The genius of Sir Thomas Wyat was refined and elevated like that of his noble friend and contemporary; but his poetry is more sententious and sombrous, and in his lyrical effusions he studied terseness rather than suavity. Besides these two interesting men, Sir Francis Bryan, the friend of Wyat, George Viscount Rochford, the brother of Anna Boleyne, and Thomas Lord Vaux, were poetical courtiers of Henry VIII. To the second of these Ritson assigns, though but by conjecture, one of the most beautiful and plaintive strains of our elder poetry, "O Death, rock me on sleep." In Totell's Collection, the earliest poetical miscellany in our language, two pieces have been i ascribed to the same nobleman, the one entitled "The Assault of Cupid," the other beginning, "I loath that I did love," which have | been frequently reprinted in modern times.

A poem of uncommon merit in the same collection, which is entitled "The restless state of a Lover," and which commences with these lines,

The Sun, when he hath spread his rays,
And shew'd his face ten thousand ways,"

has been ascribed by Dr. Nott to Lord Surrey'

but not on decisive evidence.

In the reign of Edward VI. the effects of the Reformation became visible in our poetry, by blending religious with poetical enthusiasm, or rather by substituting the one for the other. T The national muse became puritanical, and was not improved by the change. Then flourished Sternhold and Hopkins, who, with the best intentions and the worst taste, degraded the spirit of Hebrew psalmody by flat and homely phraseology; and mistaking vulgarity for simplicity, turned into bathos what they found sublime. Such was the love of versifying holy writ at that period, that the Acts of the Apostles were rhymed, and set to music by Christopher Tye *.

sne; we owe to him the introduction of the Sonnet into our language, and the first taste for the Italian poets.]

To the reign of Edward VI. and Mary may be referred two or three contributors to the "Paradise of Dainty Devices" [1576], who, though their lives extended into the Ireign of Elizabeth, may exemplify the state of poetical language before her accession. Among these may be placed Edwards, author of the pleasing little piece, "Amantium irr amoris integratio est," and Hunnis, author of the following song. [See p. 34, and Hallam, vol. ii. p. 303.] "When first mine eyes did view and mark

Thy beauty fair for to behold,

And when mine ears 'gan first to hark

The pleasant words that thou me told,

Lord Sackville's name is the next of any importance in our poetry that occurs after Lord Surrey's. The opinion of Sir Egerton Brydges, with respect to the date of the first appearance of Lord Sackville's "Induction to the Mirror for Magistrates," would place that production, in strictness of chronology, at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. As an edition of the "Mirror," however, appeared in 1559, supposing Lord Sackville not to have assisted in that edition, the first shape of the work must have been cast and composed in the reign of Mary. From the date of Lord Sackville's birth+, it is also apparent, that although he flourished under Elizabeth, and lived even to direct the councils of James, his prime of life must have been spent, and his poetical character formed, in the most disastrous period of the sixteenth century, a period when we may suppose the cloud that was passing over the public mind to have cast a gloom on the complexion of its literary taste. During five years of his life, from twenty-five to thirty, the time when sensibility and reflection meet most strongly, Lord Sackville witnessed the horrors of Queen Mary's reign; and I conceive that it is not fanciful to trace in his poetry the tone of an unhappy age. His plan for "The Mirror of Magistrates" is a mass of darkness and despondency. He proposed to make the figure of Sorrow introduce us in Hell to every unfortunate great character of English history. The poet, like Dante, takes us to the gates of Hell; but he does not, like the Italian poet, bring us back again. It is true that those doleful legends were long continued, during a brighter period; but this was only done by an inferior order of poets, and was owing to their admira

I would as then I had been free,
From ears to hear, and eyes to see.

And when in mind I did consent
To follow thus my fancy's will,
And when my heart did first relent
To taste such bait myself to spill,
I would my heart had been as thine
Or else thy heart as soft as mine.

O flatterer false! thou traitor born,
What mischief more might thou devise,
Than thy dear friend to have in scorn,
And him to wound in sundry wise;
Which still a friend pretends to be,
And art not so by proof I see?
Fie, fie upon such treachery."

