12,000 acres. The poet was obliged to reside on his estate, as this was one of the conditions of the grant; and he accordingly repaired to Ireland, and took up his abode in Kilcolman Castle, near Doneraile, which had been one of the ancient strongholds or appanages of the Earls of Desmond. The poet's castle stood in the midst of a large plain, by the side of a lake; the river Mulla ran through his grounds, and a chain of mountains at a distance seemed to bulwark in the romantic retreat. Here he wrote most of the Faery Queen, and received the visits of Raleigh, whom he fancifully styled 'the Shepherd of the Ocean;' and here he brought home his wife, the 'Elizabeth' of his sonnets, welcoming her with that noble strain of pure and fervent passion which he has styled the Epithalamium, and which forms the most magnificent'spousal verse' in the language. Kilcolman Castle is now a ruin-its towers almost level with the ground; but the spot must ever be dear to the lovers of genius. Raleigh's visit was made in 1589, and according to the figurative language of Spenser, the two illustrious friends, while reading the manuscript of the Faery Queen, sat Amongst the coolly shade Of the green alders, by the Mulla's shore. characters and events. The queen Gloriana and the huntress Belphobe are both symbolical of Queen Elizabeth; the adventures of the Redcross Knight shadow forth the history of the Church of England; the distressed knight is Henri IV.; and Envy is intended to glance at the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots. The stanza of Spenser is the Italian ottava rima, now familiar in English poetry; but he added an Alexandrine, or long line, which gives a full and sweeping close to the verse. The poet's diction is rich and abundant. He introduced, however, a number of obsolete expressions, 'new grafts of old and withered words,' for which he was censured by his contemporaries and their successors, and in which he was certainly not copied by Shakspeare. His 'Gothic subject and story' had probably, as Campbell conjectures, 'made him lean towards words of the olden time,' and his antiquated expression, as the same critic finely remarks, '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.' The Faery Queen was enthusiastically received. could scarcely, indeed, be otherwise, considering how well it was adapted to the court and times of the Virgin Queen, where gallantry and chivalry were so strangely mingled with the religious gravity and earnestness induced by the Reformation, and considering the intrinsic beauty and excellence of the poem. The first few stanzas, descriptive of Una, were of themselves sufficient to place Spenser above the whole hundred poets that then offered incense to Elizabeth. It We may conceive the transports of delight with which Raleigh perused or listened to those strains of chivalry and gorgeous description, which revealed to him a land still brighter than any he had seen in his distant wanderings, or could have been present even to his romantic imagination! The guest warmly approved of his friend's poem ; The queen settled a pension of £50 per annum and he persuaded Spenser, when he had comon Spenser, and he returned to Ireland. His pleted the first three books, to accompany him to smaller poems were next published: The Tears England, and arrange for their publication. The of the Muses, Mother Hubbard, &c. in 1591; Faery Queen appeared in January 1589-90, dedi- Daphnaida, 1592; and Amoretti and the Epithacated to her majesty, in that strain of adulation lamium (relating his courtship and marriage) in which was then the fashion of the age. To the 1595. His Elegy of Astrophel, on the death of volume was appended a letter to Raleigh, explain- the lamented Sidney, appeared about this time. ing the nature of the work, which the author said In 1596, Spenser was again in London to publish was 'a continued allegory, or dark conceit.' He the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of the Faery states his object to be to fashion a gentleman, or Queen. These contain the legend of Cambel and noble person, in virtuous and gentle discipline, Triamond, or Friendship; Artegal, or Justice; and that he had chosen Prince Arthur for his and Sir Caledore, or Courtesy. The double allehero. He conceives that prince to have beheld gory is continued in these cantos as in the prethe Faery Queen in a dream, and been so enam-vious ones: Artegal is the poet's friend and patron, oured of the vision, that, on awaking, he resolved Lord Grey; and various historical events are to set forth and seek her in Faery Land. The related in the knight's adventures. Half of the poet further 'devises' that the Faery Queen shall original design was thus finished; six of the keep her annual feast twelve days, twelve several adventures happening in that time, and each of not unlike Ovid's description of the creation of man; the soul just them being undertaken by a knight. The adven- severed from the sky, retains part of its heavenly power: And frames her house, in which she will be placed, tures were also to express the same number of Fit for herself, moral virtues. The first is that of the Redcross Knight, expressing Holiness; the second, Sir But he speculates further: Guyon, or Temperance; and the third, Britomartis, 'a lady knight,' representing Chastity. was thus a blending of chivalry and religion in the design of the Faery Queen. Spenser had imbibed -probably from Sidney-a portion of the Platonic doctrine, which afterwards overflowed in Milton's Comus, and he looked on chivalry as a sage and serious thing. Besides his personification of the abstract virtues, the poet made his allegorical personages and their adventures represent historical There The Platonism of Spenser is more clearly seen in his hymns on Love and Beauty, which are among the most passionate and exquisite of his productions. His account of the spirit of love is So every spirit, as it is most pure, For soul is form, and doth the body make. Spenser afterwards wrote two religious hymns, to counteract the effect of those on love and beauty, but though he spiritualises his passion, he does not abandon his early belief, that the fairest body incloses the fairest mind. He still says: For all that's good is beautiful and fair. The Grecian philosophy was curiously united with puritanism in both Spenser and Milton. Our poet took the fable of his great poem from the style of the Gothic romance, but the deep sense of beauty which pervades it is of classical origin, elevated and purified by strong religious feeling. 