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fancy. The prayer of a lover in this temple, which begins,

"Great Venus! queene of beauty, and of grace,"

be

is taken from Lucretius's invocation of the fame goddess in the beginning of his poem, and may reckoned one of the most elegant tranflations in our language. The continuation of the fable of Marinel, though not fo ftrictly to the fubject of this Legend, gives occafion to the Poet to introduce that admirable episode of the marriage of the Thames and the Medway, with the train of the fea-gods, nymphs, and rivers, and especially thofe of England and Ireland, that were prefent at the ceremony; all which are defcribed with a furprifing variety, and with very agreeable mixtures of geography; among which Spenfer has not forgot to mention his Mulla, the river which ran through his own grounds.

Befides the general morals and allegories in the Faerie Queene, there are fome parallel paffages and characters which, as I have faid, were defigned to allude to particular actions and perfons; yet no part is fo full of them as Eook V. which, being framed on the Virtue of Juftice, is a kind of figurative reprefentation of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Here we meet with her again, under the name of Mercilla; we fee her fending relief to Belge, or the Netherlands, and reducing the tyrannical power of Geryoneo, or Spain. Her court and attendants are drawn with a majesty suitable to her character. The reader will eafily perceive that the Trial of the Queen of Scots is fhadowed in Canto IX.; but the Poet has avoided the catastrophe of her death, and has artfully touched on the Queen's reluctance and tenderness in that affair, by which he has turned

the compliment on her juftice into another on her

mercy.

Talus with his iron flail, who attends Artegall, is a bold allegorical figure, to fignify the execution of juftice.

The next Book, which is the Sixth, is on the fubject of Courtefy. I fhall not prolong this Difcourfe to trace out particular paffages in it, but only mention that remarkable one in Canto X. where the Author has introduced himself under the perfon of Colin Clout. That vein of paftoral, which runs through this part of the Work, is indeed different from the reft of the Poem: but Taffo, in a more regular plan, has mingled the Paftoral taste with the Heroick, in his reprefentation of Erminia among the fhepherds. The picture, which Spenfer has here given us of his mistress dancing among the Graces, is a very agreeable one, and difcovers all the fkill of the painter, affifted by the paffion of the lover.

Though the remaining Six Books, which were to have compleated this beautiful and moral Poem, are loft, we have a noble fragment of them preferved in the Two Cantos of Mutability. This is, in my opinion, the moft fublime and beft-invented allegory in the whole Work. The Fable of ArloHill, and of the river Molanna, which is a digreffion on this occafion, has all the beauty we admire in the Metamorphofes of Ovid: but the pedigree of Mutability, who is reprefented as a giantefs; her progrefs from the earth to the circle of the moon; the commotion fhe raifes there, by endeavouring to remove that planet from the fky; and the fhadow which is caft, during the attempt, on the inhabitants

Has turned the compliment &c.] There is more of flattery than truth, however, in this compliment. TODD.

of the earth, are greatly imagined. We find feveral ftrains of invention in this Fable, which might appear not unworthy even of Homer himself. Jupiter is alarmed, and fends Mercury to know the reafon of this ftrife, and to bring the offender before him. How Homer-like are thofe lines, after he has concluded his fpeech among the gods?

"So having faid, he ceaft; and with his brow "(His black eye-brow, whofe doomefull dreaded beck "Is wont to wield the world unto his vow,

"And even the highest powers of heaven to check,) "Made figne to them in their degrees to fpeake."

And afterwards;

"With that he fhooke

"His nectar-deawed locks, with which the skyes "And all the world beneath for terror quooke, "And eft his burning levin-brond in hand he tooke.”

The fimile, likewife, in which the gods are reprefented looking on Mutability with surprise,

"Like a fort of steeres,

"'Mongst whom fome beast of strange and forraine race "Unwares is chaunc't, far ftraying from his peeres, &c.” is very much in the fimplicity of that old father of heroick poetry. Mutability appeals from Jupiter to Nature, before whom the obtains a hearing. The Poet on this occafion has, with a moft abundant fancy, drawn out to a review the four Seafons, the Months, Day and Night, the Hours, Life and Death; Change afferts her dominion over them all, and over the heavens themfelves: all creatures are reprefented looking up in the face of Nature, in expectation of the fentence. The conclufion is great, and contains a noble moral; that though all things are varied, and shift their forms, they do not perish, but return to their firft beings; and that

Mutability only shall be at laft entirely deftroyed, and the time shall come in which Change shall be

no more.

I have not yet faid any thing concerning Spenfer's Verfification, in which, though he is not always equal to himself, it may be affirmed that he is fuperiour to all his cotemporaries, and even to thofe that followed him for fome time, except Fairfax, the applauded tranflator of Taffo. In this he commendably ftudied the Italians, and must be allowed to have been a great improver of our English numbers: before his time mufick feems to have been fo much a stranger to our poetry, that, excepting the Earl of Surry's Lyricks, we have very few examples of verfes that had any tolerable cadence. In Chaucer there is fo little of this, that many of his lines are not even reftrained to a certain number of fyllables. Inftances of this loofe verse are likewife to be found in our Author, but it is only in fuch places where he has purposely imitated Chaucer, as in the Second Eclogue, and fome others. This great defect of harmony put the Wits in Queen Elizabeth's reign upon a defign of totally changing our numbers, not only by banishing rhyme, but by new-moulding our language into the feet and measures of the Latin poetry. Sir Philip Sidney was at the head of this project, and has accordingly given us fome Hexameter and Pentameter verfes in his Arcadia: but the experiment foon failed; and though our Author, by fome paffages in his Letters to Mr. Harvey, feems not to have difapproved it, yet it does not appear, by

a concerning Spenfer's Verfification,] This fubject is more copiously difcuffed in Mr. Warton's differtation on the poet's Stanza, Verfification, and Language; and in the notes fubjoined to that differtation. TODD.

thofe poems of his which are preferved, that he gave it any authority by his example'.

:

As to the Stanza in which the Faerie Queene is written, though the Author cannot be commended for his choice of it, yet it is much more harmonious in its kind than the heroick verfe of that age it is almoft the fame with what the Italians call their Ottave Rime, which is ufed both by Ariofto and Taffo, but improved by Spenfer, with the addition of a line more in the clofe, of the length of our Alexandrines. The defect of it in long or narrative poems is apparent: the fame meafure, clofed always by a full stop, in the fame place, by which every ftanza is made as it were a diftinct paragraph, grows tirefome by continual repetition, and frequently breaks the fenfe, when it ought to be carried on without interruption. With this exception the reader will, however, find it harmonious, full of well-founding epithets, and of fuch elegant turns on the thought and words, that Dryden' himfelf owns he learned thefe graces of verte chiefly from our Author, and does not fcruple to fay, that, in this particular, only Virgil furpaffed him among the Romans, and only Mr. Waller among the English." HUGHES.

46

that he gave it any authority by his example.] He wrote, however, An Elegie in Trimeter Iambicks, entitled Love's Embaffie, unknown to Hughes, and not printed in any, edition of Speufer's Works before the prefent. TODD.

Dedication to Juvenal. HUGHES.

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