That was in ocean waves yet never wet,

But firme is fixt, and sendeth light from farre
To all that in the wide deepe wandring arre;
And chearefull chaunticlere with his note shrill
Had warned once, that Phœbus' fiery carre
In hast was climbing up the easterne hill,
Full envious that Night so long his roome did fill;

When those accursed messengers of hell,

That feigning dreame, and that faire-forged spright
Came, &c. B. I. c. 2. st. 1.

*

At last, the golden orientall gate

Of greatest Heaven gan to open fayre;

And Phœbus, fresh as brydegrome to his mate,
Came dauncing forth, shaking his deawie hayre;
And hurld his glistring beams through gloomy ayre.
Which when the wakeful Elfe perceiv'd, streightway
He started up, and did him selfe prepayre
In sunbright armes and battailons array;
For with that Pagan proud he combat will that day.
Ib. c. 5. st. 2.

Observe also the exceeding vividness of Spenser's descriptions. They are not, in the true sense of the word, picturesque; but are composed of a wondrous series of images, as in our dreams. Compare the following passage with any thing you may remember in pari materia in Milton or Shakspeare:

His haughtie helmet, horrid all with gold,

Both glorious brightnesse and great terrour bredd ;
For all the crest a dragon did enfold

With greedie pawes, and over all did spredd
His golden winges; his dreadfull hideous hedd,
Close couched on the bever, seemd to throw
From flaming mouth bright sparkles fiery redd,

33

That suddeine horrour to faint hartes did show;

And scaly tayle was stretcht adowne his back full low.

Upon the top of all his loftie crest

A bounch of haires discolourd diversly,

With sprinkled pearle and gold full richly drest,

Did shake, and seemd to daunce for jollitie;
Like to an almond tree ymounted hye
On top of greene Selinis all alone,
With blossoms brave bedecked daintily,
Whose tender locks do tremble every one

At everie little breath that under heaven is blowne.
Ib. c. 7. st. 31-2.

4. You will take especial note of the marvellous independence and true imaginative absence of all particular space or time in the Faery Queene. It is in the domains neither of history or geography; it is ignorant of all artificial boundary, all material obstacles; it is truly in land of Faery, that is, of mental space. The poet has placed you in a dream, a_charmed-sleep, and you neither wish, nor have the power, to inquire where you are, or how you got there. It reminds me of some lines of my own:

Oh! would to Alla!

The raven or the sea-mew were appointed
To bring me food!—or rather that my soul
Might draw in life from the universal air!
It were a lot divine in some small skiff
Along some ocean's boundless solitude
To float for ever with a careless course
And think myself the only being alive!

Remorse, Act iv. sc. 3.

Indeed Spenser himself, in the conduct of his great

poem, may be represented under the same image, his symbolizing purpose being his mariner's compass:

As pilot well expert in perilous wave,

That to a stedfast starre his course hath bent,
When foggy mistes or cloudy tempests have
The faithfull light of that faire lampe yblent,
And coverd Heaven.with hideous dreriment;
Upon his card and compas firmes his eye,
The maysters of his long experiment,
And to them does the steddy helme apply,
Bidding his winged vessell fairely forward fly.
B. II. c. 7. st. 1.

So the poet through the realms of allegory.

5. You should note the quintessential character of Christian chivalry in all his characters, but more especially in his women. The Greeks, except, perhaps, in Homer, seem to have had no way of making their women interesting, but by unsexing them, as in the instances of the tragic Medea, Electra, &c. Contrast such characters with Spenser's Una, who exhibits no prominent feature, has no particularization, but produces the same feeling that a statue does, when contemplated at a distance :

From her fayre head her fillet she undight,
And layd her stole aside: her angels face,
As the great eye of Heaven, shyned bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place;

Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace.
B. I. c. 3. st. 4.

6. In Spenser we see the brightest and purest form of that nationality which was so common a

characteristic of our elder poets. There is nothing unamiable, nothing contemptuous of others, in it. To glorify their country-to elevate England into a queen, an empress of the heart-this was their passion and object; and how dear and important an object it was or may be, let Spain, in the recollection of her Cid, declare! There is a great magic in national names. What a damper to all interest is a list of native East Indian merchants! Unknown names are non-conductors; they stop all sympathy. No one of our poets has touched this string more exquisitely than Spenser; especially in his chronicle of the British Kings (B. II. c. 10.), and the marriage of the Thames with the Medway (B. IV. c. 11.), in both which passages the mere names constitute half the pleasure we receive. To the same feeling we must in particular attribute Spenser's sweet reference to Ireland :

Ne thence the Irishe rivers absent were;

Sith no lesse famous than the rest they be, &c. Ib.

And Mulla mine, whose waves I whilom taught to weep.

Ib.

And there is a beautiful passage of the same sort in the Colin Clout's Come Home Again :

"One day," quoth he, "I sat, as was my trade,
Under the foot of Mole," &c.

Lastly, the great and prevailing character of Spenser's mind is fancy under the conditions of

imagination, as an ever present but not always active power. He has an imaginative fancy, but he has not imagination, in kind or degree, as Shakspeare and Milton have; the boldest effort of his powers in this way is the character of Talus.* Add to this a feminine tenderness and almost maidenly purity of feeling, and above all, a deep moral earnestness which produces a believing sympathy and acquiescence in the reader, and you have a tolerably adequate view of Spenser's intellectual being.

LECTURE VII.

Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and

A

Massinger.

CONTEMPORARY is rather an ambiguous term, when applied to authors. It may simply mean that one man lived and wrote while another was yet alive, however deeply the former may have been indebted to the latter as his model. There have been instances in the literary world that might remind a botanist of a singular sort of parasite plant, which rises above ground, independent and unsupported, an apparent original; but trace its roots, and you will find the fibres all ter

B. 5. Legend of Artegall. Ed.