"But, ah, Mecaenas is yclad in clay,
And great Augustus long ago is dead,
And all the worthies liggen wrapt in lead,"
with
"King Pandion, he is dead;
All thy friends are lapt in lead."
It is odd that Shakespeare, in his "lapt in lead," is more Spenserian
than Spenser himself, from whom he caught this "hunting of the
letter."
[286] "Ruins of Time." It is perhaps not considering too nicely to
remark how often this image of _wings_ recurred to Spenser's mind. A
certain aerial latitude was essential to the large circlings of his
style.
[287] Perhaps his most striking single epithet is the
"sea-shouldering whales," B. II 12, xxiii. His ear seems to delight
in prolongations For example, he makes such words as _glorious_,
_gratious_, _joyeous_, _havior_, _chapelet_ dactyles, and that, not
at the end of verses, where it would not have been unusual, but in
the first half of them. Milton contrives a break (a kind of heave, as
it were) in the uniformity of his verse by a practice exactly the
opposite of this. He also shuns a _hiatus_ which does not seem to
have been generally dipleasing to Spenser's ear, though perhaps in
the compound epithet _bees-alluring_ he intentionally avoids it by
the plural form.
[288]
"Like as a wayward child, whose sounder sleep
Is broken with some fearful dream's affright,
With froward will doth set himself to weep
Ne can be stilled for all his nurse's might,
But kicks and squalls and shrieks for fell despight,
Now scratching her and her loose locks misusing,
Now seeking darkness and now seeking light,
Then craving suck, and then the suck refusing."
He would doubtless have justified himself by the familiar example of
Homer's comparing Ajax to a donkey in the eleventh book of the
Illiad. So also in the "Epithalamion" it grates our nerves to hear,
"Pour not by cups, but by the bellyful,
Pour out to all that wull."
Such examples serve to show how strong a dose of Spenser's _aurum
potabile_ the language needed.
[289] I could not bring myself to root out this odorous herb-garden,
though it make my extract too long. It is a pretty reminiscence of
his master Chaucer, but is also very characteristic of Spenser
himself. He could not help planting a flower or two among his
serviceable plants, and after all this abundance he is not satisfied,
but begins the next stanza with "And whatso _else_."
[290] Leigh Hunt's Indicator, XVII.
[291] Ben Jonson told Drummond "that in that paper Sir W. Raleigh had
of the allegories of his Faery Queen, by the Blatant Beast the
Puritans were understood." But this is certainly wrong. There were
very different shades of Puritanism, according to individual
temperament. That of Winthrop and Higginson had a mellowness of which
Endicott and Standish were incapable The gradual change of Milton's
opinions was similar to that which I suppose in Spenser. The passage
in Mother Hubberd may have been aimed at the Protestant clergy of
Ireland (for he says much the same thing in his "View of the State of
Ireland"), but it is general in its terms.
[292] Two of his eclogues, as I have said, are from Marot, and his
earliest known verses are translations from Bellay, a poet who was
charming whenever he had the courage to play truant from a bad
school. We must not suppose that an analysis of the literature of the
_demi-monde_ will give us all the elements of the French character.
It has been both grave and profound; nay, it has even contrived to be
wise and lively at the same time, a combination so incomprehensible
by the Teutonic races that they have labelled it levity. It puts them
out as nature did Fuseli.
[293] Taste must be partially excepted. It is remarkable how little
eating and drinking there is in the "Faery Queen." The only time he
fairly sets a table is in the house of Malbecco, where it is
necessary to the conduct of the story. Yet taste is not wholly
forgotten:--
"In her left hand a cup of gold she held,
And with her right the riper fruit did reach,
Whose sappy liquor, that with fulness sweld,
Into her cup she scruzed with dainty breach
Of her fine fingers without foul impeach,
That so fair wine-press made the wine more sweet."
B. II c. xii. 56.
Taste can hardly complain of unhandsome treatment!
[294] Had the poet lived longer, he might perhaps have verified his
friend Raleigh's saying, that "whosoever in writing modern history
shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his
teeth." The passage is one of the very few disgusting ones in the
"Faery Queen." Spenser was copying Ariosto; but the Italian poet,
with the discreeter taste of his race, keeps to generalities. Spenser
goes into particulars which can only be called nasty. He did this, no
doubt, to pleasure his mistress, Mary's rival; and this gives us a
measure of the brutal coarseness of contemporary manner. It becomes
only the more marvellous that the fine flower of his genius could
have transmuted the juices of such a soil into the purity and
sweetness which are its own peculiar properties.
[295] There is a gleam of humor in one of the couplets of "Mother
Hubberd's Tale," where the Fox, persuading the Ape that they should
disguise themselves as discharged soldiers in order to beg the more
successfully, says,--
"Be you the soldier, for you likest are
For manly semblance _and small skill in war."_
[296] Bunyan probably took the hint of the Giants suicidal offer of
"knife, halter, or poison," from Spenser's "swords, ropes, poison,"
in Faery Queen, B. I. c. ix. 1.
[297] Book II. c. 9.
