that enchanted region. In elegance of thinking and fertility of imagination, few of our English authors have approached him, and no one was ever able so powerfully to awaken the spirit of poetry in others. From him Cowley owns, that he derived all his inspiration: Thomson, justly esteemed one of our best descriptive poets, used to aver, that he had formed himself upon Spenser's model: how closely indeed he pursued, and how nobly he has imitated him, his 'Castle of Indolence' affords a satisfactory proof. And by Addison, in his Characters of the English Poets' addressed to Mr. Sacheverell, he is thus characterised:

Old Spenser next, warm'd with poetic rage,
In ancient tales amused a barbarous age;
An age that yet uncultivate and rude,
Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursued
Through pathless fields and unfrequented floods,
To dens of dragons and enchanted woods.
But now the mystic tale, that pleased of yore,
Can charm an understanding age no more:
The long-spun allegories fulsome grow,
While the dull moral lies too plain below.
We view well pleased at distance all the sights
Of arms, and palfreys, battles, fields, and fights,
And damsels in distress, and courteous knights.
But when we look too near, the shades decay,
And all the pleasing landscape fades away.'

}

From different accounts, it appears that he was of an amiable disposition, and an extremely generous nature. Beside the Fairy Queen,' and his Shepherd's Calendar,' he wrote several other pieces, many of which are lost. Among these, the most considerable were nine comedies, in imitation of the comedies of his favourite Ariosto, inscribed with the names of the

• Nine Muses.' The rest, which we find mentioned in his letters and those of his friends, are his Dying Pelican,' his Pageants,' Dudleyana,' The Canticles Paraphrased,' Ecclesiastes,' Seven Psalms,' 'House of our Lord,' Sacrifice of a Sinner,''Purgatory,' 'A Seven Nights' Slumber,' the Court of Cupid,' and the Hell of Lovers.' He composed, likewise, it is said, a treatise in prose, entitled, The English Poet.' The Epithalamium,' Thamesis,' and his 'Dreams,'* mentioned by himself in one of his letters, are (as Mr. Hughes thinks) still preserved, though under different names.

6

The extant poems of Spenser will never perish. Though he has unnecessarily introduced into them many obsolete terms, they contain a flow of poetry, an elegance of sentiment, a fund of imagination, and glowing enthusiasm, which will infallibly secure to him the applauses of the remotest posterity. Of his family it is recorded,† that his great grandson, Hugolin Spenser, on the restoration of Charles II., was invested by the Court of Claims with so much of the lands, as could be ascertained to have belonged to his ancestor. There is another remarkable passage, of which, says Hughes, I can give the reader much better assurance: a person came over from Ireland, in King William's time, to solicit the same affair, and brought with him letters of recommendation as a descendent of Spenser. His name procured him a favourable reception, and Congreve in particular generously recommended him to the favour of the

*It appears, from what is said of the 'Dreams' by his friend Hervey, that they were in imitation of Petrarch's Visions.

In a few particulars of his Life, prefixed to the last folio edition of his Works.

Earl of Halifax, then at the head of the treasury, by whose means he obtained his suit. This man was somewhat advanced in years, and might be the person before-mentioned, who had possibly recovered only some part of his estate at first, or had been disturbed in the possession of it. He could give no account of the works of his ancestor which are wanting, and which are therefore, in all probability, irrecoverably lost.

6

It would be an injury to Spenser's memory, to dismiss his Life without a few remarks upon that masterly performance, which has placed him among the foremost of our poets, his Fairy Queen.' Sir William Temple, in his Essay on Poetry, observes, "That the religion of the Gentiles had been woven into the contexture of all the ancient poetry with an agreeable mixture, which made the moderns affect to give that of Christianity a place also in their poems; but the true religion was not found to become fictions so well as the false one had done, and all their attempts of this kind seemed rather to debase religion, than heighten poetry. Spenser endeavoured to supply this with morality, and to make instruction, instead of story, the subject of an epic poem. His execution was excellent, and his flights of fancy very noble and high. But his design was poor; and his moral lay so bare, that it lost the effect. It is true, the pill was gilded, but so thin, that the colour and the taste were easily discovered."

Mr. Thomas Rymer asserts, that Spenser may be reckoned the first of our heroic poets. "He had," says he, "a large spirit, a sharp judgement, and a genius for heroic poetry, perhaps above any that ever wrote since Virgil; but our misfortune is, he wanted

a true idea, and lost himself by following an unfaithful guide. Though beside Homer and Virgil he had read Tasso, yet he rather suffered himself to be misled by Ariosto, with whom blindly rambling on marvels and adventures, he makes no conscience of probability all is fanciful and chimerical, without any uniformity, or without any foundation in truth; in a word, his poem is perfect Fairy-Land."

Dryden, in the splendid dedication of his translation of Juvenal, thus proceeds: "The English have only to boast of Spenser and Milton in heroic poetry, who neither of them wanted either genius or learning to have been perfect poets, and yet both of them are liable to many censures: for there is no uniformity in the design of Spencer; he aims at the accomplishment of no one action; he raises up a hero for every one of his adventures, and endows each of them with some particular moral virtue, which renders them all equal, without subordination or preference. Every one is valiant in his own legend: only we must do him the justice to observe, that magnanimity, which is the character of Prince Arthur, shines throughout the whole poem, and succours the rest when they are in distress. The original of every knight was then living in the court of Queen Elizabeth, and he attributed to each of them that virtue, which he thought most conspicuous in them; an ingenious piece of flattery, though it turned not much to his account. Had he lived to have finished his poem in the remaining legends, it had certainly been more of a piece; but it could not have been perfect, because the model was not true. But Prince Arthur, or his chief patron Sir Philip Sidney, dying before him, deprived the poet both of means and spirit to accomplish his design.

For the rest, his obsolete language, and ill choice of his stanzas,* are faults but of the second magnitude: for notwithstanding the first, he is still intelligible, at least after a little practice; and, for the last, he is more to be admired, that labouring under such disadvantages, his verses are so numerous, so various, and so harmonious, that only Virgil (whom he has professedly imitated) has surpassed him among the Romans, and only Waller among the English."

Mr. Hughes states, that the chief merit of this poem consists in that surprising vein of fabulous invention which runs through it, and enriches it every where with imaginary descriptions, more than we meet with in any modern poem. The author seems to be possessed of a kind of poetical magic; and the figures, which he calls up to our view, rise up so thick upon us, that we are at once pleased and distracted with their inexhaustible variety; so that his faults may, in a manner, be imputed to his excellences. His abundance betrays him into excess; and his judgement is overborne by the torrent of his imagination.

Upon the whole, Mr. Warton seems to have given the most candid criticism on this celebrated poem. "If the 'Fairy Queen' be destitute of that arrangement and œconomy 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

* From the peculiarity of his language and stanza, almost all the imitations of him resemble the original. So likewise, in painting, it is easier to copy the stile of a mannerist, than the simplicity of Raffaelle or Poussin.