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Demé1 thy selfe that demest others dede,2
And trouth thee shall deliver, it is no drede.

That thee is sent receive in buxomnesse,3
The wrastling of this world asketh a fall,
Here is no home, here is but wildernesse,
Forth, pilgrime! forth, beast, out of thy stall!
Looke up on high, and thanké God of all!
Weivé thy lusts, and let thy ghost thee lede,
And trouth thee shall deliver, it is no drede.

SPENSER.

He was

PRINCIPAL EVENTS OF HIS LIFE.-Edmund Spenser—“The Prince of Poets in his time,"-was, like Chaucer, a native of London. He was born in East Smithfield, in 1553. educated at Cambridge, and early in life became the friend of the accomplished Sir Philip Sidney, and a dependent on the powerful Earl of Leicester, Sidney's uncle. By this nobleman he was, in 1580, sent to Ireland, as secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, who had been appointed the Lord Deputy of that country. For his services in this capacity, he subsequently obtained of the crown the grant of an estate in Cork, named Kilcolman, with a castle of the same name. During his residence here, his great poem, "The Faerie Queene," was probably begun, and here he was visited by Sir Walter Raleigh, who, after Sir Philip Sidney's death, had become Spenser's principal friend and patron, and who is said to have introduced him to Queen Elizabeth. His success as a courtier was doubtful, if we may believe his own experience, thus recorded:

"Full little knowest thou, that hast not tride,
What hell it is, in suing long to bide:

To loose good dayes that might be better spent,
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow;
To have thy princes grace, yet want her peeres;
To have thy asking, yet waite manie yeeres;

(1) Deme-judge. (2) Others dede-others' deed, that which is done by

others.

forsake.

(3) Buxomnesse-obedience (see note 2, p. 125).

(5) Ghost-spirit.

(6) So styled in the inscription on his tomb.

(4) Weive-waive,

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To fret thy soule wirh crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires ;
To fawne, to crowche, to ride, to waite, to ronne;
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne."

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Spenser's earthly career ended very mournfully. In the rebellion of Tyrone, his castle was attacked, and to conclude in Ben Jonson's words, "The Irish having robbed Spenser's goods, and burnt his house, and a little child new-born, he and his wife escaped; and after, he died for lake (lack) of bread, in King Street, and refused twenty pieces sent to him by my lord of Essex, adding, He was sorrie he had no time to spend them."" died in 1598, and was buried, at his own request, near Chaucer, in Westminster Abbey, and the most celebrated poets of the time followed the hearse, and threw "mournful elegies" into his grave. PRINCIPAL WORKS.-Spenser's most important poems are 66 The Shepheards Calender, "An Hymne of Heavenly Love," "An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie," "Prothalamion" and "Epithalamion," both nuptial poems; two elegies entitled " "Daphnaïda" and Astrophel," "The Ruines of Rome," "The Ruines of Time," "Muiopotmos, or the Fate of the Butterfly;" and far transcending all the rest both in extent and merit, "The Faerie Queene." The subject of this poem is thus described by Dr. Aikin: "His 'Faery Queen' is by much the most considerable allegorical poem in our language; and in many respects it deserves the reputation which through two centuries it has enjoyed. Its plan, indeed, is most singularly perplexed and incoherent; and as the work is unfinished, it would be entirely unintelligible had not the author himself given a prefatory explanation of it. The term faery is used by him to denote something existing only in the regions of fancy, and the Faery Queen is the abstract idea of Glory personified. The knights of faery-land are the twelve virtues, who are the champions or servants of the Queen. The British Prince Arthur, who is the subject of so many fabulous legends, becomes enamoured of the Faery Queen in a vision, and comes to seek her in faery-land. He is the image of perfect excellence, and is regarded as the general hero of the piece. Each book, however, has its particular hero, who is one of the virtues above mentioned, and who goes through a course of adventures modelled upon the tales of chivalry, and having for their object the relief of some distressed damsel, or other sufferer under wrong and oppression. He encounters giants, monsters, enchanters, and the like, who are the allegorised foes of the particular virtue of which he is the representative; and prince

(1) "Letters on English Poetry," p. 212.

Arthur, the general hero, occasionally appears as his auxiliary when he is hard pressed.

"Thus far there is some consistency in the plan; but the poet had the further view of paying his court to Queen Elizabeth, the great topic of all the learned adulation of the age. She is therefore typified by the person of the Faery Queen, and several incidents of her history are related under the veil of allegory: the principal personages of her court are likewise occasionally alluded to in the characters of the faery knights. Moreover, the supposed real history of Arthur and other British princes is interwoven with the tissue of fictitious adventure. It is impossible to conceive a more tangled skein of narrative, and the author could scarcely expect that any reader would take the pains to unravel it. In fact, no one at present regards this poem in any other light than as a gallery of allegorical pictures, no otherwise connected than by the relation several of them bear to one common hero. It would be no easy matter to form one consistent allegory of any single book, and to explain the emblematical meaning of every adventure ascribed to its particular knight."

