to Chaucer, the first and then only great English poet. He has given common instead of classic names to his personages, for characters they can hardly be called. Above all, he has gone to the provincial dialects for words wherewith to enlarge and freshen his poetical vocabulary.* I look upon the "Shepherd's Calendar" as being no less a conscious and deliberate attempt at reform than Thomson's "Seasons" were in the topics, and Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads" in the language of poetry. But the great merit of these pastorals was not so much in their matter as their manner. They show a sense of style in its larger meaning hitherto displayed by no English poet since Chaucer. Surrey had brought back from Italy a certain inkling of it, so far as it is contained in decorum. But here was a new language, a choice and arrangement of words, a variety, elasticity, and harmony of verse most grateful to the ears of men. If not passion, there was fervour, which was perhaps as near it as the somewhat stately movement of Spenser's mind would allow him to come. Sidney had tried many experiments in versification, which are curious and interesting, especially his attempts to naturalise the sliding rhymes of Sannazzaro in English. But there is everywhere the uncertainty of a 'prentice hand. Spenser shows himself already a master, at least in verse, and we can trace the studies of Milton, a yet greater master, in the "Shepherd's Calendar" as well as in the "Faery

* Sir Philip Sidney did not approve of this. "That same framing of his style to an old rustic language I dare not allow, since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sannazzaro in Italian, did affect it." ("Defence of Poesy.") Ben Jonson, on the other hand, said that Guarini "kept not decorum in making shepherds speak as well as himself could." ("Conversations with Drummond.") I think Sidney was right, for the poets' Arcadia is a purely ideal world, and should be treated accordingly. But whoever looks into the glossary appended to the "Calendar," by E. K., will be satisfied that Spenser's object was to find unhackneyed and poetical words rather than such as should seem more on a level with the speakers. See also the "Epistle Dedicatory." I cannot help thinking that E. K. was Spenser himself, with occasional interjections of Harvey. Who else could have written such English as many passages in this Epistle?

Queen." We have seen that Spenser, under the misleading influence of Sidney* and Harvey, tried his hand at English hexameters. But his great glory is that he taught his own language to sing and move to measures harmonious and noble. Chaucer had done much to vocalise it, as I have tried to show elsewhere, but Spenser was to prove

The "6

"That no tongue hath the muse's utterance heired

For verse, and that sweet music to the ear

Struck out of rhyme, so naturally as this."

Shepherd's Calendar" contains, perhaps, the most picturesquely imaginative verse which Spenser has written. It is in the eclogue for February, where he tells us of the

"Faded oak

Whose body is sere, whose branches broke,
Whose naked arms stretch unto the fire."

It is one of those verses that Joseph Warton would have liked in secret, that Dr. Johnson would have proved to be untranslatable into reasonable prose, and which the imagination welcomes at once without caring whether it be exactly conformable to barbara or celarent. Another pretty verse in the same eclogue

"But gently took that ungently came"

pleased Coleridge so greatly that he thought it was his own. But in general it is not so much the sentiments and images that are new as the modulation of the verses in which they float. The cold obstruction of two centuries' thaws, and the stream of speech, once more let loose, seeks out its old windings, or overflows musically in unpractised channels. The service which Spenser did to our literature by this exquisite sense of harmony is incalculable. His fine ear, abhorrent of

* It was at Penshurst that he wrote the only specimen that has come down to us, and bad enough it is. I have said that some of Sidney's are pleasing.

+ See My Study Windows, 264 seqq.

barbarous dissonance, his dainty tongue that loves to prolong the relish of a musical phrase, made possible the transition from the cast-iron stiffness of "Ferrex and Porrex" to the Damascus pliancy of Fletcher and Shakespeare. It was he that

"Taught the dumb on high to sing,

And heavy ignorance aloft to fly:

That added feathers to the learned's wing,
And gave to grace a double majesty."

