Tho, up him taking in their tender hands
They easily unto her chariot bear;

Her team at her commandment quiet stands,
Whiles they the corse into her wagon rear,
And strow with flowers the lamentable bier;
Then all the rest into their coaches climb,
And through the brackish waves their passage shear;
Upon great Neptune's neck they softly swim,
And to her watery chamber swiftly carry him.

Deep in the bottom of the sea her bower
Is built of hollow billows heaped high,

Like to thick clouds that threat a stormy shower,
And vaulted all within like to the sky,

In which the gods do dwell eternally;

There they him laid in easy couch well dight,
And sent in haste for Tryphon, to apply

Salves to his wounds, and medicines of might:
For Tryphon of sea-gods the sovereign leech is hight."

To get a full notion of Spenser's power of "ravishing human sense " with word-music, one must read at least a canto, if not a whole book of the 'Faery Queen.' The dreamy melodious softness of his numbers and his ideas has something of the luxurious charm that the song of the mermaids had for the ear of Guyon (Book ii. Canto 12):

"And now they nigh approached to the stead
Whereas those mermaids dwelt; it was a still
And calmy bay, on th' one side sheltered
With the broad shadow of an hoary hill.

So now to Guyon as he passed by,

Their pleasant tunes they sweetly thus applied;
"O thou fair son of gentle Faëry,

Thou art in mighty arms most magnified

Above all knights that ever battle tried:

O turn thy rudder hitherward a while!

Here may thy storm-beat vessel safely ride;
This is the port of rest from troublous toil,

The world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome turmoil."

With that the rolling sea, resounding soft,

In his big base them fitly answered;
And on the rock the waves breaking aloft
A solemn mean unto them measured;
The whiles sweet Zephyrus loud whistleled
His treble-a strange kind of harmony,
Which Guyon's senses softly tickelèd,
That he the boatman bade row easily

And let him hear some part of their rare melody."

It is usually said that Spenser has no humour. His humour, indeed, is of the most quiet and lurking order, and may easily pass unobserved among so many objects of wonder and beauty. But though unobtrusive it is nevertheless there. The drowsy irritability of Morpheus (i. 1), and the idiotic "He could not tell" of the grave and reverend Ignaro (i. 8), are in the most delicate vein of humour. Archimago's disguise as a hermit, and his affectation of childish senility and unworldly simplicity, are also very delicately touched off: the enemy of mankind appears

as

"An aged sire, in long black weeds y-clad,

His feet all bare, his beard all hoary grey,
And by his belt his book he hanging had ;
Sober he seem'd and very sagely sad;
And to the ground his eyes were lowly bent,
Simple in shew, and void of malice bad;
And all the way he prayed as he went,

And often knocked his breast, as one that did repent.

He fair the knight saluted, louting low,
Who fair him quited, as that courteous was;
And after asked him, if he did know

Of strange adventures, which abroad did pass,
'Ah! my dear son,' quoth he, 'how should, alas!

Silly old man that lives in hidden cell,

Bidding his beads all day for his trespass,

Tidings of war and worldly trouble tell?

With holy father sits not with such things to mell.'"

We may be certain, from Spenser's antipathy to the Roman Catholics, that this was a character in one of the

lost nine Comedies: the sudden casting off of the disguise, and the flaming out in his true colours as―

"A bold bad man! that dared to call by name

Great Gorgon, prince of darkness and dead night-"

would have been a startling effect.

The most openly humorous character in the 'Faery Queen' is Braggadocio, whose behaviour is often farcical. See his bold pretences to Archimago, and his abject terror and ignominious skulking, in Book ii. 3.

Spenser has been accused of bad taste in mixing up heathen mythology with the narratives of the Bible. In Book ii. Canto 7, he represents Tantalus and Pontius Pilate as suffering in the same place of punishment. The answer that wicked men of all ages and creeds may reasonably be supposed to suffer together, is complete.

He has also been accused of interfering with ancient mythology, marrying Clio to Apollo, making Cupid the sister of the Graces, bringing Neptune to the marriage of the Thames and the Medway, and adding without authority to Neptune's retinue. On this great liberty I do not venture to pronounce.

He has been accused of extravagant violations of probability. To this it may be answered that, when we consent to be introduced to Faery land, we sign a dispensation from the ordinary conditions of life.

These charges are frivolous: much more plausibility attaches to his alleged transgressions of the boundary between pleasure and disgust. The picture of Error is said to be intolerably loathsome

"Therewith she spew'd out of her filthy maw
A flood of poison horrible and black,
Full of great lumps of flesh and gobbets raw,
Which stunk so vilely that it forc'd him slack
His grasping hold, and from her turn aback;
Her vomit full of books and papers was,

With loathly frogs and toads, which eyes did lack,

And creeping sought way in the weedy grass;
Her filthy parbreak all the place defiled has."

The picture of Duessa unmasked is still more disgusting. And yet Burke is said to have been fond of quoting the description of Error. To persons of sober refinement, for whom the energy of indignant disgust has no fascination but is merely repulsive, such passages can be justified only as being occasional discords, heightening by contrast the surrounding harmonies, or at the worst, disagreeable episodes tided over by the general sublimity and beauty. Yet the critic should not ignore the fact that great poets of our race have created such passages, and that many readers are drawn to them by irresistible fascination. It is a paradox that descriptions of things so foul and odious should possess any spell but it is not to be denied that they do possess a strong spell, and that for minds of the most poetical constitution. Spenser's design may have been entirely moral in drawing repulsive pictures of Error and Popery; but there is, whatever may have been his design, a certain intrinsic charm of sublime exaltation in the supreme energy of loathing.

238

CHAPTER V.

ELIZABETHAN SONNETEERS.

THE last ten or fifteen years of the sixteenth century was a period of amazing poetic activity: there is nothing like it in the history of our literature. Never in any equal period of our history did so much intellect go to the making of verses. They had not then the same number of distracting claims : literary ambition had fewer outlets. Carlyle, Grote, Mill, Gladstone, Disraeli, had they lived in the age of Elizabeth, would all have had to make their literary reputation in verse, and all might have earned a respectable place among our poets-might, at least, like Francis Bacon, have composed some single piece of sufficient excellence to be thought worthy of the Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics.' Amidst a general excitement and ambition of fame the gift of song may be brought to light where in less favourable circumstances it might have been extinguished by other interests. And the rivalry of men endowed with eager and powerful intellects must always act as a stimulus to the genuine poet, although all their efforts come short of the creations of genius.

Three fashions of love-poetry may be particularised as flourishing with especial vigour during those ten or fifteen years -pastoral songs and lyrics, sonnets, and tales of the same type as Venus and Adonis. Spenser did much to confirm if not to set the pastoral fashion; but perhaps still more was done by Sir Philip Sidney with his 'Arcadia' and hist sonnets of Astrophel to Stella. These two poets leading the way to the sweet pastoral country of craggy mountain,