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.