in the harbour of Cadiz; men who treated the sea as the rightful dominion of their mistress, and seeking adventures on it far and near, with or without her leave, reaped its rich harvests of plunder, from Spanish treasure ships and West Indian islands, or from the exposed towns and churches of the Spanish coast. They were at once men of daring enterprise and sometimes very rough execution; and yet men with all the cultivation and refinement of the time, courtiers, scholars, penmen, poets. These are the men whom Spenser had before his eyes in drawing his knights—their ideas of loyalty, of gallantry, of the worth and use of life,—their aims, their enthusiasm, their temptations, their foes, their defeats, their triumphs. In his tales of perpetual warfare, of perpetual resistance to evil, of the snares and desperate dangers through which they have to fight their way, there is a picture of the conditions which affect the whole life of man. The allegory may be applied, and was intended to be applied generally, to the difficulties which beset his course and the qualities necessary to overcome them. But it specially exhibits the ideals and standards and aspirations -the characteristic virtues and the characteristic imperfections, the simple loyalty and the frank selfishness, of the brilliant and high-tempered generation, who are represented by men like Philip Sidney and Walter Ralegh, and Howard of Effingham and Richard Grenville, or by families like those of Vere and Norreys and Carew.

As a work of art The Faery Queen at once astonishes us by the wonderful fertility and richness of the writer's invention and imagination, by the facility with which he finds or makes language for his needs, and above all, by the singular music and sweetness of his verse. The main theme seldom varies : it is a noble knight, fighting, overcoming, tempted, delivered; or a beautiful lady, plotted against, distressed, in danger, rescued. The poet's affluence of fancy and speech gives a new turn and colour to each adventure. But besides that under these conditions there must be monotony, the poet's art, admirable as it is, gives room for objections. Spenser's style is an imitation of the antique; and an imitation, however good, must want the master charm of naturalness, reality, simple truth. And in his system of work, with his brightness and quickness and fluency, he wanted self-restraint-the power of holding himself in, and of judging soundly of fitness and proportion. There was a looseness and carelessness, partly belonging to his age, partly his own. In the use of materials, nothing comes amiss to him. He had no scruples

as a copyist. He took without ceremony any piece of old metal,— word, or story, or image-which came to his hand, and threw it into the melting-pot of his imagination, to come out fused with his own materials, often transformed, but often unchanged. The effect was sometimes happy, but not always so.

With respect to his diction, it must ever be remembered that the language was still in such an uncertain and unfixed state as naturally to invite attempts to extend its powers, and to enrich, supple, and colour it. Spenser avowedly set himself to do this. The editor of his first work, The Shepherd's Calendar, takes credit on his behalf for attempting 'to restore, as to their rightful heritage, such good and natural English words, as have been long time out of use, and almost clean disherited.' Spenser draws largely on Chaucer, both for his vocabulary and his grammar: and his authority and popularity have probably saved us a good many words which we could ill afford to lose. And some of his words we certainly have forgotten to our loss-such words as 'ingate' (like 'insight,') 'glooming,' 'fool-happy,' 'overgone,' and his many combinations with en- 'empeopled,' 'engrieved,' 'enrace.' But it is not to enrich a language but to confuse and spoil it, when a writer forces on it words which are not in keeping with its existing usages and spirit, and much more when he arbitrarily deals with words to make them suit the necessities of metre and rime and there is

much of this in Spenser. He overdoes, especially in his earlier books, the old English expedient of alliteration, or 'hunting the letter,' as it was called, which properly belongs to a much earlier method of versification, and which the ear of his own generation had already learned to shrink from in excess. He not only revives old words, but he is licentious-as far as we are able to trace the usages of the time-in inventing new ones. He is unscrupulous in using inferior forms for better and more natural ones, not for the sake of the word, but for the convenience of the verse. The transfer of words—adjectives and verbs-from their strict use to a looser one, the passage from an active to a neuter sense, the investing a word with new associations,--the interchange of attributes between two objects, with the feelings or phrase which really belong to one reflected back upon the other -are, within limits, part of the recognised means by which language, and especially poetical language, extends its range. But Spenser was inclined to make all limits give way to his convenience, and the rapidity of his work. It is not only to us that his language is

both strange and affectedly antique; it looked the same to the men of his own time. It is a drawback to the value of Spenser as a monument of the English of his day, that it is often uncertain whether a form or a meaning of word may not be due simply to his own wayward and arbitrary use of it.

