Giles Fletcher was the younger brother of Phineas, and died twenty-three
years before him. He was a cousin of Fletcher the dramatist, and the son
of Dr Giles Fletcher, who was employed in many important missions in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, and, among others, negotiated a commercial
treaty with Russia greatly in the favour of his own country. Giles is
supposed to have been born in 1588. He studied at Cambridge; published his
noble poem, 'Christ's Victory and Triumph,' in 1610, when he was twenty-
three years of age; was appointed to the living of Alderston, in Suffolk,
where he died, in 1623, at the early age of thirty-five, 'equally loved,'
says old Wood, 'of the Muses and the Graces.'
The poem, in four cantos, entitled 'Christ's Victory and Triumph,' is one
of almost Miltonic magnificence. With a wing as easy as it is strong, he
soars to heaven, and fills the austere mouth of Justice and the golden
lips of Mercy with language worthy of both. He then stoops down on the
Wilderness of the Temptation, and paints the Saviour and Satan in colours
admirably contrasted, and which in their brightness and blackness can
never decay. Nor does he fear, in fine, to pierce the gloom of Calvary,
and to mingle his note with the harps of angels, saluting the Redeemer, as
He sprang from the grave, with the song, 'He is risen, He is risen--and
shall die no more.' The style is steeped in Spenser--equally mellifluous,
figurative, and majestic. In allegory the author of the 'Fairy Queen' is
hardly superior, and in the enthusiasm of devotion Fletcher surpasses him
far. From the great light, thus early kindled and early quenched, Milton
did not disdain to draw with his 'golden urn.' 'Paradise Regained' owes
much more than the suggestion of its subject to 'Christ's Victory;' and is
it too much to say that, had Fletcher lived, he might have shone in the
same constellation with the bard of the 'Paradise Lost?' The plan of our
'Specimens' permits only a few extracts. Let those who wish more, along
with a lengthened and glowing tribute to the author's genius, consult
_Blackwood_ for November 1835. The reading of a single sentence will
convince them that the author of the paper was Christopher North.