as it indicates that which is native and habitual; and character is to be justly drawn only by a large induction from all the facts that can be known about a man. All men who give charity are not equally benevolent; nor all who commit murder equally depraved. Neither the treatment which king David showed to Uriah, nor the tears of Nero over a death warrant, nor the throwing an open penknife at a friend, by Henry Martyn, can be accepted as deflecting the main drift of testimony respecting those men. But without a basis of facts it is idle to speculate on the conduct of Spenser in Ireland. Let us say no more than that the enormity of his offences cannot, for obvious reasons, be inferred from the circumstances which attended his expulsion from Kilcolman Castle-in his position, an angel of light would have been as ruthlessly expelled-and that the fact that his political treatise, however Machiavelian, was not published by himself, but came to light long after his death, gives him the benefit of a very important doubt.

The work of Dr. Hart embraces a sketch of the life of Spenser, with notices of, and quotations from all his principal miscellaneous peoms. These matters occupy about one-fourth of the volume. The remainder is an essay on the "Fairy Queen." This essay comprises critical and historical notices, and an elaborate re-construction of the poem, wherein the essayist, with the design of giving a view of the whole work in a small compass, hurries forward the story in his own words, interspersed with frequent, though not long, quotations from the poem. Many things episodical are passed by: but the thread of the plot is carried through to the end. The labor of rendering Spenser's great work in an abbreviated form is, on the whole, ably and faithfully accomplished; and it has obvio-ly been a labor lightened by a devout love and admiration for the genius of the poet. Something of the design and spirit of the essayist may be gathered from the following quotation:

"To catch the spirit and meaning of the concrete and poetical symbols of the anthor; to extract from the flower of poesy, and present in marketable form the honey which it contains; to present to the imagination such pictures as should tend to cultivate and elevate the taste, an 1 enkindle in the heart a love for the good, the beautiful, and the true; to

give so much of the story as to make the characters and pictures intelligible to all classes of readers, without taking from the poem the zest of novelty to those who may have the leisure and the inclination to read it for themselves, and without wearying those who have read it already; to penetrate the instructive mysteries of Belphoebe, and Amoret, and Britomart, and Florimel; this, let it be said, has required something beyond mere verbal criticism, or historical and grammatical illustrations. It has been necessary rather to abstraet the mind from the piles of erudition with which the subject is loaded, and to read the poem as the Christian should read his Bible, with a perpetual appeal to the silent expositor within."

It is evident, on every page, that the taste of Dr. Hart is highly congenial to the romantic and chivalrous character of Spenser's poem. One proof of this is, the care with which he renders, in his own words, his conceptions of the poet's principal female personages. We quote what we find most detachable :—

"Spenser excels in his female characters. He possessed not only the genius requisite for the successful delineation of characters generally, but in a special manner that goodness of heart without which there can be no proper appreciation of the mystery of woman.

*

*

Britoinart was the only daughter of her father, the king of Wales. Merlin, the great Magician, had made for this king a magic mirror, in which he could see both the distant and the future. No foe could ever attack his kingdom unawares, because the king always saw them in his mirror long ere they approached the border. Britomart had been a sort of 'Di Vernon' in her time, and had given Dan Cupid bold defiance. But happening to stroll one day into her father's closet, she took it into her head to look into this wondrous mirror, which could bring into the field of vision whatever scene the wishes, interests, or circumstances, of the beholder might happen to suggest. It is difficult to analyze the subtle essences which compose a young maiden's heart. Whether Britomart was governed by anything more than mere idle curiosity it is impossible to say. The idea of a husband surely had never yet occupied her thoughts. But yet as she gazed in the mirror there came before her, in the distance, the vision of a knight, of whom an elaborate description is given. It was the portrait of one whom she had

never seen. Upon his shield was the name ARTEGAL. That was all she knew

or could learn of him.

Thenceforth the feather in her lofty crest, 'Ruffed of Love, 'gan slowly to avale; And her proud portance and her princely gest, With which she erst triumphèd, now did quail: Sad, solemn, sour, and full of fancies frail She waxed: yet wist she neither how nor why; She wist not, silly maid, what she did ail, Yet wist she was not well at ease, perdy; Yet thought it was not love, but some melancholy.

Henceforth the quiet of her breast is disturbed. She is in love with a mere shadow. But shadow implies substance, and the shadow of Artegal, seen in the mirror, has its representative in a real Artegal somewhere in or out of fairyland. At last under the advice of Merlin, whose cave she visits, she resolves to go forth equipped as a knight, in quest of the unknown and noble stranger whom she had seen in the mirror."

