mysterious friend to write, under the initials E. K., an introduction and explanatory notes to his 'Shepherd's Calendar,' comparing this trial of his wings with similar essays by Theocritus and Virgil, and announcing him as "one that in time shall be able to keep wing with the best." Among the shepherds he represents himself under the names of Colin Cout and young Cuddy, and makes other shepherds speak of these sweet players on the oaten pipe with boundless admiration as the joy of their fellows and the rivals of Calliope herself. As for the poet's irritability, that appears in the covert bitterness of his attacks on Roman Catholics and other objects of his dislike, but most unmistakably in his 'View of the State of Ireland.' His temper was too thin for the asperities of public life. These, however, are the unfavourable aspects of the poet's amiable nature. More favourable aspects of the same reserved meditative disposition appear in his warm gratitude to benefactors, his passion for temperance and purity, and his deep religious earnestness.

II. HIS WORDS, METRES, AND GENERAL FORM.

Consistently with his shrinking from the cold realities of the present, Spenser gave a softer tinge to his diction by here and there introducing a word of the Chaucerian time. Even his diction was to be slightly mellowed with antiquity; he loved now and then to have upon his tongue a word with this soft unction round it. It is strange that the archaic character of his diction should ever have been doubted. The fact was recognised at the time. F. Beaumont, in an epistle prefixed to Speght's Chaucer, says that "Maister Spenser, following the counsel of Tully in De Oratore for reviving of ancient words, hath adorned his own style with that beauty and gravity which Tully speaks of, and his much frequenting of Chaucer's ancient speeches causeth many to allow far better of him than otherwise they

1 See also Appendix.

would." And a still better and earlier authority, the shadowy E. K., anticipated the objections to disused words, saying that the poet, "having the sound of ancient poets still ringing in his ears, mought needs in singing, hit out some of their tunes." "But whether he useth them by such casualty and custom, or of set purpose and choice, as thinking them fittest for such rustical rudeness of shepherds, either for that their rough sounds would make his rhymes more ragged and rustical, or else because such old and obsolete words are most used of country folk, sure I think, and I think not amiss, that they bring great grace, and as one would say authority to the verse." "Ancient solemn words are a great ornament." "Tully saith that ofttimes an ancient word maketh the style seem grave, and as it were reverend, no otherwise than we honour and reverence grey hairs for a certain religious regard which we have of old age." Yet what Spenser prided himself upon was denied of him by some modern admirers, who thought it a detraction.

Our poet had, however, in the rich music of his verse, a fuller protection to interpose between himself and the harsh discords of real life. He was a great metrician. With his friend Gabriel Harvey at Cambridge, with Sidney at Penshurst, with Raleigh at Kilcolman, his talk ran often on the subject of metres. He interested himself in Harvey's enthusiasm for unrhymed dactylic hexameters; but though he approved of them in theory, and produced a specimen with which he was himself highly pleased, he was not so unwise as to waste upon the experiment a poem of any length. Some of the stanzas in his 'Shepherd's Calendar' are exceedingly pretty, particularly the light, airy, childlike jig of the contest between Perigot and Willy. But his greatest achievement was the stanza that bears his name, which he formed by adding an Alexandrine to the stave used in Chaucer's Monk's Tale. In the last great revival of poetry this stanza was warmly adopted. "All poets," says Wilson, "have, since Warton's time, agreed in thinking the Spenserian stanza the finest ever conceived by the

soul of man-and what various delightful specimens of it have we now in our language! Thomson's Castle of Indolence,' Shenstone's 'Schoolmistress,' Beattie's 'Minstrel,' Burns's 'Cotter's Saturday Night,' Campbell's 'Gertrude of Wyoming,' Scott's 'Don Roderick,' Wordsworth's 'Female Vagrant,' Shelley's 'Revolt of Islam,' Keats's Eve of St Agnes,' Croly's 'Angel of the World,' Byron's 'Childe Harold'!" It lends itself with peculiar harmony to impassioned meditation and luxurious description.

Spenser's sonnets, entitled "Amoretti," composed to commemorate his love for the lady whom he afterwards married, are very intricate in form. They consist of three quatrains closed in by a couplet, the first quatrain being interwoven with the second and the second with the third. They obey the rule that confines each sonnet to a distinct idea. Their beauties, however, are wholly technical; their thin pale sentiment and frigid conceits are fatal to anything like profound human interest.

