With fair discourse the evening so they pass, The drooping night thus creepeth on them fast; Sweet slumbering dew; the which to sleep them bids. His magic books and arts of sundry kinds, He seeks out mighty charms to trouble sleepy minds. Then choosing out few words most horrible And forth he call'd out of deep darkness dread 80 To Morpheus' house doth hastily repair.-9 And low, where dawning day doth never peep, While sad night over him her mantle black doth spread. Whose double gates he findeth locked fast; The one fair fram'd of burnish'd ivory, The other all with silver overcast; And wakeful dogs before them far do lie, And more to lull him in his slumber soft, A trickling stream, from high rock tumbling down, The messenger approaching to him spake ; As one then in a dream, whose drier brain Is tost with troubled sights and fancies weak, He mumbled soft, but would not all his silence break. The sprite then 'gan more boldly him to wake, 66 'Hither," quoth he, " me Archimago sent; He bids thee to him send for his intent A fit false dream, that can delude the sleepers' sent."ll The god obey'd; and calling forth straightway Deliver'd it to him, and down did lay His heavy head, devoid of careful cark; And on his little wings the dream he bore In haste unto his lord, where he him left afore. 1 Welled forth alway. The modulation of this charming stanza is exquisite. Let us divide it into its pauses, and see what we have been hearing : A little lowly hermitage it was Down in a dale, | hard by a forest's side, | In travel to and fro : | a little wide | His holy things | each morn and eventide ; [ Thereby a crystal stream did gently play | Which from a sacred fountain wellèd forth alway. Mark the variety of the pauses, of the accentua tion of the syllables, and of the intonation of the vowels; all closing in that exquisite last line, as soft and continuous as the water it describes. The repetition of the words little and holy add to the sacred snugness of the abode. We are to fancy the little tenement on the skirts of a forest, that is to say, within, but not deeply within, the trees; the chapel is near it, but not close to it, more embowered; and the rivulet may be supposed to circuit both chapel and hermitage, running partly under the trees between mossy and flowery banks, for hermits were great cullers of simples; and though Archimago was a false hermit, we are to suppose him living in a true hermitage. It is one of those pictures which remain for ever in the memory; and the succeeding stanza is worthy of it. 2 Arrived there the little house they fill. Not literally the house, but the apartment as a specimen of the house; for we see by what follows that the hermitage must have contained at least four rooms; one in which the knight and the lady were introduced, two more for their bed-chambers, and a fourth for the magician's study. 3 Nor look for entertainment where none was. "Entertainment" is here used in the restricted sense of treatment as regards food and accommodation; according to the old inscription over inn-doors "Entertainment for man and horse." The noblest mind the best contentment has. This is one of Spenser's many noble sentiments expressed in as noble single lines, as if made to be recorded in the copy-books of full-grown memories. As, for example, one which he is fond of repeating: No service loathsome to a gentle kind. and that fine Alexandrine, Weak body well is chang'd for mind's redoubled force. And another, which Milton has imitated in ComusVirtue gives herself light in darkness for to wade. 5 “Let none them read."—As if we could! And yet while we smile at the impossibility, we delight in this solemn injunction of the Poet's, so child-like, and full of the imaginative sense of the truth of what he is saying. 6 A bold bad man that dared to call by name Great Gorgon. This is the ineffable personage, whom Milton with a propriety equally classical and poetical, designates, as The dreaded name Of Demogorgon. Par. Lost, Book ii. v. 965. Ancient believers apprehended such dreadful consequences from the mention of him, that his worst |