But of all English poets as well as of all Elizabethan poets Spenser has waged the most direct and elaborate warfare against Rome. With a most lavish yet a most exact and discerning hand, he laid out his gorgeous genius in glorifying the Reformation and in pouring shame upon the papacy. The fearful fight between Popery and Protestantism throughout Europe, whereof he was a witness, was fought over again in Faery Land-the former championed by grim giants, the latter by noble knights. The first and most famous book of the Faery Queen sets forth the conflict most exactly and magnificently. There appears in Una the loftiest, loveliest and most delightful of all Spenser's creations, the pure Truth, the one True Church opposed and persecuted by Duessa, self-styled Fidessa, the two-faced, two-tongued, much vaunting Roman Church, the kingdom of this world which professes not to be a kingdom of this world, by whom the Red-Cross Knight or the genius of Christian England, betrothed to Una, is for a while seduced and enthralled, and from whom he is delivered by Arthur, the representative of British royalty, and the alleged ancestor of the House of Tudor. The description of Duessa and of her belongings displays as much spiritual and historical insight as poetical magnificence. The true and only end of all Christian Churches, that of bringing God glory by making men godly, is exquisitely signified by Una bringing her knight to the House of Holiness and encouraging him in all noble enterprises; while Duessa in seeking to debase the champion and make a thrall of him for her own will and pleasure, admirably sets forth the self-aggrandisement which is the avowed and proper end of the Church of Rome, and that moral and intellectual degradation which she inflicts upon her votaries. Spenser shows himself fully aware of the hidden but intimate connection of popery with unbelief and lawlessness, a connection more and more revealing itself every day and fully to be unfolded in the end, when he makes the Red-Cross Knight first fall in with Duessa in company with Sansfoy, the brother of Sansloy. How well are the external splendour and allurements of Rome set forth! He had a fair companion of his way, The which her lavish lovers to her gave. Faery Queen, book i. canto ii. stanza 13. Every Protestant will at once recognise the lady. Her relation to the Roman Empire is set forth. Born the sole daughter of an emperor, He that the wide West under his rule has And high hath set his throne where Tiberis doth pass.-C. ii. st. 22. Her deceiving, truth-pretending power is noticed. Great mistress of her art was that false dame, The false Duessa, cloked with Fidessa's name.-C. vii. st. 1. In the fight between Arthur representing Britain and Orgoglio, it may be Spain, there is no mistaking the companion of the latter. And after him the proud Duessa came And bloody-mouthed with late cruel feast.-C. viii. st. 6. (the massacre at Paris or the butcheries in the Netherlands). The mingled splendour and horror, the blended gold and gore of Orgoglio's castle ask no interpreting, especially this one detail. And there beside a marble stone was built On which true Christian blood was often spilt, With cruel malice and strong tyranny, Whose blessed sprites from underneath the stone To God for vengeance cried continually.-C. viii. st. 36. How many Protestants are longing to behold the stripping of Duessa, are indeed rejoicing to behold the beginning of that operation which Spenser thus describes! So as she (Una) bade, that witch they disarrayed, Ne spared they to strip her naked all. Then when they had despoiled her tire and caul That her misshapen parts did them appal, A loathly, wrinkled hag, ill-favoured, old.-C. viii. st. 46. Thus rejoicingly and elaborately does the gorgeous and ethereal genius of Spenser lend itself to the deepest convictions, the dearest aspirations and the most earnest expectations of English Protestantism.30 30 Among the minor minstrels of the Elizabethan age one Romanist holds a respectable place, Robert Southwell, a Jesuit and a victim of the penal laws who was hanged in 1595. His poems, though devoid of genius, exhibit fervour and tenderness of feeling with occasional force and felicity of expression. But in Milton there arose a mightier intellect, a greater poet and a more intense Protestant than even Spenser. Abhorrence of Rome grew every day more and more the master-passion of England and included everything that bore the least resemblance. to Rome. The Protestantism of the Elizabethan age, earnest and potent yet joyous and graceful withal, became heightened and deepened into that solemn and sublime Puritanism which possessed and ennobled England for the first sixty years of the seventeenth century. In that spirit Milton was steeped all over. His poetry, it is true, was less directly anti-papal than that of Spenser. Just as Cromwell, that highest practical embodiment of Protestantism, was kept by circumstances from any direct conflict with the Roman See, so Milton, the highest intellectual embodiment of Protestantism, carried on little direct controversy with the Roman Church; yet just as Oliver was a far deeper and more earnest Protestant than Elizabeth, just as his abhorrence of Rome unspeakably exceeded hers in spiritual depth and intensity; so the Miltonic Protestantism was a more potent passion and a more pervading principle than the Spenserian. Milton poured every passion and affection of his puissant soul into the hatred wherewith he hated Rome, and into the joy wherewith he rejoiced in the Reformation; every power of his mighty intellect was heated and heightened in the strong fire of that