With th' other he his friends meant to enwrap: For whom he could not kill he practis'd to entrap.

Next him was Fear, all arm'd from top to toe,
Yet thought himself not safe enough thereby,
But fear'd each shadow moving to or fro;
And his own arms when glittering he did spy,
Or clashing heard, he fast away did fly,
As ashes pale of hue, and winged heel'd;
And evermore on Danger fixt his eye,

'Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield, Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield.

Such poetry as this will account for the very high fame to which SPENSER rose at once, and from which he has never since declined. It unites all the various charms of poetical thought, and poetical execution: in addition to its primary qualities, all the minor excellences of skill and artifice are here attained.

After such an admirable example of the powers of this sublime Art, it seems at first surprising, that the efforts of the Muse, which immediately follow, should

Save flen back in a se so tasteless, crude, and repulsive -Afar the Fairy Queen" SETS Ferrin I his Couervatras en SENSE.' -Alegry began to decine, and by degrees gave place to a species of Poetry, whose images were of the metaphysical and abstracted kind. This fashion evidently took its rise from the predominant studies of the times, in which the disquisitions of school-divinity, and the perplexed subtleties of philosophic disputation, became the principal pursuits of the learned.

Then Una fair 'gan drop her princely mien.”Þ

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Allegory, notwithstanding, unexpectedly rekindled some faint strokes of its native splendor in the 'Purple Island' of FLETCHER, with whom it almost as

b Mason's Musaus.'

"Printed in the year 1630. The principal fault of this poem is, that the Author has discovered too much of

soon disappeared: when a poetry succeeded, in which imagination gave way to correctness; sublimity of description to delicacy of sentiment; and majestic imagination to conceit and epigram. Poets began now to be more attentive to words, than to things and objects. The nicer beauties of happy expression were preferred to the daring strokes of great conception. Satire, that bane of the sublime, was imported from France.

Afterwards the intellectual

the anatomist. The 'Purple Island' is the Isle of Man, whose parts and construction the Poet has described in an Allegorical manner: viz. the bones are the foundation of it, the veins its brooks, &c. faculties are represented as persons: but he principally shines, where he personifies the passions and evil concupiscences of the heart, who attack the good qualities of the heart alike personified, which, under the conduct of their leader, Intellect, rout the former. In this poem there is too somewhat of a metaphysical turn. As the whole is supposed to be sung by two shepherds, the Poet has found an opportunity of adorning the beginnings and endings of his cantos with some very pleasing pastoral touches. The poem seems to bear some resemblance to the 'Psychomachia' of PRUDENTIUS."

The Muses were debauched at Court, and polite life, and familiar manners, became their only themes. The simple dignity of MILTON was either entirely neglected, or mistaken for bombast and insipidity, by the refined readers of a dissolute age, whose taste and morals were equally vitiated.”

Warton then observes that, "Allegorical Poetry, through many gradations, at last received its ultimate consummation in The Fairy Queen.' But he had previously said, when speaking of 'The Mirror for Magistrates,' of which he censures the generality of the pieces, as little better than biographical detail, that there is one poem, among the rest, which exhibits a group of imaginary personages, so beautifully drawn, that in all probability, they contributed to direct, at least to stimulate, SPENSER'S

imagination in the construction of the like representations. Thus much may be truly said, that SACKVILLE'S 'Induction' approaches nearer to 'The Fairy Queen,' than any previous or succeeding poem."

But surely this is not praise enough for SACKVILLE. Rich and beautiful, and picturesque as are the Allegorical Figures of SPENSER, I doubt if there be not something more moral and sublime in those of SACKVILLE. He deals more in those darker hues, in which great genius so much delights. And with this opinion Warton himself seems to have been fully impressed in the noble criticism, with which he speaks of this production in the third volume of his 'History of Poetry,' in which he has given such ample extracts in proof of his praises, as will restrain me from repeating more