forbids us 
 to call them incarnations, in reminding us that insects are flesh- 
 less and bloodless, (ti'uiitooagxu. Beelzebub signifies the Lord of 
 Flics. 
 
 8 The world of waters wide and deep. 
 
 How complete a sense of the ocean under one of its aspects ! 
 Spenser had often been at sea, and his pictures of it, or in con- 
 nexion with it, are frequent and fine accordingly, superior per- 
 haps to those of any other English poet, Milton certainly, ex- 
 cept in that one famous imaginative passage in which he de- 
 scribes a fleet at a distance as seeming to " hang in the clouds." 
 And Shakspearc throws himself wonderfully into a storm at sea, 
 as if he had been in the thick of it ; though it is not known that 
 he ever quitted the land. But nobody talks so much about the 
 sea, or its inhabitants, or its voyagers, as Spenser. He was 
 well acquainted with the Irish Channel. Coleridge observes, 
 (ut sup.) that "one of Spenser's arts is that of alliteration, which 
 he uses with great effect in doubling the impression of an image." 
 The verse above noticed is a beautiful example. 
 
 9 To Morpheus' house doth hastily repair, &c 
 
 Spenser's earth is not the Homeric earth, a circular flat, or disc,
 
 60 SPENSER. 
 
 studded with mountains, and encompassed with the " ocean 
 stream." Neither is it in all cases a globe. We must take 
 his cosmography as we find, and as he wants it ; that is to say, 
 poetically, and according to the feeling required by the matter 
 in hand. In the present instance, we are to suppose a precipi- 
 tous country striking gloomily and far downwards to a cav- 
 ernous sea-shore, in which the bed of Morpheus is placed, the 
 ^nds of its curtains dipping and fluctuating in the water, which 
 reaches it from underground. The door is towards a flat on the 
 fand-side, with dogs lying " far before it ;" and the moonbeams 
 reach it, though the sun never does. The passage is imitated 
 from Ovid (Lib. ii., ver. 592), but with wonderful concentration, 
 and superior home appeal to the imagination, Ovid will have no 
 dogs, nor any sound at all but that of Lethe rippling over its 
 pebbles. Spenser has dogs, but afar off, and a lulling sound 
 overhead of wind and rain. These are the sounds that men de- 
 light to hear in the intervals of their own sleep. 
 
 J9 Wrapt in eternal silence, far from enemies. 
 
 The modulation of this most beautiful stanza (perfect, except 
 for the word tumbling) is equal to that of the one describing the 
 hermitage, and not the less so for being less varied both in pauses 
 and in vowels, the subject demanding a greater monotony. A 
 poetical reader need hardly be told, that he should humor such 
 verses with a corresponding tone in the recital. Indeed it is 
 difficult to read them without lowering or deepening the voice, 
 as though we were going to bed ourselves, or thinking of the 
 ruiny night that lulled us. A long rest at the happy pause in 
 the last line, and then a strong accent on the word far, put us 
 in }>ossession of all the remoteness of the scene ; — and it is im- 
 proved, if we make a similar pause at Iteard : 
 
 No other noise, or people's troublous cries, 
 As still are wont to annoy the walled town, 
 Might there be heard ; — but careless quiet lies, 
 Wrapt in eternal silence, — far from enemies. 
 
 Upton, one of Spenser's commentators, in reference to the
 
 SPENSER. 61 
 
 trickling stream, has quoted in his note on this passage some fine 
 lines from Chaucer, in which, describing the "dark valley" of 
 Sleep, the poet says there was nothing whatsoever in the place, 
 save that, 
 
 A few wells 
 Came running fro the clyffes adowne, 
 That made a deadly sleeping sowne. 
 
 Sowne (in the old spelling) is also Spenser's word. In the text 
 of the present volume it is written soun', to show that it is the 
 same as the word sound without the d ; — like the French and 
 Italian, son, suono. 
 
 " "Tis hardly possible," says Upton, " for a more picturesque 
 description to come from a poet or a painter than this whole 
 magical scene." — See Todd's Variorum Spenser, vol. ii., p. 38. 
 
 Meantime, the magician has been moulding a shape of air to 
 represent the 'virtuous mistress of the knight ; and when the 
 dream arrives, he sends them both to deceive him, the one sitting 
 by his head and abusing " the organs of his fancy" (as Milton 
 says of the devil with Eve), and the other behaving in a manner 
 very unlike her prototype. The delusion succeeds for a time. 
 
 11 A fit false dream that can delude the sleeper's sent. 
 
 Scent, sensation, perception. Skinner says that sent, which we 
 falsely write scent, is derived a sentiendo. The word is thus 
 frequently spelt by Spenser. — Todd. 
 
 31 " A diverse dream.' 1 '' — " A dream," says Upton, " that would 
 occasion diversity or distraction ; or a frightful, hideous dream, 
 from the Italian, sogno diverso." — Dante, Inferno, canto vi. 
 
 Cerbero, fiera crudele e diversa. 
 
 (Cerberus, the fierce beast, cruel and diverse.) 
 
 Inferno, Orlando Innamorato, Lib. i., canto 4, stanza 66. 
 
 Un grido orribile e diverso. 
 
 (There rose a cry, horrible and diverse), &c. 
 
 See Todd's Edition, as above, p. 42.
 
 62 SPENSER. 
 
 The obvious sense, however, as in the case of Dante's Cerberus, 
 I take to be monstrously varied, — inconsistent with itself. The 
 dream is to make the knight's mistress contradict her natural 
 character. 
 
 THE CAVE OF MAMMON 
 
 AND 
 
 GARDEN OF PROSERPINE. 
 
 Sir Guyon, crossing a desert, finds Mammon sitting amidst his gold in a 
 gloomy valley. Mammon, taking him down into his cave, tempts him 
 with the treasures there, and also with those in the Garden of Proserpine 
 
 " Spenser's strength," says Hazlitt, " is not strength of will 
 or action, of bone and muscle, nor is it coarse and palpable ; but 
 it assumes a character of vastness and sublimity seen through 
 the same visionary medium" (he has just been alluding to 
 one), and blended with the appalling associations of preternatural 
 agency. We need only turn in proof of this to the Cave of 
 Despair, or the Cave of Mammon, or to the account of the 
 change of Malbecco into Jealousy." — Lectures, p. 77. 
 
 That house's form within was rude and strong, 13 
 Like a huge cave hewn out of rocky clift, 
 From whose rough vault the ragged branches hung 
 Embost with massy gold of glorious gift, 
 And with rich metal loaded, every rift, 
 That heavy ruin they did seem to threat ; 
 And over them Arachne high did lift 
 Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net, 
 Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds more black than jet. 
 
 Both roof and floor, and walls were all of gold, 
 But overgrown with dust and old decay, 
 And hid in darkness, that none could behold 
 The hue thereof; for view of chearful day 
 Did never in that house itself display,
 
 SPENSER. 63 
 
 But a faint shadoiv of uncertain light ; 
 Such as a lamp, whose life does fade away ; 
 Or as the moon, clothed with cloudy night, 
 Does show to him that ivalks in fear and sad affright. 
 
 In all that room was nothing to be seen, 
 But huge great iron chests and coffers strong, 
 All barr'd with double bands, that none could ween 
 Them to enforce by violence or wrong ; 
 On every side they placed were along ; 
 But all the ground with skulls was scattered, 
 And dead men's bones, which round about were flung, 
 Whose lives (it seemed) whilome there were shed, 
 And their vile carcases now left unburied. 
 
 They forward pass, nor Guy on yet spake word, 
 Till that they came unto an iron door, 
 Which to them open'd of its own accord, 
 And show'd of riches such exceeding store, 
 As eye of man did never see before, 
 Nor ever could within one place be found, 
 Though all the wealth which is, or was of yore, 
 Could gathered be through all the world around, 
 And that above were added to that under ground. 
 
 The charge thereof unto a covetous sprite 
 Commanded was, who thereby did attend, 
 And warily awaited, day and night, 
 From other covetous fiends it to defend, 
 Who it to rob and ransack did intend. 
 Then Mammon turning to that warrior, said : 
 " Lo here the worlde's bliss ! lo here the end, 
 To which all men do aim, rich to be made ! 
 Such grace now to be happy is before thee laid." 
 
 " Certes " (said he) " I n'ill thine offered grace, '•* 
 Nor to be made so happy do intend ; 
 Another bliss before mine eyes I place, 
 Another happiness, another end : 
 To them that list, these base regards I lend ; 
 But I in arms, and in achievements brave, 
 Do rather choose my fitting hours to spend, 
 And to be lord of those that riches have, 
 Than them to have myself, and be their servile slave 
 * * * * 
 
 w N'ill, ne-will, will not.
 
 64 SPENSER. 
 
 The Knight is led further on, and shown more treasures, 
 and afterwards taken into the palace of Ambition ; but all in 
 v ain. 
 
 Mammon emmoved was with inward wrath ; 
 Yet forcing it to fain, him forth thence led, 
 Through griesly shadows, by a beaten path, 
 Into a garden goodly garnished 
 
 With herbs and fruits, whose kinds must not be read : 
 Not such as earth, out of her fruitful womb, 15 
 Throws forth to men, sweet and well-savored, 
 But direful deadly black, both leaf and bloom, 
 Fit to adorn the dead and deck the dreary tomb. 
 
 There mournful cypress grew in greatest store ; 16 
 And trees of bitter gall ; and heben sad ; 
 Dead sleeping poppy : and black hellebore ; 
 Cold coloquintida ; and tetra mad ; 
 Mortal samnitis; and cicuta bad, 
 With which the unjust Athenians made to die 
 Wise Socrates, who therefore quaffing glad 
 Pour'd out his life and last philosophy 
 To the fair Critias, his dearest belamy ! 
 
 The garden of Proserpina this hight ; 17 
 And in the midst thereof a silver seat, 
 With a thick arbor goodly over-dight, 
 In which she often us'd from open heat 
 Herself to shroud, and pleasures to entreat : 
 Next thereunto did grow a goodly tree, 
 With branches broad dispread and body great, 
 Clothed with leaves, that none the wood might see, 
 And loaded all with fruit as thick as it might be. 
 
 Their fruit were golden apples, glistering bright, 
 That goodly was their glory to behold ; 
 On earth like never grew, nor living wight 
 Like ever saw, but they from hence were sold ; 18 
 For those, which Hercules with conquest bold 
 Got from great Atlas' daughters, hence began, 
 And planted there did bring forth fruit of gold ; 
 And those, with which th' Eubean young man wan 
 Swift Atalanta, when through craft It* her out-ran.
 
 SPENSER. 65 
 
 Here also sprung that goodly golden fruit, 
 With which Acontius got his lover true, 
 Whom he had long time sought with fruitless suit; 
 Here eke that famous golden apple grew, 
 The which amongst the gods false Ate threw ; 
 For which the Idcean ladies disagreed, 19 
 Till partial Paris deem'd it Venus' due, 
 And had of her fair Helen for his meed, 
 That many noble Greeks and Trojans made to bleed. 
 
 The warlike elf much wonder'd at this tree 
 So fair and great, that shadowed all the ground ; 
 And his broad branches, laden with rich fee, 
 Did stretch themselves without the utmost bound 
 Of this great garden, compass' 'd with a mound, 
 Which overhanging, they themselves did steep 
 In a black flood, which flowed about it round.* 
 That is the river of Cocytus deep, 
 In which full many souls do endless wail and weep. 
 
 Which to behold, he climb'd up to the bank ; 
 And, looking down, saw many damned wights 
 In those sad waves which direfull deadly stank, 21 
 Plunged continually of cruel sprites, 
 That with their piteous cries and yelling shrights 
 They made the further shore resounden wide. 
 Amongst the rest of those same rueful sights, 
 One cursed creature he by chance espied, 
 That drenched lay full deep under the garden side. 
 
 Deep was he drenched to the utmost chin, 
 Yet gaped still as coveting to drink 
 Of the cold liquor which he waded in : 
 And, stretching forth his hand, did often think 
 To reach the food which grew upon the brink ; 
 But both the fruit from hand and flood from mouth 
 Did fly aback, and made him vainly swinck, 
 The whiles he starv'd with hunger and with droughth 
 Ht daily died, yet never thoroughly dygn couth* 2 
 
 The knight, him seeing labor so in vain. 
 Ask'd who he was, and what he meant thereoy ! 
 Who groaning deep, thus answered him again* 
 " Most cursed of all creatures under sky, 
 Lo ! Tantalus, I here tormented lie ! 
 Of whom high Jove wont whilom feasted be! 
 Lo ! here I now for want of food do die ! 
 6
 
 SPENSER. 
 
 But, if that thou be such as I thee see, 
 Of grace I pray thee give to eat and drink to me !" 
 
 " Nay, nay, thou greedy Tantalus" quoth he ; 
 " Abide the fortune of thy present fate ; 
 And unto all that live in high degree, 
 Example be of mind intemperate, 
 To teach them how to use their present state." 
 Then 'gan the cursed wretch aloud to cry, 
 Accusing highest Jove and gods ingrate : 
 And eke blaspheming Heaven bitterly, 
 As author of injustice, there to let him die. 
 
 He look'd a little further, and espied 
 Another wretch whose carcase deep was drent 
 Within the river which the same did hide : 
 But both his hands, most filthy feculent, 
 Above the water were on high extent, 
 And fain? d to wash themselves incessantly, 
 Yet nothing cleaner were for such intent, 
 But rather fouler seemed to the eye ; 
 So lost his labor vain, and idle industry. 
 
 The knight him calling, asked who he was r 
 Who, lifting up his head, him answered thus : 
 " I Pilate am, 23 the falsest judge, alas ! 
 And most unjust ; that, by unrighteous 
 And wicked doom, to Jews despiteous 
 Delivered up the Lord of Life to die, 
 And did acquit a murderer felonous ; 
 The whilst my hands I wash'd in purity ; 
 The whilst my soul was soil'd with foul iniquity." 
 
 Infinite more tormented in like pain 
 He then beheld, too long here to be told : 
 Nor Mammon would there let him long remain, 
 For terror of the tortures manifold, 
 In which the damned souls he did behold, 
 But roughly him bespake : " Thou fearful fool, 
 Why takest not of that same fruit of gold ; 
 Nor sittest down on that same silver stool, 
 To rest thy weary person in the shady cool !" 
 
 All which he did to do him deadly fall 
 In frail intemperance through sinful bait; 
 To which if he inclined had at all,
 
 SPENSER. 67 
 
 That dreadful fiend, which did behind him wait, 
 Would him have rent in thousand pieces straight: 
 But he was wary wise in all his way, 
 And well perceived his deceitful sleight, 
 Nor suffered lust his safety to betray : 
 So goodly did beguile the guiler of his prey. 
 
 And now he has so long remained there, 
 That vital power 'gan wax both weak and wan 
 For want of food and sleep, which two upbear, 
 Like mighty pillars, this frail life of man, 
 That none without the same enduren can ; 
 For now three days of men were full outwrought, 
 Since he this hardy enterprise began : 
 Therefore great Mammon fairly he besought 
 Into the world to guide him back, as he him brought. 
 
 The god, though loth, yet was constrain'd t' obey , 
 For longer time than that no living wight 
 Below the earth might suffered be to stay : 
 So back again him brought to living light. 
 But all as soon as his enfeebled sprite 
 'Gan suck this vital air into his breast, 
 As overcome with too exceeding might, 
 The life did flit away out of her nest, 
 And all his senses were in deadly fit opprest. 
 
 13 That house's form within was rude and strong, &c. 
 
 Hazlitt, with his fine poetical taste, speaking of the two stan- 
 zas here following, and the previous one beginning, And over 
 all, SfC, says, that they are unrivalled for the " portentous mas- 
 siveness of the forms, the splendid chiaroscuro and shadowy 
 horror," — " Lectures on the English Poets," third edition, p. 77. 
 It is extraordinary that in the new "Elegant Extracts," pub- 
 lished under his name, seven lines of the first stanza, beginning 
 at the words, " from whose rough vault," are left out. Their 
 exceeding weight, the contrast of the dirt and squalor with the 
 gold, and the spider's webs dusking over all, compose chief part 
 of the grandeur of the description (as indeed he has just said). 
 Hogarth, by the way, has hit upon the same thought of a spider's 
 web for his poor's-box, in the wedding-scene in Mary-le-bone 
 church. So do tragedy and comedy meet. 
 
 •5 « Not such as earth," &c— Upton thinks it not unlikely that
 
 G8 SPENSER. 
 
 Spenser imagined the direful deadly and black fruits which 
 this infernal garden bears, from a like garden which Dante 
 describes, Inferno, canto xiii., v. 4. 
 
 Non frondi verdi, ma di color fosco, 
 Non rami schietti, ma nodosi e'nvolti, 
 Non pomi v' eran, ma stecchi con tosco. 
 
 (No leaves of green were theirs, but dusky sad ; 
 No fair straight boughs, but gnarl'd and tangled all : 
 No rounded fruits, but poison-bearing thorns.) 
 
 Dante's garden, however, has no flowers. It is a human 
 grove ; that is to say, made of trees that were once human be- 
 ing S) — an aggravation (according to his customary improve- 
 ment upon horrors) of a like solitary instance in Virgil, which 
 Spenser has also imitated in his story of Fradubio, book i., 
 canto 2, st. 30. 
 
 io There mournful cypress grew in greatest store, &c. 
 
 Among the trees and flowers here mentioned, helen, is ebony ; 
 coloquintida, the bitter gourd or apple ; tetra, the tetrum solanum, 
 or deadly night-shade ; samnitis, Upton takes to be the Sabine, 
 or savine-tree ; and cicuta is the hemlock, which Socrates 
 drank when he poured out to his friends his "last philosophy." 
 How beautifully said is that! But the commentators have shown 
 that it was a slip of memory in the poet to make Critias their 
 representative on the occasion, — that apostate from his philoso- 
 phy not having been present. Belamy is lei ami, fair friend, — 
 a phrase answering to good friend, in the old French writers. 
 
 17 The garden of Proserpina this hight. 
 
 The idea of a garden and a golden tree for Proserpina is in 
 Claudian, Be Raptu Proserpina, lib. ii., v. 290. But Spenser 
 has made the flowers funereal, and added the " silver seat," — 
 a strong yet still delicate contrast to the black flowers, and in 
 cold sympathy with them. It has also a certain fair and lady- 
 like fitness to the possessor of the arbor. May I venture, with 
 all reverence to Spenser, to express a wish that he* had made a
 
 SPENSER. 69 
 
 compromise with the flowers of Claudian, and retained them by 
 the side of the others? Proserpine was an unwilling bride, 
 though she became a reconciled wife. She deserved to enjoy 
 her Sicilian flowers ; and besides, in possessing a nature supe- 
 rior to her position, she would not be without innocent and 
 cheerful thoughts. Perhaps, however, our " sage and serious 
 Spenser" would have answered, that she could see into what 
 was good in these evil flowers, and so get a contentment from 
 objects which appeared only melancholy to others. It is cer- 
 tainly a high instance of modern imagination, this venturing to 
 make a pleasure-garden out of the flowers of pain. 
 
 18 " But they from hence were sold:''— Upton proposes that " with a 
 little variation," this word sold should be read stold ; "that is," 
 says he, " procured by stealth :" — he does not like to say stolen. 
 " The wise convey it call." Spenser certainly would have no 
 objection to spell the word in any way most convenient ; and I 
 confess I wish, with Upton, that he had exercised his licence in 
 this instance ; though he might have argued, that the infernal 
 powers are not in the habit of letting people have their goods for 
 nothing. In how few of the instances that follow did the pos- 
 session of the golden apples turn out well ! Are we sure that it 
 prospered in any ? For Acontius succeeded with his apple by 
 a trick; and after all, as the same commentator observes, it was 
 not with a golden apple, but common mortal-looking fruit, though 
 gathered in the garden of Venus. He wrote a promise upon it 
 to marry him, and so his mistress read, and betrothed herself. 
 The story is in Ovid : Heroides, Epist. xx., xxi. 
 
 19 For which the Idaan ladies disagreed. 
 
 " He calls the three goddesses that contended for the prize of 
 beauty, boldly but elegantly enough, Idsean Ladies." — Jortin. 
 "He calls the Muses and the Graces likewise, Ladies." — 
 Church. " The ladies may be further gratified by Milton's 
 adaptation of their title to the celebrated daughters of Hespe- 
 rus, whom he calls Ladies of the Hesperides." — Todd. The 
 ladies of the present day, in which so much good poetry and 
 reading have revived, will smile at the vindication of a word
 
 70 SPENSER. 
 
 again become common, and so frequent in the old poets and 
 romancers. 
 
 20 Winch overhanging, they themselves did steep 
 In a black flood f which flowed about it round, &c. 
 
 The tree, observe, grew in the middle of " this great garden," 
 and yet overhung its utmost bounds, and steeped itself in the 
 black river by which it was encircled. We are to imagine the 
 branches with their fruit stretching over the garden like one 
 enormous arbor or trellice, and mixing a certain lustrous light 
 with the gloom and the funereal flowers. You walk in the 
 shadow of a golden death. What an excessive and gorgeous 
 luxury beside the blackness of hell ' 
 
 51 And looking down saw many damned ivights 
 In those sad waves which direful deadly stank, 
 Plunged continually of cruel sprites, 
 That with their piteous cries, &c. 
 
 Virgil appears to have been the first who ventured to find 
 sublimity in a loathsome odor. I say " appears," because 
 many Greek writers have perished whom he copied, and it is 
 probable the invention was theirs. A greater genius, Dante, 
 followed him in this, as in other respects ; and, probably, would 
 have set the example had it not been given him. Sackville fol- 
 lowed both ; and the very excess of Spenser's sense of the 
 beautiful and attractive would render him fully aware of the 
 capabilities of this intensity of the repulsive. Burke notices 
 the subject in his treatise On the Sublime and Beautiful. The 
 following is the conclusion of his remarks : — " It is one of the 
 tests by which the sublimity of an image is to be tried, not 
 whether it becomes mean when associated with mean ideas, but 
 whether, when united with images of an allowed grandeur, the 
 whole composition is supported with dignity. Things which are 
 torrible are always great ; but when things possess disagreeable 
 qualities, or such as have indeed some degree of danger, but of 
 a danger easily overcome, they are merely odious, as toads and 
 spiders." — Part the Second, Section the Twenty-first. Both points
 
 SPENSER. 71 
 
 are easily illustrated. Passing by a foul ditch, you are simply 
 disgusted, and turn aside ; but imagine yourself crossing a 
 mountain, and coming upon a hot and slimy valley in which a 
 pestilential vapor ascends from a city, the inhabitants of which 
 have died of the plague and been left unburied ; or fancy the 
 great basin of the Caspian Sea deprived of its waters, and the 
 horror which their refuse would send up over the neighboring 
 regions. 
 
 22 He daily died, yet never thoroughly dySn couth. 
 
 Die could ; he never could thoroughly die. Truly horrible ; 
 and, as Swift says of his hanging footman, " very satisfactory 
 to the beholders." Yet Spenser's Tantalus, and his Pontius 
 Pilate, and indeed the whole of this latter part of his hell, 
 strike us with but a poor sort of cruelty compared with any like 
 number of pages out of the tremendous volume of Dante. But 
 the far greater part of our extract, the sooty golden cave of 
 Mammon, and the mortal beauty of the garden of Proserpine, 
 with its golden fruit hanging in the twilight ; all, in short, in 
 which Spenser combines his usual luxury with grandeur, are as 
 fine as anything of the kind which Dante or any one else ever 
 conceived. 
 
 S3 " I Pilate am," &c. Let it not be supposed that I intend the 
 slightest glance of levity towards the divine name which has 
 become identified with charity. But charity itself will allow us 
 to imagine the astonishment of this Roman Governor of Jerusa- 
 lem, could he have foreseen the destinies of his name. He 
 doubtless thought, that if another age spoke of him at all, it 
 would treat him as a good-natured man who had to rule over a 
 barbarous people, and make a compromise between his better 
 judgment and their prejudices. No name, except Judas's, has 
 received more execration from posterity. Our good-natured 
 poet has here put him in the " loathly lakes " of Tartarus.
 
 72 SPENSER. 
 
 A GALLERY OF PICTURES FROM SPENSER. 
 
 SPENSER CONSIDERED AS THE POET OF THE PAINTERS. 
 
 It has been a whim of late years with some transcendental critics, 
 in the excess of the reaction of what may be called spiritual 
 poetry against material, to deny utterly the old family relation- 
 ship between poetry and painting. They seem to think that 
 because Darwin absurdly pronounced nothing to be poetry which 
 could not be painted, they had.only to avail themselves of the 
 spiritual superiority of the art of the poet, and assert the con- 
 trary extreme. Now, it is granted that the subtlest creations of 
 poetry are neither effected by a painter-like process, nor limited 
 to his powers of suggestion. The finest idea the poet gives you 
 of anything is by what may be called sleight of mind, striking 
 it without particular description on the mind of the reader, 
 feeling and all, moral as well as physical, as a face is struck on 
 a mirror. But to say, nevertheless, that the poet does not in- 
 clude the painter in his more visible creations, is to deprive him 
 of half his privileges, nay, of half his very poems. Thousands 
 of images start out of the canvass of his pages to laugh at the 
 assertion. Where did the great Italian painters get half of the 
 most bodily details of their subjects but out of the poets ? and 
 what becomes of a thousand landscapes, portraits, colors, lights 
 and shades, groupings, effects, intentional and artistical pictures, 
 in the writings of all the poets inclusive, the greatest especially ? 
 I have taken opportunity of this manifest truth to introduce 
 under one head a variety of the most beautiful passages in 
 Spenser, many of which might otherwise have seemed too 
 small for separate exhibition ; and I am sure that the more po- 
 etical the reader, the more will he be delighted to see these 
 manifestations of the pictorial side of poetry. He will not
 
 SPENSER. 73 
 
 find them destitute of that subtler spirit of the art, which picture 
 cannot express. 
 
 " After reading," said Pope, " a canto of Spenser two or 
 three days ago to an old lady, between seventy and eighty years 
 of age, she said that I had been showing her a gallery of pic- 
 tures. I don't know how it is, but she said very right. There 
 is something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly in old age 
 as it did in one's youth. I read the Faerie Queene, when I 
 was about twelve, with infinite delight ; and I think it gave me 
 as much, when I read it over about a year or two ago." — 
 Spencers Anecdotes. 
 
 The canto that Pope here speaks of was probably one of the 
 most allegorical sort, very likely that containing the Mask of 
 Cupid. In the one preceding it, there is a professed gallery of 
 pictures, supposed to be painted on tapestry. But Spenser's 
 allegorical pictures are only his most obvious ones : he has a 
 profusion of others, many of them still more exquisitely painted. 
 I think that if he had not been a great poet, he would have been 
 a great painter ; and in that case there is ground for believing 
 that England would have possessed, and in the person of one 
 man, her Claude, her Annibal Caracci, her Correggio, her 
 Titian, her Rembrandt, perhaps even her Raphael. I suspect 
 that if Spenser's history were better known, we should find that 
 he was a passionate student of pictures, a haunter of the col- 
 lections of his friends Essex and Leicester. The tapestry just 
 alluded to, he criticises with all the gusto of a connoisseur, per- 
 haps with an eye to pictures in those very collections. In 
 speaking of a Leda, he says, bursting into an admiration of the 
 imaginary painter, 
 
 O, wondrous skill and sweet wit of the man, 
 
 That her in daffodillies sleeping made, 
 
 From scorching heather dainty limbs to shade! 
 
 And then he proceeds with a description full of life and beauty, 
 but more proper to be read with the context than brought for- 
 ward separately. The coloring implied in these lines is in the 
 very core of the secret of that branch of the art ; and the un-
 
 74 SPENSER. 
 
 painted part of the tapestry is described with hardly less 
 beauty. 
 
 For, round about, the walls y clothed were 
 With goodly arras of great majesty, 
 Woven with gold and silk so close and near, 
 That the rich metal lurked privily, 
 As feigning to be hid from envious eye ; 
 Yet here, and there, and everywhere, unwares 
 It show'd itself, and shone unwillingly ; 
 Like to a discolor' d snake, whose hidden snares 
 Through the green grass his long bright burnish' d back declares. 
 
 Spenser should have a new set of commentators, — the painters 
 themselves. They might do for him in their own art, what 
 Warton did in his, — trace him among his brethren. Certainly 
 no works would " illustrate" better than Spenser's with engrav- 
 ings from the old masters (I should like no better amusement 
 than to hunt him through the print-shops !), and from none might 
 a better gallery be painted by new ones. I once wrote an arti- 
 cle on the subject in a magazine ; and the late Mr. Hilton (I do 
 not know whether he saw it) projected such a gallery, among 
 his other meritorious endeavors. It did not answer to the origin- 
 als, either in strength or sweetness ; but a very creditable and 
 pleasing specimen may be seen in the National Gallery, — Sere- 
 na rescued from the Savages by Sir C ale pine. 
 
 In corroboration of the delight which Spenser took in this more 
 visible kind of poetry, it is observable that he is never more free 
 from his superfluousness than when painting a picture. When 
 he gets into a moral, or intellectual, or narrative vein, we might 
 often spare him a good deal of the flow of it ; but on occasions of 
 sheer poetry and painting, he is too happy to wander so much 
 from his point. If he is tempted to expatiate, every word is to 
 the purpose. Poetry and painting indeed would in Spenser be 
 identical, if they could be so ; and they are more so, too, than it 
 has latterly been the fashion to allow ; for painting does not deal 
 in the purely visible. It deals also in the suggestive and the 
 allusive, therefore in thoughts beyond the visible proof of the 
 canvass ; in intimations of sound ; in references to the past and 
 future. Still the medium is a visible one, and is at the mercy of
 
 SPENSER. 75 
 
 the spectator's amount of comprehension. The great privilege 
 of the poet is, that, using the medium of speech, he can make his 
 readers poets ; can make them aware and possessed of what he 
 intends, enlarging their comprehension by his details, or enlight- 
 ening it by a word. A painter might have the same feeling as 
 Shakspeare respecting the moonlight " sleeping" on a bank ; 
 but how is he to evince it ? He may go through a train of the 
 profoundest thoughts in his own mind ; but into what voluminous 
 fairy circle is he to compress them ? Poetry can paint whole 
 galleries in a page, while her sister art requires heaps of can- 
 vass to render a few of her poems visible. 
 
 This, however, is what everybody knows. Not so, that Spen- 
 ser emulated the Raphaels and Titians in a profusion of pic- 
 tures, many of which are here taken from their loalls. They 
 give the Poet's Poet a claim to a new title, — that of Poet of the 
 Painters. The reader has seen what Mr. Hazlitt says of him in 
 connection with Rubens ; but the passage adds, what I have 
 delayed quoting till now, that " none but Rubens could have 
 painted the fancy of Spenser;" adding further, that Rubens 
 "could not have painted the sentiment, the airy dream that 
 hovers over it." I venture to think that this fine critic on the 
 two sister arts wrote the first of these sentences hastily ; and that 
 the truth of the second would have shown him, on reflection, 
 with what painters, greater than Rubens, the poet ought to have 
 been compared. The great Fleming was a man of a genius as 
 fine and liberal as his nature ; yet who that looks for a moment 
 at the pictures which ensue, shall say that he would have been 
 justified in putting his name to them ? Sentiments and airy 
 dreams hover over them all, — say rather, abide and brood over 
 many, — with such thoug.htfulncss as the Italian aspect can only 
 match. More surprising is Mr. Coleridge's assertion, that 
 Spenser's descriptions are " not, in the true sense of the word, 
 picturesque ; but composed of a wondrous series of images, as 
 in dreams." Lectures (ut sup.), vol. i., p. 93. If, by true 
 sense of the word, he means the acquired sense of piquancy ot 
 contrast, or a certain departure from the smoothness of beauty in 
 order to enhance it, Spenser certainly is not in the habit of put- 
 ting many thorns in his roses. His bowers of bliss, he thought,
 
 7c SPENSER. 
 
 did not demand it. The gentle beast that Una rode, would not 
 have cut a very piquant figure in the forest scenery of Mr. Gil- 
 pin. But if Coleridge means picturesque in the sense of fit- 
 ness for picture, and very striking fitness, then the recollections 
 of the masks, or the particular comparison of Prince Arthur's 
 crest with the almond tree (which is the proof he adduces) made 
 him forget the innumerable instances in which the pictorial 
 power is exhibited. Nor was Spenser unaware, nay, he was 
 deeply sensible of the other feelings of the picturesque, as may 
 be seen in his sea-gods' beards (when Proteus kisses Amoret), 
 his " rank grassy fens," his " weeds of glorious feature," his 
 oaks " half dead," his satyrs, gloomy lights, beautiful but unlucky 
 grounds, &c, &c, &c. (for in this sense of the word, there are 
 feelings of the invisible corresponding with the stronger forms of 
 the picturesque). He has himself noticed the theory in his Bower 
 of Bliss, and thus anticipated the modern taste in landscape 
 gardening, the idea of which is supposed to have originated with 
 Milton : 
 
 One would have thought (so cunningly the rude 
 Jlnd scorned parts were mingled with the fine) 
 That Nature had for wantonness ensued 
 Art, and that Art at Nature did repine. 
 So, striving each the other to undermine, 
 Each did the other's work more beautify. 
 
 But the reader will judge for himself. 
 
 I have attached to each of the pictures in this Spenser Gal- 
 lery the name of the painter, of whose genius it reminded me ; 
 and I think the connoisseur will allow, that the assignment was 
 easy, and that the painter-poet's range of art is equally wide and 
 wonderful.
 
 SPENSER. 77 
 
 CHARISSA; OR, CHARITY. 
 Character, Spiritual Love ; Painter for it, Raphael. 
 
 She was a woman in her freshest age, 
 Of wondrous beauty and of bounty rare, 
 With goodly grace and comely personage, 
 That was on earth not easy to compare ; 
 Full of great love ; but Cupid's wanton snare 
 As hell she hated, chaste in work and will ; 
 Her neck and breasts were ever open bare, 
 That ay thereof her babes might suck their fill ; 
 The rest was all in yellow robes arrayed still. 
 
 A multitude of babes about her hung 
 Playing their sports, that joyed her to behold, 
 Whom still she fed, whilst they were weak and young, 
 But thrust them forth still as they waxed old ; 
 And on her head she wore a tire of gold 
 Adorn'd with gems and owches wondrous fair,* 
 Whose passing price uneathf was to be told ; 
 And by her side there sate a gentle pair 24 
 Of turtle doves, she silting in an ivory chair. 
 
 a* " And by her side" &c This last couplet brings at once be- 
 fore us all the dispassionate graces and unsuperfiuous treatmen 
 of Raphael's allegorical females. 
 
 * Owches wondrous fair. Owches are carcanets or ranges of jewels. 
 t Uneath. Scarcely, with difficulty.
 
 7* SPENSER. 
 
 HOPE. 
 
 Character, Sweetness without Devotedness ; Painter, Correggio. 
 
 With him went Hope in rank, a handsome maid, 
 Of cheerful look, and lovely to behold: 
 In silken samite she was light array'd, 
 And her fair locks were woven up in gold. iS 
 She alway smiVd ; — and in her hand did hold 
 An holy-water sprinkle dipp'd in dew, 
 With which she sprinkled favors manifold 
 On whom she list and did great liking shew ; 
 Great liking unto many, but true love to few. 
 
 25 " And her fair locks," &c. What a lovely line is that! and 
 with a beauty how simple and sweet is the sentiment portrayed 
 in the next three words, — " She alway smil'd !" But almost 
 every line of the stanza is lovely, including the felicitous Catho- 
 lic image of the 
 
 Holy-water sprinkle dipp'd in dew. 
 Correggio is in every color and expression of the picture. 
 
 CUPID USURPING THE THRONE OF JUPITER. 
 
 Character, Potency in Weakness ; Painter, the same. 
 
 In Satyr's shape, Antiope he snatch'd 
 And like a fire, when he ^Egine essay'd ; 
 A shepherd, when Mnemosyne he catch'd ; 
 And like a serpent to the Thracian maid. 
 While thus on earth great Jove these pageants play'd, 
 The winged boy did thrust into his throne ; 
 And scoffing, thus unto his mother said : 
 " Lo ! now the heavens obey to me alone, 
 And take me for their Jove, whilst Jove to earth is gone."
 
 SPENSER. 79 
 
 MARRIAGE PROCESSION OF THE THAMES AND MEDWAY. 
 
 Character, Genial Strength, Grace, and Luxury , Painter, 
 
 Raphael. 
 
 First came great Neptune with his three-fork'd mace, 
 That rules the seas and makes them rise or fall ; 
 His dewy locks did drop with brine apace, 
 
 Under his diadem imperial ; 
 And by his side his queen, with coronal, 
 Fair Amphitrite, most divinely fair, 
 
 Whose ivory shoulders weren covered all, 
 As with a robe, with her own silver hair, 
 And deck'd with pearls which the Indian seas for her prepare. 
 
 These marched far afore the other crew, 
 And all the way before them as they went 
 Triton his trumpet shrill before him blew, 
 For goodly triumph and great jolliment, 
 That made the rocks to roar as they were rent. 
 
 Or take another part of the procession, with dolphins and sea- 
 nymphs listening as they went, to 
 
 ARION\ 
 
 Then was there heard a most celestial sound 
 Of dainty music, which did next ensue 
 Before the spouse. That was Arion crown d ; 
 Who playing on his harp, unto him drew 
 The ears and hearts of all that goodly crew ; 
 That even yet the dolphin which him bore 
 Through the ^Egean seas from pirates view 
 Stood still by him, astonish'd at his lore, 
 And all the raging seas for joy forgot to roar. 
 
 So went he playing on the watery plain. se 
 M " So went he," &c. This sweet, placid, and gently progressing
 
 80 SPENSER. 
 
 line is one of Spenser's happy samples of alliteration. And 
 how emphatic is the information — 
 
 That was Anon, crown'd. 
 
 SIR GUYON BINDING FUROR. 
 Character, Superhuman Energy, and Rage ; Painter, Michael Angela 
 
 In his strong arms he stiffly him embrac'd, 
 Who, him gain-striving, naught at all prevail'd ; 
 Then him to ground he cast and rudely haled, 
 And both his hands fast bound behind his back, 
 And both his feet in fetters to an iron rack. 
 
 With hundred iron chains he did him bind, 
 And hundred knots that him did sore constrain; 
 Yet his great iron teeth he still did grind 
 And grimly gnash, threat'ning revenge in vain. 
 His burning eyes, whom bloody streaks did stain, 
 Stared full wide, and threw forth sparks of fire , 
 And more for rank despite, than for great pain, 
 Shak'd his long locks, color'd like copper wire, 2 " 
 And bit his tawny beard, to show his raging ire. 
 
 27 " Color'd like copper wire." A felicity suggested perhaps by 
 the rhyme. It has all the look, however, of a copy from some 
 oainting ; perhaps one of Julio Romano's. 
 
 UNA (OR FAITH IN DISTRESS). 
 Character, Loving and Sorrowful Purity glorified". 
 (May I say, that I think it would take Raphael and Correggio
 
 SPENSER. 81 
 
 united to paint this, on account of the exquisite chiaroscuro ? 
 Or might not the painter of the Magdalen have it all to himself ?) 
 
 Yet she, most faithful lady, all this while, 23 
 Forsaken, woful, solitary maid, 
 Far from all people's press, as in exile, 
 In wilderness and wasteful deserts stray'd, 
 To seek her knight, who subtily betray'd 
 Through that late vision which the enchanter wrought, 
 Had her abandon'd. She, of naught afraid, 
 Through woods and wasteness wide him daily sought, 
 Yet wished tidings none of him unto her brought 
 
 One day nigh weary of the irksome way, 
 From her unhasty beast she did alight, 
 And on the grass her dainty limbs did lay 
 In secret shadow far from all men's sight : 
 From her fair head her fillet she undight 
 And laid her stole aside : her angels face 
 As the great eye of heaven shinid bright, 
 And made a sunshine in the shady place ; 
 Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace. 
 
 It fortuned, out of the thickest wood 
 A ramping lion rushed suddenly, 
 Hunting full greedy after savage blood : 
 Soon as the royal virgin he did spy, 
 With gaping mouth at her ran greedily, 
 To have at once devour'd her tender corse ; 
 But to the prey when as he drew more nigh, 
 His bloody rage assuaged with remorse, 
 And with the sight amaz'd, forgot his furious force. 
 
 Instead thereof he kiss'd her weary feet, 
 And lick'd her lily hand with fawning tongue ; 
 As he her wronged innocence did weet. 
 how can beauty master the most strong, 
 And simple truth subdue avenging wrong ! 
 Whose yielded pride and proud submission, 
 Still dreading death when she had marked long 
 Her heart 'gan melt in great compassi5n : 
 And drizzling tears did shed for pure affection. 
 
 " The lion, lord of every beast in field," 
 Quoth she, " his princely puissance doth abate. 
 And mightv proud to humble weak does yield, 
 7
 
 82 SPENSER. 
 
 Forgetful of the hungry rage, which late 
 Him prick'd with pity of my sad estate — 
 But he my lion, and my noble lord, 
 How does he find in cruel heart to hate 
 Her, that him lov'd, and ever most ador'd 
 As the gbd of my life ? Why hath he me abhorr'd >"™ 
 
 *s " Yet she," &c. Coleridge quotes this stanza as " a good 
 instance of what he means " in the following remarks in his 
 Lectures : — " As characteristic of Spenser, I would call your 
 particular attention in the first place to the indescribable sweet- 
 ness and fluent projections of his verse, very clearly distinguish- 
 able from the deeper and more inwoven harmonies of Shak- 
 speare and Milton." Good, however, as the stanza is, and 
 beautiful the second line, it does not appear to me so happy an 
 instance of what Coleridge speaks of as many which he might 
 have selected. 
 
 The verses marked in the second stanza are one of the most 
 favorite quotations from the Faerie Queene. 
 
 *>"As the god of my life," &c Pray let not the reader consent 
 to read this first half of the line in any manner less marked and 
 peremptory. It is a striking instance of the beauty of that 
 " acceleration and retardation of true verse " which Coleridge 
 speaks of. There is to be a hurry on the words as the, and a 
 passionate emphasis and passing stop on the word god ; and so 
 of the next three words. 
 
 JUPITER AND MAIA. 
 
 Character, Young and Innocent but Conscious and Sensuous Beauty , 
 
 Painter, Correggio. 
 
 Behold how goodly my fair love does lie 
 
 In proud humility ! 
 Like unto Mai a, when as Jove her took 
 In Tempe, lying on the flowery grass, 
 'Twixt sleep and wake, after she weary was 
 With bathing in the Acidalian brook.
 
 SPENSER. 83 
 
 NIGHT AND THE WITCH DUESSA, 
 
 TAKING SANSJOY IN THEIR CHARIOT TO jESCULAFIUS TO BE RESTORED 
 
 TO LIFE. 
 
 Character, Dreariness of Scene; Horridness of Aspect and Wicked 
 Beauty, side by side ; Painter, Julio Romano. 
 
 Then to her iron waggon she betakes 
 And with her bears the foul well-favored ivitch: 
 Through mirksome air her ready way she makes, 
 Her twofold team (of which two black as pitch 
 And two were brown, yet each to each unlich*) 
 Did softly swim away, nor ever stamp 
 Unless she chanc'd their stubborn mouths to twitch ; 
 Then, foa?ning tar, their bridles they would champ, 
 And trampling the fine element would fiercely ramp. 
 
 So well they sped, that they be come at length 
 Unto the place whereas the Paynim lay 
 Devoid of outward sense and native strength, 
 Cover'd with charmed cloud from view of day 
 And sight of men, since his late luckless fray. 
 His cruel wounds, with cruddy blood congeal'd, 
 They binden up so wisely as they may, 
 And handle softly, till they can be heal'd, 
 So lay him in her chariot, close in night conceal'd 
 
 And all the while she stood upon the ground, 
 The wakeful dogs did never cease to bay ; 
 As giving warning of the unwonted sound, 
 With which her iron wheels did they affray, 
 And her dark griesly look them much dismay. 
 The messenger of death, the ghastly owl, 
 With dreary shrieks did also her bewray , 
 And hungry wolves continually did howl 
 At her abhorred face, so filthy and so foul. 30 
 
 * " Each to each unlich." Unlike.
 
 84 SPENSER. 
 
 Then turning back in silence soft they stole, 
 And brought the heavy corse with easy pace 
 To yawning gulf of deep Avernus hole. 
 By that same hole, an entrance, dark and base, 
 With smoke and sulphur hiding all the place, 
 Descends to hell : there creature never pass'd 
 That back returned without heavenly grace ; 
 But dreadful furies which their chains have brast, 
 And damned sprites sent forth, to make ill men aghast. 
 
 By that same way the direful dames do drive 
 Their mournful chariot JilVd with rusty blood, 3i 
 And down to Pluto's house are come belive : 
 Which passing through, on every side them stood 
 The trembling ghosts with sad amazed mood, 
 Chattering their iron teeth, and staring wide 
 With stony eyes ; and all the hellish brood 
 Of fiends infernal flock'd on every side, 
 To gaze on earthly wight, that with the night durst ride. 
 
 3° " So filthy and so foul."— Why he should say this of Night, 
 except, perhaps, in connection with the witch, I cannot say. It 
 seems to me to hurt the " abhorred face." Night, it is true, may 
 be reviled, or made grand or lovely, as a poet pleases. There 
 is both classical and poetical warrant for all. But the goddess 
 with whom the witch dared to ride (as the poet finely says at the 
 close) should have been exhibited, it would seem, in a more 
 awful, however frightful guise. 
 
 31 "Their mournful chariot fill'd with rusty blood."— There is some- 
 thing wonderfully dreary, strange, and terrible, in this picture. 
 By " rusty blood" (which is very horrid) he must mean the 
 blood half congealing; altered in patches, like rusty iron. Be 
 this as it may, the word " rusty," as Warton observes, " seems 
 to have conveyed the idea of somewhat very loathsome and hor- 
 rible to our author."
 
 SPENSER. 85 
 
 VENUS IN SEARCH OF CUPID, COMING TO DIANA. 
 
 Character, Contrast of Impassioned and Unimpassioned Beauty — 
 Cold and Warm Colors mixed ; Painter, Titian. 
 
 (Yet I know not whether Annibal Caracci would not better 
 suit the demand for personal expression in this instance. But 
 the recollection of Titian's famous Bath of Diana is forced 
 upon us.) 
 
 Shortly unto the wasteful woods she came, 
 Whereas she found the goddess with her crew, 
 After late chace of their embrewed game, 
 Sitting beside a fountain in a rew ; 
 Some of them washing with the liquid dew 
 From off their dainty limbs the dusty sweat 
 And soil, which did defile their lovely hue ; 
 Others lay shaded from the scorching heat ; 
 The rest upon her person gave attendance great. 
 
 She having hung upon a bough on high 
 Her bow and painted quiver, had unlac'd 
 Her silver buskins from her nimble thigh, 
 And her lank loins ungirt and breasts unbrac'd, 
 After her heat the breathing cold to taste ; 
 Her golden locks, that late in tresses bright 
 Embraided were for hindering of her haste, 
 Now loose about her shoulders lay undight, 
 And were with sweet ambrosia all besprinkled light 
 
 Soon as she Venus saw behind her back, 
 
 She was asham'd to be so loose surpris'd, 
 
 And wak'd half wrath against her damsels slack 
 
 That had not her thereof before aviz'd, 
 
 But sufFer'd her so carelessly disguiz'd 
 
 Be overtaken : soon her garments loose 32 
 Upgathering in her bosom she compriz 1 d, 
 Well as she might, and to the goddess rose 
 Whiles all her nymphs did like a garland her inclose
 
 86 SPENSER. 
 
 " Soon her garments loose," &c— This picture is from Ovid , 
 but the lovely and beautifully colored comparison of the gar- 
 land is Spenser's own. 
 
 MAY. 
 
 Character, Budding Beauty in male and female ; Animal Passion ; 
 Luminous Vernal coloring ; Painter, the same. 
 
 Then came fair May, the fairest maid on ground, 33 
 Deck'd all with dainties of her season's pride, 
 And throwing flowers out of her lap around : 
 Upon two brethren's shoulders she did ride, 
 The Twins of Leda ; which, on either side, 
 Supported her like to their sovereign queen. 
 Lord ! how all creatures laugh' d when her they spied, 
 And leap'd and danc'd as they had ravished been ; 
 And Cupid's self about her flutte~re~d all in green. 
 
 33 " Then came," &c — Raphael would have delighted (but Titian's 
 colors would be required) in the lovely and liberal uniformity of 
 this picture, — the young goddess May supported aloft ; the two 
 brethren on each side; animals and flowers below; birds in the 
 air, and Cupid streaming overhead in his green mantle. Ima- 
 gine the little fellow, with a body of Titian's carnation, tumbling 
 in the air, and playfully holding the mantle, which is flying 
 amply behind, rather than concealing him. 
 
 This charming stanza beats the elegant but more formal invo- 
 cation to May by Milton, who evidently had it in his recollec- 
 tion. Indeed the latter is almost a compilation from various 
 poets. It is, however, too beautiful to be omitted here. 
 
 Now the bright morning-star, day's harbinger, 
 Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her 
 The flowery May, who from her green lap throws 
 The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. 
 
 Hail beauteous May, that dost inspire 
 Mirth, and youth, and warm desire !
 
