Chapter XX: Part 20

We may now close with Burleigh; but much remains to be developed in the fortunes of a court-suitor, as we trace them in the history of our Spenser. The coldness of the Lord Treasurer may not have been the only cause of the poet's deep and constant laments. The sojourner in the circle of a court may be mortified not only by its repulse or its neglect, but also by the capricious favour of his patron. A devotion of service may provoke offence, whether it be from zeal too improvident, from officiousness too busy, or from an ingenuousness too open. He is thrown into a position in which he must preserve silence, and cannot always hope for pardon.

One incident of this nature deeply affected our poet in his intercourse with Lord Leicester. We only discover it by a remarkable dedicatory sonnet to his translation of Virgil's "Gnat." Had the poet not decided that the mysterious tale should reach posterity, he would not have published the sonnet several years after it was composed, for it is dedicated "to the deceased lord!" The poet has energetically described the delicacy and difficulty of the position into which he had been cast.

_Wrong'd, yet not daring to express my pain_
To you, good lord! the causer of my care,
In cloudy tears my case _I thus complain
Unto yourself, that only privy are_.
But if that any Oedipus, unware,
Shall chance, through power of some divining spright,
To read _the secret of this riddle rare_,
And know the purport of my evil plight;
Let him rest pleased with his own insight,
Ne further seek to gloze upon the text;
_But grief enough it is to grieved wight,
To feel hit fault_, and not be further vext.
But what so by myself may not be shown,
May by this Gnat's complaint be easily known.

The Gnat of Virgil, observing a serpent in the act of darting on a sleeping swain, stings the eye of the sleeper; starting at the pain, the disturbed man crushes the gnat, but, thus awakened, he saves himself from the crested serpent. The poem turns on the remonstrance of the ghost of the gnat, which had no other means than by inflicting its friendly sting to warn him of his peril who had thus hastily deprived it of its own innocent existence. What was "the serpent," and why the poet was hardly used as "the gnat," and why he was

Wrong'd, yet not daring to express his pain,

and yet "grieved to feel _his fault_," is "a riddle rare," supposed to require some Oedipus of secret history to solve. The moral is obvious. The character of the royal favourite may give rise to many suggestions; but if I may venture a conjecture on what the parties themselves "were only privy to," Spenser had touched on some high matter, where his affectionate zeal, however sagacious, on this occasion hurt the pride of Leicester--too haughty or too mortified to be lessoned by his familiar dependant, who, like the gnat, found that his timely warning was "his fault."

A sage of the antiquarian school imagined that he could solve the enigma of Spenser's sorrows, by arranging, with dates and accounts of salaries, the official situations which the poet held. To remove the odium attached to Burleigh's prepossessions against the poet, he assumes that without the Lord Treasurer's consent Spenser could not have received his lands or his pensions. But the royal grant of the forfeited lands was obviously the reward for his conduct, suggested by those under whose eye he had served: the patronage of Sidney and the Lords Leicester and Grey may be imagined to have greatly outweighed any cavils of Burleigh. George Chalmers infers that all the complaints of the poet are "too highly coloured, _if they really were complaints respecting himself_!" and concludes that all the poet's querulousness must be ascribed, not to Burleigh, but to the Irish rebellion. But the calamity of the Irish rebellion occasioned no complaints from the poet--only his death! for we have not a line by Spenser during the short interval which elapsed between his flight from Ireland and his decease in London.

It was not by an estimate of salaries and an arrangement of dates, which yield no result, but by a statement of feelings, in which the "secret sorrows" of Spenser lie concealed, that we can decide on the real source of his continued complaints. The poet must be judged by the habits of his mind, and by those interior conflicts which are often unconnected with those external circumstances open to common observers. Of all the tuneful train Spenser was the most poetical in the gentlest attributes of the poet. That robust force which the enterprise of active life demands was not lodged in that soul of tenderness; and worldly cares, like that cancer in the breast which the sufferer hides from others, dejected the fancy which at all times was working ceaselessly among its bright creations. His vein was inexhaustible, and we have lost perhaps more than we possess of his writings. The author of "The Faery Queen" required above all things leisure and the muse. His first steppings into life were auspicious. To Sir Philip Sidney he had opened the first cantos of his romantic epic; the catastrophe of that poet-hero made our poet a mourner all his days. There was no substitute for a congenial patron: all other patrons could be but the very statues of patronage, cold representatives of the departed, but no longer the bosom companion of the poet's thoughts, and the generous arbiter of his fortunes.

In his last days Spenser has not dropped even one "melodious tear;" but he was wept by his brothers the poets, who held his pall and bestrewed his hearse with their elegies, and beheld in the fate of their great master their own. And thus truly, though ambiguously, Phineas Fletcher described his destiny--

Poorly, poor man! he lived; poorly, poor man! he died.

So many living details of that golden bondage into which our poet was thrown, from his earliest to his latter days, discover the real source of his "secret sorrows"--his unceasing and vain solicitation at court, the suitor of so many patrons; the _res angusta domi_ perpetually pressed on the morbid imagination of the fortuneless man.

I know of no satire aimed at SPENSER; a singular fate for a great poet: even "satyric Nash" revered the character of the author of "The Faery Queen." I have often thought that among the numerous critics of SPENSER, the truest was his keen and witty contemporary; for this town-wit has stamped all our poet's excellences by one felicitous word--"HEAVENLY SPENSER."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A strange personage has been fixed on as the commentator. Spenser
lodged with a Mrs. Kerke, where his parcels were directed. E. K. has
been conjectured to be Mr. Kerke, her husband!

It is a proof of the deficient skill of the modern editors of
Spenser, Hughes and Aikin, that they have omitted the curious and
valuable Commentary of E. K. It has been judiciously restored to the
last and best edition, by Mr. Todd. The woodcuts might also have been
preserved.

