6 The passage, though properly respecting dramatick poets, is equally applicable to the action of the Faerie Queene. It is impossible for a 'piece, whose subject is an allegorical action, to interest us very much. Those, which writers ' of approved wit and talents have hazarded in 'this kind, have not succeeded so well as others, where they have been disposed to be less inge'nious, and to treat historically their subject.Our heart requires truth even in fiction itself; and, when it is presented with an allegorical 'fiction, it cannot determine itself, if I may be allowed the expression, to enter into the senti'ments of those ehimerical personages. A theatrical piece, were it to speak only to the mind, 'would never be capable of engaging our attention through the whole performance. We may therefore apply the words of Lactantius upon this occasion. Poetick licence has its bounds, beyond which you are not permitted to carry your fiction. A poet's art consists in making a good representation of things that might have 'really happened, and embellishing them with ele'gant images. Totum autem, quod referas, finineptum esse et mendacem, potius gere, id est quam poetam.' T. WARTON. 148 MR. WARTON'S REMARKS ON SPENSER'S STANZA, VERSIFICATION, AND LANGUAGE. ALTHOUGH Spenser's favourite Chaucer bad made use of the ottava rima*, or stanza of eight lines; yet it seems probable, that Spenser was principally induced to adopt it, with the addition of one line, from the practice of Ariosto and Tasso, the most fashionable poets of his age. But Spenser, in choosing this stanza, did not sufficiently consider the genius of the English language, which does not easily fall into a frequent repetition of the same termination; a circumstance natural to the Italian, which deals largely in identical cadences. Besides, it is to be remembered, that Tasso and Ariosto did not embarrass themselves with the necessity of finding out so many similar terminations as Spenser, Their ottava rima has only * Chaucer's stanza is not strictly so. Betussi, in his life of Boccace, acquaints us, that Boccace was the inventor of the ottava rima, and that the Theseide of that author was the first poem in which it was ever applied. T. WARton. The three similar endings, alternately rhyming. two last lines formed a distinct rhyme. Bút, in Spenser, the second rhyme is repeated four times, and the third three*. This constraint led our author into many absurdities; the most striking and obvious of which seem to be the following. I. It obliged him to dilate the thing to be expressed, however unimportant, with trifling and tedious circumlocutions, viz. F. Q. ii. ii. 44. 'Now hath fair Phoebe with her silver face Thrise seene the shadowes of this neather world, Sith last I left that honourable place, In which her roiall presence is enrold.' That is, It is three months since I left her palace. II. It necessitated him, when matter failed towards the close of a stanza, to run into a ridiculous redundancy and repetition of words, as in F. Q. ií. ix. 33. "In which was nothing pourtrabed nor wrought, Nor wrought nor pourtrahed, but easie to be thought.' III. It forced him, that he might make out his * See examples of the measures of the Provincial poets, in Petrarch. Spenser forms a compound of many of these. SPENSER. VOL. IX, T. WARTON. complement of rhymes, to introduce a puerile or impertinent idea, as in F. Q. ii. ix. 45. Nor that proud towre of Troy, though richly Being here laid under the compulsion of producing a consonant word to spilt and built, which are preceding rhymes, he has mechanically given us an image at once little and improper. To the difficulty of a stanza so injudiciously chosen, I think we may properly impute the great number of his ellipses; and it may be easily conceived, how that constraint, which occasioned superfluity, should at the same time be the cause of omission. Notwithstanding these inconveniencies flow from Spenser's measure, it must yet be owned, that some advantages arise from it; and we may venture to affirm, that the fullness and signi ficancy of Spenser's descriptions is often owing to the prolixity of his stanza, and the multitude of his rhymes. The discerning reader is desired to consider the following stanza, as an instance of what is here advanced. Guyon is binding FUROR, F. Q. ii. iv. 15. With hundred yron chaines he did him bind, And grimly gnash, threatning revenge in vaine. Stared full wide, and threw forth sparkes of fyre; And, more for ranck despight then for great paine, Shakt his long locks colourd like copper-wyre, 'And bit his tawny beard to shew his raging yre.' In the subsequent stanza there are some images, which perhaps were produced by a multiplicity of rhymes. F. Q. iv. v. 45. • He all that night, that too long night, did passe. And now the day out of the ocean-mayne Began to peepe above this earthly masse, • With pearly dew sprinkling the morning grasse: Then up he rose like heavie lump of lead, • That in his face, as in a looking glasse, 'The signs of anguish one might plainely read.' Dryden, I think, somewhere remarks, that rhyme often helped him to a thought; an observation which, probably, Spenser's experience had likewise supplied him with. Spenser, however, must have found more assistance, in this respect, from writing in rhyme, than Dryden, in proportion as his stanza obliged him to a more repeated use of it. In speaking of Spenser's rhyme, it ought to be remarked, that he often new-spells a word to make it rhyme more precisely. Take these specimens, F. Q. v. xii. 31. And of her own foule entrailes makes her meat, Meat fit for such a monster's monsterous DYEAT,' |