I do not mean that in the "Shepherd's Calendar" he had already achieved that transmutation of language and metre by which he was afterwards to endow English verse with the most varied and majestic of stanzas, in which the droning old alexandrine, awakened for the first time to a feeling of the poetry that was in him, was to wonder, like M. Jourdain, that he had been talking prose all his life-but already he gave clear indications of the tendency and premonitions of the power which were to carry it forward to ultimate perfection. A harmony and alacrity of language like this were unexampled in English verse :

"Ye dainty nymphs, that in this blessed brook

Here we have the natural gait of the measure, somewhat formal and slow, as befits' an invocation; and now mark how the same feet shall be made to quicken their pace at the bidding of the

tune :

"Bring here the pink and purple columbine,
With gilliflowers;

Bring coronations and sops in wine,

Worne of paramours;

Strow me the ground with daffadowndillies,
And cowslips and kingcúps and loved lilies;

The pretty paunce

And the chevisance

Shall match with the fair flowërdelice."*

The argument prefixed by E. K. to the tenth Eclogue has a special interest for us, as showing how high a conception Spenser had of poetry and the poet's office. By Cuddy he evidently means himself, though choosing out of modesty another name instead of the familiar Colin. "In Cuddy is set forth the perfect pattern of a Poet, which, finding no maintenance of his state and studies, complaineth of the contempt of Poetry and the causes thereof, specially having been in all ages, and even amongst the most barbarous, always of singular account and honour, and being indeed so worthy and commendable an art, or rather no art, but a divine gift and heavenly instinct not to be gotten by labour and learning, but adorned with both, and poured into the wit by a certain

* Of course dillies and lilies must be read with a slight accentuation of the last syllable (permissible then), in order to chime with delice. In the first line I have put here instead of hether, which (like other words where th comes between two vowels) was then very often a monosyllable, in order to throw the accent back more strongly on bring, where it belongs. Spenser's innovation lies in making his verses by ear instead of on the finger-tips, and in valuing the stave more than any of the single verses that compose it. This is the secret of his easy superiority to all others in the stanza which he composed, and which bears his name. Milton (who got more of his schooling in these matters from Spenser than anywhere else) gave this principle a greater range, and applied it with more various mastery. I have little doubt that the tune of the last stanza cited above was clinging in Shakespeare's ear when he wrote those exquisite verses in "Midsummer Night's Dream" ("I know a bank "), where our grave pentameter is in like manner surprised into a lyrical movement. See also the pretty song in the eclogue for August. Ben Jonson, too, evidently caught some cadences from Spenser for his lyrics. I need hardly say that in those eclogues (May, for example) where Spenser thought he was imitating what wiseacres used to call the riding-rhyme of Chaucer, he fails most lamentably. He had evidently learned to scan his master's verses better when he wrote his "Mother Hubberd's Tale."

Enthousiasmos and celestial inspiration, as the author hereof elsewhere at large discourseth in his book called THE ENGLISH POET, which book being lately come into my hands, I mind also by God's grace, upon further advisement, to publish." E. K., whoever he was, never carried out his intention, and the book is no doubt lost; a loss to be borne with less equanimity than that of Cicero's treatise, De Gloria, once possessed by Petrarch. The passage I have italicised is most likely an extract, and reminds one of the long-breathed periods of Milton. Drummond of Hawthornden tells us, "he [Ben Jonson] hath by heart some verses of Spenser's 'Calendar,' about wine, between Coline and Percye" (Cuddie and Piers).* These verses are in this eclogue, and are worth quoting, both as having the approval of dear old Ben, the best critic of the day, and because they are a good sample of Spenser's earlier verse :

"Thou kenst not, Percie, how the rhyme should rage;

O, if my temples were distained with wine,

And girt in garlands of wild ivy-twine,

How I could rear the Muse on stately stage

And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine

With quaint Bellona in her equipage !"

* Drummond, it will be remarked, speaking from memory, takes Cuddy to be Colin. In Milton's "Lycidas" there are reminiscences of this eclogue as well as of that for May. The latter are the more evident, but I think that Spenser's

"Cuddie, the praise is better than the price,"

suggested Milton's

"But not the praise,

Phœbus replied, and touched my trembling ears."

Shakespeare had read and remembered this pastoral. Compare

with

"But, ah, Mecænas is ycl: d in clay,

And great Augustus long ago is dead,

And all the worthies liggen wrapt in lead,"

"King Pandion, he is dead;

All thy friends are lapt in lead,"

It is odd that Shakespeare, in his "lapt in lead," is more Speuserian than Spenser himself, from whom he caught this "hunting of the letter."