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 Até threw;
For which the Idaan 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 flow'd about it round.20
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
Plungèd 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:

He daily died, yet never thoroughly dyễn couth 22

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!

But, if that thou be such as I thee see,

Of grace I pray thee give to eat and drink to me !"

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'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? 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 damnèd 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,

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 remainèd 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 stanzas here following, and the previous one beginning, And over all, &c., says, that they are unrivalled for the "portentous massiveness 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," published 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.

15 “Not such as earth," &c.-Upton thinks it not unlikely that

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 beings, an aggravation (according to his customary improvement 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.

16 There mournful cypress grew in greatest store, &c.

Among the trees and flowers here mentioned, heben, 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 philosophy not having been present. Belamy is bel ami, fair friend,— a phrase answering to good friend, in the old French writers.

17 The garden of Proserpina this hight.

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The idea of a garden and a golden tree for Proserpina is in Claudian, De 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

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 superior 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 certainly 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 possession 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 disagreea.

"He calls the three goddesses that contended for the prize of beauty, boldly but elegantly enough, Idæan 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 Hesperus, 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