There are two sublime descriptions of NIGHT which may be read together.
In the one she is the
Sister of heavie Death, and nurse of Woes!
and elsewhere she appears as
That most ancient Grandmother of all,
Older than Jove----
NIGHT befriending Deceit and Shame, takes one of their daughters, the
witch Duessa, in her "pitchy mantle;" yoking her coal-black steeds to
her iron waggon, they penetrate to the inferior regions, bearing a
mortal caitiff to be _restored_ to this wicked life--"the messenger of
death" passing over the earth, the screeching owl, the baying dogs, the
howling wolf, warn of the witch's presence; and in hell the trembling
ghosts stand
Chattering with iron teeth, and staring wide
With stonie eyes--and flock'd on every side
To gaze on EARTHLY WIGHT that with the NIGHT durst ride.[5]
The sublime fragment on "Mutability," where Nature is viewed seated
mysteriously amid the creation, has not been excelled by the most
philosophical poets.
Great Nature ever young, yet full of eld,
Still moving, yet immoved from her sted;
Unseen of any, yet of all beheld,
Thus sitting on her throne----
If such noble inventions appear rare, it perhaps is owing to the wide
extent of the "faery land," as well as to the poet's proneness to
luxuriance of diction. If from that voluminous inspiration the poet has
sometimes trespassed on the critic's bourn, or the romantic eulogist of
chastity itself has sometimes violated his own virgin page, for Spenser,
always imitative, caught a slight infection from his old romancers and
his Italian favourites, all this exuberance bears fruit; freedom and
force will ever interest the artists of poetry.
Whoever has passed into the house of Pride,
Whose walls were high, but nothing strong nor thick,
and marked her on her progress, "drawn by six unequal beasts," with her
vile counsellors in their wicked gradation; or has entered "the ancient
house of Holiness;" or counted in the den of Riches,
The huge great iron chests, and coffers strong,
amid the dead men's bones scattered around those chests and coffers, has
realized the marvellous architecture of Fancy; or, whoever roving with
the muse of Spenser through all her localities, meets the sylvan men
whom the chaste Una governed, or the satyrs whom the frail Hellenore
would not quit; or when that muse unveils her voluptuous charms, listens
to her song in the enchanted gardens of Armida; or in the approach to
Acrasia in the bower of Bliss, starts at the nymphs wantonly wrestling
in the glassy waters, laughing and blushing; or more innocently gazes on
the gorgeous Masque of Cupid, or the dance of the poet and mistress
among the Graces,--finds all endowed with poetic existences,
unchangeable in their nature amid the changes of taste so long as
imagination shall seek for its delights, and genius for the language of
its emotions.
"The Faery Queen" was designed by its author to consist of twelve books;
six of which we only possess, published at two several times, and a
fragment of another. The subject of each book is a moral attribute;
Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy. Each
attribute is personified by a knight-errant, with all the passions of
bodily mortality.
The plan of the poem is so inartificial, that the twelve books, had it
been completed, could only have formed twelve separate poems; our poet
followed the free and fertile way of Ariosto. The introduction of Prince
Arthur may have been designed to give a sort of unity to the incoherent
twelve knights, who would have been finally led under his auspices to
the court of the Faery Queen; but as the prince, however respectable in
romance, comes and vanishes, does nothing, and says little, we incline
to the humour of the editor, Hughes, that "the prince is here seen only
in his minority, performing his exercises in Fairy-land as a _private
gentleman_." The versatile plan was adapted to the genius of the poet;
the ductility of his invention, the luxuriance of his imagination, and
the never-ceasing flow of his mellifluous stanza, would have suffered
constraint and mutilation, bound by prescribed forms, and modelled by
the classical epic. At the period that the poet Hughes published his
edition[6] of Spenser, our editors and critics were little conversant
with the Elizabethan literature, nor had the taste of the learned
emancipated itself from the established form of the epic of antiquity.
But Hughes was alive to the vital poetry before him, though evidently
perplexed to fix on a criterion, or to specify the class of poetry, for
"The Faery Queen." His excellent judgment struck into a new and right
path. He describes it as "a poem of a particular kind;" and in his
"Remarks on The Faery Queen," he had the merit of distinguishing poetry,
like architecture, into its Gothic origin, as well as its classical.
This was a discovery at that period; and subsequent critics, such as
Bishop Hurd, and more recently Schlegel, have run away with the honour,
by their more ample development of the romantic school. Hughes was
hardly aware of the importance of this division; for his discovery
amounts to little more than one of those first thoughts, which have not
ripened into a principle.
"The Faery Queen" was the last great work modelled on Chivalry.
Awakening from the gloom of the theological contests of Edward and Mary,
the court of the Maiden Queen, from state-policy and her own
disposition, had been transformed into a court of romance. Glory was the
cheap but inappreciable meed bestowed by the economical sovereign; and
love was the language to which the female from the throne could bend to
listen to her subject.