CHARACTERISTIC SPIRIT AND STYLE.-" His command of imagery is wide, easy, and luxuriant. He threw the soul of harmony into our verse, and made it more warmly, tenderly, and magnificently descriptive than it ever was before, or, with a few exceptions, than it has ever been since. It must certainly be owned, that in description he exhibits nothing of the brief strokes and robust power which characterise the very greatest poets; but we shall nowhere find more airy and expansive images of visionary things, a sweeter tone of sentiment, or a finer flush in the colours of language, than in this Rubens of English poetry. His fancy teems exuberantly in minuteness of circumstance, like a fertile soil sending bloom and verdure through the utmost extremities of the foliage which it nourishes. On a comprehensive view of the whole work, we certainly miss the charm of strength, symmetry, and rapid or interesting progress; for though the plan which the poet designed is not completed, it is easy to see that no additional cantos could have rendered it less perplexed. But still there is a richness in his materials, even where their coherence is loose, and their disposition confused. The clouds of his allegory may seem to spread into shapeless forms, but they are still the clouds of a glowing atmosphere. Though his story grows desultory, the sweetness and grace of his manner still abide by him. He is like a speaker whose tones continue to be pleasing, though he may speak too long; or like a painter who makes us forget the defect of his design, by the magic of his colouring. We always rise from

perusing him with melody in the mind's ear, and with pictures of romantic beauty impressed on the imagination.

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Succeeding generations have acknowledged the pathos and richness of his strains, and the new contour and enlarged dimensions of grace which he gave to English poetry. He is the poetical father of a Milton and a Thomson. Gray habitually read him when he wished to frame his thoughts for composition, and there are few eminent poets in the language who have not been essentially indebted to him.

"Hither, as to their fountain, other stars

Repair, and in their urns draw golden light.''

The following testimony from Pope will confirm the remarks just cited:-"After my reading," said he, "a canto of Spenser, two or three days ago, to an old lady, between seventy and eighty, she said that I had been showing her a collection of pictures. She said very right; and I know not how it is, but there is something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly in one's old age as it did in one's youth. I read the 'Faery Queen' when I was about twelve, with a vast deal of delight, and I think it gave me as much when Í read it over about a year or two ago." 2

Spenser accounted himself the poetical son of Chaucer; and, to do honour to his parentage, adopted a style and diction belonging to a previous stage of the language. He was, therefore, in his own times, taunted with "affecting the ancients," with his "Chaucerisms," and with his "new grafts of old withered words and exploded expressions." "One might imagine," says Mr. Campbell," the difference of Spenser's style from that of Shakspere's, whom he so shortly preceded, to indicate that his gothic subject and story made him lean towards words of the elder time. At all events, much of his expression is now become antiquated; though it is beautiful in its antiquity, and like the moss and ivy on some majestic building, covers the fabric of his language with romantic and venerable associations."4

VERSIFICATION.-The stanza employed by Spenser in the "Faerie Queene" was borrowed from the Italian; the poet, however, made it his own by the addition of an Alexandrine, or long

(1) Campbell. "Specimens," &c., Introduction, p. liv.

(2) "Literary History," &c., vol ii. p. 334.

(3) In the "Faerie Queene" (book iv. canto 2), Spenser speaks of Chaucer, as "Don Chaucer, well of English undefyled,

On fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled."

(4) Campbell. "Specimens," &c., Introduction, p. lv.

line, which closes the whole with a majestic cadence. This style of versification-subsequently called the Spenserian-has been, notwithstanding its difficulty, adopted with much success by Thomson, in "The Castle of Indolence"-Beattie, in "The Minstrel"-and Byron, in " Childe Harold."

EXTRACTS FROM THE FAERIE QUEENE.

UNA AND THE RED-CROSS KNIGHT.

A GENTLE knight was pricking on the plaine,
Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,
Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine,
The cruel markes of many a bloody fielde;
Yet armes till that time did he never wield:
His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,
As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:
Full iolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,
As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.

And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore

The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead, as living ever, him adored:
Upon his shield the like was also scored,
For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had.
Right faithfull, true he was in deede and word;
But of his cheere 10 did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.12

11

(1) "Faerie Queene," book i. canto 1. This extract is the commencement of the poem. (2) Gentle knight-the Red-Cross knight, St. George, the tutelary Saint of England, who represents True Holiness. (3) Pricking-riding fast, or rather here, spurring his horse, but at the same time checking him to keep the pace of the lady upon her "palfrey slow." (4) Mightie armes, &c.-The armour of the Christian, described in Ephes. vi. 13-17, is here intended. (5) Dintsmarks. (6) Iolly-from the French joli-handsome. (7) Giusts-jousts or tilting matches. (8) Dead, as living ever-i.e. though dead, yet alive for evermore (see Rev. i. 18). (9) For soveraine, &c.-On account of the supreme hope, &c. (10) Cheere-countenance, appearance. (11) Sad-grave, not, mournful. (12) Ydrad-dreaded.

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