twelve days; upon which twelve several days the occasions of the twelve several adventures happened; which, being undertaken by twelve several knights, are in these twelve books handled and discoursed."* Thus, of the three first books, the first contains the adventures of the Red Cross Knight, or Holiness; the second, those of Sir Guyon, the representative of Temperance; the third, of Britomartis, a lady-knight-a sort of British Clorinda or Bradamante—in whom is pictured stern and saintly Chastity. These three books all critics agree in considering the most exquisite of the whole. They have an unsurpassable delicacy and grace-an Arcadian elegance and simplicity, almost unmatched in the language-indeed hardly approached by any author but Shakspeare. They will scarce bear the least abridgment, upon any principle of selection. The first book, in particular, we have felt constrained to give nearly unbroken. It affords æsthetic study for a life-time, if we contemplate it à la Schlegel. Raphael, and Claude, and a host of their glorious brethren, might have exhausted their genius worthily in drawing from it. Sermons innumerable might be preached from its heavenly texts; rules of life to satisfy the most rigid moralist enrich its every page. If it be treason for goodness to show itself unlovely, it is, on the other hand, transcendently worthy to show that true loveliness consists in goodness. The abstract idea of Truth will be ever more attractive to one who has learned to contemplate it under the divine figure of Una; Holi

*The Faëry Queen," says Prof. Wilson, "is to be considered as a gothic, not a classical poem. As a gothic poem, it derives its method, as well as the other characters of its composition, from the established modes and ideas of chivalry. Now, in the days of knight-errantry, at great annual feasts, throngs of knights and barons bold assembled, and thence sallied forth to succor the distressed-the noblest of all characters being that of deliverers. Such feasts were held for twelve days."

† See "A Gallery of Pictures from Spenser," in Hunt's " Imagination and Fancy."

ness seems within hope when we see it not incompatible with some touch of kindred human weakness in the Red Cross Knight.

"Will was his guide, and grief led him astray—”

and again, he was "too simple and too true," like other children of light, and so not always proof against the wiles of the wicked. And

"Oftentimes he quak'd, and fainted oftentimes,"

even as we, "frail, feeble, fleshly wights," are sure to do, let our hope be ever so strongly placed. The sweetest, most devoted, most child-like spirit of love and gratitude to Heaven was never more unostentatiously inculcated, and unconsciously exhibited, than in the general tone as well as many distinct passages of this delicious poem. Take a specimen or two, even though we should give them again in their place in our selections:

"And is there care in Heav'n? And is there love

In heavenly spirits to these creatures base,
That may compassion of their evils move?
There is :-else much more wretched were the case
Of man than beasts: but oh! th' exceeding grace
Of Highest God that loves his creatures so,
And all his works with mercy doth embrace
That blessed angels he sends to and fro,

To serve to wicked man-to serve his wicked foe !

"How oft do they their silver bowers leave

To come to succor us that succor want!

How oft do they with golden pinions cleave
The flitting skies, like flying pursuivant

Against foul fiends to aid us militant!
They for us fight, they watch and duly ward

And their bright squadrons round about us plant;

And all for love and nothing for reward!

Oh why should heavenly God to man have such regard !"

And again:

"Ay me! how many perils do enfold

The righteous man, to make him daily fall,
Wer't not that heavenly grace doth him uphold
And steadfast Truth acquit him out of all!
Her love is firm, her care continual,

So oft as he, through his own foolish pride

Or weakness, is to sinful bands made thrall."

This sweetness is not, however, exclusive of strength, when occasion offers for stirring the passions, and calling up the keenest sympathies. The genius of picture, rather than of passion, has been said to pervade the Faëry Queen; but, to our thinking, this sweeping opinion is unjust to Spenser. He was a man deeply concerned in the affairs of life; a man of friendship, of love, of sorrow, of disappointment; not a pale, stoical student, a dealer in abstractions, a builder up of castles at once imposing and impalpable. He was a true man; the blood in his rich veins was warm with the sympathies of humanity; and to us his poetry, imaginative as it is, is full-fraught with all this wealth of feeling and experience. His pictures have ever the charm of human interest. Even the perfect Una is as true a woman as if she had owned all the follies of her sex. When she has foundor thinks she has found-her knight again, is she only picturesque?

"His lovely words her seemed due recompense

Of all her pass'd pains; one loving hour

For many years of sorrow can dispense;

A drachm of sweet is worth a pound of sour!

She has forgot how many a woful stour
For him she late endured; she speaks no more

Of past; true is that true love hath no power

To looken back; his eyes be fixed before.

Before her stands her knight, for whom she toiled so sore."

༢༠༠

ა

Gorgeous pictures there are, in such lavish profusion, such

splendor of coloring, such infinite minuteness of detail, that we seem to see them through an atmosphere preternaturally transparent, or to be endowed with eyes magically anointed, to enable us to see so much more than words ever brought to our view before. But in this enchanted panorama, beneath these shades which are not cast by the common garish sun, we discern, through all disguises of allegory, chivalry, magic, and fantastic romance, real men and women, with bosoms warmed by the same hopes, and fears, and wishes that agitate our own; their cheeks suffused with blushes, and their hearts beating visibly under the influence of Love; their hands grasping the sword at the approach of injury or insult. Even the personages most purely allegorical. seem to us just like their other selves now walking among us. Gluttony, with his "eyes swollen with fatness," and his neck (long, for the better tasting),

"With which he swallow'd up excessive feast

For want whereof poor people oft did pine-"

́ is as plainly a man, as many a seeker of turtle feasts, “in shape and life more like a monster than a man," whom we have all seen; and Avarice, that "scarce good morsel all his life did taste," though "child nor living kinsman had he none" to inherit his hoards, is no more an abstraction than some we could name, who live and look just like him. When Pride comes forth "with princely pace," and

"The heaps of people, thronging in the hall,

Do ride each other, upon her to gaze,"

we look upon something more than a picture. We can detect, in the rolling of her haughty eye, the look which pretends indifference, but which is secretly watching on all sides to ascertain that no "pepper-corn of praise" be wanting; and we perceive that she takes her airing more for the sake of exhibiting her state, than to be

"With pleasance of the breathing fields yfed—”

exactly as her flesh-and-blood kindred do at this very day.

As for strength, it is acknowledged that nothing in Dante exceeds the personification of Despair, of Fear, of Care, and of Mammon, in the Faery Queen. In all these unsurpassed delineations there is an intensity of implied invective, without a tinge of that bitter temper from which our better nature revolts. The greatest detestation for what is false and wrong is excited, without even a suspicion that a personal feeling has prompted the poet's indignation. Yet there is not the coldness of mere abstraction. We are interested in these creations because they seem to partake of our own humanity. They show us the ghastly and terrific image of what conscience teaches us we ourselves should be if we gave full scope to the evil part of our nature, and what the results upon others of such indulgence. We see our own faults, commonly, as we see our faces in a convex mirror-softened by diminution into a delicate harmony, and looking almost beautiful in miniature. Spenser shows us the same things, as a concave glass gives back every speck and blemish and unhappy expression, magnified, yet not untrue,-exaggerated, but by that means more easily studied. Perhaps the indulgence of baleful passions looks ever thus to the angels and pure intelligences who mourn over the miseries we invoke by our own wilful folly.

The humanity, so to speak-of the Faëry Queen, is proved by its suggestiveness. We are often betrayed into reverie-carried off into far experience or still more distant anticipation-by our sympathy with the actors in the scene. We see the picture, but we see much more. The poet's accessories are perfect; but we supply, from our own spiritual world, and in proportion to our power of appreciation, a thousand subtle links which serve to bring us into communication with the imaginary world before us, airy spirits ascending and descending upon this electric ladder,