over a book, but would have put the history into the mouth of some proper person to relate it. But I have already said that this Work is not to be examined by the strict rules of epick poetry.

The last Canto of this Second Book being designed to show the utmost trial of the Virtue of Temperance, abounds with the most pleasurable ideas and representations which the fancy of the Poet could assemble together; but, from the 58th stanza to the end, it is for the most part copied, and many whole stanzas translated, from the famous episode of Armida in Tasso.

The

reader may observe, that the Italian genius for luxury appears very much in the descriptions of the garden, the fountain, and the nymphs; which, however, are finely amplified and improved by our English poet. I shall give but one instance in the following celebrated stanza, which, to gratify the curiosity of those who may be willing to compare the copy with the original, I shall set down in Italian.

• Vezzosi augelli, infra le verdi fronde,
Temprano à prova lascivette note:
'Mormora l'aura, e fà le foglie e l'onde
Garrir, che variamente ella percote.
Quando taccion gli augelli, alto risponde;
Quando cantan gli augei, piu lieve scote.
Sia caso od arte, hor accompagna, ed hora
Alterna i versi lor la Musica ora.'

Spenser has two stanzas on this thought, the last of which only is an imitation of Tasso, but with finer turns of the verse, which are so artificial, that he seems to make the musick he describes.

• Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound
Of all that mote delight a daintie eare,
Such as attonce might not on living ground,
Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere:

Right hard it was for wight which did it heare
To read what manner musicke that mote bee;
For all that pleasing is to living eare

Was there consorted in one harmonee; Birdes, voices, instruments, windes, waters, all agree:

The ioyous birdes, shrouded in chearefull shade,
Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet;
'Th' angelicall soft trembling voyces made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver-sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmure of the water's fall;
The water's fall, with difference discreet,
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call;
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.'

Sir Guyon and the Palmer, rescuing the youth who was held captive by Acrasia in this delightful mansion, resembles that of the two warriours recovering Rinaldo from the charms of Armida in the Italian poem.

In the Third Book, the character of Britomartis, a lady-errant, who is the heroine, and performs the chief adventure, resembles Ariosto's

Bradamante, and Tasso's Clarinda; as they are all copies of the Camilla in Virgil.

Among the chief beauties in this book, we may reckon that episode in which, Britomartis goes to the cave of Merlin, and is entertained with a prophetical account of her future marriage. and offspring. This thought is remotely taken: from Virgil, but more immediately from Ariosto, who has represented Bradamante on the like occasion making a visit to the tomb of Merlin,. which he is forced for that purpose to suppose to : be in Gaul; where she sees, in like manner, in a vision, the heroes and captains who were to be > her descendants.

The story of Marinell, and of Belphobe and Amoret, in

that of the birthwhich the manner

of Ovid is well imitated, are very amusing. That complaint against Night, at the end of Canto IV..

Night! thou foule mother of annoyaunce sad,
Sister of heavie Death, and nourse of Woe, &c.'

though it were only considered as detached from the rest, might be esteemed a very fine piece of poetry. But there is nothing more entertaining in this whole Book than the prospect of the Gardens of Adonis, which is varied from the Bower of Bliss in the former Book, by an agreeable. mixture of philosophical fable. The figure of

Time, walking in this garden, spoiling the beauty of it, and cutting down the flowers, is a very fine and significant Allegory.

I cannot so much commend the story of the Squire of Dames, and the intrigue between Paridell and Hellenore: these passages savour too much of the coarse and comick mixtures in Ariosto: but that image of Jealousy, at the end of Canto X. grown to a savage, throwing himself into a cave, and lying there without ever shutting one eye, under a craggy clift just threatening to fall, is strongly conceived, and very poetical. There is likewise a great variety of fancy in drawing up and distinguishing, by their proper emblems, the visionary persons in the Mask of Cupid, which is one of the chief embellishments of this Book.

In the story of Cambel and Canace, in Book IV. the author has taken the rise of his invention from the Squire's Tale in Chaucer, the greatest part of which was lost. The battle of Cambel with the three brethren, and the sudden parting of it by that beautiful machine of the appearance of Concord, who by a touch of her wand charms down the fury of the warriours, and converte them into friends, is one of the most shining passages in this Legend. We may add to this the fiction concerning the Girdle of Florimel, which s a good Allegory; as also the description of Ate, or Discord; that of Care, working like a

1

smith, and living amidst the perpetual noise of hammers; and especially the Temple of Venus, which is adorned with a great variety of fancy. The prayer of a lover in this temple, which begins,

• Great Venus! queene of beauty, and of grace,'

is taken from Lucretius's invocation of the same goddess in the beginning of his poem, and may be reckoned one of the most elegant translations in our language. The continuation of the fable of Marinel, though not so strictly to the subject of this Legend, gives occasion to the Poet to introduce that admirable episode of the marriage of the Thames and the Medway, with the train of the sea-gods, nymphs, and rivers, and espesially those of England and Ireland, that were present at the ceremony; all which are described with a surprising variety, and with very agreeable mixtures of geography; among which Spenser has not forgot to mention his Mulla, the river which ran through his own grounds.

Besides the general morals and allegories in the Faerie Queene, there are some parallel passages and characters which, as I have said, were designed to allude to particular actions and persons; yet no part is so full of them as Book V. which, being framed on the Virtue of Justice, is a kind of figurative representation of Queen