[298] See Sidney's "Defence," and Puttenham's "Art of English Poesy,"
Book I. c. 8.
[299] We can fancy how he would have done this by Jeremy Taylor, who
was a kind of Spenser in a cassock.
[300] Of this he himself gives a striking hint, when speaking in his
own person he suddenly breaks in on his narrative with the passionate
cry,
"Ah, dearest God, me grant I dead be not defouled."
_Faery Queen_, B. I. c. x. 43.
[301] Was not this picture painted by Paul Veronese, for example?
"Arachne figured how Jove did abuse
Europa like a bull, and on his back
Her through the sea did bear: ...
She seemed still back unto the land to look,
And her playfellows' aid to call, and fear
The dashing of the waves, that up she took
Her dainty feet, and garments gathered near....
Before the bull she pictured winged Love,
With his young brother Sport, ...
And many nymphs about them flocking round,
And many Tritons which their horns did sound."
_Muiopotmos_, 281-296.
Spenser begins a complimentary sonnet prefixed to the "Commonwealth
and Government of Venice" (1599) with this beautiful verse,
"Fair Venice, flower of the last world's delight."
Perhaps we should read "lost"?
[302] Marlowe's "Tamburlaine," Part I. Act V. 2.
[303]
Grayheaded Thought, nor much nor little, may
Take up its lodging here in any heart;
Unease nor Lack can enter at this door;
But here dwells full-horned Plenty evermore.
_Orl. Fur._, e. vi. 78.
[304] B. I. c. iii. 7. Leigh Hunt, one of the most sympathetic of
critics, has remarked the passionate change from the third to the
first person in the last two verses.
[305] B. II. c. viii. 3.
[306] Observations on Faery Queen, Vol. I pp. 158, 159. Mr. Hughes
also objects to Spenser's measure, that it is "closed always by a
fullstop, in the same place, by which every stanza is made as it were
a distinct paragraph." (Todd's Spenser, II. xli.) But he could hardly
have read the poem attentively, for there are numerous instances to
the contrary. Spenser was a consummate master of versification, and
not only did Marlowe and Shakespeare learn of him, but I have little
doubt that, but for the "Faery Queen," we should never have had the
varied majesty of Milton's blank verse.
[307] As where Dr. Warton himself says:--
"How nearly had my spirit past,
Till stopt by Metcalf's skilful hand,
To death's dark regions wide and waste
And the black river's mournful strand,
Or to," etc.,
to the end of the next stanza. That is, I had died but for Dr.
Metcalf 's boluses.
[308] Iliad, XVII. 55 _seqq_. Referred to in Upton's note on Faery
Queen, B. I. c. vii. 32. Into what a breezy couplet trailing off with
an alexandrine has Homer's [Greek: pnoiai pantoion anemon] expanded!
Chaplin unfortunately has slurred this passage in his version, and
Pope _tittivated_ it more than usual in his. I have no other
translation at hand. Marlowe was so taken by this passage in
Spenser that he put it bodily into his _Tamburlaine_.
[309] Inferno, XXIV. 46-52.
"For sitting upon down,
Or under quilt, one cometh not to fame,
Withouten which whoso his life consumeth
Such vestige leaveth of himself on earth
As smoke in air or in the water foam."
_Longfellow._
It shows how little Dante was read during the last century that none
of the commentators on Spenser notice his most important obligations
to the great Tuscan.
[310] Faery Queen, B. II. c. iii. 40, 41.
[311] Ibid., B. I. c. v. 1.
[312] Ibid., B. II. c. viii. 1,2.
[313] B. III. c. xi. 28.
[314] B. I. c. i. 41.
[315] This phrase occurs in the sonnet addressed to the Earl of
Ormond and in that to Lord Grey de Wilton in the series prefixed to
the "Faery Queen". These sonnets are of a much stronger build than
the "Amoretti", and some of them (especially that to Sir John Norris)
recall the firm tread of Milton's, though differing in structure.
[316] Daphnaida, 407, 408.
[317] Faery Queen, B. I. c. x. 9.
[318] Strictly taken, perhaps his world is not _much_ more imaginary
than that of other epic poets, Homer (in the Iliad) included. He who
is familiar with mediaeval epics will be extremely cautious in
drawing inferences as to contemporary manners from Homer. He
evidently _archaizes_ like the rest.
[319] Faery Queen, B. VI. c. x. 10-16.
[320] Purgatorio, XXIX., XXX.
[321] I find a goodly number of Yankeeisms in him, such as _idee_
(not as a rhyme); but the oddest is his twice spelling _dew deow_,
which is just as one would spell it who wished to phonetize its sound
in rural New England.
[322] This song recalls that in Dante's Purgatorio (XIX. 19--24), in
which the Italian tongue puts forth all its siren allurements.
Browne's beautiful verses ("Turn, hither turn your winged pines")
were suggested by these of Spenser. It might almost seem as if
Spenser had here, in his usual way, expanded the sweet old verses:--
"Merry sungen the monks binnen Ely
When Knut king rew thereby;
'Roweth knightes near the loud,
That I may hear these monkes song.'"