the last song that would ever be sung in the old home overcame the stout heart that till now had never known to quail before the ills of life. He felt his courage and his strength waning, and obeying the childlike faith that comes to us all in the hour of dire calamity, he lifted his face towards the dark starless sky and prayed. And God had taken pity on him and granted him a respite to his sorrow. They brought him into the drawing-room, but it was long before he regained sufficient consciousness to unbosom his sad news. Then, having briefly announced the catastrophe, he buried his face in his hands, and rocked himself to and fro, quite heedless of the tender caresses of Mary and Emily, and the brave, hopeful words of Philip Celini. Emily, always impulsive, at last broke down in her affected cheerfulness, and retiring to the farthest corner of the room stood sobbing hysterically, while Philip held her hand, conveying by his touch the sympathy and love his tongue refused to speak. But Mary sat still at her father's side, with her arm round his neck, as she had sat from the first; she had long dried her silent tears, but her thoughtful womanly wisdom told her that the sound of her loved voice could only recall him to a keener sense of his misery. All the higher sympathies are silent, her soft warm arm wound so lovingly round him brought more consolation and

volumes of kind words.

peace than

"Father," said Mary, her soft cooing voice breaking silence at last, "Father, we have forgotten something. Mr. Celini and Emily are our guests, and dinner is waiting."

Mr. Cotton raised his head. "Yes, yes, my child, you are right," he said. "We will be hospitable while we can. To

morrow is not ours."

"That's my dear, brave papa," cried Mary, kissing the

deeply-furrowed face.

"Forgive me, Mr. Celini, misfortune should not have made me forgetful of others, since I think prosperity never did." Philip passed to his side and took the good man's hand. "Excuse me, sir," he faltered, "I am not so thoughtless as to obtrude my poor sympathy between you and those who love you most. I owe much to your kindness already. Pray try, for the sake of your daughter, for the sake of all who love you, to be strong, and hope the best. The loss of fortune should

be little to one so rich in love. Good-bye, sir, good-bye, Miss Cotton; good-bye, Emily."

The name was spoken almost in a whisper, and the poor girl was too miserable to heed the unwarrantable liberty.

"Oh, do not leave us," she pleaded, throwing her arms hysterically round Philip's neck, "Do not leave them."

Philip stroked back the wild hair from her brow. He gazed long and earnestly into her tearful eyes, then gently removing the clinging hands he escaped from the room.

He is on the point of breaking down and he will rather leave us than add a tear to our misery, she thought. Kind good Philip!

But he walked down the stairs with the old light step, and as the door closed behind him she thought-what will not a woman think?-we shall never meet in Mr. Cotton's house again, perhaps never again anywhere in the world.

(To be continued.)

C

ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS.

No. III.-SPENSER.

It was

NE of the most notable facts in literary English history is the appearance, in 1579, of an anonymous poem entitled "The Shepheards Kalender." dedicated, like Gosson's "School of Abuse" (which had such a fertile result) to that prince of knights, Sir Philip Sidney. In speaking, in the "Apologie for Poetrie," of the English poets down to his own time, Sidney points to the writings of Chaucer and the " Mirror of Magistrates' noteworthy products of English genius and energy; commending, too, as he passes along, the "Liricks" of the Earl of Surrey, in which, he says, there are “many things of a noble birth and worthy of a noble minde." In reference to Chaucer he pays a tribute and passes a criticism that both deserve notice, first as indicating the true critical spirit,

as

and secondly as expressing a cultured man's mistrust of his own time. "Chaucer," the critic proceeds, "undoubtedly did excellently in his Troylus and Cresseid; of whom, truly I know not whether to marvel more, either that he in that mistie time could see so clearely, or that wee in this cleare age walke so stumblingly after him." Sidney was thus not satisfied that all that could be done for English poetry, for a century and a half previous to the time at which he was writing, had been done by men like Hoccleve, Hawes, and Skelton; while his compliment to the Earl of Surrey is not much higher than Dr. Johnson's, touching the Earl of Roscommon, to the effect that "he wrote very well for a gentleman." Perhaps, indeed, Sidney might have been a little more enthusiastic over his noble predecessor had it not been that he too was anxious, as Surrey had been, to reform English verse.