[2] These complimentary sonnets, evidently composed "for the nonce,"
are not the happiest specimens in our language of these minor poems,
no more than they are of the real genius of Spenser. I have seen a
German reprint, consisting _only_ of Spenser's Sonnets, by the
learned Von Hammer. Foreign critics often startle one by their
fancies on English poetry.

[3] We have several printed specimens of her Majesty's poetry, which
does not want for elevation of thought; but to compose poetry with
the energy of her prose, deprived her Majesty of all the grace and
melody of verse. I have been informed, on the best authority, that
Elizabeth exercised her poetical pen more voluminously than we have
hitherto known, for that there exists a manuscript volume of her
Majesty's poems in that rich repository of State-papers--the Hatfield
Collection.

[4] Three thousand acres of dilapidated estates of the Earl of
Desmond. The receivers of these grants were called "The Undertakers,"
as they were bound to bring the lands into cultivation, which, after
the ravages of fire and sword, consisted of tenantless farms and a
wasted soil. Sir Walter Rawleigh had a grant of twelve thousand
acres, which he probably found profitless, for he made them over at a
low rate to the Boyle family.

[5] I have been favoured with the sight of several manuscript letters
of Burleigh, in the possession of a gentleman in the neighbourhood of
Taunton, which relate to this critical period. They remarkably
display the eager and remorseless decision of Burleigh. Messengers
were sent off three or four times in a day, countermanding the former
command, as the mind of Elizabeth vacillated, disconcerting the plans
of the minister. The order "to cut off her head" is given with the
most revolting minuteness.

[6] This petition in rhyme is well known--

"I was promised on a time,
To have reason for my rhime;
From that time unto this season,
I received nor rhime nor reason."

Mr. Todd deems the anecdote apocryphal, because he can only retrace
it to Fuller, who published it seventy years after the incident
recorded, assigning no authority. Honest Fuller has, however, given a
tolerable authority for such a sort of thing, namely, that it was "a
story commonly _told_ and _believed_." There could be no motive for
any one to invent the circumstance and the pleasantry, gratuitously
to ascribe it to the poet. Mr. Todd is pleased to call "the numbers
magical," and decides on this "ridiculous memorial"--a criticism
fatal to all the playfulness of genius. Were the "Rhimes" not good
enough for the nonce, and "the Reason" amusingly convenient to be
remembered?

The anecdote is only deficient in its date, and possibly may relate
to some former donation before the pension was fixed. Edward Phillips
gives the large sum of five hundred pounds--another version of the
same story; and he wrote about the same time. What remains
inexplicable is, that this pension to Spenser seems to have been
wholly unknown to his contemporaries--to Camden and to others--who
wrote subsequently. The grant of this pension was only discovered a
few years ago in the Chapel of the Rolls. The pension was only for
fifty pounds; but the value of money makes the royal gift more decent
than at first it would seem.

THE FAERY QUEEN.

SPENSER, the courtly spectator of the tilt, the pageant, and the masque--musing over the tome of old Gothic romances, and striking into the vein of fabling of Italian poesy, whose novelty had nearly supplanted the ancient classics--was at once ARIOSTO and TASSO and OVID.

SPENSER composed with great facility; incessant production seems to have been his true existence. His was one of those minds whose labour diffuses their delight, and whose delight provokes to labour. He seems always to be in earnest, and sometimes in haste, for he had much to work. While composing the "Faery Queen," he had that concurrent poem of the regal Arthur, of no inferior _calibre_, ever in his mind. The "Faery Queen" would have contained, had it been completed, not much under a hundred thousand verses. The "Iliad" does not exceed fifteen. He seems to have been satisfied with his first unblotted thoughts. He has defects which might have proved fatal to an ordinary versifier; but his voluminous vein lies protected by his genius.

The artificial complexity of his nine-lined stanza put him to many shifts; he exercised arbitrary power in shortening words or lengthening syllables, and hardily invented novel terminations to common words, to provide his multiplicity of rhymes; he falsified accentuation, to adapt it to his metre, and violated the orthography, to adjust the rhyme. He dilated his thoughts to fill up the measure of his stanza; and we are too often reminded of the hammering of the chain. The first book of the "Faery Queen," when the difficulties of this novel stanza must have been most arduous, is necessarily composed with most care, and, both for subject and execution, is of itself a complete poem. As Spenser acquired facility and dexterity, his pen winged its flight through the prescribed labyrinth of sweet sounds.

His exquisite ear had felt the melody of the vowelly and voluble stanza of Italy, and to which he even added a grace of his own by a new measure, in the Alexandrine close. This verse had been introduced by Sir Thomas Wyatt with no great effect; it was adroitly adopted by Spenser to give a full cadence to his stanza. Dryden, in its occasional use, professedly derived it from Spenser, and seems to have carried away the honour, when Pope in exemplifying its solemn effect ascribes it to the latter poet, who he tells us had taught--

--------------The full-resounding line,
The long majestic march and energy divine.

The inanity of that race--

Of gentlemen who wrote with ease,

and made such free use of "the full-resounding line," void of all thought, only betrayed their barrenness by this additional extension of their weakness. Hence it incurred the partial censure of our great poetical critic, as "a needless Alexandrine,"

That like a wounded snake drags its slow length along.

But the soul of melody lies hidden in the musician's instrument; and the Spenserian stanza, to be felt, must find its echo in the ear of the reader. A master in the art of versification was struck by our poet's modulation, so musical was his ear in the rhythm of his verse. He remarked this in those two delicious pieces, "The Prothalamion," a spousal hymn on the double marriage of two ladies, personated as two swans in these harmonious lines--

-------------Two swans of goodly hue,
Came softly swimming down along the Lee;[1]--

and "The Epithalamium" on the poet's own nuptials, or, as the poet notes--

Song made in lieu of many ornaments,
With which my Love should duely have been deck'd.

