served throughout; but the interest of the narrative, as full of action and incident as an old romance, and the charm of the free, vagrant, open-air life described, make one think and care little for the hidden meaning. "There is something," said Pope, "in Spenser, that pleases one as strongly in one's old age as it did in one's youth. I read The Faerie Queen' when I was about twelve, with a vast deal of delight; and I think it gave me as much when I read it over about a year or two ago. An account in some detail of a portion of the second book will be found at a later page.2 6 Of the many shorter poems left by Spenser, we shall noticeThe Ruines of Time," and "The Teares of the Muses." The first, dedicated to Sydney's sister the Countess of Pembroke, is, in its main intention, a lament over her noble brother's untimely death. The marvellous poetic energy, the perfect finish, the depth of thought, the grace, tenderness, and richness of this poem, make it eminently illustrative of Spenser's genius. "The Teares of the Muses," published in 1591, is an impassioned protest against the depraved state of the public taste, which at this time, according to Spenser, led society in general to despise learning, nobles to sacrifice true fame to vanity and avarice, and authors to substitute servility and personality for wit. Each Muse bewails in turn the miserable condition of that particular branch of literary art over which she is supposed to preside. Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, frankly owns that her occupation in England is a sinecure : "But I, that in true tragedies am skilled, The flower of wit, find nought to busie me, * See p. 388. This might well be said, when as yet no better tragedy had appeared in England than Sackville's "Gorboduc." The complaint of Thalia, the Muse of Comedy, is different. The comic stage had flourished, thanks to one gifted gentle spirit;" but he was now keeping silence, and ribaldry and folly had possession of the stage. Then comes the following interesting passage: 6. "All these, and all that else the comic stage With seasoned wit and goodly pleasance graced, Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced; And he, the man whom Nature's self had made Instead thereof, scoffing scurrilitie And scornful folly with contempt is crept, But that some gentle spirit, from whose pen Large streams of honnie and sweet nectar flowe, Which dare their follies forth so rashly throwe, Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell." In spite of Mr. Todd's petty objections, I firmly believe that here we have Spenser's tribute to the mighty genius that had already given "Two Gentlemen of Verona," "Love's Labor's Lost," "The Taming of the Shrew," and probably one or two other comedies, to the English stage, In "Colin Clout's come home againe," Spenser, having returned to his Irish home, describes the visit which he paid to England in 1591, the condescension of the queen, and the ways of the court; all under the mask of a conversation between shepherds and shepherdesses. The "Foure Hymnes " in honor of earthly and heavenly love, earthly and heavenly beauty, are written in the Chaucerian heptastich; the force and harmony of the verse are wonderful. "Mother Hubbard's Tale," a work of the poet's youth, is in the heroic couplet; it is in the main a satire, first exposing with a lofty scorn the hypocrisy and self-seeking of the new clergy, and then turning off to paint the meanness, cunning, and hardheartedness which pervade the atmosphere of a court. It is in this connection that the famous passage occurs, thought to embody his own experience, which describes the miserable life of a suitor for some favor at court. 'Daphnaida and "Astrophel" are elegies, the last upon the death of Sir Philip Sidney. The lovely nuptial hymn, "Epithalamion," was written on the occasion of his marriage; its metre and movement are Pindaric. "6 Muiopotmos" is an elaborate poem, in the fantastic style, on the fate of a butterfly. 66 The reader will observe that there is a wide interval, in respect of the polish and modern air of the diction, between the productions of 1579 and those of 1590 and 1591. One may reasonably conjecture that the perusal of such a play as "Two Gentlemen of Verona,” had led Spenser to modify considerably his youthful theory, giving the preference to the obsolete English of a former age. The poems of Shakspeare all fall within the early part of his life, they were all composed before 1598. Writing in that year, Meres, in the "Wit's Treasury," says, "As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous honey-tongued Shakspeare. Witness his Venus and Adonis,' his Lucrece,' his sugared sonnets among his private friends." These, together with such portions of "The Passionate Pilgrim" and the "Lover's Complaint" as may have been his genuine composition, constitute the whole of Shakspeare's poems, as distinguished from his plays, The sonnets, a hundred and fifty-four in number, were first published by a bookseller, Thomas Thorpe, in 1609, with a dedication to a Mr. W. H., "the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets." Yet there are some among them that are evidently addressed to a woman. The tone of self-humiliating adulation which pervades those of which Mr. W. H. appears to have been the object, has always been a mystery and a trouble to the admirers of Shakspeare, who have been driven to invent various hypotheses to account for it. The subject is fully discussed by Mr. Knight in his "Pictorial Shakspeare," and briefly handled by Hallam in the third volume of his "Literary History." Of the minor poets of the Elizabethan age, the earliest in date among those that attained to real distinction was Robert Southwell1 the Jesuit, cruelly put to death by the Government in 1595, for the crime of having been found in England, endeavoring to supply his family and friends with priestly ministrations. His poems, under the title of "St. Peter's Complaint, with other Poems," appeared in the same year that he was executed, and were many times reprinted during the next forty years. Southwell, it seems, was the founder of the modern English style of religious poetry; his influence and example are evident in the work of Crashaw, or of Donne, or of Herbert, or Waller, or any of those whose devout lyrics were admired in later times. Chaucer had, it is true, shown in the prologue to "The Prioress' Tale," and in the poem called his A. B. C. in honor of the blessed Virgin, how much the English tongue was capable of in this direction. But the language was now greatly altered; and Chaucer, though admired, was looked upon as no subject for direct imitation. The poets of the time were much more 1 See his Poetical Works, edited by the late Mr. Turnbull, 1856. We may solicitous to write like Ovid than like Isaiah. admit the truth, excluding only Spenser from its application, of Southwell's general censure, that, In lieu of solemn and devout matters, to which in duty they owe their abilities, they now busy themselves in expressing such passions as serve only for testimonies to what unworthy affections they have wedded their wills. And because the best course to let them see the error of their works is to weave a new web in their own loom, I have laid a few coarse threads together, to invite some skilfuller wits to go forward in the same, or to begin some finer piece, wherein it may be seen how well verse and virtue suit together.' Southwell was attacked by Hall, then an eager rising young man at Cambridge, in the first book of his satires, called " Virgidemiæ." 1 Hall's notion seems to have been, that verse was too trivial and too worldly a garb wherein to clothe religious thought. But Marston smote the smiter, who had railed · "Gainst Peter's teares and Marie's moving moane," And argued the matter out rather forcibly: "Shall painims honor their vile falsed gods The prince by his prerogative may claim? Why may not then our soules, without thy blame, And with due reverence and devotion 1 See p. 408. |