The next is a different character, and more studied in the delineation-BELPHOEBE a woman "having all the grace and delicacy of her sex, without its dependence not like Britomart, unloving, because she has not seen the right one, or not appearing to others to love because she successfully conceals her feelings-but one who can pity the misfortunes, or admire the noble qualities, of a man as she would those of a woman; who does not love, because in the composition of her heart there is no mixture of that subtle element on which love feeds; whose want of love is not want of feeling, nor the result of disappointment, much less of chagrin; who can sympathize with the pains, and alleviate the distresses, of a wounded squire, as she would those of a younger brother; in whose bosom there is no latent undeveloped want; to whose eyes the magic mirror of Merlin would reveal only a group of sisterly nymphs, or a medicinal herb, or a wounded deer; in whose tender and graceful stalk (to vary yet once more the expression) neither the germ has been retarded by late spring, nor the bud blasted by untimely frost, nor the flower already faded and fallen, but its sap, by native constitution, contains only that element which produces branches and leaves--a plant flowerless, indeed, but graceful, unchanging, perennial, green. Belphobe is not a perfect woHer imperfection, however, is of a kind which makes her more admirable, though less interesting. In proportion

man.

as she is less womanly she is more angelic."

Under the character of Belphœbe in the poem, Spenser compliments Queen Elizabeth.

* *

Here is AMORET:-" "By the Amoret of Spenser, we are to understand one whose perfections and imperfections are the counterpart of her sister's [Belphoebe's]; who is both less angelic and more womanly; who is made to love and to be loved; who finds not only her happiness, but her honor and her protection, in a feeling of dependence upon another; * Amoret is a being too earnest to be coy, too confiding to be jealous. She bestows her love not as a boon to another, but as a necessary gratification to herself. Her love is twice blessed. It blesseth her that gives, and him that takes. Her repose is not inward and within herself, but outward upon another. She experiences a high gratification in knowing that she is loved, but a still higher one in loving."

FLORIMEL:-" Her name (meaning flowers and honey) indicates truly that union of sweetness and delicacy which resides in her person. It breathes of the freshness at once of Flora and Sylva, and those unstudied graces which spring from nature, rather than those which result from cultivated and artificial life."

The cause, they say, of this her cruel hate,
Is for the sake of Bellodant the bold,

To whom she bore most fervent love of late
And wooed him by all the ways she could:
But when she saw at last that he ne would,
For ought or nought, be won unto her will,
She turned her love to hatred manifold,
And for his sake vowed to do all the ill
Which she could do to Knights; which now she doth
fulfil.

Prince Arthur, in his knightly wanderings, comes to a halt before the castlegate of a most rancorous and atrociousminded "Soudan ;" and sends in a challenge to the venomous Pagan to come out and fight him.

Wherewith the Soudan, all with fury fraught, Swearing and banning most blasphemously, Commanded straight his armor to be brought: And mounting straight upon a chariot high, (With iron wheels and hooks armed dreadfully, And drawn of cruel steeds which he had fed With flesh of men, whom through fell tyranny He slaughtered had, and ere they were half dead, Their bodies to his beasts for provender had spread.)

So forth he came all in a coat of plate
Burnished with bloody rust, whiles on the green
The Briton Prince him ready did await

In glistering arms right goodly well beseen

In the Soudan, Spenser typifies Philip of Spain, and his chariot is the Spanish Armada. The Soudan attacks and wounds Prince Arthur with missiles, but the prince, mounted on horseback, finds his adversary inaccessible, in his scythearmed chariot, to spear or sword. His horse too shies, and he is completely foiled. But he carries an enchanted shield, which, ordinarily he keeps covered with a case of cloth:

At last, from his victorious shield he drew
The veil which did his [its] powerful light im-
peach;

And coming full before his [the Soudan's] horses'
view,

As they upon him pressed, it, plain, to them did shew.

Like lightning flash that hath the gazer burned, So did the sight thereof their sense dismay, That back again upon themselves they turned, And with their rider ran perforce away: Ne could the Soudan them from flying stay With reins or wonted rule, as well he knew: Nought feared they what he could do or say, But th' only fear that was before their view; From which like mazed deer dismayfully they flew.

Fast did they fly as them their feet could bear.
High over hills, and lowly over dales,
As they were followed of their former fear:
In vain the Pagan bans and swears and rail
And back with both his hands unto him halen

The resty relus, regarded now no more: He to them calls and speaks, yet nought avails; They hear him not, they have forgot his lore; But go which way they list; their guide they have forlore.

