Matter and motion he restrains, And studied lines and fictious circles draws, Then with imagined sovereignty Lord of his new hypothesis he reigns." 44. Asgill. 50. Horace "Snatch'd their fair actions from degrading prose, And set their battles in eternal light." 98. De-Witted. Here is this wicked word. Spenser. UNFINISHED parts, or rather, indications of what the remaining books were to contain. Fradubio and Frælissa. B. 1, c. 2, xliii. "We may not change, quoth he, this evil plight, Till we be bathed in a living well." Final action of the poem. B. 1, c. 11, vii. "Fair Goddess, lay that furious fit aside, Till I of wars and bloody Mars do sing, And Briton fields with Sarazin blood be dide, 'Twixt that great Faery Queen and Paynim king, That with their horror heaven and earth did ring." Though he very rarely carries on the sentence from one stanza to another, he seems fond of carrying on the sound, and continuing the rhyme, or at least repeating the word at the beginning of one stanza with which the last ended. Some link of allusion or of sound he evidently liked to introduce. Guyon was one who -"knighthood took of good Sir Huon's hand, When with king Oberon he came to Faery Land." 2, 1, vi. Spenser's feeling concerning suicide. 2, 1, lviii. Concerning burial. 2, 1, lviii. 1, 10, xlii. Sansjoy is a person who must have been intended to be brought forward again. If the allegorical names were always as happy as in the instances of Una and Duessa, the effect would be altogether so. Here they are good in themselves, and their significance not too apparent. Sir Hudibras. 2, 2, xvii. 2, 3, xxvi. A hemistich in the last line. 2, 8, lv. 2, 4, xli. A line of twelve syllables in the penultimate. 3, 4, xxxix. Hemistich, seventh line. "As Arthegall and Sophy now been honoured." 2, 9, vi. Arthegall. 3, 3, xxvii. B. 3, c. 2, st. iv. An oversight,-Guyon instead of the Red Cross Knight. "Achilles' arms which Arthegall did win." 3, 2, xxv. In the Bernardo of Bernardo de Balbuena, the hero wins the armour of Achilles. C. 9. Angela, the martial queen of the Angles, whose armour Britomart wears. 3, 3, lv.vi.-viii. B. 3. An oversight concerning Florimel, c. 1. Prince Arthur, Guyon, and Britomart see her flying from the Foster, follow her, and separate. Britomart passes the night in Malecasta Castle, proceeds on her way, and encounters and wounds Marinel, c. 4. And, c. 5, Prince Arthur meets her dwarf, who tells him that she had left the Court in consequence of Marinel's wound. In the Ruins of Time, he speaks of the Paradise dels were as unfixed as they had been before his time. "SPENSER (SIR EGERTON BRYDGES says) gave rise to no school of imitators,-unless we attribute to his example the translations of Ariosto and Tasso by Harrington and Fairfax." His peculiar language was the probable cause. But no poet has produced more effect in kindling others. KENT is said to have frequently declared "that he caught his taste in gardening from reading the picturesque descriptions of Spenser. However this may be, the designs which he made for the works of that poet, are an incontestable proof that they had no "The literary characters of men of infeeffect upon his executive powers as a pain-rior genius are made by the character of the ter.-Notes to Mason's English Garden, vol. i. p. 395. Nor on his imaginative, Mr. Burgh might says, POPE "After my reading 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 I read it over about a year or two ago."-SPENCE's Anecdotes, p. 86. BILDERDIGK (ut supra, 174) says, "Emblemata en Allegorien waren eeuwen lang t' troetelkind onzer Natien. Ik sta toe dat beide nuttig zijn, en hare verdienste en schoonheden hebben; maar zy toonen de eeuw van scherpzinnigheid, niet van het Dichterlijk gevoel, en dus, niet die der Poëzy." age in which they live; and the main features of their writings are entirely of that artificial form: but master minds impose their own shapes and colours upon their compositions, which, if tinged with any marks of their age, only betray them in subordinate parts. If Spenser's designs and characters took the costume of days of chivalry, the prima stamina of his poem, his main thoughts and language are founded on the truths of universal nature."