lofty abhorrence; his rich and ample genius was coloured and suffused with the glow of that noble joy. This spirit breathes through all his writings, from his earliest to his latest utterance, from the lispings of the boy-poet to the warnings of the mature politician, through elegy, sonnet, epic, history, ecclesiastical controversy, political controversy, and official despatch. The poet, the historian, the theologian, the political philosopher, the secretary of the commonwealth, always speaks as a Protestant. At college the boy of seventeen expressed his abhorrence of Popery in a Latin poem on the Gunpowder Treason (In Quintum Novembris). This feeling broke forth in Lycidas where after bewailing the starved sheep of the Anglican fold, neglected by slothful and heedless shepherds, he adds Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 31 These lines clearly indicate the stealthy operations of the Roman Church in England during the first sixteen years of Charles I., under the patronage of Henrietta Maria (Warton's Minor Poems of Milton). Gibbon (Autobiography) quotes them in illustration of the manner of his perversion to Rome. Η Η In his many magnificent onslaughts upon the semi-popish prelates, those traitors to the English Church and tyrants of the English nation, his intense abhorrence of the papacy, the depth and fullness of his Protestantism, everywhere appear. These writings are in truth the sublimest utterances that Protestantism has yet won or ever will win. How augustly does the tractate on Reformation in England begin! 'Among those deep and retired thoughts which with every man Christianly instructed ought to be most frequent of God and of His miraculous ways and works amongst men, and of our religion and works to be performed to Him; after the story of our Saviour Christ suffering to the lowest bent of weakness in the flesh and presently triumphing to the highest pitch of glory in the spirit I do not know of anything more worthy to take up the whole passion of pity on the one side and joy on the other than to consider first the foul and sudden corruption and then after many a tedious age the long deferred but much more wonderful and happy Reformation of the Church in these latter days.' Then after a most searching and subtle setting forth of the process whereby pure, inward, spiritual Christianity sank and stiffened into Popery, he thus breaks forth-When I recall to mind at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the Church, how the bright and blissful Reformation by divine power struck through the black and settled night of ignorance and anti-Christian tyranny; methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him who reads or hears, and the sweet odour of the returning Gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of Heaven.' The most magnificent piece of prose writing in English or any language, that majestic argument for political innovation grounded on the renewing work of the Spirit, and culminating into that astonishing prayer-hymn which so sublimely interrupts the keen logic and sharp witticisms of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrant, is nothing but a manifestation of Protestant insight and an outburst of Protestant rapture. In this age, Britons, God hath reformed His Church after many hundred years of Popish corruption. Let us all go, every true protested Briton, throughout the three kingdoms and render thanks to God, the Father of Light and Fountain of heavenly grace, and to His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. For He, being equally near to His whole creation of mankind and of free power to turn His beneficent or fatherly regard to what region or kingdom He pleases, hath yet ever had this island under the special indulgent eye of His Providence; and pitying us the first of all other nations, after He had decreed to purify and renew His Church that lay wallowing in idolatrous pollutions, sent first to us a messenger to touch softly our sores and to carry a gentle hand over our wounds. He knocked once and twice and came again, opening our drowsy eye-lids leisurely by that glimmering light which Wycliffe and his followers dispersed; and still taking off by degrees the inveterate scales from our nigh-perished sight, purged also our deaf ears and prepared them to attend His second warning trumpet in our grandsires' days.' In the Areopagitica Milton showed book-licensing to have been a papal invention and branded the evil device as more detestable for the corrupt fountain from which it flowed. In the Iconoclastes, in the two Defences of the People of England, and in the History of England the Protestant is ever grandly manifest. In many a noble state despatch he lent to his own soul not less than to the soul of Oliver a voice in behalf of persecuted Protestantism and in advocacy of a Protestant confederacy, especially in the letter to the Duke of Savoy in behalf of the oppressed Waldenses.32 Yet his Protestant heart, not satisfied with this public appeal, overflowed in the loftiest of all sonnets Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them, who kept Thy faith so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, Forget not; in Thy book record their groans Who were Thy sheep and in their ancient fold This mighty prayer has been fully answered in our day when a guardian Victor Emmanuel has replaced the oppressor Charles 32 Olivarius Protector Reipublicæ Anglicane Serenissimo Principi Immanueli, Sabaudiæ Duci; O. P. R. A. S. P. Transylvaniæ; O. P. R. A. Excelsis Dominis Fœderati Belgii Ordinibus; O. P. R. A. Civitatibus Helvetiorum Evangelicis (Milton's Works, ed. 1837, pp. 794-6). |