One feature in Spenser's versification seems to have escaped notice, although Warton has expressly written a dissertation on that subject. It is Spenser's discreet use of _alliteration_; never obtrusive, but falling naturally into the verse, it may escape our perception while it is acting on our feeling. Unconsciously or by habit, his ear became the echo of his imagination; sound was the response of thought, and, as much as his epithets, scattered the "orient hues" of his fancy. Alliteration and epithets, which with mechanical versificators are a mere artifice, because only an artifice, and glare and glitter, charm by their consonance when they rise out of the emotions of the true poet.[2]

Some persons have been deterred from venturing on the "Faery Queen" from a notion that the style had rusted with time, and is as obsolete as chivalry itself. This popular prejudice has been fostered by an opinion of Ben Jonson, which probably referred chiefly to "The Shepherd's Calendar," where Spenser had adopted a system of Chaucerian words, which to us is more curious than fortunate, and which on the first publication required a glossary. This system he abandoned in his romantic epic; but he loved to sprinkle some remaining graces of antiquity, some _naive_ expressions, or some picturesque words; and his modern imitators, amid their elaborate pomp, have felt the secret charm, and have mottled their Spenserian stanza with these archaisms.

Of all poets SPENSER excelled in the pictorial faculty. His circumstantial descriptions are minute yet vivid. They are, indeed, exuberant, for he loved not to quit his work while he could bring the object closer to the eye. This diffusion, flowing with the melody of his verse, often raises the illusion of reverie till we seem startled by reality, and we appear to have beheld what only we have been told.[3] Poet of poets! SPENSER made a poet at once of COWLEY, and once lent an elegant simplicity to THOMSON. GRAY was accustomed to open Spenser when he would frame

Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn;

and MILTON, who owned Spenser to have been his master as well as his predecessor, lingered amid his musings, and with many a Spenserian image touched into perfection his own sublimity.

In associating the name of SPENSER with MILTON and GRAY, we are reminded of the distinctness of his poetic faculty, and the difference of his personal character. Spenser, tender, elegant, and fanciful, rarely participated in their condensed energies or the severity of their greatness; the personal character of our courtly poet was moulded by his position in society.

When we float along the stream of his melodious song, conscious only of its beauty, we do not often pause at elevations which raise the feeling of the sublime. Such daring visions, when they do rise on us, rather indicate the power of his genius than the habit of his mind. Our gentle Spenser was often satisfied with rivalling without surpassing his originals, which Milton and Gray ever did when they copied. It seems, therefore, unreasonable to assert that Spenser has combined the daring sternness of Dante with the wild fantasy of Goethe. Yet their lofty creations have not gone beyond those of Spenser's personifications of Despair--of Fear--of Confusion--of Astonishment--of laborious Care, that workman in his smithy, living amid the unceasing strokes of his perpetual hammers--or of Jealousy, from a mortal man metamorphosed with Ovidean fancy: his single eye, for he had long worn out the other, never could be closed; no slumber could press down those restless lids; tenant of a cavern, listening day and night to the roaring billows incessantly beating his abode, threatening with its huge ruins to fall on the wretch wasting in self-torments, till, nothing left of him, he vanished into a flitting aery sprite--

Forgot he was a Man, and JEALOUSY is hight.[4]

There are two sublime descriptions of NIGHT which may be read together. In the one she is the

Sister of heavie Death, and nurse of Woes!

and elsewhere she appears as

That most ancient Grandmother of all,
Older than Jove----

NIGHT befriending Deceit and Shame, takes one of their daughters, the witch Duessa, in her "pitchy mantle;" yoking her coal-black steeds to her iron waggon, they penetrate to the inferior regions, bearing a mortal caitiff to be _restored_ to this wicked life--"the messenger of death" passing over the earth, the screeching owl, the baying dogs, the howling wolf, warn of the witch's presence; and in hell the trembling ghosts stand

Chattering with iron teeth, and staring wide
With stonie eyes--and flock'd on every side
To gaze on EARTHLY WIGHT that with the NIGHT durst ride.[5]

The sublime fragment on "Mutability," where Nature is viewed seated mysteriously amid the creation, has not been excelled by the most philosophical poets.

Great Nature ever young, yet full of eld,
Still moving, yet immoved from her sted;
Unseen of any, yet of all beheld,
Thus sitting on her throne----

If such noble inventions appear rare, it perhaps is owing to the wide extent of the "faery land," as well as to the poet's proneness to luxuriance of diction. If from that voluminous inspiration the poet has sometimes trespassed on the critic's bourn, or the romantic eulogist of chastity itself has sometimes violated his own virgin page, for Spenser, always imitative, caught a slight infection from his old romancers and his Italian favourites, all this exuberance bears fruit; freedom and force will ever interest the artists of poetry.

Whoever has passed into the house of Pride,

Whose walls were high, but nothing strong nor thick,

and marked her on her progress, "drawn by six unequal beasts," with her vile counsellors in their wicked gradation; or has entered "the ancient house of Holiness;" or counted in the den of Riches,

The huge great iron chests, and coffers strong,

amid the dead men's bones scattered around those chests and coffers, has realized the marvellous architecture of Fancy; or, whoever roving with the muse of Spenser through all her localities, meets the sylvan men whom the chaste Una governed, or the satyrs whom the frail Hellenore would not quit; or when that muse unveils her voluptuous charms, listens to her song in the enchanted gardens of Armida; or in the approach to Acrasia in the bower of Bliss, starts at the nymphs wantonly wrestling in the glassy waters, laughing and blushing; or more innocently gazes on the gorgeous Masque of Cupid, or the dance of the poet and mistress among the Graces,--finds all endowed with poetic existences, unchangeable in their nature amid the changes of taste so long as imagination shall seek for its delights, and genius for the language of its emotions.