 SPENSER. 87 
 
 Woods and groves are of thy dressing, 
 Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. 
 Thus we salute thee with our early song, 
 And welcome thee, and wish thee long. 
 
 Spenser's " Lord ! how all creatures laugh'd " is an instance 
 of joyous and impulsive expression not common with English 
 poets, out of the pale of comedy. They have geniality in 
 abundance, but not animal spirits. 
 
 AN ANGEL, WITH A PILGRIM AND A FAINTING KNIGHT. 
 
 Character, Active Superhuman Beauty, with the finest coloring and 
 contrast ; Painter, the same. 
 
 During the while that Guyon did abide 
 In Mammon's house, the palmer, whom whilere 
 That wanton maid of passage had denied, 
 By further search had passage found elsewhe*e; 
 And being on his way, approached near 
 While Guyon lay in trance : when suddenly 
 He heard a voice that called loud and clear, 
 " Come hither, hither, come hastily !" 
 That all the fields resounded with the rueful cry 
 
 The palmer leant his ear unto the noise, 
 To weet who call'd so importun^dly ; 
 Again he heard a more enforced voice, 
 That bade him come in haste. He by-and-bye 
 His feeble feet directed to the cry ; 
 Which to that shady delve him brought at last, 
 Where Mammon earst did sun his treasury : 
 There the good Guyon he found slumbering fast 
 In senseless dream ; which sight at first him sore aghast 
 
 Beside his head there sat a fair young man, 34 
 Of wondrous beauty and of freshest years, 
 Whose tender bud to blossom new began, 
 And flourish far above his equal peers; 
 His snowy front, curled with golden hairs,
 
 8S SPENSER. 
 
 Like Phcebus' face adorn'd with sunny rays, 
 Divinely shone ; and two sharp winged shears, 
 Decked with diverse plumes, like painted jays, 
 Were fixed at his back to cut his airy ways 
 
 34 "Beside his head," &c— The superhuman beauty of this angel 
 should be Raphael's, yet the picture, as a whole, demands Ti- 
 tian ; and the painter of Bacchus was not incapable of the most 
 imaginative exaltation of countenance. As to the angel's body, 
 no one could have painted it like him, — nor the beautiful jay's 
 wings ; not to mention the contrast between the pilgrim's weeds 
 and the knight's armor. See a picture of Venus blinding Cupid, 
 beautifully engraved by Sir Robert Strange, in which the Cupid 
 has variegated wings. 
 
 AURORA AND TITHONUS. 
 
 Character, Young and Genial Beauty, contrasted with Age, — the ac- 
 cessories full of the mixed warmth and chillness of morning ; Pain- 
 ter, Guido. 
 
 The joyous day 'gan early to appear, 
 And fair Aurora from the dewy bed 
 Of aged Tithon 'gan herself to rear 
 With rosy cheeks, for shame as blushing red. 
 Her golden locks, for haste, were loosely shed 
 About her ears, when Una did her mark 
 Climb to her chariot, all with flowers spread, 
 From heaven high to chase the cheerless dark : 
 With merry note her loud salutes the mounting lark
 
 SPENSER. 89 
 
 THE BRIDE AT THE ALTAR. 
 
 Character, Flushed yet Lady-like Beauty, with ecstatic Angels regard- 
 ing her ; Painter, the same. 
 
 Behold, while she before the altar stands, 
 Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks, 
 And blesses her with his two happy hands, 
 How the red roses flush up in her cheeks ! 
 And the pure snow, with goodly vermeil stain, 
 
 Like crimson dyed in grain ! 
 That ev'n the angels, which continually 
 About the sacred altar do remain, 
 Forget their service and about her fly, 
 Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair 35 
 The more they on it stare ; 
 But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground, 
 Are governed with goodly modesty, 
 That suffers not one look to glance awry, 
 Which may let in a little thought unsound. 
 
 ss " Oft peeping in her face," &c. — I cannot think the words peep- 
 ing and stare, the best which the poet could have used ; but he 
 is aggravating the beauties of his bride in a long epithalamium, 
 and sacrificing everything to her superiority. The third line is 
 felicitous. 
 
 A NYMPH BATHING. 
 
 Character, Ecstacy of Conscious and Luxurious Beauty ; Paintet 
 
 Guido. 
 
 — Her fair locks which formerly were bound 
 
 Up in one knot, she low adown did loose, 
 
 Which flowing long and thick, her cloth' d around, 
 
 And the ivory in golden ma?itle gown'd,
 
 90 SPENSER. 
 
 So that fair spectacle was from him reft, 
 Yet that which reft it, no less fair was found : 
 So hid in locks and waves from looker's theft, 
 JVaught but her lovely face she for his looking left. 
 
 Withal she laughed, and she blush'd withal, 36 
 That blushing to her laughter gave more grace, 
 And laughter to her blushing. 
 
 36 " Withal she laughed," &c. — Perhaps this is the loveliest thing 
 of the kind, mixing the sensual with the graceful, that ever was 
 painted. The couplet, So hid in locks and waves, &c, would be 
 an excessive instance of the sweets of alliteration, could we bear 
 to miss a particle of it. 
 
 THE CAVE OF DESPAIR. 
 
 Character, Savage and Forlorn Scenery, occupied by Squalid Misery 
 
 Painter, Salvator Rosa. 
 
 Ere long they come where that same wicked wight 
 His dwelling has, low in a hollow cave. 
 Far underneath a craggy cliff ypight, 
 Dark, doleful, dreary, like a greedy grave, 
 That still for carrion carcasses doth crave ; 
 On top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly owl, 
 Shrieking his baleful note, which ever drave 
 Far from that haunt all other cheerful fowl, 
 And all about it wand'ring ghosts did wail and howl : 
 
 And all about old stocks and stubs of trees, 
 Whereon nor fruit nor leaf was ever seen, 
 Did hang upon the ragged rocky knees, 
 On which had many wretches hanged been, 
 Whose carcasses were scattered on the green, 
 And thrown about the cliffs. Arrived there, 
 That bare-head knight, for dread and doleful teen,* 
 Would fain have fled, nor durst approachen near, 
 But th' other forc'd him stay and comforted in fear. 
 
 * Teen — anxiety.
 
 SPENSER. 91 
 
 Look'd deadly dull, and stared as astoun'd ; 
 His raw-bone cheeks, through penury and pine, 
 Were shrunk into his jaws, as he did never dine. 
 That darksome cave they enter where they find 
 That cursed man low sitting on the ground, 
 Musing full sadly in his sullen mind ; 
 His griesly locks, long growen and unbound, 
 Disordered hung about his shoulders round, 
 And hid his face through which the hollow eyne. 
 
 His garment naught but many ragged clouts, 
 With thorns together pinn'd and patched was, 
 The which his naked sides he wrapp'd about ; 
 And him beside there lay upon the grass 
 A dreary corse, whose life away did pass, 
 All wallow'd in his own yet lukewarm blood, 
 That from his wound yet welled fresh alas ! 
 In which a rusty knife fast fixed stood, 
 And made an open passage for the gushing flood. 
 
 Still finer than this description are the morbid sophistry and 
 the fascinations of terror that follow it in the original ; but as 
 they are less poetical or pictorial than argumentative, the extract 
 is limited accordingly. There is a tradition that when Sir 
 Philip Sidney read this part of the Faerie Queene, he fell into 
 transports of admiration. 
 
 A KNIGHT IN BRIGHT ARMOR LOOKING INTO A CAVE. 
 
 Character, A deep effect of Chiaroscuro, making deformity visible 
 
 Painter, Rembrandt. 
 
 But full of fire and greedy hardiment, 
 The youthful knight would not for aught be stay'd, 
 But forth unto the darksome hole he went, 
 And looked in. His glistering armor made 
 A little glooming light, much like a shade ; 37 
 By which he saw the ugly monster plain, 
 Half like a serpent horribly display'd, 
 But th' other half did woman's shape retain, 
 Most loathsome, filthy foul, and full of vile disdain
 
 92 SPENSER. 
 
 37 " A little glooming light, much like a shade."— Spenser is very 
 fond of this eifect, and has repeatedly painted it. I am not 
 aware that anybody noticed it before him. It is evidently the 
 original of the passage in Milton : — 
 
 Where glowing embers through the room 
 Teach light to counterfeit a gloom. 
 
 Observe the pause at the words looked in. 
 
 MALBECCO SEES HELLENORE DANCING WITH THE SATYRS 
 
 Character, Luxurious Abandonment to Mirth ; Painter, Nicholas 
 
 Poussin. 
 
 — Afterwards, close creeping as he might, 
 He in a bush did hide his fearful head : 
 The jolly satyrs, full of fresh delight, 
 Came dancing forth, and with them nimbly led 
 Fair Hellenore, with garlands all bespread, 
 Whom their May-lady they had newly made : 
 She, proud of that new honor which they redd,* 
 And of their lovely fellowship full glad, 
 Danc'd lively : and her face did with a laurel shade. 
 
 The silly man then in a thicket lay, 
 Saw all this goodly sport, and grieved sore, 
 Yet durst he not against it do or say, 
 But did his heart with bitter thoughts engore 
 To see the unkindness of his Hellenore. 
 All day they danced with great lustyhead, 
 And with their horned feet the green grass wore, 
 The whiles their goats upon the browses fed, 
 Till drooping Phabus 'gan to hide his golden head. 
 
 * " That new honor which they redd." — Areaded, awarded.
 
 SPENSER. 93 
 
 LANDSCAPE, 
 
 WITH DAMSELS CONVEYING A WOUNDED SQUIRE ON HIS HORSE. 
 
 Character, Select Southern Elegance, with an intimation of Jine Ar- 
 chitecture ; Painter, Claude. {Yet "mighty" woods hardly belong 
 to him.) 
 
 Into that forest far they thence him led, 
 Where was their dwelling, in a pleasant glade 
 With mountains round about environed ; 
 And mighty woods which did the valley shade 
 And like a stately theatre it made, 
 Spreading itself into a spacious plain ; 
 And in the midst a little river play'd 
 Amongst the pumy stones, which seem'd to plain 
 With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain. 
 
 Beside the same a dainty place there lay, 
 
 Planted with myrtle trees and laurels green, 
 
 In which the birds sung many a lovely lay 
 
 Of God's high praise and of their sweet love's teen, 
 
 As it an earthly paradise had been ; 
 
 In whose enclosed shadows there was pight 
 
 A fair pavilion, scarcely to be seen. 
 
 THE NYMPHS AND GRACES DANCING TO A SHEPHERD'S 
 
 PIPE; or, 
 
 APOTHEOSIS OF A POET'S MISTRESS. 
 
 Character, Nakedness without Impudency : Multitudinous and Innocent 
 Delight ; Exaltation of the principal Person from Circumstances, 
 rather than her own Ideality ; Painter, Albano. 
 
 Unto this place whereas the elfin knight 
 Approach'd, him seemed that the merry sound
 
 94 SPENSER 
 
 Of a shrill pipe he playing heard on height, 
 
 And many feet fast thumping the hollow ground ; 
 
 That through the woods their echo did rebound ; 
 
 He higher drew, to weet what might it be ; 
 
 There he a troop of ladies dancing found 
 
 Full merrily, and making gladful glee, 
 
 And in the midst a shepherd piping he did see. 
 
 He durst not enter into the open green, 
 
 For dread of them unwares to be descry'd, 
 
 For breaking off their dance, if he were seen ; 
 
 But in the covert of the wood did bide, 
 
 Beheld of all, yet of them unespied : 
 
 There he did see (that pleas'd much his sight 
 
 That even he himself his eyes envied) 
 
 A hundred naked maidens, lily white, 
 
 All ranged in a ring, and dancing in delight. 
 
 All they without were ranged in a ring 
 And danced round, but in the midst of them 
 Three other ladies did both dance and sing, 
 The whilst the rest them round about did hem, 
 And like a garland did in compass stem ; 
 And in the midst of those same three were placed 
 Another damsel, as a precious gem 
 Amidst a ring most richly well enchaced, 
 That with her goodly presence all the rest much gracea. 
 
 Those were the Graces, daughters of delight. 
 Handmaids of Venus, which are wont to haunt 
 Upon this hill, and dance there day and night ; 
 Those three to man all gifts of grace do graunt, 
 And all that Venus in herself doth vaunt 
 Is borrowed of them ; but that fair one 
 That in the midst was placed paravaunt, 
 Was she to whom that shepherd pip'd alone, 
 
 That made him pipe so merrily as never none. 
 
 I 
 
 She was, to weet, that jolly shepherd's lass 
 Which piped there unto that merry rout; 
 That jolly shepherd, which there piped, was 
 Poor Colin Clout (who knows not Colin Clout ?) ; 
 He pip'd apace, whilst they him danc'd about. 
 Pipe, jolly shepherd ! pipe thou noiv apace 
 Unto thy love, that made thee low to lout ; 
 Thy love is present there with thee in place, 
 Thy love is there advaunst to be another grace. 39
 
 SPENSER. 95 
 
 38 " Thy love is there advanc'd," &c. — And there she remains, 
 dancing in the midst of the Graces for ever, herself a Grace, 
 made one by the ordinance of the poor but great poet who here 
 addresses himself under his pastoral title, and justly prides him- 
 self on the power of conferring immortality on his love. The 
 apostrophe is as affecting as it is elevating, and the whole scene 
 conceived in the highest possible spirit of mixed wildness and 
 delicacy. 
 
 A PLUME OF FEATHERS AND AN ALMOND TREE. 
 
 In this instance, which is the one he adduces in proof of his 
 remark on the picturesque, the reader must agree with Cole- 
 ridge, that the description (I mean of the almond tree), however 
 charming, is not fit for a picture : it wants accessories ; to say 
 nothing of the reference to the image illustrated, and the feeling 
 of too much minuteness and closeness in the very distance. 
 Who is to paint the tender locks " every one," and the whisper 
 of " every little breath ?" 
 
 Upon the top of all his lofty crest 
 A bunch of hairs discolor'd diversely, 
 With sprinkled pearl and gold full richly dress'd, 
 Did shake and seem to dance for jollity. 
 Like to an almond tree, ymounted high, 
 On top of green Selinis all alone, 
 With blossoms brave bedecked daintily, 
 Whose tender locks do tremble every tne, 
 At every little breath that under heaven is blown. 
 
 What an exquisite last line ! but the whole stanza is perfec- 
 tion. The word jollity seems to show the plumpness of the 
 plume ; what the fop in Moliere calls its embonpoint. 
 
 Hola, porteurs, hola ! La, la, la, la, la, la. Je pense que ces marauds- 
 la ont dessein de me briser a force de heurter contre les murailles et lea 
 paves. 
 
 1 Porteur. Dame, c'est que la porte est etroite. Vous avez voulu aussi 
 que nous soyons entres jusqu'ici.
 
 96 SPENSER. 
 
 Mascarille. Je le crois bien. Voudriez-vous, faquins, que j'exposasse 
 l'embonpoint de mes plumes aux inclemences de la saison pluvieuse, et que 
 j"allasse imprimer mes souliers en boue ? — Les Precieuses Ridicules, sc. 7. 
 
 [Mascarille (to the sedan chairmen). Stop, stop ! What the devil is all 
 this ? Am I to be beaten to pieces against the walls and pavement ? 
 
 Chairman. Why you see the passage is narrow. You told us to bring 
 "Vm right in. 
 
 Mascarille. Unquestionably. Would you have me expose the embon- 
 point of my feathers to the inclemency of the rainy season, and leave the 
 impression of my pumps in the mud ?] 
 
 Our gallery shall close with a piece of 
 
 ENCHANTED MUSIC. 
 
 Eftsoons they heard a most melodious sound 
 Of all that might delight a dainty ear. 
 Such as, at once, might not on living ground, 
 Save in this paradise be heard elsewhere : 
 Right hard it was for wight which did it hear 
 To weet what manner music that might be, 
 For all that pleasing is to living ear 
 Was there consorted in one harmony ; 
 Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree. 
 
 The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade 
 Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet: 
 Th' angelical, soft, trembling voices made 
 To th' instruments divine respondence meet ; 
 The silver sounding instruments did meet 
 With the base murmur of the water's fall ; 
 The water's fall, with difference discreet, 
 Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call ; 
 The gentle warbling wind low answered to all. 39 
 
 3 9 " The gentle warbling wind," &c. This exquisite stanza is a 
 specimen of perfect modulation, upon the principles noticed in 
 the description of Archimago 's Hermitage. The reader may, 
 perhaps, try it upon them. " Compare it," says Upton, " with 
 Tasso's Gierusalemme Liberata, canto 16, st. 12." Readers 
 who understand Italian will gladly compare it, and see how far 
 their countryman has surpassed the sweet poet of the south.
 
 MARLOWE. 97 
 
 MARLOWE, 
 
 BORN, ACCORDING TO MALONE, ABOUT 1565> DIED, 1593. 
 
 If ever there was a born poet, Marlowe was one. He perceived 
 thiags in their spiritual as well as material relations, and im- 
 pressed them with a corresponding felicity. Rather, he struck 
 them as with something sweet and glowing that rushes by ; — 
 perfumes from a censer, — glances of love and beauty. And he 
 could accumulate images into as deliberate and lofty a grandeur. 
 Chapman said of him, that he stood 
 
 Up to the chin in the Pierian flood. 
 
 Drayton describes him as if inspired by the recollection : — 
 
 Next Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs, 
 Had in him those brave translunary things, 
 That the first poets had ; his raptures were 
 All air and fire, which made his verses clear 
 For that fine madness still he did retain, 
 Which righth/ short Id possess a poet's brain. 
 
 But this happy genius appears to have had as unhappy a will, 
 which obscured his judgment. It made him condescend to 
 write fustian for the town, in order to rule over it ; subjected 
 him to the charge of impiety, probably for nothing but too scorn- 
 fully treating irreverent notions of the Deity; and brought him, 
 in the prime of his life, to a violent end in a tavern. His plays 
 abound in wilful and self-worshipping speeches, and every one 
 of them turns upon some kind of ascendency at the expense of 
 other people. He was the head of a set of young men from the 
 university, the Peeles, Greens, and others, all more or less pos- 
 sessed of a true poetical vein, who, bringing scholarship to the 
 
 8
 
 98 MARLOWE. 
 
 theatre, were intoxicated with the new graces they threw on the 
 old bombast, carried to their height the vices as well as wit of 
 the town, and were destined to see, with indignation and aston- 
 ishment, their work taken out of their hands, and lone better, by 
 the uneducated interloper from Stratford-upon-Avon. • 
 
 Marlowe enjoys the singular and (so far) unaccountable 
 honor of being the only English writer to whom Shakspeare 
 seems to have alluded with approbation. In As You Like It, 
 Phoebe says, 
 
 Dead Shepherd ! now I know thy saw of might, — 
 " Who ever lov'd that lov'd not at first sight ?" 
 
 The " saw " is in Marlowe's Hero and Leander, a poem not 
 comparable with his plays. 
 
 The ranting part of Marlowe's reputation has been chiefly 
 owing to the tragedy of TamburJainc, a passage in which is 
 laughed at in Henry the Fourth, and has become famous. Tam- 
 burlaine cries out to the captive monarchs whom he has yoked 
 to his car, — 
 
 Hollo, ye pampered jades of Asia, 
 
 What ! can ye draw but twenty miles a-day, 
 
 And have so proud a chariot at your hi 
 
 And such a coachman as great Tamburhune ? 
 
 Then follows a picture drawn with real pootry: 
 
 The horse that guide the golden eye of heaven, 
 
 And blow the morning from their nostrils (read nosterils), 
 
 Making their fiery gait above the clouds, 
 
 Are not so honor'd in their governor, 
 
 As you, ye slaves, in mighty Tamburlaine. 
 
 It has .atterly been thought, that a genius like Marlowe could 
 have had no hand in a play so bombastic as this huffing tragedy. 
 But besides the weighty and dignified, though monotonous tone 
 of his versification in many places (what Ben Jonson, very ex- 
 actly as well as finely, calls " Marlowe's mighty line,") there 
 are passages in it of force and feeling, of which I doubt whether 
 any of his contemporaries were capable in so sustained a degree, 
 though Green and Peele had felicitous single lines, and occa-
 
 MARLOWE. 99 
 
 sionally a refined sweetness. Take, for instance, the noble 
 verses to be found in the description of Tamburlaine himself, 
 which probably suggested to Milton his " Atlantean shoulders " 
 — " fit to bear mightiest monarchies " — and to Beaumont a fine 
 image, which the reader will see in his Melancholy : — 
 
 Of stature tall and straightly fashioned 
 
 Like his desire lift upward and divine, 
 
 So large of limbs, his joints so strongly knit, 
 
 Such breadth of shoulders as might mainly bear 
 
 Old Atlas' burthen :— 
 
 Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion, &c. 
 
 By " passion " we are to understand, not anger, but deep emo- 
 tions. Peele or Green might possibly have written the beauti- 
 ful verse that closes these four lines : 
 
 Kings of Argier, Moroccus, and of Fesse, 
 You that have marched with happy Tamburlaine 
 As far as from the frozen place of heaven 
 Unto the watery morning's ruddy bower : — 
 
 but the following is surely Marlowe's own : — 
 
 As princely lions when they rouse themselves, 
 Stretching their paws and threatening herds of beasts, 
 So in his armor looketh Tamburlaine. — 
 
 And in the following is not only a hint of the scornful part of 
 his style, such as commences the extract from the Jew of Malta, 
 but the germ of those lofty and harmonious nomenclatures, which 
 have been thought peculiar to Milton. 
 
 So from the cast unto the farthest west 
 Shall Tamburlaine extend his puissant arm. 
 The gallies and those pilling brig and ines 
 That yearly sail to the Venetian gulf 
 And h wer in the Straits for Christian wreck, 
 Shall lie at anchor in the isle Jlrant, 
 Until the Persian fleet cttid men of wars, 
 Sailing along the Oriental sea, 
 Have fetch' d about the Indian continent, 
 Even from Persepolis to Mexico, 
 And thence unto the Straits of Jub altar.
 
 100 MARLOWE. 
 
 Milton never surpassed the elevation of that close. Who also 
 bul Marlowe is likely to have written the fine passage extracted 
 into this volume, under the title of "Beauty beyond Expression," 
 in which the thought argues as much expression, as the style a 
 confident dignity ? Tamburlaine was most likely a joint-stocK 
 piece, got up from the manager's chest by Marlowe, Nash, and 
 perhaps half-a-dozen others ; for there are two consecutive plays 
 en the subject, and the theatres of our own time are not unac- 
 quainted with this species of manufacture. 
 
 But I am forgetting the plan of my book. Marlowe, like 
 Spenser, is to be looked upon as a poet who had no native pre- 
 cursors. As Spenser is to be criticised with an eye to his 
 poetic ancestors, who had nothing like the Faerie Queene, so is 
 Marlowe with reference to the authors of Gorboduc. He got 
 nothing from them ; he prepared the way for the versification, 
 the dignity, and the pathos of his successors, who have nothing 
 finer of the kind to show than the death of Edward the Second 
 — not Shakspeare himself: — and his imagination, like Spenser's, 
 haunted those purely poetic regions of ancient fabling and mod- 
 ern rapture, of beautiful forms and passionate expressions, which 
 they were the first to render the common pi'operty of inspiration, 
 and whence their language drew " empyreal air." Marlowe 
 and Spenser are the first of our poets who perceived the beauty 
 of words ; not as apart from their significance, nor upon occa- 
 sion only, as Chaucer did (more marvellous in that than them- 
 selves, or than the originals from whom he drew), but as a habit 
 of the poetic mood, and as receiving and reflecting beauty 
 through the feeling of the ideas. 
 
 THE JEW OF MALTA'S IDEA OF WEALTH. 
 
 So that of thus much that return was made, 
 And of the third part of the Persian ships, 
 There was the venture summ'd and satisfied 
 As for those Samnites, and the men of Uz, 
 That bought my Spanish oils and wines of Greece, 1 
 Here have I purs'd their paltry silverlings.
 
 MARLOWE. : 01 
 
 Fie ; what a trouble 'tis to count this trash! 
 
 Well fare the Arabians, who so richly pay 
 
 The things they traffic for with wedge of gold, 
 
 Whereof a man may easily in a day 
 
 Tell that which may maintain him all his life 
 
 The needy groom, that never finger' d groat, 
 
 Would make a miracle of thus much coin ; 
 
 But he whose steel-barr'd coffers are cramm'd full, 
 
 And all his life-time had been tired (read ti-er-ed), 
 
 Wearying his fingers' ends with telling it, 
 
 Would in his age be loth to labor so, 
 
 And for a pound to sweat himself to death. 
 
 Give me the merchants of the Indian mines, 
 
 That trade in metal of the purest mould ; 
 
 The wealthy Moor, that in the eastern rocks 
 
 Without control can pick his riches up, 
 
 And in his house heap pearl like pebblestones ; 
 
 Receive them free, and sell them by the weight ; 
 
 Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts, 
 
 Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds, 
 
 Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds, 
 
 And seld-seen costly stones of so great price, 
 
 As one of them indifferently rated, 
 
 And of a carat of this quantity, 
 
 •May serve, in peril of calamity, 
 
 To ransom great kings from captivity : 
 
 This is the ware wherein consists my wealth ; 
 
 And thus, methinks, should men of judgment frame 
 
 Their means of traffic from the vulgar trade, 
 
 And as their wealth increaseth, so inclose 
 
 Infinite riches in a little room. 
 
 But now how stands the wind ? 
 
 Into what corner peers my halcyon's bill ?* 
 
 Ha ! to the East ? yes ; see how stand the vanes ? 
 
 East and by south. Why then, I hope my ships 
 
 I sent for Egypt and the bordering isles 
 
 Arc gotten up by Nilus' winding banks ; 
 
 Mine argosies from Alexandria,- 
 
 Loaden with spice and silks, now under sail, 
 
 Are smoothly gliding down by Candy shore 
 
 To Malta, through our Mediterranean Sea. 
 
 i " Samnites" and " men of Uz," and " Spanish oils ."' — That IS to 
 say, countrymen and contemporaries of old Rome, of Arabian 
 
 * " My halcyon's bill.'' — The halcyon is the figure on the vane.
 
 102 MARLOWE. 
 
 Job, and the modern Spanish merchants ! Marlowe, though he 
 was a scholar, cared no more for geography and consistent his- 
 tory than Shakspeare. He took the world as he found it at the 
 theatre, where it was a mixture of golden age innocence, tragi- 
 cal enormity, and a knowledge superior to all petty and transi- 
 tory facts. 
 
 2 " Mine argosies from Alexandria," &c. — Note the wonderful 
 sweetness of these four lines, particularly the last. The variety 
 of the vowels, the delicate alliteration, and the lapse of the two 
 concluding verses, are equal, as a study, to anything in Spenser. 
 
 A VISION OF HELEN. 
 
 She passes between two Cupids, having been summoned from the next 
 world by desire of Faustus. 
 
 Faust. Was this the face that launch' d a thousand ships, 
 And burnt the topmost towers of Ilium ? 
 Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. — 
 Her lips suck forth my soul ! see where it flies. 
 Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. 
 Here will I dwell, for heav'n is in these lips, 
 Jlnd all is dross that is not Helena. 
 I will be Paris ; and for love of thee, 
 Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack'd ; 
 And I will combat with weak Menelaus, 
 And wear my colors on my plumed crest ; 
 Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, 
 And then return to Helen for a kiss. 
 Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air, 
 Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars ; 
 Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter, 3 
 When he appear'd to hapless Semele ; 
 More lovely than the monarch of the sea, 
 In wanton Arethusa's azure arms ; 
 And none but thou shalt be my paramour ! 
 
 3 " Brighter art thou," &c. — Much cannot be said of the five 
 lines here ensuing ; but their retention was necessary to the 
 entire feeling or classical association of the speech, if not to a 
 certain lingering modulation.
 
 MARLOWE. 0-3 
 
 MYTHOLOGY AND COURT AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 Craveston meditates how to govern Edward the Second 
 
 I must have wanton poets, pleasant wits, 
 Musicians, that with touching of a string 
 May draw the pliant king which way I please. 
 Music and poetry are his delight: 
 Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night ; 
 Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows ; 
 And in the day, when he shall walk abroad, 
 Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad : 
 My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns, 
 Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay. 
 Sometimes a lovely boy in Dian's shape, 
 With hair that gilds the water as it glides, 
 Shall bathe him in a spring ; and there, hard by, 
 One, like Actaeon, peeping through the grove, 
 Shall by the angry goddess be transform'd; 
 And running in the likeness of a hart, 
 By yelping hounds pull'd down, shall seem to die — 
 Such things as these best please his Majesty. 
 
 LEAUTY BEYOND EXPRESSION. 
 
 If all the pens that. ev< si I. rid 
 
 Had fed the feeling of their master's thoughts, 
 And ev'ry sweetness that inspired their hearts, 
 And minds, and muses on admired themes; 
 If all the heavenly quintessence they still 
 
 >m their immortal flowers of poesy, 
 Wherein, as in a mirror, wc perceive 
 The reaches of a human wit ; 
 
 If these had made one poem's period, 
 And all combin'd in beauty's worthiness 
 Yet should there hover in their restless heads, 
 On> thought, one grace, one wonder, at the bent, 
 Which into words no virtue can digest
 
 i(M MARLOWE. 
 
 THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE. 
 
 Come live with me and be my love, 
 And ive will all the pleasures prove, 
 That hill and valley, grove and field, 
 And all the craggy mountains yield 
 There will we sit upon the rocks, 
 And see the shepherds feed their flocks 
 By shallow rivers, to whose falls 
 Melodious birds sing madrigals, 
 There will I make thee beds of roses, 
 With a thousand fragrant posies ; 
 A cap of flowers and a kirtle 
 Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle ; 
 A gown made of the finest wool 
 Which from our pretty lambs we pull ; 
 Slippers lin'd ch < for the cold, 
 With buckles of the purest gold ; 
 A belt of straw, and ivy buds, 
 With coral clasps and amber studs. 
 
 The shepherd swains shall dance and sing 
 For thy delight each May morning ; 
 And if these pleasures may thee move, 
 Then live with me and be my love. 
 
 This song is introduced, not so much for its poetical excel- 
 lence (though it is quite what a poet would write on the occa- 
 sion) as because it is one of those happy embodiments of a 
 thought which all the world thinks at some time or other; and 
 which therefore takes wonderfully with them when somebody 
 utters it. The " golden buckles" and " amber studs" are not 
 to be considered as a contradiction to the rest of the imagery ; 
 for we are to suppose it a gentlewoman to whom the invitation is 
 addressed, and with whom her bridegroom proposes to go and 
 play at shepherd and shepherdess, at once realizing the sweets 
 of lowliness and the advantages of wealth. A charming fancy! 
 and realized too sometimes; though Sir Walter Raleigh could 
 not let it alone, but must needs refute it in some excellent
 
 MARLOWE. 105 
 
 verses, too good for the occasion. Sir Walter, a great but wil- 
 ful man (in some respects like Marlowe himself, and a true poet 
 too — I wish he had written more poetry), could pass and 
 ultimately lose his life in search of El Dorados, — whole coun- 
 tries made of gold, — but doubted whether an innocent young 
 lady and gentleman, or so, should aim at establishing a bit of 
 Arcadia. 
 
 There are so many copies of this once-popular production, all 
 different and none quite consistent, owing, no doubt, to oral 
 repetitions and the license of musical setting (for no copy of it 
 is to be found coeval with its production), that, after studious 
 comparison of several, I have exercised a certain discretion in 
 the one here printed, and omitted also an ill-managed repetition 
 of the burthen : — not, of course, with the addition of a syllable. 
 Such readers, therefore, as it may concern, are warned not to 
 take the present copy for granted, at the expense of the others ; 
 but to compare them all, and make his choice.
 
 i0 6 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE, 
 
 BORN, 1564 DIED, 1616. 
 
 Shakspeare is here in his purely poetical creations, apart (as 
 much as it is possible for such a thinker and humanist to be) 
 from thought and humanity. There is nothing wanting either to 
 the imagination or fancy of Shakspeare. The one is lofty, rich, 
 affecting, palpable, subtle ; the other full of grace, playfulness, 
 and variety. He is equal to the greatest poets in grandeur of 
 imagination ; to all in diversity of it ; to all in fancy ; to all in 
 everything else, except in a certain primaeval intensity, such as 
 Dante's and Chaucer's; and in narrative poetry, which (to 
 judge from Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece) he 
 certainly does not appear to have had a call to write. He over- 
 informed it with reflection. It has been supposed that when 
 Milton spoke of Shakspeare as 
 
 Fancy's child 
 Warbling his native wood-notes wild, 
 
 the genealogy did him injustice. But the critical distinction 
 between Fancy and Imagination was hardly determined till of 
 late. Collins himself, in his Ode on the Poetical Character, 
 uses the word Fancy to imply both, even when speaking of 
 Milton ; and so did Milton, I conceive, when speaking of Shaks- 
 peare. The propriety of the words, "native wood-notes wild," 
 is not so clear. I take them to have been hastily said by a 
 learned man of an unlearned. But Shakspeare, though he had 
 not a college education, was as learned as any man, in the 
 highest sense of the word, by a scholarly intuition. He had the 
 spirit of learning. He was aware of the education he wanted.
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 107 
 
 and by some means or other supplied it. He could anticipate 
 Milton's own Greek and Latin ; 
 
 Tortive and errant from his course of growth — 
 The multitudinous seas incarnardine — 
 A pudency so rosy, &c. 
 
 In fact, if Shakspeare's poetry has any fault, it is that of being 
 too learned ; too over-informed with thought and allusion. His 
 wood-notes wild surpass Haydn and Bach. His wild roses were 
 all twenty times double. He thinks twenty times to another 
 man's once, and makes all his serious characters talk as well as 
 he could himself, — with a superabundance of wit and intelli- 
 gence. He knew, however, that fairies must have a language 
 of their own ; and hence, perhaps, his poetry never runs in a 
 more purely poetical vein than when he is speaking in their 
 persons ; — I mean it is less mixed up with those heaps of com- 
 ments and reflections which, however the wilful or metaphysical 
 critic may think them suitable on all occasions, or succeed in 
 persuading us not to wish them absent, by reason of their stimu- 
 lancy to one's mental activity, are assuredly neither always 
 proper to dramatic, still less to narrative poetry; nor yet so 
 opposed to all idiosyncrasy on the writer's part as Mr. Coleridge 
 would have us believe. It is pretty manifest, on the contrary, 
 that the over-informing intellect which Shakspeare thus carried 
 into all his writings, must have been a personal as well as lite- 
 rary peculiarity ; and as the events he speaks of are sometimes 
 more interesting in their nature than even a superabundance of 
 his comments can make them, readers may be pardoned in 
 sometimes wishing that he had let them speak a little more 
 briefly for themselves. Most people would prefer Ariosto's and 
 Chaucer's narrative poetry to his; the Griselda, for instance, 
 and the story of Isabel, — to the Rape of Lucrece. The intense 
 passion is enough. The misery is enough. We do not want 
 even the divinest talk about what Nature herself tends to petrify 
 into silence. Curce ingenies stupent. Our divine poet had not 
 quite outlived the times when it was thought proper for a writer 
 to say everything that came into his head. He was a student 
 of Chaucer: he beheld the living fame of Spenser ; and his
 
 JOS SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 fellow-dramatists did not help to restrain him. The players told 
 Ben Jonson that Shakspeare never blotted a line ; and Ben says 
 he was thought invidious for observing, that he wished he had 
 blotted a thousand. He sometimes, he says, required stopping. 
 {Aliquando sufflaminandus erat.) Was this meant to apply to 
 his conversation as well as writing ? Did he manifest a like 
 exuberance in company ? Perhaps he would have done so, but 
 for modesty and self-knowledge. To keep his eloquence alto- 
 gether within bounds was hardly possible ; and who could have 
 wished it had been? Would that he had had a Boswell a 
 hundred times as voluminous as Dr. Johnson's, to take all down ! 
 Bacon's Essays would have seemed like a drop out of his ocean. 
 He would have swallowed dozens of Hobbeses by anticipation, 
 like. larks for his supper. 
 
 If Shakspeare, instead of proving himself the greatest poet in 
 the world, had written nothing but the fanciful scenes in this 
 volume, he would still have obtained a high and singular repu- 
 tation, — that of Poet of the Fairies. For he may be said to 
 have invented the Fairies ; that is to say, he was the first that 
 turned them to poetical account ; that bore them from clownish 
 neighborhoods to the richest soils of fancy and imagination. 
 
 WHOLE STORY OF THE TEMPEST. 
 
 ENCHANTMENT, MONSTROSITY, AND LOVE. 
 
 The whole story of the Tempest is really contained :'m this 
 scene. 
 
 J\fira. I pray you, sir, 
 (For still 'tis beating in my mind) your reason 
 For raising this sea-storm ? 
 
 Pro. Know thus far forth ;— 
 
 By accident, most strange, bountiful fortune, 
 Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies 
 Brought to this shore : and by my prescience, 
 I find my zenith doth depend upon
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 109 
 
 A most auspicious star : whose influence, 
 
 If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes 
 
 Will ever after droop : — here cease more questions ; 
 
 Thou art inclin'd to sleep ; 'tis a good duln'iss, 
 
 And give it way ; — I know thou canst not choose. — 
 
 {Miranda sleeps.') 
 Come away, servants, come ; I am ready pow ; 
 Approach, my Ariel ; come. 
 
 Enter Ariel 
 
 Ari. All hail, great master ! grave sir- hail ! I come 
 To answer thy best pleasure : be 't to fly, 
 To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride 
 On the curl'd clouds ; to thy strong bidding, task 
 Ariel, and all his quality. 
 
 Pro. Hast thou, spirit, 
 
 Perform'd to point the tempest that I bachi thee? 
 
 Ari. To every article. 
 I boarded the king's ship ; now on the berk, 
 Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, 
 IJlam'd amazement. Sometimes, I'd div'df, 
 And burn in many places ; on the top-mast, 
 The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, 
 Then meet, ami join : Jove's lightnings, the precursors 
 & the dreadful thunder-claps more momentary 
 And sight out-running were not : the fire and cr-vks 
 Of sulphurous roaring, the most mighty Neptune 
 Seemed to besiege, and make his bold waves trembl-* 
 Yea, his dread trident shake. 
 
 Pro. c My brave spirit ! 
 
 Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil 
 Would not infect his reason ? 
 
 Ari. Not a soul 
 
 IJut felt a fever of the mind, and play'd 
 Some tricks of desperation; all, but mariners, 
 Plung'd in the foaming brine, and quit the vessi 1 
 Then all a-jire with me: the king's sun, Ferdinand 
 Willi hair up-staring (then like reeds, not hair), 
 
 the firsl man that leap'd; cried, Hell is empty, 
 And all the devils are here. 
 
 Pro. Why that 's my spirit ! 
 
 But was not this nigh shore? 
 
 Ari. Close h\ , mj master. 
 
 Pro. But are they, Ariel, sale ? 
 
 Ari. Not a hair perish'd ; 
 
 On their sustaining garments not a blemish,
 
 110 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 But fresher than before : and as thou bad'st me, 
 In troops I have dispers'd them 'bout the isle : 
 The king's son have I landed by himself; 
 Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs, 
 In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting, — 
 His arms in this sad knot. 
 
 Pro. Of the king's ship, 
 
 The mariners, say, how thou hast dispos'd, 
 And all the rest o' the fleet ? 
 
 Ari. Safely in harbor 
 
 Is the king's ship ; in the nook, where once 
 Thou calVdst me up at midnight to fetch dew 
 From the still vexed Bermoothes ; there she's hid ; 
 The mariners all undec hatches stow'd ; 
 Whom, with a charm join'd to their suffer'd labor, 
 I have left asleep ; and for the rest o' the fleet, 
 Which I dispers'd, they all have met again ; 
 And are upon the Mediterranean flote, 
 Bound sadly home for Naples ; 
 Supposing that they saw the king's ship wreck'd, 
 And his great person perish. 
 
 Pro. Ariel, my charge 
 
 Exactly is perform'd ; but there's more work : 
 What is the time o' the day ? 
 
 Ari. Past the mid season. 
 
 Pro. At least two glasses : the time 'twixt six and now, 
 Must by us both be spent most preciously. 
 
 Ari. Is there more toil ? Since thou dost give me pains, 
 Let me remember thee what thou hast promis'd, 
 Which is not yet performed me. 
 
 Pro. How now ! moody ? • 
 
 What is 't thou canst demand ? 
 
 Ari. My liberty. 
 
 Pro. Before the time be out ? no more. 
 
 Ari. I pray thee 
 
 Remember, I have done thee worthy service ; 
 Told thee no lies, made no mistakings, serv'd 
 Without or grudge or grumblings : thou didst promise 
 To bate me a full year. 
 
 Pro. Dost thou forget 
 
 From what a torment I did free thee ? 
 
 ArL No. 
 
 Pro. Thou dost ; and think'st 
 It much to tread the ooze of the salt deep , 
 To run upon the sharp wind of the north ; 
 To do me business in the veins of the earth, 
 

 
 SHAKSPEARE. Ill 
 
 When it is bak'd with frost. 
 
 Ari. I do not, sir. 
 
 Pro. Thou liest, malignant thing ! Hast thou forgot 
 The foul witch Sycorax, who, with age and envy, 
 Was grown into a hoop ? Hast thou forgot her ? 
 Ari. No, sir. 
 
 Pro. Thou hast : where was she born ? speak ; tell me. 
 
 Ari. Sir, in Argier. 
 
 Pro. 0, was she so ? I must, 
 
 Once in a month, recount what thou hast been, 
 Which thou forget'st. This damn'd witch, Sycorax, 
 For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible 
 To enter human hearing, from Argier 
 Thou know'st was banish'd, for one thing she did ; 
 They would not take her life : Is not this true ? 
 Ari. Aye, sir. 
 
 Pro. This blue-ey'd hag was hither brought with child, 
 And here was left by the sailors : Thou, my slave, 
 As thou report'st thyself, was then her servant : 
 And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate 
 To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands, 
 Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee 
 By help of her more potent ministers, 
 And in her most unmitigable rage, 
 Into a cloven pine : within which rift, 
 Imprison'd, thou didst painfully remain 
 A dozen years ; within which space she died, 
 And left thee there ; where thou didst vent thy groans, 
 As fast as mill-wheels strike: Then was this island 
 (Save for the son which she did litter here, 
 A freckled whelp, hag-born) not honor'd with 
 A human shape. 
 
 Ari. Yes ; Caliban her son. 
 
 Pro. Dull thing, I say so, — he, that Caliban, 
 Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st 
 What torments I did find thee in ; thy groans 
 Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts 
 Of ever angry bears : it was a torment 
 To lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax 
 Could not again undo ; it was mine art, 
 When I arriv'd, and heard thee, that made gape 
 The pine and let thee out. 
 
 Ari. I thank thee, master. 
 
 Pro. If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak. 
 And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till 
 Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters.
 
 112 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 Ari. Pardon, master : 
 
 I will be correspondent to command, 
 And do my spiriting gently. 
 
 Pro. Do so ; and after two days 
 
 I will discharge thee. 
 
 An. That's my noble master ! 
 
 What shall I do ? say ? what shall I do ? 
 
 Pro. Go make thyself like to a nymph o' the sea ; 
 Be subject to no sight but mine ; invisible 
 To every eyeball else. Go, take this shape, 
 And hither come in 't : hence with diligence. 
 
 {Exit Ariel.) 
 
 Awake, dear heart, awake ! thou hast slept well : 
 Awake ! 
 
 Mira. The strangeness of your story put 
 Heaviness in me. 
 
 Pro. Shake it off; come on ; 
 
 We'll visit Caliban, my slave, who never 
 Yields us kind answer. 
 
 Mira. 'Tis a villain, sir, 
 
 I do not love to look on. 
 
 Pro. But as 'tis, 
 
 We cannot miss him ; he does make our fire, 
 Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices 
 That profit us. What ho ! slave ! Caliban ! 
 Thou earth thou ! speak. 
 
 Calx, {within.) — There's wood enough within. 
 
 Pro. Come forth, I say : there's other business for tnee. 
 Come forth, thou tortoise ! when ? 
 
 Re-enter Ariel, like a water-nymph. 
 
 Fine apparition ! my quaint Ariel ! 
 Hark in thine ear. 
 
 Ari. My lord, it shall be done. 
 
 (T2xif\ 
 
 Pro. Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself 
 Upon thy wicked dam, come forth ! 
 
 Enter Caliban. 
 
 Cali. As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush , d 
 With raven's feather from unwholesome fen 
 Drop on you both ! a south-west blow on ye, 
 And blister you all o'er ! 
 
 Pro. For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps, 
 •iide-stitches that shall pen thy breath up ; urchins
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 11 J 
 
 Shall, for that vast of night that they may work, 
 All exercise on thee : thou shalt be pinch'd 
 As thick as honey-combs, each pinch more stinging 
 Than bees that made them. 
 
 Call. I must eat my dinner ! 
 
 This island's mine, by Sycorax, my mother, 
 Which thou tak'st from me. When thou earnest first, 
 Thou strok'dst me, and mad'st much of me ; would'st give me 
 Water with berries in't; and teach me how 
 To name the bigger light, and how the less 
 That burn by day and night : and then I lov'd thee, 
 And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle. 
 The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place, and fertile; 
 Cursed be I that did so ! All the charms 
 Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you ! 
 For I am all the subjects that you have, 
 Which first was mine own king; and here you sty me 
 In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me 
 The rest of the island. 
 
 Pro. Thou most lying slave, 
 
 Who . not kindness, — I have us'd thee, 
 
 Filth as thou art, with human care; and lodg'd thee 
 In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate 
 The honor of my child. 
 
 Call. O ho, O ho ! would it had been done ! 
 Thou didst prevent me ; I had peopled else 
 This isle with Calibans. 
 
 Pro. Abhorred slave ; 
 
 Which any print of goodness will not take, 
 Being capable of all ill ! I pitied thee, 
 Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour 
 One thing or other; when thou didst not, savage, 
 Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble, like 
 A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes 
 With words that made them known : but thy vile race, 
 Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures 
 Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou 
 ! I isi rvedlj confin'd into this rock, 
 Who hadst deserv'd more than a prison. 
 
 Call. \ oh taught me Language; and my profit on't 
 Is, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you, 
 For Learning me your Language ! 
 
 Pro. Hag-seed, hence ' 
 
 Fetch us in fuel ; and be quick, thou wert best, 
 To answer other business. Shrug'st thou, malice? 
 If thou neglect'st, or dost unwillingly 
 9
 
 114 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 What I command, I'll rack thee with old cramps, 
 Fill all thy bones with aches ; make thee roar, 
 That beasts shall tremble at thy din. 
 
 Call. No, 'pray thee ! 
 
 I must obey : his art is of such power, {Aside.) 
 It would control my dam's god, Setebos, 
 And make a vassal of him. 
 
 Pro. So, slave ; hence ! 
 
 [Exit Caliban. 
 
 Re-enter Ariel, invisible, playing and singing ; Ferdinand 
 
 following him. 
 
 Ariel's Song. 
 Come unto these yellow sands, 
 
 And then take hands ; 
 Courtsied when you have, and kiss'd 
 
 (The wild waves whist) 
 Foot it featly here and there ; 
 And, sweet sprites, the burden bear. 
 
 Hark, hark ! 
 Burthen. Bowgh, wowgh. {dispersed! y) 
 
 The watch-dogs bark : 
 Bur. Bowgh, wowgh. 
 Hark, hark ! I hear 
 The strain of strutting chanticlere 
 Cry, Cock-a-doodle-doo. 
 Fer. Where should this music be ? i' the air, or the earth ? 
 It sounds no more ; — and sure it waits upon 
 Some god of the island. Sitting on a bank, 
 Weeping again the king my father's wreck, 
 This music crept by me upon the waters ; 
 Allaying both their fury, and my passion, 
 With its sweet air ; thence I have follow'd it, 
 Or it hath drawn me rather. — But 'tis gone : — 
 No. it begins again. 
 
 Ariel sings. 
 Full fathom five thy father lies ; 
 
 Of his bones are coral made ; 
 Tliose are pearls that were his eyes; 
 
 Nothing of him that doth fade, 
 But doth suffer a sea-change 
 Into some rich thing and strange. 
 Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell ; 
 Hark ! now I hear them, — ding, dong, bell. 
 (Burthen, Ding-dong.)
 
 SHAKSPEAKE. lift 
 
 Fer. The ditty does remember my drowned father, 
 This is no mortal business, nor no sound 
 That the earth owes ;— I hear it now above me. 
 
 Pro. The fringed curtains of thine eye advance, 1 
 And say, what thou seest yond ! 
 
 Mira. What is 't ? a spirit ? 
 
 Lord, how it looks about ! Believe, me, sir, 
 It carries a brave form : — but 'tis a spirit. 
 
 Pro. No, wench ; it eats and sleeps, and hath such senses 
 As we have, — such. This gallant which thou seest, 
 Was in the wreck ; and but he's something stain'd 
 With grief, that's beauty's canker, thou might'st call him 
 A goodly person : he hath lost his fellows, 
 And strays about to find them. 
 
 Mira. I might call him 
 
 A thing divine; for nothing natural 
 I ever saw so noble. 
 
 Pro. It goes on (aside), 
 
 As my soul prompts it : — Spirit, fine spirit ! I'll free thee 
 Within two days for this. 
 