[1536, if not a little earlier.]

rected by Mr. Malone, who pronounces it to be exactly that of his contemporaries. His authority is weighty; still, however, without reviving the exploded error respecting Jonson's censure, one might imagine the difference of Spenser's style from that of Shakspeare's, whom he so shortly preceded, to indicate that his gothic subject and story made him lean towards words of the elder time. At all events, much of his expression is now become antiquated; though it is beautiful in its antiquity, and like the moss and ivy on some majestic building, covers the fabric of his language with romantic and venerable associations.

words were his choice not his necessity. Has Drayton, or Daniel, or Peele, Marlowe, or Shakspeare the obscure words found constantly recurring in Spenser? "Let others," says Daniel (the well-languaged Daniel as Coleridge calls | him,

"Let others sing of knights and paladines,

In aged accents and untimely words,

I sing of Delia in the language of those who are about her and of her day." Davenant is express on the point, and speaks of Spenser's new grafts of old withered words and exploded expressions. Surely the writers of his own age are better authorities than Malone, who read verbally not spiritually, and, emptying a commonplace-book of obso lete words, called upon us to see in separate examples what

collectively did not then exist. It is easy to find many of Spenser's Chaucerisms in his contemporaries, but they do not crowd and characterize their writings; they tincture, but they do not colour; they are there, but not for ever

there.

Bo'ton, who wrote in 1622 of language and style, speaks to this point in his Hypercritica. He is recommending authors for imitation and study-" Those authors among us, whose English hath in my conceit most propriety, and is nearest to the phrase of court, and to the speech used among the noble, and among the better sort in London; the two sovereign seats, and as it were Parliament tribumals, to try the question in." "In verse there are," he says, * to furnish an English Historian with copy and tongue, Ed Spenser's Hymns. I cannot advise the allowance of other of his Poems, as for practick English, no more than I can ¿y Jeff Chaucer, Lydgate, Peirce Ploughman, or Laureat Skriton. It was laid as a fault to the charge of Sallust, that he used some old outworn words, stolen out of Cato his Books de Originibus. And for an Historian in our tongue to AFFECT the like out of those our Poets would be crunted a foul oversight. That therefore must not be."

Gray has a letter to prove that the language of the age is never the language of poetry. Was Spenser behind or Shakspeare in advance? Stage language must necessarily be the language of the time; and Shakspeare gives us wards pure and neat, yet plain and customary-the style that Ben Jonson loved, the eldest of the present and the newest of the past-while Spenser fell back on Chaucer As the

Well of English undefilde,

as he was pleased to express it. (Sec WARTON'S Essay on <, enarr, vol. i., and HALLAM, Lit Hist. vol. ii. p. 328.) "The Language of Spenser," says Hallam, "like that of Shakspeare, is an instrument manufactured for the sake of the work it was to perform."]

His command of imagery is wide, easy, and luxuriant. He threw the soul of harmony into our verse, and made it more warmly, tenderly, and magnificently descriptive than it ever was before, or, with a few exceptions, than it has ever been since. It must certainly be owned that in description he exhibits nothing of the brief strokes and robust power which characterise the very greatest poets; but we shall nowhere find more airy and expansive images of visionary things, a sweeter tone of sentiment, or a finer flush in the colours of language, than in this Rubens of English poetry. His fancy teems exuberantly in minuteness of circumstance, like a fertile soil sending bloom and verdure through the utmost extremities of the foliage which it nourishes. On a comprehensive view of the whole work, we certainly miss the charm of strength, symmetry, and rapid or interesting progress; for, though the plan which the poet designed is not completed, it is easy to see that no additional cantos could have rendered it less perplexed*. But still there is a richness in his materials, even where their coherence is loose, and their disposition confused. The clouds of his allegory may seem to spread into shapeless forms, but they are still the clouds of a glowing atmosphere. Though his story grows desultory, the sweetness and grace of his manner still abide by him. He is like a speaker whose tones continue to be pleasing, though he may speak too long; or like a painter who makes us forget the defect of his design, by the magic of his colouring. We always rise from perusing him with melody in the mind's ear, and with pictures of romantic beauty impressed on the imagination. For these attractions "The Fairy Queen" will ever continue to be resorted to by the poetical student. It is not, however, very popularly read, and seldom perhaps from beginning to end, even by those who can fully appreciate its beauties. This cannot be

[* Mr. Campbell has given a character of Spenser, not so enthusiastic as that to which I have alluded, but so discriminating, and in general sound, that I shall take the liberty of extracting it from his Specimens of the British Poets.-HALLAM, Lit. Hist. vol. ii. p. 334.]