"The Faery Queen" was designed by its author to consist of twelve books; six of which we only possess, published at two several times, and a fragment of another. The subject of each book is a moral attribute; Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy. Each attribute is personified by a knight-errant, with all the passions of bodily mortality.

The plan of the poem is so inartificial, that the twelve books, had it been completed, could only have formed twelve separate poems; our poet followed the free and fertile way of Ariosto. The introduction of Prince Arthur may have been designed to give a sort of unity to the incoherent twelve knights, who would have been finally led under his auspices to the court of the Faery Queen; but as the prince, however respectable in romance, comes and vanishes, does nothing, and says little, we incline to the humour of the editor, Hughes, that "the prince is here seen only in his minority, performing his exercises in Fairy-land as a _private gentleman_." The versatile plan was adapted to the genius of the poet; the ductility of his invention, the luxuriance of his imagination, and the never-ceasing flow of his mellifluous stanza, would have suffered constraint and mutilation, bound by prescribed forms, and modelled by the classical epic. At the period that the poet Hughes published his edition[6] of Spenser, our editors and critics were little conversant with the Elizabethan literature, nor had the taste of the learned emancipated itself from the established form of the epic of antiquity. But Hughes was alive to the vital poetry before him, though evidently perplexed to fix on a criterion, or to specify the class of poetry, for "The Faery Queen." His excellent judgment struck into a new and right path. He describes it as "a poem of a particular kind;" and in his "Remarks on The Faery Queen," he had the merit of distinguishing poetry, like architecture, into its Gothic origin, as well as its classical. This was a discovery at that period; and subsequent critics, such as Bishop Hurd, and more recently Schlegel, have run away with the honour, by their more ample development of the romantic school. Hughes was hardly aware of the importance of this division; for his discovery amounts to little more than one of those first thoughts, which have not ripened into a principle.

"The Faery Queen" was the last great work modelled on Chivalry. Awakening from the gloom of the theological contests of Edward and Mary, the court of the Maiden Queen, from state-policy and her own disposition, had been transformed into a court of romance. Glory was the cheap but inappreciable meed bestowed by the economical sovereign; and love was the language to which the female from the throne could bend to listen to her subject.

Elizabeth, stately and tender, was herself "the Faery Queen," without even the poet's flattery, when seated under the dais, amid long galleries hung with cloth of gold or silver, and all the moving tilt-yard glittering in its shine; "the noise of music," and the sound of shields; the solemn procession, and gay crowd of the many-coloured liveries; the tasselled caparisons of the horses, and the nodding plumes of the knights. There our poet fed his eyes on the pageant, enchanting by its scenical allegory--as when four noble challengers approached--the children of DESIRE--attempting to win the Fortress of BEAUTY,--that is, Whitehall and her Majesty![7] They stand in a car, "shadowed with white and carnation silk, being the colours of Desire." But the challengers must yield to Beauty, whose princely voice is their ample guerdon; and on the following day were the tourney and the barriers "courageously tried." Thus were the days of chivalry, in its forms or its "fopperies," restored by the Faery Queen; and with such festivals SPENSER nursed his gorgeous fancy, and the Queen was the true inspirer of his romantic Epic.

Warton and Hurd observe that Spenser copied real _manners of his time_ as much as Homer. We must here distinguish an essential difference, if Homer really represented the manners of the heroic age. It is true, that much of the _manners_ and forms of chivalry prevailed among the courtiers of Elizabeth; but such _adventures_ of chivalry as Spenser has described in his singular poem were transplanted from the ancient romances. The _incidents_ are therefore not of the poet's age; and we can only read his narrative as the last of the romances.

The old romance of "La Morte d'Arthur" was still the fashionable reading of the court; nor had the gorgeous enchantments of Stephen Hawes yet vanished, for a new edition had issued in 1555. Spenser had read Hawes; and however entranced by the pageantry of the fiction, from the uncouth stanza of "The Pastime of Pleasure" he may have been led to the construction of the Spenserian; for it is one of the aptitudes of true genius to carry to perfection what it finds imperfect.

"The Faery Queen" was produced at a crisis of transition when the old romantic way was departing, notwithstanding the temporary influence of a courtly revival, and the new had not yet arrived. The whole machinery of Gothic invention could hardly be worked; its marvels had ceased to be wondrous, and began to be ridiculed. The fantastic extravagance of the ordinary writers of fiction--that crowd of poet-apes which always rise after a great work has appeared--has been censured by the two great literary satirists of that day, MARSTON and HALL; Hall, indeed, suddenly checks his censorial temerity in blaming themes made sacred by the Faery Muse.

Let no rebel satire dare traduce
Th' eternal legends of thy fairy Muse,
Renowned SPENSER, whom no earthly wight
Dares once to emulate----

The compliment to Spenser does not diminish the satire levelled at the class.

Contemporary satirists furnish a precise date when ancient things are on the turn and getting out of fashion; they are the first who, like hawks, descend on their quarry.

If Spenser attempted to infuse a rejuvenescence into the dry veins of the old age of romance, by the vitality of _Allegory_, he has fallen into a great error; for his twelve knight-errants do not interest our sympathies the more for being twelve wandering virtues. Allegorical poetry not long after his day also declined; and when it was resumed by PHINEAS FLETCHER, in what he has fantastically named and described as "The Purple Island," or "the little ISLE OF MAN," the poetry can hardly preserve itself amid the ludicrous analogies which, with such ingenious perversity of taste, are struck out between anatomy and poesy, too many not very agreeable to recollect.