Such was the fury of these headstrong steeds,
Soon as the Infant's sun-like shield they saw,
That all obedience, both to words and deeds,
They quite forgot, and scorned all former law:
Through woods and rocks and mountains they
did draw

The iron chariot and the wheels did tear,
And tossed the Paynim without fear or awe;
From side to side, they tossed him here and

there,

Crying to them in vain that nould his crying hear.
Yet still the Prince pursued him close behind,
Oft making offer him to smite, but found
No easy means according to his mind;
At last they have all overthrown to ground
Quite topside turvy, and the Pagan hound
Amongst the iron hooks and grapples keen
Torn all to rags and rent with many a wound;
That no whole piece of him was to be seen,
But scattered all about and strewed upon the green.

This very spirited passage breathes the fierce delight with which the whole English nation regarded the overthrow of the Spanish Armada. It has, to our appreciation, a touch of the comic, which perhaps was not intended by “the sage and serious Spenser." We Americans, with our enlarged ideas of railroad travelling, would not call the catastrophe that involved the blasphemous "Soudan," such a very bad smash-up-only one car cleaned of the trucks, and the brakeman killed.

Once again we will allow Spenser to speak for himself, in a passage, respecting which we will say no more than that nothing else ever need be quoted in vindication of his poetical genius. Archimago, an enchanter, sends an attendant Spirit to the house of Sleep to procure for him a dream. The Spirit

-Making speedy way through spersed air, And through the world of waters wide and deep, To Morpheus' house doth hastily repair, 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, Whiles sad right over him her mantle black doth spread:

Whose double gates he findeth locked fast; The one fair framed of burnished 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 rain upon the loft,

Mixt with a murmuring wind, much like the

sound

Of swarming bees did cast him in a swown. No other noise, nor people's troubled cries, As still are wont t'annoy the walled town, Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lies Wrapt in eternal silence far from enemies.

There are doubtless many before whose eyes this article will come, who know little or nothing about the "Fairy Queen." Let us therefore, before we leave the poem, sketch, briefly, the plan

of it :

Spenser laid out his work in twelve Books, six only of which he lived to complete. Each of these books is occupied with the adventures of a particular Knight, who goes forth as the champion of a particular virtue; and the accessory personages who appear, illustrate, in their characters and conduct, the virtue (or its opposites) treated of in the book in which they appear. Each of the champion Knights figures prominently in a book by himself, and then goes off the stage, or appears afterwards as an accessory character.

This explanation does not make manifest the connection between the books, nor the pertinence of the title to the whole. But Spenser did not finish his design. He completed six books, only, and it was not until the twelfth that he proposed to give his readers a view of his whole plan. This appears from a letter which he wrote to Raleigh, wherein he says:"The beginning, therefore of my history, if it were to be told by an historiographer, should be the twelfth book, which is the last; where I devise that the Fairy Queen kept her annual feast twelve days, upon which several days the occasion of the twelve several adventures happened"-not the adventures themselves, but the "occasion" or cause of them for these several Knights or champions who go through these adventures, are subjects of the Fairy Queen sent out by her on "occasion," and are abroad occupied for various periods.

The ingenuity of Spenser enabled him to make these pattern Knights not only illustrate the several virtues of Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Justice, &c. but to typify actual personages. In the course of the poem we find that the Fairy Queen is Queen Elizabeth, in her royal character, and Belphoebe, the same, in

แ

her character of a most virtuous and beautiful lady." Prince Arthur, the Fairy Queen's most magnificent Knight, is the Earl of Leicester; Artegal, the Knight of Justice, is Sidney; the "Soudan" is Philip, as we have seen &c. Thus, his allegory becomes in many places a double allegory, and the whole forms a metrical romance, which, notwithstanding its great length, is carried forward with wonderful facility and rapidity, introducing us to knights, ladies, pages, squires, Saracens, enchanters, enchantresses, witches, spirits, dreams, dragons, wild-beasts, blatant-beasts, giants, satyrs, wild-men, iron-men, fishermen, mermaids, shepherds, shepherdesses, nymphs, graces, amazons, hermits, palmers, old Proteus and innumerable personified virtues and vices.

And now come we to a point which has been much discussed among critics: Why does this great poem, which seems the very embodiment of all that is romantic, wild, and beautiful in the old Gothic fiction, remain, in our day, so much in the background of publicity?-Why is not Spenser as much read as Shakespeare and Milton? In fertility of invention is he surpassed by Shakespeare, or equalled by Milton?-or in the genuine poetical value of his materials, and the moral purity and beauty of his creations, has he anything to fear from the comparison? yet it is evident that "The Fairy Queen" is not read, as "Hamlet," and "Paradise Lost," are read.

