it is "extremely tiresome;" yet this book was the favourite and model in the age of Shakspeare! Shakspeare has in a thousand exquisite places imitated the scenes, the manners, and even the diction of the Arcadia;' Shirley, Beaumont, and Fletcher turned to it as their text-book; Sidney enchanted two later brothers in Waller and Cowley; and the world of fashion in Sidney's age culled their phrases out of the 'Arcadia,' which served them as a complete 'Academy of Compliments.' Disraeli then goes on to show that modern critics, misled by the title of this prose romance, which Sidney injudiciously adopted from Sannazzaro, have generally concluded, without taking the trouble of reading it, to consider it as a pastoral, similar to that multitudinous class of fictions so popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and of which the Galatea' of Cervantes is a well-known specimen. The fact is, however, that the Arcadian or pastoral parts of Sidney's work are merely supplementary, forming no essential portion of the narrative; being, in short, merely interludes of shepherds introduced dancing and reciting verses at the close of each book. There can be no doubt but that the scenes and sentiments described with such a sweet luxuriance of beautiful language were reflections of true events in Sidney's own chivalrous life, and transcripts from his own gentle and heroic heart. We cannot better conclude our notice on this work than by a selection from the remarks of Disraeli :-" He describes objects on which he loves to dwell, with a peculiar richness of fancy he had shivered his lance in the tilt, and had managed the fiery courser in his career; and in the vivid picture of the shock between two knights we see distinctly every motion of the horse and horseman. But sweet is his loitering hour in the sunshine of luxuriant gardens, or as we lose ourselves in the green solitudes of the forests which most he loves. There is a feminine delicacy in whatever alludes to the female character, not merely courtly, but imbued with that sensibility which St. Palaye has remarkably described as 'full of refinement and fanaticism.' And this may suggest an idea, uot improbable, that Shakspeare drew his fine conceptions of female character from Sidney. Shakspeare solely, of all our elder dramatists, has given true beauty to woman; and Shakspeare was an attentive reader of the Arcadia."" Besides this romance, which, though in prose, partakes more markedly of the character of poetry, Sidney was the author, as we have hinted above, of a considerable number of Sonnets, some of very singular beauty, and of a short treatise entitled 'The Defense of Poesie,' the nature of which is perfectly expressed in the title. The beauty of our author's prose style is no less conspicuous in this work than the deep feeling which he exhibits for the value and the charms of poetry. The language, indeed, is itself poetry of no nean order, and in this work, no less than in the ' Arcadia,' we do find in every line reason to confirm the judgment of Cowper, who was keenly alive to Sir Philip's merits, and who thus qualifies his style: Sidney, warbler of poetic prose." He was mortally wounded by a musket-ball in the left thigh at the skirmish at Zutphen, September 22, 1586, and died on the 15th of October following, in his thirty-second year, and was buried in St. Paul's. To do, in so short a life, so much for immortality, is the lot of few; of still fewer to excite, in dying, such universal sorrow as that which followed Sidney to the grave; for in him the court lost its chiefest ornament, learning its steadiest patron, genius its boldest defender and firmest friend, and his country her most illustrious child "The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword: The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, 66 The greatest English poet after Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, was born in London about the year 1553, that is, a year before. Sidney, and educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. On leaving the University he retired (it is supposed in the quality of a private tutor) to the North of England, in which retirement he composed the first production which attracted notice to his youthful genius. This was 'The Shepherd's Calendar,' a long poem divided into twelve parts or months, and consisting of pastoral dialogues of a plaintive and amatory character. The Italian taste then prevalent in Europe, and which filled the literature of every country with imitations, more or less frigid, of the Arcadianisms of Guarini and Sannazzaro, is perhaps more perceptible in Spenser than any author, even of the "Italianated” Elizabethan age; and it is singular to observe how universally this manner was adopted in the early essays of the young poets of the day. "Babes," says the Scripture, are fed with milk;" and it seems natural that the romantic genius of youth should nourish itself on the pure but somewhat insipid delicacies of the poetical "Golden Age." Eager to give to the form of his work the originality which was necessarily wanting to its design, Spenser rejected the rather worn-out Corydons and Tityruses of the classical idyllists, and gave to his shepherds and his scenery as much of an English air as he could by adopting English names and describing English nature the same result also was aimed at in the language, into which he strove to infuse the spirit of the antique, and at the same time of a rustic simplicity, by adopting a great deal of the now almost obsolete. diction of Chaucer. His shepherds, however, are not much inferior in point of nature and probability to the general run of pastoral personages -to the disguised courtiers who pipe and sing in Virgil's Mantuan shades, or the masquerading pedants of the modern Italian school; in short, to none of these sham shepherds, always excepting the admirable rustics of Theocritus. The subjects of the various poems of the 'Shepherd's Calendar' are the same which form the curta supellex of ordinary pastorals: the hinds of Spenser are sufficiently "melancholy and gentlemanlike," and pour out their melodious complaints without exciting any very deep sympathy in the reader. They remind us of young, thoughtful scholars, who have, "for very wantonness," put on the garb of rustics, and whose elegant and graceful thoughts are breathed in the language not of the field but of the study. This work, besides exercising the youthful poet's powers of diction and harmony, acquired for him the admiration and friendship of the learned Gabriel Harvey, who, though fantastical in his literary tastes, and though for a time infecting Spenser with his own enthusiasm for his metrical whimsies, was of the greatest use to his modest and sensitive friend. The projects to which we have alluded were, among others, nothing less than the employment of the classical or syllabic mode of versification in