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--