appearing to a traveller, of Sleep, of Beauty enhancing a fair scene, of half-darkness, of the nun in Il Penseroso, are drawn from Spenser, and many of his epithets are taken from the same source. "Impurpled with celestial roses smiled," "angelic squadrons bright," "broad and beaten way," "equipage of war," "proud crest," "high disdain," "unsunned heaps of miser's treasure," "world of waters," may be instanced, and others might be specified without noting those agreements which result from the use of epithets common to poets at the time. Milton has Spenser, "Then farewell, Hope, and with Hope, farewell, Fear," "Why fearest thou, that canst not hope for thing?" Milton, "Virtue could see," etc. (Comus), Spenser, “Virtue gives herself light," etc. (I. i. 13); Milton, "Plain fishermen, no greater men them call," Spenser, " A shepherd's boy, no better do him call." Dr. Grosart has ably discussed the relations of Spenser and the Fletchers. Although Giles Fletcher has borrowed two lines from Spenser's Despair in his description, and used his "oaten reed" and "trumpet" of Introd. Faery Queen, B. 1., and a few more touches, yet his allegories are cast in another mould, and he paints in a different style. The poems of the Fletchers possess many beauties, and though showing Spencer's influence, can, no more than Paradise Lost, be called imitations. Gray habitually read Spenser when he wished to frame his mind to composition. He has borrowed "the woodman's sturdy stroke," "tenor of his way," and the description of an eagle in Progress of Poesy. Coleridge has appropriated the line But gently took that ungently came," and Byron's "She walks the waters like a thing of life" is Spenser's " Behold a huge great vessel," etc., in Colin Clout, 212. Thomson's Castle of Indolence is a well-known imitation. Some of its descriptive passages are not without beauty, but the poem has no real resemblance to its model. The archaic words are in most cases artificially introduced; there is a straining after an appearance of antiquity which contrasts harshly with the many eighteenth-century lines which are imbedded in the Spenserian stanza. His Language and Versification. III Spenser has not, like Chaucer, archaic grammatical inflexions, but only, (1) obsolete words, (2) words now used only in Scotland and the north of England, (3) Latinisms, (4) words borrowed from the French and Italian. Under the second head may be instanced greet, wite, lear, dool, sicker, ken, sib, fyle, skaith, herd, quean, gate, etc. Under the third such forms as nephews (grandchildren), expyre (send forth), table (picture), past (suffered), implies (folded), intended (stretched out), crime (reproach), contrive (wear out), sacred soil, sacred hunger (accursed), imply (wrap up), revolt (roll back), failed (cheated), insolence (fury), resolved (dissolved), defend (repel), invented (found), principle (beginning), succeed (approach), pretend (hold out), discourse (wandering). The sense of many passages seems obscure unless these meanings are remembered. Of words borrowed from the French about a hundred have been noted, from the Italian seventeen. A few words are the poet's own coinage, e.g. rulesse (lawless), cowardree, mercified (pitied), divinde (deified), griefful, fortunize. He occasionally plays with words, as in his line, "like dared lark not daring up to look," "luckless lucky maid," and Faery Queen I. xi. 2, Ruins of Time, St. 37, line 7, and his pun on "fruit and fruitless," borrowed by Milton. In a "conceit " of this kind is doubtless to be found the true reading of the disputed passage, VII. viii. 2. It is consistent if we read "But thenceforth all shall rest eternally With Him that is the God of Sabbath hight (Mark ii. 28), O that great Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabbath's sight." Otherwise we must infer that Spenser thought Sabaoth identical with Sabbath in meaning. Professor Hales would ingeniously read the Alexandrine optatively “O (may) that great Sabaoth God grant me that Sabaoth's sight," and suggests that "Sabaoth's sight" may be an allusion to the ancient interpretation of the word Jerusalem, i.e. visio pacis. His versification is perhaps his greatest achievement. The Spenserian stanza is a strophe of eight decasyllabic rhymes and an Alexandrine, and has a threefold rhyme: the 1st and 3d lines form one, the 2d, 4th, 5th, and 7th a second, and the 6th, 8th, and 9th a third. 66 'Boccacio, Ariosto, Tasso, and Chaucer had used the ottava rima, though Chaucer's is not strictly so. Tasso and Ariosto have in their rima only three similar endings alternately rhyming, the two last forming a distinct line. Spenser adds an Alexandrine as a 9th line, and repeats the second line four times, and the third thrice." "The nine-line stanza was his own invention. It is a kind of combination of the Italian ottava rima with the royal stanza' so frequently used by Chaucer. As far as the fifth line the Spenserian stanza resembles the latter, and as the fifth is the most important of the nine from the accentuation of feeling produced by the immediate repetition of rhyme, it is no doubt to this source we must trace a harmony which, after Milton's blank verse, is the most complex in our language. Spenser, however, gave a great development to the royal stanza,' by increasing the number of lines from seven to nine, and by carrying on the continuance of the second and fourth into the fifth and seventh. It is possible to describe the stanza as consisting of two waves, the second of which joins the first at the fifth line, while the Alexandrine closes the movement with the swiftness of the break and the prolonged echo on the shore. The type, however, admits all kind of variations, and as a matter of fact, in the most finished descriptive passages, the fifth line is generally employed to emphasise the beat of the rhyme in the fourth. Nothing testifies to the great qualities of Spenser more than this, that though he was the first to employ the stanza, yet, taken all in all, he has undeniably made a finer use of it any of his successors."