English poetry. He has left us some most inimitable specimens of dactylic and iambic measures, which furnish a ludicrous proof of the inherent absurdity of the project. Spenser, too, has perpetrated some monstrous "classicisms" of this nature; and these show that not even the exquisite ear of the most harmonious of our poets could render bearable the application of the prosody of quantity to a language essentially accentual in its metrical cha racter. This curious literary folly, however, was at this period exceedingly epidemic; for similar attempts were made, and with exactly as much success, to naturalize the Greek and Roman metres in the Italian, Spanish, and even the French languages. In German, however, the innovation has lasted (and with tolerable success) down to the present day. It was to Harvey that Spenser is supposed to have owed his introduction to Sir Philip Sidney, at whose ancestral seat of Penshurst the poet passed perhaps the brightest years of his unhappy life. We have stood beneath "Spenser's Oak" in the beautiful park of that venerable place, and dreamed of the hero and the poet-both still so young, yet with the halo of immortality already on their front, seated, "in colloquy sublime," beneath those murmuring boughs. It was here that Spenser completed his 'Shepherd's Calendar, dedicating it, under the title of The Poet's Year,' to his young patron, "Maister Philip Sidney, worthy of all titles, both of learning and chivalry." Through the medium of Sidney the poet obtained the protection of the great Earl of Leicester, the favourite of Elizabeth, and uncle of "Maister Philip;" and through Leicester Spenser acquired the notice of his royal mistress. Our youthful poet now became a courtier, and forms one star- and one of the brightest too-of that glorious galaxy which gave such splendour to the court of the "Maiden Queen." But in leaving the green solitudes of Penshurst for the splendours of the court, Spenser was destined to exchange his freedom and his happiness for a chain only the heavier because it was of gold. He forgot the profound truth concealed in that oracular verse of the poet which so truly describes the proper atmosphere for a lettered life, "Flumina amem sylvasque, inglorius; and he paid for his mistake, the heavy penalty of a life embittered by court disappointments, and finished in affliction. Though early distinguished by the favour of Elizabeth, his life at court seems to have been a nearly uninterrupted succession of mortifications and disappointments. The very favour of the Earl of Leicester, powerful as it was, was not omnipotent, and in courts, as in the fairy tale, the talisman or charmed weapon, given to the adventurous knight by a friendly magician, often proves the very cause of his being attacked by a hostile enchanter. The very patronage and protection of Leicester naturally drew upon Spenser the dislike and suspicion of Lord Burleigh, then Chancellor and highly favoured by Elizabeth; and the poet, in innumerable passages of his works, has alluded to the discouragement and coldness he experienced at the hands of the great lawyer. One stanza, indeed, describing the miseries of court dependence, has passed ineffaceably into the memory of every reader of English poetry. It is so painfully beautiful and so evidently sincere-written, as it were, with the very heart's blood of the poet-that we cannot forbear quoting it here : "Full little knowest thou who hast not tried, To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, At length, however, Spenser received (in 1580) the appointment of secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, whom he accompanied to Ireland, and under whose orders the poet seems to have distinguished himself as a man of business, for he was soon afterwards rewarded with a grant from the Crown of 3000 acres of land in the county of Cork, an estate which had previously formed part of the domains belonging to the Earls of Desmond, but which had been forfeited to the Crown. This is one of the numerous instances of Elizabeth's ingenious policy; for she thus rewarded a faithful servant with a gift of land which cost her nothing, and which the recipient (or "undertaker," as he was termed) was bound by his contract to inhabit and keep in cultivation. A territory, however, recently devastated by contending armies with fire and sword, was a gift rather splendid in appearance than profitable in reality; and perhaps the principal advantage derived by Spenser from this donation was the necessity it imposed upon him of residing on his estate, and the leisure which it enabled him to dedicate to his literary pursuits. He took up his abode in the ancient castle of Kilcolman, situated in the midst of his beautiful but unproductive domain, and it is here that he composed the greater part of his immortal work-the poem of 'The Faerie Queene.' The scenery by which he was here surrounded is remarked for its beauty even in beautiful Ireland; and it may not be fanciful to speculate how far the natural loveliness of the spot is reflected and reproduced in the rich pictures which fill the pages of the poem. It was here that the poet was visited by Raleigh, then a young man, beginning, as Captain of the Guards, that extraordinary and brilliant career which has rendered his name so illustrious at once for learning and for enterprise. To Raleigh-a kindred spiritSpenser communicated his literary projects, and read to him the unfinished cantos of the Faerie Queene.' Among the various friendships and meetings recorded among great men, there is perhaps nöne on which we reflect with such interest as this: how delightful is it to picture to ourselves the Ariosto of England and the colonizer of Virginia seated together on the banks of Mulla, exchanging thoughts bright with immortality, 'amongst the coolly shade Of the green alders, by the Mulla's shore !" The "Shepherd of the Ocean," as Raleigh was styled in Spenser's poetical nomenclature, replaced for the bard, in some degree at least, the irreparable loss inflicted by the early death of Sidney-perhaps the severest blow inflicted on the sensitive heart of the poet during the earlier part of his career: the death of his youthful patron cast a gloom over the whole of his too short existence. + In 1590 Spenser returned to England in order to present to Elizabeth the first part of the 'Faerie Queene;' and, insatiable as was that great sovereign in the matter of praise and adulation, with the exquisite tribute of Spenser's Muse she must have been profoundly gratified. All the learning and genius of an age remarkable for learning and genius were exhausted in supplying the Maiden Monarch with incessant clouds of elegant and poetical incense; and among all the worshippers in the temple none were certainly more devoted or more capable than Spenser. The annals of court adulation are in general among the most humiliating pages of human folly |