 Fer. Most sure, the goddess 
 
 On whom these airs attend ! — Vouchsafe, my prayer 
 May know if you remain upon this island ; 
 And that you will some good instructions give, 
 How I may bear me here. My prime request, 
 Which I do last pronounce, is, O you wonder ! 
 If you be maid or no ? 
 
 Mira. No wonder, sir ; 
 
 But, certainly a maid. 
 
 Fer My language ! heavens ! 
 
 I am the best of them that speak this speech, 
 Were I but where 'tis spoken. 
 
 Pro. How ! the best ? 
 
 What wert thou, if the King of Naples heard thee ? 
 
 Fer. A simple thing, as I am now, that wonders 
 To hear thee speak of Naples ; he does hear me ; 
 And, that he does, I weep ; myself am Naples ;- 
 Who with mine eyes, ne'er since at ebb, beheld 
 The king my father wreck'd. 
 
 Mira. Alack for mercy ! 
 
 Fer. Yes, faith, and all his lords ; the Duke of Milan, 
 And his brave son, being twain. 
 
 Pro. (aside.) The Duke of Milan, 
 
 And his more braver daughter, could control thee, 
 If now 'twere fit to do 't. — At the first sight 
 They have changed eyes ! — Delicate Ariel (aside), 
 I'll set thee free for this !
 
 11G SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 1 The fringed curtains of thine eye advance. 
 
 Why Shakspeare should have condescended to the elaborate 
 nothingness, not to say nonsense of this metaphor (for what is 
 meant by advancing "curtains?") I cannot conceive; that is 
 to say, if he did condescend ; for it looks very like the interpo- 
 lation of some pompous, declamatory player. Pope has put it 
 into his treatise on the Bathos. 
 
 2 " Myself am Naples." — This is a very summary and kingly 
 style. Shakspeare is fond of it. " How, now, France?" says 
 King John to King Philip, " I'm dying, Egypt !" says Antony to 
 Cleopatra. 
 
 MACBETH AND THE WITCHES. 
 
 This scene fortunately comprises a summary of the whole 
 subsequent history of Macbeth. 
 
 A dark Cave. In the middle, a Caldron boiling. Thunder. 
 Enter three Witches. 
 
 1st Wi. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd, 
 2nd Wi. Thrice and once the hedge-pig whin'd, 
 3rd Wi. Harper cries : — 'Tis time, 'tis time. 
 1st Wi. Round about the caldron go ; 
 
 In the poison'd entrails throw. 
 
 Toad, that under cold stone 
 
 Days and nights has, thirty-one, 
 
 Swelter d venom sleeping got, 
 
 Boil thou first i' the charmed pot ! 
 All Double, double, toil and trouble ; 
 
 Fire, burn; and, caldron, bubble. 
 2nd Wi. Fillet of a fenny snake, 
 
 In the caldron boil and bake : 
 
 Eye of newt, and toe of fro?, 
 
 Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, 
 
 Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, 
 
 Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing, 
 
 For a charm of powerful trouble ; 
 
 Like a hell-broth, boil and bubble.
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 117 
 
 All. Double, double, toil and trouble ; 
 
 Fire, burn ; and, caldron, bubble. 
 3rd Wi. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf; 
 
 Witches' mummy ; maw, and gulf, 
 
 Of the ravin' d salt-sea shark ; 
 
 Root of hemlock, digg'd i' the dark : 
 
 Liver of blaspheming Jew ; 
 
 Gall of goat, and slips of yew, 
 
 Sliver 'd in the moon's eclipse ; 
 
 Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips ; 
 
 Finger of birth-strangled babe, 
 
 Ditch-deliver 'd by a drab ; 
 
 Make the gruel thick and slab ; 
 
 Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, 
 
 For the ingredients of our caldron. 
 All. Double, double, toil and trouble, 
 
 Fire, burn ; and, caldron, bubble. 
 2nd Wi. Cool it with a baboon's blood. 
 
 Enter Hecate and the three other Witches 
 Hec. O, well done ! I commend your pains ; 
 And every one shall share i' the gains, 
 And now about the caldron sing, 
 Like elves and fairies in a ring, 
 Enchanting all that you put in. 
 
 (Music and a Song, Black Spirits, &c.) 
 
 2nd Wi. By the pricking of my thumbs, 
 
 Something tricked this ivay comes: — 
 Open, locks, whoever knocks. 
 
 Enter Macbeth. 
 
 Mac. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags, 
 What is't you do? 
 
 All. A deed without a name. 
 
 Mac. I conjure you, by that which you profess 
 (Howe'er you come to know it), answer me : 
 Though you untie the winds, and let them fight 
 Against the churches : though the yesty waves 
 Confound and swallow navigation up ; 
 Though Haded corn be lodg'd, and trees blown down ; 
 Though castles topple on their warders' heads; 
 Though palaces and pyramids do slope 
 Their heads to their foundations ; though the treasure 
 Of nature's germins tumble all together, 
 Even till destruction sicken, answer me 
 To what I ask you.
 
 215 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 1st Wi. Speak. 
 
 2nd Wi. Demand. 
 
 3rd Wi. We'll answer. 
 
 1st Wi. Say, if thou'dst rather hear it from our mouths, 
 Or from our masters' ? 
 
 Mac. Call them, let me see them. 
 
 1st Wi. Pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten 
 Her nine farrow ; grease, that's sweaten 
 From the murderer's gibbet, throw 
 Into the flame. 
 
 All. Come, high or low ; 
 
 Thyself, and office, deftly show. 
 
 Thunder. An Apparition of an armed Head rises. 
 
 Mac. Tell me, thou unknown power, — 
 
 1st Wi. He knows thy thought ; 
 
 Hear his speech, but say thou naught. 
 
 App. Macbeth ! Macbeth ! Macbeth ! beware Macduff; 
 Beware the Thane of Fife. — Dismiss me ; — Enough. 
 
 (Descends.) 
 
 Mac. Whate'er thou art, for thy good caution thanks ; 
 Thou hast harp'd my fear aright : — But one word more ; — 
 
 1st Wi. He will not be commanded. Here's another, 
 More potent than the first. 
 
 Thunder. An Apparition of a bloody Child rises. 3 
 
 App. Macbeth ! Macbeth ! Macbeth ! — 
 
 Mac. Had I three ears, Pd hear thee 
 
 App. Be bloody, bold, and resolute ; laugh to scorn 
 The power of man, for none of woman born 
 Shall harm Macbeth. 
 
 Mac. Then live, Macduff: what need I fear of thee ? 
 But yet I'll make assurance doubly sure, 
 And take a bond of fate : thou shalt not live ; 
 That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, 
 And sleep in spite of thunder. — What is this ? 
 
 Thunder. An Apparition of a Child crowned, with a tree in his hand, 
 
 rises. 
 
 That rises like the issue of a king ; 
 
 And wears upon his baby-brow the round 
 
 And top of sovereignty ! 
 
 All. Listen, but speak not to 't. 
 
 App. Be lion-mettled, proud ; and take no care 
 Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are ; 
 Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be, until
 
 SHAKSPEARE. U9 
 
 Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill 
 Shall come against him. 
 
 (Descends.) 
 
 Mac. That will never be ; 
 
 Who can impress the forest ; bid the tree 
 Unfix his earth-bound root ? sweet bodements ! good ! 
 Rebellious head, rise never, till the wood 
 Of Birnam rise, and our high-plac'd Macbeth 
 Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath 
 To time, and mortal custom. — Yet my heart 
 Throbs to know one thing ; Tell me (if your art 
 Can tell so much) shall Banquo's issue ever 
 Reign in the kingdom ? 
 
 Ml. Seek to know no more. 
 
 Mac. I will be satisfied ; deny me this 
 And an eternal curse fall on you ! Let me know : — 
 Why sinks that caldron ? and what noise is this ? 
 
 (Hautboys.) 
 
 1st Wi. Show! 
 
 2nd Wi. Show! 
 
 3rd Wi. Show! 
 
 Ml. Show his eyes and grieve his heart, 
 Come like shadows, so depart. 
 
 Eight Kings appear, and pass over the stage in order ; the last with a 
 glass in his hand ; Banquo following. 
 
 Mac. Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo ; down ! 
 Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs : — And thy hair, 
 Thou other gold-bound brow is like the first ; — 
 A third is like the former ; — Filthy hags ! 
 Why do you show me this ? a fourth ? Start, eyes ! 
 What ! will the line stretch out to the crack of doom > 
 Another yet ? — A seventh ? — I'll see no more : 
 And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass 
 Which shows me many more ; and some I see, 
 That two-fold balls and treble sceptres carry : 
 Horrible sight ! — Now, I see, 'tis true ; 
 For the blood-bolter d Banquo smiles upon me, 
 And points at them for his. — What, is this so ? 
 \sl Wi. Aye, sir, all this is so: — But why 
 
 Stands Macbeth thus amazedly ? 
 
 Come, sisters, cheer we up his sprites, 
 
 And show the best of our delights : 
 
 I'll charm the air to give a sound, 
 
 While you perform your antique round ;
 
 120 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 That this great king may kindly say, 
 Our duties did his welcome pay. 
 
 (Music. The Witches dance, and va?iish.) 
 
 Mac. Where are they ? Gone ? — Let this pernicious hour, 
 Stand aye accursed in the calendar ! — 
 Come in, without there ! 
 
 Enter Lenox. 
 
 Len. What's your grace's will ? 
 
 Mac. Saw you the weird sisters ? 
 
 Len. No, indeed, my lord. 
 
 Mac. Infected be the air whereon they ride ; 
 And damn'd all those that trust them ! — I did hear 
 The galloping of horse ; who was 't came by ? 
 
 Len. 'Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word, 
 Macduff is fled to England. 
 
 Mac. Fled to England ? 
 
 Len. Ay, my good lord. 
 
 Mac. Time, thou anticipat'st my dread exploits : 
 The flighty purpose never is o'ertook, 
 Unless the deed go with it : From this moment, 
 The very firstlings of my heart shall be 
 The firstlings of my hand. And even now 
 To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done : 
 This castle of Ma-duff I will surprise; 
 Seize upon Fife ; give to the edge o' the sword 
 His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls 
 That trace him in his line. No boasting like a fool ; 
 This deed I'll do before this purpose cool; 
 But no more sights .' 4 — Where are these gentlemen ? 
 Come, bring me where they are. 
 
 (Exeunt.) 
 
 3 " Apparition of a bloody child." — The idea of a " bloody child" 
 and of his being more potent than the armed head, and one cf 
 the masters of the witches, is very dreadful. So is that of the 
 child crowned, with a tree in his hand. They impersonate, it is 
 true, certain results of the war, the destruction of Macduff's 
 children, and the succession of Banquo's; but the imagination 
 does not make these reflections at first ; and the dreadfulness 
 still remains, of potent demons speaking in the shapes of 
 children.
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 121 
 
 « " But no more sights." — What a world of horrors is in this little 
 familiar phrase ! 
 
 THE QUARREL OF OBERON AND TITANIA. 
 A Fairy Drama. 
 
 I have ventured to give the extract this title, because it not 
 only contains the whole story of the fairy part of the Midsum- 
 mer Night's Dream, but by the omission of a few lines, and the 
 transposition of one small passage (for which I beg the reader's 
 indulgence), it actually forms a separate little play. It is nearly 
 such in the greater play ; and its isolation was easily, and not 
 at all injuriously effected, by the separation of the Weaver from 
 his brother mechanicals. 
 
 Enter Oberon at one door with his train ; and Titania at another 
 
 with hers. 
 
 Ober. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania. 
 
 Tit. What ! jealous Oberon ? Fairies, skip hence : 
 I have forsworn his bed and company. 
 
 Ober. Tarry, rash wanton ; am not I thy lord ? 
 
 Tit. Then I must be thy lady ; but I know 
 When thou haststol'n away from fairy-land, 
 And in the shape of Corin sat all day 
 Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love 
 To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here. 
 Come from the furthest steep of India, 5 
 But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon, 
 Your buskin'd mistress, and your warrior love, 
 To Theseus must be wedded ; and you come 
 To give their bed joy and prosperity ? 
 
 Ober. How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania, 
 Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, 
 Knowing I know thy love to Theseus ? 
 Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night 
 From Perigenia, whom he ravished ? 
 And make him with fair ^Egle break his faith,
 
 122 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 With Ariadne, and Antiope ? 
 
 Tit. These are the forgeries of jealousy : 
 And never since the middle summer's spring, 
 Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead, 
 By paved fountain, or by rushing brook, 
 Or on the beached margent of the sea, 
 To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, 
 But in thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport 
 Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, 
 As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea 
 Contagious fogs ; which falling on the land, 
 Have every pelting river made so proud, 
 That they have overborne their continents; 
 The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain, 
 The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn 
 Hath rotted, ere his youth attain' d a beard: 
 The fold stands empty in the drowned field, 
 And crows are fatted with the murrain flock ; 
 The nine men's morris* is fill'd up with mud ; 
 And the quaint mazes in the wanton green, 
 For lack of tread, are undistinguishable ; 
 The human mortals want their winter here ; 
 No night is now with hymn or carol blest : 
 Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, 
 Pale in her anger, washes all the air, 
 That rheumatic diseases do abound : 
 And thorough thisdistemperature, we see 
 The seasons alter : hoary-headed frosts 
 Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose ; 
 And on old Hyems' chin, and icy crown, 
 An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds 
 Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer, 
 The chilling autumn, angry winter, change 
 Their wonted liveries ; and the mazed world, 
 By their increase, now knows not which is which : 
 And this same progeny of evils comes 
 From our debate, from our dissension : 
 We are their parents and original. 
 
 Ober. Do you amend it then : it lies in you : 
 Why should Titian cross her Oberon ? 
 I do but beg a little changeling boy, 
 To be my henchman, f 
 
 * Mine men's morris. — A rustic game, played with stones upon lines cut 
 in the ground. 
 \ Henchman — Page.
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 123 
 
 Tit. Set your heart at rest ; 
 
 The fairy land buys not the child of me. 
 His mother was a vot'ress of my order ; 
 And, in the spiced Indian air, by night, 
 Full often hath she gossip'd by my side ; 
 And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands, 
 Marking the embarking traders on the flood ; 
 When we have laughed to see the sails conceive 
 And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind : 
 Which she with pretty and with swimming gait 
 (Following her womb, then rich with my young squire) 
 Would imitate ; and sail upon the land, 
 To fetch me trifles and return again, 
 As from a voyage, rich with merchandize. 
 But she, being mortal, of that boy did die ; 
 And, for her sake, I do rear up her boy : 
 And, for her sake, I will not part with him. 
 
 Ober. How long within this wood intend you stay ? 
 
 Tit. Perchance till after Theseus' wedding-day. 
 If you will patiently dance in our round, 
 And see our moonlight revels, go with us ; 
 If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts. 
 
 Ober. Give me that boy, and I will go with thee. 
 
 Tit. Not for thy fairy kingdom. — Fairies, away : 
 We shall chide down-right, if I longer stay. 
 
 [Exeunt Titania and her train. 
 
 Ober. Well, go thy way : thou shalt not from this grove, 
 Till I torment thee for this injury. — 
 My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou remember'st 
 Since once I sat upon a promontory, 
 And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back, 
 Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, 
 That the rude sea grew civil at her song ; 
 And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, 
 To hear the sea-maid's music. 
 
 Puck. I remember, 
 
 Ober. That very night I saw (but thou couldst not), 
 Flying between the cold moon and the earth, 
 Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took 
 At a fair vestal, throned by the west;* 
 And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, 
 
 * At a fair vestal, throned by the west. — An allusion to Queen Eliza- 
 beth. See in the Rev. Mr. Halpin's remarks on this passage, published by 
 the Shakspeare Society, a most ingenious speculation on the hidden mean- 
 ing of it, as a bit of secret court history.
 
 £24 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts : 
 
 But I might seen young Cupid's fiery shaft 
 
 Quench'd in the chaste beams of the ivafry moon : 
 
 And the imperial votaress pass' d on, 
 
 In maiden meditation, fancy free. 
 
 Vet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell ; 
 
 It fell upon a little western flower, — 
 
 Before milk-white ; now purple with love's wound, 
 
 And maidens call it Love-in-idleness.* 
 
 Fetch me that flower : the herb I showed thee once : 
 
 The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid, 
 
 Will make or man or woman madly dote 
 
 Upon the next live creature that it sees. 
 
 Fetch me this herb : and be thou here again, 
 
 Ere the leviathan can swim a league. 
 
 Puck. F 11 put a girdle round about the earth, 
 In forty minutes. 
 
 [Exit Puck. 
 
 Ober. Having once this juice, 
 
 Pll watch Titania when she is asleep, 
 And drop the liquor of it in her eyes: 
 The next thing then she waking looks upon 
 (Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, 
 Or meddling monkey, or on busy ape), 
 She shall pursue it with the soul of love, 
 And ere I take this charm off from her sight 
 (As I can take it with another herb), 
 Pll make her render up her page to me. 
 
 [Exit Oberon 
 
 Another part of the Wood. 
 
 Enter Titania and her train. 
 
 Tit. Come, now a roundel, and a fairy song; 
 Then, for the third part of a minute, hence ; 
 Some, to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds ; 
 Some, war with rear mice for their leathern wings, 
 To make my small elves' coats ; and some keep back 
 The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, and wonders 
 At our quaint spirits: Sing me now asleep ; 
 Then to your offices, and let me rest. 
 
 * Love-in-idleness. — The heart's-ease
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 125 
 
 SONG 
 
 1st Fai. You spotted snakes with double tongue, 
 Thorny hedge-hogs, be not seen. 
 Newts and blind worms, do no wrong ; 
 Come not near our fairy queen. 
 Chorus. Philomel with melody 
 
 Sing in our sweet lullaby, 
 Lulla, lulla, lullaby : lulla, lulla, lullaby ; 
 Never harm, nor spell, nor charm, 
 Come our lovely lady nigh ; 
 So, good night — with lullaby. 
 2d Fai. Weaving spiders, come not here ; 
 
 Hence you long-legged spinners, hence : 
 Beetles black, approach not near; 
 Worm nor snail, do no offence. 
 Chorus. Philomel with melody, &c. 
 1st Fai. Hence, away ; now all is well : 
 One, aloof, stand sentinel. 
 
 [Exeunt Fairies. Titania sleeps. 
 
 Enter Oberon. 
 
 Ober. — What thou seest when thou dost awake 
 
 [Squeezes the flower on Titania's eyelids. 
 Do it for thy true love take ; 
 Love and languish for his sake : 
 Be it ounce, or cat, or bear, 
 Pard, or boar with bristled hair, 
 In thy eye that shall appear 
 When thou wak'st, it is thy dear ; 
 Wake, when some vile thing is near. 
 
 [Exit. 
 
 Enter Bottom, singing ; Puck having clapt on him an ass's head 
 
 Song. 
 
 Bot. The ousel-cock, so black of hue, 
 With orange-tawny bill, 
 The throstle with his note so true, 
 The wren with little quill — 
 Tit. What angel wakes me from my flowery bed ? 
 
 [ Wakes. 
 I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again ; 
 Mine ear is much enaw'' f thy note;
 
 126 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape ; 
 
 And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me, 
 
 On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee. 
 Bot. Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that, and yet to 
 say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days. 
 The more the pity that some honest neighbors will not make them friends. 
 Nay, I can gleek* upon occasion. 
 
 Tit. Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful. 
 
 Bot. Not so neither ; but if I had wit enough to get out of this wood, I 
 have enough to serve mine own turn. 
 
 Tit. Out of this wood do not desire to go : 
 
 Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no. 
 
 I am a spirit of no common rate ; 
 
 The summer still doth tend upon my state, 
 
 And I do love thee ; therefore go with me ; 
 
 I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee ; 
 
 And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, 
 
 And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep : 
 
 And I will purge thy mortal grossness so, 
 
 That thou shalt like an airy spirit go, 
 
 Peas-blossom ! Cobweb ! Moth ! and Mustard-seed ! 
 
 Enter four Fairies. 
 
 1st Fai. Ready. 
 
 2nd Fai. And I. 
 
 3rd Fai. And I. 
 
 4th Fai. Where shall we go ? 
 
 Tit. Be kind and courteous to this gentleman ; 
 Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes ; 
 Feed him with apricocks and dewberries , 
 With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries : 
 The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, 
 And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs, 
 And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes, 
 To have my love to bed, and to arise : 
 And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, 
 To fan the moon-beams from his sleeping eyes ; 
 JVod to htm, elves, and do him courtesies. 
 
 1st Fai. Hail, mortal ! 
 
 2nd Fai. Hail ! 
 
 3rd Fai. Hail ! 
 
 4th Fai. Hail! 
 
 Bot. I cry your worship's mercy, heartily. I beseech your worship's 
 name. 
 
 * Gleek. — Banter. 

 
 SHAKSPEARE. 127 
 
 Cob. Cobweb. 
 
 Bot. I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master Cobweb. Jf I 
 cut my finger, I shall make bold with you. Your name, honest gentle 
 man ? 
 
 Peas. Peas-blossom. 
 
 Bot. I pray you commend me to Mistress Squash, your mother, and to 
 Master Peascod, your father. Good Master Peas-Blossom, I shall desire you 
 of more acquaintance toe Your name, I beseech you, sir? 
 
 Mus. Mustard-seed. 
 
 Bot. Good Master Mustard-seed, I know your patience welL That same 
 cowardly, giant-like ox-beef hath devoured many gentlemen of your 
 house. I promise you your kindred hath made my eyes water ere now. I 
 desire you more acquaintance, good Master Mustard-seed. 
 
 Oberon enters unseen. 
 
 Tit. Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed, 
 While I thy amiable cheeks do coy 
 And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head, 
 And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy. 
 Bot. Where's Peas-blossom ? 
 Peas. Ready. 
 
 Bot. Scratch my head, Peas-blossom. Where's Monsieur Cobweb ? 
 Cob. Ready. 
 Bot. Monsieur Cobweb, good monsieur, get up your weapons in your 
 hands, and kill me a red-hipped humble bee on the top of a thistle ; and, 
 good monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much 
 with the action, monsieur ; and, good monsieur, have a care the honey-bag 
 break not; I would be loth to have you overflown with a honey-bag, 
 signior. — Where's Monsieur Mustard-seed ? 
 Must. Ready. 
 
 Bot. Give me your neif,* Monsieur Mustard-seed. Pray you, leave your 
 courtesy, good monsieur. 
 Must. What's your will ? 
 
 Bot. Nothing, good monsieur, but to help Cavaliero Cobweb to scratch. 
 I must to the barber's, monsieur ; for methinks I am marvellous hairy 
 about the face ; and I am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me I 
 must scratch. 
 
 Tit. What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love ? 
 Bot. I have a reasonable ear in music : let us have the tongs and the 
 bones 
 
 Tit. Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat. 
 
 Bot. Truly a peck of provender. I could munch your good dry oats. 
 Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay. Good hay, sweet hay, 
 hath no fellow. 
 
 * JVeif.— Fist.
 
 128 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 Tit I hare a venturous fairy, that shall seek the squirrel's hoard, and 
 fetch thee new nuts. 
 
 Bot. I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas: — but, I pray 
 you, let none of your people stir me ; I have an exposition of sleep cotae 
 upon me. 
 
 Tit. Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. 
 Fairies, begone, and be all ways away. 
 So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle 
 Gently entwist ;- the female ivy so 
 Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. 
 0, how I love thee ! How I dote on thee ! 
 
 [ They sleep. 
 
 Oberon advances. Enter Puck. 
 Ober. Welcome, good Robin. See'st thou this sweet sight ? 
 Her dotage now I do begin to pity : 
 For meeting her of late behind the wood, 
 Seeking sweet savors for this hateful fool, 
 I did upbraid her, and fall out with her : 
 For she his hairy temples then had rounded 
 With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers ; 
 And that same dew, which sometimes on the buds 
 Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls, 
 Stood now within the pretty flowref s eyes, 
 Like tears, that did their own disgrace bewail. 
 When I had, at my pleasure, taunted her, 
 And she, in mild tones, begged my patience, 
 I then did ask of her my changeling child ; 
 Which straight she gave me, and her fairy sent 
 To bear him to my bower in fairy land. 
 And now I have the boy, I will undo 
 This hateful imperfection of her eyes. 
 And, gentle Puck, take this transformed scalp 
 From off the head of this Athenian swain; 
 That she awaking when the other do, 
 May all to Athens back again repair. 
 And think no more of this night's accidents, 
 But as the fierce vexation of a dream* 
 But first, I will release the fairy queen. 
 
 Be as thou wert wont to be ; 
 
 {Touching her eyes with a herb ) 
 
 See, as thou were wont to see ; 
 
 Dian's bud o'er Cupid's flower 
 
 * But as the fierce vexation of a dream. — This fine stray verse come* 
 looking in among the rest like a stern face through flowers.
 
 SHAKSPEARE. \i'i 
 
 Hath such force and blessed power. 
 Now, my Titania ; wake you, my sweet queen. 
 Tit. My Oberon ! what visions have I seen ! 
 Methought I was enamored of an ass. 
 Ober. There lies your love. 
 
 Tit. How came these things to pass ? 
 
 0, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now ! 
 
 Ober. Silence awhile. Robin, take off this head. — 
 Titania, music call ; and strike more dead 
 Than common sleep, of all these five the sense. 
 Tit. Music ! ho ! music ! such as charmeth sleep. 
 Puck. Now, when thou wak'st, with thine own fool's eyes peep. 
 Ober. Sound music ! [still music.] Come, my queen, take hand 
 with me, 
 And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be. 
 Now thou and I are new in amity, 
 And will to-morrow midnight, solemnly 
 Dance in Duke Theseus' house triumphantly, 
 And bless it to all fair posterity : 
 There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be 
 Wedded, with Theseus, all in jollity. 
 
 Puck. Fairy king, attend and mark ; 
 
 I do hear the morning lark. 
 Ober. Then, my queen, in silence sad,* 
 Trip we after the night's shade. 
 We the globe can compass soon, 
 Swifter than the wandering moon. 
 
 Tit. Come, my lord, and in our flight 
 Tell me how it came this night, 
 That I sleeping here was found 
 
 With these mortals on the ground. [Exeunt. 
 
 [Horns sound within 
 
 5 Come from the farthest steep of India. 
 
 Shakspeare understood the charm of remoteness in poetry, as 
 lie did everything else. Oberon has been dancing on the sunny 
 steeps looking towards Cathay, where the 
 
 Chinese drive 
 
 Their cany waggons light. 
 * Sad. — Grave, serious (not melancholy). 
 
 10
 
 130 SHAKSPEAKE. 
 
 THE BRIDAL HOUSE BLESSED BY THE FAIRIES. 
 
 Enter Puck. 
 
 Puck. Now the hungry lion roars, 6 
 
 And the wolf behowls the moon, 
 While the heavy ploughman snores, 
 
 All with weary task fordone. 
 Now the wasted brands do glow, 
 
 Whilst the scritch-owl scritching loud, 
 Puts the wretch that lies in wo, 
 
 In remembrance of a shroud. 
 Now it is the time of night 
 
 That the graves all gaping wide, 
 Every one lets forth his sprite, 
 
 In the churchway paths to glide : 
 And we fairies that do run 
 
 By the triple Hecate's team, 
 From the presence of the sun, 
 Following darkness like a dream, 
 Now are frolick ; not a mouse 
 Shall disturb this hallow'd house : 
 I am sent, with broom before, 
 To sweep the dust behind the door. 
 
 Enter Oberon and Titania, with their train. 
 
 Ober. Through this house give glimmering light 
 By the dead and drowsy fire : 
 Every elf and fairy sprite, 
 Hop as light as bird from brier ; 
 And this ditty after me 
 Sing and dance it trippingly. 
 
 Tita. First rehearse this song by rote : 
 To each word a warbling note, 
 Hand in hand, with fairy grace, 
 Will we sing and bless the place. 
 
 Song and Dance 
 
 Ober. Now, until the break of day, 
 
 Through the house each fairy stray,
 
 SKAKSPEARE. 131 
 
 To the best bride-bed will we, 
 
 Which by us shall blessed be ; 
 
 And the issue there create 
 
 Ever shall be fortunate. 
 
 So shall all the couples three, 
 
 Ever true in loving be ; 
 
 And the blots of Nature's hand 
 
 Shall not in their issue stand ; 
 
 Never mole, hare-lip or scar 
 
 Nor mark prodigious, such as are 
 
 Despised in nativity, 
 
 Shall upon their children be. 
 
 With this field-dew, consecrate, 
 
 Every fairy take his gait ; 
 
 And each several chamber bless 
 
 Through this palace with sweet peace ; 
 
 E'er shall it in safety rest, 
 
 And the owner of it blest. 
 Trip away; 
 Make no stay : 
 
 Meet me all by break of day. 
 
 «" J\ r ow the hungry lion roars .-"—Upon the songs of Puck and 
 Oberon, Coleridge exclaims, " Very Anacreon in perfectness, 
 proportion, and spontaneity ! So far it is Greek ; but then add, 
 O ! what wealth, what wild rangings and yet what compression 
 and condensation of English fancy ! In truth, there is nothing 
 in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, or half so rich 
 and imaginative. They form a speckless diamond." — Literary 
 Remains, vol. ii., p. 114. 
 
 LOVERS AND MUSIC. 
 
 Lorenzo and Jessica, awaiting the return home of Portia and Ne- 
 rissa, discourse of music, and then welcome with it the bride and 
 her attendant. 
 
 Lor. The moon shines bright. In such a night as this, 7 
 When the siceet wind did gently kiss the trees.
 
 132 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 And they did make no noise, — in such a night 
 Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls, 
 And sighed his soul towards the Grecian tents, 9 
 Where Cressid lay that night. 
 
 Jes. In such a night 
 
 Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew ; 
 And saw the liorts shadow ere himself, 9 
 And ran dismay'd away. 
 
 Lor. In such a night 
 
 Stood Dido with a willow in her hand 10 
 Upon the wild sea-banks, and wav'd her love 
 To come again to Carthage. 
 
 Jes. In such a night 
 
 Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs 11 
 That did renew old ^Eson. 
 
 Lor. In such a night 
 
 Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew ; 
 And with an unthrift love did run from Venice, 
 As far as Belmont. 
 
 Jes. And in such a night 
 
 Did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well ; 
 Stealing her soul with many rows of faith, 
 And ne'er a true one. 
 
 Lor. And in such a night 
 
 Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew, 
 Slander her love, and he forgave it her. 
 
 Jes. I would out-night you, did nobody come ; 
 But, hark ; I hear the footing of a man. 
 
 Enter Stephano. 
 
 Lor. Who comes so fast in silence of the night? 
 
 Step. A friend. 
 
 Lor. A friend ! what friend ? your name, I pray you, friend ? 
 
 Step. Stephano is my name ; and I bring word 
 My mistress will, before the break of day, 
 Be here at Belmont : she doth stray about 
 By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays 
 For happy wedlock hours. 
 
 Lor. Who comes with her ? 
 
 Step. None but a holy hermit and her maid 
 
 Lor. Sweet soul, let 'sin, and there expect their coming. 
 And yet no matter ; why should we go in ? 
 My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you, 
 Within the house, your mistress is at hand ; 
 And bring your music forth into the air. 
 
 [Exit Stephano.
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 133 
 
 How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon the bank ! 
 Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music 
 Creep into our ears ; soft stillness and the night, 
 Become the touches of sweet h armony. 
 Sit, Jessica: look, how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines* of bright gold ; 
 There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,' 2 
 But in her motion like an angel sings, 
   Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims ; 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
 But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it. 
 
 Enter Musicians. 
 
 Come, ho ! and wake Diana with a hymn ; 
 
 With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear, 
 
 And draw her home with music. \Music. 
 
 Jes. I am never merry when I hear sweet music. 
 
 Lor. The reason is, your spirits are attentive : 
 For do but note a wild and wanton herd, 
 A race of youthful and unhanded colts, 
 Fetching mad bounds, — bellowing and neighing loud, 
 Which is the hot condition of their blood ; 
 If they but hear, perchance, a trumpet sound, 
 Or any air of music touch their ears, 
 You shall perceive them make a mutual stand — 
 Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze 
 By the sweet power of music. Therefore the poet 
 Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods, 
 Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage, 
 But music for the time doth change its nature. 
 The man that hath 710 music in himself, 
 Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ; 
 The motions of his spirit are dull as night, 
 And his affections dark as Erebus : 
 Let no such man be trusted. — Mark the music. 
 
 * Patines (Patine, Patene, Ital.) have been generally understood to mean 
 plates of gold or silver used in the Catholic service. A new and interesting 
 commentator, however (the Rev. Mr. Hunter), is of opinion that, the proper 
 word is patterns.
 
 134 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 Enter Portia and Nerissa, at a distance. 
 
 Por. That light we see is burning in my hall ; 
 How far that little candle throws its beams ! 
 So shines a good deed in a naughty world. 
 
 JVer. When the moon shone, we did not see the candle 
 
 Por. So doth the greater glory dim the less : 
 A substitute shines brightly as a king, 
 Until a king be by ; and then his state 
 Empties himself, as doth the inland brook 
 Into the main of waters. Music ! hark ! 
 
 JVer. It is your music, madam, of the house 
 
 Por. Nothing is good I see without respect; 
 Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day. 
 
 JVer. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam. 
 
 Por. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark, 
 When neither is attended ; and, I think, 
 The nightingale, if she should sing by day, 
 When every goose is cackling, would be thought 
 No better a musician than the wren. 
 How many things by season, season'd are, 
 To their right praise, and true perfection ! 
 Peace, hoa ! the moon sleeps with Endymion, 
 And would not be awak'd ! [Music ceases. 
 
 Lor. That is the voice, 
 
 Or I am much deceiv'd, of Portia. 
 
 Por. He knows me, as the blind man knows the cuckoo, 
 By the bad voice. 
 
 Lor. Dear lady, welcome home. 13 
 
 7 " In such a night as this," &c — All the stories here alluded to, — 
 Troilus and Cressida, Pyramus and Thisbe, Dido and iEneas, 
 Jason and Medea, are in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. It 
 is pleasant to see our great poet so full of his predecessor. He 
 cannot help, however, inventing particulars not to be found in 
 his original. 
 
 8 And sigh'd his soul, &c. 
 
 " The day go'th fast, and after that came eve, 
 And yet came not Troilus to Crescid: 
 He looketh forth by hedge, by tree, by greve (grove), 
 And far his head over the wall he laid." 
 
 Clarke's Chaucer, vol. ii., p. 151. 
 
 » " And saw the lion's shadow." — Thisbe in Chaucer does not see
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 132 
 
 the shadow before she sees the beast (a fine idea !) ; nor does she 
 in Ovid. In both poets it is a lioness seen by moonlight. 
 
 " With bloody mouth, of strangling of a beast." 
 
 Ceede leaena bourn spumantes oblita rictus. 
 
 Metam., lib. iv., v. 97. 
 
 10 "Stood Dido ivith a willow in her hand.'" — The willow, a symbol 
 of being forsaken, is not in Chaucer. It looks as if Shakspeare 
 had seen it in a picture, where it would be more necessary than 
 in a poem. 
 
 » " Medea gathered the enchanted herbs." — Shakspeare has here 
 gone from Chaucer to Gower. Warton, in his Observations on 
 the Faerie Queene, vol. i., p. 361, edit. 1807, has noticed a 
 passage in Gower's story, full of imagination. The poet is 
 speaking of Medea going out upon the business noticed by 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 Thus it fell upon a night, 
 
 When there was naught but starrie light, 
 
 She was vanish'd right as she list, 
 
 That no wight but herself wist, 
 
 And that was at midnight tide. 
 
 The world was still on every side. 
 
 With open head and foot all bare ; 
 
 Her hair too spread, she 'gan to fare ; 
 
 Upon her clothes girt she was, 
 
 And speecheless, upon the grass, 
 
 She g I ode* forth, as an adder doth. 
 
 12 "There's not the smallest orb." — The "warbler of wood-notes 
 wild" has here manifestly joined with Plato and other learned 
 spirits to suggest to Milton his own account of the Music of the 
 Spheres, which every reader of taste, I think, must agree with 
 Mr. Knight in thinking " less perfect in sentiment and har- 
 mony." — Pictorial Shakspeare, vol. ii., p. 448. The best thing 
 in it is what is observed by Warton : that the listening to the 
 spheres is the recreation of the Genius of the Wood (the speaker) 
 after his day's duty, " when the world is locked up in sleep and 
 silence." 
 
 * Glode, is glided. If Chaucer's contemporary had written often thus, 
 his name would have been as famous.
 
 13G SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 Then listen I 
 To the celestial Sirens' harmony, 
 That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, 
 And sing to those that hold the vital shears, 
 And turn the adamantine spindle round, 
 On which the fate of gods and men is wound. 
 Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie 
 To lull the daughters of Necessity, 
 And keep unsteady Nature in her law, 
 And the low world in measur'd motion draw 
 After the heavenly tune, which none can hear 
 Of human mould, with gross unpurged ear. 
 
 Arcades, v. 62. 
 
 The best account I remember to have read of the Music of the 
 Spheres is in the History of Music by Hawkins. 
 
 ' 3 " Dear lady, welcome home:' 1 — Never was a sweeter or more 
 fitting and bridal elegance, than in the whole of this scene, in 
 which gladness and seriousness prettily struggle, each alternate- 
 ly yielding predominance to the other. The lovers are at once 
 in heaven and earth. Thenew bride is "drawn home" with the 
 soul of love in the shape of music ; and to keep her giddy spirits 
 down, she preached that little womanly sermon upon a good deed 
 shining in a "naughty world." The whole play is, in one sense 
 of the word, the most picturesque in feeling of all Shakspeare's. 
 The sharp and malignant beard of the Jew (himself not unrecon- 
 ciled to us by the affections) comes harmlessly against the soft 
 cheek of love. 
 
 ANTONY AND THE CLOUDS. 
 
 Ant. Eros, thou yet behold'st me ? 
 
 Eros. Ay, noble lord. 
 
 Ant. Sometime we see a cloud tkafs dragonish : 
 A vapor sometime ; like a bear, or lion, 
 A tower'd citadel, a pendant rock, 
 A forked mountain, or blue promontory 
 With trees uponH that nod unto the world, 
 And mock our eyes with air ; thou hast seen these signs ; 
 They are black Vesper's pageants 
 
 Eros. Ay, my lord.
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 137 
 
 Ant That which is now a horse, even with a thought 
 The rack dislimns ; and makes it indistinct, 
 As water is in water. 
 
 Eros. It does, my lord. 
 
 Ant. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is 
 Even such a bodv : — here I am, — Antony — 
 Yet cannot hold this shape. 
 
 YOUNG WARRIORS. 
 
 Hotspur. My cousin Vernon ! welcome, by my soul ! 
 
 Sir Richard Vernon. Pray God, my news be worth a welcome, lord 
 The Earl of Westmoreland, seven thousand strong, 
 Is marching hitherwards ; with him, Prince John. 
 
 Hot. No harm : what more ? 
 
 Ver. And further, I have learn'd, — 
 The king himself in person is set forth, 
 Or hitherwards intended speedily, 
 With strong and mighty preparation. 
 
 Hot. He shall be welcome too. Where is his son, 
 The nimble-footed mad-cap Prince of Wales, 
 And his comrades, that daff'd the world aside, 
 And bid it pass ? 
 
 Ver. All furnished, all in arms, 
 All plum'd like estridges that wing the wind ; 
 Bated like eagles having lately bath'd ; 
 Glittering in golden coats, like images ; 
 As full of spirit as the month of May 
 And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer ; 
 Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls, 
 I saw young Harry, — with his beaver on, 
 His cuises on his thighs, gallantly arm'd, — 
 Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury, 
 And vaulted with such ease into his seat, 
 As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds, 
 To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, 
 And witch the world with noble horsemanship. 
 
 Hot. No more, no more ; worse than the sun in March, 
 This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come ; 
 They come like sacrifices in their trim, 
 And to thefire-ey'd maid of smoky war,
 
 138 SHAKSPEARE 
 
 All hot, and bleeding, will we offer them ; 
 The mailed Mars shall on his altar sit, 
 Up to the ears in blood. I am on fire, 
 To hear this rich reprisal is so nigh, 
 And yet not ours : — Come, let me take my horse, 
 Who is to bear me, like a thunder-bolt, 
 Against the bosom of the Prince of Wales : 
 Harry to Harry shall, hot (query not ?) horse to horse, 14 
 Meet, and ne'er part, till one drop down a corse. 
 
 14 " Harry to Harry shall, hot horse to horse." — I cannot help think- 
 ing that the word hot in this line ought to be not. " Hot horse to 
 horse" is not a very obvious mode of speech, and it is too obvi- 
 ous an image. The horses undoubtedly would be hot enough. 
 But does not Hotspur mean to say that the usual shock of horses 
 will not be sufficient for the extremity of his encounter with the 
 Prince of Wales ; their own bodies are to be dashed together, 
 and not merely the horses : 
 
 14 Harry to Harry shall, not horse to horse : 
 
 so closely does he intend that their combat shall hug. 
 
 IMOGEN IN BED. 
 
 (from cymbeline.) 
 
 (Jachimo, dared by Imogen's husband to make trial of her fidelity, hides 
 in her chamber in order to bring away pretended proofs against it.) 
 
 Imo. (reading in bed.) Who's there ? my woman Helen ? 
 
 Lady. Please you, madam. 
 
 Imo. What hour is it ? 
 
 Lady. Almost midnight, madam. 
 
 Imo. I have read three hours then : mine eyes are weak : 
 Fold down the leaf where I have left : — to bed : 
 Take not away the taper ; leave it burning : 
 And if thou canst awake by four o' the clock, 
 I prithee, call me. Sleep hath seized me wholly. 
 
 [Exit Lady. 
 To your protection I commend me, Gods ! 
 From fairies, and the tempters of the night.
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 139 
 
 Guard me, I beseech ye ! 
 
 [Sleeps. Jachimo, from the trunk. 
 Jack. The crickets sing, and man's o'er-labor'd sense 
 Repairs itself by rest : our Tarquin thus 
 Did softly press the rushes, ere he waken'd 
 The chastity he wounded. — Cytherea, 
 How bravely thou com'st thy bed ! fresh lily, 
 And whiter than the sheets ! that I might touch ! 
 But kiss ; one kiss ! — Rubies unparagon'd, 
 How dearly they do 't — ' Tis her breathing that 
 Perfumes the chamber thus: — the flame o' the taper 
 Bows towards her ; and would under-peep her lids, 
 To see the enclosed lights ; now canopied 
 Under those windows, white and azure, lac'd 
 With blue of heaven's own tint. But my design 
 To note the chamber, — I will write all down : 
 Such and such pictures : — there the window : such 
 The adornment of her bed : — the arras, figures, 
 Why, such and such, — and the contents o' the story. 
 Ah, but some natural notes about her body 
 Above ten thousand meaner movables 
 Would testify, to enrich mine inventory. 
 O sleep, thou ape of Death, lie dull upon her ! 
 And be her sense but as a monument, 
 Thus in a chapel lying ! — Come off, come off; 
 
 [ Takes off her bracelet. 
 As slippery!, as the Gordian knot was hard ! 
 'Tis mine, and this will witness outwardly, 
 As strongly as the conscience does within, 
 To the madding of her lord. On her left breast, 
 Jl mole, cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops 
 I' the bottom of a cowslip. Here's a voucher, 
 Stronger than ever law could make : this secret 
 Will force him think I have pick'd the lock, and ta'en 
 The treasure of her honor. No more. To what end ? 
 Why should I write this down that's riveted, 
 Screw'd, to my memory ? She hath been reading late 
 The tale of Tereus ; here the leaf's turn'd down 
 Where Philomel gave up : — I have enough : — 
 To the trunk again, and shut the spring of it. 
 Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning 
 May bare the raven's eye ! I lodge in fear ; 
 Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here. 
 
 [Clock strikes. 
 One, two, three, — Time, time ! 
 
 [ Goes into the trunk. The scene closes
 
 i40 BEN JONSON. 
 
 BEN JONSON, 
 
 BORN, 1574, — DIED, 1637. 
 
 «A^A^AAAAAA^< 
 
 If Ben Jonson had not tried to do half what he did, he would 
 have had a greater fame. His will and ambition hurt him, as 
 they always hurt genius when set in front of it. Lasting repu- 
 tation of power is only to be obtained by power itself; and this, 
 in poetry, is the result not so much, if at all, of the love of the 
 power, as of the power of love, — the love of truth and beauty, — 
 great and potent things they, — not the love of self, which is 
 generally a very little thing. The " supposed rugged old 
 bard," notwithstanding his huffing and arrogance, had elegance, 
 feeling, imagination, great fancy ; but by straining to make 
 them all greater than they were, bringing in the ancients to 
 help him, and aiming to include the lowest farce (perhaps by 
 way of outdoing the universality of Shakspeare), he became 
 as gross in his pretensions, as drink had made him in person. 
 His jealous irritability and assumption tired out the gentlest and 
 most generous of his contemporaries — men who otherwise really 
 liked him (and he them), — Decker for one ; and he has ended in 
 appearing to posterity rather the usurper than the owner of a 
 true renown. He made such a fuss with his learning, that he is 
 now suspected to have had nothing else. Hazlitt himself can- 
 not give him credit for comic genius, so grave and all-in-all does 
 his pedantry appear to that critic, — an erroneous judgment, as 
 it seems to me, — who cannot help thinking, that what altogether 
 made Ben what he was projected his ultra-jovial person rather 
 towards comedy than tragedy ; and as a proof of this, his trage- 
 dies are all borrowed, but his comedies his own. Twelfth 
 Night and other plays of Shakspeare preceded and surpassed
 
 BEN JONSON. Ul 
 
 him in his boasted "humor;" but his Alchemist, and especially 
 his Volpone, seem to me at the head of all severer English 
 comedy. Ihe latter is a masterpiece of plot and treatment. 
 Ben's fancy, a power tending also rather to the comic than 
 tragic, was in far greater measure than his imagination ; and 
 their strongest united efforts, as in the Witches' Meeting, and 
 the luxurious anticipations of Sir Epicure Mammon, produce a 
 smiling as well as a serious admiration. The three happiest of 
 all his short effusions (two of which are in this volume) are the 
 epitaph on Lady Pembroke, the address to Cynthia (both of 
 which are serious indeed, but not tragic), and the Catch of the 
 Satyrs, which is unique for its wild and melodious mixture of 
 the comic and the poetic. His huge farces, to be sure (such as 
 Bartholomew Fair), are execrable. They seem to talk for talk- 
 ing's sake, like drunkards. And though his famous verses, 
 beginning " Still to be neat, still to be drest," are elegantly 
 worded, I never could admire them. There is a coarseness 
 implied in their very refinement. 
 
 After all, perhaps it is idle to wish a writer had been other- 
 wise than he was, especially if he is an original in his way, and 
 worthy of admiration. His faults he may have been unable to 
 mend, and they may not have been without their use, even to 
 his merits. If Ben had not been Ben, Sir Epicure Mammon 
 might not have talked in so high a tone. We should have 
 missed, perhaps, something of the excess and altitude of his ex- 
 pectations — of his 
 
 Gums of Paradise and eastern air. 
 
 Let it not be omitted, that Milton went to the masques and 
 odes of Ben Jonson for some of the elegances even of his digni- 
 fied muse. See Warton's edition of his Minor Poems, passim. 
 Our extracts shall commence with one of these odes, combining 
 classic elegance with a tone of modern feeling, and a music like 
 a serenade.
 
 142 BEN JONSON. 
 
 TO CYNTHIA;— THE MOON. 
 
 Queen of hunters, chaste and fair, 
 
 Now the sun is laid asleep, 
 Seated in thy silver chair, 
 State in wonted manner keep, 
 Hesperus entreats thy light, 
 Goddess, excellently bright. 
 
 Earth, let not thy envious shade 
 
 Dare itself to interpose ; 
 Cynthia's shining orb was made 
 Heav'n to clear, when day did close. 
 Bless us then with wished sight, 
 Goddess, excellently bright. 
 
 Lay thy bow of pearl apart, 
 
 And thy crystal shining quiver ; 
 Give unto the flying hart 
 
 Space to breathe, how short soever ; 
 Thou, that mak'st a day of night, 
 Goddess, excellently bright. 
 
 THE LOVE-MAKING OF LUXURY. 
 
 Volpone makes love to Celia. 
 
 Volp. See, behold, 
 
 What thou art queen of; not in expectation, 
 As I feed others, but possess' d and crown'd. 
 See here, a rope of pearl ; and each, more orient 
 Than that the brave ^Egyptian queen caroused : 
 Dissolve and drink them. See, a carbuncle, 
 May put out both the eyes of our St. Mark ; 
 A diamond would have bought Lollia Pauliner, 
 When she came in like star-light, hid with jewels, 
 That were the spoils of provinces ; take these 
 And wear and lose them ; yet remains an ear-ring
 
 BEN JONSON. 143 
 
 To purchase them again, and this whole state. 
 
 A gem but worth a private patrimony, 
 
 Is nothing : we will eat such at a meal. 
 
 The heads of parrots, tongues of nightingales, 
 
 The brains of peacocks, and of estriches, 
 
 Shall be our food : and, could we get the phtenix, 
 
 Though nature lost her kind, she were our dish. 
 