Very different from the involved and timid sonnets is the triumphant "Epithalamion," which celebrates the completion of the same courtship. I know no poem that realises so directly and vividly the idea of winged words: no poem whose verses soar and precipitate themselves with such a vehemence of impetuous ardour and exultation.

Spenser followed the example of Virgil in trying his skill first upon pastoral poetry. This poetical exercise of his has been criticised by various standards, and pronounced wanting. The Shepherd's Calendar' was unhappily praised by Dryden as showing mastery of the northern dialect, and as being an exact imitation of Theocritus: this was subsequently seen to be a mistake, and, the standard of comparison being retained, Spenser was blamed because he did not imitate Theocritus. Amid the mass of confused criticism of these pastorals, where each critic pronounces from some vague ideal of what pastoral poetry ought to be, the fundamental objection has always been that they do not represent the actual life of shepherds. Shepherds in real life do

not sit in the shade playing on pan-pipes, improvising songs for wagers of lambs and curiously carved bowls, and discoursing in rhymed verse about morality, religion, and politics. But it was not Spenser's design to paint real shepherds, or to copy the features of real pastoral life. His shepherds are allegorical representatives of his friends and his enemies, and exponents of his artistic, moral, and other theories, the whole drifted into a land of the imagination. If we are asked why he chose such a disguise, we must go back to his character, and point to his turn for the picturesque, and his delight in withdrawing from direct contact with the actual world. He loved to wrap hard facts in soft and picturesque allegory. Sir Philip Sidney killed at Zutphen becomes the shepherd Astrophel of Arcadia torn to death by a savage beast, and transformed along with his love Stella into a red and blue flower like a star. Such an Arcadia is purely fanciful, and must be criticised as such not from an unsympathetic distance but out of the mood in which it was conceived. If, indeed, it is said that in the strictly pastoral parts of the poem, Spenser is far inferior to Theocritus, that he neglects the minuter daily and hourly changes of aspect in field and sky, and that there is too little sunshine in his Arcadia, one can understand this criticism as indicating positive defects: the poet might have brought more of this into his Arcadia with the effect of enriching it, and without doing harm to his design. But we miss the whole intention and effect of the poetry if we exact from the poet an adherence to the conditions of the actual life of shepherds. The picturesque environment of hill, wood, dale, silly sheep and ravenous wild beasts, is all that the poet cares for: if he helps us to remember that we are amongst such scenery, he has fulfilled his design. We are not to look for North of England dialect or North of England scenery if we would enjoy Spenser's Arcadia, we must simply let ourselves float into a dreamland of unsubstantial form and colour. The pastoral surroundings are of value only in so far as they colour and transfigure the sentiments of the poetry.

It was again in professed imitation of Virgil that our poet raised his pipe "from rustic tunes to chant heroic deeds." His knights are as shadowy as his shepherds. Spenser's design was not, like Sir Walter Scott's, to revive in imagination the manners, customs, and adventures of chivalry. In the 'Faery Queen,' as in the 'Shepherd's Calendar,' his design was to translate bare realities into poetical form and colour. Stating the general scope of the work, and passing over his adumbrations of living characters, we may say that his knights and fair ladies are virtues impersonated; his monsters and feigned fair ladies, vices impersonated. So far there is a resemblance between the 'Shepherd's Calendar' and the 'Faery Queen :' both lead us into allegorical worlds. But the two worlds are very different; they rose up in the poet's imagination at the bidding of very different emotions. In the 'Shepherd's Calendar' all is pan-piping and peace, composed sadness and grave moral reflection. In the 'Faery Queen,' on the other hand, we are brought into a land of storms and sunshine, fierce encounter and rapturous love-making; we are hurried in rapid change through lively emotions of mystery, terror, voluptuous security, heartrending pity, and admiration of superhuman prowessthrough various scenes from the "Den of Error" to the "House of Holiness," from the "Bower of Bliss" to the "Gardens of Adonis:" now hideousness triumphs, and beauty is in distress; and anon the gates are burst open by a blast of Arthur's horn, or Britomart charges with her charmed spear. The pastoral allegory is insipid if we ignore the hidden meaning; but Faery land is a land of wonder and beauty, where we need remember the hidden meaning only if we desire to pay just homage to the genius of the poet.

Dryden and many others have complained of occasional intricacy and incoherence in the 'Faery Queen.' The admirers of the poet should not meet this complaint by denying the fact for a fact it is that Spenser does often violate the plain laws of space and time.1 To maintain coherence,

1 See, for very decided cases, Book IV., Cantos 8, 9, 10.