Platonic "Fair and Good." The one was not the ornament merely of the other. As oxygen and hydrogen not only blend in the composition of water, but so unite as to become a single substance as simple as either gas, so in his poetry the fair and the good coexist as a single element. He is the converse of ordinary poets. When his theme forces on him the sensational in place of the beautiful, the poet gets sleepy. Some of his battles admit of grand incidents, and he always knows how to make the most of such; but where fight is nothing more than fight, it is to him but a business that has to be transacted. Stanza here follows stanza, each a single sentence, the fifth line not seldom an echo of the fourth, the language diffuse, and the metre monotonous, the chief pause constantly recurring at the end of the line. But this is not Spenser. When he has killed off his man, he feels relieved. Something brings back the beautiful to his theme, and the poet wakens: his language becomes that of a man inspired; every epithet has its significance, every metrical change its meaning; the frost melts, the stream of melody flows again; and the bramble close by, or the forest-roof far off, "glistens with a livelier ray."

Sometimes the beauty is minute, as—

Two goodly trees, that faire did spred
Their arms abroad, with grey moss overcast ;
And their greene leaves trembling with every blast
Made a calme shadowe far in compass round.

More often it is touched with a vague ideal, as—

And low, where dawning day doth never peepe
His dwelling is: there Tethys his wet bed
Doth ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steepe

In silver dew his ever-drooping head;

While sad night over him her mantle black doth spred.

Sometimes the truth to nature seems a suggestion to art such as Salvator's

As an aged tree

High growing on the top of rocky clift,

Whose heart-strings with keene steele nigh hewen be;
The mighty trunck half rent with ragged rift

Doth roll adoune the rocks.

It is singular how the poet's character reflects itself in his descriptions of scenery. Spenser's was gentle, and the nature which he sings is that which is least troubled with storms, and smiles on its admirer. He likes mountains best when they keep their distance; but he can never be near enough to the reedy river's brim, or familiar enough with the cowslips on the mead. Professor Dowden, an admirable critic, remarks, "Spenser's landscape possesses a portion, as it were, of feminine beauty" (" Heroines of Spenser ”).1 It is noteworthy that the careless descriptions incidentally introduced into his narratives are far more true to Nature than his more elaborate pictures of her, such as "The Garden of Sensual Delight," Book II. canto v., or "The Bower of Bliss," Book II. canto xii. In the latter class Nature is generalised: we have catalogues of trees, not the tree itself; and the intellectual beauty of Nature is drowned in her Epicurean appeal to the sense. The passage last 1 The Cornhill Magazine, June 1879.

referred to is largely taken from Tasso; for in those days poets were ready alike to borrow and to lend; and wholesale plagiarism was neither concealed nor complained of. But Spenser was always best when he depended most on his own genius. It was his modesty, not his need, that made him borrow. He seems to have regarded it as a tribute of respect.

Spenser's extraordinary sense of the beautiful at once shows itself when he describes art in any of its forms. Nothing in "The Bower of Bliss" surpasses the description of its ivory gate with the story of Jason, Medea, and the Argo graven upon it, and that of the fountain carved all over with "curious imageree." Another specimen of this excellence is his description of the Temple of Isis, its emblematic sculpture, and its stately ministrations (Book V. canto vii.) In this canto occurs a passage which has been more than once imitated in modern poetry. Britomart recounts to an aged priest of the temple a vision which has left her stunned and amazed. The priest listens long

Like to a weake faint-hearted man he fared
Through great astonishment of that strange sight;
And with long locks up-standing stifly, stared
Like one adawèd with some dreadful spright;
So filled with heavenly fury thus he her behight.

He prophesies her future greatness. The reader of
Scott's Lord of the Isles, and of Macaulay's Prophecy

finest passage in Among the most

of Capys, when they come to the each, may recognise its original here. remarkable instances, perhaps, of the mode in which Spenser's sense of beauty shows itself in the conception

of pictures and statues, are those in the House of Busyrane" (Book III. canto xi.), and the "Maske of Cupid" (Book III. canto xii.)

The gift of delineating beauty finds perhaps its most arduous triumph when exercised on the description of incident, a thing that passes successively from change to change, and not on permanent objects which less elude the artist's eye and hand. As an example may be cited the striving of the rival ladies for Florimel's girdle, which will not allow itself to be buckled around the waist of the fairest if upon her life there rests even the slightest stain (Book IV. canto v.) That poetic touch which suggested the expression "nihil tetigit quod non ornavit," moves over this episode with a light and bright felicity; and elsewhere leaves a gleam even upon that pathos in which the Faery Queen so richly abounds. A charming example of this is the story of the gentle squire who loves Belphoebe. He saves Amoret; and his compassion for the victim he has rescued half-dead from the "salvage man "makes him for a moment seem to forget that love. Amoret lies on the forestfloor in swoon, when Belphobe arrives and finds him From her faire eyes wiping the deawy wet

Which softly still'd, and kissing them atweene.

Belphoebe has not returned the gentle squire's devotion to herself, but yet she regards his fidelity as her due, and with no words except "Is this the Faith?" she recoils into the woods. He sees her no more. He throws his weapons away; he will speak to none; he

hides himself in the forest's gloomiest nook; his fair locks

He let to grow and griesly to concrew
Uncompt, uncurled, and carelessly unsted;

That like a pinèd ghost he soon appears.

When his "deare lord" Prince Arthur finds him, he knows him not; and the abandoned one will answer nothing. Prince Arthur notes that "Belphoebe" is graved upon every tree; but knows only that the forlorn wretch before him must have been one of gentle birth. Help comes from a tenderer friend. A turtle-dove that has lost her mate understands him better, and laments close beside him in a strain

So sensibly compyled that in the same
Him seemed oft he heerd his owne right name.

Each day he shares with her his woodland fare, and at last binds around her neck a jewel

Shaped like a heart yet bleeding of the wound,

given to him by Belphoebe. The dove flies away, and wafts it afar to the spot where Belphoebe sits. She recognises and tries to recover it; but the dove, swerving ever as she is about to be caught, insensibly leads her through the forest till they reach the gentle squire, and then flies into his hand. He speaks nothing; it is long before Belphoebe recognises him, and then it is not by his features, but by his sorrow, That her in-burning wrath she gan abate,

And him received againe to former favour's state,

Spenser's dove may have suggested to Southey the "green bird" which served as guide to Thalaba.