 Cel. Good sir, these things might move a mind aiFected 
 With such delights ; but I, whose innocence 
 Is all I can think wealthy, or worth th' enjoying, 
 And which, once lost, I have naught to lose beyond it, 
 Cannot be taken with these sensual baits : 
 If you have conscience 
 
 Volp. 'Tis the beggar's virtue : 
 
 If thou had wisdom, hear me, Celia. 
 Thy baths shall be the juice of July flowers, 
 Spirit of roses and of violets, 
 The milk of unicorns, and panthers' breath 
 Gather'd in bags, and mixt with Cretan wines. 
 Our drink shall be prepared gold and amber ; 
 Which we will take until my roof whirl round 
 With the vertigo : and my dwarf shall dance, 
 My eunuch sing, my fool make up the antic ; 
 Whilst we, in changed shape, act Ovid's tales ; 
 Thou, like Europa now, and I like Jove ; 
 Then I like Mars, and thou like Erycine : 
 So, of the rest, till we have quite run through 
 And wearied all the fables of the gods. 
 
 TOWERING SENSUALITY. 
 
 Sir Epicure Mammon, expecting to obtain the Philosopher's Stone, 
 riots in the anticipation of enjoyment. 
 
 Enter Mammon and Surly. 
 
 Mam. Come on, sir. Now, you set your foot on shore 
 In Novo Orbe : here's the rich Peru : 
 And there within, sir, are the golden wines, 
 Great Solomon's Ophir ! he was sailing to 't 
 Three years ; but we have reach'd it in ten months. 
 This is the day, wherein to all my friends, 
 I will pronounce the happy word, Bje rich. 
 Where is my Subtle there ! Within !
 
 144 BEN JONSON. 
 
 Enter Face. 
 
 How now ? 
 Do we succeed ? Is our day come ? and holds it ? 
 
 Face. The evening will set red upon you, sir ; 
 You have color for it, crimson : the red ferment 
 Has done his office : three hours hence prepare you 
 To see projection. 
 
 Mam. Pertinax, my Surly, 
 Again I say to thee, aloud, Be rich. 
 This day thou shalt have ingots ; and to-morrow 
 Give lords the affront. — Is it, my Zephyrus, right ?— 
 Thou'rt sure thou saw'st it blood ? 
 
 Face. Both blood and spirit, sir. 
 
 Mam. I will have all my beds blown up, not stuff'd : 
 Down is too hard. — My mists 
 I'll have of perfume, vapored 'bout the room 
 To lose ourselves in ; and my baths, like pits, 
 To fall into : from whence we will come forth, 
 And roll us dry in gossamer and roses, 
 Is it arriv'd at ruby ? — And my flatterers 
 Shall be the pure and gravest of divines. — 
 And they shall fan me with ten estrich tails 
 A-piece, made in a plume to gather wind. 
 We will be brave, Puffe, now we have the med'cine 
 My meat shall all come in, in Indian shells, 
 Dishes of agate, set in gold, and studded 
 With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies, 
 The tongues of carps, doumice, and camels' heels, 
 Boil'd in the spirit of sol, and dissolv'd pearl, 
 Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy : 
 And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber, 
 Headed with diamond and carbuncle. 
 My foot-boy shall eat pheasants, calver'd salmons, 
 Knots, godwits, lampreys : I myself will have 
 The beards of barbels serv'd, instead of salads ; 
 Oil'd mushrooms ; and the swelling, unctuous paps 
 Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off, 
 Drest with an exquisite and poignant sauce, 
 For which I'll say unto my cook, " There's gold; 
 Go forth, and be a knight." 
 
 Face. Sir, I'll go look 
 
 A little, how it heightens. 
 
 [Exit Face 
 
 Mam. Do. My shirts 
 
 I'll have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light
 
 BEN JONSON. 14l» 
 
 As cobwebs ; and for all my other raiment, 
 It shall be such as might provoke the Persian, 
 Were he to teach the world riot anew. 
 My gloves of fishes and birds' skins, perfum'd 
 With gums of Paradise and eastern air. 
 
 Sur. And do you think to have the stone with this ? 
 
 Mam. No ; I do think t' have all this with the stone ! 
 
 Sur Why, I have heard he must be homo frugi, 
 A pious, holy, and religious man, 
 One free from mortal sin, a very virgin. 
 
 Mam. That makes it, Sir ; he is so ; but I bxjy it. 
 
 THE WITCH. 
 From the Pastoral Fragment, entitled " The Sad Shepherd." 
 
 Aiken. Know ye the witch's dell ? 
 
 Scathlock. No more than I do know the walks of hell- 
 
 Alken. Within a gloomy dimble she doth dwell, 
 Down in a pit, o'ergrown with brakes and briars. 
 Close by the ruins of a shaken abbey, 
 Torn with an earthquake down unto the ground, 
 'Mongst graves and grots, near an old charnel-house, 
 Where you shall find her sitting in her form, 
 As fearful and melancholic as that 
 She is about; with caterpillars' kelis, 
 And knotty cobwebs, rounded in with spells. 
 Then she steals forth to relief in the fogs, 
 And rotten mists, upon the fens and bogs, 
 Down to the drownid lands of Lincolnshire ; 
 To make ewes cast their lambs, swine eat their farrow, 
 And housewives' tun not work, nor the milk churn ! 
 Writhe children's wrists, and suck their breath in sleep, 
 Get vials of their blood ! and where the sea 
 Casts up his slimy ooze, search for a weed 
 To open locks with, and to rivet charms, 
 Planted about her in the wicked feat 
 Of all her mischiefs ; which are manifold. 
 
 John. I wonder such a story could be told 
 Of her dire deeds. 
 
 George. I thought a witch's banks 
 
 Had inclosed nothing but the merry pranks 
 Of some old woman. 
 
 11
 
 146 BEN JONSON 
 
 Scarlet. Yes, her malice more. 
 
 Scath As it would quickly appear had we the store 
 Of his collects. 
 
 George. Ay, this good learned man 
 
 Can speak her right. 
 
 Scar. He knows her shifts and haunts 
 
 Aiken. And all her wiles and turns. The venom'd plants 
 Wherewith she kills ! where the sad mandrake grows, 
 Whose groans are deathful ; and dead-numbing night-shade, 
 The stupefying hemlock, adder's tongue, 
 And martagan : the-shrieks of luckless owls 
 We hear, and croaking night crows in the air! 
 Green-bellied snakes, blue fire-drakes in the sky, 
 And giddy flitter-mice with leather wings ! 
 The scaly beetles, with their habergeons, 
 That make a humming murmur as they fly '. 
 There in the stocks of trees, white fairies do dwell, 
 And span-long elves that dance about a pool, 
 With each a little changeling in their arms ! 
 The airy spirits play with falling stars, 
 And mount the spheres of fire to kiss the moon ! 
 While she sits reading by the glow-worm's light, 
 Or rotten wood, o'er which the worm hath crept, 
 The baneful schedule of her nocent charms. 
 
 A MEETING OF WITCHES 
 
 FOR THE PURPOSE OF DOING A MISCHIEF TO A JOYFUL HOUSE, AND BP.IW;- 
 ING AN EVIL SPIRIT INTO BIRTH IN THE MIDST OF IT. 
 
 From the Masque of Queens. 
 
 Charm The owl is abroad, the bat and the toad, 
 
 And so is the cat-a-mountain ; 
 The ant and the mole both sit in a hole, 
 
 And the frog peeps out of the fountain 
 The dogs they do bay, and the timbrels play 
 
 The spindle is now a turning ; 
 The moon it is red, and the stars are fled, 
 
 But all the sky is a-burning.
 
 BEN JONSON. 147 
 
 1st Hag. I have been all day looking after 
 A raven, feeding upon a quarter ; 
 And soon as she turn'd her beak to the south, 
 I snatch'd this morsel out of her mouth 
 
 '2nd Hag. I have been gathering wolves' hairs, 
 
 The mad dog's foam, and the adder's ears ; 
 The spurging of a dead man's eyes, 
 And all since the evening star did rise 
 
 3rd Hag. I, last night, lay all alone 
 
 On the ground to hear the mandrake groan ; 
 And pluck' d him up, though he grew full low, 
 And as had done, the cock did crow. 
 
 4th Hag. And I have been choosing out this skull 
 From charnel-houses that were full ; 
 From private grots, and public pits ; 
 And frightened a sexto?i out of his wits. 
 
 5th Hag. Under a cradle I did creep, 
 
 By day ; and when the child was asleep 
 At night, I suck'd the breath ; and rose, 
 And pluck'd the nodding nurse by the nose. 
 
 6th Hag. I had a dagger : what did I with that ? 
 KilVd an infant to have his fat. 
 I scratch'd out the eyes of the owl before, 
 I tore the bat's wing ; what would you have more ? 
 
 Dame. Yes, I have brought to help our vows 
 Horned poppy, cypress boughs, 
 The fig-tree wild that grows on tombs, 
 And juice that from the larch-tree comes, 
 The basilisk's blood and the viper's skin ; 
 And now our orgies let us begin. 
 
 You fiends and fairies, if yet any be 
 
 Worse than ourselves, you that have quak'd to see 
 
 These knots untied (she unties them) — exhale earth's rottenest 
 
 vapors, 
 And strike a blindness through these blazing tapers 
 
 Charm. Deep, deep we lay thee to sleep , 
 
 We leave thee drink by, if thou chance to be dry ;
 
 148 
 
 BEN JONSON. 
 
 Both milk and blood, the dew and the flood; 
 We breathe in thy bed, at the foot and the head ; 
 And when thou dost wake, Dame Earth shall quake 
 Such a birth to make, as is the Blue Brake. 
 
 Dame. Stay ; all our charms do nothing win 
 Upon the night ; our labor dies, 
 Our magic feature will not rise, 
 Nor yet the storm ! We must repeat 
 More direful voices far, and beat 
 The ground toith vipers, till it sweat. 
 
 Charm. Blacker go in, and blacker come out: 
 At thy going down, we give thee a shout; 
 
 Hoo! 
 At thy rising again thou shalt have two ; 
 And if thou dost what we 'd have thee do, 
 Thou shalt have three, thou shalt have four, 
 
 Hoo ! har ! har ! hoo ! 
 A cloud of pitch, a spur and a switch, 
 To haste him away, and a whirlwind play, 
 Before and after, with thunder for laughter 
 And storms of joy, of the roaring boy, 
 His head of a drake, his tail of a snake. 
 
 (JL loud and beautiful music is heard, and the Witches vanish ) 
 
 A CATCH OF SATYRS. 
 
 Silenus bids his Saty?s awaken a couple of Sylvans, who have fallen 
 asleep while they should have kept watch. 
 
 Buz, quoth the blue fly, 
 
 Hum, quoth the bee ; 
 Buz and hum they cry, 
 
 And so do we. 
 In his ear, in his nose, 
 
 Thus, do you see ? 
 He ate the dormouse ; 
 
 Else it was he.
 
 BEN JONSON. 149 
 
 " It is impossible that anything could better express than this, 
 either the wild and practical joking of the satyrs, or the action 
 of the thing described, or the quaintness and fitness of the images, 
 or the melody and even the harmony, the intercourse, of the mu- 
 sical words, one with another. None but a boon companion 
 with a very musical ear could have written it. It was not for 
 nothing that Ben lived in the time of the fine old English compos- 
 ers, Bull and Ford, or partook his canary with his " lov'd Alphon- 
 so," as he calls him, the Signor Ferrabosco. — A Jar of Honey 
 from Mount Hybla, in Ainswortlvs Magazine, No. xxx., p. 86.
 
 150 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, 
 
 BEAUMONT, BORN 1586 DIED 1615. 
 
 FLETCHER, " 1576— " 1625. 
 
 Poetry of the higheft order and of the loveliest character 
 abounds in Beaumont and Fletcher, but so mixed up with incon- 
 sistent, and too often, alas! revolting matter, that, apart from 
 passages which do not enter into the plan of this book, I had no 
 alternative but either to confine the extracts to the small number 
 which ensue, or to bring together a heap of the smallest quota- 
 tions, — two or three lines at a time. I thought to have got a 
 good deal more out of the Faithful Shepherdess, which I had not 
 read for many years ; but on renewing my acquaintance with 
 it, I found that the same unaccountable fascination with the evil 
 times which had spoilt these two fine poets in their other plays, 
 had followed its author, beyond what I had supposed, even into 
 the regions of Arcadia. 
 
 Mr. Hazlitt, who loved sometimes to relieve his mistrust by a 
 fit of pastoral worship, pronounces the Faithful Shepherdess to 
 be " a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, where no crude surfeit 
 reigns." I wish I could think so. There are both hot and cold 
 dishes in it, which I would quit at any time to go and dine with 
 the honest lovers of Allan Ramsay, whose Gentle Shepherd, 
 though of another and far inferior class of poetry, I take upon 
 the whole to be the completest pastoral drama that ever was 
 written. 
 
 It is a pity that Beaumont and Fletcher had not been born 
 earlier, and in the neighborhood of Shakspeare, and become his 
 playmates. The wholesome company of the juvenile yeoman 
 (like a greater Sandford) might have rectified the refined spirits
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER 151 
 
 of the young gentlemen, and saved their Hippocrene from he- 
 coming ditch-water. Even as it is, they seem different men 
 when writing in their own persons, and following the taste of the 
 town. Compare, for example, Beaumont's exquisite verses on 
 Melancholy (here printed) with any one of their plays ; or 
 Fletcher's lines entitled An Honest Man's Fortune with the play 
 of the same name, to which it is appended. The difference is 
 so great, and indeed is discernible to such an equal degree in 
 the poetry which startles you in the plays themselves (as if two 
 different souls were writing one passage), that it appears unac- 
 countable, except on some principle anterior to their town life, 
 and to education itself. Little is known of either of their fami- 
 lies, except that there were numerous poets in both ; but 
 Fletcher's father was that Dean of Peterborough (afterwards 
 Bishop of London) who behaved with such unfeeling imperti- 
 nence to the Queen of Scots in her last moments, and who is 
 said (as became such a man) to have died of chagrin, because 
 Elizabeth was angry at his marrying a second time. Was 
 poetry such a " drug " with " both their houses " that the friends 
 lost their respect for it ? or was Fletcher's mother some angel of 
 a woman — some sequestered Miranda of the day — with whose 
 spirit the " earth " of the Dean her husband but ill accorded ? 
 
 Every devout lover of poetry must have experienced the wish 
 of Coleridge, that Beaumont and Fletcher had written "poems 
 instead of tragedies." Imagine as voluminous a set of the one 
 as they have given us of the other ! It would have been to 
 sequestered real life what Spenser was to the land of Faery, — a 
 retreat beyond all groves and gardens, a region of medicinal 
 sweets of thought and feeling. Nor would plenty of fable have 
 been wanting. What a loss ! And this, — their birthright with 
 posterity — these extraordinary men sold for the mess of the 
 loathsome pottage of the praise and profligacy of the court of 
 James I. 
 
 But let us blush to find fault with them, even for such a de- 
 scent from their height, while listening to their diviner moods.
 
 152 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 
 
 MELANCHOLY. 
 
 BY BEAUMONT. 
 
 Hence, all you vain delights, 
 As short as are the nights 
 
 Wherein you spend your folly; 
 There's naught in this life sweet, 
 Were men but wise to see 't, 
 
 But only Melancholy ; 
 O sweetest Melancholy ! 
 
 Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes; 
 A sigh, that piercing;, mortifies ; 
 A look that's fasten' d to the ground ; 
 A tongue chain'd up without a sound. 
 
 Fountain heads and path/ess groves, 
 Places vphich pale passion loves ; l 
 Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 
 Are warmly hous'd save bats and owls ; 
 A midnight bell, a parting groan, 
 These are the sounds we feed upon : 
 Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley ; 
 Nothing so dainty stvect as lovely Melancholy.- 
 
 2" Loiely Melancholy."— Tradition has given these verses to 
 Beaumont, though they appeared for the first time in a play of 
 Fletcher's after the death of his friend. In all probability 
 Beaumont had partly sketched the play, and left the verses to 
 be inserted. 
 
 I cannot help thinking that a couplet has been lost after the 
 words " bats and owls." It is true the four verses ending; 
 with those words might be made to belong to the preceding 
 four, as among the things " welcomed j" but the junction would 
 be forced, and the modulation injured. They may remain, too, 
 where they are, as combining to suggest the " sounds" which the 
 melancholy man feeds upon ; " fountain-heads" being audible, 
 "groves" whispering, and the "moonlight walks" being attend. 
 ed by the hooting "owl." They also modulate beautifully in
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 153 
 
 this case. Yet these intimations themselves appear a little forc- 
 ed ; whereas, supposing a couplet to be supplied, there would 
 be a distinct reference to melancholy sights, as well as sounds. 
 
 The conclusion is divine. Indeed the whole poem, as Hazlitt 
 says, is "the perfection of this kind of writing." Orpheus 
 might have hung it, like a pearl, in the ear of Proserpina. It 
 has naturally been thought to have suggested the Penseroso to 
 Milton, and is more than worthy to have done so ; for fine as 
 that is, it is still finer. It is the concentration of a hundred 
 melancholies. Sir Walter Scott, in one of his biographical 
 works, hardly wiih the accustomed gallantry and good-nature 
 of the great novelist, contrasted it with the " melo-dramatic" ab- 
 stractions of Mrs. RadclyfFe (then living). He might surely, 
 with more justice, have opposed it to the diffuseness and con- 
 ventional phraseology of" novels in verse." 
 
 i " Places which pale passion loves." — Beaumont, while writing 
 this verse, perhaps the finest in the poem, probably had in his 
 memory that of Marlowe, in his description of Tamburlaine. 
 
 Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion. 
 
 A SATYR PRESENTS A BASKET OF FRUIT TO THE 
 FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS. 
 
 BT FLETCHER. 
 
 Here be grapes whose lusty blood 
 
 Is the learned poet's good ; 
 
 Sweeter yet did never crown 
 
 The head of Bacchus ; nuts more brown 
 
 Than the squirrel's teeth that crack them ; 
 
 Deign, oh, fairest fair ! to take them. 
 
 For these black-eyed Dryope 
 
 Hath oftentimes commanded me 
 
 With my clasped knee to climb : 
 
 See how well the lusty time 
 
 Hath dec/e'd their rising cheeks in red, 
 
 Such as on your lips is spread.
 
 154 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER 
 
 Here be berries for a queen, 
 
 Some be red — some be green , -3 
 
 These are of that luscious meat 
 
 The great god Pan himself doth eat ; 
 
 All these, and what the woods can yield, 
 
 The hanging mountain or the field, 
 
 I freely offer; and ere long 
 
 Will bring you more, more sweet and strong ; 
 
 Till when, humbly leave I take, 
 
 Least the great Pan do awake 
 
 That sleeping lies in a deep glade, 
 
 Under a broad beech's shade : 4 
 
 I must go, I must run, 
 
 Swifter than the fiery sun 
 
 3 " Some be red, some be green." — This verse calls to mind a beau- 
 tiful one of Chaucer, in his description of a grove in spring : — 
 
 In which were oakes great, straight as a line, 
 Under the which the grass, so fresh of hue, 
 Was newly sprung, and an eight foot or nine, 
 Ev-e-ry tree well from his fellow grew, 
 With branches broad, laden with leaves new, 
 That sprangen out against the sunny sheen, 
 Some very red, and some a glad light green. 
 
 The Flower and the Leaf. 
 
 Coleridge was fond of repeating it. 
 
 * " That sleeping lies," &c— Pan was not to be waked too soon 
 with impunity. 
 
 Ot> dc/iis, o) -Koijiav, to peaapffpivov, ov 9epi; ayptv 
 ±vpioSeV tov Tiava JcSoiKapes >i yap an aypn 
 LaviK i KCKpaicws aprravcraf tvri 6e m/cpos 
 Kai hi a "i Spipcia ^oXo ttoti ptm /ca0»jrai. 
 
 Theocritus, Idyll i., v. 15. 
 
 No, shepherd, no ; we must not pipe at noon : 
 We must fear Pan, who sleeps after the chase, 
 Ready to start in snappish bitterness 
 With quivering nostril. 
 
 What a true picture of the half-goat divinity !
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 155 
 
 A SPOT FOR LOVE TALES. 
 
 Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells ; 
 Arbors o'ergrown with woodbines; caves and dells ; 
 Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing, 
 Or gather rushes, to make man}' a ring 
 For thy long fingers ; tell thee tales of love ; 
 Hflw the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, 
 FWt saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes 
 She took eternal fire that never dies ; 
 How she conveyed him softly in a sleep, 
 His temples bound ivith poppy, to the steep 
 Head of old Latmus, where she stoops each night, 
 Gilding the mountain with her brother's light, 
 To kiss her sweetest. 
 
 MORNING. 
 
 See, the day begins to bi'eak, 
 And the light shoots like a streak 
 Of subtle fire. The wind blows cold 
 Wliile the morning doth unfold. 
 
 I have departed from my plan for once, to introduce this very 
 small extract, partly for the sake of its beauty, partly to show 
 the student that great poets do not confine their pleasant descrip- 
 tions to images or feelings pleasing in the commoner sense of the 
 word, but include such as, while seeming to contradict, harmo- 
 nize with them, upon principles of truth, and of a genial and 
 strenuous sympathy. The " subtle streak of fire" is obviously 
 beautiful, but the addition of the cold wind is a truth welcome to 
 those only who have strength as well as delicacy of apprehen- 
 sion, — or rather, that healthy delicacy which arises from the 
 strength. Sweet and wholesome, and to be welcomed, is the 
 chill breath of morning. There is a fine epithet for this kind of 
 dawn in the elder Marston's Antonio and Melida : —
 
 156 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 
 
 Is not yon gleam the shuddering morn, that flakes 
 With silver tincture the east verge of heaven ? 
 
 THE POWER OF LOVE. 
 
 Hear, ye ladies that despise 
 
 What the mighty Love has done ; 
 Fear examples and be wise : 
 
 Fair Calisto was a nun ; 
 Leda, sailing on the stream ^ 
 
 To deceive the hopes of man, 
 Love accounting but a dream 
 
 Doted on a silver swan ; 
 Danae, in a brazen tower, 
 Where no love was, loved a shower.** 
 
 Hear, ye ladies that are coy, 
 
 What the mighty Love can do, 
 Fear the fierceness of the boy : 
 
 The chaste moon he makes to woo ; 
 Vesta, kindling holy fires, 
 
 Circled round about with spies, 
 Never dreaming loose desires, 
 
 Doting at the altar dies ; 
 Hion in a short hour, higher 
 He can build, and once more fire. 
 
 * " Where no love was." — See how extremes meet, and pas 
 sion writes as conceit does, in these repetitions of a word : — 
 
 Where no love was, lov'd a shower. 
 
 So, still more emphatically, in the instance afterwards : — 
 
 Fear the fierceness of the boy — 
 
 than which nothing can be finer. Wonder and earnestness con- 
 spire to stamp the iteration of the sound.
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 157 
 
 INVOCATION TO SLEEP. 
 
 Sung to Music : the Emperor Valentinian sitting by, sick, in a 
 
 chair. 
 
 Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes, — 
 Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose 
 On this afflicted prince : fall like a cloud 
 In gentle showers ; give nothing that is loud 
 Or painful to his slumbers ; — easy, sweet, 6 
 Aifd as a purling stream, thou son of night, 
 Pass by his troubled senses : — sing his pain, 
 Like hollow murmuring wind, or silver rain : 
 Into this prince gently, oh, gently slide, 
 And kiss him into slumbers like a bride ! 
 
 e " Easy, sweet.'" — In rhymes like night and sweet, the fine ears 
 of our ancestors discerned a harmony to which we have been 
 unaccustomed. They perceived the double e, which is in the 
 vowel i, — night nah-eet. There is an instance in a passage in 
 the Midsummer Night's Dream, extracted at page 126, where 
 the word bees, as well as mulberries, and dewberries, is made to 
 rhyme with eyes, arise, &c. Indeed, in such words as mulber- 
 ries the practice is still retained, and e and i considered corres- 
 ponding sounds in the fainter terminations of polysyllables : — 
 free, company — -fiy, company. 
 
 Was ever the last line of this invocation surpassed ? But it 
 is all in the finest tone of mingled softness and earnestness. 
 The verses are probably Fletcher's. He has repeated a pas- 
 sage of it in his poem entitled An Honest Man's Fortune. 
 
 Oh, man ! thou image of thy Maker's good, 
 What canst thou fear, when breath'd into thy blood 
 His Spirit ; s that built thee ? What dull sense 
 Makes thee suspect, in need, that Providence 
 Who made the morning, and who plac'd the light 
 Guide to thy labors ; who call'd up the night, 
 And bid her fall upon thee like sweet showers 
 In hollow murmurs to lock up thy powers ! 
 
 O si sic omnia !
 
 158 MIDDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER. 
 
 MIDDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER, 
 
 When about to speak of these and other extraordinary men of 
 the days of Shakspeare, the Marstons, Rowleys, Massingers, 
 Draytons, &c, including those noticed already, I wasted a 
 good deal of time in trying to find out how it was that, possess- 
 ing, as most of them did, such a pure vein of poetry, and some- 
 times saying as fine things as himself, they wrote so much that 
 is not worth reading, sometimes not fit to be read. I might have 
 considered that, either from self-love, or necessity, or both, too 
 much writing is the fault of all ages and of every author. 
 Even Homer, says Horace, sometimes nods. How many odes 
 might not Horace himself have spared us ! How many of his 
 latter books, Virgil ! What theology, Dante and Milton ! What 
 romances, Cervantes ! What Comedies, Ariosto ! What trage- 
 dies, Dryden ! What heaps of words, Chaucer and Spenser ! 
 What Iliads, Pope ! 
 
 Shakspeare's contemporaries, however, appear to have been a 
 singularly careless race of men, compared with himself. Could 
 they have been rendered so by that very superiority of birth and 
 education which threw them upon the town, in the first instance, 
 with greater confidence, his humbler prospects rendering hin 
 more cautious ? Or did their excess of wit and fancy require 
 a counter- perfection of judgment, such as he only possessed ? 
 Chapman and Drayton, though their pens were among the pro- 
 fusest and most unequal, seem to have been prudent men in 
 conduct ; so in all probability were Ford and Webster ; but 
 none of these had the animal spirits of the others. Shak- 
 speare had animal spirits, wit, fancy, judgment, prudence in 
 money matters, understanding like Bacon, feeling like Chaucer, 
 mirth like Rabelais, dignity like Milton ! What a man ! Has 
 anybody discovered the reason why he never noticed a living
 
 MIDDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER. 159 
 
 contemporary, and but one who was dead ? and this too in an 
 age of great men, and when they were in the habit of acknow 
 ledging the pretensions of one another. It could not have been 
 jealousy, or formality, or inability to perceive merits which his 
 own included ; and one can almost as little believe it possible 
 to have been owing to a fear of disconcerting his aristocratic 
 friends, for they too were among the eulogizers : neither can it 
 be attributed to his having so mooted all points, as to end in 
 caring for none ; for in so great and wise a nature, good nature 
 must surely survive everything, both as a pleasure and a duty. 
 I have made up my mind to think that his theatrical manager- 
 ship was the cause. It naturally produced a dislike of pro- 
 nouncing judgments and incurring responsibilities. And yet 
 he was not always a manager ; nor were all his literary friends 
 playwrights. I think it probable, from the style, that he wrote 
 the sonnet in which Spenser is eulogized : — 
 
 If music and sweet poetry agree, &c. 
 
 but this is doubtful ; and Spenser was not one of his dramatic 
 fellows. Did he see too many faults in them all to praise 
 them ! ! Certainly the one great difference between him and 
 them, next to superiority of genius, is the prevailing relevancy 
 of all he wrote ; its freedom, however superabundant, from in- 
 consistency and caprice. But could he find nothing to praise 1 
 Nothing in the whole contemporary drama ? Nothing in all 
 the effusions of his friends and brother clubbists of the Mermaid 
 and the Triple Tun 1 
 
 I take Webster and Decker to have been the two greatest of 
 the Shakspeare men, for unstudied genius, next after Beaumont 
 and Fletcher ; and in some respects they surpassed them. 
 Beaumont and Fletcher have no such terror as Webster, nor 
 any such piece of hearty, good, affecting human clay, as 
 Decker's "Old Signior Orlando Friscobaldo." Is there any 
 such man even in Shakspeare ? — any such exaltation of that 
 most delightful of all things, bonhomie ? Webster sometimes 
 overdoes his terror ; nay often. lie not only riots, he debauches 
 in it ; and Decker, full of heart and delicacy as he is, and 
 
 t: |j 
 
 liiied 
 
 qualifier to teach refinement to the refined, condescends to an
 
 60 MIDDLETOxN, DECKER, AND WEBSTER. 
 
 astounding coarseness. Beaumont and Fletcher's good company 
 saved them from that, in words. In spirit they are full of it. 
 But Decker never mixes up (at least not as far as I can remem- 
 ber) any such revolting and impossible contradictions in the 
 same character as they do. Neither does he bring a doubt on 
 his virtue by exaggerating them. He believes heartily in what 
 he does believe, and you love him in consequence. It was he 
 that wrote that character, the piety of which has been pro- 
 nounced equal to its boldness : — 
 
 The best of men 
 That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer ; 
 A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit; 
 The first true gentleman that ever breath'd. 
 
 His universal sympathy enabled him to strike out that audacious 
 and happy simile, " untameable as pes" which Homer would 
 have admired, though it is "fit to make poetasters shudder. The 
 poetaster, had Decker offered to make him a present of it, would 
 have been afraid of being taken for a fly himself. Images are 
 either grand in themselves, or for the thought and feeling that 
 accompany them. This has all the greatness of Nature's 
 " equal eye." You may see how truly Decker felt it to be of 
 this kind, by the company in which he has placed it ; and there 
 is a consummation of propriety in its wildness, for he is speaking 
 of lunatics : — 
 
 There are of madmen, as there are of tame, 
 
 All humor'd not alike. We have here some 
 
 So apish and fantastic, will play with a feather; 
 
 And though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image 
 
 So blemish'd and defaced, yet do they act 
 
 Such antic and such pretty lunacies, 
 
 That, spite of sorrow, they will make you smile. 
 
 Others again we have like hungry lions, 
 
 Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as flies. 
 
 Middleton partakes of the poetry and sweetness of Decker, 
 but not to the same height ; and he talks more at random. You 
 hardly know what to make of the dialogue or stories of some of 
 Hs plays. But he has more fancy ; and there is one characte
 
 M1DDLET0N, DECKER, AND WEBSTER. 161 
 
 of his (De Flores in the " Changeling") which, for effect at once 
 tragical, probable, and poetical, surpasses anything I know of 
 in the drama of domestic life. Middleton has the honor of 
 having furnished part of the witch poetry to Macbeth, and of 
 being conjoined with it also in the powerful and beautiful music 
 of Locke. 
 
 From Massinger, Ford, and the others (as far as I have met 
 with them, and apart from the connexion of Massinger's name 
 with Decker), I could find nothing to extract of a nature to suit 
 this particular volume, and of equal height with its contents. 
 It is proper to state, however, that I have only glanced through 
 their works : for though no easily daunted reader, I never read 
 an entire play either of Ford or Massinger. They repel me 
 with the conventional tendencies of their style, and their unnatu- 
 ral plots and characters. Ford, however, is elegant and 
 thoughtful ; and Massinger has passion, though (as far as I 
 know) not in a generous shape. With these two writers began 
 that prosaical part of the corruption of dramatic style (merging 
 passionate language into conventional) which came to its head 
 in Shirley. 
 
 Donusa. What magic hath transform' d me from myself? 
 Where is my virgin pride 1 how have I lost 
 My boasted freedom .' what new fire burns up 
 My scorch'd entrails ! ! what unknown desires 
 Invade, and take possession of my soul ? 
 
 Maasinger's Renegado. 
 
 Hialas. To this union 
 
 The good of both the Church and Commonwealth 
 Invite you. 
 
 Durham. To this unity, a mystery 
 Of providence points out a greater blessing 
 For both these nations, than our human wisdom 
 Can search into. King Henry hath a daughter, 
 The Princess Margaret. I need not urge, &c. 
 
 Ford's Perkin Warheck. 
 
 Both tnese passages are the first I came to, on dipping into 
 their works. One might fancy one's self reading Cato or the 
 Grecian Daughter, instead of men who had breathed the air of 
 the days of Shakspeare. 
 
 12
 
 162 MIDDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER. 
 
 Massinger was joint author with Decker, of the play from 
 which the scene of the lady and the angel is taken ; but nobody 
 who knows the style of the two men can doubt for a moment to 
 which it belongs. I have, therefore, without hesitation assigned 
 it according to the opinion expressed by Mr. Lamb. 
 
 FLIGHT OF WITCHES. 
 
 Scene, a Field. Enter Hecate, Stadlin, Hoppo, and other Witches. 
 Firestone in the background. 
 
 Hec. The moon's a gallant ; see how brisk she rides ! 
 
 Stad. Here 's a rich evening, Hecate. 
 
 Hec. Ay, is 't not, wenches, 
 
 To take a journey of five thousand miles ? 
 
 Hop. 't will be precious ! 
 
 Heard you the owl yet ? 
 
 Stad. Briefly in the copse, 
 
 As we came through now. 
 
 Hec. 'T is high time for us then 
 
 Stad. There was a bat hung at my lips three times, 
 As we came through the woods, and drank her fill : 
 Old Puckle saw her. 
 
 Hec. You are fortunate stiii ; 
 
 The very screech-owl lights upon your shoulder, 
 And woos you like a pigeon. Are you furnished ? 
 Have you your ointments ? 
 
 Stad.. All. 
 
 Hec. Prepare to flight then ; 
 
 I'll overtake you swiftly. 
 
 Stad. Hie thee, Hecate ; 
 
 We shall be up betimes. 
 
 Hec. I'll reach you quickly. 
 
 [Exeunt all the Witches except Hecate. 
 
 Fire. They are all going a birding to-night : they talk of fowls i' th' air 
 that fly by day ; I am sure they '11 be a company of foul sluts there to-night : 
 if we have not mortality after 't, I '11 be hanged, for they are able to putrefy 
 it, to infect a whole region She spies me now. 
 
 Hec. What, Firestone, our sweet son ? 
 
 Fire A little sweeter than some of you, or a dunghill were too good for 
 me. [Aside. 
 
 Hec How much hast here ?
 
 MTDDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER 163 
 
 Fire. Nineteen, and all brave plump ones, besides 
 
 six lizards and three serpentine eggs. 
 
 Hec. Dear and sweet boy ! what herbs hast thou ? 
 
 Fire. I have some marmartin and mandragon. 
 
 Hec. Marmaritin and mandragora, thou wouldst say. 
 
 Fire. Here's panax too— I thank thee — my pan aches I'm sure, with 
 kneeling down to cut 'em. 
 
 Hec. And selago, 
 
 Hedge-hysop too ; how near he goes my cuttings ! 
 Were they all cropt by moonlight ? 
 
 Fire. Every blade of 'em, 
 
 Or I'm a moon-calf, mother. 
 
 Hec. Hie thee home with 'em : 
 
 Look well to the house to-night ; I'm for aloft. 
 
 Fire. Aloft, quoth you ? I would you would break your neck once, that 
 J might have all quickly ! [Aside.]— Hark, hark, mother ! they are above 
 the steeple already, flying over your head with a noise of musicians. 
 
 Hec. They 're they indeed. Help, help me ; I'm too late else. 
 
 SONG ABOVE. 
 
 Come away, come away, 
 Hecate, Hecate, come away. 
 Hec. I come, I come, I come, I come, 
 With all the speed I may. 
 Where's Stadlin ? 
 [Voice above.] Here. 
 
 Hec. Where's Puckle ? 
 [Voice above.] Here. 
 
 And Hoppo too, and Hellwain too ; 
 We lack but you, we lack but you ; 
 Come away, make up the count. 
 Hec. I will but 'noint and then I mount. 
 
 [A spirit like a cat descends 
 [Voict above.] There's one comes down to fetch his dues, 
 A kiss, a coll, a sip of blood ; 
 And why thou stay'st so Ions, I muse, 
 Since the air 's so sweet and good ? 
 Hec. O, art thou come ? what news, what news ? 
 Spirit. All goes still to our delight, 
 
 Either come, or else refuse. 
 Hec Now I'm furnished for the flight. 
 Fire. Hark, hark, the cat rings a brave treble in her own language ! 
 [Hec. going up.] Now I go, now I fly, 
 
 Malkin my sweet spirit and I. 
 O what a dainty pleasure 't is
 
 164 MIDDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER. 
 
 To ride in the air 
 When the moon shines fair, 
 And sing and dance, and toy and kiss ! 
 Over woods, high rocks and mountains, 
 Over seas, our mistress' fountains ; 
 Ov<>r steeples, towers, and turrets, 
 We fly by night, 'mongst troops of spirits : 
 No ring of bells to our ears sounds ; 
 No howls of wolves, no yelps of hounds ; 
 No, not the noise of water's breach, 
 Or cannon's throat our height can reach. 
 [Voice above.'] No ring of bells, &c. 
 
 Fire. Well, mother, I thank your kindness : you must be gambolling i' 
 th' air, and leave me to walk here, like a fool and a mortal. 
 
 MlDDLETON. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LADY AND THE ANGEL. 
 
 An Angel, in the guise of a Page, attends on Dorothea. 
 
 Dor. My book and taper 
 
 Ang. Here, most holy mistress. 
 
 Dor. Thy voice sends forth such music, that I never 
 Was ravish'd with a more celestial sound. 
 Were every servant in the world like thee, 
 So full of goodness, angels would come down 
 To dwell with us : thy name is Angelo, 
 And like that name thou art. Get thee to rest; 
 Thy youth with too much watching is opprest. 
 
 Ang. No, my dear lady ; I could weary stars, 
 And force the wakeful moon to lose her eyes, 
 By my late watching, but to wait on you. 
 When at your prayers you kneel before the altar, 
 Methinks I'm singing with some quire in heaven, 
 So blest I hold me in your company : 
 Therefore, my most lov'd mistress, do not bid 
 Your boy, so serviceable, to get hence : 
 For then you break his heart 
 
 Dor. Be nigh me still then. 
 
 In golden letters down I'll set that day 
 Which gave thee to me. Little did I hope 
 To meet such worlds of comfort in thyself,
 
 MIDDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER. 165 
 
 This little, pretty body, when I, coming 
 Forth of the temple, heard my beggar-boy, 
 My sweet-faced, godly beggar-boy, crave an alms, 
 Which with glad hand I gave, with lucky hand ! 
 And when I took thee home, my most chaste bosom 
 Methought was fill'd with no hot wanton fire, 
 But with a holy flame, mounting since higher, 
 On wings of cherubims, than it did before. 
 
 Ang. Proud am I, that my lady's modest eye 
 So likes so poor a servant. 
 
 Dor. I have offer' d 
 
 Handfuls of gold but to behold thy parents. 
 I would leave kingdoms, were I queen of some 
 To dwell with thy good father ; for, the son 
 Bewitching me so deeply with his presence, 
 He that got him must do it ten times more. 
 I pray thee, my sweet boy, show me thy parents ; 
 Be not asham'd. 
 
 Ang. I am not : I did never 
 
 Know who my mother was ; but by yon palace, 
 Fill'd with bright heavenly courts, I dare assure you, 
 And pawn these eyes upon it, and this hand, 
 My father is in heaven ; and, pretty mistress, 
 If your illustrious hour-glass spend his sand, 
 No worse than yet it does, upon my life. 
 You and I both shall meet my father there, 
 And he shall bid you welcome ! 
 
 Dor. O blessed day ! 
 
 We all long to be there, but lose the way. 
 
 [Exeunt 
 
 Dorothea is executed; and the Angel visits Theophilus, the Judge 
 
 that condemned her. 
 
 Theoph. (alone) This Christian slut was well, 
 
 A pretty one ; but let such horror follow 
 The next I feed with torments, that when Rome 
 Shall hear it, her foundation at the sound 
 May feel an earthquake. How now ? (Music.) 
 
 Ang. Are you amazed, sir ? 
 
 So great a Roman spirit, and doth it tremble ? 
 
 Theoph. How cam'st thou in ? to whom thy business? 
 
 Ang. To you. 
 I had a mistress, late sent hence by you 
 Upon a bloody errand ; you entreated, 
 That, when she came into that blessed garden
 
 1G6 MIDDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER. 
 
 Whither she knew she went, and where, now happy, 
 She feeds upon all joy, she would send to you 
 Some of tnat garden fruit and flowers; which here, 
 To have her promise sav'd, are brought by me. 
 
 Theoph. Cannot I see this garden ? 
 
 Ang. Yes, if the master 
 
 Will give you entrance. (He vanishes.) 
 
 Theoph. 'Tis a tempting fruit, 
 
 And the most bright-cheek'd child I ever view'd ; 
 Sweet-smelling, goodly fruit. What flowers are these i 
 In Dioclesian's gardens, the most beauteous 
 Compar'd with these are weeds : is it not February, 
 The second day she died ? frost, ice, and snow, 
 Hang on the beard of winter : where's the sun 
 That gilds this summer ? pretty, sweet boy, say, 
 In what country shall a man find this garden ? — 
 My delicate boy, — gone ! vanish'd ! within there, 
 Julianus ! Geta ! 
 
 Both. My lord. 
 
 Theoph. Are my gates shut ? 
 
 Geta. And guarded. 
 
 Theoph. Saw you not 
 
 A boy ? 
 
 Jul. Where ? 
 
 Theoph. Here he enter'd, a young lad ; 
 
 A thousand blessings danc'd upon his eyes ; 
 A smooth-fac'd glorious thing, that brought this basket. 
 
 Geta. No, sir. 
 
 Theoph. Away ! but be in "each, if my voice calls you. 
 
 Decker. 
 
 LADIES DANCING. 
 
 A fine sweet earthquake, gently mov'd 
 By the soft wind of whispering silks. 
 
 The same.
 
 MIDDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER. 167 
 
 APRIL AND WOMEN'S TEARS. 
 
 Trust not a woman when she cries, 
 For she'll pump water from her eyes 
 With a wet finger, and in faster showers 
 Than April when he rains down flowers. 
 
 The same. 
 
 DEATH. 
 
 There's a lean fellow beats all conquerors. 
 
 The same. 
 
 PATIENCE. 
 
 Duke. What comfort do you find in being so calm ? 
 
 Candido. That which green wounds receive from sovereign balm. 
 Patience, my lord ! why, 'tis the soul of peace ; 
 Of all the virtues 't is nearest kin to heaven ; 
 It makes men look like gods. The best of men 
 That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer, 
 A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, 
 The first true gentleman that ever breath'd. 
 The stock of patience then cannot be poor ; 
 All it desires, it has ; what award more ? 
 It is the greatest enemy to law 
 That can be, for it doth embrace all wrongs, 
 And so chains up lawyer's and women's tongues : 
 ' T is the perpetual prisoner's liberty, 
 His walks and orchards : 't is the bond-slave's freedom, 
 And makes him seem proud of his iron chain, 
 As though he wore it more for state than pain : 
 It is the beggar's music, and thus sings, —
 
 168 MIDDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER. 
 
 Although their bodies beg, their souls are kings. 
 0, my dread liege ! it is the sap of bliss, 
 Bears us aloft, makes men and angels kiss ; 
 And last of all, to end a household strife, 
 It is the honey 'gainst a waspish wife. 
 
 The same. 
 
 I had a doubt whether to put this exquisite passage into the 
 present volume, or to reserve it for one of Contemplative poetry ; 
 but the imagination, which few will lot think predominant in it, 
 together with a great admiration of the sentiments, of the 
 thoughtful, good-natured alternation of jest and earnest, and of 
 the sweetness of the versification, increased by a certain wild 
 mixture of rhyme and blank verse, determined me to indulge 
 the impulse. Perhaps Decker, who had experienced the worst 
 troubles of poverty, not excepting loss of liberty, drew his pa- 
 tient man from himself, half-jesting over the portrait, in order to 
 reconcile his praises of the virtue in the abstract, with a modest 
 sense of it in his own person. To the strain in it of a " higher 
 mood," I cannot but append what Mr. Hazlitt has said in his 
 Lectures on the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (Temple- 
 man's edition, p. 21). "There have been persons who, being 
 sceptics as to the divine mission of Christ, have taken an unac- 
 countable prejudice to his doctrines, and have been disposed to 
 deny the merit of his character ; but this was not the feeling of 
 the great men in the age of Elizabeth (whatever might be their 
 belief), one of whom says of him, with a boldness equal to its 
 piety, ' The best of men,' " &c. (Here the lecturer quotes the 
 verses alluded to and adds), " This was honest old Decker ; and 
 the lines ought to embalm his memory to every one who has a 
 sense either of religion, or philosophy, or humanity, or true 
 genius." 
 
 A WICKED DREAM. 
 
 Vittoria Corombona. To pass away the time I '11 tell your grace 
 A dream I had last night.
 
 MIDDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER. 169 
 
 Brachiano. Most wishedly. 
 
 Pit. Cor. A foolish idle dream, 
 Methought I walk'd, about the mid of night, 
 Into a church-yard, where a goodly yew-tree 
 Spread her large root in ground. Under that yew, 
 As I sat sadly leaning on a grave 
 Checquer'd with cross sticks, there came stealing in 
 Your duchess and my husband ; one of them 
 A pick-axe bore, tlv other a rusty spade, 
 And in rough terms they 'gan to challenge me 
 About this yew. 
 
 Brack. That tree ? 
 
 Pit. Cor. This harmless yew. 
 
 They told me my intent was to root up 
 That well-known yew, and plant i' th' stead of it 
 A wither'd black-thorn : and for that they vow'd 
 To bury me alive. My husband straight 
 With pick-axe 'gan to dig ; and your fell duchess 
 With shovel, like a fury, voided out 
 The earth, and scattered bones : Lord, how, methought, 
 I trembled, and yet for all this terror 
 I could not pray. 
 
 Flamineo. (aside.) No ; the devil was in your dream. 
 
 Pit. Cor. When to my rescue there arose, methought 
 A whirlwind, which let fall a massy arm, 
 From that strong plant ; 
 
 And both were struck dead by that sacred yew, 
 In that base shallow grave which was their due. 
 
 Flamineo. (aside.) Excellent devil ' she hath taught him in a dream 
 To make away his duchess and her husband 
 
 Webster. 
 
 NATURAL DEATH. 
 
 0, thou soft natural death, that art joint twin 
 To sweetest slumber ! no rough-bearded comet 
 Stares on thy mild departure ; the. dull owl 
 Beats not against thy casement ; the hoarse wolf 
 Scents not thy carrion : pity winds thy corse, 
 Whilst horror waits on princes. 
 
 The same
 
 170 M1DDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER. 
 
 FUNERAL DIRGE. 
 (Sung by a Mother over her Son.) 
 
 Call for the robin red-breast and the wren, 
 
 Since o'er shady groves they hover, 
 
 And with leaves of flowers do cover 
 The friendless bodies ofunburied men. 
 
 Call unto his funeral dole 
 
 The ant, the field mouse, and the mole, 
 To raise him hillocks that shall keep him warm ; 
 And when gay tombs are robb'd, sustain no harm : 
 But keep the wolf far thence, that 's foe to men, 
 For with his nails he '11 dig them up again. 
 
 The same. 
 
 " I never saw," says Lamb, " anything like this dirge, except 
 the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father in the 
 Tempest. That is of the water, watery ; so this is of the earth, 
 eartny. Both have that intenseness of feeling which seems to 
 resolve itself into the elements which it contemplates." — Dra- 
 matic Specimens, Moxon's edition, vol. i., p. 251. 
 
 DISSIMULATION. 
 
 • 
 
 Be not cunning; 
 For those whose faces do belie their hearts 
 Are witches ere they arrive at twenty years, 
 And give the devil suck. 
 
 The same.
 
 MIDDLETON, DECKER, AND WEBSTER. Ill 
 
 BEAUTEOUS MORAL EXAMPLE. 
 
 Her I hold 
 My honorable pattern ; one whose mind 
 Appears more like a ceremonious chapel 
 Full of sweet music, than a thronging presence. 
 
 The same. 
 
 UNLOVELINESS OF FROWNING. 
 
 Cupid sets a crown 
 
 Upon those lovely tresses 
 O, spoil not with a frown, 
 
 What he so sweetly dresses ! 
 
 The same.
 
 172 MILTON. 
 
 MILTON, 
 
 BORN, 1608, DIED, 1674. 
 
 It is difficult to know what to do with some of the finest passages 
 in Milton's great poem. To treat the objectionable points of 
 their story as mythological, might be thought irreverent to opi- 
 nion ; and to look upon them in the light in which he at first 
 wished us to regard them (for he is understood to have changed 
 his own opinions of it), involves so much irreverence towards the 
 greatest of beings, that it is painful to seem to give them counte- 
 nance. The difficulty is increased in a volume of the present 
 kind, which is intended to give the reader no perplexity, except 
 to know what to admire most. I have therefore thought it best 
 to confine the extracts from Paradise Lost to unconnected pas- 
 sages ; and the entire ones to those poems which he wrote when 
 a happy youth, undegenerated into superstition. The former 
 will still include his noblest flights of imagination : the rest are 
 ever fresh, true, and delightful. 
 
