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sive; but of what affluence and prodigality of power and resources in his own style; of what inexhaustible ingenuity and invention; of what flowing freedom of movement; of how deep and exquisite a sense of beauty! He is, indeed, distinctly and pre-eminently the Poet of the Beautiful. Of the purely beautiful, as consisting simply in form and colour, his poetry is the richest storehouse in the literature of the world. Spenser's poetry is full also of the spirit of moral beauty. It is not a passionate song, but yet it is both earnest and lighttoned, and it is pervaded by a quiet tenderness that is always soothing, often touching. A heart of gentleness and nobleness ever lives and beats in it. With all its unworldliness, too, it breathes throughout a thoughtful wisdom, which looks deep even into human things, and oftenest sad and pitying, is yet also sometimes stern."

This is fine criticism, is it not? The remarks, too, on Spenser's versification, are equally truthful, and have besides a dash of humour in them.

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Spenser's verse is the most abundantly musical in English poetry. Even Milton's, more scientific and elaborate, and also rising at times to more volume and grandeur of tone, has not so rich a natural sweetness and variety, or so deep a pathos. His poetry swims in music. He winds his way through stanza after stanza of his spacious song, more like one actually singing than writing, borne along it might seem almost without effort or thought, reminding us of his own Lady of the Idle Lake in her magic gondelay, that,

More swift than swallow shears the liquid sky,
Withouten oar or pilot it to guide,

Or winged canvas with the wind to fly;
Only she turned a pin, and by and by
It cut away upon the yielding wave.
Nor cared she her course for to apply;

For it was taught the way which she would have,

And both from rocks and flats itself could wisely save.'

"It must be confessed, indeed, that from rocks and flats Spenser does not always wisely save himself; he not unfrequently runs against both the one and the other; but it is wonderful to see how little he minds such an accident, when it occurs. He gets always off in some way or other, and he takes apparently not the least trouble or forethought to avoid the same thing another time. On he floats, singing away as if nothing had happened, after the narrowest conceivable escape from being run aground or stove in. His treatment of words upon such occasions is like nothing that ever was seen, unless it might be Hercules breaking the back of the Nemean lion. He gives them any sense and any shape that the case may demand. Sometimes he merely alters a letter or two; sometimes he twists off the head or the tail of the unfortunate vocable altogether. In short, it is evident that he considers his prerogative in such matters to be unlimited. But this fearless, lordly, truly royal state in which he proceeds, makes one only feel the more how easily, if he chose, he could avoid the necessity of having recourse to such outrages. After all, they do not occur so frequently as much to mar the beauty of his verse. The more brilliant passages of the poem are for the most part free from them. Perhaps they sometimes heighten the general effect, upon one of his own favourite principles that 'discord oft in music makes the sweeter lay.' At the worst they are little wilfulnesses for which none who love him at all will love him the less."

STANLEY. I like that. Poets are the absolute rulers over language, and may use words as it likes them. A few petty wilfulnesses, the result of an unlimited prerogative, can well be forgiven, especially by us Englishmen ; for all the force and harmony and sweetness of our language have been brought into play by the poets. In their hands, how marvellous an instrument it becomes !

HARTLEY. Sage remarks, no doubt, but by no means to the point, which is indeed true of all which has been

said this evening. In the mean while, rural poetry, like a bashful maiden, simplex in munditiis, is waiting timidly to know what Master Edmund Spenser has left her for a legacy.

TALBOT. I incline to think that the more we read the "Faerie Queene" the more surprised shall we be, not only at the beauty of the work, but at the strength and energy it displays, and at the judgment evinced by its author. Yet I question whether the most prolonged search would give us many proofs of Spenser's genius in the sphere of rural poetry.

HARTLEY. No, truly. His landscape is the landscape of fairy land; his pictures of country life, though warm and almost dazzling in colour, take us away in fancy to a region of rarest beauty, to forests haunted by woodgods, to streams possessing a healing virtue, to flowers such as "in other climates dwell," to an atmosphere which is peopled with strange intelligences and filled with fantastic sounds. Such a haunt is an inspired region of beauty and poetry, of love and valour. It is the fittest land for the exposition of a great spiritual allegory; but not there should we expect to find the plain delineation of English rural life, or any sweet but literal transcript of nature's loveliest scenes.

STANLEY. Yet if Spenser had not bent his mind to a loftier emprise, he might, like his own Calidore, have chosen to "set his rest amongst the rusticke sort," with whom he deemed the greatest contentment was to be found. Thus he writes of Calidore :

:

"Ne certes mote he greatly blamed be,
From so high step to stoupe unto so low;
For who had tasted once, as oft did he,
The happy peace which there doth overflow,
And prov'd the perfect pleasures which doe grow
Amongst poore hyndes, in hils, in woods, in dales,
Would never more delight in painted show,
Of such false blisse as there is set for stales,*

T' entrap unwary fooles in their eternall bales."

By the way, this stanza, which I have quoted, is followed by a fine Spenserian landscape which affords a fair example of the poet's method of dealing with nature. It has an antique air about it, and reminds one of some of the old masters. Read it at your leisure; it is in Canto 10 of Book VI.

TALBOT. According to Drayton, Spenser is "the prime pastoralist of England;" and the "Shepherd's Calendar" is not only the earliest, but the greatest English pastoral poem.

HARTLEY. If Drayton be true the achievement is not one to be proud of; but I cannot agree with him. The "Shepherd's Calendar" is, to my thinking, a pastoral in form rather than in substance; and I have Pope's authority on my side, to judge from his definition, which I will read to you.

“A pastoral is an imitation of the action of a shepherd, or one considered under that character. The form of this imitation is dramatic, or narrative, or mixed, or both; the fable simple, the manners not too polite, nor too rustic ; the thoughts are plain, yet admit a little quickness and passion, but that short and flowing; the expression humble, yet as pure as the language will afford; neat but not florid; easy and yet lively. In short, the fable, manners, thoughts, and expressions, are

* Lures.

full of the greatest simplicity in nature. The complete character of this poem consists in simplicity, brevity, and delicacy, the two first of which render an eclogue natural, and the last delightful."

TALBOT. A fairly good definition, and in some respects the Calendar may be tested by it. Spenser's fable is generally simple; his eclogues combine "brevity and delicacy," and his dialogues, according to the orthodox custom, are put into the mouths of shepherds. In Dr. Johnson's two dull essays on pastoral poetry, however, he does not seem to think it necessary that the dramatis persona of the pastoral should invariably be shepherds. His definition of the pastoral is "a poem in which any action or passion is represented by its effects upon a country life;" and he complains of some writers for considering the pastoral "not in general as a representation of rural nature, and consequently as exhibiting the ideas and sentiments of those, whoever they are, to whom the country affords pleasure or employment, but simply as a dialogue or narrative of men, actually tending sheep and busied in the lowest and most laborious offices."

STANLEY. Then according to Dr. Johnson we may regard "The Task," ""The Seasons," or even "The Excursion," as pastorals, since they profess to exhibit "the ideas and sentiments of those to whom the country affords pleasure."

HARTLEY. Herein I think the Lichfield sage is right, and some of our best modern poets have proved their agreement with him. In general, however, I must own to a low opinion of Dr. Johnson's critical powers in the domain of poetry. With the exception of some excellent verbal criticism, and sundry strong, nervous thoughts, which have more in them of the moralist than the poetical