CHIVALRY and ALLEGORY, two columns of our poet's renown, thus soon gave way; and SPENSER has often suffered the heaviest penalty to which a great poet was ever condemned--neglect!

But these infelicitous forms, which disguised the most tender and imaginative genius, could not deprive it of its "better parts." Spenser still remained the poet among poets themselves; though for the world at large, indeed, Spenser seemed to be recognised only as a poet in the chronology of poetry. A critic of great delicacy, and a votary of "the Gothic school," despaired for the destiny of our poet. "The Faery Queen," exclaimed HURD, in the agony of his taste, "one of the noblest productions of modern poetry, is fallen into so general a neglect, that all the zeal of the commentators is esteemed officious and impertinent, and will never restore it to those honours which it has, once for all, irrecoverably lost."

This sharp lament broke out in 1760, when, only two years before, the two rival editions of CHURCH and UPTON had simultaneously appeared; and the latter could at least boast both of the novelty and the curiosity of its commentary. But literary commentators held forth few attractions to the incurious readers of that day. More than thirty years have now elapsed since the last classical edition of Spenser's works. But at no period was Spenser ever forgotten by poetical recluses; and professed imitations of our poet in modern times, though they may not always be Spenserian, have never ceased, from Shenstone to Mickle, and from Beattie to Byron.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Lee is the stream.

[2] I offer some instances of alliteration; but the beauty of such
lines can only be rightly judged by the context.--

"In woods, in waves, in wars, she wonts to dwell
And will be found with peril and with pain."

"Such as a lamp whose life does fade away,
Or as the moon cloathed with cloudy night."

"A world of waters,
Horrible, hideous, roaring with hoarse cry."

"They cherelie chaunt, and rymes at random flung,
The fruitful spawn of their rank fantasies;
They feed the ears of fools with flattery."

"All the day before the sunny rays,
He used to slug or sleep, in slothful shade."

"Unpitied, unplagued, of foe or friend."

"And with sharp shrilling shriek do bootless cry."

"Did stand astonish'd at his curious skill,
With hungry ears to hear his harmony."

[3] Spenser has suffered a criticism from Mr. Campbell, who, a great
poet himself, has otherwise done ample justice to his ancient master.
"It must certainly be owned that in description he exhibits nothing
of the _brief strokes_ and _robust power_ which characterize the
_very greatest poets_." Certain it is Spenser is rarely "brief and
robust;" but contrary natures cannot operate in the same genius. If
Spenser rarely shows the strength and brevity of "the very greatest
poets," so may it be said that "the very greatest poets" rarely rival
the charm of his diffusion; or, as Mr. Campbell himself attests, in
"verse more magnificently descriptive." But the voice of Poetry is
more potent than its criticism, and truly says Mr. Campbell--"We
shall nowhere find more airy and expansive images of visionary
things, a sweeter tone of sentiment, or a finer flush in the colour
of language, than in this RUBENS OF ENGLISH POETRY."

Twining was a scholar, deeply versed in classical lore, which he has
shown to great advantage in his "Version of and Commentary on
Aristotle's Treatise of Poetry." In his Dissertations "On Poetical
and Musical Imitation" prefixed to this work, our critic is quite at
home with Pope and Goldsmith, but he seems wholly shut out from
Spenser! In a note to his first Dissertation he tells us "the
following stanza of SPENSER has been much admired:"--

The joyous birds shrouded in cheareful shade,
Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet;
Th' angelical soft trembling voices made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver-sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmurs 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.*

Our critic observes that Dr. Warton says of these lines, that "they
are of themselves a complete concert of the most delicious music."
Indeed, this very stanza in Spenser has been celebrated long before
Joseph Warton wrote, and often since; now listen to our learned
_Twining:_--

"It is unwillingly that I differ from a person of so much taste. I
cannot consider as music, much less as 'delicious music,' a mixture
of incompatible sounds--of sounds musical with sounds unmusical. The
singing of birds cannot possibly be 'attempered' to the notes of a
human voice. The mixture is, and must be, disagreeable. To a person
listening to a concert of voices and instruments, the interruption of
singing-birds, wind, and water-falls, would be little better than the
torment of Hogarth's enraged musician. Further, the description
itself is, like too many of Spenser's, coldly elaborate, and
indiscriminately minute. Of the expressions, some are feeble and
without effect, as 'joyous birds'--some evidently improper, as
'trembling voices' and 'cheerful shades;' for there cannot be a
greater fault in a voice than to be tremulous, and cheerful is surely
an unhappy epithet applied to shade--some cold and laboured, and such
as betray too plainly the necessities of rhyme; such is--

"'The waters-fall with difference discreet.'"

Such is the anti-poetical and technical criticism! Imagine a
music-master, who had never read a line of poetry, attempting to
perform the "delicious music" of our poet--or a singing-master, who
had never heard a "joyous bird," tuning up some fair pupil's
"trembling voice," and we might have expected this criticism from
such "enraged musicians!" Would our critic insist on having a
philharmonic concert, or a simple sonata? He who will not suffer
birds to be "joyous," nor "the shade cheerful," which their notes
make so.

"Th' angelical soft trembling voices made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet,"

the "softness trembling" with the verse; had our critic forgotten
Strada's famed contest of the Nightingale with the Lyre of the poet,
when, her "trembling voice" overcome in the rivalry, she fell on the
strings to die? And what shall we think of the classical critic who
has pronounced that "the descriptions of Spenser are coldly
elaborate"--the most vivid and splendid of our poetry?