 Milton was a very great poet, second only (if second) to the 
 very greatest, such as Dante and Shakspeare ; and, like all 
 great poets, equal to them in particular instances. He had no 
 pretensions to Shakspeare's universality ; his wit is dreary ; 
 and (in general) he had not the faith in things that Homer and 
 Dante had, apart from the intervention of words. He could not 
 let them speak for themselves without helping them with his 
 learning. In all he did, after a certain period of youth (not to 
 speak it irreverently), something of the schoolmaster is visible ; 
 and a gloomy religious creed removes him still farther from the 
 universal gratitude and delight of mankind. He is understood, 
 however, as I have just intimated, to have given this up before 
 he died. He had then run the circle of his knowledge, and
 
 MILTON. 173 
 
 probably come round to the wiser, more cheerful, and more po- 
 etical beliefs of his childhood. 
 
 In this respect, Allegro and Penseroso are the happiest of his 
 productions ; and in none is the poetical habit of mind more 
 abundantly visible. They ought to precede the Lycidas (not 
 unhurt with theology) in the modern editions of his works, as 
 they did in the collection of minor poems made by himself. 
 Paradise Lost is a study for imagination and elaborate musical 
 structure. Take almost any passage, and a lecture might be 
 read from it on contrasts and pauses, and other parts of metrical 
 harmony ; while almost every word has its higher poetical mean- 
 ing and intensity ; but all is accompanied with a certain oppres- 
 siveness of ambitious and conscious power. In the Allegro and 
 Penseroso, &c, he is in better spirits with all about him ; his 
 eyes had not grown dim, nor his soul been forced inwards by disap- 
 pointment into a proud self-esteem, which he narrowly escaped 
 erecting into self-worship. He loves nature, not for the power 
 he can get out of it, but for the pleasure it affords him ; he is at 
 peace with town as well as country, with courts and cathedral- 
 windows ; goes to the play and laughs ; to the village-green 
 and dances : and his study is placed, not in the Old Jewry, but 
 in an airy tower, from whence he good-naturedly hopes that his 
 candle — I beg pardon, his " lamp," for he was a scholar from 
 the first, though not a Puritan — maybe "seen" by others. His 
 mirth, it. is true, is not excessively merry. It is, as Warton 
 says, the " dignity of mirth ;" but it is happy, and that is all that 
 is to be desired. The mode is not to be dictated by the mode of 
 others ; nor would it be so interesting if it were. The more a 
 man is himself the better, provided he add a variation to the 
 stock of comfort, and not of sullenness. Milton was born in a 
 time of great changes ; and in the order of events and the 
 working of good out of ill, we are bound to be grateful to what 
 was of a mixed nature in himself, without arrogating for him that 
 exemption from the mixture which belongs to no man. But upon 
 the same principle on which nature herself loves joy better than 
 grief, health than disease, and a general amount of welfare than the 
 reverse (urging men towards it where itdoes not prevail, and mak- 
 ing many a form of discontent itself but a mode of pleasure and
 
 174 MILTON. 
 
 self-esteem), so Milton's great poem never has been, and never can 
 be popular (sectarianism apart) compared with his minor ones ; 
 nor does it, in the very highest sense of popularity, deserve to 
 be. It does not work out the very piety it proposes ; and the 
 piety which it does propose wants the highest piety of an intelli- 
 gible charity and reliance. Hence a secret preference for his 
 minor poems among many of the truest and selectest admirers 
 of Paradise Lost, — perhaps with all who do not admire power in 
 any shape above truth in the best ; hence Warton's fond edition 
 of them, delightful for its luxurious heap of notes and parallel 
 passages ; and hence the pleasure of being able to extract the 
 finest of them, without misgiving, into a volume like the present. 
 
 SATAN'S RECOVERY FROM HIS DOWNFALL. 
 
 He scarce had ceas'd, when the superior Fiend 
 
 Was moving toward the shore, his ponderous shield 
 
 Behind him cast; the broad circumference 
 
 Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb 
 
 Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
 
 At evening from the top of Fesoli 
 
 Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 
 
 Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe. 
 
 His spear, to equal which the tallest pine 
 
 Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 
 
 Of some great ammiral, were but a wand, 
 
 He walk'd with, to support uneasy steps 
 
 Over the burning marie, not like those steps 
 
 On Heaven's azure ; and the torrid clime 
 
 Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire : 
 
 Nathless he so endur'd, till on the beach 
 
 Of that inflamed sea he stood, and call'd, 
 
 His legions, angel forms, who lay entranc'd 
 
 Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks 
 
 In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades, 
 
 High over-arch' d, embower ; or scatter'd sedge 
 
 Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm'd 
 
 Hath vex'd the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew 
 
 Busiris and his Memphian Chivalry, 
 
 While with perfidious hatred they pursued 
 
 The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 
 
 From the safe shore their floating carcasses
 
 MILTON. 175 
 
 And broken chariot wheels : so thick bestrown, 
 Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood, 
 Under ment of their hideous change. 
 
 He calVd so loud, that all the hollow deep 
 Of Hell resounded. Princes, Potentates, 
 
 dors, the flower of Heaven, once yours, now lost, 
 If such astonishment as this can seize 
 Eternal Spirits ; or have ye chosen this place 
 After the toil of battle to repose 
 Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find 
 To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven ? 
 Or in this abject posture have ye sworn 
 To adore the conqueror ? who now beholds 
 Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood, 
 With scatter'd arms and ensigns ; till anon 
 His swift pursuers from heaven-gates discern 
 The advantage, and, descending, tread us down, 
 Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts 
 Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf. 
 Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen! 
 
 THE FALLEN ANGELS GATHERED AGAIN TO WAR. 
 
 All these and more came flocking ; but with looks 
 
 Downcast and damp ; yet such wherein appear'd 
 
 Obscure, some glimpse of joy, to have found their chief 
 
 Not in despair ; which on his countenance cast 
 
 Like doubtful hue ; but he, his wonted pride 
 
 Soo i recollecting, with high words, that bore 
 
 Semblance of worth, not substance, gently rais'd 
 
 Their fainting courage, and dispell'd their fears. 
 
 Then straight commands, that at the warlike sound 
 
 Of trumpets loud and clarions be uprear'd 
 
 His mighty standard: that proud honor claim'd 
 
 Azazel as his right, a cherub tall ; 
 
 Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurl'd 
 
 The imperial ensign ; which, full high advanc'd. 
 
 Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind, 
 
 With gems and golden Lustre rich emblaz'd, 
 
 Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while 
 
 So-norous metal blowing martial sounds : 
 
 At which the universal host up-sent
 
 76 MILTON. 
 
 A shout, that tore Hell's concave, and beyond 
 Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. 
 All in a moment through the gloom were seen 
 Ten thousand banners rise into the air 
 With orient colors waving : with them rose 
 A forest huge of spears ; and thronging helms 
 Appear'd, and serried shields, in thick array 
 Of depth immeasurable : anon they move 
 In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood 
 Of flutes and soft recorders ; such as rais'd 
 To height of noblest temper heroes old 
 Arming to battle ; and instead of rage 
 Deliberate valor breath'd, firm and unmov'd 
 With dread of death to flight or foul retreat, 
 Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage 
 With solemn touches troubled thoughts, and chase 
 Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain, 
 From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they 
 Breathing united force, with fixed thought, 
 Jlfov'd on in silence to soft pipes, that charnCd 
 Their painful steps o'er the burnt soil : and now 
 Advanc'd in view they stand, a horrid front 
 Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in guise 
 Of warriors old with order'd spear and shield ; 
 Awaiting what command their mighty chief 
 Had to impose : he through the armed files 
 Darts his experienc'd eye, and soon traverse 
 The whole battalion views ; their order due ; 
 Their visages and stature as of gods ; 
 Their number last he sums. And now his heart 
 Distends with pride, and hardening in his strength 
 Glories: for never, since created man, 
 Met such embodied force, as nam'd with these 
 Could merit more than that small infantry 
 Warr'd on by cranes ; though all the giant brood 
 Of Phlegra with the heroic race were join'd 
 That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side 
 Mix'd with auxiliar gods ; and what resounds 
 In fable or romance of Uther's son 
 Begirt with British and Armoric knights ; 
 And all who since, baptiz'd or infidel, 
 Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban 
 Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, 
 Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore, 
 When Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
 By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond
 
 MILTON. 177 
 
 Compare of mortal prowess, yet observ'd 
 Their dread commander : he, above the rest 
 In shape and gesture proudly eminent, 
 Stood like a tower : his form had yet not lost, 
 All her original brightness ; nor appear' d 
 Less than arch-angel ruin'd, and the excess 
 Of glory obscur'd: as when the sun, new risen, 
 Looks through the horizontal misty air 
 Shorn of his beams ; or from behind the moon, 
 In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
 On half the nations, and with fear of change 
 Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone 
 Above them all the arch-angel : but his face 
 Deep scars of thunder had intrench' d ; and care 
 Sat on his faded cheek ; but under brows 
 Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride, 
 Waiting revenge. 
 
 VULCAN. 
 
 Nor was his name unheard, or unador'd 
 In ancient Greece ; — and in Ausonian land 
 Men call'd him Mulciber ; and how he fell 
 From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove 
 Sheer o'er the crystal battlements. From morn 
 To noon he fell ; — from noon to dewy eve, 
 A summer's day ; and with the setting sun 
 Dr opt from the zenith like a falling star. 
 
 THE FALLEN ANGELS HEARD RISING FROM COUNCIL 
 
 Their rising all at once was as the sound 
 Of thunder heard remote. 
 
 18
 
 L78 MILTON. 
 
 SATAN ON THE WING FOR EARTH. 
 
 Meanwhile the adversary of God and man, 
 
 Satan, with thoughts inflam'd of highest design, 
 
 Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of hell 
 
 Explores his solitary flight : sometimes 
 
 He scours the right-hand coast, sometimes the left ; 
 
 Now shaves with level wing the deep ; then soars 
 
 Up to the fiery concave towering high. 
 
 As when far off at sea a fleet descried 
 
 Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds 
 
 Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles 
 
 Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring 
 
 Their spicy drugs ; they, on the trading flood, 
 
 Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape, 
 
 Ply stemming nightly towards the pole : So seemed 
 
 Far off the flying Fiend. 
 
 THE MEETING OF SATAN AND DEATH. 
 
 The other shape 
 If shape it might be call'd that shape had none 
 Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb ; 
 Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd, 
 For each seem'd either : black it stood as Night, 
 Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, 
 And shook a dreadful dart ; what seem'd his head 
 The likeness of a kingly crown had on. 
 Satan was now at hand, and from his seat 
 The monster moving onward came as fast 
 With horrid strides ; Hell trembled as he strode. 
 The undaunted Fiend what this might be admir'd, 
 Admir'd, not fear'd ; God and his Son except, 
 Created thing naught valued he, nor shunn'd ; 
 And with disdainful look thus first began : — 
 
 " Whence and what art thou, execrable shape! 
 That dar'st, though grim and terrible, advance 
 Thy miscreated front athwart my way
 
 MILTON. 179 
 
 To yonder gates ? through them I mean to pass, 
 That be assur'd, with leave unask'd of thee : 
 Retire, or taste thy folly ; and learn by proof, 
 Hell-born ! not to contend with Spirits of Heaven." 
 
 To whom the Goblin, full of wrath, replied : — 
 " Art thou that Traitor-angel ; art thou he 
 Who first broke peace in heaven, and faith, till then 
 Unbroken ; and in proud rebellious arms 
 Drew after him the third part of Heaven's sons 
 Conjur'd against the Highest; for which both thou 
 And they, outcast from God, are here condemn'd 
 To waste eternal days in wo and pain ? 
 And reckon'st thou thyself with Spirits of Heaven, 
 Hell-doom'd ! and breath'st defiance here and scorn, 
 Where I reign king, and to enrage thee more, 
 Thy king and lord '? Back to thy punishment, 
 False fugitive ! and to thy speed add wings, 
 Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue 
 Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart, 
 Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before." 
 
 So spake the grizly Terror, and in shape, 
 So speaking and so threatening, grew ten-fold 
 More dreadful and deform. On the other side 
 Incens'd with indignation, Satan stood 
 Unterrified ; and like a comet bum'd, 
 That fires the length of Ojmiuchus huge 
 In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair 
 Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head 
 Levelled his deadly aim ; their fatal hands 
 JVo second stroke intend; and such a frown 
 Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds 
 With Heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on 
 Over the Caspian, then stand front to front, 
 Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow 
 To join their dark encounter in mid air : 
 So frown'd the mighty combatants, that hell 
 Grew darker at their frown ; so match'd they stood ; 
 For never but once more was either like 
 To meet so great a foe : and now great deeds 
 Had been achiev'd, whereof all hell had rung, 
 Had not the snaky Sorceress that sat 
 Fast by hell-gate, and kept the fatal key, 
 Risen, and with hideous outcry rush'd between.
 
 180 MILTON. 
 
 L'ALLEGRO. 
 
 Hence, loathed Melancholy, 
 
 Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born 
 
 In Stygian cave forlorn, 
 
 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy 
 
 Find out some uncouth cell, 
 
 Where brooding Darkness spreads her jealous wings, 
 
 And the night-raven sings ; 
 
 There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks 
 
 As ragged as thy locks, 
 
 In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 
 
 But corne, thou goddess fair and free, 
 
 In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, 
 
 And by men, heart-easing Mirth ; 
 
 Whom lovely Venus, at a birth 
 
 With two sister Graces more, 
 
 To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore : 
 
 Or whether, as some sager sing, 1 
 
 The frolic wind, that breathes the spring, 
 
 Zephyr with Aurora playing, 
 
 As he met her once a Maying, 
 
 There on beds of violets blue 
 
 And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew, 
 
 Fill'd her with thee, a daughter fair, 
 
 So buxom, blithe and debonair. 
 
 Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee 
 
 Jest and youthful Jollity, 
 
 Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, 2 
 
 Nods and Becks and wreathtd Smiles 
 
 Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, 
 
 And love to live in dimple sleek ; 
 
 Sport that wrinkled Care derides, 
 
 And Laughter holding both his sides. 
 
 Come and trip it, as you go, 
 
 On the light fantastic toe ; 
 
 And in thy right hand lead with thee 
 
 The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty; 
 
 And, if I give thee honor due, 
 
 Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
 
 MILTON. isi 
 
 To live with her, and live with thee, 
 
 In unreproved pleasures free ; 
 
 To hear the lark begin his flight, 
 
 And singing, startle the dull night, 
 
 From, his watch-tower in the skies, 
 
 Till the dappled dawn doth rise ; 
 
 Then to come in spite of sorrow, 
 
 And at my window bid good morrow, 
 
 Through the sweet-briar, or the vine, 
 
 Or the twisted eglantine ; 
 
 While the cock with lively din, 
 
 Scatters the rear of darkness thin, 
 
 And to the stack or the barn-door 
 
 Stoutly struts his dames before : 
 
 Oft listening how the hounds and horn 
 
 Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, 
 
 From the side of some hoar hill, 
 
 Through the high wood echoing shrill : 
 
 Sometimes walking, not unseen, 
 
 By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green, 
 
 Right against the eastern gate, 
 
 Where the great Sun begins his state, 
 
 Robed in flames and amber light, 
 
 The clouds in thousand liveries dight; 
 
 While the ploughman near at hand, 
 
 I1 7 histles o'er the furrowed land, 
 
 And the milkmaid singeth blithe, 
 
 And the mower whets his scythe, 
 
 And every shepherd tells his tale, 4 
 
 Under the hawthorn in the dale. 
 
 Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, 
 
 Whilst the landskip round it measures , 
 
 Russet lawns, and fallows gray, 
 
 Where the nibbling flocks do stray , 
 
 Mountains, on whose barren breast 
 
 The laboring clouds do often rest 
 
 Meadows trim with daisies pied, 
 
 Shallow brooks and rivers wide. 
 
 Towers and battlements it sees 
 
 Bosom' d high in tufted trees, 
 
 Where perhaps some beauty lies, 
 
 The cynosure of neighboring eyes.* 
 
 Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes, 
 
 From betwixt tioo aged oaks ; 
 
 Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met, 
 
 Are at their savory dinner set
 
 182 MILTON. 
 
 Of herbs, and other country messes, 
 
 Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses ; 
 
 And then in haste her bower she leaves 
 
 With Thestylis to bind the sheaves ; 
 
 Or, if the earlier season lead, 
 
 To the tann'd haycock in the mead. 
 
 Sometimes, with secure delight, 
 
 The upland hamlets will invite, 
 
 When the merry bells ring round, 
 
 And the jocund rebecks sound 
 
 To many a youth and many & maid, 
 
 Dancing in the chequer 'd shade. ; 
 
 And young and old come forth to play 
 
 On a sunshine holy-day, 
 
 Till the live-long day-light fail. 
 
 Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, 
 
 With stories told of many a feat, 
 
 How faery Mab the junkets eat: 
 
 She was pinch'd, and pull'd, she said, 
 
 And he, by friars' lantern led ; 
 
 Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat, 
 
 To earn his cream-bowl duly set, 
 
 When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, 
 
 His shadowy flail had thrash'd the corn, 
 
 That ten-day laborers could not end ; 
 
 Then lies him down the lubber fiend, 
 
 And stretch'd out all the chimney's length 
 
 Basks at the fire his hairy strength ; 
 
 And crop-full out of doors he flings, 
 
 Ere the first cock his matin rings. 
 
 Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, 
 
 By whispering winds soon lull'd to sleep, 
 
 Tower'd cities please us then, 
 
 And the busy hum of men, 
 
 Where throngs of knights and barons bold, 
 
 In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold, 
 
 With store of ladies, whose bright eyes 
 
 Rain influence, 6 and judge the prize 
 
 Of wit, or arms, while both contend 
 
 To win her grace, whom all commend. 
 
 There let Hymen oft appear 
 
 In saffron robe, with taper clear ; 
 
 And pomp, and feast, and revelry, 
 
 With masque and antique pageantry ; 
 
 Such sights as youthful poets dream 
 
 On summer eves by haunted stream.
 
 MILTON. 183 
 
 Then to the well-trod stage anon, 
 
 If Jonson's learned sock be on, 7 
 
 Or sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child, 
 
 Warble his native wood-notes wild 
 
 And ever against eating cares, 
 
 Lap me in soft Lydian airs, 
 
 Married to immortal verse, 
 
 Such as the meeting soul may pierce, 
 
 In notes with many a winding bout 
 
 Of linked sweetness long drawn out, 
 
 With wanton heed and giddy cunning, 
 
 The melting voice through mazes running, 
 
 Untwisting all the chains that tie 
 
 The hidden soul of harmony ; 
 
 That Orpheus' self may heave his head 
 
 From golden slumbers on a bed 
 
 Of heap 'dElysian flowers and hear 
 
 Such strains as would have won the ear 
 
 Of Pluto, to have quite set free 
 
 His half regained Eurydice. 
 
 These delights if thou canst give, 
 
 Mirth, with thee I mean to live. 
 
 Milton shows his early fondness for the Italian language, by 
 taking from it the titles of these poems. V Allegro is the mirth- 
 ful (man), and II Penseroso the melancholy (pensive rather, or 
 thoughtful). These two poems are supposed, with good reason, 
 to have been written at Horton in Buckinghamshire, where his 
 parents were residing at the time of their composition. I men- 
 tion this circumstance, first because it is pleasant to know when 
 poetry is written in poetical places, and next for the sake of 
 such readers as may happen to know the spot. 
 
 i " Some sager sing." — Ben Jonson, in one of his Masks. " Be- 
 cause," says Warburton, "those who give to Mirth such gross 
 companions as Eating and Drinking, are the less sage mytholo- 
 gists." 
 
 2 " Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles." — What a Crank is, the 
 commentators are puzzled to say. They guess, from analogy 
 with " winding turns" (which the word originally appears to 
 signify), that the poet means cross purposes, or some other such 
 pastime. The witty author of Hints to a young Reviewer (after- 
 wards, I believe, no mean reviewer himself), who criticised these
 
 184 MILTON. 
 
 poems upon the pleasant assumption of their having "just come 
 out," and expressed his astonishment at " Mr. Milton's amatory- 
 notions" (I quote from memory), takes occasion, from the obscu- 
 rity of this word, to observe, that the " phenomenon of a trip- 
 ping crank" would be very curious, and " doubtless attract nu- 
 merous spectators." He also, in reference to passages a little 
 further on, wonders how " Mirth can be requested to come and 
 go at the same instant;" and protests at the confident immortal- 
 ity of the "young gentleman who takes himself for a poet," in 
 proposing to live with Mirth and Liberty both together. 
 
 To live with her, and live with thee, 
 In unreproved pleasures free. 
 
 How delightful is wit, when bantering in behalf of excellence ! 
 
 z "Through the sweet-briar," &c— « Sweet-briar and eglantine," 
 says Warton, " are the same plant : by the twisted eglantine he 
 therefore means the honey-suckle : all three are plants often 
 growing against the side or walls of a house." This is true ; 
 yet the deduction is hai'dly certain. The same name sometimes 
 means different flowers, in different counties ; as may be seen 
 from passages in Shakspeare. Eglantine, however, is the 
 French word for the flower of the sweet-briar (eglantier) ; and 
 hence it came to mean, in English, the briar itself. Perhaps, if 
 Milton had been asked why he used it in this place, he would 
 have made Johnson's noble answer to the lady, when she inquir- 
 ed why he defined pastern, in his Dictionary, to be a horse's 
 knee ; — " Ignorance, madam, ignorance." Poets are often fonder 
 of flowers than learned in their names ; and Milton, like his 
 illustrious brethren, Chaucer and Spenser, was born within the 
 sound of Bow bell. 
 
 4 " And every shepherd tells his tale." — It used to be thought, till 
 Mr. Headley informed Warton otherwise, telling his tale meant 
 telling a love-tale, or story. The correction of this fancy is now 
 admitted ; namely, that tale is a technical word for numbering 
 sheep, and is so used by several poets, — Dryden for one. War- 
 ton, like a proper Arcadian, was loth to give up the fancy ; but 
 he afterwards found the new interpretation to be much the better
 
 MILTON. 185 
 
 one. Every shepherd telling his story or love-lale, under a 
 hawthorn, at one and the same instant, all over a district, would 
 resemble indeed those pastoral groups upon bed-curtains, in 
 which, and in no other place, such marvels are to be met with. 
 Yet, in common perhaps with most young readers, I remember 
 the time when I believed it, and was as sorry as Warton to be 
 undeceived. 
 
 5 " The Cynosure of neighboring eye." — Cynosure (dog's-tail) for 
 load-star, must have been a term a little hazardous, as well as 
 over-learned, when it first appeared ; though Milton, thinking of the 
 nymph who was changed into the star so called (since known as 
 Ursa minor), was probably of opinion, that it gave his image a 
 peculiar fitness and beauty. That enjoying and truly poetical 
 commentator, Thomas Warton, quotes a passage from Browne's 
 Britamiia's Pastorals, that may have been in Milton's recol- 
 lection : — 
 
 Yond palace, whose pale turret tops 
 Over the stately wood survey the copse ; 
 
 and then he indulges in pleasing memories of the old style of 
 building, and in regrets for the new, which was less picturesque 
 and less given to concealment. " This was the great mansion- 
 house," says he, " in Milton's early days. With respect to 
 their rural residences, there was a coyness in our Gothic ances- 
 tors. Modern seats are seldom so deeply ambushed." Warton 
 would have been pleased at the present revival of the old taste, 
 which indeed is far superior to the bald and barrack-like insipi- 
 dities of his day ; though as to the leafy accessories, I am afraid 
 the poetic pleasure of living " embosoin'd " in trees is not 
 thought the most conducive to health. 
 
 6 " Rain influence." — Da begli occhi un piacer si caldo piove. 
 Such fervent pleasure rains from her sweet eyes. 
 
 Petrarch, Son. czxzi 
 
 T'Jonson's learned sock." — "Milton has more frequently and 
 openly copied the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher than of 
 Shakspcare. One is therefore surprised, that in his panegyric 
 on the stage he did not mention the twin-bards, when he ecle-
 
 186 MILTON. 
 
 brated the learned sock of Jonson, and the wood-notes wild of 
 Shakspeare. But he concealed his love." — Warton. 
 
 Perhaps he was afraid of avowing it, on account of the licence 
 of their muse. 
 
 IL PENSEROSO. 
 
 Hence, vain deluding Joys, 
 
 The brood of Folly without Father bred ! 
 
 How little you bested, 
 
 Or rill the fixed mind with all your toys ! 
 
 Dwell in some idle brain, 
 
 And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, 
 
 As thick and numberless 
 
 As the gay motes thai people the sunbeams ; 8 
 
 Or likeliest hovering dreams, 
 
 The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. 
 
 But hail, thou Goddess, sage and holy, 
 
 Hail, divinest Melancholy ! 
 
 Whose saintly visage is too bright 
 
 To hit the sense of human sight, 
 
 And therefore, to our loeaker view, 
 
 Overlaid with black, staid wisdom's hue ; 
 
 Black, but such as in esteem 
 
 Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, 9 
 
 Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove 
 
 To set her beauty's praise above 
 
 The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended : 
 
 Yet thou art higher far descended : 
 
 Thee bright-haired Vesta, long of yore, 
 
 To solitary Saturn bore : 
 
 His daughter she ; in Saturn's reign 
 
 Such mixture was not held a stain : 
 
 Oft in glimmering bowers and glades 
 
 He met her, and in secret shades 
 
 Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 
 
 Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove 
 
 Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, 
 
 Sober, stedfast, and demure, 
 
 All in a robe of darkest grain, 
 
 Flowing with majestic tram,
 
 MILTON. 187 
 
 And sable stole of Cypress lawn 
 
 Over thy decent shoulders drawn. 
 
 Come, but keep thy wonted state, 
 
 With even step and musing gait, 
 
 And looks commercing with the skies, 
 
 Thy rapt soul sitti?ig in thine eyes ; 
 
 There held in holy passion still, 
 
 Forget thyself to marble, till, 
 
 With a sad leaden downward cast, 
 
 Thou fix them on the earth as fast, — 
 
 And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet, 
 
 Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet, 
 
 And hears the Muses in a ring 
 
 Aye round about Jove's altar sing : 
 
 And add to these retired Leisure, 
 
 That in trim gardens takes his pleasure : 
 
 But first, and chiefest, with thee bring 
 
 Him that yon soars on golden wing, 
 
 Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, 
 
 The cherub Contemplation ; 10 
 
 And the mute Silence hist along, 
 
 Less Philomel will deign a song, 
 
 In her sweetest saddest plight, 
 
 Smoothing the rugged brow of night, 
 
 While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke 
 
 Gently o'er the accustom'd oak, 
 
 Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, 
 
 Most musical, most melancholy ! n 
 
 Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among 
 
 I woo to hear thy even-song : 
 
 And missing thee, I walk unseen 
 
 On the dry smooth-shaven green, 
 
 To behold the wandering moon, 
 
 Riding near her highest noon, 
 
 Like one that hath been led astray 13 
 
 Through the heaven's wide pathless way ; 
 
 And oft, as if her head she boufd, 
 
 Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 
 
 Oft, on a plot of rising ground. 
 
 I hear the far-off curfew sound, 
 
 Over some wide-water d shore, 
 
 Swinging slow with sullen roar: 
 
 Or, if the air will not permit, 
 
 Some still removed place will fit, 
 
 Where glowing embers through the room 13 
 
 Teach light to counterfeit a gloom;
 
 188 MILTON. 
 
 Far from all resort of mirth, 
 Save the cricket on the hearth. 
 Or the bellman's drowsy charm, 
 To bless the doors from nightly harm. 
 Or let my lamp at midnight hour, 
 Be seen in some high lonely totver, u 
 Where I may oft out-watch the Bear 
 With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere 
 The spirit of Plato, to unfold 
 What worlds, or what vast regions, hold 
 The immortal mind, that hath forsook 
 Her mansion in this fleshly nook : 
 And of those demons that are found 
 In fire, air, flood, or under ground, 
 Whose power hath a true consent 
 With planet or with element. 
 Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy 
 In sceptred pall come sweeping by, 
 Presenting Thebes or Pelops' line, 
 Or the tale of Troy divine ; 
 Or what (though rare) of later age 
 Ennobled hath the buskin'd stage. 
 But 0, sad virgin, that thy power 
 Might raise Musaeus from his bower ? 
 Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 
 Such notes as, warbled to the string, 
 Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, 
 And made Hell grant what love did seek . 
 Or call up him that left half told 15 
 The story of Cambuscan bold, 
 Of Camball, and of Algarsife, 
 And who had Canace to wife, 
 That own'd the virtuous ring and glass ; 
 And of the wondrous horse of brass, 
 On which the Tartar king did ride : 
 And if aught else great bards beside 
 In sage and solemn tunes have sung, 
 Of turneys and of trophies hung, 
 Of forests and enchantments drear, 
 Where more is meant than meets the ear 
 Thus Night, oft see me in thy pale career, 
 Till civil-suited morn appear ; 
 Not trick'd and froune'd as she was went 
 With the Attic boy to hunt, 
 Butkercheft in a comely cloud, 
 While rocking winds are piping loud,
 
 MILTON. 189 
 
 Or usher'd with a shower still 
 
 When the gust hath blown his Jill, 
 
 Ending on the rustling leaves 
 
 With minute-drops from off the eaves : 
 
 And when the sun begins to fling 
 
 His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring 
 
 To arched walks of twilight groves, 
 
 And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves, 
 
 Of pine, or monumental oak, 
 
 Wliere the rude axe, with heaved stroke, 
 
 Was never heard the nymphs to daunt, 
 
 Or fright them from their hallowed haunt 
 
 There in close covert by some brook, 
 
 Where no profaner eye may look, 
 
 Hide me from day's garish eye, 
 
 While the bee with honied thigh, 
 
 That at her flowery work doth sing, 
 
 And the waters murmuring, 
 
 With such consort as they keep, 
 
 Entice the dewy-feather 'd Sleep ; 
 
 And let some strange mysterious dream 
 
 Wave at his wings in airy stream 
 
 Of lively portraiture display'd, 
 
 Softly on my eyelids laid ; 
 
 And, as I wake, sweet music breathe 
 
 Above, about, or underneath, 
 
 Sent by some spirit to mortals good, 
 
 Or the unseen Genius of the wood. 
 
 But let rny due fest never fail 
 
 To walk the studious cloister's pale, 
 
 And love the high embowed roof, 
 
 With antick pillars, massy proof, 
 
 And storied windows richly dight, 
 
 Casting a dim religious light: 
 
 There let the pealing organ blow 
 
 To the full-voic'd quire below ; 
 
 In service high and anthems clear, 
 
 As may with sweet?iess, through mine ear t 
 
 Dissolve me into ecstacies, 
 
 And bring all heaven before mine eyes 
 
 And may at last my weary age 
 Find out the peaceful hermitage, 
 The hairy gown and mossy cell, 
 Where I may sit and rightly spell 
 Of every star that heaven doth shew, 
 And every herb that sips the dew ;
 
 1*90 MILTON. 
 
 Till old experience do attain 
 
 To something like prophetic strain. 
 
 These pleasures, Melancholy, give, 
 And I with thee will choose to live. 
 
 He pute the Penseroso last, as a climax ; because he prefers 
 .he pensive mood to the mirthful. I do not know why he spells 
 vhe word in this manner. I have never seen it without the i, — 
 Pensieroso. In Florio's Dictionary the ie varies into an o, — 
 Pensoroso ; whence apparently the abbreviated form, — Pensoso. 
 
 8 "As thick as motes in the sunne beams." — Chaucer. — But see how 
 by one word, people, a great poet improves what he borrows. 
 
 6 " Prince Memnon's sister." — It does not appear, by the ancient 
 authors, that Memnon had a sister ; but Milton wished him to 
 have one ; so here she is. It has been idly objected to Spenser, 
 w r ho dealt much in this kind of creation, that he had no rig-lit to 
 add to persons and circumstances in old mythology. • As if the 
 same poetry which saw what it did might not see more ! 
 
 w " The cherub Contemplation." — Learnedly called cherub, not 
 seraph ; because the cherubs were the angels of knowledge, the 
 seraphs of love. In the celestial hierarchy, by a noble senti- 
 ment, the seraphs rank higher than the cherubs. 
 
 " " Most musical, most melancholy."— A question has been started 
 of late years, whether the song of the nightingale is really 
 melancholy ; whether it ought not rather to be called merry, as, 
 in fact, Chaucer does call it. But merry, in Chaucer's time, 
 did not mean solely what it does now ; but any kind of hasty or 
 strenuous prevalence, as " merry men," meaning men in their 
 heartiest and manliest condition. He speaks even of the " merry 
 organ," meaning the church organ — the " merry organ of the 
 mass." Coleridge, in some beautiful lines, thought fit to take the 
 merry side, out of a notion, real or supposed, of the necessity of 
 vindicating nature from sadness. But the question is surely 
 very simple, — one of pure association of ideas. The night- 
 ingale's song is not in itself melancholy, that is, no result ol 
 sadness on the part of the bird ; but coming, as it does, in the 
 night-time, and making us reflect, and reminding us by its very 
 beauty of the mystery and fleetingness of all sweet things, it
 
 MILTON. 191 
 
 becomes melancholy in the finer sense of the word, by the com- 
 bined overshadowing of the hour and of thought. 
 
 12 " Like one that hath been led astray.'''' — This calls to mind a 
 beautiful passage about the moon, in Spenser's Epithalamium : — 
 
 Who is the same that at my window peeps ? 
 Or who is that fair face that shines so bright ? 
 Is it not Cynthia, she that never sleeps, 
 But walks about high heaven all the night ? 
 
 13 « Where glowing embers." — Here, also, the reader is reminded 
 of Spenser. — See p. 88: — 
 
 A little glooming light much like a shade. 
 
 14 " And may my lamp at midnight hour 
 Be seen." 
 
 The picturesque of the " be seen" has been much admired. 
 Its good-nature seems to deserve no less approbation. The light 
 is seen afar by the traveller, giving him a sense of home com- 
 fort, and, perhaps, helping to guide his way. 
 
 I s " Call up him that left half told 
 The story of Cambuscan bold." 
 
 Chaucer, with his Squire's Tale. But why did Milton turn 
 Cambuscan, that is, Cambus the Khan, into Cambuscan. The 
 accent in Chaucer is never thrown on the middle syllable. 
 
 LYCIDAS. 
 
 The poet bewails the death of his young friend and fellow- 
 student, Edward King, of Christ's College, Cambridge, who was 
 drowned at sea, on his way to visit his friends in Ireland. The 
 vessel, which was in bad condition, went suddenly to the bottom, 
 in calm weather, not far from the English coast ; and all on 
 board perished. Milton was then in his twenty-ninth year, and 
 his friend in his twenty-fifth. The poem, with good reason, is
 
 102 MILTON. 
 
 supposed to have been written, like the preceding ones, at Hor- 
 ton, in Buckinghamshire. 
 
 Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, 
 Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, 
 I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, 
 And with forced fingers rude 
 Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year 
 Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, 
 Compels me to disturb your season due : 
 For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, 
 Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. 
 Who would not sing for Lycidas ? he knew 
 Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. 
 He must not float upon his watery bier 
 Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, 
 Without the meed of some melodious tear. 10 
 
 Begin, then, sisters of the sacred well, 
 That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring, 
 Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string, 17 
 Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse, 
 So may some gentle Muse 
 With lucky words favor my destin'd urn, 
 And, as he passes, turn, 
 And bid fair peace to be my sable shroud : 
 
 For we were nurst upon the self-same hill, 
 Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill : 
 Together both, e'er the high lawns appear'd 
 Under the opening eyelids of the Morn, 
 We drove a-field, and both together heard 
 What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn. 
 Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night 
 Oft till the star, that rose, at evening, bright, 
 Tow'rds heav'n's descent had slop'd his west'ring wheel 
 Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, 
 Temper'd to the oaten flute ; 
 
 Rough Satyrs dane'd ; and Fauns with cloven heel 
 From the glad sound would not be absent long 
 And old Damaetas lov'd to hear our song. 
 
 But, O the heavy change, noiv thou art gone, 
 Now thou art gone, and never must return ! 
 Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves, 
 With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, 
 And all their echoes mourn. 
 The willows, and the hazel copses green, 
 Shall now no more be seen
 
 MILTON. 193 
 
 Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. 
 
 As killing as the canker to the rose, 
 
 Or taint worm to the weanling herds that graze, 
 
 Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, 
 
 When first the white thorn blows ; 
 
 Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear, 
 
 Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
 Closed o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas ? 1S 
 For neither were ye playing on the steep, 
 Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie, 
 Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, 
 Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream : 19 
 Ah, me ! I fondly dream, 
 
 Had ye been there — for what could that have done ? 
 What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, 
 The Muse herself, for her enchanting son, 
 Whom universal Nature did lament, 
 When, by the rout that made the hideous roar, 
 His gory visage down the stream was sent, 
 Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore ? 
 
 Alas ! what boots it with incessant care 
 To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade, 
 And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ? 
 Were it not better done, as others use, 
 To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, 
 Or with the tangles of JVecsra's hair ? 
 Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 
 (That last infirmity of noble minds) 
 To scorn delights, and live laborious days ; 
 But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, 
 And think to burst out into sudden blaze, 
 Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears, 
 And slits the thin-spun life. — " But not the praise" 
 Phoebus reply'd, and touch'd my trembling ears ; 
 " Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 
 Nor in the glist'ring foil 
 Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies, 
 But lives, and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, 
 And perfect witness of all-judging Jove ; 
 As he pronounces lastly on each deed, 
 Of 30 much fame in heaven expect thy meed." 
 
 O fountain Arethuse, and thou honor'd* flood, 
 Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown'd with vocal reeds, 
 That strain I heard was of a higher mood : 
 But now my oat proceeds, 
 And listens to the herald of the sea 
 14
 
 194 MILTON. 
 
 That came in Neptune's plea ; 
 
 He ask'd the waves, and ask'd the felon winds, 
 
 What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain ? 
 
 And question'd every gust of rugged wings 
 
 That blows from off each beaked promontory. 
 
 They knew not of his story ; 
 
 And sage Hippotades their answer brings, 
 
 That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd ; 
 
 The air was calm, and on the level brine 
 
 Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd. 
 
 It was that fatal and perfidious bark, 
 
 Built in the eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, 
 
 That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. 
 
 Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, 
 
 His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge, 
 
 Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge 
 
 Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe. 20 
 
 " Ah ! who hath reft," quoth he, " my dearest pledge ?* 
 
 Last came and last did go. 21 
 
 The pilot of the Galilean lake ; 
 
 Two massy keys he bore of metals twain 
 
 (The golden opes, and iron shuts amain), 
 
 He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake : 
 
 " How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain,'"* 
 
 " Enow of such, as for their bellies' sake 
 
 " Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ? 
 
 " Of other cares they little reckoning make, 
 
 " Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 
 
 " And shove away the worthy bidden guest; 
 
 " Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
 
 " A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else the least 
 
 " That to the faithful herdman's art belongs ! 
 
 " What recks it them? What need they ? They are sped ; 
 
 " And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
 
 " Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; 
 
 " The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed; 
 
 " But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, 
 
 " Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
 
 " Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
 
 " Daily devours apace, and nothing said : 
 
 " But that two-handed engine at the door 
 
 " Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more." 
 
 Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past,'® 
 That shrunk thy streams ; return, Sicilian Muse, 
 And call the vales, and bid them hither cast 
 Their bells, and flowerets, of a thousand hues.
 
 MILTON. 195 
 
 Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use 
 
 Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, 
 
 On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks : 
 
 Throw hither all your quaint enamelVd eyes, 
 
 That on the green turf suck the honied showers,™ 
 
 And purple all the ground with vernal flowers : 
 
 Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, 
 
 The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, 
 
 The white pink, and the pansy freak' d with jet, 
 
 The glowing violet, 25 
 
 The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine, 
 
 With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, 
 
 And every flower that sad embroidery wears : 
 
 Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, 
 
 And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, 
 
 To strow the laureat hearse where Lycid lies ; 
 
 For, so to interpose a little ease, 
 
 Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. — 
 
 Ay rne ! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas, 
 
 Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurl'd, 
 
 Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, 
 
 Where thou perhaps, under the whelming tide, 
 
 Visifst the bottom of the monstrous world ; 
 
 Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, 
 
 Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, 
 
 Where the great Vision of the guarded Mount 26 
 
 Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold ; 
 
 Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth : 
 
 And, 0, ye dolphins ! waft the hapless youth. 
 
 Weep no more, woful Shepherds, weep no more, 
 For Lycidae your sorrow is not dead, 
 Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor ; 
 So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
 And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
 And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore 
 Flames in the forehead of the morning sky: 
 So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, 
 Through the dear might of Him that waWd the waves 
 Where, other groves and other streams along, 
 With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 
 And hears the unexpressive nuptial song 
 In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. 
 There entertain him all the saints above, 
 In solemn troops and sweet societies, 
 That sing, and, singing, in their glory move, 
 And wipe the tears for tver from his eyes.
 
 196 MILTON 
 
 Now Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more ; 
 Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore, 
 In thy large recompense, and shalt be good 
 To all that wander in that perilous flood. 
 
 Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills, 
 While the still morn went out with sandals grey , 
 He touch'd the tender stops of various quills, 
 With eager thought warbling his Doric lay : 
 And now the sun had strctch'd out all the hills, 
 And now was dropt into the western bay : 
 At last he rose, and twitch'd his mantle blue : 
 To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. 
 
 6 " Without the meed of some melodious tear." — Catullus uses the 
 word in a like sense, when alluding to the elegies of Simonides 
 in his touching expostulation with his friend, Cornificius, whom 
 he requests to come and see him during a time of depression : — 
 
 Paulum quid lubet allocutionis 
 Mcestius lacrymis Simonideis. 
 
 Prythee a little talk for ease, for ea»3, 
 Sad as the tears of poor Simonides. 
 
 17 << Begin, and somewhat loudly," &c. 
 " Hence with denial vain," &c. 
 
 The first of these lines has a poor prosaic effect, like one of 
 the inane mixtures of familiarity and assumed importance in the 
 " Pindaric" writers of the age. And " hence with denial vain" 
 is a very unnecessary piece of harshness towards the poor 
 Muses, who surely were not disposed to ill-treat the young 
 poet. 
 
 js « Clos'd o'er the head," &c. — The very best image of drowning 
 he could have chosen, especially during calm weather, both as 
 regards sufferer and spectator. The combined sensations of 
 darkness, of liquid enclosure, and of the final interposition of a 
 heap of waters between life and the light of day, are those 
 which most absorb the faculties of a drowning person. Haud 
 insubmersus loquor. 
 
 19 " Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream." — The "iver 
 Dee, in Spenser's and Drayton's poetry, and old British history, 
 is celebrated for its ominous character and its magicians.
 
 MILTON. 197 
 
 20 " Sanguine flowW inscribed with wo." — The ancient poetical 
 hyacinth, proved, I think, by Professor Martyn, in his Virgil's 
 Georgics, to be the turk's-cap lily, the only flower on which 
 characters like the Greek exclamation of wo, AI, AI, are to be 
 found. The idea in Milton is from Moschus's Elegy on the 
 Death of Bion : — 
 
 Nov, vaictvQe, \a\ei ra aa ypafi^iara^ km ir~Ktov at at 
 Ba/i/?aAE cois itETaXoioi. 
 
 Now more than ever say, O, hyacinth ! 
 Ai, ai ; and babble of your written sorrows. 
 
 21 " Last came and last did go"—" This passage," says Hazlitt, 
 " which alludes to the clerical character of Lycidas, has been 
 found fault with, as combining the truths of the Christian 
 religion with the fiction of the Heathen mythology. I con- 
 ceive there is very little foundation for this objection, either 
 in good reason or good taste. I will not go so far as to 
 defend Camoens, who, in his Lusiad, makes Jupiter send 
 Mercury with a dream to propagate the Catholic religion ; 
 nor do I know that it is generally proper to introduce the two 
 things in the same poem, though I see no objection to it here ; 
 but of this I am quite sure, that there is no inconsistency or 
 natural repugnance between this poetical and religious faith in 
 the same mind. To the understanding, the belief of the one is 
 incompatible with that of the other, but, in the imagination, they 
 not only may, but do constantly, co-exist. I will venture to go 
 farther, and maintain that every classical scholar, however 
 orthodox a Christian he may be, is an honest Heathen at heart. 
 This requires explanation. Whoever, then, attaches a reality 
 to any idea beyond the mere name, has, to a certain extent 
 (though not an abstract), an habitual and practical belief in it. 
 Now, to any one familiar with the names of the personages of 
 the heathen mythology, they convey a positive identity beyond 
 the mere name. We refer them to something out of ourselves. 
 It is only by an effort of abstraction that we divest ourselves of 
 Ihe idea of their reality ; all our involuntary prejudices are on 
 their side. This is enough for the poet. They impose on the
 
 198 MILTON. 
 
 imagination by the attractions of beauty and grandeur. They 
 come down to us in sculpture and in song. We have the same 
 associations with them as if they had really been : for the be- 
 lief of the fiction in ancient times has produced all the same 
 effects as the reality could have done. It was a reality to the 
 minds of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and through them it is 
 reflected to us." — Lectures on the English Poets (Templeman's 
 edition), p. 338. 
 
 22 " How well could I have spar'd" &c " He here animadverts," 
 
 says Warton, " to the endowments of the church, at the same time 
 insinuating that they were shared by those only who sought the 
 emoluments of the sacred office, to the exclusion of a learned 
 and conscientious clergy." An old complaint ! Meantime the 
 church has continued mild and peaceful. An incalculable 
 blessing ! 
 
 23 " Return, Alpheus," &c — How much more sweet and Chris- 
 tian Paganism itself sounds, after those threats of religious 
 violence ! The " two-handed engine" is supposed to mean the 
 axe preparing for poor, weak, violent Laud ! Milton was now 
 beginning to feel the sectarian influence of his father; one, 
 unfortunately, of a sullen and unpoetical sort. 
 
 24 " Honied showers." — There is an awkwardness of construction 
 between this and the preceding line which hurts the beautiful 
 idea of the flowers " sucking the honied showers," by seeming to 
 attribute the suction to their " eyes." There might, indeed, be 
 learned allowance for such an ellipsis ; and we hardly know 
 where to find the proper noun substantive or predicate for the 
 verb, if it be not so ; but the image is terribly spoilt by it. 
 
 25 " Glowing violet." — Why " glowing ?" The pansy (heart's- 
 ease) " freak'd with jet" is exquisite ; equally true to letter and 
 spirit. 
 
 20 " The great Vision of the guarded Mount." — This is the Arch- 
 angel Michael, the guardian of seamen, sitting on the Mount off 
 the coast of Cornwall known by his name, and looking towards 
 the coast of Gallicia. It is rather surprising that Milton, with 
 his angelical tendencies, did not take the opportunity of saying 
 more of him. But the line is a grand one.
 
 MILTON. 199 
 
 COMUS THE SORCERER. 
 
 Thyrsis tells the Brothers of a Lady, that their Sister has fallen lnt» 
 the hands of the Sorcerer Comus, dwelling in a wood. 
 
 Within the navel of this hideous wood, 
 Immur'd in cypress shades, a sorcerer dwells, 
 Of Bacchus and of Circe born, — great Comus, 
 Deep skill'd in all his mother's witcheries ; 
 And here to every thirsty wanderer 
 By sly enticement gives his baneful cup, 
 With many murmurs mix'd, whose pleasing poison 
 The visage quite transforms of him that drinks, 
 And the inglorious likeness of a beast 
 Fixes instead, unmoulding reason's mintage 
 Charactered in the face. This have I learnt, 
 Tending my flocks hard by i' the hilly crofts, 
 That brow this bottom-glade : whence, night by night, 
 He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl, 
 Like stabled wolves, or tigers at their prey, 
 Doing abhorred rites to Hecate 
 In their obscured haunts of inmost bowers ; 
 Yet have they many baits and guileful spells, 
 To inveigle and invite the unwary sense 
 Of them that pass unweeting by the way. 
 This evening late, by then the chewing flocks 27 
 Had ta'en their supper on the savory herb 
 Of knot-grass dew-besprent, and were in fold, 
 I sat me down to watch upon a bank 
 With ivy canopied, and interwove 
 With flaunting honey-suckle, and began, 
 Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy, 
 To meditate my rural minstrelsy, 
 Till fancy had her fill ; but, ere a close, 
 The wonted roar urns up amidst the woods, 
 And fill'd the air with barbarous dissonance ; 
 At which I ceas'd, and listen'd them awhile, 
 Till an unusual stop of sudden silence 
 Gave respite to the drowsy flighted steeds, 
 That draw the litter of close-curtained Sleep   
 At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound 
 Rose like a stream of rich distil Vd perfumei.
 
 300 MILTON. 
 
 And stole upon the air, that even Silence 
 
 Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might 
 
 Deny her nature, and be never more 
 
 Still to be so displaced. I was all ear, 
 
 And took in strains that might create a soul 
 
 Under the ribs of Death : but ! ere long, 
 
 Too well I did perceive it was the voice 
 
 Of my most honor'd lady, your dear sister. 
 
 Amaz'd I stood, harrow'd with grief and fear, 
 
 And, O poor hapless nightingale, thought I, 
 
 How sweet thou sing'st, how near the deadly snare 
 
 Then down the lawns I ran with headlong haste, 
 
 Through paths and turnings often trod by day ; 
 
 Till, guided by mine ear, I found the place, 
 
 Where that damn'd wizard, hid in sly disguise, 
 
 (For so by certain signs I knew), had met 
 
 Already, ere my best speed could prevent, 
 
 The aidless innocent lady, his wish'd prey ; 
 
 Who gently ask'd if he had seen such two, 
 
 Supposing him some neighbor villager. 
 