The Faery Queen has eclipsed all Spenser's other writings: but his other writings alone would be enough to place him, as his contemporaries placed him, at the head of all who had yet attempted English poetry. The Shepherd's Calendar, as has been said, with all its defects and affectations, showed force, skill, command of language and music as yet unknown. In it were shown the beginnings of two powers characteristic of Spenser: the power of telling a story, as in the fables of The Oak and Briar, and The Fox and Kid; and the power of satire, a power which he used both there and afterwards in Mother Hubberd's Tale, to lash the Church abuses of the time and the manners of the Court, and in using which he is in strong contrast, in his sobriety and self-restraint, to the coarse extravagance of such writing in his time. The Fox and Ape of Mother Hubberd's Tale is much nearer to the satire of Dryden and Pope, than it is to such writers as Donne and Hall. He did his necessary share of work in writing poems of salutation or congratulation for the great, or of lamentation for their misfortunes and sorrows. The Prothalamion celebrates the marriage of two ladies of the Worcester family; and he bewailed the death of Sir Philip Sidney and the Earl of Leicester. Much of this poetry was conventional. But in it appear fine and beautiful passages. The Prothalamion has great sweetness and grace. The Dirges never fail to show his deep and characteristic feeling for the vicissitudes of our human state. Finally, his own love and courtship inspired a series of Sonnets, and a Wedding Hymn. The Sonnets on the whole are disappointing. There is warmth and sincerity in them; but they want the individual stamp which makes such things precious. On the other hand, the Wedding Hymn, the Epithalamion, is one of the richest and most magnificent compositions of the kind in any language.

R. W. CHURCH.

FABLE OF THE OAK AND THE BRIAR.

[From The Shepheards Calender, 1579-80. February.]
There grewe an aged Tree on the greene,
A goodly Oake sometime had it bene,
With armes full strong and largely displayd,
But of their leaves they were disarayde:
The bodie bigge, and mightely pight,
Throughly rooted, and of wonderous hight;
Whilome had bene the King of the field,
And mochell mast to the husband did yielde,
And with his nuts larded many swine:
But now the gray mosse marred his rine;
His bared boughes were beaten with stormes,
His toppe was bald, and wasted with wormes,
His honor decayed, his braunches sere.

Hard by his side grewe a bragging Brere,
Which proudly thrust into Thelement,
And seemed to threat the Firmament:
It was embellisht with blossomes fayre,
And thereto aye wonned to repayre
The shepheards daughters to gather flowres,
To peinct their girlonds with his colowres;
And in his small bushes used to shrowde
The sweete Nightingale singing so lowde;
Which made this foolish Brere wexe so bold,
That on a time he cast him to scold

And snebbe the good Oake, for he was old.

'Why standst there (quoth he) thou brutish blocke? Nor for fruict nor for shadowe serves thy stocke;

Seest how fresh my flowers bene spredde,
Dyed in Lilly white and Cremsin redde,
With Leaves engrained in lusty greene;
Colours meete to clothe a mayden Queene?
Thy wast bignes but combers the grownd,
And dirks the beauty of my blossomes rownd:
The mouldie mosse, which thee accloieth,

My Sinamon smell too much annoieth :
Wherefore soone I rede thee hence remove,
Least thou the price of my displeasure prove.'
So spake this bold brere with great disdaine :
Little him aunswered the Oake againe,
But yeelded, with shame and greefe adawed,
That of a weede he was overcrawed.

Yt chaunced after upon a day,

The Hus-bandman selfe to come that way,
Of custome for to survewe his grownd,
And his trees of state in compasse rownd:
Him when the spitefull brere had espyed,
Causelesse complained, and lowdly cryed
Unto his lord, stirring up sterne strife.

'O, my liege Lord! the God of my life!
Pleaseth you ponder your Suppliants plaint,
Caused of wrong and cruell constraint,
Which I your poore Vassall dayly endure;
And, but your goodnes the same recure,
Am like for desperate doole to dye,
Through felonous force of mine enemie.'

Greatly aghast with this piteous plea, Him rested the goodman on the lea, And badde the Brere in his plaint proceede. With painted words tho gan this proude weede (As most usen Ambitious folke :)

His colowred crime with craft to cloke.

'Ah, my soveraigne! Lord of creatures all,
Thou placer of plants both humble and tall,
Was not I planted of thine owne hand,
To be the primrose of all thy land;

With flowring blossomes to furnish the prime,
And scarlot berries in Sommer time?
How falls it then that this faded Oake,
Whose bodie is sere, whose braunches broke,
Whose naked Armes stretch unto the fyre,
Unto such tyrannie doth aspire ;
Hindering with his shade my lovely light,
And robbing me of the swete sonnes sight?