But the most curious part remains to be told. This fine stanza of
Spenser is one of his free borrowings, being a translation of a
stanza in Tasso,** excepting the introduction of "the silver-sounding
instruments." The Aeolian harp played on by the musical winds was a
happiness reserved for Thomson. The felicitous copy of Spenser
attracted Fairfax, who, when he came to the passage in Tasso, kept
his eye on Spenser, and has carefully retained "the joyous birds" for
the "vezzosi augelli" of the original.

It is certain that, without poetic sensibility, the most learned
critic will ever find that the utmost force of his logic in these
matters will not lead to reason, but to unreason. Imagination only
can decide on imagination.

* "The Faery Queen," book II. canto xii. st. 71.

** "Gerusalemme Liberata," canto xvi. st. 12.

[4] "The Faery Queen," book III. canto x.

[5] "The Faery Queen," B. III. canto iv, st. 65, and B. I. canto v.
st. 20.

[6] This edition of 1715, from its modernized orthography, and from
greater freedoms taken with the text, is valueless.

[7] Thia famous tourney may be viewed in Hollinshed--"England," 1317,
fo. The four illustrious challengers were, the Earl of Arundel, Lord
Windsor, Sir Fulke Greville, and Sir Philip Sidney.

ALLEGORY.

Allegory and its exposition of what is termed the double or secret sense, is a topic on more than one account important. The mystical art of types and symbols has given rise to some extraordinary abuses, and even to artifices, which may be considered as an imposture practised on the human understanding. An extended fictitious narrative, constructed on the principle of one continued allegory, is a topic which critical learning has not expressly treated on. An allegorical epic never occurred to the ancient legislator of poetry; and modern critics have consented to define ALLEGORY as "that art in which one thing is _related_, and another _understood_."

But it has been subsequently discovered that this definition was too narrow to comprehend the multiform shapes which allegory assumes, either in the subtility or the grossness of its nature.

Licentious commentators have rioted in their presumed discoveries by extorting from the apparent meaning a hidden sense; or by typical adumbrations wresting allusions to persons or circumstances. The genius of allegory has triumphed from an extended metaphor to a whole poem itself; and its chimerical results have often resembled the metamorphoses of Ovid, turning every object into an altered shape, and making two objects, wholly unconnected, appear to rise out of each other. We may show from the success of many of these pretended revelations that the difficulty has not always been so great as the absurdity.

A prevalent folly has usually some parent-origin; and the present one of ALLEGORY may have been an ancient one. The learned have sought for the source of Allegory in the night of Egyptian darkness, among their hieroglyphics. That curious tale of antiquity which Herodotus has preserved shows us all the obscurity and the inconvenience of allegorical communication in its ambidextrous nature. The four symbols--of the arrows, the bird, the mouse, and the frog, which the Scythian ambassadors silently presented to Darius on his invasion of their deserts, were an allegory; and like many allegories, this emblematical embassy admitted of contrary interpretations. This enigmatic humour of the Egyptian learning seems to have been caught by the emblematical Greeks. The priesthood, eager to save the divinity of their whole theogony from the popular traditions and poetical impieties of that bible of the Polytheists, the Iliad, opened the secret or double sense of Homer. They maintained that the Homeric fables were nothing less than an allegory, shadowing forth the mysteries of nature, and veiling an arcanum of the sciences physical and moral. And these elucidators of speculative obscurities formed a sect under the lower Platonists.[1] The fathers were perfect children in their ridiculous allegories, and they allegorised the Old Testament throughout; and assuredly the Rabbins did not yield in puerility to the fathers. But all these were on topics too solemn to enter into our present inquiry.

We may, however, smile when we discover this race of Oedipuses among the _romanzatori_, or the publishers of the ancient romances. With solemn effrontery these proceeded on the principle of allegory to dignify their light and lying volumes, either to renovate the satiated curiosity of their readers, to cover the freedom of their prurient incidents, or to tolerate their marvellous fantasies. The editor of "Amadis of Gaul" revealed a secret yet untold. The common reader hitherto had never strayed beyond the literal sense; but he was now informed that he had only culled the most perishable flowers; for the more elevated mind were reserved the perennial fruits of a mystical interpretation of the occult sense. It was in this way that the famous "Romaunt of the Rose," from a mere love-story and a general satire on society, was converted into a volume of theology, of politics, of ethics, and even of the _grand oeuvre_ of the alchemists. Such inchoate mysteries were told under "the rose!" The most ludicrous display of their literary imposture may be seen in that collection of popular tales called the _Gesta Romanorum_. Every tale is accompanied by the gloss of a pious allegorist. An "Emperor," or "Pompey the Great," is a frequent personage in these tales, and is always the type of "our Heavenly Father," or "the soul," or "the Saviour;" while _Contes a la Fontaine_, however licentious, pass through a moralization by the puritanical cant of hypocritical monkery.

Conforming to the spurious piety of this monkish taste, a voluminous commentary expounded the morality of the ravishing versatilities of Ariosto. Berni gravely assured us that all the marvels of enchanted gardens, voluminous dragons, sylvan savages, and monsters with human faces, were only thrown out for the amusement of the ignorant; and concludes with these memorable lines, which he freely borrowed from the father of Italian poesy--

Ma voi ch'avete gl'intelletti sani,
Mirate la dottrina che s'asconde,
Sotto queste coperte alte e profonde![2]

"But ye of sounder intellect admire the wisdom hidden under these coverings, high and profound!" A strain so solemn and melodious was not the least exquisite pleasantry from a burlesque satirist!

