its weakness and in its strength, in its mirth and in its passion, in the appetites which sink it below the beasts that perish, in the aspirations which lift it to regions of existence of which the visible heavens are but the veil.

IN

SPENSER.

N the last chapter we closed our remarks on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth. In the present we propose to treat of Spenser, with some introductory observations on the miscellaneous poets who preceded him. And it is necessary to bear in mind that, in the age of which we treat, as in all ages, the versifiers far exceeded the seers, and the poetasters the poets. It has been common to exercise a charity towards the early English poets which we refuse to extend to those of later times; but mediocrity has identical characteristics in all periods, and there was no charm in the circumstances of the Elizabethan age to convert a rhymer into a genius. Indeed, leaving out the dramatists, the poetry produced in the reigns of Elizabeth and James can hardly compare in originality, richness, and variety, with the English poetry of the nineteenth century. Spenser is a great name; but he is the only undramatic poet of his time who could be placed above, or on a level with, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, or Tennyson. There is a list, somewhere, of two hundred names of poets who belonged to the Eliza

bethan age, mostly mere nebulous appearances, which

it requires a telescope of the greatest power to resolve into individual stars. Few of them can be made to shine with as steady a lustre as the ordinary versemen who contribute to our magazines. Take England's Helicon and the Paradise of Dainty Devices, - two collections of the miscellaneous poetry written during the last forty or fifty years of the sixteenth century, -and, if we except a few pieces by Raleigh, Sidney, Marlowe, Greene, Lodge, Breton, Watson, Nash, and Hunnis, these collections have little to dazzle us into admiration or afflict us with a sense of inferiority. Reading them is a task, in which an occasional elegance of thought, or quaintness of fancy, or sweetness of sentiment does not compensate for the languor induced by tiresome repetitions of moral commonplaces, varied by repetitions, as tiresome, of amatory commonplaces. In the great body of the poetry of the time there is more that is bad than tolerable, more that is tolerable than readable, and more that is readable than excellent.

One person, however, stands out from this mob of versifiers the most noticeable elevation in English poetry from Chaucer to Spenser, namely, Thomas Sackville, afterwards Lord Buckhurst, and, still later, Earl of Dorset. Born in 1536, and educated at both universities, his poetic genius was but one phase of his general

ability. In 1561 his tragedy of Gorboduc was acted with great applause before the Queen. Previously to this, in 1559, at the age of twenty-three, he had joined two dreary poetasters - Baldwyne and Ferrers-in the production of a work called The Mirrour for Magistrates, the design of which was to exhibit, in a series of metrical narratives and soliloquies, the calamities of men prominent in the history of England. The work passed to a third edition in 1571, and received such constant additions from other writers, in the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions, that its bulk finally became enormous. Its poetical value is altogether in the comparatively meagre contributions of Sackville, consisting of the Induction, and the complaint of the Duke of Buckingham. The Induction, especially, is a masterpiece of meditative imagination, working under the impulse of sternly serious sentiment. Misery and sorrow seem the dark inspirers of Sackville's Muse; and his allegoric pictures of Revenge, Remorse, Old Age, Dread, Care, Sleep, Famine, Strife, War, and Death exhibit such a combination of reflective and analytic with imaginative power, of melody of verse with compact, massive strength and certainty of verbal expression, that our wonder is awakened that a man with such a conscious mastery of the resources of thought and language should have written so little. If political ambition

drawal from the Muse, -if Burleigh tempted him from

Dante, it must be admitted that his choice, in a worldly sense, was justified by the event, for he became an eminent statesman, and in 1598 was made Lord High Treasurer of England. He held that great office at the time of his death, in 1608.

But it is probable that

Sackville ceased to cultivate poetry because he failed

to reap its internal rewards.

His genius had no joy in

it, and its exercise probably gave him little poetic delight. With great force of imagination, his was still a somewhat dogged force. He could discern clearly, and shape truly, but no sudden ecstasy of emotion gave a "precious seeing" to his eye or unexpected felicity to his hand. There is something bleak in his noblest The poet, we must ever remember, is paid, not by external praise, or fortune, or fame, but by the deep bliss of those inward moods from which his creations spring. The pleasure they give to others is as nothing compared with the rapture they give to him.

verse.

But Sackville was to be succeeded by a man who, though he did not exhibit at so early an age equal power of shaping imagination, had that perception of the loveliness of things, and that joy in the perception, which make continuous poetic creation a necessity of