gination. His ideas, indeed, seem more distinct than his perceptions. He is the painter of abstractions, and describes them with dazzling minuteness. In the Mask of Cupid he makes the God of Love" clap on high his coloured winges twain:" and it is said of Gluttony, in the Procession of the Passions, "In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad." At times he becomes picturesque from his intense love of beauty; as where he compares Prince Arthur's crest to the appearance of the almond tree: "Upon the top of all his lofty crest, A bunch of hairs discolour'd diversely With sprinkled pearl and gold full richly drest Her tender locks do tremble every one The love of beauty, however, and not of truth, is the moving principle of his mind; and he is guided in his fantastic delineations by no rule but the impulse of an inexhaustible imagination. He luxuriates equally in scenes of Eastern magnificence; or the still solitude of a hermit's cellin the extremes of sensuality or refinement. In reading the Faery Queen, you see a little withered old man by a wood-side opening a wicket, a giant, and a dwarf lagging far behind, a damsel in a boat upon an enchanted lake, woodnymphs, and satyrs; and all of a sudden you are transported into a lofty palace, with tapers burning, amidst knights and ladies, with dance and revelry, and song, "and mask, and antique pageantry." What can be more solitary, more shut up in itself, than his description of the house of Sleep, to which Archimago sends for a dream: "And more to lull him in his slumber soft A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down, And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft, Mix'd with a murmuring wind, much like the sound No other noise, nor people's troublous cries Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lies It is as if "the honey-heavy dew of slumber" had settled on his pen in writing these lines. How different in the subject (and yet how like in beauty) is the following description of the Bower of Bliss: "Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound Such as at once might not on living ground, Was there consorted in one harmonee : Birds, voices, instruments, windes, waters, all agree. The joyous birdes shrouded in chearefull shade To th' instruments divine respondence meet. Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call; The remainder of the passage has all that voluptuous pathos, and languid brilliancy of fancy, in which this writer excelled: "The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay; In springing flower the image of thy day! Doth first peep forth with bashful modesty, So passeth in the passing of a day Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower; That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower Gather therefore the rose whilst yet is prime, Whilst loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.* He ceased; and then gan all the quire of birds As in approvance of his pleasing wordes. The constant pair heard all that he did say, Upon a bed of roses she was laid As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin; *Taken from Tasso. †This word is an instance of those unwarrantable freedoms which Spenser sometimes took with language. And was arrayed or rather disarrayed, But rather shewed more white, if more might be : Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see Her snowy breast was bare to greedy spoil Of hungry eyes, which n' ote therewith be fill'd. The finest things in Spenser are, the character of Una, in the first book; the House of Pride; the Cave of Mammon, and the Cave of Despair; the account of Memory, of whom it is said, among other things, "The wars he well remember'd of King Nine, the description of Belphœbe; the story of Florimel and the Witch's son; the Gardens of Adonis, and the Bower of Bliss; the Mask of Cupid; and |