write more, I reply in your own words (like the pamphleteer, who is going to confute you out of your own mouth), What has one to do, when "turned of fifty," but really to think of finishing? However, I will be candid, for you seem to be so with me, and avow to you that till fourscore-and-ten, whenever the humor takes me, I will write, because I like it; and because I like myself much better when I do so. If I do not write much, it is because I cannot.

Mr. Boswell's book1 I was going to recommend to you, when I received your letter; it has pleased and moved me strangely, all, I mean, that relates to Paoli. He is a man born two thousand years after his time! The pamphlet proves what I have always maintained, that any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity. Of Mr. Boswell's truth I have not the least suspicion, because I am sure he could invent nothing of this kind. The true title of this part of his work is, A Dialogue between a Green-Goose and a Hero.

1 An Account of Corsica . . . and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli.

THOMAS WARTON

OBSERVATIONS ON THE FAIRY QUEEN OF SPENSER 1754

[The date above given is that of the first edition of the Observations, but the extracts are reprinted from the enlarged edition of 1762; they include portions of Sections I and x, and of the Postscript. This book was the first critical work dealing with an English author to follow the methods characteristic of modern scholarship. Its appreciation of certain aspects of Spenser's poetry also gives it an important place in the history of the socalled "romantic movement."]

... It is absurd to think of judging either Ariosto or Spenser by precepts which they did not attend to. We who live in the days of writing by rule, are apt to try every composition by those laws which we have been taught to think the sole criterion of excellence. Critical taste is universally diffused, and we require the same order and design which every modern performance is expected to have, in poems where they never were regarded or intended. Spenser, and the same may be said of Ariosto, did not live in an age of planning. His poetry is the careless exuberance of a warm imagination and a strong sensibility. It was his business to engage the fancy, and to interest the attention, by bold and striking images, in the formation and the disposition of which little labor or art was applied. The various and the marvelous were the chief sources of delight. Hence we find our author ransacking alike the regions of reality and romance, of truth and fiction, to find the proper decorations and furniture for his fairy structure. Born in such an age, Spenser wrote rapidly from his own feelings, which at the same time were naturally noble. Exactness in his poem would have been like the cornice which a painter introduced in the grotto of Calypso. Spenser's beauties are like the flowers in Paradise, which not nice art

In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon
Pour'd forth profuse, on hill and dale and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, or where the unpierc'd shade
Imbrown'd the noontide bowers.

1

If the Fairy Queen be destitute of that arrangement and economy which epic severity requires, yet we scarcely regret the loss of these while their place is so amply supplied by something which more powerfully attracts us; something which engages the affections, the feelings of the heart, rather than the cold approbation of the head. If there be any poem whose graces please because they are situated beyond the reach of art, and where the force and faculties of creative imagination delight, because they are unassisted and unrestrained by those of deliberate judgment, it is this. In reading Spenser if the critic is not satisfied, yet the reader is transported. .

In reading the works of a poet who lived in a remote age, it is necessary that we should look back upon the customs and manners which prevailed in that age. We should endeavor to place ourselves in the writer's situation and circumstances. Hence we shall become better enabled to discover how his turn of thinking and manner of composing were influenced by familiar appearances and established objects, which are utterly different from those with which we are at present surrounded. For want of this caution, too many readers view the knights and damsels, the tournaments and enchantments, of Spenser with modern eyes, never considering that the encounters of chivalry subsisted in our author's age; that romances were then most eagerly and universally studied; and that consequently Spenser, from the fashion of the times, was induced to undertake a recital of chivalrous achievements, and to become, in short, a romantic poet.

Spenser in this respect copied real manners no less than Homer. A sensible historian1 observes that "Homer copied true natural manners, which, however rough and uncultivated, will always form an agreeable and interesting picture; but the pencil of the English poet [Spenser] was employed in drawing the affectations and conceits and fopperies of chivalry." This, however, was nothing more than an imitation of real life; as much, at least, as the plain descriptions in Homer, which corresponded to the simplicity of manners then subsisting in Greece. Spenser, in the address of the Shepherd's Calendar to Sir Philip Sidney, couples his patron's learning with his skill in

1 Hume.

chivalry, a topic of panegyric which would sound very odd in a modern dedication, especially before a set of pastorals. "To the noble and virtuous gentleman, most worthy of all titles, both of Learning and Chivalry, Master Philip Sidney,"

Go, little book, thyself present,

As child whose parent is unkent,
To him that is the president
Of nobleness and chivalry.

Nor is it sufficiently considered that a popular practice of Spenser's age contributed, in a considerable degree, to make him an allegorical poet. We should remember that in this age allegory was applied as the subject and foundation of public shows and spectacles, which were exhibited with a magnificence superior to that of former times. The virtues and vices, distinguished by their respective emblematical types, were frequently personified, and represented by living actors. These figures bore a chief part in furnishing what they called pageants, which were then the principal species of entertainment, and were shown not only in private, or upon the stage, but very often in the open streets for solemnizing public occasions, or celebrating any grand event. As a proof of what is here mentioned, I refer the reader to Holinshed's Description of the Show of Manhood and Desert, exhibited at Norwich before Queen Elizabeth, and more particularly to that historian's account of a tourney performed by Fulke Greville, the Lords Arundel and Windsor, and Sir Philip Sidney, who are feigned to be the children of Desire, attempting to win the Fortress of Beauty. In the composition of the last spectacle no small share of poetical invention appears.

After the Fairy Queen, allegory began to decline, 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 subtilties of philosophic disputation, became the principal pursuits of the learned.

Then Una fair gan drop her princely mien.

James I is contemptuously called a pedantic monarch. But surely nothing could be more serviceable to the interests of

learning, at its infancy, than this supposed foible. "To stick the doctor's chair into the throne" was to patronize the literature of the times. In a more enlightened age, the same attention to letters and love of scholars might have produced proportionable effects on sciences of real utility. This cast of mind in the king, however indulged in some cases to an ostentatious affectation, was at least innocent.

Allegory, notwithstanding, unexpectedly rekindled some faint sparks of its native splendor in the Purple Island of Fletcher, with whom it almost as soon disappeared; when a poetry succeeded in which imagination gave way to correctness, sublimity of description to delicacy of sentiment, and majestic imagery 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. 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....

...

Mechanical critics will perhaps be disgusted at the liberties I have taken in introducing so many anecdotes of ancient chivalry. But my subject required frequent proofs of this sort. Nor could I be persuaded that such inquiries were, in other respects, either useless or ridiculous, as they tended at least to illustrate an institution of no frivolous or indifferent nature. Chivalry is commonly looked upon as a barbarous sport or extravagant amusement of the dark ages. It had, however, no small influence on the manners, policies, and constitutions of ancient times, and served many public and important purposes. It was the school of fortitude, honor, and affability. Its exercises, like the Grecian games, habituated the youth to fatigue and enterprise, and inspired the noblest sentiments of heroism. It taught gallantry and civility to a savage and ignorant people, and humanized the native ferocity of the northern nations. It conduced to refine the manners of the combatants by exciting an emulation in the devices and accoutrements, the splendor and parade, of their tilts and tournaments; while its magnifi