 Longer I durst not stay, but soon I guess'd 
 
 Ye were the two she meant ; with that I sprung 
 
 Into swift flight, till I had found you here ; 
 
 But further know I not. 
 
 See. Br. O night, and shades I 
 
 How are ye join'd with hell in triple knot 
 Against the unarmed weakness of one virgin, 
 Alone and helpless ! Is this the confidence 
 You gave me, Brother. 1 ' 
 
 Eld. Br. Yes, and keep it still ; 
 
 Lean on it safely ; not a period 
 Shall be unsaid for me : against the threats 
 Of malice, or of sorcery, or that power 
 Which erring men call chance, this I hold firm ;— 
 Virtue may be assail'd, but never hurt, — 
 Surpris'd by unjust force, but not enthrall'd; 
 Yea, even that, which mischief meant most harm. 
 Shall in the happy trial prove most glory ; 
 But evil on itself shall back recoil, 
 And mix no more with goodness : when at last 
 Gathered like scum, and settled to itself, 
 It shall be in eternal restless change, 
 Self -fed, and self- consumid ; if this fail, 
 The pillar 'd firmament is rottenness, 
 And earth's base built on stubble.
 
 MILTON. 201 
 
 w The chewing flocks" &c — " The supper of the sheep," says 
 Warton, " is from a beautiful comparison in Spenser, — 
 
 As gentle shepherd, in sweet eventide 
 
 When ruddy Phoebus gins to welk (decline) in west, 
 
 High on a hill, his flock to viewen wide, 
 
 Marks which do bite their hasty supper best." 
 
 Faerie Queene, I., s. 23. 
 
 ' ; Chewing flocks" is good, but not equal to " biting their hasty- 
 supper. " It is hardly dramatical, too, in the speaker to stop to 
 notice the sweetness and dewiness of the sheep's grass, while 
 he had a story to tell, and one of agitating interest to his hearers.
 
 202 COLERIDGE. 
 
 COLERIDGE, 
 
 BORN, 1793 DIED, 1834. 
 
 Coleridge lived in the most extraordinary ani agitated period 
 of modern history ; and to a certain extent he was so mixed up 
 with its controversies, that he was at one time taken for nothing 
 but an apostate republican, and at another for a dreaming theo- 
 sophist. The truth is, that both his politics and theosophy were 
 at the mercy of a discursive genius, intellectually bold but 
 educationally timid, which, anxious, or rather willing, to bring 
 conviction and speculation together, mooting all points as it 
 went, and throwing the subtlest glancing lights on many, ended 
 in satisfying nobody, and concluding nothing. Charles Lamb 
 said of him, that he had " the art of making the unintelligible 
 appear intelligible." He was the finest dreamer, the most 
 eloquent talker, and the most original thinker of the day ; but 
 for want of complexional energy, did nothing with all the vast 
 prose part of his mind but help the Germans to give a subtler 
 tone to criticism, and sow a few valuable seeds of thought in 
 minds worthy to receive them. Nine-tenths of his theology 
 would apply equally well to their own creeds in the mouths of 
 a Brahmin or a Mussulman. 
 
 His poetry is another matter. It is so beautiful, and was so 
 quietly content with its beauty, making no call on the critics, 
 and receiving hardly any notice, that people are but now begin- 
 ning to awake to a full sense of its merits. Of pure poetry, 
 strictly so called, that is to say, consisting of nothing but its 
 essential self, without conventional and perishing helps, he was 
 the greatest master of his time. If you would see it in a phial, 
 like a distillation of roses (taking it, I mean, at its best), it would 
 be found without a speck. The poet is happy with so good a gift,
 
 COLERIDGE 203 
 
 and the reader is " happy in his happiness." Yet so little, 
 sometimes, are a man's contemporaries and personal acquaint- 
 ances able or disposed to estimate him properly, that while 
 Coleridge, unlike Shakspeare, lavished praises on his poetic 
 friends, he had all the merit of the generosity to himself ; and 
 even Hazlitt, owing perhaps to causes of political alienation, 
 could see nothing to admire in the exquisite poem of Christabel, 
 but the description of the quarrel between the friends ! After 
 speaking, too, of the Ancient Mariner as the only one of his po- 
 ems that he could point out to any one as giving an adequate 
 idea of his great natural powers, he adds, " It is high German, 
 however, and in it he seems to conceive of poetry but as a 
 drunken dream, reckless, careless, and heedless of past, present, 
 and to come." This is said of a poem, with which fault has 
 been found for the exceeding conscientiousness of its moral ! O, 
 ye critics, the best of ye, what havoc does personal difference 
 play with your judgments! It was Mr. Hazlitt's only or most 
 unwarrantable censure, or one which friendship found hardest 
 to forgive. But peace, and honor too, be with his memory ! 
 If he was a splenetic and sometimes jealous man, he was a disin- 
 terested politician and an admirable critic : and lucky were 
 those whose natures gave them the right and the power to par- 
 don him. 
 
 Coleridge, though a born poet, was in his style and general 
 musical feeling the disciple partly of Spenser, and partly of the 
 fine old English ballad-writers in the collection of Bishop Percy. 
 But if he could not improve on them in some things, how he did 
 in others, especially in the art of being thoroughly musical ! 
 Of all our writers of the briefer narrative poetry, Coleridge is 
 the finest since Chaucer; and assuredly he is the sweetest of all 
 our poets. Waller's music is but a court-flourish in compari- 
 son ; and though Beaumont and Fletcher, Collins, Gray, Keats, 
 Shelley, and others, have several as sweet passages, and Spenser 
 is in a certain sense musical throughout, yet no man has writ- 
 ten whole poems, of equal length, so perfect in the sentiment of 
 music, so varied with it, and yet leaving on the ear so unbroken 
 and single an effect.
 
 204 COLERIDGE. 
 
 A damsel with a dulcimer 
 In a vision once I saw ; 
 It was an Abyssinian maid, 
 
 And on her dulcimer she play'd, 
 Singing of Mount Abora. 
 
 That is but one note of a music ever sweet, yet never 
 cloying. 
 
 It ceas'd ; yet still the sails made on 
 
 A pleasant noise till noon, 
 A noise like of a hidden brook 
 
 In the leafy month of June, 
 That to the sleeping woods all night 
 Singeth a quiet tune. 
 
 The stanzas of the poem from which this extract is made {The 
 Ancient Mariner) generally consist of four lines only ; but see 
 how the "brook" has carried him on with it through the silence 
 of the night. 
 
 I have said a good deal of the versification of Christabel, in 
 the Essay prefixed to this volume, but I cannot help giving a 
 further quotation. 
 
 It was a lovely sight to see 
 The lady Christabel, when she 
 Was praying at the old oak tree. 
 Amid the jagged shadows 
 
 Of massy leafless boughs, 
 Kneeling in the moonlight 
 
 To make her gentle vows : 
 Her slender palms together press'd, 
 Heaving sometimes on her breast ; 
 Her face resigned to bliss or bale — 
 Her face, O call it fair, not pale ! 
 And both blue eyes more bright than clear, 
 Each about to have a tear. 
 
 All the weeping eyes of Guido were nothing to that. But I 
 .shall be quoting the whole poem. I wish I could ; but I fear to 
 trespass upon the bookseller's property. One more passage, 
 however, I cannot resist. The good Christabel had been under- 
 going a trance in the arms of the wicked witch Geraldine :
 
 COLERIDGE. 205 
 
 A star hath set, a star hath risen, 
 
 O Geraldine ! since arms of thine 
 Have been the lovely lady's prison. 
 
 O Geraldine ! one hour was thine — 
 Thou hast thy will ! By tarn and rill — 
 The night-birds all that hour were still. 
 
 (An appalling fancy) 
 
 But now they are jubilant anew, 
 
 From cliff and tower tu-whoo ! tu-whoo ! 
 
 Tu-whoo ! tu-whoo ! from wood and fell. 
 
 And see ! the lady Christabel 
 
 (This, observe, begins a new paragraph, with a break in the 
 rhyme) 
 
 Gathers herself from out her trance ; 
 Her limbs relax, her countenance 
 Grows sad and soft; the smooth thin lids 
 Close o'er her eyes ; and tears she sheds — 
 Large tears that leave the lashes bright .' 
 And oft the while she seems to smile, 
 As infants at a sudden light. 
 
 Yea, she doth smile, and she doth weep, 
 Like a youthful hermitess 
 Beauteous in a wilderness, 
 
 Who praying always, prays in sleep. 
 And, if she move unquietly, 
 Perchance 't is but the blood so free 
 Comes back and tingles in her feet. 
 No doubt she hath a vision sweet : 
 What if her guardian spirit 't were ? 
 What if she knew her mother near ? 
 But this she knows, in joys and woes, 
 
 The saints will aid, if men will call, 
 
 For the blue sky bends over all. 
 
 We see how such a poet obtains his music. Such forms of 
 melody can proceed only from the most beautiful inner spirit of 
 sympathy and imagination. He sympathizes, in his universality, 
 with antipathy itself. If Regan or Goneril had been a young 
 and handsome witch of the times of chivalry, and attuned her
 
 205 COLERIDGE. 
 
 violence to craft, or betrayed it in venomous looks, she could 
 not have beaten the soft- voiced, appalling spells, or sudden, snake- 
 eyed glances of the lady Geraldine, — looks which the innocent 
 Christabel, in her fascination, feels compelled to " imitate." 
 
 A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy, 
 And the lady's eyes they shrank in her head, 
 Each shrank up to a serpent's eye ; 
 And with somewhat of malice and more of dread, 
 At Christabel she look'd askance. 
 ***** 
 
 The maid devoid of guile and sin 
 
 I know not how, in fearful wise, 
 
 So deeply had she drunken in 
 
 That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, 
 
 That all her features were resign'd 
 
 To this sole image in her mind, 
 
 And passively did imitate 
 
 That look of dull and treacherous hate. 
 
 This is as exquisite in its knowledge of the fascinating ten- 
 dencies of fear as it is in its description. And what can surpass 
 a line quoted already in the Essay (but I must quote it again !) 
 for very perfection of grace and sentiment ? — the line in the 
 passage where Christabel is going to bed, before she is aware 
 that her visitor is a witch. 
 
 Quoth Christabel,— So let it be ! 
 And as the lady bade, did she. 
 Her gentle limbs did she undress, 
 And lay down in her loveliness. 
 
 Oh ! it is too kite now ; and habit and self-love blinded me at 
 the time, and I did not know (much as I admired him) how great 
 a poet lived in that grove at Highgate ; or I would have cultivat- 
 ed its walks more, as I might have done, and endeavored to return 
 him, with my gratitude, a small portion of the delight his verses 
 have given me. 
 
 I must add, that I do not think Coleridge's earlier poems at all 
 equal to the rest. Many, indeed, I do not care to read a second 
 time ; but there are some ten or a dozen, of which I never tire, 
 and which will one day make a small and precious volume to
 
 COLERIDGE 207 
 
 put in the pockets of all enthusiasts in poetry, and endure with 
 the language. Five of these are The Ancient Mariner, Christa- 
 bel, Kubla Khan, Genevieve, and Youth and Age. Some, that 
 more personally relate to the poet, will be added for the love of 
 him, not omitting the Visit of the Gods, from Schiller, and the 
 famous passage on the Heathen Mythology, also from Schiller. 
 A short life, a portrait, and some other engravings perhaps, will 
 complete the book, after the good old fashion of Cooke's and 
 Bell's editions of the Poets ; and then, like the contents of the Jew 
 of Malta's casket, there will be 
 
 Infinite riches in a little room. 
 
 LOVE ; OR, GENEVIEVE. 
 
 All thoughts, all passions, all delights, 
 Whatever stirs this mortal frame, 
 
 Are all but ministers of Love, 
 And feed his sacred flame. 
 
 Oft in my waking dreams do I 
 Live o'er again that happy hour, 
 
 When midway on the mount I lay, 
 Beside the ruin'd tower. 
 
 The moonlight stealing o'er the scene, 
 Had blended with the lights of eve ; 
 
 And she was there, my hope, my joy, 
 My own dear Genevieve ! 
 
 She leant against the armed man, 
 The statue of the armed knight ; 
 
 She stood and listen'd to my lay, 
 Amid the lingering light. 
 
 Few sorrows hath she of her own, 
 My hope! my joy .' my Genevieve 
 
 She loves me best whene'er J sing 
 The songs that make her grieve.
 
 208 COLERIDGE. 
 
 I play'd a soft and doleful air, 
 I sang an old and moving story — 
 
 An old rude song, that suited well 
 That ruin wild and hoary. 
 
 She listen'd with a flitting blush, 
 
 With downcast eyes and modest grace, 
 
 For well she knew I could not choose 
 But gaze upon her face. 
 
 I told her of the knight that wore 
 Upon his shield a burning brand ; 
 
 And that for ten long years he woo'd 
 The lady of the land. 
 
 I told her how he pin' d, and — ah ! 
 
 The deep, the low, the pleading tone 
 With which I sang another's love, 
 
 Interpreted my own. 
 
 She listen'd with a flitting blush, 
 
 With downcast eyes and modest grace, 
 
 And she forgave me, that I gaz'd 
 Too fondly on her face ! 
 
 But when I told the cruel scorn 
 
 That crazed that bold and lovely knight, 
 And that he cross'd the mountain-woods, 
 
 Nor rested day nor night : 
 
 That sometimes from the savage den, 
 And sometimes from the darksome shade, 
 
 And sometimes starting up at once 
 In green and sunny glade, 
 
 There came and look'd him in the face 
 An angel beautiful and bright ; 
 
 And that he knew it was a fiend, 
 This miserable knight! 
 
 And that, unknowing what he did, 
 He leap'd amid a murderous band, 
 
 And sav'd from outrage worse than death 
 The lady of the land ! 
 
 And how she wept and claspt his knees ; 
 And how she tended him in vain —
 
 COLERIDGE. 209 
 
 And ever strove to expiate 
 
 The scorn that crazed his brain ; 
 
 And that she m'rs'd him in a cave ; 
 
 *...« now his madness went away, 
 When on the yellow forest leaves 
 
 A dying man he lay. 
 
 His dying words — but when I reach'd 
 That tenderest strain of all the ditty, 
 
 My faltering voice and pausing harp 
 Disturb'd her soul with pity. 
 
 All impulses of soul and sense 
 
 Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve ; 
 
 The music and the doleful tale, 
 The rich and balmy eve ; 
 
 And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, 
 An undistinguishable throng, 
 
 And gentle wishes long subdued, 
 Subdued and cherished long. 
 
 She wept with pity and delight, 
 * She blush'd with love and virgin shame , 
 And like the murmur of a dream, 
 I heard her breathe my name. 
 
 Her bosom heav'd — she stept aside, 
 As conscious of my look she stept 
 
 Then suddenly, with timorous eye, 
 She fled to me and wept. 
 
 She half enclos'd me in her arms, 
 ^phe press'd me with a meek embrace : 
 
 And bending back her head, looted up, 
 And gazed upon my face. 
 
 ' Twas partly love and partly fear, 
 And partly 't was a bashful art 
 
 That Imight rather feel than see, 
 The swelling of her heart. 
 
 1 calm'd her fears, and she was calm, 
 And told her love with virgin pride, 
 15
 
 i.j COLERIDGE 
 
 And so I won my Genevieve, 
 My own, my beauteous bride ! 
 
 I can hardly say a word upon this poem for very admiration. 
 I must observe, however, that one of the charms of it consists 
 in the numerous repetitions and revolvings of the words, one on 
 the other, as if taking delight in their own beauty. 
 
 KUBLA KUAN. 
 
 SUGGESTED TO THE AUTHOR BY A PASSAGE IN PURCHAs's PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan' 
 
 A stately pleasure-dome decree, 
 Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
 Through caverns measureless to man, 
 
 Down to a sunless sea. 
 
 So twice five miles of fertile ground 
 With walls and towers were girdled round ; 
 And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills* 
 Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree ; 
 And here were forests ancient as the hills, 
 Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. 
 
 But oh, that deep romantic chasm which slanted 
 
 Down the green hill, athwart a cedarn cover ! 
 
 A savage place! as holy and enchanted 
 
 As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted 
 
 By woman wailing for her demon-lover ! 
 
 And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, 
 
 As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, 
 
 A mighty fountain mor ptly was forc'd: 
 
 Amid whose swift half-mfcei^iitted burst 
 
 Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, 
 
 Or chaffy grain beneath the thrasher's flail : 
 
 And 'mid these dancing rocks, at once and ever, 
 
 It flung up momently the sacred river. 
 
 Five miles meandering with a mazy motion, 
 
 Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, 
 
 Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man, 
 
 And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
 
 COLERIDGE. 211 
 
 And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far 
 Ancestral voices prophesying war. 2 
 The shadow of the dome of pleasure 
 Floated midway on the waves ; 
 Where was heard the mingled measure 
 From the fountain and the caves. 
 It was a miracle of rare device, 
 A sunny pleasure-dome, with caves of ice ! 
 A damsel with a dulcimer 
 In a vision once I saw: 
 It was an Abyssinian maid, 
 And on her dulcimer she play'd, 
 Singing of Mount Abora. 
 Could I revive within me 
 Her symphony and song, 
 To such a deep delight 't would win me, 
 That with music loud and long, 
 I would build that dome in air, 
 That sunny dome ! those caves of ice! 
 And all who heard should see them there, 
 And all should cry, Beware ! Beware ! 
 His flashing eyes, his floating hair ! 
 Weave a circle round him thrice, 
 And close your eyes with holy dread, 
 For he on honey-dew hath fed, 
 And drunk the milk of Paradise. 
 
 » " In Xanadu." — I think I recollect a variation of this stanza, 
 as follows: — 
 
 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
 
 A stately pleasure-house ordain, 
 Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
 Through caverns measureless to man, 
 
 Down to a sunless main. 
 
 The nice-eared poet probably thought there were too many 
 ns in these rhymes ; and man and main are certainly not the best 
 neighbors : yet there is such an open, sounding, and stately into* 
 nation in the words pleasure-house ordain, and it is so superior 
 to pleasure-dome decree, that I am not sure I would not give up 
 the correctness of the other terminations to retain it. 
 
 But what a grand flood is this, flowing down through measure- 
 less caverns to a sea without a sun ! I know no other sea equal
 
 212 COLERIDGE. 
 
 to it, except Keats's, in his Ode to a Nightingale ; and none can 
 surpass that. 
 
 2 " Ancestral voices prophesying war."— Was ever anything more 
 wild, and remote, and majestic, than this fiction of the " ances- 
 tral voices?" Methinks I hear them, out of the blackness of 
 the past. 
 
 YOUTH AND AGE. 
 
 Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying, 
 Where hope clung feeding like a bee — 
 Both were mine ! Life went a-Maying 
 With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, 
 When I was young ! 
 
 When I was young ? Ah, woful when! 
 Ah, for the change 'twixt now and then ! 
 This breathing house not built with hands, 
 This body that does me grievous wrong, 
 O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands, 
 How lightly then itflasKd along! — 
 Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, 
 On winding lakes and rivers wide, 
 That ask no aid of sail or oar, 
 That fear no spite of wind or tide ! 
 Naught cared this body for wind or weather, 
 When youth and I lived in 't together. 
 
 Flowers are lovely ; Love is flower-like: 
 Friendship is a sheltering tree ; 
 O the joys that came down shower-like, 
 Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty, 
 Ere I was old ! 
 
 Ere J was old ? Ah, woful ere ! 
 Which tells me Youth's no longer here ! 
 Youth ! for years so many and sweet, 
 'T is known, that thou and 1 were one ; 
 I'll think it but a fond deceit — 
 It cannot be that thou art gone ! 
 Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd,
 
 COLERIDGE. 21S 
 
 And thou wert aye a masker bold ! 
 What strange disguise hast now put on, 
 To make believe that thou art gone ? 
 I see these locks in silvery slips, 
 This drooping gait, this alter d size ; 
 But springtide blossoms on thy lips, 
 And tears take sunshine from thine eyes ! 
 Life is but thought ; so think I will, 
 That Youth and I are house-mates still. 
 
 This is one of the most perfect poems, for style, feeling, and 
 everything, that ever were written. 
 
 THE HEATHEN DIVINITIES MERGED INTO ASTROLOGY. 
 
 FROM THE TRANSLATION OF SCHILLER'S FICCOLOMINI. 
 
 — Fable is Love's world, his home, his birthplace: 
 
 Delightedly dwells he 'mong fays and talismans, 
 
 And spirits ; and delightedly believes 
 
 Divinities, being himself divine. 
 
 The intelligible forms of ancient poets, 
 
 The fair humanities of old religion, 
 
 The power, the beauty, and the majesty, 
 
 That had her haunts in dale, or piny mountain, 
 
 Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, 
 
 Or chasms and wat'ry depths ; all these have vanish'd , 
 
 They live no longer in the faith of reason ; 
 
 But still the heart doth need a language ; still 
 
 Doth the old instinct bring back the old names ; 
 
 And to yon starry world they now are gone, 
 
 Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth 
 
 With man as with their friend ; and to the lover 
 
 Yonder they move ; from yonder visible sky 
 
 Shoot influence down : and even at this day 
 
 ' T is Jupiter who brings whatever is great, 
 
 And Venus who brings everything that 'sfatr
 
 214 COLERIDGE. 
 
 WORK WITHOUT HOPE. 
 
 LINES COMPOSED 21sT FEBRUARY, 1827. 
 
 All Nature seems at work. Stags leave their lair— 
 
 The bees are stirring — birds are on the wing — 
 And Winter, slumbering in the open air, 
 
 Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring ! 
 And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing, 
 Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. 
 Yet well I ken the banko where amaranths blow, 
 Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. 
 Bloom, O ye amaranths ! bloom for whom ye may; 
 For me ye bloom not ! Glide, rich streams, away ! 
 With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll : 
 And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul ! 
 Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, 
 And hope without an object cannot live. 
 
 I insert this poem on account of the exquisite imaginative 
 picture in the third and fourth lines, and the terseness and melo- 
 dy of the whole. Here we have a specimen of a perfect style, — 
 unsuperfluous, straightforward, suggestive, impulsive, and se- 
 rene. But how the writer of such verses could talk of " work 
 without hope," I cannot say. What work had he better to do 
 than to write more 1 and what hope but to write more still, and 
 delight himself and the world ? But the truth is, his mind was 
 too active and self-involved to need the diversion of work ; and 
 his body, the case that contained it, too sluggish with sedentary 
 living to like it ; and so he persuaded himself that if his writ- 
 ings did not sell, they were of no use. Are we to disrespect 
 these self-delusions in such a man ? No; but to draw from them 
 salutary cautions for ourselves, — his inferiors.
 
 SHELLEY. 215 
 
 SHELLEY, 
 
 BORN, 1792, DIED, 1822. 
 
 Among the many reasons which his friends had to deplore the 
 premature death of this splendid poet and noble-hearted man, 
 the greatest was his not being able to repeat, to a more attentive 
 public, his own protest, not only against some of his earlier 
 effusions (which he did in the newspapers), but against all which 
 he had written in a wailing and angry, instead of an invaria- 
 bly calm, loving, and therefore thoroughly helping spirit. His 
 works, in justice to himself, require either to be winnowed from 
 what he disliked, or to be read with the remembrance of that 
 dislike. He had sensibility almost unique, seemingly fitter for a 
 planet of a different sort, or in more final condition, than ours : 
 he has said of himself, — so delicate was his organization, — that 
 he could 
 
 " Hardly bear 
 The weight of the superincumbent hour ;" 
 
 and the impatience which he vented for some years against that 
 rough working towards good, called evil, and which he carried 
 out into conduct too hasty, subjected one of the most naturally 
 pious of men to charges which hurt his name, and thwarted his 
 philanthropy. Had he lived, he would have done away all 
 mistake on these points, and made everybody know him for 
 what he was, — a man idolized by his frie'Hs, — studious, tempe- 
 rate, of the gentlest life and conversation, and willing to have 
 died to do the world a service. For my part, I never can men- 
 tion his name without a transport of love and gratitude. I 
 rejoice to have partaken of his cares, and to be both suffering 
 and benefiting from him at this moment ; and whenever I think 
 of a future state, and of the great and good Spirit that must
 
 216 SHELLEY. 
 
 pervade it, one of the first faces I humbly hope to see there, is 
 that of the kind and impassioned man, whose intercourse conferred 
 on me the title of the Friend of Shelley. 
 
 The finest poetry of Shelley is so mixed up with moral and po- 
 litical speculation, that I found it impossible to give more than the 
 following extracts, in accordance with the purely poetical de- 
 sign of the present volume. Of the poetry of reflection and tra- 
 gic pathos, he has abundance ; but even such fanciful produc- 
 tions as the Sensitive Plant and the Witch of Atlas are full of 
 metaphysics, and would require a commentary of explanation. 
 The short pieces and passages, however, before us, are so beau- 
 tiful, that they may well stand as the representatives of the whole 
 powers of his mind in the region of pure poetry. In sweetness 
 (and not even there in passages) the Ode to the Skylark is infe- 
 rior only to Coleridge, — in rapturous passion to no man. It is 
 like the bird it sings, — enthusiastic, enchanting, profuse, contin- 
 uous, and alone, — small, but filling the heavens. One of the 
 triumphs of poetry is to associate its remembrance with the beau- 
 ties of nature. There are probably no lovers of Homer and 
 Shakspeare, who, when looking at the moon, do not often call to 
 mind the descriptions in the eighth book of the Iliad and the fifth 
 act of the Merchant of Venice. The nightingale (in England) 
 may be said to have belonged exclusively to Milton (see page 
 178), till a dying young poet of our own day partook of the 
 honor by the production of his exquisite Ode : and notwithstand- 
 ing Shakspeare's lark singing " at heaven's gate," the longer 
 effusion of Shelley will be identified with thoughts of the bird 
 hereafter, in the minds of all who are susceptible of its beauty. 
 What a pity he did not live to produce a hundred such ; or to 
 mingle briefer lyrics, as beautiful as Shakspeare's, with trage- 
 dies which Shakspeare himself might have welcomed ! for as- 
 suredly, had he lived, he would have been the greatest dramatic 
 writer since the days of Elizabeth, if indeed he has not abun- 
 dantly proved himself such in his tragedy of the Cenci. Unfor- 
 tunately, in his indignation against every conceivable form of 
 oppression, he took a subject for that play too much resembling 
 one which Shakspeare had taken in his youth, and still more 
 unsuitable to the stage ; otherwise, besides grandeur and terror
 
 SHELLEY. 217 
 
 there are things in it lovely as heart can worship; and the au- 
 thor showed himself able to draw both men and women, whose 
 names would have been " familiar in our mouths as household 
 words." The utmost might of gentleness, and of the sweet 
 habitudes of domestic affection, was never more balmily im- 
 pressed through the tears of the reader, than in the unique and 
 divine close of that dreadful tragedy. Its loveliness, being that 
 of the highest reason, is superior to the madness of all the crime 
 that has preceded it, and leaves nature in a state of reconcile- 
 ment with her ordinary course. The daughter, who is going 
 forth with her mother to execution, utters these final words : — 
 
 Give yourself no unnecessary pain, 
 
 My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie 
 
 My girdle for me, and bind up this hair 
 
 In any simple knot. Ay, that does well ; 
 
 And yours, I sec is coming down. How often 
 
 Have we done this for one another ! now 
 
 We shall not do it any more. My Lord, 
 
 We are quite ready, Well, — 't is very well. 
 
 The force of simplicity and moral sweetness cannot go fur- 
 ther than this. But in general, if Coleridge is the sweetest of 
 our poets, Shelley is at once the most ethereal and most gor- 
 geous ; the one who has clothed his thoughts in draperies of the 
 most evanescent and most magnificent words and imagery. Not 
 Milton himself is more learned in Grecisms, or nicer in etymolo- 
 gical propriety ; and nobody, throughout, has a style so Orphic 
 and primaeval. His poetry is as full of mountains, seas, and skies, 
 of light, and darkness, and the seasons, and all the elements of 
 our being, as if Nature herself had written it, with the creation 
 and its hopes newly cast around her ; not, it must be confessed, 
 without too indiscriminate a mixture of great and small, and a 
 want of sufficient shade, — a certain chaotic brilliancy, " darK 
 with excess of light." Shelley (in the verses to a Lady with a 
 Guitar) might well call himself Ariel. AH the more enjoying 
 part of his poetry is Ariel, — the " delicate" yet powerful "spi- 
 rit," jealous of restraint, yet able to serve ; living in the ele- 
 ments and the flowers ; treading the " ooze of the salt deep," and 
 running "on the sharp wind of the north;" feeling for creatures
 
 218 SHELLEY. 
 
 unlike himself; " flaming amazement" on them too, and singing 
 exquisitest songs. Alas ! and he suffered for years, as Ariel 
 did in the cloven pine : but now he is out of it, and serving the 
 purposes of Beneficence with a calmness befitting his knowledge 
 and his love. 
 
 TO A SKYLAHK. 
 
 Hail to thee, blithe spirit ! 
 
 Bird thou never wert, 
 That from heaven, or near it, 
 
 Pourest thy full heart, 
 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.' 
 
 Higher still and higher 
 
 From the earth thou springest, 
 Like a cloud of fire ! 
 
 The blue deep thou wingest, 
 And singing, still dost soar : and soaring, ever singest 
 
 in. 
 
 In the golden lightning 
 
 Of the sunken sun, 
 O'er which clouds are brightening, 
 Thou dost float and run ; 
 Like an embodied joy, whose race has just begun 
 
 The pale purple even 
 
 Melts round thy flight ; 
 Like a star of heaven 
 
 In the broad day-light 
 Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. 
 
 Keen as are the arrows 
 Of that silver sphere 
 Whose intense lamp narrows 
 In the white dawn clear, 
 Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
 
 SHELLEY. 219 
 
 VI. 
 
 All the earth and air 
 
 With thy voice is loud 
 As, when night is bare, 
 
 From one lonely cloud 
 The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. 
 
 What thou art we know not. 
 
 What is most like thee ? 
 From rainbow clouds there flow not 
 Drops so bright to see, 
 As from thy presence showers a rain of melody 
 
 Like a poet hidden 
 
 In the light of thought, 
 Singing hymns unbidden, 
 Till the world is wrought 
 To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. 
 
 Like a high-born maiden 2 
 
 In a palace tower, 
 Soothing her love-laden 
 Soul in secret hour 
 With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower. 
 
 Like a glow-worm golden 
 
 In a dell of dew, 
 Scattering unbeholden 
 Its adrial hue 
 Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Like a rose embowered 
 
 In its own green leaves, 
 By warm winds deflowered 
 Till the scent it gives 
 Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves 
 
 Sound of vernal showers 
 On the twinkling grass,
 
 220 SHELLEY. 
 
 Rain-awakened flowers, 
 All that ever was 
 Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass 
 
 zm. 
 
 Teach me, sprite or bird, 
 
 What sweet thoughts are thine : 
 i aave never heard 
 
 Praise of love or wine 
 That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Chorus hymeneal, 
 
 Or triumphal chaunt, 
 Match'd with thine would be all 
 
 But an empty vaunt — 
 A thin? wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 
 
 What objects are the fountains 
 
 Of thy happy strain 1 
 What fields, or waves, or mountains ? 
 What shapes of sky or plain ? 
 What love of thine own kind 1 What ignorance of pain "> 
 
 With thy clear keen joyance 
 
 Languor cannot be : 
 Shadow of annoyance 
 Never came near thee : 
 Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety 
 
 Waking or asleep, 
 
 Thou of death must deem 
 Things more true and deep 
 Than we mortals dream, 
 Or how could thy note flow in such a crystal stream ? 
 
 We look before and after, 
 
 And pine for what is not ; 
 Our sincerest laughter 
 
 With some pain is fraught : 
 Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.
 
 SHELLEY. 221 
 
 Yet if we could scorn 
 
 Hate and pride and fear ; 
 If we were things born 
 
 Not to shed a tear, 
 I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 
 
 xx. 
 
 Better than all measures 
 
 Of delightful sound, 
 Better than all treasures 
 That in books are found, 
 Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! 3 
 
 xxi. 
 
 Teach me half the gladness, 
 
 That thy brain must know; 
 Such harmonious madness 
 From my lips would flow, 
 The world should listen then, as I am listening now 
 
 " In the spring of 1820," says Mrs. Shelley, " we spent a wee* 
 or two near Leghorn, borrowing the house of some friends, who 
 were absent on a journey to England. It was on a beautiful 
 summer evening, while wandering among the lanes where myrtle 
 hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling 
 of the skylark, which inspired one of the most beautiful of his po- 
 ems." — Moxon's edition of 1840, p. 278. 
 
 Shelley chose the measure of this poem with great felicity. 
 The earnest hurry of the four short lines, followed by the long 
 effusiveness of the Alexandrine, expresses the eagerness and 
 continuity of the lark. There is a luxury of the latter kind in 
 Shakspeare's song, produced by the reduplication of the 
 rhymes : — 
 
 Hark ! hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings, 
 
 And Phoebus 'gins arise 
 His steeds to water at those springs 
 
 On chalic'd flowers that lies : 
 And winking mary-buds begin 
 
 To ope their golden eyes : 
 With everything that pretty bin, 
 
 !\1 y lady sweet, arise.
 
 222 SHELLEY. 
 
 " Chalic'd flowers that lies," is an ungrammatical license in 
 use with the most scholarly writers of the time ; and, to say the 
 truth, it was a slovenly one ; though there is all the difference 
 in the world between the license of power and that of poverty. 
 
 1 " In profuse strains of unpremeditated art." — Durirjo - the preva- 
 lence of the unimaginative and unmusical poetry of the last cen- 
 tury, it was thought an Alexandrine should always be cut in 
 halves, for the greater sweetness ; that is to say, monotony. 
 The truth is, the pause may be thrown anywhere, or even en- 
 tirely omitted, as in the unhesitating and characteristic instance 
 before us. See also the eighth stanza. The Alexandrines 
 throughout the poem evince the nicest musical feeling. 
 
 2 Like a high-born maiden 
 In a palace tower. 
 
 Mark the accents on the word " love-laden," so beautifully 
 carrying on the stress into the next line — 
 
 Soothing her Ibve-laden 
 Sdul in secret hour. 
 
 The music of the whole stanza is of the loveliest sweetness ; of 
 energy in the midst of softness ; of dulcitude and variety. Not 
 a sound of a vowel in the quatrain resembles that of another, 
 except in the rhymes ; while the very sameness cr repetition of 
 the sounds in the Alexandrine intimates the revolvement and 
 continuity of the music which the lady is playing. Observe, 
 for instance (for nothing is too minute to dwell upon in such 
 beauty), the contrast of the i and o in "high-born ;" the diffe- 
 rence of the a in " maiden" from that in " palace ;" the strong 
 opposition of maiden to tower (making the rhyme more vigorous 
 in proportion to the general softness) ; then the new differences 
 in soothing, Zoue-laden, soul, and secret, all diverse from one 
 another, and from the whole strain ; and finally, the strain it- 
 self, winding up in the Alexandrine with a cadence of particular 
 repetitions, which constitutes nevertheless a new difference on 
 that account, and by the prolongation of the tone.
 
 SHELLEY. 223 
 
 " It gives a very echo to the seat 
 Where love is throned." 
 
 There is another passage of Shakspeare which it more particu- 
 larly calls to mind ; — the 
 
 Ditties highly penn'd, 
 Sung by a fair queen in a summer bower, 
 With ravishing division to her lute. 
 
 But as Shakspeare was not writing lyrically in this passage, 
 nor desirous to fill it with so much love and sentiment, it is no 
 irreverence to say that the modern excels it. The music is car- 
 ried on into the first two lines of the next stanza : — 
 
 Like a glow-worm golden 
 In a dell of dew ; 
 
 a melody as happy in its alliteration as in what may be termed 
 its counterpoint. And the coloring of this stanza is as beautiful 
 as the music. 
 
 3 " Thou scornerof the ground."— A most noble and emphatic close 
 of the stanza. Not that the lark, in any vulgar sense of the 
 word, " scorns" the ground, for he dwells upon it : but that, like 
 the poet, nobody can take leave of common-place-s with more 
 heavenly triumph. 
 
 A GARISH DAY. 
 
 (SAID BY A POTENT RUFFIAN.) 
 
 The all-beholding sun yet shines ; I hear 
 
 A busy stir of men about the streets ; 
 
 I see the bright sky through the window-panes ; 
 
 It is a garish, broad, and peering day ; 
 
 Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears ; 
 
 And every little corner, nook, and hole, 
 
 Is penetrated with the insolent light. 
 
 Come, darkness !
 
 224 SHELLEY. 
 
 CONTEMPLATION OF VIOLENCE. 
 
 (by a man not bad.) 
 
 Spare me now. 
 I am as one lost in a midnight wood, 
 Who dares not ask some harmless passenger 
 The path across the wilderness, lest he, 
 As my thoughts are, should be a murderer 
 
 A ROCK AND A CHASM. 
 
 I remember, 
 Two miles on this side of the fort, the road 
 Crosses a deep ravine : 't is rough and narrow> 
 And winds with short turns down the precipice ; 
 j. nd in its depth there is a mighty rock, 
 Wi.ich has, from unimaginable years, 
 Sustain d itself with terror and with toil 
 Over a gulf, and ivilh the agony 
 With which it clings seems slowly coming down; 
 Even as a wretched soul, hour after hour, 
 Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, leans, 
 And, leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss 
 In which it fears to fall. Beneath this crag, 
 Huge as despair, as if in weariness, 
 The melancholy mountain yawns. Below 
 You hear, but see not, an impetuous torrent 
 Raging among the caverns : and a bridge 
 Crosses the chasm ; and high above these grow, 
 With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag, 
 Cedars, and yews, and pines ; whose tangled hair 
 Is matted in one solid roof of shad^ 
 By the dark ivy's twine. At noon-day here 
 ' Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night
 
 SHELLEY. 225 
 
 LOVELINESS INEXPRESSIBLE. 
 
 Sweet lamp ! my moth-like muse has burnt its wings ; 
 
 Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, 
 
 Young Love should teach Time in his own grey style 
 
 All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile ? 
 
 A lovely soul form'd to be blest and bless ? 
 
 A well of seal'd and secret happiness, 
 
 Whose waters like blithe light and music are, 
 
 Vanquishing dissonance and gloom ? — a star 
 
 Which moves not in the moving heavens, alone ? 
 
 A smile amid dark frowns ? — a gentle tone 
 
 Amid rude voices ? — a beloved sight ? 
 
 A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight ? 
 
 A lute, which those whom love has taught to play, 
 
 Make music on, to soothe the roughest day, 
 
 And lull fond grief asleep ? — a buried treasure ? 
 
 A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure ? 
 
 A violet-shrouded grave of wo ? I measure 
 
 The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, 
 
 And find — alas ! mine own infirmity. 
 
 EXISTENCE IN SPACE. 
 
 Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity. 
 
 DEVOTEDNESS UNREQUIRING. 
 
 One word is too often profaned 
 
 For me to profane it ; 
 One feeling too falsely disdain' d 
 
 For thee to disdain it. 
 One hope is too like despair 
 
 For prudence to smother, 
 16
 
 226 SHELLEY. 
 
 And pity from thee more clear 
 Than that from another. 
 
 I can give not what men call love ; 
 
 But wilt thou accept not 
 The worship the heart lifts above, 
 
 And the Heaven's reject not ? 
 The desire of the moth for the star 
 
 Of the night for the morrow ; 
 The devotion to something afar 
 
 From the sphere of our sorrow. 
 
 TO A LADY WITH A GUITAR. 
 
 Ariel to Miranda : — Take 
 
 This slave of music, for the sake 
 
 Of him who is the slave of thee ; 
 
 And teach it all the harmony 
 
 In which thou canst, and only thou, 
 
 Make the delighted spirit glow, 
 
 Till joy denies itself again, 
 
 And, too intense, is turned to pain. 
 
 For by permission and command 
 
 Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, 
 
 Poor Ariel sends this silent token 
 
 Of more than ever can be spoken : 
 
 Your guadian spirit, Ariel, who 
 
 From life to life must still pursue 
 
 Your happiness, for thus alone 
 
 Can Ariel ever find his own : 
 
 From Prospero's enchanted cell, 
 
 As the mighty verses tell, 
 
 To the throne of Naples he 
 
 Lit you o'er the trackless sea, 
 
 Flitting on, your prow before, 
 
 Like a living meteor : 
 
 When you die, the silent moon 
 
 In her interlunar swoon, 
 
 Is not sadder in her cell 
 
 Than deserted Ariel : 
 
 When you live again on earth, 
 
 Like an unseen star of birth,
 
 SHELLEY. 227 
 
 Ariel guides you o'er the sea 
 
 Of life from your nativity. 
 
 Many changes have been run, 
 
 Since Ferdinand ana you begun 
 
 Your course of love, and Ariel still 
 
 Has track'd your steps and serv'd your will. 
 
 Now in humbler, happier lot, 
 
 This is all remember d not ; 
 
 And now, alas ! the poor sprite is 
 
 Imprisoned for some fault of his 
 
 In a body like a grave. 
 
 From you, he only dares to crave, 
 
 For his service and his sorrow, 
 
 A smile to-day — a song to-morrow. 
 
 The artist who this idol wrought, 
 
 To echo all harmonious thought, 
 
 FelPd a tree, while on the steep 
 
 The woods were in their winter sleep, 
 
 Mock'd in that repose divine 
 
 On the wind-swept Appenine : 
 
 And dreaming, some of autumn past, 
 
 And some of spring approaching fast, 
 
 And some of April buds and showers, 
 
 And some of songs in July bowers, 
 
 And all of love : and so this tree — 
 
 O that such our death may be ! — 
 
 Died in sleep, and felt no pain, 
 
 To live in happier form again : 
 
 From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star, 
 
 The artist wrought this lov'd Guitar, 
 
 And taught it justly to reply 
 
 To all who question skilfully, 
 
 In language gentle as thine own; 
 
 Whispering in enamor'd tone 
 
 Sweet oracles of woods and dells, 
 
 And summer winds in sylvan cells ; 
 
 For it had learnt all harmonies 
 
 Of the plains and of the skies, 
 
 Of the forest and the mountains, 
 
 And the many-voiced fountains, 
 
 The clearest echoes of the hills, 
 
 The softest notes of falling rills, 
 
 The melodies of birds and bees, 
 
 The murmuring of summer seas, 
 
 And pattering rain, and breathing dew,
 
 228 SHELLEY. 
 
 And airs of evening ; and it knew 
 That seldom-heard mysterious sound. 
 Which, driven on its diurnal round, 
 As it floats through boundless day, 
 Our world enkindles on its way : — 
 All this it knows, but will not tell 
 To those who cannot question well 
 The spirit that inhabits it ; 
 It talks according to the wit 
 Of its companions : and no more 
 Is heard than has been felt before, 
 By those who tempt it to betray 
 These secrets of an elder day. 
 But, sweetly as its answers will 
 Flatter hands of perfect skill, 
 It keeps its highest, holiest tone 
 For our beloved friend alone. 
 
 This is a Catullian melody of the first water. The transform- 
 ation of the dreaming wood of the tree into a guitar was proba- 
 bly suggested by Catullus's Dedication of the Galley, — a poem 
 with which I know he was conversant, and which was particu- 
 larly calculated to please him ; for it records the consecration 
 of a favorite old sea-boat to the Dioscuri. The modern poet's 
 imagination beats the ancient ; but Catullus equals him in 
 graceful flow ; and there is one very Shelleian passage in the 
 original : — 
 
 Ubi iste, post phaselus, antea fuit 
 Comata silva : nam Cytorio in jugo 
 Loquente saepe sibilum edidit coma. 
 
 For of old, what now you see 
 
 A galley, was a leafy tree 
 
 On the Cytorian heights, and there 
 
 Talk'd to the wind with whistling hair
 
 SHELLEY. 229 
 
 MUSIC, MEMORY, AND LOVE. 
 
 TO . 
 
 Music, when soft voices die, 1 
 
 Vibrates in the memory; 
 
 Odors, when sweet violets sicken, 
 
 Live within the sense they quicken ; 
 
 Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead, 
 
 Are heap'd for the beloved's bed ; 
 
 And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, 
 
 Love itself shall slumber on. 
 
 i " Music, when soft voices die." — This song is a great favorite 
 with musicians : and no wonder. Beaumont and Fletcher never 
 wrote anything of the kind more lovely.
 
 230 KEATS. 
 
 KEATS, 
 
 BORN, 1796, DIED, 1821. 
 
 Keats was a born poet of the most poetical kind. All his feel- 
 ings came to him through a poetical medium, or were speedily- 
 colored by it. He enjoyed a jest as heartily as any one, and 
 sympathized with the lowliest common-place ; but the next 
 minute his thoughts were in a garden of enchantment, with 
 nymphs, and fauns, and shapes of exalted humanity ; 
 
 Elysian beauty, melancholy grace. 
 
 It might be said of him, that he never beheld an oak-tree with- 
 out seeing the Dryad. His fame may now forgive the critics 
 who disliked his politics, and did not understand his poetry. 
 Repeated editions of him. in England, France, and America, 
 attest its triumphant survival of all obloquy ; and there can be 
 no doubt that he has taken a permanent station among the Brit- 
 ish Poets, of a very high, if not thoroughly mature, description. 
 Keats's early poetrj r , indeed, partook plentifully of the exube- 
 rance of youth; and even in most of his later, his sensibility, 
 sharpened by mortal illness, tended to a morbid excess. His 
 region is " a wilderness of sweets," — flowers of all hue, and 
 "weeds of glorious feature," — where, as he says, the luxuriant 
 soil brings 
 
 The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth 
 
 But there also is the " rain-scented eglantine," and bushes of 
 May-flowers, with bees, and myrtle, and bay, — and endless 
 paths into forests haunted with the loveliest as well as the gentlest
 
 KEATS. 23] 
 
 beings ; and the gods live in the distance, amid notes of majestic 
 thunder. I do not say that no " surfeit" is ever there ; but I do, 
 that there is no end to the " nectared sweets." In what other 
 English poet (however superior to him in other respects) are 
 you so certain of never opening a page without lighting upon the 
 loveliest imagery and the most eloquent expressions 1 Name 
 one. Compare any succession of their pages at random, and see 
 if the young poet is not sure to present his stock of beauty ; crude 
 it may be, in many instances ; too indiscriminate in general ; 
 never, perhaps, thoroughly perfect in cultivation ; but there it is, 
 exquisite of its kind, and filling envy with despair. He died at 
 five-and-twenty ; he had not revised his earlier works, nor given 
 his genius its last pruning. His Endymion, in resolving to be 
 free from all critical trammels, had no versification ; and his 
 last noble fragment, Hyperion, is not faultless, — but it is nearly 
 so. The Eve of St. Agnes betrays morbidity only in one in* 
 stance (noticed in the comment). Even in his earliest produc- 
 tions, which are to be considered as those of youth just emerging 
 from boyhood, are to be found passages of as masculine a beauty 
 as ever were written. Witness the Sonnet on reading Chap- 
 man's Homer, — epical in the splendor and dignity of its images, 
 and terminating with the noblest Greek simplicity. Among his 
 finished productions, however, of any length, the Eve of St. Ag- 
 nes still appears to me the most delightful and complete speci- 
 men of his genius. It stands mid-way between his most sensi- 
 tive ones (which, though of rare beauty, occasionally sink into 
 feebleness) and the less generally characteristic majesty of the 
 fragment of Hyperion. Doubtless his greatest poetry is to be 
 found in Hyperion ; and had he lived, there is little doubt he 
 would have written chiefly in that strain ; rising superior to those 
 languishments of love which made the critics so angry, and 
 which they might so easily have pardoned at his time of life. 
 But the Eve of St. Agnes had already bid most of them adieu, — 
 exquisitely loving as it is. It is young, but full-grown poetry 
 of the rarest description; graceful as the beardless Apollo; 
 slowing and gorgeous with the colors of romance. I have there- 
 fore reprinted the whole of it in the present volume, together 
 with the comment alluded to in the Preface ; especially as, in
 
 J32 KEATS. 
 
 \ddition to felicity of treatment, its subject is in every respect a 
 happy one, and helps to " paint" this our bower of" poetry with 
 delight." Melancholy, it is true, will "break in" when the 
 reader thinks of the early death of such a writer ; but it is one of 
 the benevolent provisions of nature, that all good things tend to 
 pleasure in the recollection ; when the bitterness of their loss :'s 
 past, their own sweetness embalms them. 
 
 A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. 
 
 While writing this paragraph, a hand-organ out-of-doors has 
 been playing one of the mournfullest and loveliest of the airs of 
 Bellini — another genius who died young. The sound of music 
 always gives a feeling either of triumph or tenderness to the 
 state of mind in which it is heard : in this instance it seemed 
 like one departed spirit come to bear testimony of another, and 
 to say how true indeed may be the union of sorrowful and sweet 
 recollections. 
 