In explanation of this fact, various reasons have been assigned; such as the obsolete language, the allegory, and the great length of the poem. But the successes of Shakespeare, Bunyan, and Milton, are sufficient to set aside these objections. Dr. Hart, near the close of his essay, offers a few observations of his own on this point. He thinks that Spenser's want of entire success is due to a want of art in one particular-that his fertile imagination presented him so rapidly with new scenes and adventures, that he neglected to mark his transitions clearly and boldly-that "he enters so fully into the present scene that he forgets the one just past or just to come. The story-teller should be to some extent like a showman. To pull successfully the wires, he should stand apart, behind the scenes. * * * * * To be so enwrapped in the subject as to forget your audience, is to reckon without your host. Spenser is so absorbed with what is immediately in hand, his imagination

is so completely engrossed with the present object, that the wants of the reader are forgotten. The reader is precipitated from one scene to another, without any sufficient warning or preparation. He consequently gets bewildered."

This is just criticism, so far as it sets forth a fault of Spenser; but does it thoroughly explain why he is not universally read? Shakespeare, also, is notoriously careless of the order and connection of his scenes; and writes on in the same absorbed and self-forgetful manner; while Milton, on the other hand, betrays more self-consciousness and artistical design to the reader than either Shakespeare or Spenser. Yet, of the three poets, Shakespeare, unquestionably, is the most universally appreciated. The exposition of Dr. Hart does not wholly satisfy us. Let us observe how authors obtain their readers. When we take up a book that is new to us, do we generally open at the first page and read it through? Do we not usually reserve that, until we have first dipped in at random here and there, and withont understanding the connection, ascertained whether what we have lighted upon pleases us? The best writings of the best authors have a singular magnetic power upon minds constituted to appreciate them. Open them where you will, you immediately happen upon something that grapples your attention. Let us try the experiment. Here is "Hamlet." Fling the book across the room. It has fallen open. Now go and read the first sentence that you see:—

"A murderer and a villain!

A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings:
A cut purse of the empire and the rule
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
And put it in his pocket!"

There! you pick the book up and put it in your own pocket, resolved to borrow or steal it till you have read more.

This power of seizing the attention, lives, alike, in the matter and the manner of a writer-and quite as much in the manner as in the matter. In those literary works, and particularly in those poems which are most read, we always find an intensely vital and vivifying spirit, compared with which, in producing popular effect, unity and coherence of design are of secondary importance. The perception of this fact has led some. critics to the extreme of asserting that inner is everything to a poet, and that

This is

"he who executes best is best." going too far. Be it understood of ourselves that fine frenzies do not satisfy us, if they are not coherent and consistent-if they do not reproduce, in new combinations the true appearances of the external world and the natural port and gesture of the human soul. The best poetry is not only the most spirited, but it is the most true to nature, the most logical, the most inventive; it will bear to be read forcibly, with full lungs, and the strong utterance of passion; and it will bear to be read coolly and critically, like a demonstration in geometry. We do not say that such poetry is the only poetry; but that it is the best. It satisnies the reason and judgment, it satisfies the imagination and passions, it rouses and exalts the whole soul, it

Dissolves us into ecstasies

And brings all heaven before our eyes,

it is an eagle-winged eloquence, that first comes down and takes a strong grapple on the minds of men, with the talons of reason and judgment, and then bears them away on the pinions of imagination. Such poetry, once written, makes itself known and endures. It is acknowledged as equally supreme, "o'er the mind's sunshine bright and warm," and "o'er reason's colder hours."

In Spenser's poetry we find such purity and brilliancy of materials, and such fertility of invention, as have hard, y been excelled; but, in brilliancy of spir.t, it does not come up to the highest standard. His temper is not high-strung. He does not deal with the strongest passions in the heartiest manner. There is glow and feeling, but not to the extent of that divine ardor, which is rapturous, and which kindles rapture. His highest enthusiasm is in the Epithalamium. His "Fairy Queen" we read with admiration of its magnificence, yet with a feeling that other poets, some of them of much less inventive genius, have achieved profounder effects in productious of much less compass, written with more concentrated energy and power. Posterity, however, will not willingly let his works die. There will always be those who will remember, and by their labors assist others in remembering, the moral purity and tenderness, and the bountiful ideal wealth of Edmund Spenser.

Of his own age he was a conspicuous light, as he is still a shining illustration. His rank is with Bacon and Shakspeare,