not sit in the shade playing on pan-pipes, improvising songs for wagers of lambs and curiously carved bowls, and discoursing in rhymed verse about morality, religion, and politics. But it was not Spenser's design to paint real shepherds, or to copy the features of real pastoral life. His shepherds are allegorical representatives of his friends and his enemies, and exponents of his artistic, moral, and other theories, the whole drifted into a land of the imagination. If we are asked why he chose such a disguise, we must go back to his character, and point to his turn for the picturesque, and his delight in withdrawing from direct contact with the actual world. He loved to wrap hard facts in soft and picturesque allegory. Sir Philip Sidney killed at Zutphen becomes the shepherd Astrophel of Arcadia torn to death by a savage beast, and transformed along with his love Stella into a red and blue flower like a star. Such an Arcadia is purely fanciful, and must be criticised as such not from an unsympathetic distance but out of the mood in which it was conceived. If, indeed, it is said that in the strictly pastoral parts of the poem, Spenser is far inferior to Theocritus, that he neglects the minuter daily and hourly changes of aspect in field and sky, and that there is too little sunshine in his Arcadia, one can understand this criticism as indicating positive defects: the poet might have brought more of this into his Arcadia with the effect of enriching it, and without doing harm to his design. But we miss the whole intention and effect of the poetry if we exact from the poet an adherence to the conditions of the actual life of shepherds. The picturesque environment of hill, wood, dale, silly sheep and ravenous wild beasts, is all that the poet cares for if he helps us to remember that we are amongst such scenery, he has fulfilled his design. We are not to look for North of England dialect or North of England scenery if we would enjoy Spenser's Arcadia, we must simply let ourselves float into a dreamland of unsubstantial form and colour. The pastoral surroundings are of value only in so far as they colour and transfigure the sentiments of the poetry. : It was again in professed imitation of Virgil that our poet raised his pipe "from rustic tunes to chant heroic deeds." His knights are as shadowy as his shepherds. Spenser's design was not, like Sir Walter Scott's, to revive in imagination the manners, customs, and adventures of chivalry. In the 'Faery Queen,' as in the 'Shepherd's Calendar,' his design was to translate bare realities into poetical form and colour. Stating the general scope of the work, and passing over his adumbrations of living characters, we may say that his knights and fair ladies are virtues impersonated; his monsters and feigned fair ladies, vices impersonated. So far there is a resemblance between the 'Shepherd's Calendar' and the 'Faery Queen :' both lead us into allegorical worlds. But the two worlds are very different; they rose up in the poet's imagination at the bidding of very different emotions. In the Shepherd's Calendar' all is pan-piping and peace, composed sadness and grave moral reflection. In the 'Faery Queen,' on the other hand, we are brought into a land of storms and sunshine, fierce encounter and rapturous love-making; we are hurried in rapid change through lively emotions of mystery, terror, voluptuous security, heartrending pity, and admiration of superhuman prowessthrough various scenes from the "Den of Error" to the "House of Holiness," from the "Bower of Bliss" to the "Gardens of Adonis:" now hideousness triumphs, and beauty is in distress; and anon the gates are burst open by a blast of Arthur's horn, or Britomart charges with her charmed spear. The pastoral allegory is insipid if we ignore the hidden meaning; but Faery land is a land of wonder and beauty, where we need remember the hidden meaning only if we desire to pay just homage to the genius of the poet. Dryden and many others have complained of occasional intricacy and incoherence in the Faery Queen.' The admirers of the poet should not meet this complaint by denying the fact for a fact it is that Spenser does often violate the plain laws of space and time. To maintain coherence, 1 See, for very decided cases, Book IV., Cantos 8, 9, 10. prolonged actions must sometimes be supposed to happen in no time and personages are sometimes present or absent as it suits the poet's convenience, coming or going without remark. The proper excuse is to say that the scene is laid "in the delightful land of Faery," where perplexity and confusion are as natural as in a dream. The real