-SIR E. BRYDGES, Theat. Poet. p. 34. BRAGGADOCHIO is to be found in Gyron SYMPSON Concludes his notes on B. and F. by saying, "This is my first essay in criticism, and its good or ill success will either encourage me in, or deter me from prosecuting an edition of Spenser, toward which I have these several years been collecting materials. And as I wish to see a good edition of that fine poet, so I would invite all the learned and ingenious part of the world to contribute their assistance toward the effecting of it. For I am persuaded, that Spenser will make a figure no way inferior to the best Greek or Roman writers, when published like them, cum notis variorum.” Pageants and court masques accustomed the people to such personifications as Spenser's. LORD CHATHAM's sister, Mrs. Anne Pitt, "used often in her altercations with him to say, that he knew nothing whatever, except Spenser's F. Queen.' And no matter, says Burke, how that was said, for whoever relishes and reads Spenser, as he ought to be read, will have a strong hold of the English language."-HARDY's Life of Lord Charlemont, vol. ii. p. 286. SIR K. DIGBY published Observations on the twenty-second stanza in the ninth canto of the second book of Spenser's F. Queen. 1644. "If it were put to the question of the Water Rhymer's works against Spenser's, I doubt not but they would find more suffrages; because the most favour common vices, out of a prerogative the vulgar have to lose their judgments, and like that which is naught."-B. JONSON, Discoveries, vol. ix. p. 174. 1780. "JOHNSON told me he had been with the king that morning, who enjoined him to add Spenser to his lives of the poets. I seconded the motion. He promised to think of it, but said the booksellers had not included him in their list of the poets."HANNAH MORE, vol. i. p. 175. 1759. Two editions of the Faery Queen, published by Upton and Church.-Monthly Review, vol. xx. p. 566-7. Ditto, vol. xxx. p. 33. Spenser blasphemed by Michael Wodhull and his reviewers. Ditto, vol. xliii. p. 306. “The Faery Queen is frequently laid down almost as soon as it is taken up! because it abounds with loathsome passages!" Ditto, vol. xliv. p. 265. The tiresome uniformity of his measure! Ditto, vol. lii. p. 111. Specimen of the Faery Queen in blank verse, canto 1, 1774. See the Review. Ditto, vol. lx. p. 324. Prince Arthur, an allegorical romance. The story from Spenser. 2 vols. 1778. (prose.) WHEN HORACE WALPOLE was planning a bower at Strawberry Hill, he said, “I am almost afraid I must go and read Spenser, and wade through his allegories and drawling stanzas, to get at a picture."-Letters, vol. iii. p. 25. May. 1633. "ON Monday after Candlemas day, the gentlemen of the inns of court performed their masque at court: they were sixteen in number, who rode through the streets in four chariots, and two others to carry their pages and musicians, attended by an hundred gentlemen on great horses, as well clad as ever I saw any. They far exceeded in bravery any masque that had formerly been presented by those societies, and performed the dancing part with much applause. In their company there was one Mr. Read of Gray's Inn, whom all the women and some men cried up for as handsome a man as the Duke of Buckingham. They were well used at court by the king and queen, no disgust given them, only this one accident fell :Mr. May of Gray's Inn, a fine poet, he who translated Lucan, came athwart my lord chamberlain in the banquetting house, and he broke his staff over his shoulders, not knowing who he was: the king present, who knew him, for he calls him his poet, and told the chamberlain of it, who sent for him the next morning, and fairly excused himself to him, and gave him fifty pounds in pieces. I believe he was the more indulgent for his name's sake."-GERRARD, Strafford Letters, vol. i. p. 207. RICHARDSON. PAMELA. "I know not," says LADY M. W. MONTAGU (vol. iv. p.112), “under what constellation that foolish stuff was wrote; but it has been translated into more languages than any modern performance I ever heard of!" And she proceeds to relate a memorable example of its influence in Italy. Apology for the life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, in which the many falsehoods in a book called Pamela are exposed. 1741. Johnson's character of him.-CROKER'S Boswell, vol. iii. p. 91. "RICHARDSON's works are more admired by the French than among us. To the generality of readers, if characters are ever so naturally drawn, they will not appear to be so, if they are improperly drest. Foreigners, who are not acquainted with our language and our customs, are unprejudiced by Richardson's defect in expression and manners, which are so very striking to ourselves as to conceal much of his very great merit in other respects.”