verse. But in his enthusiastic youth Sir Philip

thought of recurring to the manner of the ancients, and he and Spenser used to supplement each other's efforts towards

that consummation. It is not difficult to see what were the models admired at the time, when we find these sentences following in direct sequence those already quoted from the "Apologie ":" The Sheapheards Kalander hath much poetry in his Eglogues: indeed worthy the reading if I be not deceived. That same framing of his style to an old rustic language I dare not alowe, sith neyther Theocritus in Greeke, Virgill in Latine, nor Sanazar in Italian did affect it." Of course, this may simply mean that the famous writers of pastoral, already known to the world, had used the language of their own time, but it also shows that the critic was not quite sure whether there was one form of English that might be used for poetical purposes. It is clear that Sidney felt astonishment, rather than admiration, when he thought of Chaucer, and that it had never entered his mind as a possibility that Chaucer's language might be looked on as the standard of poetical English. Spenser himself probably had this notion: he considered he could not approach Chaucer too closely, whether in sentiment or form. So, too, his apologist E.K. (now known to have been Edward Kirke) defends the words of the "Calendar" on the ground that though "they be something hard and of most men unused" they are at the same time "English, and also used of most excellent Authors and most famous Poets." This much it seems indispensable to grant in reference to Spenser's idea of his poetic art and of what was due to his Master, Chaucer. Affectation alone is not a sufficient reason for his preference of archaisms. There is no doubt much that is artificial in all his work, but in this particular feature of diction it is evident that he is acting on a well considered theory, and that criticism was not likely to have much effect on his choice. It would have shown greater strength of character in Spenser, perhaps, had he boldly used the language of his own time; but then his strength of character might have been apparent at the expense of his poetic excellence. Sidney, we shall say, was on this point right for the critic; but Spenser knew himself and his art better, and he went his own way. It is not likely that there are many true students of the "Shepherd's Calendar" and the "Faerie Queene," who would prefer the language to be other than what it is, and this not so much because they

A

have conquered the difficulties connected with it, as because they find it suitable to the poet's idiosyncrasy. Spenser in Elizabethan English would no longer be the Spenser that has influenced all English poets from his own day to this.

Dean Church, in discussing the "Shepherd's Calendar" in his recent monograph on Spenser, has the clear ring of genuine appreciation along with the doubt as to the propriety of the diction selected. Here we find, he says, "for the first time in the century, the swing, the command, the varied resources of the real poet, who is not driven by failing language or thought into frigid or tumid absurdities." It is not quite patent why there should be supposed to exist an inseparable connection between failing language " and "frigid or tumid absurdities." If Spenser had been capable of absurdities it is not likely that words of any kind would have saved him from the perpetration of them, and his success with the language he did use is ample proof of his own clear insight into propriety, and of his moulding and adapting power. There is this difference between the eccentricity of Spenser and that of Wordsworth in reference to diction, that (as E.K. points out) Spenser was doing what acknowledged great poets had done before him, whereas Wordsworth was striving to achieve what had never been thought of, and what (as he must have known himself) would come with all the suddenness and shock of an innovation. Spenser's choice of words was a revival rather than a novelty. Probably his attitude finds its best parallel in this generation in that of Mr. William Morris, who has also declared boldly for a diction not quite in accordance with that used by his c

In

any case, Spenser's language does not prevent the "Shepherd's Calendar " from being the first of a new kind of poetry,

and so

Sidney

forming a landmark in English literature. Sir Philip

acknowledged the "sinew" there is in it, and nothing

could be better than this latest tribute to the excellence of the work from the pen of Dean Church :

"There are passages in the "Shepherd's Calendar" of poetical eloquence, of refined vigour, and of musical and imaginative sweetness, such as the English language had never attained to, since the days of him, who was to the age of Spenser, what Shakespeare and Milton are to ours, the pattern and fount of poetry, Chaucer."