Camoens having adopted the Grecian mythology in his Christian epic, recourse was had to a mystic allegory to defend the incongruity; when Vasco de Gama and his companions sport with Thetis and her nymphs, allegorically, though in good earnest, some Portuguese commentator has explained how "these phantastic amours signify the _wild sects_ of different enthusiasts in the most rational institutions, which, however contrary to each other, all agree in deriving their authority from the same source." To such ineptitudes are the allegorists sometimes driven, from the sickly taste of gratifying the infirmity of readers by cloaking their freest inventions in the garb of piety and morality. Thus the popular literature of Europe was overrun by these adumbrations. Even Milton echoed the occult doctrine which he had caught from the seers of the old _Romanzatori_--those Gothic Homers in whose spells he had been bound:--

Forests and enchantments drear,
_Where more is meant than meets the ear_.

While this mania of allegorising fictitious narratives was in vogue, a remarkable occurrence, had it been publicly known, might have let the initiated into a secret more "high and profound" than any of their esoteric revelations, and might have exposed the imposture which had been so long practised on their simplicity. The hapless Tasso was harassed by a most "stiff-necked" generation of "the learned Romans," as he calls the Classicists--a mob of _signori_, of mechanical critics, protesting against his potent inventions.

Magnanima Mensogna, hor quando e il vero
Si bello che si posse a te preporre.

The forest incantations of Ismen, and the enchantments of Armida, those true creations of Gothic romance, were on the point of utter perdition. In this extremity the poet decided to have recourse to the prevalent folly of fitting an allegory to his epic. He acknowledges to his confidential friend that the whole was only designed to humour the times, and begs that he may not be laughed at. "I will act the profound, and show that I have a deep political purpose;" and he might have added a whole system of ethics which has been extorted from the presumed allegory. "Under this shield," he proceeds, "I shall endeavour to protect the _loves_ and the _enchantments_"--those golden leaves which the furious classicists would have torn out of his romantic epic. By this singular fact we are led to this important discovery, that to allegorise is no difficult affair, for the present allegory was "the work of a single morning!"[3]

Tasso's confession is a perpetual demonstration of _the fallacies of allegory_. We must wholly rid ourselves of "gl' intelletti sani," if we doubt that the original writers who have been so largely allegorised ever composed an extended fictitious narrative but in all the freedom of invention, in open daylight, and never seeking to hide nature in secret coverts.

If, as we see, an allegory may be ingeniously drawn from a work which never was allegorical; so when an allegory seems designed, its secret application is usually the forlorn hope of literature, since the most subtile conjectures on these enigmas have wholly differed from each other.

Persons and incidents in an allegorical fiction are noses of wax, ever to be shaped by a more adroit finger. But in a lengthened allegory, the ground is often shifted; the allegorister tires of his allegory, and at length means what he says and nothing more. This has driven the expounders of the double sense into the absurdity of explaining an identical object, sometimes in a metaphysical, and at others in a material sense; they take up what their fancy requires, and cautiously drop what would place them in an inextricable position.

DANTE opened his great work in the darkness of an allegory; but how the erratic commentators have lost their way in "Le tenebre della Divina Commedia!" What are the three allegorical animals which open "the Vision?" The double sense remains inexplicable from its abundant explanations. Are these animals personifications of three great passions? Is the gay panther the type of luxurious pleasure, the lion of ambition, the she-wolf of avarice? But what if the spotted panther should be the representative of Dante's own Florence, and its spots indicate the Neri and the Bianchi factions? The hungry lion, with its lofty head, would then be superb France, and the lean she-wolf, never satiate, be devouring Rome. Yet a later revelation from Niebuhr, according to his Platonic ideas, sees but three metaphysical beings the types of the soul, the understanding, and the senses. Should some future allegorister discover, by his historical, political, and ethical fancies, that the three animals were designed, one for a wavering and maculated Ghibelline, and the others for the resolute papal Guelphs, the probability would be much the same. In truth we can afford but small confidence to these expounders of the double sense; for when Jean Molinet allegorised the "Roman de la Rose," and illustrated it by historical appliances, as chronology was rarely consulted in his day, it appears that this good canon of Valenciennes had allegorised in reference to persons who flourished and events which occurred posterior to the time of the writers.

In the instances which we have indicated, such as in Ariosto and Tasso, it was the commentator who had indulged his allegorical genius, not the original writers themselves. With one of our great poets unhappily the case is reversed; the poetic character and destiny of Spenser stand connected with allegory; for here the poet himself prematurely _meditated on his allegory before he invented his fiction_. The difference is immense. SPENSER fell a victim to this phantom of the poetic creed of his day. Deeming a mystic allegory a novel spirit in poesy, he who was to run the glorious career of Faery-land first forged the brazen bonds which he could never shake off. His invention was made subordinate to a prescribed system. The poet was continually running after the allegory, which he did not always care to recover in the exuberance of his imagination, and the copious facility of his stanzas. Often must he have deprived his twelve knights-errant of their tangible humanity, perpetually relapsing into their metaphysical nonentities--Sir Guyon into temperance, Arthegal into justice, and Sir Caladore into courtesy!

Yet this is not the sole defect of the allegorical character of the "Faery Queen." We may suspect that when SPENSER decided on constructing an allegorical poem, he had not any settled notions of the artifice of types, nor yet of the subjects to be symbolised; of fictions which were to conceal truths, and of truths which might be mistaken for fictions. A strange confusion often prevails in his system, sometimes ambiguous, sometimes contradictory, whenever the allegory loses itself in what is not allegorical, or the reality is as suddenly lost amid the mystical fancies.