—MRS. CARTER to MRS. M. vol. ii. p. 322. BEATTIE allows that many parts in the first volumes of Clarissa, which seem wearisome, and he had almost said nauseating repetitions, might possibly please, upon a "I RECOLLECT an anecdote (says SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, in the opening address to the subscribers to the Windsor and Eton public library, of which the learned knight is president) told me by a late highly respected inhabitant of Windsor, as a fact which he could personally testify, having occurred in a village where he resided several years, and where he actually was at the time it took place. The blacksmith of the village had got hold of Richardson's novel of 'Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded,' and used to read it aloud in the long summer evenings, seated on his anvil, and never failed to have a large and attentive audience. It is a pretty long-second or third reading, when we are acwinded book; but their patience was fully a match for the author's prolixity, and they fairly listened to it all. At length, when the happy turn of fortune arrived which brings the hero and heroine together, and sets them living long and happily, according to the most approved rules, the congregation were so delighted as to raise a great shout, and, procuring the church keys, actually set the parish bells a ringing." THE Card, 2 vols. 1755. Monthly Review, No. xii. 1755, p. 117, a satire upon Richardson chiefly. The History of Sir Charles Grandison, spiritualised in part, a Vision; with Reflexions thereon, by Theophila. - Ibid. Sept. No. lx. vol. xxiii. p. 255. I BROOKE in his Juliet Grenville, says of Pamela and its title: "Can virtue be rewarded by being united to vice? Her master was a ravisher, a tyrant, a dissolute, a barbarian in manners and principle. admit it,' the author may say; 'but then he was superior in riches and station.' Indeed, Mr. R. never fails in due respect to such matters; he always gives the full value to title and fortune."-Ibid. No. 1. p. 19. Brooke blames him for "6 undressing the sex." quainted with all the characters and all the particulars of the story. But few, he says, can afford leisure for this.-Life of BEATTIE, vol. i. p. 29. H. WALPOLE stopped at the fourth vol. of Sir Charles Grandison. "I was so tired of sets of people getting together, and saying, 'Pray, miss, with whom are you in love?' and of mighty good young men, that convert your Mr. M-s in the twinkling of a sermon."-Letters, vol. i. p. 322. Ibid, vol. ii. p. 100. The town called a child of Mrs. Fitzroy's, at whose house the great loo parties were held, Pam-ela. The natural of modern novel, H. Walpole said, was a kind of writing which Richardson had made to him intolerable.-Ibid. vol. iii. p. 27. "Nous en avons un modèle prodigieux dans le roman Anglais de Clarisse, ouvrage qui fourmille de génie; tous les personnages qu'on y sait parler ou écrire, ont leur style et leur langage d'eux, qui ne ressemblent nullement aux autres. Cette différence est observée jusque dans les nuances les plus fines, les plus délicates, les plus imperceptibles; c'est un prodige continuel aux yeux du connaisseur; aussi Clarisse est peut-être l'ouvrage le plus surprenant qui His lost finger. 54. 106. soit jamais sorti des mains d'hommes, et il | That ocean-terror, he that durst outbrave n'est pas étonnant que ce roman n'ait eu Dread Neptune's trident, Amphitrite's qu'un succès médiocre. Le vrai sublime wave." n'est fait que pour être senti de quelques âmes privilégiées; il échappe aux yeux de la multitude, s'il ne lui est indiqué ou transmis par tradition."-Grimm. Correspondance Littéraire, tom. i. p. 14. Randolph. STORY of a plagiarism from him. Lady M. W. Montagu. 4. 194. P. 37. "Live well, and then how soon soe'er thou die, Thou art of age to claim eternity." 91.- "yonder man of wood that stands To bound the limits of the parish lands." His brother Robert, noticing his originality, says, "Here are no remnants tortured into rime, 4. "Thou several artists dost employ to The measure of thy lands, that thou mayst know How much of earth thou hast; while I do call My thoughts to scan how little 'tis in all." 22. Bulls' guts must bend their bows. -"intendunt taurino viscere nervos." Was it so ? 55. "For to my Muse, if not to me, I'm sure all game is free, Heaven, earth, are all but parts of her great royalty." 56. To Ben Jonson, "Wilt thou engross thy store "Thou canst not find them stuff 121. "Iniquity aboundeth, though pure But. 42. "Hath Madam Devers dispossest her spirit?" Davies it should be, the never so mad a lady, of whom so good a story is told by Peter Heylyn. 43. "My physiognomy two years ago By the small-pox was marr'd, and it may be A finger's loss hath spoil'd my palmistry." 47. Ward, the pirate, "he that awed the seas, Frighting the fearful Hamadryades; Bur. For charity what is it? Had been consumed: the Phoenix, burnt The Fortune, whipt for a blind whore; He wonders how it scaped demolishing And there be soundly baited."—Ibid. |