discard prepossessions and recognise that the unity resides in the spirit of the composition rather than in the structure, remember that the English poet followed Ariosto, who, if more successful in the management of his story, was equally indifferent to classical laws, and yet had achieved a triumph, bear in mind finally that romantic art aims to interest by multiplicity of detail, by profusion and splendour, and to secure its end must sacrifice that simplicity and precision of form which distinguish and ennoble the great works of antiquity, and it will remain possible to admire and enjoy Spenser without violation of one's literary conscience. It may be allowed that Phidias was wholly right without admitting that the builders of St. Marks or of Chartres were wholly wrong. To confess that the art of Sophocles is beyond reproach is not to say that the art of Shakespeare is indefensible.

Epic in all ages and at all stages of culture reflects the life and manners, the tastes and pursuits of the ruling class. Beowulf mirrors the aristocratic society of the pre-Christian English, Virgil is the poet of the imperial court of Augustus, Ariosto of the Renaissance circles of culture which met in ducal palaces. Spenser is equally a court poet. He wrote for the learned and brilliant coterie that surrounded and worshipped Elizabeth. To the Queen the poem is dedicated, "to live with the eternitie of her fame." She is at once Gloriana, the Queen of Fairyland, and in some places else I do also shadow her "—she is Belphoebe and Mercilla. The poem itself was recommended to Elizabethan fashionable society in a series of sonnets, seventeen in number, to Essex, the Queen's favourite, to the Lord Chancellor, to Burleigh, High Treasurer, to Earls and Knights, and finally “ To all the gratious and beautifull ladies in the Court "

"If all the world to seek I overwent,

A fairer crew yet nowhere could I see

Than that brave court doth to mine eye present,
That the world's pride seems gathered there to be."

Sixteenth century England, fully conscious that she had taken her place among the great nations, that she might lack nothing of national splendour and dignity, required her epic. Mindful that Virgil had turned from pastoral to sing his country's glory,

Spenser was ambitious to answer to the call of patriotism and to exalt his England. He makes his allegory, therefore, personal and historical, as well as general and spiritual-Elizabeth is the Fairy Queen, Mary Stuart, Duessa; Lord Leicester, Arthur; Lord Grey of Wilton, Governor of Ireland, delivers Ireland from the rebels, that is, Sir Artegal succours Irena oppressed by Grantorto; Charles, last of the Nevils, Earls of Westmoreland, famous for his many loves, is Paridel, "the learned lover," who

many weak hearts had subdued," who wrongs the jealous miser Malbecco by bearing off the faithless Hellenore; Percy, Earl of Northumberland, who was also one of the leaders in the Revolt of the North (1569), is Blandamour, Paridel's friend," " of fickle mind, full of inconstancies,"--a false pair of knights; Sir John Perrot, at that time a prisoner in the tower, is Sir Satyrane; Philip of Spain is the Soldan, who plots against Mercilla, a maiden queen, here Elizabeth, and by his "Swearing and banning most blasphemously" as he advances against Arthurintervening as the grace of God-may be recognised as the ally of the excommunicating Pope; the Emperor, Charles V., monarch of Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands, is Geryon, "of horrible aspect," a three-bodied monster, who had " the arms and legs of three to succour him in fight"; Henry of Navarre is Burbon, "blushing half for shame," who throws away his shield of Protestantism, and thus his "former praise hath blemished sore"; Sidney, Spenser's friend, the mirror of courtesy, is Sir Calidore, and Pastorella-here the Arcadia is glanced atFrances Walsingham, his wife. By these and a host of other references which comment upon contemporary history from the patriotic point of view, by topographical descriptions, such as those in praise of London, as Cleopolis, "the fairest city that might be seen," and of Oxford and Cambridge as "the double nursery of Arts," Spenser essays to make his poem English, and acceptable by the aristocratic England of his day. It was accepted the more delightedly that the themes were love and beauty, matter after the Renaissance heart. The taste of the age is seen in a book of the same year, Sidney's Arcadia, with its wealth of sentiment, its medley of scenes and persons, all

fantastic. The Faerie Queene is a pageant such as Elizabeth and her courtiers loved,-philosophy embedded in roses, meanings in masquerades, music joined with painting to produce a delicious intoxication of all the senses. Bold in adventure, fierce in action, determined in policy, these men, when they took their ease, desired to sit at a continual feast, a sugred blisse," where all forms and shapes of beauty promised an eternal spring, and Cupid played among the flowers.