The poet himself announced that the "Faery Queen" was "a continued allegory or dark conceit;" and he was so strongly convinced that "all allegories are doubtfully construed," that he determined to expound his own text regarding a most eminent personage; but this was merely to secure a courtly eulogy on a royal patroness. "In the 'Faerie Queene' I mean _glory_ in my _general_ intention, but in my _particular_ I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of the Queen and her kingdom in Faery-land." He afterwards adds that "in some places also I do otherwise shadow her." And further, the poet informs us that "her Majesty is two persons, a royal Queen and a most virtuous and beautiful lady." Truly her Majesty might have viewed herself "in mirrors more than one," and, as she much liked, in different dresses. Now as the Faerie Queen, now as Belphoebe, now as Cynthia, now as Mercilla; and in the "Legend of Chastity," who would deny that Britomart is the shadow of the Virgin Queen, notwithstanding that this lady-warrior bears a closer resemblance to Virgil's Camilla, to Ariosto's Bradamante, and Tasso's Clorinda? All this the poet has revealed; but had he been silent, these mystical types might have baffled even the perilous ingenuity of Upton, his egregious expounder of the double sense, the exuberance of whose conjectural sagacity might have enlightened and charmed even Spenser himself!

The poet was himself aware that when an allegory does not gracefully unveil itself, it admits of the most dubious expositions. The allegories of the "Faery Queen" which allude to public events are transparent. The first book exhibits the struggles of the Reformation with papistry. Una is Truth, the Red-cross Knight the Christian militant, still subjected to trial and infirmity, separated from Una, or as it was called, "the true Religion," by the magical illusions of Archimagus, whom Warton considers was the arch-fiend himself, but Upton only an adumbration of "his Holiness." The terrible giant, Orgoglio, seems to have a stronger claim to be the proud and potent Bishop of Rome, enamoured as he is of Superstition in the false Duessa, that gorgeous enchantress, so fair and foul, arrayed in purple and scarlet, whom he has seated on his seven-headed dragon, and on whose head he has placed a triple crown. The dark den of monstrous Error, the hastening cavalcade of every splendid vice, the combat with the Infidel Sans Foy, the church militant finally triumphant in the solemn union of the Red-cross with Una, complete the allegory of "Holiness." The Apocalypse may serve as the commentary on some of these personages; but the well-known title of the lady may not be risked to "ears polite." But such is the moveable machinery of allegorical history, that Sir Walter Scott, in his review of Todd's Spenser, has discovered many other shadowings of _facts_, in the history of Christian "Holiness," who, like the Red-cross Knight, separated from Una, had to encounter "the monster Error, and her brood," in paganism, before the downfall of Orgoglio and Duessa, and popery in England; in the freedom of the Red-cross Knight from his imprisonment, our critic reveals the establishment of the Protestant Church.[4] Sir Walter might have noticed Spenser's abhorrence of the puritans.

The allegory is still more obvious when the poet alludes to some contemporary events. It is then a masquerade by daylight, where the maskers pass on, holding their masks in their hands. In the fifth book we see the distressed Knight Bourbon, opposed by a rabble-rout in his attempt to possess himself of the Lady _Fleur de Lis_, whom he loves for "her lordships and her lands." He bears away that half-reluctant and coy lady. But for this purpose Bourbon had basely changed his shield, and, reproached by Sir Arthegal or Justice, he offers but a recreant's apology:--

----When time shall serve,
My former shield I may resume again;
To temporise is not from truth to swerve.

Fie on such forgerie! said Arthegal,
Under one hood to shadow faces twain.

The change of shields of Sir Bourbon is the change of faith of Henry of Navarre; and the reluctant mistress is that uncompliant France whom he forced to take him as her monarch. Not less obvious is the episode of the Lady Belge calling for aid on the British prince--she, now widowed, and whose seventeen sons were reduced to five by the cruelties of Geryon, and the horrors of that implacable "monster, who lay hid in darkness, under the cursed Idol's altar-stone;" the great revolution of the Netherlands, the reduction of the seventeen provinces, and the horrors of a Romish persecution, are apparent.

But when the allegory runs into obscurer incidents and more fictitious personages than those which we have noticed, it becomes rarefied into volatile conjecture, or by our ingenuity may be shaped into partial resemblances, always uncertain, when we accept invented fictions as historical evidence. We know that a writer of an elaborate fictitious narrative may have touched on circumstances and characters caught from life; but all these, in passing through the mind of the inventor, are usually so altered from their reality, to be accommodated to the higher design of the invention, that any parallel in private history, or any likeness of an individual character, any indistinct allusion, can never deserve our historical confidence. A picture of human nature would be an anomalous work, in which we could trace no resemblance to individuals, or discover no coincidences of circumstances.

A century and a half after the publication of the "Faery Queen," a commentator of "the double sense" revealed to its readers that sealed history which they had never read, and which the poet had never divulged. A few traditional rumours may have floated down; but it was UPTON'S edition which startled the world by the abundance of its modern revelations.

JOHN UPTON, prebendary of Rochester, and the master of a public school, which he raised to eminence, was distinguished for his scholastic acquirements, the depth of his critical erudition, and for his acquaintance with the history of the Elizabethan court, chiefly, however, drawn from Camden. Acute in his emendations of texts, they were not, however, slightly tinged by an over-refining pedantry at the cost of his taste; and as his judgment was the infirmest of his faculties, in his enthusiasm for an historical illustration of Spenser, he seems often encumbered by his knowledge striking out similitudes and parallels; a few appear not infelicitous, but many are suggested in the licentiousness of vague conjecture, or left half in the light and half in the dark. His "Critical Observations on Shakspeare" remind one of Bentley's "slashing" of Milton. Dr. Johnson has been censured for the severity of his character of UPTON; I know not whether the doctor ever attended to Upton's Commentary on Spenser; he has, however, admirably hit off a prominent feature of our critic. "Every cold"--in Upton's case I would rather say warm--"empiric, when his heart is expanded by a successful experiment, swells into a theorist."