explanation probably is, that the poet wrote with great facility, and that in "winging his flight rapidly through the prescribed labyrinth of sweet sounds," he sometimes sang himself to sleep, and forgot exactly where he was. III. THE CHIEF QUALITIES OF HIS POETRY. In Thomas Campbell's criticism of the Faery Queen,' it is said that, "on a comprehensive view of the whole work, we certainly miss the charm of strength, symmetry, and rapid or interesting progress." The criticism, like all others from the same pen, is carefully studied and just; but it is somewhat startling without farther explanation of the terms. By rapid or interesting progress we must not understand rapid or interesting succession of events; we must lay emphasis on the word progress. Incidents succeed one another quickly and suddenly as in a dream: but they do not progress with the interest of increasing suspense towards their professed end, the accomplishment of the commands of Gloriana "that greatest glorious Queen of Faery land." Nor, had the poem been completed, is it easy to see how the additional cantos could have corrected what we have, and made part answer to part with even balance the poet makes no apparent effort to proportion with nice care the weight and space assigned to each personage, situation, and adventure. This will be readily allowed. But the critic's meaning in saying that we miss the charm of strength, is more liable to be misunderstood. If by "strength" is meant the sentiment inspired by the ideal presence of superior might, then, so far from missing that charm in the 'Faery Queen,' we are kept under its fas cination from beginning to end of the poem: imposing situations and mighty beings surround us on every hand. We are carried through waste wildernesses and interminable forests, the haunts of monsters and powerful magicians : forests darkened by frightful shadows, and filled with sad trembling sounds. Hideous giants and dragons, puissant knights, enchanted weapons, grim caves, stately palaces, gloomy dungeons-these and suchlike conceptions in the 'Faery Queen' occupy our imaginations with a perpetual stir of wonder, admiration, and awe. "We do not often," says I. Disraeli, "pause at elevations which raise the feeling of the sublime." If that is so, which I very much doubt, it must be because, in that land of wonders, one thing is not felt to be more wonderful than another. We are sustained at a sublime elevation throughout: we move among the primeval elements of sublimity: even on the Idle Lake, or in the Bower of Bliss, or in the Gardens of Adonis, where the senses ache with beauty, our voluptuous delight is permeated and elevated by the presence of supernatural agency. It may perhaps be pleaded by the nice discriminators of language that there is too much grotesqueness and excitement in Spenser's Faery land to warrant the application of the term "sublime:" many, doubtless, would restrict the name to Miltonic sublimity, the steady planetary sublimity that overawes into calmness. Spenser, it is true, sustains us at a different pitch from Milton. To come fully under the spell of the Faery Queen,' we must make ourselves as little children listening to the wondrous tales of a nurse: the very diction has in it something of the affected strange words, feigned excitement, and mouthed tones of softness and wonder put on by a skilful story-teller to such an audience: and when we yield ourselves to the poet in such a spirit, he makes our hearts throb with the same absorbing emotions. Of these emotions perhaps the most fitting names are wonder and dread; but they are also fitly termed modes of sublimity, when they rise to a certain pitch. We should call both Milton and Spenser sublime, but sublime in different ways. P What then did Campbell mean by saying that in the 'Faery Queen' we miss the charm of strength? He meant, probably, the strength arising from clearness and brevity of expression: in description, he says, Spenser "exhibits nothing of the brief strokes and robust power which characterise the very greatest poets." It would perhaps be more accurate to say that the brief strokes are supplemented and their abrupt concentrated effect weakened or at least softened by subsequent diffusion. Compare, for example, with Lucrece's frantic exclamations against Night, the following by impatient Arthur when darkness comes between him and his pursuit of Florimel (iii. 4) :— "Night! thou foul mother of annoyance sad, What had the Eternal Maker need of thee, And great dame Nature's handmaid cheering every kind. But well I wot that to an heavy heart, Breeder of new, renewer of old smarts; |