always think of him as the gentle bard. Though one of the least sentimental of the poets, and never the prey of morbid melancholy, yet the soft, mellow haze of love rests over all his landscapes. His exalted admiration of the female character is a part of his inmost religion. Fairer creations of heavenly purity never dawned upon poet's or painter's vision, than Florimel and Amoret and Belphoebe and "lovely Una, with her milk-white lamb," and even Britomart, as stern as beautiful, who prefers a spear and helmet to the quiet occupations of her sex, and has no patience to finger the fine needle and nice thread." Though wanting, all of them, individuality__and warmth, what a mysterious interest they excite in us! They are like the chaste stars, which look in upon us as we fall asleep, and mingle in our dreams, transformed to angels of light and love, with tender, warning looks. But on these characters the American editor has discoursed with so much delicate discrimination, in his "Introductory Observations," that we forbear further remark. We cannot, however, forbear quoting what he says of Belphœbe.

"In this book, too, the radiant vision of Belphœbe breaks upon us for the first time. She is a flattered likeness of Queen Elizabeth, the woman, as contradistinguished from the queen, who is imaged in Gloriana. Flattery more highly seasoned may have been offered her, but none more delicate and graceful, than that contained in the finished portrait of Belphoebe. She represents that pure and high-spirited maidenhood, which the ancients embodied in Diana; and, like her, the forest is her dwellingplace, and the chase her favorite pastime. The breezes have imparted to her their own fleetness, and the swaying foliage its graceful movement. She comes attended with a train of sylvan images and associations, the dewy meadow, the sunny hillside, the woven roof of foliage, and the jocund horn, startling echo from her woodland seat. She has womanly graces, but not womanly affections. She is passionless and pure, self-sustained and self-dependent, 'in maiden meditation fancy free,' and shines with a cold, lunar light, and not the warm glow of day. The author has mingled the elements of her nature so skilfully, that the result is nothing harsh, unnatural, or unfeminine; and has so combined the lofty and the ideal with the graceful and attractive, that we behold in her a creature recalling the beautiful line of a living poet,

666 Too fair for worship, too divine for love."

But the quality possessed in the highest degree by Spenser, the light which never leaves his works, is beauty. This it is mainly, that gives him his high place among poets, and not sublimity, or intensity, or profoundness of thought. His muse haunts all the exquisite retreats of nature, and bathes in every innocent delight. He is a very bee, or humming-bird, among flowers; through whole eternities of summer days it is one feast of beauty with him; his appetite is never cloyed. He is beautiful, even while dull. His world is always fresh and young. His is that gracefulness of constant cheerful activity and accomplishment, which characterizes the music of Haydn, and which fitted him better to sing "The Creation," than the world's aspiration for its "Messiah," which required the sublimer genius of a Handel, or the depths of love and sorrow, the boundless yearnings of a spirit like Beethoven. Indeed, "The Faerie Queene" reminds us more of Haydn's music, than of any poetry of words, with which we are familiar. It has the same constant grace and cheerfulness, the same tenderness and purity and conscientiousness, and about the same moderate degree of depth. The melody of the poem surpasses everything. He is the master of versification. Those flowing, majestical "Spenserian stanzas " remain as unrivalled as the Grecian statues. They have an architectural solidity and self-sustaining proportion. To compose such may well be called " to build the lofty rhyme." The choice setting of every word, the antithetic clauses, the endless alliterations, would seem studied and artificial in the extreme, but for the perfect success in every instance, the agreeable effect produced, and the freshness with which every stanza so elaborated is left. It seems as if this rhythm were the habitual law of his mind, and governed even its spontaneous workings. In some instances this complicated beauty of form is carried so far, as to seem like a language in itself, another art, as distinct from music, as from poetry. It is a sort of verbal architecture; a rhyming of thoughts, as well as of syllables. It is noticeable in such stanzas as these;

XIII.

"No tree, whose braunches did not bravely spring;

No braunch, whereon a fine bird did not sitt ;

No bird, but did her shrill notes sweetely sing;
No song, but did containe a lovely ditt ;

Trees, braunches, birds, and songs, were framed fitt
For to allure frail mind," &c.

B. II. C. vi.

XXXV.

"Thence, forward he him ledd, and shortly brought
Unto another rowme, whose dore forthright
To him did open as it had beene taught:
Therein an hundred raunges weren pight,
An hundred fournaces all burning bright;
By every fournace many Feends did byde,
Deformed creatures, horrible in sight;
And every Feend his busie paines applyde
To melt the golden metall, ready to be tryde."

And the exquisite lines so often quoted;

LXX.

CANTO VII.

"Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound,
Of all that mote delight a daintie eare,
Such as attonce might not on living ground,
Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere;
Right hard it was for wight which did it heare,
To read what manner musicke that mote bee;
For all that pleasing is to living eare

Was there consorted in one harmonee;
Birdes, voices, instruments, windes, waters, all agree:

LXXI.

"The joyous birdes, shrouded in chearefull shade,
Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet;
Th' angelicall soft trembling voyces made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver-sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmur of the waters fall;
The waters fall with difference discreet,
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call ;
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all."

CANTO XII.

This beauty of rhythm carries the reader contentedly through even those monotonous, level passages, some of which consist of little more than a catalogue of names. But the law of the "Spenserian stanza ' costs often a great sacrifice of intensity and concentration of expression. Each verse must swell out towards the end; must be "leaded," as it were, at the bottom; the last, long line, like the last wave, must gather in and carry with it the weight of all the preceding; and to VOL. XXVIII. 3D s. VOL. X. NO. II. 28

accomplish this, it is often necessary to spread out weak and thin what goes before. Diffuseness, therefore, and superfluity of detail, is almost an unavoidable fault in the style of the poem. Still we are reconciled to this by continually meeting a splendid verse, so grand and beautiful, in sense, in sound, and in structure, as to seem like one of the eternal forms of thought. The whole poem may be likened to a forest, in which the stanzas are so many trees, each bearing its determined relation to the whole picture, but also growing from its own root. A Spenserian Canto is a grove of sonnets.

With all its excellencies, a great deal of "The Faerie Queene" is mechanical and wearisome. The endless repetition of knightly encounters; the detailed description of each knight's method of managing his giant or dragon, which can have no variety or interest but to a pugilist or fencer by profession; the tedious chronicles, occupying whole cantos; the introduction of all the fifty daughters of Danaus by name, with scores of other nymphs and water-gods; we can only account for the patience with which he plods through all this, by considering, what we have remarked before, that the motive of the poem was the adventurous spirit of the age, the wish to accomplish a heavy Herculean labor.

To the enthusiasm of the age, too, and the sentiment of glory, which loved to fancy its own ideal impersonated in a female sovereign, must be traced his repeated extravagant flattery of Elizabeth. The particular virtue, celebrated in the person of the hero or heroine of each book of "The Faerie Queene,' must always remember to wane and look eclipsed before the superior lustre of the same in Elizabeth. Hers is every grace which can adorn a woman or a goddess; holiness, temperance, chastity, beauty, friendship, all have their perfect manifestation in her. He compliments her transcendent beauty, at the age of sixty, and on all fit occasions expresses a decided preference for yellow hair. He dares not even praise his own beloved, in that beautiful vision on the wooded mount, where she dances encircled by the Graces, without thus apologizing to the royal pattern of all loveliness;

"Sunne of the world, great glory of the sky,
That all the earth dost lighten with thy rayes,
Great Gloriana, greatest Majesty!

Pardon thy Shepherd, mongst so many layes
As he hath sung of thee in all his dayes,

To make one minime of thy poor handmayd, And underneath thy feete to place her prayse; That, when thy glory shall be farre display'd To future age, of her this mention may be made!" B. VI. C. x. Stanza xxviii. And, worst of all, in the character of Justice he represents her as passing sentence on the Queen of Scots, while in the character of the woman she grieves that it must be so. Such unstinted bestowal of false praise is certainly beneath the dignity of the poetic character. But, perhaps, Elizabeth to him was but an idea; perhaps he lived so much surrounded by the beings of his imagination, that he fell into the habit of imagining, instead of observing, actual things and persons.

We cannot think it matter of much regret that "The Faerie Queene" was never finished. We know not what new pictures and combinations the remaining cantos would have presented, or what beauty of completeness the whole would have gained by them; but we know that they would have added little or nothing to our stock of ideas, or to our acquaintance with the poet. We feel that he has done quite justice to himself in what he has written. Nothing remains behind. His works prophecy no more than they are. We have seen his limits and sounded his depths. He is not one of the great poets, who always seem to have more in them than they have ever got out. He planned a vast work, too vast, and executed half of it. The other half, we know, would have been like the first; such interminable picture-poetry soon grows all alike. We should have sate so much longer at his table, but should have been served probably with no new viands. He has led us thus far in the midst of the marvellous forest; to explore farther would be but a repetition of the old story; trees and rocks and streams it was, and trees and rocks and streams it would be over again; for has he not had time to exhaust their variety in seventy-two long cantos?

The minor poems of Spenser, some of which are full of beauty and of his peculiar genius, are but little read. We regret that our limits will not allow us to make large extracts from them. We would gladly quote the whole of the "Epithalamion," written on the occasion of the poet's own marriage; it is so instinct and tremulous with joy. Of his sonnets, many are beautiful, and breathe the purest passion, though they are cold compared with Shakspeare's. And that "Prothalamion,"