converted to faint devotion, thinks it is a divinity that he sees. Glauce now, seeing how matters stand, entreats her mistress to grant the two warriors "truce awhile;" Britomart consents; and then the knights raise their beavers, and she for the first time sees their countenances. As soon as she beholds "the lovely face of Artegal, tempered with sterness and stout majesty," she is startled and appalled by perceiving it to be the same that she had seen long since in the enchanted glass. Her uplifted hand drops down, and, ever as she attempts to raise it anew, all strength to hold the sword leaves it as soon as her eye again meets that manly visage; nor will even her tongue obey her as she strives still to appear enraged, but brings forth speeches mild instead of angry words. Meanwile Scudamore, inwardly rejoicing at having found how false and groundless was all his jealous fear, addresses the submissive knight :

"Certes, Sir Artegal,

I joy to see you loutb so low on ground,
And now become to live a lady's thrall,

That whilome in your mind wont to despise them all.” Poor Britomart does not hear that name, giving her full assurance that she has found him she has so long sought, without various violent and conflicting emotions, though she still continues to feign her former angry mood,

Thinking to hide the depth by troubling of the flood.

Glauce now addresses the three. First, she reminds both Artegal and Scudamore, that they may now lay aside all the fears that had troubled them so much, lest Britomart should " woo away" their loves. Then she exhorts Artegal not henceforth to make it matter of regret or self-reproach that he has a second time been conquered by a woman's hand ;—"for," says she,

"whilome they have conquered sea and land, And heaven itself, that nought may them withstand:" "Ne," she adds,

b Stoop, bow.

"henceforth be rebellious unto love,

That is the crown of knighthood, and the band

Of noble minds derived from above,

Which, being knit with virtue, never will remove."

Britomart she recommends to repress somewhat of her wrathful spirit, the fire of which, she tells her, "were better turned to other flame," and to lend a favourable ear to her lover, only, however, on condition that he fulfil the penance she shall lay upon him

"For lovers' heaven must pass by sorrow's hell." "Thereat," we are told,

full inly blushed Britomart;

But Artegal, close-smiling, joyed in secret heart.

During all this while Scudamore is longing to hear news of his Amoret; and he now begs Britomart (whom, however, somewhat oddly, he still addresses by the title Sir) to give him the desired information. It would appear that, after releasing her from the hands of the enchanter, Britomart had taken every care of her, preserving her "from peril and from fear" with all possible tenderness and affection; till one day as they were travelling through a desert, being both weary, they alighted and sate down to rest, when Britomart, having fallen asleep, found on awaking her companion gone; nor were all her subsequent efforts to obtain tidings of her of any avail. Scudamore is overwhelmed with grief and deadly fear at this account; but after a while is somewhat re-assured by Britomart kindly vowing "by heaven's light" never to leave him till they shall have found his lady love, and avenged themselves on her reaver. Every thing being thus arranged, they take their steeds, and set forward to a resting place to which Artegal undertakes to conduct them;

Where goodly solace was unto them made,
And daily feasting both in bower and hall,
Until that they their wounds well healed had,
And weary limbs recured after late usage bad.

In all this time Sir Artegal, too, we are told, was making way "unto the love of noble Britomart ;" and that, notwithstanding the pains she took "with womanish art" to conceal the impression he had made on her heart,

So well he wooed her, and so well he wrought her,
With fair entreaty and sweet blandishment,
That at the length unto a bayc he brought her,
So as she to his speeches was content

To lend an ear, and softly to relent.

At last, through many vows which forth he poured
And many oaths, she yielded her consent

To be his love, and take him for her lord,

Till they with marriage meet might finish that accord.

But at last, after they have rested here for a long while, Artegal, to the great grief of Britomart, finds it necessary to depart in order to proceed upon an adventure in which he had been engaged when they met. It is with much difficulty that he obtains her permission to go; but on his pledging his faith to her by a "thousand vows from bottom of his heart," and promising to return to her as soon as he shall have achieved his object, for which he only demands three months, she yields her consent.

So, early on the morrow next, he went
Forth on his way to which he was ybent;
Ne wight him to attend, or way to guide,
As whilome was the custom ancient

Mongst knights when on adventures they did ride;
Save that she algates him a while accompanied.

And by the way she sundry purpose found
Of this or that, the time for to delay,
And of the perils whereto he was bound,

The fear whereof seemed much her to affray :
But all she did was but to wear out day.
Full oftentimes she leave of him did take;
And eft again devised somewhat to say,
Which she forgot, whereby excuse to make:
So loth she was his company for to forsake.

However, at last, when all her speeches are spent, she leaves him to himself; and, returning to Scudamore, sets out with him in quest of Amoret-" her second care, though in another kind." They go back to the forest where she had disappeared, and seek her there and every where, without success. But, coneludes the Canto,

by what hapless fate

Or hard misfortune she was thence conveyed,
And stolen away from her beloved mate,
Were long to tell therefore I here will stay
Until another tide, that I it finish may.

Canto VII. (47 stanzas)." Great God of Love," exclaims the poet in now proceeding with the story of Amoret,

Great God of Love, that with thy cruel darts
Dost conquer greatest conquerors on ground,
And set'st thy kingdom in the captive hearts
Of kings and kesars to thy service bound;
What glory or what guerdon hast thou found
In feeble ladies tyranning so sore,

And adding anguish to the bitter wound

With which their lives thou lanched'ste long afore,
By heaping storms of trouble on them daily more?

It seems that, when Britomart fell asleep, Amoret had amused herself by taking a walk through the wood, and in the course of her ramble had been suddenly fallen upon and snatched up by a personage who is thus engagingly painted:

It was to weet a wild and salvage man;
Yet was no man, but only like in shape,
And eke in stature higher by a span;

All overgrown with hair, that could awhapef
An hardy heart; and his wide mouth did gape
With huge great teeth, like to a tusked boar:
For he lived all on ravin and on rape
Of men and beasts; and fed on fleshly gore,
The sign whereof yet stained his bloody lips afore.

• Pierced'st.

f

Terrify.

His nether lip was not like man nor beast,
But like a wide deep poke down hanging low,
In which he wont the relics of his feast

And cruel spoil, which he had spared, to stow :
And over it his huge great nose did grow,
Full dreadfully empurpled all with blood;
And down both sides two wide long ears did glow,
And raught down to his waste when up he stood,
More great than the ears of elephants by Indus' flood.
His waist was with a wreath of ivy green
Engirt about, ne other garment wore;
For all his hair was like a garment seen;
And in his hand a tall young oak he bore,
Whose knotty snags were sharpened all afore,
And beathedh in fire for steel to be in stead.
But whence he was, or of what womb ybore,
Of beasts, or of the earth, I have not read;

But certes was with milk of wolves and tigers fed.

The hideous monster rushed away with her through the briars and bushes to his cave, and there throwing her in left her more dead than alive. When she came to herself she heard in the darkness some one sighing and sobbing near her; this was one of her own sex, another of the wretch's victims, who had been already twenty days in the cavern, and in that time had seen "seven women by him slain and eaten clean," that being his regular mode of finishing his atrocities as soon as his amorous fit was over. Only she and an old woman, besides Amoret, remained; "and of us three," said she, "to-morrow he will sure eat one." She then told her own story. The daughter of a great lord, she had loved a squire of low degree-who yet was fit, if her eyes did not deceive her, "by any lady's side for leman to have lain." Having resolved for his sake to abandon sire, and friends, and all for ever, she one day left her home to meet him at a place they had agreed upon between them, and was caught by this "shame of men and plague of woman-kind," who, said she,

• Reached.

h Heated.

VOL. II.

G