Spenser is inconclusive. Nothing really happens in his poem, nothing is done. The Faerie Queene is like a labyrinthine flower, whose unfolding we can watch, or a liquid evening sky upon which, as we gaze, the magic rose appears, to glow and fade. If this be a national epic it celebrates no national undertaking or achievement. No foundation is laid of city or state, no imperium established, no Ilion besieged, no Jerusalem captured. It would seem as if we had here a poem typical of the inconclusiveness of all romance, beginning nowhere and leading nowhere; it would seem as if the poetry of romance must logically end in a preference for the dream to the act; must, like the youthful Keats when he cried,

'Hence, pageant history, hence, gilded cheat!" look upon events as so far and no farther of interest or importance than as matter for the poet's vision. Then romance is parasitic and the antithesis of epic. For epic values the act, as drama values it, knowing that in the act, and not in the emotion which may accompany it, the prompting of the god appears, that act and feeling may not coincide, that the bravest man may, for example, feel fear, and disregarding it triumph the more, that human reluctance to undertake the great deed detracts nothing from its splendour when done. Dr. Johnson hated labour, but how far is the sympathy of the readers who know it estranged from the results of his labour? Romance contrasted with true epic is not only inconclusive then, it is hazardous. It may neglect the substance for the shadow, it may become a mere fitful play of emotions without justification in the pains and pleasures of living. It moves on the edge of emptiness. In respect of form it engages in a hazardous rivalry with classic

art, for it tends to overlook" that simplicity without which no human performance can arrive at any great perfection," and "to derive more from the effect than it has put into the cause." Simplicity in design, in composition has no dangers, a hundred wait upon exuberance. The affinity of romance with colour rather than design--and Spenser is surely the greatest colourist among English poets-is hazardous also. "Colour is the enemy of all noble art," said Domenico Neroni, and one sees his meaning. It is the enemy of all precise and perfect form, since where colour exists form can be seen only as juxtaposition of colour."1 Spenser on his chosen path plainly skirted many and ever-present dangers. It would be idle to assert that he wholly escaped them. But the lovers of poetry, though they have their moods of estrangement, will return to watch him

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moving through his clouded heaven

With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace,"

and allow him to be Castalidum decus sororum--the Muses' pride, and, may we not add, patriae, his country's, also?

'Vernon Lee: Renaissance Fancies and Studies, p. 120.

CHAPTER IX

HEROIC POETRY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

THE Elizabethan age might well have produced an epic on some great national subject. It was confidently looked for. Poets were numerous, not a few of whom belonged to “ the upper house of the Muses." If patriotism could have assisted it was not wanting, for at no period in our history was national pride more conscious or more fervid. "Look on England," exclaimed Massinger,

"The Empress of the European isles:

When did she flourish so, as when she was
The mistress of the ocean, her navies

Putting a girdle round about the world?

When the Iberians quaked, her worthies named;
And the fair flower de luce grew pale, set by
The red rose and the white?" 1

Long and spirited poems were written on patriotic subjects by men without any claim to be professional poets. Witness The Most Honorable Tragedy of Sir Richard Grinvile, Knight, by Gervase Markham, a voluminous writer on horsemanship and husbandry, which in about fifteen hundred lines celebrates the last fight of the Revenge. In art and fervour it proclaims the spirit of the age

"For till that fire shall all the world consume,

Shall never name with Grinvil's name presume."

England-the idea was everywhere accepted-needed only the crowning glory of epic to claim entrance into the select society of the most famous nations, to plant "her roses on the Appenines,"

"And to teach Rheyne, the Loire and Rhodanus,
That they might all admire and honour us."

Pride in the present begat pride in the national past. Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland were published

1 The Maid of Honour.

2 Daniel: Dedication of The Tragedy of Cleopatra.