prolonged actions must sometimes be supposed to happen in no time and personages are sometimes present or absent as it suits the poet's convenience, coming or going without remark. The proper excuse is to say that the scene is laid "in the delightful land of Faery," where perplexity and confusion are as natural as in a dream. The real explanation probably is, that the poet wrote with great facility, and that in "winging his flight rapidly through the prescribed labyrinth of sweet sounds," he sometimes sang himself to sleep, and forgot exactly where he was.

III. THE CHIEF QUALITIES OF HIS POETRY.

In Thomas Campbell's criticism of the 'Faery Queen,' it is said that, "on a comprehensive view of the whole work, we certainly miss the charm of strength, symmetry, and rapid or interesting progress." The criticism, like all others from the same pen, is carefully studied and just; but it is somewhat startling without farther explanation of the terms. By rapid or interesting progress we must not understand rapid or interesting succession of events; we must lay emphasis on the word progress. Incidents succeed one another quickly and suddenly as in a dream: but they do not progress with the interest of increasing suspense towards their professed end, the accomplishment of the commands of Gloriana "that greatest glorious Queen of Faery land." Nor, had the poem been completed, is it easy to see how the additional cantos could have corrected what we have, and made part answer to part with even balance: the poet makes no apparent effort to proportion with nice care the weight and space assigned to each personage, situation, and adventure. This will be readily allowed. But the critic's meaning in saying that we miss the charm of strength, is more liable to be misunderstood.

If by "strength" is meant the sentiment inspired by the ideal presence of superior might, then, so far from missing that charm in the 'Faery Queen,' we are kept under its fas

cination from beginning to end of the poem: imposing situations and mighty beings surround us on every hand. We are carried through waste wildernesses and interminable forests, the haunts of monsters and powerful magicians : forests darkened by frightful shadows, and filled with sad trembling sounds. Hideous giants and dragons, puissant knights, enchanted weapons, grim caves, stately palaces, gloomy dungeons-these and suchlike conceptions in the Faery Queen' occupy our imaginations with a perpetual stir of wonder, admiration, and awe. "We do not often," says I. Disraeli, "pause at elevations which raise the feeling of the sublime." If that is so, which I very much doubt, it must be because, in that land of wonders, one thing is not felt to be more wonderful than another. We are sustained at a sublime elevation throughout: we move among the primeval elements of sublimity: even on the Idle Lake, or in the Bower of Bliss, or in the Gardens of Adonis, where the senses ache with beauty, our voluptuous delight is permeated and elevated by the presence of supernatural agency. It may perhaps be pleaded by the nice discriminators of language that there is too much grotesqueness and excitement in Spenser's Faery land to warrant the application of the term "sublime:" many, doubtless, would restrict the name to Miltonic sublimity, the steady planetary sublimity that overawes into calmness. Spenser, it is true, sustains us at a different pitch from Milton. To come fully under the spell of the 'Faery Queen,' we must make ourselves as little children listening to the wondrous tales of a nurse: the very diction has in it something of the affected strange words, feigned excitement, and mouthed tones of softness and wonder put on by a skilful story-teller to such an audience: and when we yield ourselves to the poet in such a spirit, he makes our hearts throb with the same absorbing emotions. Of these emotions perhaps the most fitting names are wonder and dread; but they are also fitly termed modes of sublimity, when they rise to a certain pitch. We should call both Milton and Spenser sublime, but sublime in different ways.

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What then did Campbell mean by saying that in the 'Faery Queen' we miss the charm of strength? He meant, probably, the strength arising from clearness and brevity of expression in description, he says, Spenser "exhibits nothing of the brief strokes and robust power which characterise the very greatest poets." It would perhaps be more accurate to say that the brief strokes are supplemented and their abrupt concentrated effect weakened or at least softened by subsequent diffusion. Compare, for example, with Lucrece's frantic exclamations against Night, the following by impatient Arthur when darkness comes between him and his pursuit of Florimel (iii. 4)

"

'Night! thou foul mother of annoyance sad,
Sister of heavy Death, and nurse of Woe,
Which wast begot in Heaven, but for thy bad
And brutish shape thrust down to Hell below,
Where by the grim flood of Cocytus slow,
Thy dwelling is in Erebus' black house,
(Black Erebus, thy husband, is the foe
Of all the gods) where thou ungracious
Half of thy days dost lead in horror hideous.

What had the Eternal Maker need of thee,
The world in his continual course to keep,
That dost all things deface, ne lettest see
The beauty of his work? Indeed in sleep
The slothful body that doth love to steep
His lustless limbs, and drown his baser mind,
Doth praise thee oft, and oft from Stygian deep,
Calls thee his goddess, in his error blind,

And great dame Nature's handmaid cheering every kind.

But well I wot that to an heavy heart,
Thou art the root and nurse of bitter cares,

Breeder of new, renewer of old smarts;
Instead of sleep thou lendest railing tears,
Instead of sleep thou sendest troublous fears
And dreadful visions, in the which alive
The dreary image of sad Death appears :
So from the weary spirit thou dost drive
Desired rest, and men of happiness deprive.

Under thy mantle black there hidden lie
Light-shunning Theft, and traitorous Intent,
Abhorred Bloodshed, and vile Felony,
Shameful Deceit, and Danger imminent,
Foul Horror, and eke hellish Dreariment:
All these I wot in thy protection be,

And light do shun for fear of being shent :
For light y-like is loathed of them and thee;
And all that lewdness love do hate the light to see."

Here we have no lack of brief strokes, but they are not final and solitary: the poet does not leave his conceptions pent up and struggling with repressed force, but expands them into sublime images. Another way of understanding how Spenser's wide expansive manner is opposed to abrupt strength, would be to compare any of his pitched duels with similar performances by Mr Tennyson, in which brevity and symmetry are carried almost to the pitch of burlesque, Compare, for example, the encounter of Guyon and Britomart (iii. 1), with the fight between Gareth and the Evening Star.

The visit of Duessa to Dame Night, and the journey of the weird pair to bring the wounded Sansjoy to Æsculapius, who had been thrust down to hell by the jealousy of Jove, is a passage of magnificent power; the terrible figure of the ancient but still mighty mother out of whose womb came earth and the ruler of heaven and earth, at whose presence dogs bay, owls shriek, and wolves howl, and whose arrival causes such excitement amidst the ghastly population of hell, is quite a typical conception of wild Gothic grandeur:

"So wept Duessa until eventide

That shining lamps in Jove's high house was light.
Then forth she rose, ne longer would abide,

But comes unto the place where the heathen knight
In slumbering swound, nigh void of vital sprite,
Lay covered with enchanted cloud all day :
Whom when she found, as she him left in flight,
To wail his woful case she would not stay,

But to the eastern coast of Heaven makes speedy way.

Where grisly Night, with visage deadly sad,
That Phoebus' cheerful face durst never view,
And in a foul black pitchy mantle clad,

She finds forth coming from her darksome mew,
Where she all day did hide her hated hue.
Before the door her iron chariot stood,
Already harnessed for journey new,

And coal-black steeds yborn of hellish brood
That on their rusty bits did champ as they were wood,

Who when she saw Duessa, sunny bright,
Adorned with gold and jewels shining clear,
She greatly grew amazed at the sight,
And the unacquainted light began to fear,
(For never did such brightness there appear);
And would have back retired to her cave,
Until the witch's speech she gan to hear,
Saying 'Yet, O thou dreaded dame, I crave
Abide, till I have told the message which I have.'
She stayed; and forth Duessa gan proceed :
'O thou, most ancient grandmother of all,

More old than Jove, whom thou at first didst breed,
Or that great house of gods celestial :

Which was begot in Demogorgon's hall,

And sawest the secrets of the world unmade!
Why sufferest thou thy nephews dear to fall
With elfin sword, most shamefully betrayed?

Lo, where the stout Sansjoy doth sleep in deadly shade!

'And, him before, I saw with bitter eyes

The bold Sansfoy shrink underneath his spear:
And now the prey of fowls in field he lies,

Nor wailed of friends nor laid on groaning bier,

That whilom was to me too dearly dear.
Oh! what of gods them boots it to be born

If old Aveugle's sons so evil hear?

Or who shall not great Nightës children scorn, When two of three her nephews are so foul forlorn?

'Up, then; up, dreary dame, of darkness queen! Go, gather up the relics of thy race!

Or else go them avenge; and let be seen

That dreadest Night in brightest day hath place,
And can the children of fair Light deface!'