[ Spenser's allegorical story resembles, methinks, a continuance of extraordinary dreams.-SIR W. DAVENANT. After my reading a canto of Spenser two or three days ago to an old lady between 70 and 80, she said that I had been showing her a collection of pictures. She said very right.-POPE to Spence.]

ascribed merely to its presenting a few words which are now obsolete; nor can it be owing, as has been sometimes alleged, to the tedium inseparable from protracted allegory. Allegorical fable may be made entertaining. With every disadvantage of dress and language, the humble John Bunyan has made this species of writing very amusing.

The reader may possibly smile at the names of Spenser and Bunyan being brought forward for a moment in comparison; but it is chiefly because the humbler allegorist is so poor in language, that his power of interesting the curiosity is entitled to admiration. We are told by critics that the passions may be allegorised, but that Holiness, Justice, and other such thin abstractions of the mind, are too unsubstantial machinery for a poet;-yet we all know how well the author of the Pilgrim's Progress (and he was a poet though he wrote in prose) has managed such abstractions as Mercy and Fortitude. In his artless hands, those attributes cease to be abstractions, and become our most intimate friends. Had Spenser, with all the wealth and graces of his fancy, given his story a more implicit and animated form, I cannot believe that there was anything in the nature of his machinery to set bounds to his power of enchantment. Yet, delicious as his poetry is, his story, considered as a romance, is obscure, intricate, and monotonous. He translated entire cantos from Tasso, but adopted the wild and irregular manner of Ariosto. The difference is, that Spenser appears, like a civilised being, slow and sometimes half forlorn, in exploring an uninhabited country, while Ariosto traverses the regions of romance like a hardy native of its pathless wilds. Hurd and others, who forbid us to judge of "The Fairy Queen" by the test of classical unity, and who compare it to a gothic church, or a gothic garden, tell us what is little to the purpose. They cannot persuade us that the story is not too intricate and too diffuse. The thread of the narrative is so entangled, that the poet saw the necessity for explaining the design of his poem in prose, in a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh; and the perspicuity of a poetical design which requires such an explanation may, with no great severity, be pronounced a contradiction in terms. It is degrading to poetry, we shall perhaps be

told, to attach importance to the mere story which it relates. Certainly the poet is not a great one whose only charm is the management of his fable; but where there is a fable, it should be perspicuous.

There is one peculiarity in "The Fairy Queen" which, though not a deeply pervading defect, I cannot help considering as an incidental blemish; namely, that the allegory is doubled and crossed with complimentary allusions to living or recent personages, and that the agents are partly historical and partly allegorical. In some instances the characters have a threefold allusion. Gloriana is at once an emblem of true glory, an empress of fairyland, and her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. Envy is a personified passion, and also a witch, and, with no very charitable insinuation, a type of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots. The knight in dangerous distress is Henry IV. of France; and the knight of magnificence, Prince Arthur, the son of Uther Pendragon, an ancient British hero, is the bulwark of the Protestant cause in the Netherlands. Such distraction of allegory cannot well be said to make a fair experiment of its power. The poet may cover his moral meaning under a single and transparent veil of fiction; but he has no right to muffle it up in foldings which hide the form and symmetry of truth.

Upon the whole, if I may presume to measure the imperfections of so great and venerable a genius, I think we may say that, if his popularity be less than universal and complete, it is not so much owing to his obsolete language, nor to degeneracy of modern taste, nor to his choice of allegory as a subject, as to the want of that consolidating and crowning strength, which alone can establish works of fiction in the favour of all readers and of all ages. This want of strength, it is but justice to say, is either solely or chiefly apparent when we examine the entire structure of his poem, or so large a portion of it as to feel that it does not impel or sustain our curiosity in proportion to its length. To the beauty of insulated passages who can be blind? The sublime description of "Him who with the Night durst ride,” "The House of Riches," "The Canto of Jealousy," "The Masque of Cupid," and other parts, too many to enumerate, are so splendid, that after reading them, we feel it for the