 Keats knew the youthful faults of his poetry as Avell as any 
 man, as the reader may see by the preface to Endymion, and 
 its touching though manly acknowledgment of them to critical 
 candor. I have this moment read it again, after a lapse of 
 years, and have been astonished to think how anybody could 
 answer such an appeal to the mercy of strength, with the cruelty 
 of weakness. All the good for which Mr. Gilford pretended to 
 be zealous, he might have effected with pain to no one, and 
 glory to himself; and therefore all the evil he mixed with it 
 was of his own making. But the secret at the bottom of such 
 unprovoked censure is exasperated inferiority. Young poets, 
 upon the whole, — at least very young poets, — had better not 
 publish at all. They are pretty sure to have faults; and jeal- 
 ousy and envy are sure to find them out, and wreak upon them 
 their own disappointments. The critic is often an unsuccessful 
 author, almost always an inferior one to a man of genius, and 
 possesses his sensibility neither to beauty nor to pain. If he 
 does, — if by any chance he is a man of genius himself (and 
 such things have been), sure and certain will be his regret, some 
 day, for having given pains which he might have turned into
 
 KEATS. 233 
 
 noble pleasures ; and nothing will console him but that very 
 charity towards himself, the grace of which can only be secured 
 to us by our having denied it to no one. 
 
 Let the student of poetry observe, that in all the luxury of 
 the Eve of Saint Agnes there is nothing of the conventional 
 craft of artificial writers; no heaping up of words or similes for 
 their own sakes or the rhyme's sake ; no gaudy common-places ; 
 no borrowed airs of earnestness ; no tricks of inversion ; no 
 substitution of reading or of ingenious thoughts for feeling or 
 spontaneity ; no irrelevancy or unfitness of any sort. All 
 flows out of sincerity and passion. The writer is as much in 
 love with the heroine as his hero is ; his description of the 
 painted window, however gorgeous, has not an untrue or super- 
 fluous word ; and the only speck of a fault in the whole poem 
 arises from an excess of emotion. 
 
 THE EVE OF SAINT AGNES. 1 
 
 St. Agnes' Eve — Ah ! bitter chill it was : 
 The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold ,-2 
 The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, 
 And silent was the flock in woolly fold ; 
 Numb were the beadsman's fingers while he told 
 His rosary, and while his frosted breath, 
 Like pious incense from a censer old. 
 Seem'd taking flight for heaven without a death 
 Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith 3 
 
 His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man, 
 Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees, 
 And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan, 
 Along the chapel aisle by slow degr-ees : 
 The sculptur'd dead on each side seem'd to freeze, 
 Imprison 'd in black, purgatorial rails : 
 Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat'ries, 
 He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails 
 To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails
 
 234 KEATS. 
 
 Northward he turneth through a little door, 
 And scarce three steps, ere music's golden tongue 
 Flatter d to tears this aged man and poor : 5 
 But no ; already had his death-bell rung : 
 The joys of all his life were said and sung : 
 His was harsh penance on St. Agnes' Eve : 
 Another way he went, and soon among 
 Rough ashes sat he, for his soul's reprieve ; 
 And all night kept awake, for sinners' sake to grieve. 
 
 That ancient beadsman heard the prelude soft ; 
 And so it chanc'd (for many a door was wide, 
 From hurry to and fro) soon up aloft 
 
 The silver-snarling trumpets 'gan to chide ; 
 The level chambers ready with their pride, 
 Were glowing to receive a thousand guests : 
 And carved angels, ever eager-eyed, 
 
 Stared, where upon their heads the cornice rests, 
 With hair blown back, and wings 2nd cross-wise on their breasti- 
 
 At length burst in the argent revelry 
 With plume, tiara, and all rich array, 
 Numerous as shadows haunting fairily 
 The brain, new stuff 'd, in youth, with triumphs gay 
 Of old romance. These let us wish away, 
 And turn, sole-thoughted, to one lady there, 
 Whose heart had brooded all that wintry day 
 On love, and wing'd St. Agnes' saintly care, 
 As she had heard old dames full many times declare 
 
 They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve, 
 Young virgins might have visions of delight , 
 And soft adorings from their loves receive 
 Upon the honey' d middle of the night 
 If ceremonies due they did aright ; 
 As, supperless to bed they must retire, 
 And couch supine their beauties, lily white : 
 Nor look behind or sideways, but require 
 Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.
 
 KEATS. 235 
 
 vir. 
 
 Full of this whim was youthful Madeline ; 
 The music, yearning, like a god in pain, 
 She scarcely heard ; her maiden eyes divine, 
 Fix'd on the floor, saw many a sweeping train 
 Pass by, she heeded not at all ; in vain 
 Came many a tip-toe amorous cavalier, 
 And back retired, not cool'd by high disdain, 
 But she saw not ; her heart was otherwhere ; 
 She sigh'd for Agnes' dreams, the sweetest of the year. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 She danc'd along with vague, regardless eyes, 
 Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short ; 
 The hallow'd hour was near at hand : she sighs 
 Amid the timbrels and the throng'd resort 
 Of whisperers in anger or in sport ; 
 'Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn ; 
 Hoodwink'd with faery fancy ; all amort, 
 Save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn, 
 And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn. 
 
 IX. 
 
 So, purposing each moment to retire, 
 She linger'd still. Meantime across the moors, 
 Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire 
 For Madeline. Beside the portal doors 
 Buttress'd from moonlight, stands he, and implores 
 All saints to give him sight of Madeline, 
 But for one moment in the tedious hours, 
 That he might gaze and worship all unseen, 
 Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss ; — in sooth such things have been 
 
 He ventures in, let no buzz'd whisper tell ; 
 All eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords 
 Will storm his heart, Love's feverous citadel. 
 For him those chambers had barbarian hordes, 
 Hyaena foemen, and hot-blooded lords, 
 Whose very dogs would execrations howl 
 Against his lineage. Not one breast affords 
 Him any mercy, in that mansion foul, 
 Save one old beldame, weak in body and in soul. 
 
 Ah ! happy chance ! the aged creature came 
 Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand,
 
 236 KEATS. 
 
 To where he stood, hid from the torches' light, 
 Behind a broad hall pillar, far beyond 
 The sound of merriment and chorus bland. 
 He startled her ; but soon she knew his face, 
 And grasp'd his fingers in her palsied hand : 
 Saying, " Mercy, Porphyro ! hie thee from this place. 
 They are all here to-night, the whole blood-thirsty race. 
 
 " Get hence ! get hence ! there's dwarfish Hildebrand, 
 He had a fever late, and in the fit 
 He cursed thee and thine, both house and land : 
 Then there 's that old Lord Maurice, not a whit 
 More tame for his grey hairs — Alas, me ! flit; 
 Flit like a ghost away."—" Ah, gossip dear, 
 We 're safe enough ; here in this arm-chair sit, 
 And tell me how—" — " Good Saints ! not here ! not here ' 
 Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy bier !" 
 
 XIII. 
 
 He follow'd through a lowly, arched way, 
 Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume ; 
 And as she mutter'd, " Well-a-well-a-day !" 
 He found him in a little moonlight room,* 
 Pale, latticed, chill, and silent as a tomb 
 " Now tell me where is Madeline," said he ; 
 " Oh, tell me, Angela, by the holy loom 
 Which none but secret sisterhood may see, 
 When they St. Agnes' wool are weaving piously." 
 
 " St. Agnes ! Ah ! it is St. Agnes' Eve- 
 Yet men will murder upon holidays ; 
 Thou must hold water in a witch's sieve, 
 And be the liege lord of all elves and fays, 
 To venture so : it fills me with amaze 
 To see thee, Porphyro ! — St. Agnes' Eve ! 
 God's help ! my lady fair the conjuror plays 
 This very night : good angels her deceive ! 
 But let me laugh awhile ; I 've mickle time to grieve 
 
 xv. 
 
 Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon, 
 While Porphyro upon her face doth look, 
 Like puzzled urchin on an aged crone,
 
 KEATS. 237 
 
 Who keepeth clos'd a wondrous riddle-book, 
 As spectacled she sits in chimney nook ; 
 But soon his eyes grow brilliant, when she told 
 His lady's purpose ; and he scarce could brook 
 Tears, at the thought of those enchantments cold, 7 
 Jlnd Madeline asleep in lap of legends old. 
 
 Sudden a thought came, like a full-blown rose, 
 Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart 
 Made purple riot ; then doth he propose 
 A stratagem, that makes the beldame start. 
 " A cruel man and impious thou art; 
 Sweet lady ! let her pray, and sleep and dream, 
 Alone with her good angels far apart 
 From wicked men like thee. Go ! go ! I deem 
 Thou canst not, surely, be the same that thou dost seem. 
 
 " I will not harm her, by all saints, I swear !" 
 Quoth Porphyio; " Oh, may I ne'er find grace, 
 When my weak voice shall whisper its last prayer, 
 If one of her soft ringlets I displace, 
 Or look with ruffian passion in her face ! 
 Good Angela, believe me, by these tears, 
 Or I will, even in a moment's space, 
 Awake with horrid shout my foemen's ears, 
 And beard them, though they be more fang'd than wolves and oears " 
 
 " Ah ! why wilt thou affright a feeble soul ? 
 A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing, 
 Whose passing bell may ere the midnight toll ; 
 Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening, 
 Were never miss'd ?" Thus plaining, doth she bring 
 A gentler speech from burning Porphyro, 
 So woful and of such deep sorrowing, 
 That Angela gives promise she will do 
 Whatever he shall wish, betide or weal or wo : 
 
 Which was to lead him in close secrecy 
 Even to Madeline's chamber, and there hide 
 Him in a closet, of such privacy 
 That he might see her beauty unespied.
 
 238 KEATS. 
 
 And win perhaps that night a peerless bride, 
 Wliile legion'' d fairies paced the coverlet, 
 And pale enchantment held her sleepy-eyed 
 Never on such a night have lovers met, 
 Since Merlin paid his demon all the monstrous debt. 8 
 
 " It shall be as thou wishest," said the dame ; 
 " All cates and dainties shall be stored there, 
 Quickly on this feast-night ; by the tambour frame 
 Her own lute thou wilt see : no time to spare, 
 For I am slow and feeble, and scarce dare, 
 On such a catering, trust my dizzy head. 
 Wait here, my child, with patience ; kneel in prayer 
 The while ; ah ! thou must needs the lady wed ; 
 Or may I never leave my grave among the dead !" 
 
 So saying, she hobbled off with busy fear ; 
 The lover's endless minute slowly pass'd, 
 The dame return'd, and whisper'd in his ear 
 To follow her, with aged eyes aghast 
 From fright of dim espial. Safe at last 
 Through many a dusk y gallery, they gain 
 The maiden's chamber, silken, hush'd and chaste, 
 Where Porphyro took covert, pleas'd amain : 
 His poor guide hurried back with agues in her brain 
 
 Her faltering hand upon the balustrade, 
 Old Angela was feeling for the stair, 
 When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid, 
 Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware ; 
 With silver taper-light, and pious care 
 She turn'd, and down the aged gossip led 
 To a safe level matting. Now prepare, 
 Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed ; 
 She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray'd and fled. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Out went the taper as she hurried in; 
 Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died : 9 
 She clos'd the door, she panteth all akin 
 To spirits of the air, and visions wide ; 
 Nor utter'd syllable, or " Wo betide!" 
 But to her heart her heart was voluble,
 
 KEATS. 241 
 
 Paining with eloquence her balmy side : 
 As though a tongueless nightingale should swell 
 Her throat in vain, and die heart-stifled in her dell. 
 
 A casement high and triple-arch? d there was, 
 All garlanded with carven imageries 
 Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, 
 And diamonded with panes of quaint device, 
 Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes. 
 As are the tiger-moth's deep damask' d wings ; 
 And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, 
 And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, 
 A shielded scutcheon blusKd with blood of queens and kings. 10 
 
 xxv. 
 
 Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, 
 And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, 
 As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon : 
 Rose-bloom fell on her hands together prest, 
 And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 
 And on her hair a glory like a saint ; 
 She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, 
 Save wings for heaven: — Porphyro grew faint — u 
 She knelt so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. 
 
 Anon his heart revives : her vespers done, 
 Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees ; 
 Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one ; 12 
 Loosens her fragrant boddice ; by degrees 
 Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees : 
 Half hidden, like a mermaid in sea-iveed, 
 Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees 
 In fancy fair St. Agnes in her bed, 
 But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled. 
 
 Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest, 
 In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex'd she lay, 
 Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress'd 
 Her smoothed limbs, and soul, fatigued away, 
 Flown, like a thought, until the morrow day ; 
 Blissfully haven d both from joy and pain ; 
 Clasp' d like a missal, where swart Paynims pray ; 
 Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain, 
 As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again. 1 *
 
 24 KEATS. 
 
 Stol'n to this paradise and so entranc'd, 
 Porphyro gaz'd upon her empty dress, 
 And listen'd to h.er breathing vf it chanc'd 
 To wake unto a slumb'rous tenderness : 
 Which when he heard, that minute did he bless, 
 And breath'd himself; then from the closet crept, 
 Noiseless as fear in a wild wilderness, 
 And over the hush'd carpet silent stept, 
 And 'tween the curtains peep'd, where lo ! how fast she slept. 
 
 Then, by the bedside, where the faded moon 
 Made a dim silver twilight, — soft he set 
 A table, and, half-anguish'd, threw thereon 
 A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet : — 
 0, for some drowsy Morphean amulet ! 
 The boist'rous, midnight, festive clarion, 
 The kettle-drum and far-heard clarionet, 
 Affray his ears, though but in dying tone : — 
 The hall-door shuts again, and all the noise is gone 
 
 XXX. 
 
 And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep 
 In blanched linen, smooth and lavender'd, 
 While he from forth the closet brought a heap 
 Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd, 
 With jellies soother than the creamy curd, 
 Jlnd lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon : 14 
 Manna and dates, in argosy transferr'd 
 From Fez ; and spiced dainties every one, 
 From silken Samarcand to cedafd Lebanon. 
 
 These delicates he heap'd with glowing hand 
 On golden dishes and in baskets bright 
 Of wreathed silver ; sumptuously they stand 
 In the retired quiet of the night, 
 Filling the chilly room with perfume light. 
 " And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake ! 
 Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite. 
 Open thine eyes for meek St. Agnes' sake, 
 Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache. 
 
 Thus whispering, his warm, unnerved arm 
 Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream
 
 KEATS. 241 
 
 By the dusk curtains ; — 'twas a midnight charm 
 Impossible to melt as iced stream : 
 The lustrous salvers in the moonlight gleam ; 
 Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies ; 
 It seem'd he never, never could redeem 
 From such a steadfast spell his lady's eyes ; 
 So mus'd awhile, entoiPd in woofed fantasies 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Awakening up, he took her hollow lute, — 
 Tumultuous, — and, in chords that tenderest be, 
 He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute, 
 In Provence call'd, " La belle dame sans mercy:" 
 Close to her ear touching the melody; — 
 Wherewith disturb'd she utter'd a soft moan : 
 He ceas'd — she panted quick — and suddenly 
 Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone : 
 Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth sculptured stone 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Her eyes were open, but she still beheld, 
 Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep ; 
 There was a painful change that nigh expell'd 
 The blisses of her dream, so pure and deep, 
 At which fair Madeline began to weep, 
 And moan forth witless words with many a sigh ; 
 While still her gaze on Porphyro would keep ; 
 Who knelt, with joined hands and piteous eye, 
 Fearing to move or speak, she look'd so dreamingly 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 " Ah Porphyro !" said she, " but even now 
 Thy voice was a sweet tremble in mine ear, 
 Made tunable with every sweetest vow ; 
 And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear ; 
 How chang'd thou art ! how pallid, chill, and drear !— 
 Give me that voice again, my Porphyro', 
 Those looks immortal, those complainings dear; 
 Oh ! leave me not in this eternal wo, 
 For if thou diest, my love, I know not where to go " 
 
 Beyond a mortal man impassion' d far 1 * 
 At these voluptuous accents he arose, 
 Ethereal, flushed, and like a throbbing star 
 17
 
 242 KEATS. 
 
 Seen 'mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose • 
 Into her dream he melted, as the rose 
 Blendeth its odors with the violet, — 
 Solution sweet. Meantime the frost wind blows 
 Like love's alarum, pattering the sharp sleet 
 Against the window panes : St. Agnes' moon hath set. 
 
 'T is dark ; quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet : 
 " This is no dream ; my bride, my Madeline !" 
 'Tis dark : the iced gusts still rave and beat. 
 " No dream, alas ! alas ! and wo is mine ; 
 Porphyro will leave me here to rave and pine ; 
 Cruel ! what traitor could thee hither bring ! 
 I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine, 
 Though thou forsakest a deceived thing ; — 
 A dove, forlorn and lost, with sick unpruned wing.' 
 
 " My Madeline, sweet dreamer ! lovely bride ! 
 Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest ? 
 Thy beauty's shield, heart-shap'd, and vermeil-dyed ? !( * 
 Ah ! silver shrine, here will I take my rest, 
 After so many hours of toil and quest — 
 A famish'd pilgrim, saved by miracle : 
 Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest, 
 Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think'st well 
 To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel. 
 
 " Hark ! 't is an elfin storm from faery land, 
 Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed. 
 Arise, — arise ! — the morning is at hand ; 
 The bloated wassailers will never heed; 
 Let us away, my love, with happy speed ; 
 There are no ears to. hear, nor eyes to see, — 
 Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead : 
 Awake ! arise ! my love, and fearless be ; 
 For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee." 
 
 She hurried at his words, beset with fears, 
 For there were sleeping dragons all around 
 At glaring watch, perhaps with ready spears. 
 Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found,—
 
 KEATS. 243 
 
 In all the house was heard no human sound 
 Achain-droop'd lamp was nickering by each door; 
 The arras, rife with horseman, hawk and hound, 
 Flutter'd in the besieging winds' uproar ; 
 And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. 11 
 
 XLI. 
 
 They glide like phantoms into the wide hall ; 
 Like phantoms to the inner porch they glide, 
 Where lay the porter, in uneasy sprawl, 
 With a huge empty flagon by his side ; 
 The watchful blood-hound rose, and shook his hide, 
 But his sagacious eye an inmate owns : 
 By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide : 
 The chains lie silent on the foot-worn stones : 
 The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans. 
 
 And they are gone ; ay, ages long ago, 
 These lovers fled away into the storm. 
 That night the Baron dreamt of many a wo, 
 And all his warrior guests, with shade and form 
 Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm, 
 Were long benightmared. Angela the old 
 Died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform : 
 The beadsman, after thousand aves told, 
 For aye unsought-for slept among his ashes cold. 
 
 i " The Eve of St. Agnes." — St. Agnes was a Roman virgin, 
 who suffered martyrdom- in the reign of Dioclesian. Her 
 parents, a few days after her decease, are said to have had a 
 vision of her, surrounded by angels and attended by a white 
 lamb, which afterwards became sacred to her. In the Catholic 
 Church, formerly, the nuns used to bring a couple of lambs to 
 her altar during mass. The superstition is (for I believe it is 
 still to be found), that, by taking certain measures of divination, 
 damsels may get a sight of their future husbands in a dream. 
 The ordinary process seems to have been by fasting. Aubrey 
 (as quoted in "Brand's Popular Antiquities") mentions another, 
 which is, to take a row of pins, and pull them out one by one, 
 saying a Paternoster ; after which, upon going to bed, the dream 
 is sure to ensue. Brand quotes Ben Jonson : —
 
 244 KEATS. 
 
 And on sweet St. Agnes' night, 
 Pleas'd you with the promis'd sight, 
 Some of husbands, some of lovers, 
 Which an empty dream discovers. 
 
 2 " The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold." — Could he have se- 
 lected an image more warm and comfortable in itself, and, 
 therefore, better contradicted by the season 1 We feel the 
 plump, feathery bird, in his nook, shivering in spite of his natu- 
 ral household warmth, and staring out at the strange weather. 
 The hare cringing through the chill grass is very piteous, and 
 the " silent flock" very patient; and how quiet and gentle, as 
 well as wintry, are all these circumstances, and fit to open a 
 quiet and gentle poem ! The breath of the pilgrim, likened to 
 " pious incense," completes them, and is a simile in admirable 
 " keeping," as the painters call it; that is to say, is thoroughly 
 harmonious with itself and all that is going on. The breath of 
 the pilgrim is visible, so is that of a censer ; the censer, after its 
 fashion, may be said to pray ; and its breath, like the pilgrim's, 
 ascends to heaven. Young students of poetry may, in this image 
 alone, see what imagination is, under one of its most poetical forms, 
 and how thoroughly it "tells." There is no part of it unfitting. 
 It is not applicable in one point, and the reverse in another. 
 
 3 "Past the sweet Virgin's picture" &c — What a complete feel- 
 ing of winter-time is in this stanza, together with an intimation 
 of those Catholic elegances, of which we are to have more in 
 the poem ! 
 
 4 " To think how they may ache," &c The germ of the thought, 
 
 or something like it, is in Dante, where he speaks of the figures 
 that perform the part of sustaining columns in architecture. Keats 
 had read Dante in Mr. Cary's translation, for which he had a 
 great respect. He began to read him afterwards in Italian, 
 which language he was mastering with surprising quickness. 
 A friend of ours has a copy of Ariosto containing admiring 
 marks of his pen. But the same thought may have struck one 
 poet as well as another. Perhaps there are few that have not 
 felt something like it on seeing the figures upon tombs. Here, 
 however, for the first time, we believe, in English poetry, it is 
 expressed, and with what feeling and elegance ! Most wintry
 
 KEATS. 245 
 
 as well as penitential is the word " aching " in " icy hoods and 
 mails ;" and most felicitous the introduction of the Catholic idea 
 in the word "purgatorial." The very color of the rails is made 
 to assume a meaning, and to shadow forth the gloom of the 
 punishment — 
 
 Imprisoned in black purgatorial rails. 
 
 s " Flattered to tears." — This " flattered " is exquisite. A true 
 poet is by nature a metaphysician ; far greater in general than 
 metaphysicians professed. He feels instinctively what the others 
 get at by long searching. In this word " flattered " is ihe whole 
 theory of the secret of tears ; which are the tributes, more or 
 less worthy, of self-pity to self-love. Whenever we shed tears, 
 we take pity on ourselves ; and we feel, if we do not consciously 
 say so, that we deserve to have the pity taken. In many cases, 
 the pity is just, and the self-love not to be construed unhand- 
 somely. In many others it is the reverse ; and this is the reason 
 why selfish people are so often found among the tear-shedders, 
 and why they seem never to shed them for others. They ima- 
 gine themselves in the situation of others, as indeed the most 
 generous must, before they can sympathize ; but the generous 
 console as well as weep. Selfish tears are niggardly of every, 
 thing but themselves. 
 
 " Flattered to tears." Yes, the poor old man was moved, by 
 the sweet music, to think that so sweet a thins; was intended for 
 his comfort, as well as for others. He felt that the mysterious 
 kindness of Heaven did not omit even his poor, old, sorry case, 
 in its numerous workings and visitations ; and, as he wished 
 to live longer, he began to think that his wish was to be attended 
 to. He had begun to think how much he had suffered — how 
 much he had suffered wrongly and mysteriously — and how 
 much better a man he was, with all his sins, than fate seemed 
 to have taken him for. Hence he found himself deserving of 
 tears and self-pity, and he shed them, and felt soothed by his 
 poor, old, loving self. Not undeservedly either ; for he was 
 a painstaking pilgrim, aged, patient, and humble, and willingly 
 suffered cold and toil for the sake of something better than he
 
 246 KEATS. 
 
 could otherwise deserve ; and so the pity is not exclusively on 
 his own side : we pity him, too, and would fain see him out of 
 that cold chapel, gathered into a warmer place than the grave. 
 But it was not to be. We must therefore console ourselves in 
 knowing, that this icy endurance of his was the last, and that he 
 soon found himself at the sunny gate of heaven. 
 
 6 " A little moonlight room." — The poet does not make his " little 
 moonlight room" comfortable, observe. The high taste of the 
 exordium is kept up. All is still wintry. There is to be no com- 
 fort in the poem, but what is given by love. All else may be left 
 to the cold walls. 
 
 7 " Tears." — He almost shed tears of sympathy, to think how 
 his treasure is exposed to the cold ; and of delight and pride, 
 to think of her sleeping beauty, and her love for himself. 
 This passage, " asleep in lap of legends old," is in the high- 
 est imaginative taste, fusing together the imaginative and the 
 spiritual, the remote and the near. Madeline is asleep in her 
 bed ; but she is also asleep in accordance with the legends of the 
 season : and therefore the bed becomes their lap as well as sleep's. 
 The poet does not critically think of all this ; he feels it : and 
 thus should other young poets draw upon the prominent points of 
 their feelings upon a subject, sucking the essence out of them 
 into analogous words, instead of beating about the bush for 
 thoughts, and, perhaps, getting clever ones, but not thoroughly 
 pertinent, not wanted, not the best. Such, at least, is the diffe- 
 rence between the truest poetry and the degrees beneath it. 
 
 8 Si?ice Merlin paid his demon all the monstrous debt. 
 
 What he means by Merlin's "monstrous debt," I cannot say. 
 Merlin, the famous enchanter, obtained King Arthur his inte;- 
 view with the fair logerne ; but though the son of a devil, and 
 conversant with the race, I am aware of no debt that he owed 
 them. Did Keats suppose that he had sold himself, like " Faus- 
 tus?" 
 
 9 Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died. 
 This is a verse in .he taste of Chaucer, full of minute grace and
 
 KEATS. 247 
 
 truth. The smoke of the wax-taper seems almost as ethereal and 
 fair as the moonlight, and both suit each other and the heroine. 
 But what a lovely line is the seventh about the heart, 
 
 Paining with eloquence her balmy side ! 
 
 And the nightingale ! how touching the simile ! the heart a 
 " tongueless nightingale," dying in the bed of the bosom. 
 What thorough sweetness, and perfection of lovely imagery ! 
 How one delicacy is heaped upon another ! But for a burst of 
 richness, noiseless, colored, suddenly enriching the moonlight, 
 as if a door of heaven were opened, read the stanza that fol- 
 lows. 
 
 10 A shielded scutcheon blusK d with blood of queens and kings. 
 
 Could all the pomp and graces of aristocracy, with Titian's 
 and Raphael's aid to boot, go beyond the rich religion of this 
 picture, with its " twilight saints," and its scutcheons, " blushing 
 with the blood of queens ?" 
 
 "" Save wings for heaven."— The lovely and innocent creature, 
 thus praying under the gorgeous painted window, completes the 
 exceeding and unique beauty of this picture, — one that will for 
 ever stand by itself in poetry, as an addition to the stock. It 
 would have struck a glow on the face of Shakspeare himself. 
 He might have put Imogen or Ophelia under such a shrine. 
 How proper as well as pretty the heraldic term gules, consider- 
 ing the occasion. " Red" would not have been a fiftieth part 
 as good. And with what elegant luxury he touches the " silver 
 cross" with " amethyst," and the fair human hand with " rose- 
 color," the kin of their carnation ! The lover's growing " faint" 
 is one of the few inequalities which are to be found in the latter 
 productions of this great but young and over-sensitive poet. He 
 had, at the time of his writing this, the seeds of a mortal illness 
 in him, and he doubtless wrote as he had felt, for he was also 
 deeply in love ; and extreme sensibility struggled in him with 
 a great understanding. 
 
   2 " Unclasps her warmed jewels." — How true and cordial the 
 warmed jewels, and what matter of fact also, made elegant, in
 
 24S KEATS. 
 
 the rustling downward of the attire ; and the mixture of dress 
 and undress, and of the dishevelled hair, likened to a " mermaid 
 in sea-weed !" But the next stanza is perhaps the most ex- 
 quisite in the poem." 
 
 " " As though a rose had shut." — Can the beautiful go beyond 
 
 this ? I never saw it. And how the imagery rises ! flown like 
 a thought — blissfully haven? d — clasp'd like a missal in a land of 
 Pagans : that is to say, where Christian prayer-books must not 
 be seen, and are, therefore, doubly cherished for the danger. 
 And then, although nothing can surpass the preciousness of this 
 idea, is the idea of the beautiful, crowning all — 
 
 Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain, 
 As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again. 
 
 Thus it is that poetry, in its intense sympathy with creation, 
 may be said to create anew, rendering its words more impres- 
 sive than the objects they speak of, and individually more last- 
 ing ; the spiritual perpetuity putting them on a level (not to 
 speak it profanely) with the fugitive compound. 
 
 14 " Lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon." — Here is delicate modu- 
 lation, and super-refined epicurean nicety ! 
 
 Lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon ; 
 
 make us read the line delicately, and at the tip-end, as it were, 
 
 of one's tongue. 
 
 15 " Beyond a mortal man." — Madeline is half awake, and Por- 
 
 phyro reassures her, with loving, kind looks, and an affectionate 
 
 embrace. 
 
 16 " Heart-shaped and vermeil-dyed." — With what a pretty wilful 
 
 conceit the costume of the poem is kept up in this line about the 
 shield ! The poet knew when to introduce apparent trifles for- 
 bidden to those who are void of real passion, and who, feeling 
 nothing intensely, can intensify nothing. 
 
 17 " Carpets rose." — This is a slip of the memory, for there were 
 hardly carpets in those days. But the truth of the painting 
 makes amends, as in the unchronological pictures of old masters.
 
 KEATS. 249 
 
 LONELY SOUNDS. 
 
 Undescribed sounds 
 That come a-swooning over hollow grounds, 
 And wither drearily on barren moors. 
 
 ^wwwvv-'^^^ 
 
 ORION. 
 
 At this, with madden'd stare, 
 And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood, 
 Like old Deucalion mountain'd o'er the flood, 
 Or blind Orion hungry for the morn. 
 
 -''N'V^'l/ W Wl^^^^^ 
 
 CIRCE AND HER VICTIMS. 
 
 Fierce, wan, 
 And tyrannizing was the lady's look, 
 As over them a gnarled staff she shook. 
 Ofttimes upon the sudden she laugh' d out, 
 And from a basket emptied to the rout 
 Clusters of grapes, the which they raven'd quick 
 And roar'd for more, with many a hungry lick 
 About their shaggy jaws. Avenging, slow, 
 Anon she took a branch of misletoe, 
 And emptied on 't a black dull-gurgling phial : 
 Groan' d one and all, as if some piercing trial 
 Were sharpening for their pitiable bones. 
 She lifted up the charm : appealing groans 
 From their poor breasts went suing to her ear 
 In vain : remorseless as an infanfs bier, 
 She whisk'd against their eyes the sooty oil ; 
 Whereat was heard a noise of painful toil, 
 Increasing gradual to a tempest rage, 
 Shrieks, yells, and groans, of torture pilgrimage.
 
 250 KEATS. 
 
 A BETTER ENCHANTRESS IMPRISONED IN THE SHAPE 
 
 OF A SERPENT. 
 
 She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue, 
 
 Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue, 
 
 Striped like a zebra, speckled like a pard, 
 
 Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson-barf d, 
 
 And full of silver moons, that as she breath' d 
 
 Dissolv'd or brighter shone, or interwreath'd 
 
 Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries. 
 
 So, rainbow-sided, full of miseries, 
 
 See seem'd, at once, some penanc'd lady elf, 
 
 Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self. 
 
 Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire 
 
 Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar ; 
 
 Her head was serpent; but ah, bitter sweet! 
 
 She had a woman's mouth, with all its pearls complete 
 
 SATURN DETHRONED. 
 
 Deep in the shady sadness of a vale, 
 
 Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, 
 
 Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, 
 
 Sat grey-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, 
 
 Still as the silence round about his lair; 
 
 Forest on forest hung about his head, 
 
 Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, 
 
 Not so much life as on a summer's day 
 
 Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, 
 
 But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. 
 
 A stream went voiceless by, still deaden'd more 
 
 By reason of his fallen divinity 
 
 Spreading a shade : the Naiad, 'mid her reeds, 
 
 Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips. 
 
 Along the margin sand large footmarks went, 
 
 Nor further than to where his feet had stray'd, 
 
 And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground 
 
 His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, 
 
 Unsceptred ; and his realmless eyes were closed.
 
 KEATS. • 251 
 
 THE VOICE OF A MELANCHOLY GODDESS SPEAKING 
 
 TO SATURN. 
 
 As when upon a tranced summer-night 
 Those green-robed senators of mighty woods, 
 Tall oaks, branch- charmed by the earnest stars, 
 Dream, and so dream, all night without a stir, 
 Save from one gradual solitary gust, 
 Which comes upon the silence, and dies off, 
 As if the ebbing air had but one wave : 
 So came these words, and went. 
 
 A FALLEN GOD. 
 
 The bright Titan, frenzied with new woes, 
 
 Unus'd to bend, by hard compulsion, bent 
 
 His spirit to the sorrow of the time ; 
 
 And all along a dismal rack of clouds, 
 
 Upon the boundaries of day and night, 
 
 He stretch' d himself, in grief and radiance faint. 
 
 OTHER TITANS FALLEN. 
 
 Scarce images of life, one here, one there, 
 Lay vast and edgeways ; like a dismal cirque 
 Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor, 
 When the chill rain begins at shut of eve 
 In dull JVovember, and their chancel vault, 
 The heaven itself, is blinded throughout night
 
 252 KEATS. 
 
 ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.* 
 
 My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
 
 My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 
 Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 
 
 One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk. 
 'T is not through envy of thy happy lot, 
 But being too happy in thy happiness, 
 
 That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, 
 In some melodious plot 
 Of beeches green, and shadows numberless, 
 Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 
 
 for a draught of vintage, that hath been 
 
 Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, 
 Tasting of Flora and the country-green, 
 
 Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth ! 
 O for a beaker full of the warm South, 
 Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 
 With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, 
 And purple-stained mouth ; 
 That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 
 And with thee fade away into the forest dim : 
 
 Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 
 
 What thou among the leaves hast never known, 
 The weariness, the fever, and the fret 
 
 Here, where men sit, and hear each other groan ; 
 Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs ; 
 
 Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies , 
 Where but to think is to be full of sorrow 
 And leaden-eyed despairs ; 
 Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, 
 Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 
 
 Away ! away ! for I will fly to thee, 
 
 Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, 
 
 But on the viewless wings of Poesy, 
 
 Though the dull brain perplexes and retards ; 
 
 Already with thee ! tender is the night, 
 
 And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, 
 Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays ;
 
 KEATS. 253 
 
 But here there is no light, 
 Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown 
 Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 
 
 / cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 
 
 JVorwhat soft incense hangs vpon the boughs, 
 But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 
 
 Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
 The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild ; 
 White-hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine ; 
 Fast-fading violets, cover'd up in leaves ; 
 And mid-May's eldest child, 
 The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, 
 
 The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 
 
 Darkling I listen ; and, for many a time, 
 
 I have been half in love with easeful Death, 
 CalVd him soft names in many a mused rhyme 
 
 To take into the air my quiet breath ; 
 Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 
 To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 
 While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 
 In such an ecstacy ! 
 Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain — 
 To thy high requiem become a sod. 
 
 Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird.' 
 
 J\ r o hungry generations tread thee down : 
 The voice I hear this passing night was heard 
 
 In ancient days by emperor and clown ; 
 Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
 
 Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
 She stood in tears amid the alien corn; 
 The same that ofttimes hath 
 Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 19 
 
 Forlorn ! the very word is like a bell 
 
 To toll me back from thee to my sole self ! 
 Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so well 
 
 As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. 
 Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 
 
 Past the near meadows, over the still stream, 
 Up the hill side ; and now 'tis buried deep 
 In the next valley-glades ? 
 Was it a vision, or a waking-dream ! 
 
 Fled is that music ? Do I wake or sleep ?
 
 254 KEATS. 
 
 18 " Ode to a Nightingale.'" — This poem was written in a house 
 at the foot of Highgate Hill, on the border of the fields looking 
 towards Hampstead. The poet had then his mortal illness upon 
 him, and knew it. Never was the voice of death sweeter. 
 
 19 " Charm 'd magic casements," &c — This beats Claude's En- 
 chanted Castle, and the story of King Beder in the Arabian 
 Nights. You do not know what the house is, or where, nor who 
 ♦he bird. Perhaps a king himself. But you see the window, 
 open on the perilous sea, and hear the voice from out the trees 
 in which it is nested, sending its warble over the foam. The 
 whole is at once vague and particular, full of mysterious life. 
 You see nobody, though something is heard ; and you know not 
 what of beauty or wickedness is to come over that sea. Perhaps 
 it was suggested by some fairy tale. I remember nothing of it 
 in the drearn-like wildness of things in Palmerin of England, a 
 book which is full of color and home landscapes, ending with a 
 noble and affecting scene of war ; and of which Keats was very 
 fond. 
 
 ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER. 
 
 Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, 
 
 And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ; 
 
 Round many western islands have I been, 
 Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold 
 Oft of one wide expanse had I been told, 
 
 That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne ; 
 
 Yet did I never breathe its pure serene, 
 Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : 
 Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, 
 When a new planet swims into his ken ; 
 Or like stout Cortex, when with eagle eyes 
 
 He star'd at the Pacific 20 — and all his men 
 Looked at each other with a wild surmise — 
 
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 21 
 
 80 " He stared at the Pacific," &c. — « Stared " has been thought 
 by some too violent, but it is precisely the word required by the
 
 KEATS. 255 
 
 occasion. The Spaniard was too original and ardent a man 
 either to look, or to affect to look, coldly superior to it. His 
 " eagle eyes " are. from life, as may be seen by Titian's por- 
 trait of him. 
 
 The public are indebted to Mr. Charles Knight for a cheap 
 reprint of Homer and Chapman. 
 
 21 " Silent, upon apeak in Darien." — A most fit line to conclude 
 our volume. We leave the reader standing upon it, with all the 
 illimitable world of thought and feeling before him, to which his 
 imagination will have been brought, while journeying through 
 these " realms of gold." 
 
 THE END.
 
 J55 Broadway, New York. 142 Strand, London 
 
 Of lat* firm of Wiley 8c Putnam, 
 
 New Works in Press, 
 
 Or recently published, by 
 
 GEORGE P. PUTNAM, 
 
 155 Broadway, New York. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM has the pleasure of announcing that, agreeably to his contract with the 
 distinguished author, he has now in the course of publication 
 
 A new, uniform, and complete edition 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Works of Washington Irving, 
 
 Revised and enlarged by the Author, 
 
 In Twelve Elegant Duodecimo Volumes, 
 Beautifully printed with new type, and on superior paper, made expressly for the purpose. 
 
 The first volume of the Series will be 
 
 The Sketch -Book, 
 
 complete in one volume, 
 
 which will be ready on the first day of September. 
 
 Knickerbocker's History of New York, 
 
 with revisions and copious additions, 
 
 will be published on the 1st of October. 
 
 The Life and Voyages of Columbus, 
 
 Vol. I. on the 1st of November, 
 
 and the succeeding volumes will be issued on the first day of each month until com- 
 pleted ; — as follows : 
 
 The Sketch-Book, in one volume. The Crayon Miscellany, in one 
 Knickerbocker's New York, in one) vol. — Abbotsford, Newstead, 
 
 volume. ) The Prairies, 8fc. 
 
 Tales of a Traveller, in one volume.} Life and Voyages of Columbus, 
 Bracebridge Hall, in one volume. ( and The Companions of Co- 
 
 The Conquest of Grenada, in one \ lumbus, 2 vols. 
 
 volume. ) Adventures of Captain Bonneville, 
 
 The Alhambra, in one volume. ) one vol. 
 
 The Spanish Legends, in one vol. ( Astoria, one volume. 
 
 The Illustrated Sketch -Book. 
 
 In October will be published, 
 
 The Sketch-Book. 
 By Washington Irving. 
 
 One volume, square octavo. 
 Illustrated with a series of highly-finished Engravings on wood, from Designs by Darley 
 and others, engraved in the best style by Childs, Herrick, &c. This edition will be printed 
 on paper of the finest quality, sitnilar in size and style to the new edition of " Ilalleck's 
 Poems." It is intended that the illustrations shall be superior to any engravings on wood 
 yet produced in this country, and that the mechanical execution of the volume, altogether, 
 shall be worthy of the author's reputation. It will form an elegant and appropriate gift- 
 book for all seasons.
 
 New Works published by — 
 
 The Illustrated Knickerbocker, 
 
 With a series of Original Designs, in one vol., octavo, is also in preparation. 
 
 Mr. Putnam has also the honor to announce that he will publish at intervals (in con- 
 nexion, and uniform wi*h the other collected writings;, 
 
 Mr. I r v i n g ' s New Works, 
 
 now nearly ready for the press: including 
 
 The Life of Mohammed, 
 
 The Life of Washington, 
 
 New volumes of Miscellanies, Biographies, &c. 
 
 *+* This being the first ui iform ami complete edition of Mr. Irving's works, either in this 
 country or in Europe, '-he publisher confidently believes that the undertaking will meet 
 with a prompt and cordial response To say this, is perhaps superfluous and impertinent; 
 for ii is H ti U.ISDJ that no American bookcase (not to say library) can be well filled without 
 the works of VVashing'on Irving; while the English language itself comprises no purer 
 models of composition. 
 
 G. P. Putnam hits also made arrangements for the early commencement of new works 
 or new editions of the works of 
 
 Miss C. M. Sedgewick, , Mary Howitt, 
 
 Charles Fenno Hoffman, \ W M Thackeray, 
 
 George H Calvert, ( - Thoff. Hood, 
 
 J. Bayard Taylor, I Leigh Hunt, 
 
 S. Wells Williams, { Thomas Carlyle, 
 
 A. J. Downing, X R Monckton Milnes., 
 
 Prof .3. Gray, \ Mrs. Jameson, 
 
 Mrs E Oaltes Smith, ] Charles Lamb, 
 
 Mrs. C. M. Kirkland, Elliot Warburton 
 
 The following new works are now ready, or will be published this season ; 
 
 L 
 
 Sophisms of the Protective Policy, 
 
 Translated from the French of F. Bastiat. With an introduction by Francis Lieber, LL.I> 
 Prolessor in South Carolina College, Editor of the Encyclopaedia Americana, &.C. 12iho. 
 
 II. 
 
 Grecian and Roman Mythology: 
 
 With original illustrations. Adapted for the use of Universities and High Schools, and for 
 popular reading. IJy M A. Dwight. With an introduction by Tayler Lewis, Professor of 
 Greek, University ol JN'ew York. !2iuo. (')n 1st September) 
 
 Also :• fine edition in octavo, with illustrations. 
 
 *„* This work has lieen prepared with great care, illustrated with 20 effective outline^ 
 drawings, and is designed to treat the subjict in an original, comprehensive, and unex- 
 ceptionable tn inner, so as to fi.l the place as a text book which is yet unsupplied ; while 
 rtwiHalsobe an attractive and readable table book for general use It will be at once 
 introduced as a text book in the University of New York and other colleges and schools. 
 
 III. 
 
 Eureka: a Prose Poem. 
 
 Or the Physical and Metaphysical Universe. 
 By Edgar A. Poe, Esq. Handsomely printed. 12mo. Cloth
 
 — G. P. Putnam, 155 Broadway, New York. 3 
 
 IV. 
 
 $!)£ Sook of Paintrj Ulnnces. 
 
 ***This new and unique volume, superbly illuminated by M.plesnn, nnd comprising 
 original articles by di tinguished writers, will lie the most elegant and recherche book of 
 the kind ever produced in this country. It will he readv in October 
 
 A new and superior edit;on of the PEAKLS OF AMERICAN POETRY will also be 
 published this season. 
 
 V. 
 
 Oriental Life Illustrated. 
 
 Being a new edition of Eothen, or Traces of Travel in the East. With fine illustrations 
 
 on Steel. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Dr. Klipstein's Anglo-Saxon Course 
 
 of Study. 
 
 In uniform 12mo. volumes, 
 i. 
 
 A Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language. By Louis F. Klipstein, AA. LL.M. and 
 PH.D.. of the University ot Giessen. 
 
 * =fc *Thi< work recommends itself particularly to the attention of every American 
 student who "glories in his A glo-Saxon descent"' or Teutonic lineage, as well as of all 
 who desire an acquaintance with a 1 ingu 'ge which lies as the found ition of the English, 
 and throws a light upon its i.le nents and structure, derivable from no other source Of 
 the imp iriance and interesting n aure of the study there can be no doubt, and we agree 
 with those who think th it the time is coming when it will be considered " utterly disgrace- 
 ful for any well bred Rnglishm in or Americ n " to have neglected it. With regard to the 
 merits of Dr. Klipstein's Grimm ir, we will only say. Ihi* it has been already adopted as 
 a text-book in some of the leading Institutions of our country. 
 
 [The following are also in press.] 
 it. 
 Analecta Anslo Saxnnica, with an Introductory Ethnographical Essay, Copious Notes, Cri- 
 tical and Explanatory, and a Glossary m which are shown the Indo-Geruianic and other 
 Affinities of tne Language. By the same. 
 
 In this work appear the fruits of considerable research, and, we may add, learning. 
 The Ethnology of Europe is sut-ciucll , but • leirly illustrated, the Anglo-Saxon language 
 completely a uilysed. revealing the ntmo t harmony of combination from its elements, its 
 forms and root- compared with those i i kindred di ilects and cognate tongues its po ition 
 in the Ten ionic f unity and [ndo-Germanic range established, and thegei.ui «e relation of the 
 English toils great pirent properly set forth To those who are fond of the comparative 
 study of language, the Glossary will prove an invaluable aid, aput from its particular 
 object. 
 
 in. 
 Natale Sancti Gregorii Papa? — A5lfric's Homily on th? Birth-day of St. Gregory, and Col- 
 lateral Extr cis from King Alfred's ver-ion of Ride's Ecclesiastical History and ihe 
 Saxon Chronicle, with a full rendering into English, Notes Critical and Explanatory, 
 and an Index of Words. By the same. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Extr ids from the Anglo Sixin-G ispels, a Portion of the Anglo-Saxon Paraphrase of the 
 Book of Psalms, and other Sel ciions of a Sacred Order in the oime Lancuage, with a 
 Translation into English, and Notes Critic il and Explanatory. By the same. 
 
 These two works are prepared in such a way as in them -elves, with the aid of the 
 Gramm ir to afford every facility to the Anglo Saxon Student. ^E trie'- Homily is remarka- 
 ble for beauty of composition, and interesting as setting forth Augustine's Mission to the 
 " Land of the Angles." 
 
 v. 
 Tha Hainan Cod-pel on Englisc — the Anglo-Snxon Version of the Holy Gospels. Edited 
 by Benj i uiin Thorpe, P S. \ Reprinted by the same. Now ready 
 
 This, the earliest • E glish " ver-i f the Four G spela will be found interesting to 
 
 the niviqn ari in and tlr-ologi in, a- u   I as serviceable to the student in bis investigations 
 of the language The Text, bps-des the usual but unbroken division, appears, wiih the 
 Rubrics, as read in the early Anglican Church.
 
 New Works published by- 
 
 VII. 
 
 Study of Modern Languages. 
 
 Part First; French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and English. 
 
 By L. F. Klipstein, AA. LL.M. and Ph. D. One Vol. Imperial 8vo. 75 cents. 
 
 This work, which is intended equally for the simultaneous and the separate study of the 
 languages that it sets forth, and which is adapted as well for the native of Germany, 
 France, Italy, Spain, or Portugal, as for him to whom English is vernacular, in the acquire- 
 ment of any one of the other tongues besides his own, will be found an acceptable manual 
 not only to the tyro, but to the more advanced scholar. The reading portion of the matter 
 is interesting, and the text in every case remarkably correct, while the Elementary Phrases, 
 forms -of Cards, Letters, Bills of Exchange, Promissory Notes, Receipts, &c, in the six 
 languages, constitute what has long been a desideratum from the American press. For 
 the comparative study of the Romanic tongues the work affords unusual facilities. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Pedestrian Tour in Europe. 
 
 Views a-Foot ; or Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff*. 
 
 By J. Bayard Taylor. 
 
 A new edition with an additional chapter, and a sketch of the author in pedestrian cos- 
 tume, from a drawing by T. Buchanan Read. 12mo. Cloth. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Third Edition of 
 
 The Middle Kingdom. 
 
 A SURVEY OF THE 
 
 GEOGRAPHY, GOVERNMENT, EDUCATION, SOCIAL LIFE, ARTS, 
 
 RELIGION, etc., 
 
 Of the Chinese Empire 
 
 AND ITS INHABITANTS. 
 
 With a New Map of the Kmpirc, and Illustrations, principally engraved by J. TV. Orr. 
 BY S. WELLS* WILLIAMS. 
 
 Two Vols. Svo. Half morocco, gilt tops, $3. JVow ready. 
 
 " What personal observation did not supply has been industriously and ably supplied 
 from other sources. This will probably take the place of the previous accounts of the 
 Chinese Empire, as more full and accurate than they." — Evening Post. 
 
 " We are very greatly mistaken, or the circulation of these volumes will raise very 
 Tmuch the inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom in the respect of our countrymen." — JV. Y. 
 Recorder. 
 
 "We do not think the man is living who is better qualified than Mr. Williams to make 
 a book on China, and he has produced a work which will be of standard authority as refer- 
 ence." — JV*. Y. Observer. 
 
 " The work before us is full of the information required, interspersed with numerous 
 amusing sketches of the peculiar manners of this people. No one was more qualified to 
 write a book of this sort than the author ; and all who read it will be highly interested, 
 and will learn more of the Celestials from it, than he can anywhere else." — Christian 
 Advocate <$- Journal. 
 
 X. 
 
 A New Edition of 
 
 Clarke's Shakspeare Concordance. 
 
 A Complete Concordance to Shakspeare : being a Verbal Index to ALL the PASSAGES 
 in the Dramatic Works of the Poet. By Mrs. Cowden Clarke. 
 
 " Order gave each thing view." 
 
 One large Vol comprising 2560 closely printed columns, — (indicating every word and 
 passage in Shakspeare's Works). Price $6. Cloth. 
 
