In a yet further fragment, his last recorded written words, we seem to find him, beaten down, yet not hopeless, measuring his own life's changes as a poet, a philosopher, a Christian; looking forward to that haven of all storm-tossed souls, where change shall turn to stedfastness and weariness shall find repose:

Then gin I thinke on that which Nature sayd
Of that same time when no more change shall be,
But stedfast rest of all things firmly stayed
Upon the pillours of Eternitie,

That is contrayr to Mutabilitie.

For all that moveth doth in Change delight,

But thenceforth all shall rest eternally

With Him that is the God of Sabaoth hight:

Oh! that great Sabaoth's God, grant me that Sabaoth's sight!

THE SPENSERIAN SECRET

To shirk such an estimate of the "Faery

Queene" as we have tried to furnish, would be to leave the life of Spenser half complete; yet the recitation of its story goes to show that it has story none to tell; in its intricate plot and amid its shifting characters, we only do not lose our way because there is no way to lose. What, then, was the charm by which Spenser leapt at once into the front rank of English writers, was proclaimed a "Poet's Poet," was accepted as time went on-to take only the greatest names-by Milton, Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth? He wrote, we must remember, for the few; his work lacks the popular touch which so distinguished Chaucer. The "Canterbury Tales" paint types of every social class with sympathetic intimacy; the "Faery Queene" shows only dainty dames and knights of high degree in human kind, shows monsters no less aristocratic in the blazonry of Hell; while the "raskall rout," the common folk, appear on rare occasions, and then in a ludicrous or contemptible light. He looked for readers to the courtly patrons of the Renaissance-Sidney, Raleigh, Leicester-to the great Queen herself; to the

brilliant wits around her, Fairfax, Warner, Harington, Chapman, amourist, patriotic, philosophical, who had tuned her Court into a nest of singing birds. He wrote for Lyly, Florio, poor Robert Southwell; for the three dissolute dramatists who had made Shakespeare possible; nay, for young Shakespeare's self, many of whose plays were acted before the second instalment of the "Faery Queene" appeared. We have seen (p. 32) Spenser's endearing notice of "our pleasant Willy"; Shakespeare, in his "Passionate Pilgrim," if it indeed be his, comparing music and sweet poetry, personifies poetry in Spenser:

Whose deep conceit is such

As, passing all conceit, needs no defence.

And the lesser contemporaries dutifully echoed the master's note of praise. Meres in his "Palladis Tamia" classes the author of the "Faery Queene" with Homer; so does a greater writer, Drayton:

Grave moral Spenser after these came on,
Than whom I am persuaded there was none,
Since the blind bard his Iliads did make
Fitter a task like that to undertake.

Bishop Hall ranks him above Ariosto and Du Bartas; Barnfield, known to us by lines long attributed to Shakespeare, recommends his own pretty poem, "Cynthia," as an attempt to imitate the master, Spenser. Nash calls him "Heavenly Spenser "; William Browne, a few years later, saw in him "the highest glory of the Muses";

later still, Cowley was made a poet by reading him. Yet popular, in the literal sense of the word, he was not then, and has not been since; editions of his works came forth very slowly; his great poem has never, as a whole, been translated into any foreign language: nay, in his own country it is probably true that, bearing the title of a great classic, he has more admirers than readers. Meanwhile, his rapturous acceptance by the few, and those the supreme literary judges who decide on immortality, is intelligible to all who have felt his charm. Stately to the level of his stately age, yet buoyant with unceasing movement, sweet with acute responsiveness to beauty, whether of natural sights and sounds, of moral character, of physical form, he invites and rewards from careful students not only the passive enjoyment of his music, but an analysis of his poetic

secret.

Let us notice first the splendour of his imagery. His descriptions have no neutral tints; whether he portrays the passing of a hero or a heroine, a forest landscape or a palace hall, a tilt-yard or a temple shrine, there is the same rich yet appropriate sumptuousness of decoration and accessory. Each place, each person, wears ever, like Milton's Tragedy, its gorgeous dress of sceptered pall, the dress not of a mimic pantomime but of the highest and most polished art. Take, for example, the description of Queen Lucifera riding forth in state (I, iv), of Prince Arthur's first appearance (I, vii), of Belphoebe (II, iii), of Phaedria's Isle (II, vi), of the Garden of Adonis (III, vi), whence

are born into the world all men and beasts and goodly flowers:

Shee brought him to her joyous Paradize,

Wher most she wonne when she on earth does dwell,
So faire a place as Nature can devize;
Whether in Paphos, or Cytheron hill,
Or it in Gnidus bee, I wote not well;
But well I wote by triall, that this same
All other pleasaunt places doth excell,
And called is by her lost lover's name,
The Gardin of Adonis, far renownd by fame.

Notice, too, the picture-writing in his allegorical impersonations, new to our literature, except for Sackville's fine but brief description of the company at Hell gate.

Here is Envy in the House of Pride:

And next to him malicious Envy rode
Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw
Between his cankred teeth a venemous toad,
That all the poison ran about his chaw;
But inwardly he chawed his own maw
At neighbour's welth, that made him ever sad;
For death it was when any good he saw;

And wept, that cause of weeping none he had;

But, when he heard of harme, he wexed wondrous glad.

He hated all good workes and vertuous deeds,
And him no lesse, that any like did use;
And who with gratious bread the hungry feeds
His almes for want of faith he did accuse.

So every good to bad he doth abuse;
And eke the verse of famous Poets witt
He does backebite, and spightfull poison spues
From leprous mouth on all that ever writt.

Such one vile Envy was, that fifte in row did sitt.