-(COURTHOPE.) He does not scruple to re-spell or to abbreviate words (e.g. kaies, keys, keight, caught, husband's toyle, for husbandman) when it suits his purpose, and his ellipses are numerous. There are only three rugged lines in the Faery Queen, III. i. 14, 9, v. ii. 30, 9, III. iv. 9, 4; four examples of a hemistich, II. iii. 26, II. viii. 55, III. iv. 39, III. ix. 37; and three needless Alexandrines, III. xii. 41, IV. xii. 34, II. iv. 41. His metrical skill is shown in the echoing song, S. C. viii., in his corresponding verse," I. xi. 28, and his triptych stanzas, III. xii. 24, Iv. ii. 42. He employs reduplication with happy effect, I. ii. 23, IV. ii. 41, IV. x. 51, IV. xii. 11. He makes great use of alliteration, but with such ease that the reader's attention is never drawn to it. Perhaps his finest metrical stanza is, "Then woe and woe and everlasting woe," III. iii. 42. Courthope has pointed out the pathos of the pauses in the fourth and fifth lines, suggestive of suppressed sobs. Hazlitt remarks that "we are perhaps indebted to the very necessity (caused by the complexity of the stanza) of finding out new forms of expression, and to the occasional faults to which it led, for a poetical language rich, varied, and magnificent beyond all former and almost beyond all later example." Lowell says the secret of Spenser's superiority in the stanza lies in his "making his verses by ear instead of on the finger-tips, and in valuing the stave more than any of the single verses that compose it." Worsley shows that "there are two good types of the Spenserian Alexandrine, the one, 'Fierce wars and faithful loves shall moralize my song,' and the other, 'Wrapt in eternal silence, far from enemies.' Byron has invariably rejected the latter in Childe Harold, notwithstanding its beauty. The variety in the Faery Queen affords sensible relief to the ear. . . . It effects all that can be done to combine the rolling amplitude of periods with the melody of individual lines." Hazlitt says, "His versification is at once the most smooth and the most sounding in the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds, that would clog by their very sweetness but that the ear is constantly relieved and enchanted by their continued variety of modulation." His works are little read, because they lack many elements of popular interest. The realism of Chaucer and Shakespeare is entirely deficient in Spenser. He is subjective, and impresses the tone of his own mind on all the pictures of his fancy. His poem has been well described as "vision after vision unrolled to the sound of endlessly varying music." Leigh Hunt points out that whoever looks for a story in Spenser will be disappointed, that his Trompart and Braggadochio (comic characters) are failures, and that the reason why men of business and the world do not like him is because he is so far removed from the ordinary cares and haunts of the world. Courthope ascribes his unpopularity to his deficiencies in the qualities requisite for the treatment of so long a story, the absence of that fervent belief which gives unity to allegory, and of that delight in incident which sustains the interest through a great number of adventures. Campbell attributes it to his want of consolidating power. These defects must be admitted, and it is to be feared that they render the Faery Queen a sealed book to the majority of readers. They are only to be counterbalanced by the unrivalled music of Spenser's verse, the beauty of his pictures, and the spirituality of his thoughts. Few poets have equalled the Descent to Avernus, the Dance on Mount Acidale, the Midnight Masque, the Cave of Mammon, the Idle Lake, and the Palace of Pride. The character of Una has long since taken place as one of the finest creations of literature; and many noble sentiments are scattered through his works. The lines in which he paints the fervent piety and tender farewell of a dying saint are almost unsurpassed.1 Wesley recommends his poems as one of the books to be studied in preparing for the ministry, and Southey has well spoken of him as "Sweet Spenser, sweetest bard, and not more sweet M. H. TOWRY. ART. VI.-Righteousness of Life; being a Sequel to "The Rule of Righteousness." IN a former paper 2 Morality was affirmed to be an Ultimate Truth, and its nature Absolute and Eternal. It was, moreover, claimed for the Gospel that it was, before all things, a Righteousness-producing agency; its object being to bring men more and more into conformity with the Absolute Rule and Standard of Righteousness: that if it did not do that for them, it did nothing, and was no Gospel at all. And this because mere Happiness does not occupy the position in the Christian economy which it does in the Utilitarian philosophy. It is not the end, but, as it were, the accident of the life of Righteousness; or, to speak more accurately, it is a correlation of growth, in the nature of things connected with Goodness, but 1 Daphnaida. "The Rule of Righteousness," British and Foreign Evangelical Review, October 1879. |