Elizabeth, stately and tender, was herself "the Faery Queen," without
even the poet's flattery, when seated under the dais, amid long
galleries hung with cloth of gold or silver, and all the moving
tilt-yard glittering in its shine; "the noise of music," and the sound
of shields; the solemn procession, and gay crowd of the many-coloured
liveries; the tasselled caparisons of the horses, and the nodding plumes
of the knights. There our poet fed his eyes on the pageant, enchanting
by its scenical allegory--as when four noble challengers approached--the
children of DESIRE--attempting to win the Fortress of BEAUTY,--that is,
Whitehall and her Majesty![7] They stand in a car, "shadowed with white
and carnation silk, being the colours of Desire." But the challengers
must yield to Beauty, whose princely voice is their ample guerdon; and
on the following day were the tourney and the barriers "courageously
tried." Thus were the days of chivalry, in its forms or its "fopperies,"
restored by the Faery Queen; and with such festivals SPENSER nursed his
gorgeous fancy, and the Queen was the true inspirer of his romantic
Epic.
Warton and Hurd observe that Spenser copied real _manners of his time_
as much as Homer. We must here distinguish an essential difference, if
Homer really represented the manners of the heroic age. It is true, that
much of the _manners_ and forms of chivalry prevailed among the
courtiers of Elizabeth; but such _adventures_ of chivalry as Spenser has
described in his singular poem were transplanted from the ancient
romances. The _incidents_ are therefore not of the poet's age; and we
can only read his narrative as the last of the romances.
The old romance of "La Morte d'Arthur" was still the fashionable reading
of the court; nor had the gorgeous enchantments of Stephen Hawes yet
vanished, for a new edition had issued in 1555. Spenser had read Hawes;
and however entranced by the pageantry of the fiction, from the uncouth
stanza of "The Pastime of Pleasure" he may have been led to the
construction of the Spenserian; for it is one of the aptitudes of true
genius to carry to perfection what it finds imperfect.
"The Faery Queen" was produced at a crisis of transition when the old
romantic way was departing, notwithstanding the temporary influence of a
courtly revival, and the new had not yet arrived. The whole machinery of
Gothic invention could hardly be worked; its marvels had ceased to be
wondrous, and began to be ridiculed. The fantastic extravagance of the
ordinary writers of fiction--that crowd of poet-apes which always rise
after a great work has appeared--has been censured by the two great
literary satirists of that day, MARSTON and HALL; Hall, indeed, suddenly
checks his censorial temerity in blaming themes made sacred by the Faery
Muse.
Let no rebel satire dare traduce
Th' eternal legends of thy fairy Muse,
Renowned SPENSER, whom no earthly wight
Dares once to emulate----
The compliment to Spenser does not diminish the satire levelled at the
class.
Contemporary satirists furnish a precise date when ancient things are on
the turn and getting out of fashion; they are the first who, like hawks,
descend on their quarry.
If Spenser attempted to infuse a rejuvenescence into the dry veins of
the old age of romance, by the vitality of _Allegory_, he has fallen
into a great error; for his twelve knight-errants do not interest our
sympathies the more for being twelve wandering virtues. Allegorical
poetry not long after his day also declined; and when it was resumed by
PHINEAS FLETCHER, in what he has fantastically named and described as
"The Purple Island," or "the little ISLE OF MAN," the poetry can hardly
preserve itself amid the ludicrous analogies which, with such ingenious
perversity of taste, are struck out between anatomy and poesy, too many
not very agreeable to recollect.
CHIVALRY and ALLEGORY, two columns of our poet's renown, thus soon gave
way; and SPENSER has often suffered the heaviest penalty to which a
great poet was ever condemned--neglect!
But these infelicitous forms, which disguised the most tender and
imaginative genius, could not deprive it of its "better parts." Spenser
still remained the poet among poets themselves; though for the world at
large, indeed, Spenser seemed to be recognised only as a poet in the
chronology of poetry. A critic of great delicacy, and a votary of "the
Gothic school," despaired for the destiny of our poet. "The Faery
Queen," exclaimed HURD, in the agony of his taste, "one of the noblest
productions of modern poetry, is fallen into so general a neglect, that
all the zeal of the commentators is esteemed officious and impertinent,
and will never restore it to those honours which it has, once for all,
irrecoverably lost."
This sharp lament broke out in 1760, when, only two years before, the
two rival editions of CHURCH and UPTON had simultaneously appeared; and
the latter could at least boast both of the novelty and the curiosity of
its commentary. But literary commentators held forth few attractions to
the incurious readers of that day. More than thirty years have now
elapsed since the last classical edition of Spenser's works. But at no
period was Spenser ever forgotten by poetical recluses; and professed
imitations of our poet in modern times, though they may not always be
Spenserian, have never ceased, from Shenstone to Mickle, and from
Beattie to Byron.