Of every one he takes and tastes at will,
And on their pleasures greedily doth prey;
Then, when he hath both played and fed his fill,
In the warm sun he doth himself embay,
And there him rests in riotous suffisance
Of all his gladfulness and kingly joyance.

"What more felicity can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with liberty,

And to be lord of all the works of nature?

To reign in the air from earth to highest sky,

To feed on flowers and weeds of glorious feature,
To take whatever thing doth please the eye?
Who rests not pleased with such happiness
Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness."

"To reign in the air," writes Mr. Lowell, in commenting on these stanzas, was certainly Spenser's function. And yet the commentators, who seem never willing to let their poet be a poet pure and simple-though had he not been so they would have lost their only hold on life-try to make out from his 'Mother Hubberd's Tale' that he might have been a very sensible matter-of-fact man if he would. For my own part, I am quite willing to confess that I like him none the worse for being unpractical, and that my reading has convinced me that being too poetical is the rarest fault of poets. Practical men are not so scarce, one would think; and I am not sure that the tree was a gainer when the hamadryad flitted and left it nothing but ship-timber. Such men as Spenser are not sent into the world to be part of its motive power. The blind old engine would not know the difference though we get up its steam with ottar of roses, nor make one revolution more to the minute for it. What practical man ever left such an heirloom to his country as the 'Faery Queen'?"

This unworldly and pre-eminently un-American statement will recall to the reader of Carlyle's "Hero-Worship" the question he asks with regard

to Shakespeare and our Indian empire. If we English were compelled to give up India or the poet, which should it be? Despite Mr. Lowell, there can be no question that the greatest poets, unlike many smaller singers, have been men eminent for worldly sagacity and business tact.* Grant that the poetical nature is of rarer value, and therefore more precious than the practical wisdom so needful in this working-day world, the poet is surely better as a poet in proportion to the free play and full development of his nature as a man.

Spenser has one more claim upon our admiration which can never be overlooked. He is a great lyric poet, and the "Epithalamion," or "Wedding Hymn," written on his own marriage, to which I have already alluded, is perhaps the most triumphant love-poem in the language; it is beyond question one of our most splendid lyrics. No extract can convey a notion of its peerless beauty. Enough to say that it is worthy of the purity, the rich fancy, and the mastery of language which distinguish this noble poet, whose place is with Chaucer and Shakespeare, with Milton and with Wordsworth.

It may

[The literature associated with Spenser is extensive. suffice to call the student's attention to the Globe edition of Spenser, edited by Mr. R. Morris, with a memoir by J. W. Hales (Macmillan and Co.); to the finely printed edition, in five vols., brought out about ten years ago by that literary veteran Mr. J. P.

* Chaucer and Shakespeare, for example, were both men of affairs, and Mr. Lowell allows that Dante was supremely practical.

Collier; to Dean Church's "Spenser," in "English Men of Letters;" and to "" Spenser and his Poetry," by the late Professor Craik. A series of papers on Spenser, written by "Christopher North," in Blackwood's Magazine, in the years 1833-1835, are worthy of the subject and of the eloquent-sometimes perhaps too eloquent— writer. Professor Wilson's admiration of Spenser is unbounded. There is no affectation in his praise; and it is better sometimes for a young student to read such generous, if occasionally unguarded, criticism, catching as he reads the glow of the writer's enthusiasm, than to follow the tamer comments of more cautious critics. Every word about Spenser in Leigh Hunt's delightful volume "Imagination and Fancy" should be read, and cannot fail to be read with pleasure.]

CHAPTER III.

THE ELIZABETHAN POETS (Continued).

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY-SAMUEL DANIEL-MICHAEL DRAY

TON-CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE-GEORGE CHAPMAN.

verse.

THERE are several poets of this period who, although never likely to be much read, will always keep an honoured place in the history of English Prominent among the number stand the names of Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Christopher Marlowe, and George Chapman; and I will try to tell the young reader as much about these poets as it is perhaps necessary that he should know.

Sir Philip

The name of Sir Philip Sidney stands preeminent in the Elizabethan age, not so much for his poetry as for his many virtues as a gentleman, a soldier, and

Sidney, 1554-1586.

a scholar. A recent editor of Sidney's works has

advised students to give days and nights to the study of his poetry. Such advice addressed to a youthful and enthusiastic reader can only breed vexation and disappointment. Sidney's verse, although not without distinct poetical worth, has many crudities and conceits. There is little in it comparatively of high value, and assuredly nothing that calls for a large sacrifice of time and labour. In his fine treatise, the "Apologie for Poetrie,” Sidney objects to far-fetched words and impertinent conceits. In his day, as in our own, verse-makers were apt to mistake extravagant allusions and a fantastic use of words for the inspiration of the poet. Sidney himself was not free from the fault he had the critical sagacity to discover. He often plays upon words; his imagery is sometimes strained and affected, his fancy "high fantastical;" and as conceits in poetry retain no life beyond the age that produced them, there is much in his verse that is without significance for the modern reader. Charles Lamb has said that some of Sidney's sonnets are among the very best of their sort. It would be more correct to say that Sidney's best work is to be found in them. Several of the sonnets, indeed, read like the painful efforts of a scholar's wit rather than of a poet's fancy; but there are others which possess sweetness and strength, and much of that subtle charm of rhythm which belongs to the Elizabethan lyrists. The following sonnet, for instance, has a quaint melodiousness characteristic of the time: