Amenities of Literature Part 42

Whoever has pa.s.sed into the house of Pride,

Whose walls were high, but nothing strong nor thick,

and marked her on her progress, "drawn by six unequal beasts," with her vile counsellors in their wicked gradation; or has entered "the ancient house of Holiness;" or counted in the den of Riches,

The huge great iron chests, and coffers strong,

amid the dead men's bones scattered around those chests and coffers, has realized the marvellous architecture of Fancy; or, whoever roving with the muse of Spenser through all her localities, meets the sylvan men whom the chaste Una governed, or the satyrs whom the frail h.e.l.lenore would not quit; or when that muse unveils her voluptuous charms, listens to her song in the enchanted gardens of Armida; or in the approach to Acrasia in the bower of Bliss, starts at the nymphs wantonly wrestling in the gla.s.sy waters, laughing and blus.h.i.+ng; or more innocently gazes on the gorgeous Masque of Cupid, or the dance of the poet and mistress among the Graces,--finds all endowed with poetic existences, unchangeable in their nature amid the changes of taste so long as imagination shall seek for its delights, and genius for the language of its emotions.

"The Faery Queen" was designed by its author to consist of twelve books; six of which we only possess, published at two several times, and a fragment of another. The subject of each book is a moral attribute; Holiness, Temperance, Chast.i.ty, Friends.h.i.+p, Justice, and Courtesy. Each attribute is personified by a knight-errant, with all the pa.s.sions of bodily mortality.

The plan of the poem is so inartificial, that the twelve books, had it been completed, could only have formed twelve separate poems; our poet followed the free and fertile way of Ariosto. The introduction of Prince Arthur may have been designed to give a sort of unity to the incoherent twelve knights, who would have been finally led under his auspices to the court of the Faery Queen; but as the prince, however respectable in romance, comes and vanishes, does nothing, and says little, we incline to the humour of the editor, Hughes, that "the prince is here seen only in his minority, performing his exercises in Fairy-land as a _private gentleman_." The versatile plan was adapted to the genius of the poet; the ductility of his invention, the luxuriance of his imagination, and the never-ceasing flow of his mellifluous stanza, would have suffered constraint and mutilation, bound by prescribed forms, and modelled by the cla.s.sical epic. At the period that the poet Hughes published his edition[6] of Spenser, our editors and critics were little conversant with the Elizabethan literature, nor had the taste of the learned emanc.i.p.ated itself from the established form of the epic of antiquity.

But Hughes was alive to the vital poetry before him, though evidently perplexed to fix on a criterion, or to specify the cla.s.s of poetry, for "The Faery Queen." His excellent judgment struck into a new and right path. He describes it as "a poem of a particular kind;" and in his "Remarks on The Faery Queen," he had the merit of distinguis.h.i.+ng poetry, like architecture, into its Gothic origin, as well as its cla.s.sical.

This was a discovery at that period; and subsequent critics, such as Bishop Hurd, and more recently Schlegel, have run away with the honour, by their more ample development of the romantic school. Hughes was hardly aware of the importance of this division; for his discovery amounts to little more than one of those first thoughts, which have not ripened into a principle.

"The Faery Queen" was the last great work modelled on Chivalry.

Awakening from the gloom of the theological contests of Edward and Mary, the court of the Maiden Queen, from state-policy and her own disposition, had been transformed into a court of romance. Glory was the cheap but inappreciable meed bestowed by the economical sovereign; and love was the language to which the female from the throne could bend to listen to her subject.

Elizabeth, stately and tender, was herself "the Faery Queen," without even the poet's flattery, when seated under the dais, amid long galleries hung with cloth of gold or silver, and all the moving tilt-yard glittering in its s.h.i.+ne; "the noise of music," and the sound of s.h.i.+elds; the solemn procession, and gay crowd of the many-coloured liveries; the ta.s.selled caparisons of the horses, and the nodding plumes of the knights. There our poet fed his eyes on the pageant, enchanting by its scenical allegory--as when four n.o.ble challengers approached--the children of DESIRE--attempting to win the Fortress of BEAUTY,--that is, Whitehall and her Majesty![7] They stand in a car, "shadowed with white and carnation silk, being the colours of Desire." But the challengers must yield to Beauty, whose princely voice is their ample guerdon; and on the following day were the tourney and the barriers "courageously tried." Thus were the days of chivalry, in its forms or its "fopperies,"

restored by the Faery Queen; and with such festivals SPENSER nursed his gorgeous fancy, and the Queen was the true inspirer of his romantic Epic.

Warton and Hurd observe that Spenser copied real _manners of his time_ as much as Homer. We must here distinguish an essential difference, if Homer really represented the manners of the heroic age. It is true, that much of the _manners_ and forms of chivalry prevailed among the courtiers of Elizabeth; but such _adventures_ of chivalry as Spenser has described in his singular poem were transplanted from the ancient romances. The _incidents_ are therefore not of the poet's age; and we can only read his narrative as the last of the romances.

The old romance of "La Morte d'Arthur" was still the fas.h.i.+onable reading of the court; nor had the gorgeous enchantments of Stephen Hawes yet vanished, for a new edition had issued in 1555. Spenser had read Hawes; and however entranced by the pageantry of the fiction, from the uncouth stanza of "The Pastime of Pleasure" he may have been led to the construction of the Spenserian; for it is one of the apt.i.tudes of true genius to carry to perfection what it finds imperfect.

"The Faery Queen" was produced at a crisis of transition when the old romantic way was departing, notwithstanding the temporary influence of a courtly revival, and the new had not yet arrived. The whole machinery of Gothic invention could hardly be worked; its marvels had ceased to be wondrous, and began to be ridiculed. The fantastic extravagance of the ordinary writers of fiction--that crowd of poet-apes which always rise after a great work has appeared--has been censured by the two great literary satirists of that day, MARSTON and HALL; Hall, indeed, suddenly checks his censorial temerity in blaming themes made sacred by the Faery Muse.

Let no rebel satire dare traduce Th' eternal legends of thy fairy Muse, Renowned SPENSER, whom no earthly wight Dares once to emulate----

The compliment to Spenser does not diminish the satire levelled at the cla.s.s.

Contemporary satirists furnish a precise date when ancient things are on the turn and getting out of fas.h.i.+on; they are the first who, like hawks, descend on their quarry.

If Spenser attempted to infuse a rejuvenescence into the dry veins of the old age of romance, by the vitality of _Allegory_, he has fallen into a great error; for his twelve knight-errants do not interest our sympathies the more for being twelve wandering virtues. Allegorical poetry not long after his day also declined; and when it was resumed by PHINEAS FLETCHER, in what he has fantastically named and described as "The Purple Island," or "the little ISLE OF MAN," the poetry can hardly preserve itself amid the ludicrous a.n.a.logies which, with such ingenious perversity of taste, are struck out between anatomy and poesy, too many not very agreeable to recollect.

CHIVALRY and ALLEGORY, two columns of our poet's renown, thus soon gave way; and SPENSER has often suffered the heaviest penalty to which a great poet was ever condemned--neglect!

But these infelicitous forms, which disguised the most tender and imaginative genius, could not deprive it of its "better parts." Spenser still remained the poet among poets themselves; though for the world at large, indeed, Spenser seemed to be recognised only as a poet in the chronology of poetry. A critic of great delicacy, and a votary of "the Gothic school," despaired for the destiny of our poet. "The Faery Queen," exclaimed HURD, in the agony of his taste, "one of the n.o.blest productions of modern poetry, is fallen into so general a neglect, that all the zeal of the commentators is esteemed officious and impertinent, and will never restore it to those honours which it has, once for all, irrecoverably lost."

This sharp lament broke out in 1760, when, only two years before, the two rival editions of CHURCH and UPTON had simultaneously appeared; and the latter could at least boast both of the novelty and the curiosity of its commentary. But literary commentators held forth few attractions to the incurious readers of that day. More than thirty years have now elapsed since the last cla.s.sical edition of Spenser's works. But at no period was Spenser ever forgotten by poetical recluses; and professed imitations of our poet in modern times, though they may not always be Spenserian, have never ceased, from Shenstone to Mickle, and from Beattie to Byron.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Lee is the stream.

[2] I offer some instances of alliteration; but the beauty of such lines can only be rightly judged by the context.--

"In woods, in waves, in wars, she wonts to dwell And will be found with peril and with pain."

"Such as a lamp whose life does fade away, Or as the moon cloathed with cloudy night."

"A world of waters, Horrible, hideous, roaring with hoa.r.s.e cry."

"They cherelie chaunt, and rymes at random flung, The fruitful sp.a.w.n of their rank fantasies; They feed the ears of fools with flattery."

"All the day before the sunny rays, He used to slug or sleep, in slothful shade."

"Unpitied, unplagued, of foe or friend."

"And with sharp shrilling shriek do bootless cry."

"Did stand astonish'd at his curious skill, With hungry ears to hear his harmony."

[3] Spenser has suffered a criticism from Mr. Campbell, who, a great poet himself, has otherwise done ample justice to his ancient master.

"It must certainly be owned that in description he exhibits nothing of the _brief strokes_ and _robust power_ which characterize the _very greatest poets_." Certain it is Spenser is rarely "brief and robust;" but contrary natures cannot operate in the same genius. If Spenser rarely shows the strength and brevity of "the very greatest poets," so may it be said that "the very greatest poets" rarely rival the charm of his diffusion; or, as Mr. Campbell himself attests, in "verse more magnificently descriptive." But the voice of Poetry is more potent than its criticism, and truly says Mr. Campbell--"We shall nowhere find more airy and expansive images of visionary things, a sweeter tone of sentiment, or a finer flush in the colour of language, than in this RUBENS OF ENGLISH POETRY."

Twining was a scholar, deeply versed in cla.s.sical lore, which he has shown to great advantage in his "Version of and Commentary on Aristotle's Treatise of Poetry." In his Dissertations "On Poetical and Musical Imitation" prefixed to this work, our critic is quite at home with Pope and Goldsmith, but he seems wholly shut out from Spenser! In a note to his first Dissertation he tells us "the following stanza of SPENSER has been much admired:"--

The joyous birds shrouded in cheareful shade, Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet; Th' angelical soft trembling voices made To th' instruments divine respondence meet; The silver-sounding instruments did meet With the base murmurs of the waters-fall; The waters-fall with difference discreet, Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call; The gentle-warbling wind low answered to all.*

Our critic observes that Dr. Warton says of these lines, that "they are of themselves a complete concert of the most delicious music."

Indeed, this very stanza in Spenser has been celebrated long before Joseph Warton wrote, and often since; now listen to our learned _Twining:_--

"It is unwillingly that I differ from a person of so much taste. I cannot consider as music, much less as 'delicious music,' a mixture of incompatible sounds--of sounds musical with sounds unmusical. The singing of birds cannot possibly be 'attempered' to the notes of a human voice. The mixture is, and must be, disagreeable. To a person listening to a concert of voices and instruments, the interruption of singing-birds, wind, and water-falls, would be little better than the torment of Hogarth's enraged musician. Further, the description itself is, like too many of Spenser's, coldly elaborate, and indiscriminately minute. Of the expressions, some are feeble and without effect, as 'joyous birds'--some evidently improper, as 'trembling voices' and 'cheerful shades;' for there cannot be a greater fault in a voice than to be tremulous, and cheerful is surely an unhappy epithet applied to shade--some cold and laboured, and such as betray too plainly the necessities of rhyme; such is--

"'The waters-fall with difference discreet.'"

Such is the anti-poetical and technical criticism! Imagine a music-master, who had never read a line of poetry, attempting to perform the "delicious music" of our poet--or a singing-master, who had never heard a "joyous bird," tuning up some fair pupil's "trembling voice," and we might have expected this criticism from such "enraged musicians!" Would our critic insist on having a philharmonic concert, or a simple sonata? He who will not suffer birds to be "joyous," nor "the shade cheerful," which their notes make so.

"Th' angelical soft trembling voices made To th' instruments divine respondence meet,"

the "softness trembling" with the verse; had our critic forgotten Strada's famed contest of the Nightingale with the Lyre of the poet, when, her "trembling voice" overcome in the rivalry, she fell on the strings to die? And what shall we think of the cla.s.sical critic who has p.r.o.nounced that "the descriptions of Spenser are coldly elaborate"--the most vivid and splendid of our poetry?

But the most curious part remains to be told. This fine stanza of Spenser is one of his free borrowings, being a translation of a stanza in Ta.s.so,** excepting the introduction of "the silver-sounding instruments." The aeolian harp played on by the musical winds was a happiness reserved for Thomson. The felicitous copy of Spenser attracted Fairfax, who, when he came to the pa.s.sage in Ta.s.so, kept his eye on Spenser, and has carefully retained "the joyous birds" for the "vezzosi augelli" of the original.

It is certain that, without poetic sensibility, the most learned critic will ever find that the utmost force of his logic in these matters will not lead to reason, but to unreason. Imagination only can decide on imagination.

* "The Faery Queen," book II. canto xii. st. 71.

** "Gerusalemme Liberata," canto xvi. st. 12.

[4] "The Faery Queen," book III. canto x.

[5] "The Faery Queen," B. III. canto iv, st. 65, and B. I. canto v.

st. 20.

[6] This edition of 1715, from its modernized orthography, and from greater freedoms taken with the text, is valueless.