79 twelve adventures and moral virtues were produced; but unfortunately the world saw only some fragments more of the work. It has been said that the remaining half was lost through the 'disorder and abuse' of a servant sent forward with it to England. This is highly improbable. Spenser, who came to London himself with each of the former portions, would not have ventured the largest part with a careless servant. But he had not time to complete his poetical and moral gallery. There was an interval of six years between his two publications, and he lived only three years after the second. During that period, too, Ireland was convulsed with rebellion. The English set-together trees and plants, and assemble sounds tlers, or 'undertakers,' of the crown-lands were unpopular with the conquered natives of Ireland. They were often harsh and oppressive; and even Spenser is accused, on the authority of existing legal documents, of having sought unjustly to add to his possessions. He was also in office over the Irish (clerk of the council of Munster); he had been recommended by the queen (1598) for the office of sheriff of Cork; and he was a strenuous advocate for arbitrary power, as is proved by a political treatise on the state of Ireland, written by him in 1596 for the government of Elizabeth, but not printed till the reign of Charles I. The poet was, therefore, a conspicuous object for the fury of the irritated and barbarous natives, with whom 'revenge was virtue.' The storm soon burst forth. In October 1598, an insurrection was organised in Munster, following Tyrone's rebellion, which had raged for some years in the province of Ulster. The insurgents attacked Kilcolman, and having robbed and plundered, set fire to the castle. Spenser and his wife escaped; but either in the confusion incidental to such a calamity, or from inability to render assistance, an infant child of the poet (new-born,' according to Ben Jonson) was left behind, and perished in the flames. The poet, impoverished and broken-hearted, reached London, and died in about three months, in King Street, Westminster, on Saturday the 13th January 1599. He was buried near the tomb of Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, the Earl of Essex defraying the expense of the funeral, and his hearse attended-as Camden relates-by his brotherpoets, who threw 'mournful elegies' into his grave. A monument was erected over his remains, thirty years afterwards, by Anne, Countess of Dorset. His widow, the fair Elizabeth, whose bridal bower at Kilcolman he had decked with such 'gay garlands' of song, returned to Ireland, and married a second time. The poet left two sons, Sylvanus and Peregrine. A son of the latter, Hugolin Spenser, was restored to the Irish estate by Charles II.; he afterwards lost it by adhering to the cause of James II.; but, through the interest of Halifax, it was, about the year 1700, restored to another descendant, William Spenser. the texture of some of its most delicious embellishments) still leave him the merit of his great moral design-the conception of his allegorical characters-his exuberance of language and illustration-and that original structure of verse, powerful and harmonious, which he was the first to adopt, and which must ever bear his name. His faults arose out of the fulness of his riches. His inexhaustible powers of circumstantial description betrayed him into a tedious minuteness, which sometimes, in the delineation of his personified passions, becomes repulsive, and in the painting of natural objects led him to group and instruments, which were never seen or heard in unison out of Faery Land. The ingenuity and subtlety of his intellect tempted him to sow dark meanings and obscure allusions across the bright and obvious path of his allegory. This peculiarity of his genius was early displayed in his Shepherd's Calendar; and if Burleigh's displeasure could have cured the poet of the habit, the statesman might be half forgiven his illiberality. His command of musical language led him to protract his narrative to too great a length, till the attention becomes exhausted, even with its very melody, and indifference succeeds to languor. Had Spenser lived to finish his poem, it is doubtful whether he would not have diminished the number of his readers. His own fancy had evidently begun to give way, for the last three books have not the same rich unity of design, or plenitude of imagination, which fills the earlier cantos with so many interesting, lofty, and ethereal conceptions, and steeps them in such a flood of ideal and poetical beauty. The first two books (of Holiness and Temperance) are like the first two of Paradise Lost, works of consummate taste and genius, and superior to all the others. We agree with Mr Hazlitt, that the allegory of Spenser is in reality no bar to the enjoyment of the poem. The reader may safely disregard the symbolical applications. We may allow the poet, like his own Archimago, to divide his characters into 'double parts,' while one only is visible at a time. While we see Una, with her heavenly looks, that Spenser is the most luxuriant and melodious of all our descriptive poets. His creation of scenes and objects is infinite, and in free and sonorous versification he has not yet been surpassed. His 'lofty rhyme' has a swell and cadence, and a continuous sweetness, that we can find nowhere else. In richness of fancy and invention, he can scarcely be ranked below Shakspeare, and he is fully as original. His obligations to the Italian poets (Ariosto supplying a wild Gothic and chivalrous model for the Faery Queen, and Tasso furnishing 80 Made a sunshine in the shady place, or Belphoebe flying through the woods, or Britomartis seated amidst the young warriors, we need not stop to recollect that the first is