 "The result of sixteen years of untiring labor. The different editions of Shakspeare 
 have been carefully collated by the compiler, and every possible means taken to insure 
 the correctness of the work. As it now stands, a person can find a particular passage in 
 Shakspeare by simply remembering one word of it, and is also referred to the act and scene
 
 — G. P. Putnam, 155 Broadway, New York. 5 
 
 of the play in which it occurs. As a mere dictionary of Shakspearian language and 
 phrases, it is of great value ; hut it is also a dictionary of his thouuhts and imaginations. 
 It altogether supersedes the volumes of Twiss and Ayscough, and should be on every 
 student's shelves " — Boston Courier. 
 
 *+* This extraordinary work is printed in London and the price there at present is 
 j£2 5s. Od. or about $12 A large part of the edition having been purchased for this market, 
 it is furnished here for the very low price of $6, bound in cloth. 
 
 Also — By same Author. 
 
 The Book of Shakspeare Proverbs. 
 
 18mo. 75 cts. 
 
 Dr. Lieber' s Poetical Address to the American Republic. 
 In a few days in a neat volume, 
 
 The West: 
 
 A Metrical Epistle. 
 By Francis Lieber. 
 
 %* Dr. Lieber, the distinguished Professor of Political Economy in South Carolina Col- 
 lege, Author of •'Political Ethics," &c. has just sailed for his native country— Germany— 
 with the view of aiding in the great cause of Constitutional and Rational Freedom. This 
 iitlle volume proves that he has well studied that subject during his long residence in this 
 his adopted country— and his able and valuahleopiiuonson American Society and Progress, 
 carry with them a peculiar interest at this time. 
 
 NEW AND IMPROVED EDITIONS 
 
 Of the following works are now ready or will shortly be published. 
 Downing's Landscape Gardening and Rural Architecture 3d edition, revised. 
 I) owning' s Fruit and Fruit Trees of America. The second illustrated edition. With. 
 
 70 plates, carefully and accurately colored. Royal 8vo. 
 Downing' s Cottage Residences. Illustrated new edition. 1 vol. 8vo. (Now ready.) 
 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Very neatly printed. ") 
 The same, with illustrations designed by Mulready. Ele- I 
 
 gantly bound, gilt edges. 
 Lamb's Essays of Elia. i 
 
 Warburtons Crescent and the Cross; or Romance and Realities 
 
 of Eastern Travel. 
 Ford's Spaniards and their Country. *** Washington Irving, ^ bound in green cloth 
 
 warmly commends this book. I new style and at lower 
 
 Eothen. (" The best hook of Eastern travel.") j Price. 
 
 Leigh Hunt's Imagination and Fancy. 
 Leigh Hunt's Italian Poets. 
 Fouque's Undine and Sintram. 
 
 Peacock's Headlong Hall, and Nightmare Abbey. J 
 
 MRS. JAMESON'S CHARACTERISTICS OF fVOMEN—Morn\, Poetical, and 
 
 Historical. Illustrated with J2 beautiful Engravings of Sbakspeare's Female 
 
 Characters, engraved by Heath and others. A new and improved edition. Elegantly 
 
 bound Saxony gilt, royal octavo. 
 
 THE HEROINES OF SHAKSPEARE. Comprising 45 highly finished Engravings, 
 from drawings by the best artists, illustrating the female characters in the works of 
 the great poet. Royal 8vo. Elegantly bound. A few copies exquisitely colored. 
 N. B. These beautiful volumes, attractive and valuable at all seasons, will be ready in 
 
 a new stvle for the autumn season. 
 
 Each complete in one 
 volume, very neatly
 
 6 Recent Publications — 
 
 RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Alexander. — Commentary on the Earlier Prophecies of Isaiah. 
 
 By Prof. J. A. Alexander. Royal 8vo. cloth, $3. 
 
 Alexander. — Commentary on the Later Prophecies of Isaiah. 
 
 By Prof. J. A. Alexander. Royal 8vo. cloth, $2 50. 
 
 Ancient Moral Tales, from the Gesta Romanorum, &c. I 
 
 vol. 12mo. green cloth. 
 
 " A quiet humor, \ quaintness and terseness of style, will strongly recommend them." 
 — English Churchman. 
 
 Architecture. — Hints on Public Architecture ; issued under the 
 
 Direction of" the "Smithsonian Institution," Imperial 4to. with Illustrations. (In 
 preparation.) 
 
 This work will contain numerous and valuable illustrations, intruding two perspective 
 views of the buildings of the Smilhsoni m Institution. The Appendix will contain the 
 results of a research under the auspices of the Institution to test the properties of the 
 most important building materials throughout the United States. 
 
 Bartlett. — An Elementary Treatise on Optics. By W. H. C. 
 
 Bartlett, A.M., Professor at West Point. 8vo. cloth, $2. 
 
 Bastiat. — Sophisms of the Protective Policy. Translated from 
 
 the French of F Bastiat. With an Introduction, by Francis Lieber, LED., Professor 
 in South Carolina College, Editor of the Encyclopaedia Americana, &c , &c. 12mo. 
 
 Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review. Conducted by 
 
 B.B.Edwards and E. A. Park, Professors at Andover, with the Special Aid of Dr. 
 Robinson and Professor Stuart. Published quarterly in February, May, August, and 
 Novemoer $4 per annum. Vols. 1, 2, 3, and 4, 8vo. cloth, each $4. 
 
 "This is, perhaps, the most ambitious journal in the United States. We use theword 
 in a good sense, as meaning that there is no journal among its which seems more laud- 
 ably desirous to take the lead in literary and theological science. Its handsome type 
 ami piper give it a pleading exterior; its typographical errors, though sufficiently nu- 
 merous, are so comparatively few, as to show that it has the advantage of the best 
 American proof-reading; while for thoroughness of execution in the departments of 
 history and criticism, it aims to be pre-eminent." — JV. Y. Churchman. 
 
 Bull. — Hints to Mothers for the Management of Health during 
 
 Pregnancy. By Thomas Bull, M.D. 5th edition, 12mo. cloth, 51) cents. 
 
 Burton. — The Anatomy of Melancholy. By Burton. New and 
 
 beautiful edition, with Engravings. 1 vol. royal 8vo. cloth, $2 51). 
 
 *** This is one of those sterling old works which were written for " all time," full of 
 learning, humor, and quaint conceits. No library can be complete without it. 
 
 Calvert. — Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. By an American. 
 
 1 vol. 12mo. green cloth. 
 
 " His descriptions of scenery, his remarks on art, his accounts of the different people 
 among whom he sojourned, are all good." — Cincinnati Oazette. 
 
 Carlyle. — The French Revolution : a History. By Thomas 
 
 Carlyle. 2 vols. 12mo. green cloth, $2. 
 
 " His French Revolution is considered one of the most remarkable works of the age — 
 as at once the poetry and philosophy of history." — Hunt's Merchants' Mag. 
 
 Carlyle. — Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. By Thos. 
 
 Carlyle. 2 vols. 12mo. green cloth, $2 50. 
 
 " A work more valuable as a guide to the study of the singular and complex character 
 of our pious revolutionist, our religious demagogue, our preaching, and praying warrior, 
 has not been produced." — Blackwood's Magazine.
 
 — G. P. Putnam, 155 Broadway. 
 
 Garlyle. — Past and Present : Chartism. By Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 1 voi. 12mo. green cloth, $1 • 
 
 " To say that the hook is replete with instruction, thought, anil quaint fancy, is unne- 
 cessary, but we may mention it as one, jiar ex.cellen.ee, which should be read at the 
 present juncture." — Tribune. 
 
 Chaucer and Spenser. — Selections from the Poatical Works of 
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. By Charles D. Deshler. Spenser, and the Faery Queen. By Mrs. 
 C. M. Kirkland. 1 vol. l2mo. 
 
 The same, extra gilt. 
 
 "A portion of their writings are presented in a beautiful and convenient form, and 
 with the requisite notes and modifications."— Home Juurnal. 
 
 Church. — Elements of the Differential and Integral Calculus. 
 
 By E. A. Church, Professor in the United States Military Academy. 8vo. $1 50. 
 
 Coe. — Studies in Drawing, in a progressive Series of Lessons on 
 
 Cards; beginning with the most Elemen'ary Studies, and Adapted for Use at Home 
 and Schools. By Benjamin H. Coe, Teacher of Drawing. In Ten Series — marked 1 and 
 10 — each containing about eighteen Studies. 25 cents each. 
 
 The design is: 
 I. — To mike the exercises in drawing highly interesting to the pupil. 
 II. — To make drawings so simple, and so gradually progres-ive, as to enable any teachei, 
 
 whether acquainted with drawing or not, to instruct his pupils to advantage. 
 III. — To take the place of one-half of the writing lessons, with confidence that the learner 
 
 will acquire a knowledge of writing in less thin time is usually required. 
 IV. — To give the pupils a bold, rapid, and artist-like style of drawing 
 
 Coleridge. — Biographia Literaria ; or, Biographical Sketches of 
 
 my Literary Life and Opinions. By Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From the 2d London 
 edition, Edited by H. N. Coleridge. 2 vols. 12tno. green cloth. 
 
 Cortez. — Letters and Despatches of Hernando Cortez. Trans- 
 lated by Hon. George FoHotn. 1 vol. 8vo. $1 25. 
 
 Coleridge and Southey. — Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor 
 
 * Coleridge and Robert Southey ; with their Letters, &.c. By Joseph Cottle. 1 vol. 12mo. 
 cloth. 
 
 "Their reminiscences, put forth by -a long and familiar Friend, c "inot be read withonl 
 benefiting both the heart and the understanding.'' — Jlnglo-JImericon. 
 
 Croton Aqueduct. — History, Description, and Illustration of the 
 
 Croton Aqueduct. By F. B. Tower 25 engravings, royal 4lo. cloth, $3 50. 
 
 Dana. — A System of Mineralogy, comprising the most Recent 
 
 Discoveries. By .lames D. Dana. Woodcuts and copperplates, 8vo. cloth, $3 50. 
 
 De Hart. — Observations on Military Law, and the Constitution 
 
 and Practice of Courts Martial ; with a Summary of the Law of Evidence. By William 
 C. De Hart. 8vo. law sheep, $3. 
 
 Downing. — Cottage Residences ; or, a Series of Designs for 
 
 Rural Cottages and Cottage Villas, and their Gardens and Grounds ; adapted to North 
 America. By A. J. Downing. Numerous plates, 3d edition, 8vo. cloth, $2. 
 
 Downing. — A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape 
 
 Gardening adapted to North America ; with Remarks on Rural Architecture. By A. J. 
 Downing. Plates, 2d edition, thick 8vo cloth, $3 50. 
 
 Downing. — The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America ; or, the 
 
 Culture, Propagation, and Management, in the Garden and Orchard, of Fruit Trees 
 generally. Ily A. J. Downing. Plates, 9th edition, revised, 12mo. cloth, SI 50. 
 
 The same, 8vn. cloth, $2 50. 
 
 The same, with 80 superb Illustrations, drawn and beautifully colored by Pari! 
 
 Artists, royal 8vo. half morocco, top edge gilt. New edition shortly.
 
 8 Recent Publications — 
 
 Duer. — The Life of William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, Major- 
 
 Genernl in the Army of the United States* during the Revolution ; with Extracts from 
 his Correspondence. By his Grandson, William A. Duer, LL.D. 8vo. cloth, $1 50. 
 
 " It consists mainly of letters or extracts written "by or to the illustrious Subject, whose 
 life ought long since to have been thus commemorated. As yet, little honor has been 
 done to his memory, but this injustice, we trust, is near its termination. Honor to the 
 memory of a faithful and self-denying Patriot." — Tribune. 
 
 Dwight. — Grecian and Roman Mythology ; with original Illus- 
 trations. Adapted for the Use of Universities and High Schools, and for Popular Read- 
 ing. By M. A. Dwight. With an Introduction by Tayler Lewis, Professor of Greek, 
 University of New York. 12mo. [In September. 
 Also a fine edition in octavo, with Illustrations. 
 
 *** This work has been prepared with great care, illustrated with twenty effective 
 outline drawings, and is designed to treat the subject in an original, comprehensive, and 
 unexceptionable manlier, so as to fill the p|ace as a text-book which is yet unsupplied ; 
 while it will also be an attractive and readable table-book for general use. It will be at 
 once introduced as a text-book in the University of New York, and other colleges and 
 schools. 
 
 Ford. — The Spaniards and their Country. By Richard Ford. 
 
 1 vol. 12mo. green cloth. 
 
 "The best description of national character and manners of Spain that has ever 
 appeared." — Quarterly Review. 
 
 "The volumes aopear to treat of almost everything save the graver questions of reli- 
 gion and politics, which may possibly be taken up hereafter. In one respect it has the 
 advantage over more directly historical works — it portrays the Spanish character, as well 
 as country, with fidelity." — Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 Fouque. — Undine, a Tale ; and Sintram and his Companions, a 
 
 Tale. From the German of La Motte Fouqu6. 1 vol. J2mo. green cloth. 
 
 '• The style and execution of this delightful romance are very graceful." — Hawkins's 
 Germany. 
 
 "Fouque's romances I always recommend— especially the wild, graceful, and touching 
 Undine." — Sarah Austin 
 
 French. — Historical Collections of Louisiana. By B. F. French. 
 
 8vo. cloth, $1 50. 
 
 Goldsmith.— The Vicar of Wakefield. By Oliver Goldsmith. 
 
 1 vol. 12mo. neatly printed, cloth, 50 cents. 
 
 The same, with Illustrated Designs by Mulready, elegantly bound, gilt edges, 75 
 
 cents. 
 
 Gray. — Botanical Text-Book. By Prof. Asa Gray. Many 
 
 hundred cuts, 2d edition, large 12mo. cloth, $1 75. 
 
 Green. — A Treatise on Diseases of the Air Passages ; compris- 
 ing an Inquiry intothe History, Pathology, Causes, and Treatment of those Affections of 
 the Throat called Bronchitis, &c. By Horace Green, M.D. Colored plites, 8vo. cloth. 
 $2 50. 
 ' A new and eminently successful treatment of lung complaints." 
 
 Hackley. — Elements of Trigonometry, Plane and Spherical. 
 
 By Rev. C. W. Hackley, Professor of Mathematics, Columbia College, New York. 8vo. 
 cloth, $1 25. 
 
 Hamilton Papers. — The Official Papers of the late Major-General 
 
 Alexander Hamilton. Compiled from the Originals in the Possession of Mrs. Hamilton. 
 1 vol. 8vo. cloth, $2 50.
 
 — G. P. Putnam, 155 Broadway. 9 
 
 Hahn's Hebrew Bible. — New and complete stereotype edition, 
 
 being afac-simile of the Leipsic edition. In 1 vol. 8vo. In press. 
 
 Hart. — Essay on Spenser and the Faery Queen. By John S. Hart. 
 
 8vo. cloth, S3. 
 The same, half morocco, gilt top, $3 75. 
 
 Hazlitt's (William) MiscellaneousWorks. 4 vols. l2mo. cloth, $5. 
 Hazlitt's Life of Napoleon. 3 vols. l2mo. cloth. 
 Spirit of the Age. 12mo., 50 cents. 
 
 Table Talk, both series, in 2 vols, cloth, $2 25. 
 
 Characters of Shakspeare, 50 cts. 
 
 Literature of the Age of Queen Elizabeth, 50 cts. 
 
 English Comic Writers, 50 cts. 
 
 Lectures on English Poets, 50 cts. 
 
 Head. — Bubbles from the Brunnen. By Sir Francis Head. 
 
 I2mo. green cloth. 
 
 " At once an instructive and amusing book. It contains a great deal of information."— 
 London Times. 
 
 Heroines of Shakspeare. — A Series of 45 beautiful illustrations, 
 
 engraved by Charles Heath, with letter press from Shakspeare's text. Royal 8vo. 
 
 Saxony, gilt extra, $9. 
 
 The same, morocco extra, $12. 
 
 The same, exquisitely colored, morocco extra, $20. New edition shortly. 
 
 Hervey. — The Book of Christmas ; descriptive of the Customs, 
 
 Ceremonies, Traditions, Superstitions, Fun, Feeling, and Festivities of the Christmas 
 Season. By Thomas K. Hervey. 12mo. green cloth. 
 
 The same, gilt extra. 
 
 " Every leaf of this book affords a feast worthy of the season." — Dr. Hawks' 's Church 
 Record. 
 
 Hood. — Prose and Verse. By Thomas Hood. 12mo. green 
 
 cloth. 
 
 The same, gilt extra. 
 
 " A very judicious selection, designed to embrace Hood's more earnest writings, those 
 which were written most directly from the heart, which reflect most faithfully his life 
 and opinions." — Broadway Journal. 
 
 Howitt. — Ballads and other Poems. By Mary Howitt. 1 vol. 
 
 12mo. green cloth. 
 The s:ime, with fine Portrait, gilt extra. 
 
 " Her poems are always graceful and beautiful." — Mrs. S. C. Hall. 
 
 "We cannot commend too highly the present publication, and only hope that the 
 reading public will relish ' Mary Howitt's Ballads and other Poems,' now for the first 
 time put forth in a collected form." — Jilbion. 
 
 Hunt. — Imagination and Fancy. By Leigh Hunt. - 1 vol. 
 
 12mo. green cloth, 62 cents. 
 The same, gilt extra, $1. 
 
 Hunt. — Stories from the Italian Poets: being a Summary in 
 
 Prose of the Poems of Dante, Pulci, Boiardo, Aristo, and Tasso ; with Comments through- 
 out, occasional passages Versified, and Critical Notices of the Lives and Cenius of the 
 Authors. By Leigh Hunt. 12mo. cloth. 
 
 The same, fancy gilt. 
 
 "Mr. Hunt's book has been aptly stylrd, a series of exquisite < ncravings of the mngni 
 ficent pictures painted by these great Italian masters."— Journal of Commerce.
 
 10 Recent Publications — 
 
 Irving. — Works of Washington Irving ; Revised and Enlarged 
 
 by the Author. In twelve elegant duodecimo volumes, beautifully printed with new 
 type, and on superior piper, made expressly for the purpose, and bound in cloth. 
 As follows : — 
 
 The Crayon .Miscellany, in one 
 volume. Abbotsford, Newstead, 
 The Prairies, &c. 
 
 The Spanish Legends, in one vol. 
 
 The Life and Voyages of Columbus, 
 and The Companions of Colum- 
 bus, in two volumes. 
 
 Adventures of Capt. Bonneville, in 
 one volume. 
 
 The Sketch-Book, in one volume. 
 Knickerbocker's 3Yew York, in one 
 
 volume. 
 Tales of a Traveller, in one vol. 
 Bracebridge Hall, in one volume. 
 The Conquest of Grenada, in one 
 
 volume. 
 The Alhambra, in one volume. 
 Astoria, in one volume. 
 
 (Now publishing.) 
 
 Irving. — The Sketch-Book. By Washington Irving. Complete 
 
 in one volume, 12mo. cloth. In September. , 
 
 Irving. — The Illustrated Sketch-Book. By Washington Irving. 
 
 In October will be published, The Sketch-Book, by Washington Irving, one vol. square 
 octavo, Illustrated with a series of highly finished Engravings on Wood, from Designs 
 by Darley and others, engraved in the best style by Childs, Herrick, &c. This 
 edition will be printed on paper of the finest quality, similar in size and style to the new 
 edition of " Halleck's Poems." It is intended that the illustrations shall be superior to 
 any engravings on wood yet produced in this country, and that the mechanical execu- 
 tion of the volume, altogether, shall be worthy of the author's reputation. It will form 
 an elegant and appropriate gift book for all seasons. 
 
 Irving. — Knickerbocker's History of New York. By Washing- 
 ton Irving. With Revisions and copious Additions. Will be published on the 1st of 
 October. 
 
 Irving. — The Illustrated Knickerbocker; with a series of origi- 
 nal Designs, in one volume, octavo, uniform with the " Sketch-Book," is also in prepa- 
 ration. 
 
 Irving. — The Life and Voyages of Columbus. By Washington 
 
 Irving. Vol. I. on the 1st of November. 
 The succeeding volumes will be issued on the first day of each month until completed. 
 
 Jameson. — Characteristics of Women. By Mrs. Jameson. 
 
 Illustrated with 12 elegant steel-plate engravings. 1 large vol. royal 8vo. richly gilt. 
 
 '■ Mrs. Jameson's Characteristics of Women is certainly among the most attractive and 
 charming volumes which the American press has produced this season. It is a royal 
 8vo. volume, of from 301) to 400 pages, superbly bound in Saxony gilt extra, and contains 
 the following twelve portraits, executed in the most finished style of the first artists, 
 under the direction of Mr. Charles Heath, of London, viz: — Portia, Beatrice, Miranda, 
 Jnl>et, Ophelia, Imogen, Viola, Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Rosalind, Perdita, Cordelia. 
 These portraits illustrate the following class of Shakspeare's characters, as arranged by 
 Mrs. Jameson :- - 
 
 " J St. Characters of Intellect. 
 
 "2d. Characters of Imajrination avd Fancy. 
 
 " '3d. Characters of the .Affections. 
 
 "4th. Historical Characters. 
 
 "They are, in truth, admirable expositions of Shakspeare's matchless creations, and 
 form, in the elegant edition of the American publishers, one of the most appropriate 
 gifts that could be made." — Newark Daily Jldeertiser. 
 
 Keats. — The Poetical Works of John Keats. 1 vol. 12mo. 
 
 cloth. 
 
 The same, gilt extra. 
 
 " They are flushed all over with the rich lights of fancy ; and so colored and bestrewn 
 with the fl iwers of poetry that, even while perplexed and bewildered in their labyrinths, 
 it is impossible to resist the intoxication of their sweemess, or to shut our hearts to the 
 enchantment they so lavishingly present " — Francis Jeffrey.
 
 — G. P. Putnam, 155 Broadway. 11 
 
 Kinglake. — Eothen ; or, Traces of Travel brought from the 
 
 East. 12mo. green cloth. 
 
 " Eothen is a book with which everybody, fond of eloquent prose and racy description, 
 should be well acquainted." — U. S. Gazette. 
 
 Klipstein's Anglo-Saxon Course of Study. In uniform 12mo. 
 
 volumes, as follows : 
 
 I. • 
 
 Klipstein. — A Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language. By 
 
 Louis F. Klipstein, AA. LL.M. and PH. D., of the University of Giessen. 12ino. 
 
 II. 
 
 Klipstein. — Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, with an Introductory Eth- 
 nographical Essay, Copious Notes, Critical and Explanatory, and a Glossary in which 
 are shown the In do Germanic and other Affinities of the Language. By Louis F. Klip- 
 stein, AA. LL.M. and PH. D., of the University of Giessen. 
 
 III. 
 
 Klipstein. — Natale Sancti Gregorii Papse. — /Elfric's Homily on 
 
 the Birth- day of St. Gregory, and Collateral Extracts from King Alfred's Version of 
 Bedc's Ecclesiastic il History and the Saxon Chronicle, with a lull Rendering into Eng- 
 lish, Notes Critical and Explanatory, and an Index of Words. By Louis F. Klipstein, 
 AA. LL. M. and PH. D., of the University of Giessen. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Klipstein. — Extracts from the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, a Portion of 
 
 the Anglo-Saxon Paraphrase of the Book of Psalms, and other Selections of a Sacred 
 Order in the same Language, with a Translation into English, and Notes Critical and 
 Explanatory. By Louis F. Klipstein, AA. LL.M. and PH. D., of the University of 
 Giessen. 
 
 V. 
 
 Klipstein. — Tha Halgan Godspel on Englisc — the Anglo-Saxon 
 
 Version of the Holy Gospels. Edited by Benjamin Thorpe, F. S. A. Reprinted by the 
 same. Now ready. 
 
 Klipstein. — Study of Modern Languages. — Part First ; French, 
 
 Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and English. By L. F. Klipstein, AA. LL.M. and 
 Ph. D. One vol. Imperial 8vo. Cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 Lamb. — Essays of Elia. By Charles Lamb. 1 vol. l2mo., 
 
 cloth. 
 
 The same, gilt extra. 
 
 '• Shakspeare himself might have read them, and Hamlet have quoted them : for truly 
 was our excellent friend of the genuine line of Yorick." — Leigh Hunt's London Jour- 
 nal." 
 
 Lamb. — Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets. By Charles 
 
 Lamb. I vol. 12mo., green cloth. 
 
 The same gill extra. 
 
 " Nowhere are tin- resources of the English tongue in power, in sweetness, terror, 
 pathos: in description and dialogue, so well displayed." — Broadway Journal. 
 
 Mahan . — On Advanced Guards, Outposts, and Military Duty. 
 
 By D. H. Mahan, M.A. 18mo. cloth, 75 cents 
 
 Mahan's Course of Civil Eiiinneering. Third edition, 8vo. II- 
 
 I u s( ra i.-d. $3 50. 
 
 Milton. — The Prose Works of John Milton. Edited by Rev. 
 
 Rufus VViimoit Griswold. 2 vols. 8vo., cloth, SI.
 
 12 Recent Publications — 
 
 Modern Painters. By a Graduate of Oxford. 12mo. cloth, 
 
 $1 25. 
 The same. Second vol. 12mo. 
 
 Montagu. — Selections from the Works of Taylor, Latimer, Hall, 
 
 Milton, Barrow, Lowth, Brown, Fuller, and Bacon. By Basil Montagu. 1 vol. 12mo., 
 green cloth. 
 
 "This volume contains choice extracts from some of the noblest of the old English 
 writers." — Cincinnati Atlas. 
 
 Nordheimer. — A Critical Grammar of the Hebrew Lansuaee. 
 
 o o 
 By Isaac Nordheimer, Phil. Doctor. 8vo. cloth, $3 50. 
 
 Norton. — An Elementary Treatise on Astronomy. Designed for 
 
 use as a Text Book in Colleges and Academies. By William A. Norton. Second edi- 
 tion. 8vo. sheep, $2. 
 
 Oriental Life Illustrated. Being a new edition of Eothen, or 
 
 Traces of Travel in the East. With fine Illustrations on Steel. 
 
 Parsons. — The Rose ; its History, Poetry, and Culture. By S. 
 
 B. Parsons. With colored Plates. Royal 8vo cloth, $1 50. 
 
 Patrick, Lowth, Arnold, and Whitby.— Commentary on the 
 
 Bible, by Bishops Patrick, Lowth, Arnold, Whitby, and Lowman. 4 vols, imperial, 8vo. 
 cloth, $16. 
 
 Peacock. — Headlong Hall and Nightmare Abbey. 1 vol. 12mo., 
 
 green cloth. 
 
 " This is a witty and amusing book." — Tribune. 
 
 Poe. — Eureka, A Prose Poem : Or the Physical and Metaphy- 
 sical Universe. By Edgar A. Poe, Esq. Handsomely printed. 12mo. cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 Pearls of American Poetry. Second edition, superbly illumi- 
 nated in the manner of the ancient missals by T. W. Gwilt Mapleson, Esq. Printed in 
 gold and colors on Bristol board. Elegantly and strongly bound in full Morocco, Antique 
 style. One volume quarto, $12. 
 
 %* Of this splendid and costly work, a small number were issued for this season, but 
 it was not ready for actual publication. It is now completed in a superior style, and is 
 the most splendid book of the time. 
 
 " On beautiful vellum paper, are printed in colored characters and with every variety of 
 type, some of the choicest brief puems of American writers — Bryant, Longfellow, C. F. 
 Hoffman, and others. Each initial letter is a picture, and each page is illuminated as ex- 
 quisitely as any of the choicest of antique illuminated volumes — and all from original 
 designs. The conception of these works of art. as they richly deserve to be called, the 
 drawing, painting, gilding, are of the highest order. The binding is in keeping with the 
 rest — that of the olden day— solid, rich, and tasteful. Altogether this is a volume of 
 . great attraction for the rare beauty of its adorning and the discrimination of its selec- 
 tions." — Courier. 
 
 Princeton Theological Essays. First Series. Royal 8vo. cloth, 
 
 $2 50. 
 
 Princeton Theological Essays. Second Series. Royal 8vo. 
 
 cloth, $2 50. 
 
 St. John.— The Three Days of February, 1848 : with Portrait 
 
 of Lamartine. 18mo. cloth, 63 cts. 
 
 Tappan. — Elementary Logic. By Prof. H. P. Tappan. 1 vol. 
 
 12mo. cloth, $1. 
 
 Tasso. — Godfrey of Bulloigne ; or, the Recovery of Jerusalem: 
 
 done into English Heroical Verse. From the Italian of Tasso, by Edward Fairfax. 
 Introductory Essay, by Leigh Hunt, and the Lives of Tasso and Fairfax, by Charles 
 Knight. 1 vol. 12mo. 
 
 " The completest translation, and nearest like its original of any we have seen." — 
 Leigh Hunt.
 
 — G. P. Putnam, 155 Broadway. 13 
 
 Taylor. — Views a-Foot ; or, Europe seen with Knapsack and 
 
 Staff. By J. Bayard Taylor. New edition, with an additional Chapter, &c, and a 
 Sketch of the Author in Pedestrian Costume, from a Drawing by T. Buchanan Read. 
 12mo. cloth. Nearly ready. 
 
 " Besides being one of the most entertaining books of travel we ever read, it is written 
 under circumstances of the most interesting ; although at a first glance, seemingly the 
 most unfavorable. ' — Boston Mlas. 
 
 Thackeray. — Journey from Cornhill to Cairo. By Michael 
 
 Angelo Titmarsh. 1 vol. 12mo. green cloth. 
 
 " It is wonderful what a description of people and things, what numerous pictures, 
 what innumerable remarks and allusions it contains.'* — Douglas Jerrold's Mag. 
 
 Torrey and Gray. — Flora of North America. By Professors 
 
 Torrey and Gray. 1 vol. 8vo. cloth, $6. Parts 1 and 6, each $1 50 ; Part 7, $1. 
 
 Tschudi. — Travels in Peru. By Dr. J. J. Von Tschudi. 1 
 
 vol. 12mo. cloth. 
 
 '■The book contains a great deal of curious information, and will be found useful as 
 a book of reference by all who are interested in the commerce, natural history, and 
 general statistics of Peru." — Blackwood's Magazine. 
 
 Tupper. — Proverbial Philosophy. By Martin Farquhar Tupper. 
 
 12mo. green cloth. 
 
 The same, gilt extra. 
 
 The same, morocco extra. 
 
 Walton. — The Lives of Donne, Walton, Hooker, Herbert, and 
 
 Sanderson. By Izaak Walton. New edition, 1 vol. 12mo. green cloth. 
 
 " The Lives are the most delightful kind of reading. Walton possesses an inimitable 
 simplicity and vivacity of style." — Mrs. C. M. Kirkland. 
 
 Warburton. — The Crescent and the Cross ; or, the Romance 
 
 and Reality of Eastern Travel. By Elliot Warburton. 1 vol. 12mo. green cloth, $1. 
 
 "This delightful work is, from first to last, a splendid panorama of Eastern scenery, 
 in the lull blaze of its magnificence." — London Morning Post. 
 
 Williams. — The Middle Kingdom ; a Survey of the Geography, 
 
 Government, Education, Social Life, Arts, Religion, etc , of the Chinese Empire and its 
 Inhabitants : with a new Map of the Empire, and Illustrations. By S. Wells Williams. 
 3d edition, 2 vols, large 12mo. half morocco, gilt tops, $3. 
 
 Willard. — On the Circulation of the Blood. By Mrs. Willard. 
 
 l2mo. cloth, 50 cts. 
 
 Wighlwick. — Hints to Young Architects. By George Wight- 
 wick. With additional Notes and Hints to Persons about Building in the Country, by 
 A. J. Downing. Cuts, 8vo. cloth, $1 50. 
 
 A valuable Work for Libraries. 
 Now Ready. 8vo. $1. 
 
 An Alphabetical Index to Subjects treated in the Reviews, and 
 
 otlior Periodicals, to which no Indexes have been Published 
 
 %* This volume comprises an Index to all articles in 560 volumes of the most im- 
 portant periodical works.
 
 14 
 
 Popular Volumes for Presenlaiion- 
 
 POPULAR VOLUMES 
 
 Elegantly bound in 
 
 Chaucer and Spenser $1 50 
 
 Fairfax's Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. 1 50 
 
 Fouque's Undine, and Sintram 1 00 
 
 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, with 
 
 plates I CO 
 
 llervey's Book of Christmas 1 00 
 
 Howitt's (Mary) Ballads and Poems.. .1 00 
 
 Hood's Prose andVer.se 1 '25 
 
 Hunt's Imagination and Fancy 1 00 
 
 Italian Poets 1 03 
 
 Jameson's (Mrs.) Characteristics of 
 
 Women, with 12 splendid portraits. 
 
 8vo 6 00 
 
 Keats's Poems 1 25 
 
 FOR PRESENTATION, 
 
 extra cloth, gilt edges. 
 
 Lamb's Dramatic Specimens 1 50 
 
 Limb's Essays of Elia 1 25 
 
 Southey's (Mrs.) Poems 1 25 
 
 Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy, com- 
 plete 1 25 
 
 The same, morocco 2 00 
 
 The same, fancy, with portrait. .1 50 
 
 The same, with " One Thousand 
 
 Lines" 1 37£ 
 
 The same, and with portrait 1 63 
 
 The same, miniature edition, no 
 
 portrait 75 
 
 The same, morocco, neat 1 50 
 
 ILLUSTRATED JUVENILES. 
 
 Alphabetical Drawing Book, and Pictorial Short and Simple Prayers, for the use of 
 
 Natural History, illustrated, 12mc>. fancy children, 18mo. cloth 37£ 
 
 boards ..." ." 63 Smith's (Mrs. T. P.) The Little Republic. 
 
 Kinsley's Tales of Travellers, with fine Original Articles' by John Quincy 
 
 illustrations, square ]2mo. cloth 50 Adams, E Burritt, L. H. Sigourney, 
 
 Binsley's Tales of Instinct, with fine &c, bound in a neat and novel style. . . 62J 
 illustrations, square 16mo. cloth 50 The same, gilt extra 87A 
 
 Horse and His Rider, or Anecdotes of the William Tell, the Hero of Switzerland, 
 
 Noble Quadruped in different Ages and with fine illustrations, l(:mo, cloth 50 
 
 .Nations, witli fine illustrations, en- Wonderful Stories for Children. By Hans 
 graved in London ; lCino 75 Andersen. TvvoSeries. lOnio., cl., each. 37£ 
 
 ENGl ISH BOOKS 
 
 IMPORTED BY G. P. PUTNAM. 
 
 Bohn's Antiquarian Library, uniform vo- 
 lumes, 1 uge 12mo., bound in cloth — at a 
 very lino price, viz. 
 
 Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and the An- 
 glo-Saxon Chronicle, 1vol. 
 
 Mh11cU's Northern Antiquities, by Bishop 
 Percy; with an Abstract of the Eyrbig- 
 gia Saga, by Sir Walter Scott. New edi- 
 tion, revised and enlarged by J. A. Bl ,ck- 
 well. 1 vol. 
 
 William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the 
 Kings of England, 1 vol. 
 
 Six Old English Chronicles, viz. Asser's 
 Life of Alfred, and the Chronicles of 
 Ethelwerd, Gild as, Nenniu.3, Geoffrey of 
 Monmouth, and Richard of Cirencester, 
 1 vol. 
 Bohn's Classical Library — 
 
 Herodotus, Thucydide.s, Plato, Aristotle, 
 Xenophon, Livy, Caesar ; all faithfully 
 translated. 
 
 Beloe's Herodotus, 1 vol. 
 Bohn's Scientific Library — 
 
 Staunton's Chess Player's Hand Book 
 'the best work on Chess), witli diagrams, 
 12m». 
 Bohn's Standard Library, in uniform 
 J-Jnio. vols., with portraits, &c, bound 
 in cloth. 
 
 Volumes Published. 
 Beckman's History of Inventions, Disco- 
 veries, &c, 4th edition, enlarged, 2 vols. 
 
 Coxe's History of the House of Austria* 
 
 3 vols. 12mo. post. 
 
 Life of Marlborough, 1 vol. 
 
 Kings of Sp i in, 1 vol. 
 
 Hall's (Robert) Miscellaneous Works, 1 
 
 vol. 
 Hutchinson's (Col.) Memoirs, 1 vol. 
 Lamurtine's History of the Girondists, 3 
 
 vols. 
 Lanzi's History of Painting in Italy, 3 vols. 
 Machiavelli's History of Florence, 1 vol. 
 Ockley's History of the Saracens, 1 vol. 
 R inke's Lives of the Popes. 3 vols. 
 Schlegel's Dramatic Literature, 1 vol. 
 
 Philosophy of History, 1 vol. 
 
 Philosophy of Life, &c, 1 vol. 
 
 Schiller's Historical Dramas, Don Carlos, 
 &c, 1 vol. 
 
 30 Years' War and Netherlands, 1 
 
 vol. 
 
 Netherlands, Wallenstein, &c. 1 vol. 
 
 Robbers, Dramas, &c, 1 vol. 
 
 Sheridan's Dramatic Works,] vol. 
 Booue's European Library — same size 
 
 and price as the above. 
 Berrington's Literary History of the Mid- 
 dle Ages, 1 vol. 
 Boutervveck's Spanish and Portuguese Li- 
 
 terature, I vol. 
 Cinq-Mars, an Historical Romance, by De 
 
 Vigny, 1 vol. 
 Carrel's History of the Counter-Revolu- 
 
 tion in England, I vol.
 
 — G. P. Putnam, 155 Broadway. 
 
 15 
 
 Duppa's Lives of the Italian Painters, 1 
 
 vol. 
 Dumas' Marguerite de Valois, 1 vol. 
 Gait's Life of Cardinal Wolsey, 1 vol. 
 Guizot's History of Civilization in Eu- 
 rope, 3 vols. 
 
 English Revolution, 1 vol. 
 
 Luther's Table Talk, translated by Hazlitt, 
 
 1 vol. 
 Michelet's Life of Luther, 1 vol. 
 
 Roman Republic, 1 vol. 
 
 Mignet's French Revolution, 1 vol. 
 Roscoe's Life of Leo Xth, 2 vols. 
 
 Life of Lorenzo de Medici, 1 vol. 
 
 Thierry's Conquest of England by the 
 Norm ins, 1 vol. 
 British Essayists. — The Spectator, Tatler 
 andGuardian, Rambler, Idler, Adventur- 
 er and Connoisseur Complete in 3 
 vols.8vo, with portraits, &c. $7 50. 
 British Orators — viz: 
 
 Fox's Speeches, new edition. Complete 
 
 in 1 vol., roy 1 8vo. $6 00. 
 Sheridan's Speeches, 3 vols., 8vo. $5 25. 
 Curran's Speeches, 1 vol , 8vo $2 00. 
 Grattan's Speeches 1vol., 8vo. $y 00. 
 Shiel's Speeches, 1 vol., 8vo. $2 00. 
 British Poets. — Cabinet Edition of Select 
 British Poets comprising the works of 
 Milton, Cowper. Goldsmith, Thomson, 
 Falconer, Gray, Akenside, Collins, and 
 Somerville. 4 vols., post 8vo cl. $4 50. 
 
 Lond. 1847. 
 Catlin's North American Indians. New 
 edition, with 300 illustrations. 2 vels. 
 8vo., cloth extra. 
 Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio. 
 Sketches and Scene-; of Hunting, Amuse- 
 ments, &c. Folio, h bound morocco. 
 The s; me, finely colored and £ bd mor. 
 Classic Tales ; comprising the most es- 
 teemed works of the Im igination ; Ras- 
 selas, Vicir of Wakefield, Exiles of Si- 
 beria. Gulliver's Travels, Sorrows of 
 Werter, &.c. Post 8vo., cloth, $1 25. 
 
 Lond. 
 
 Cowper's Translation of Homer — edited by 
 
 Sbuthey. 4 vfils , l2mo., plates, §4 50. 
 
 Clarke's Complete Concordance to Shak- 
 
 spe ire fan extraordinary and valuable 
 
 work, being a Cyclopaidia of Wit and 
 
 Wisdom, Useful for every onej Royal 
 
 8vo. cloth — Sti — (London price §12) 
 
 Clarke's (Mrs. Cowden) Book of Shak- 
 
 spe ire Proverbs, IHnio , 1848, cloth. 
 Crabbe's Poetical Works, complete in 1 
 natidsonie vol., royal 8vo., cloth, post. 
 | Murray ) 
 
 Cressy's Encyclopaedia of Civil Engineer 
 ing, I very large vol., 8vo , with engra 
 vings. 
 
 Don (Iuixotte, very neat edition, royal 8vo. 
 illustrated, cloth, gilt. 
 
 Harrison. — The Dublin Dissector, or System 
 of Practical Anatomy. Fifth edition, 
 with numerous illustrations, 2 vols., 
 8vo., cloth, and a copious Index, pp 909. 
 
 Hutton. — Course of Mathematics, composed 
 for the use of the Royal Military Acade- 
 my A new and carefully corrected 
 edition, 1 vol 8vo , cloth. 
 
 Johnson's (Dr.) Complete Works, good edi- 
 tion, in 2 vols., 8vo., cloth. $3 50. 
 
 Johnson's Diamond Dictionary, 32mo., roan, 
 gilt edges. 
 
 Lindley's Vegetable Kingdom ; or, the 
 Structure, Classification, and Usages of 
 Plants, with upwards of 500 illustrations. 
 One 1 irge vol., 8vo , cloth. 
 
 Lizars's Anatomical Atlas. 1 splendid vol., 
 folio, with 101 finely colored plates, and 
 full descriptive text, half bound in rus- 
 sia, best style. 
 
 Loudon's Cottage, Farm, and Villa Archi- 
 tecture, one large vol., numerous illus- 
 trations. 
 
 Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Plants, with fig- 
 ures of nearly 10,000 species. 8vo., cloth. 
 
 Milner's Gallery of Nature, with 300 en- 
 gravings royal 8vo., cloth. 
 The same, mor. extra. 
 
 National Atlas of General and Physical 
 Geography. 1 very large vol. folio, 
 strongly half bound mor. 
 *** This is the latest Atlas published 
 in England, and considered by far the 
 best. 
 
 Paris and its Historical Scenes, 2 vols., 
 12mo, plates, $1 50. 
 
 Percy's lieliques of English Poetry, beau- 
 tilul edition, 3 vols, 12mo., cloth gilt. 
 The same, 3 vols. 24mo., cloth. 
 
 Pompeii, numerous illustrations, 2 vols. 
 12mo., cloth. 
 
 Schramke's New York Croton Aqueduct — 
 a doscription in English, German, and 
 French — with 20 plttes, radiographic 
 maps, &c„ 4to., lids. 
 
 Stookes — The Mother's Medic?! Instructor 
 — being a complete course of directions 
 for the medic il m inagement if mothers 
 and children. Tenth edition, 32mo., 
 cloth gilt, with an engr- ving. 
 
 The Naturalist's Library Conducted 
 by Sir William Jardiue. Complete in 
 forty vols. 12mo, with near 2000 colored 
 engravings, in extra cloth. 
 
 OXFORD BIBLES, of every size and style
 
 George P. Putnam 
 
 (OF THE LATE FIRM OF WILEY AND PUTNAM 
 
 Has taken the new and commodious premises, 
 
 15 5 BROADWAY, NEW YORK 
 (JVext building to that of the late Firm), 
 
 And continues the business of 
 
 PUBLISHING, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 IMPORTATION OF FOREIGN BOOKS, 
 
 AS ABOVE, AND AT 
 
 PUTNAM'S AMERICAN LITERARY AGENCY, 142 Strand, London 
 [Established in 1838]. 
 
 Arrangements have been made to secure at the London Agency the 
 services of an experienced and competent Bibliographer, so that the busi- 
 ness of executing SPECIAL ORDERS FOR THE TRADE AND PUBLIC 
 INSTITUTIONS may be better regulated, and all parties giving such or- 
 ders, may be fully satisfied both with regard to expedition and economy. 
 
 The interests of Public Institutions, and those ordering Books in quan- 
 tities will receive special attention, while it is also intended that any one 
 ordering a single volume from Europe, may receive it promptly (if procura- 
 ble), without disappointment or unnecessary expense. 
 
 Mr. Putnam believes that his twelve years' experience abroad in pur- 
 chasing Books for the American market, will be of service to those who 
 may favor him with orders. 
 
 %* Correspondence established with Paris, Rome, Leipsic, Brus- 
 sels, and all the principal cities on the Continent. All American Publi- 
 cations on the best terms, by the quantity or singly 
 
 N. B. — CATALOGUES of extensive collections of Foreign and Ame- 
 rican Books, on all subjects, may be had on application.
 
 JAM 2 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 This "book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 ^ 1951 i 
 
 
 APR 4 1951 i 
 
 Form L-9 
 inm-3,'3li(T7r,2) 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 AT 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 A A 000 294 532 
 
 PR 
 
 503 
 
 H91i 
 
 1848 
 
 cop.l
 
 U.U 
 
   I Ml I U II 
 
 Mtf. 
 
 n.i.i 
 
 ' 1 1 u 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 in i iii 
 
 
 lh 
 
 m 
 
 mmammm 
 
 DO 
 
 iiiiiiimniiiiiiiiiiHi 
 
 % 
 
 im 
 
 III!! 
 
 IIIIIIIIDIIH 
 
 i u 1 1 1 1 ii i.i timuififiSfiftw!, 
 
 i > 1 1 1 1 1 1 
 
 lil 
 
 iimminir 
 
 pagtaiii 
 
 m 
 
 iVi'iYi'MY/i'Vy/in'Vl'ljTl 
 
 m unman 
 
 .iiniiniiiir 
 
 flmffjofnKvff.fi 
 
 1 1 111 1 1 1 U 1 1 1 1 1 1 U 1 m I U I n 1 1 1 1 1 
 
 Illllll 
 111I1M 
 
 . 1 1 m f i 
 
 iilllll 
 
 MIHIIIIHI.il 
 I i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 M I 
 
 illllll 
 
 •'"ViVi'iW.V 
 IMftt 
 
 m 
 
 m 
 
 "Himr 
 
 u.n. 
 
 ffuffl&Jl 
 
 • 
 
 ...IIIMf 
 
 .jrffitiln 
 
 illll.lll 
 
 ;imm 
 ill iff 
 
 iimini 
 
 ,,, 
 
 1 1 1 1 i 1 1 1 ii 
 
 ii 
 Hi 
 
 U.U 
 
 inn 
 
 m ffmUI 
 
 mfffiifff 
 
 iiiiimiiit 
 
 II II I! II II Illllll I 
 
 ; ii 1 1 hi i in 
 
 Hlllllilll 
 
 hi 
 
 minim 
 (m Hiiilj 
 
 him mm^mm^wm 
 
 1 1 1 1 1 n i n 1 1 ii i n 1 1 1 1 . 
 
 
 i inmnn 
 
 ini.iini.i.i ill if in 
 
 iiiini 
 
 iYmiiiii 1 
 
 tiiniiinnil 
 
 Ml 
 iff m 
 
 miiiiui 
 if 
 
 / 
 
 lUiiiiniimmiMiiiinimn 
 iiniiiiiiiininitiiHniiiiii"''' 
 
 .Illllll 
 
 iMiimiiiiiHiiiiniiii 
 
 ! 
 
 1 
 ihihiii i nmii< 
 
 1 1 1 1 ( II 1 1 1 11 HI.' I'll] 
 
 inimii i u iniiifi 
 miniHininnnni.il 
 mmintnininmi; 
 
 
 in 
 
 Minn 
 
 1 ! 11 1 II I! II 
 
 ttmfj), 
 
 ami 
 
 mil 
 
 n.ii.i 
 
 Hill 
 
 
 
 ium»») 
 
 ill 
 
 imimm. 
 
 Mi 
 
 Jlillfl 
 
 WAViViYf 1 1 f m f f r r 1 1 1 1 1 m t ii 1 1 1 i 1 1 1 f i 
 
 mm 
 
 t!wffW, 
 
 mm 
 
 mi' 
 
 i n i n i.i n i 
 
 illllll! 
 
 I Ml/Ill HI HI 
 
 II.UJ1.U 
 
 III 
 
 V.Vn 
 
 ii i in 
 iiiiii! 
 
 nini i IjCUl, „ 
 inniuiini 
 
 imimiih! n 
 iiiiir 
 
 
 
 ifffffifi 
 
 
 
 nninnii 
 i nnmi) 
 1 1 / 0/ff/iJ 
 
 * 
 
 « 
 
 inn. 
 
 UOllY 
 
 Hi 
 
 Wfffff* 
 
 in 
 
 
 WfffffftWff 
 
 Wltfiftttmr. 
 
 if 
 
 
 
 mi 
 
 .'039OT. 
 
 nl 
 
 . 
 
 UliiiJiinnnilli 
 iiiinir 
 
 mini 
 
 U/ffl 
 
 nffl 
 
 tHfflHHn 
 
 ■pi 
 
 uMffjfffffffffffffiiffw.y 
 
 m 
 
 iiiiii 
 
 1 nil 
 
 Wffffffffffim 
 
 MM 
 ifM 
 
 
 
 WffM 
 
 ■iiBi 
 
 M 
 
 {{{{ffiff\ . "' ,::.' 
 
 ! ! ; 1 1 : ; . , , : , 
 
 1 II I ! t H ! 11 1! 1 1 1 : : 
 
 wiiiiffuih Kin ,:* •