splendor of coloring, such infinite minuteness of detail, that we seem to see them through an atmosphere preternaturally transparent, or to be endowed with eyes magically anointed, to enable us to see so much more than words ever brought to our view before. But in this enchanted panorama, beneath these shades which are not cast by the common garish sun, we discern, through all disguises of allegory, chivalry, magic, and fantastic romance, real men and women, with bosoms warmed by the same hopes, and fears, and wishes that agitate our own; their cheeks suffused with blushes, and their hearts beating visibly under the influence of Love; their hands grasping the sword at the approach of injury or insult. Even the personages most purely allegorical seem to us just like their other selves now walking among us. Gluttony, with his "eyes swollen with fatness," and his neck (long, for the better tasting),

"With which he swallow'd up excessive feast

For want whereof poor people oft did pine—”

66

is as plainly a man, as many a seeker of turtle feasts, "in shape and life more like a monster than a man," whom we have all seen; and Avarice, that scarce good morsel all his life did taste," though "child nor living kinsman had he none" to inherit his hoards, is no more an abstraction than some we could name, who live and look just like him. When Pride comes forth "with princely pace," and

"The heaps of people, thronging in the hall,

Do ride each other, upon her to gaze,"

we look upon something more than a picture. We can detect, in the rolling of her haughty eye, the look which pretends indif ference, but which is secretly watching on all sides to ascertain that no "pepper-corn of praise" be wanting; and we perceive that she takes her airing more for the sake of exhibiting her state, than to be

"With pleasance of the breathing fields yfed-"

exactly as her flesh-and-blood kindred do at this very day.

As for strength, it is acknowledged that nothing in Dante exceeds the personification of Despair, of Fear, of Care, and of Mammon, in the Faery Queen. In all these unsurpassed delineations there is an intensity of implied invective, without a tinge of that bitter temper from which our better nature revolts. The greatest detestation for what is false and wrong is excited, without even a suspicion that a personal feeling has prompted the poet's indignation. Yet there is not the coldness of mere abstraction. We are interested in these creations because they seem to partake of our own humanity. They show us the ghastly and terrific image of what conscience teaches us we ourselves should be if we gave full scope to the evil part of our nature, and what the results upon others of such indulgence. We see our own faults, commonly, as we see our faces in a convex mirror—softened by diminution into a delicate harmony, and looking almost beautiful in miniature. Spenser shows us the same things, as a concave glass gives back every speck and blemish and unhappy expression, magnified, yet not untrue,-exaggerated, but by that means more easily studied. Perhaps the indulgence of baleful passions looks ever thus to the angels and pure intelligences who mourn over the miseries we invoke by our own wilful folly.

The humanity, so to speak-of the Faëry Queen, is proved by its suggestiveness. We are often betrayed into reverie-carried off into far experience or still more distant anticipation-by our sympathy with the actors in the scene. We see the picture, but we see much more. The poet's accessories are perfect; but we supply, from our own spiritual world, and in proportion to our power of appreciation, a thousand subtle links which serve to bring us into communication with the imaginary world before us, airy spirits ascending and descending upon this electric ladder,

until a complete unison is attained, and the poet's brilliant idealizing assumes the dignity of fact, and our own matter-of-fact existence is exalted into poetry.

The fourth Book of the Faery Queen exhibits the ideal of Friendship in the adventures of Cambel and Triamond; the fifth of Justice, exemplified by Artegall, who is attended by Talus, an iron man, typical of unswerving and executive Law. The sixth Book tells of Sir Calidore, or Courtesy

"Beloved over all,

In whom it seems that gentleness of spright

And manners mild were planted natural;

To which he, adding comely guise withal,

And gracious speech, did steal men's hearts away."

Each of these knights has a mission of his own to fulfil, and all with the general object of serving "great Gloriane," the Faëry Queen; but other than this general purpose their several trains of adventure have little connection. One character, however, appears in every book, and was undoubtedly intended by the poet at the outset as the hero, par excellence, of the whole action. This is Prince Arthur, or Magnanimity, who is set forth as an embodiment of all the moral virtues, and who has a part, more or less important, assigned him in each of the several actions. Herein lies the great objection made by the critics to the conduct of the poem, and arguments pro and con have been multiplied to little purpose. Nothing can be plainer than that the subject, as at first conceived by Spenser, was, when treated with that luxurious diffuseness which seems the inevitable result of such fulness as his, entirely too immense for management; and that the unities, which a poet of more scanty genius might have observed even to frigidity, melted away in the glow of an imagination too fervid to suffer compression in a mould however beautiful. A sufficient apology for the disregard of those rules which have been framed by means of the writings of such poets

as Spenser, is found in the fact that each book of the Faëry Queen is an epic within its own bounds, so that the appearance of Arthur in all is gratuitous. "Spenser," says Warton, “did not live in an age of planning. His poetry is the careless exuberance of a warm imagination and a strong sensibility. It was his business to engage the fancy and to interest the attention by bold and striking images, in the formation and the disposition of which little labor or art was applied. The various and the

marvellous were the chief sources of delight. Here we find our author ransacking alike the regions of reality and romance, of truth and fiction, to find the proper decorations and furniture of his fairy structure. Born in such an age, Spenser wrote rapidly from his own feelings, which, at the same time, were naturally noble. Exactness, in his poem, would have been like the cornice which a painter introduced in the grotto of Calypso. Spenser's beauties are like the flowers in Paradise,

Which not nice art,

In beds and curious knots, but nature boon,
Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain;
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, or where the unpierced shade
Imbrown'd the noontide bowers."

*

In reading Spenser, if the critic is not satisfied, the reader is transported.

The Knights of the Virtues are throughout engaged not so much in mere feats of strength, and actions whose leading motive is fame, like those of Ariosto's heroes, as in revenging injuries and doing justice, aiding the weak, and consoling the distressed. In the first book, for instance, "a king's daughter applies to a knight with a request that he would relieve her father and mother, who are closely confined to their castle upon account of a vast and terrible dragon that had ravaged their country, and perpetually laid wait to destroy them. The knight sets forward with the

lady, encounters a monster in the way, is plotted against by an enchanter, and, after surmounting a variety of difficulties and obstacles, arrives at the country which is the scene of the dragon's devastation; kills him, and is presented to the king and queen whom he has just delivered, marries their daughter, but is soon obliged to leave her, on account of fulfilling a vow.”*

This first book we propose to give, as a temptation to explore the whole poem; and although we cannot deny that, as a whole, this Book is more perfect in its excellence than the rest, yet it contains no passages of greater splendor than may be found in the other Books. If encouraged by the reception of the present attempt, we shall offer some account of these, with specimens of their beauty, any one of which would make the fortune of a modern poem.

It is not for us to point out the faults of Spenser; we must leave that office to the critics. Faults he has, doubtless; but we agree with Mr. Hunt in thinking that "his genius not only makes amends for all, but overlays them and makes them beautiful with ‘riches fineless.'” His faults are the faults of his age; his book reflects his age—not its manners, but its spirit. The prose writings of that day exhibit everywhere abundant proof that quaintness and prolixity, verbal pedantry and inflated phraseology, were in fashion. Philological studies were almost exclusively confined to the learned languages, to the great neglect of the cultivation of the English tongue. The ardor for classical erudition was so prevalent among the learned and the great, that the mythology as well as the diction of the ancients became fashionable. The amusements and even the furniture of the opulent, their shows and masques, the hangings and the tapestries of their houses, and their very cookery, assumed an erudite, and what would now be termed a pedantic, cast. "Everything," says Warton, speaking

* Warton's Observations on the Faëry Queen.