designed to represent the true church, the second Queen Elizabeth, or the third an abstract personification of Chastity. They are exquisite representations of female loveliness and truth, unmatched save in the dramas of Shakspeare. The allegory of Spenser leaves his wild enchantments, his picturesque situations, his shady groves and lofty trees any star Not pierceable by power of his Masque of Cupid, and Bower of Bliss, and all the witcheries of his gardens and wildernesses, without the slightest ambiguity or indistinctness. There is no haze over his finest pictures. We seem to walk in the green alleys of his broad forests, to hear the stream tinkle and the fountain fall, to enter his caves of Mammon and Despair, to gaze on his knights and ladies, or to join in his fierce combats and crowded allegorical processions. There is no perplexity, no intercepted lights, in those fine images and personifications. They may be sometimes fantastic, but they are always brilliant and distinct. When Spenser fails to interest, it is when our coarser taste becomes palled with his sweetness, and when we feel that his scenes want the support of common probability and human passions. We surrender ourselves up for a time to the power of the enchanter, and witness with wonder and delight his marvellous achievements; but we wish to return again to the world, and to mingle with our fellow-mortals in its busy and passionate pursuits. It is here that Shakspeare eclipses Spenser; here that he builds upon his beautiful groundwork of fancy-the high and durable structure of conscious dramatic truth and living reality. Spenser's mind was as purely poetical, and embraced a vast range of imaginary creation. The interest of real life alone is wanting. Spenser's is an ideal world, remote and abstract, yet affording, in its multiplied scenes, scope for those nobler feelings and heroic virtues which we love to see even in transient connection with human nature. The romantic character of his poetry is its most essential and permanent feature. We may tire of his allegory and 'dark conceit,' but the general impression remains; we never think of the Faery Queen without recalling its wondrous scenes of enchantment and beauty, and feeling ourselves lulled, as it were, by the recollected music of the poet's verse, and the endless flow and profusion of his fancy. Una and the Redcross Knight. A gentle knight was pricking on the plain, And on his breast a bloody cross he bore, Upon a great adventure he was bound, A lovely lady rode him fair beside, And by her in a line a milk-white lamb she led. So pure and innocent, as that same lamb, Behind her far away a dwarf did lag, Of needments at his back. Thus as they past That every wight to shroud it did constrain, And forth they pass, with pleasure forward led, Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, The aspin good for staves, the cypress funeral. The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors Led with delight, they thus beguile the way, That which of them to take, in divers doubt they been. Adventure of Una with the Lion. Nought is there under heaven's wide hollowness, Yet she, most faithful lady, all this while Far from all people's press, as in exile, 81 To seek her knight; who, subtily betrayed Through woods and wasteness wide him daily sought; One day, nigh weary of the irksome way, Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace. It fortuned, out of the thickest wood And with the sight amazed forgat his furious force. Instead thereof he kissed her weary feet, 'The lion, lord of every beast in field,' As the God of my life? why hath he me abhorred!' Redounding tears did choke th' end of her plaint, To seek her strayed champion if she might attain. The lion would not leave her desolate, The Bower of Bliss. There the most dainty paradise on ground One would have thought-so cunningly the rude And in the midst of all a fountain stood Was overwrought, and shapes of naked boys, To fly about, playing their wanton toys, While others did embay themselves in liquid joys. And over all, of purest gold, was spread A trail of ivy in his native hue: That wight, who did not well advised it view, Low his lascivious arms adown did creep, That themselves dipping in the silver dew, Which drops of crystal seemed for wantonness to weep. Infinite streams continually did well Out of this fountain, sweet and fair to see, That through the waves one might the bottom see, • ... And all the margin round about was set The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade, The while, some one did chant this lovely lay: 'So passeth, in the passing of a day, Of many a lady, and many a paramour; While loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.' In the foregoing extracts from the Faery Queen, we have, for the sake of perspicuity, modernised the spelling, without changing a word of the original. The following two highly poetical descriptions are given in the poet's orthography: The House of Sleep. He making speedy way through spersed ayre, Whiles sad Night over him her mantle black doth spred. Whose double gates he findeth locked fast, And wakeful dogges before them farre doe lye, And more to lulle him in his slumber soft, A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe, Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne Description of Belphabe. In her faire eyes two living lamps did flame, She broke his wanton darts, and quenched base desyre. Her yvorie forhead, full of bountie brave, For there their dwelling was. And, when she spake, A silver sound, that heavenly musicke seemd to make. Upon her eyelids many graces sate, So faire, and thousand thousand times more faire, Purfled upon with many a folded plight, And in her hand a sharpe bore-speare she held, Her yellow lockes, crisped like golden wyre, In her rude heares sweet flowres themselves did lap, Fable of the Oak and the Brier. There grew an aged tree on the green, Hard by his side grew a bragging Briere, And sneb the good Oak, for he was old. 'Why stands there,' quoth he, 'thou brutish block? Nor for fruit nor for shadow serves thy stock; Dyed in lily white and crimson red, It chanced after upon a day, |