Who here appeal unto your grace;
You know if I have been untrue,

It was in too much praising you.

And though this judge doth make such haste,
To shed with shame my guiltless blood,

Yet let your pity first be placed

To save the man that meant you good;
So shall you shew yourself a queen,
And I may be your servant seen.'

Quoth Beauty: 'Well; because I guess
What thou dost mean henceforth to be;
Although thy faults deserve no less

Than justice here hath judged thee;
Wilt thou be bound to stint all strife,
And be true prisoner all thy life?'

'Yea, madam,' quoth I, that I shall;
Lo, Faith and Truth my sureties.'

"Why, then,' quoth she,come when I call,
I ask no better warrantise.'

Thus am I Beauty's bounden thrall,
At her command when she doth call.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554–1586) takes his rank in English literary history rather as a prose writer than as a poet. His poetry has been neglected on account of the generally cold and affected style in which he wrote. It has been justly remarked, that if he had looked into his own noble heart, and written directly from that, instead of from his somewhat too metaphysico-philosophical head, his poetry would have been excellent.' Yet in some pieces he has fortunately failed in extinguishing the natural sentiment which inspired him. The following are among the most poetical and graceful of his sonnets: Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney.

Because I oft in dark abstracted guise
Seem most alone in greatest company,

With dearth of words, or answers quite awry

To them that would make speech of speech arise,
They deem, and of their doom the rumour flies,

That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie

So in my swelling breast, that only I

Fawn on myself, and others do despise.
Yet Pride, I think, doth not my soul possess,
Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass:
But one worse fault Ambition I confess,
That makes me oft my best friends overpass,
Unseen, unheard, while thought to highest place
Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's grace.

With how sad steps, O Moon! thou climb'st the skies,
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What may it be, that even in heavenly place
That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long with love acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;

I read it in thy locks, thy languished grace
To me that feel the like thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?

Come, Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woc,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low.
With shield of proof shield me from out the press
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw;
O make in me those civil wars to cease:

I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed;
A chamber, deaf to noise, and blind to light;
A rosy garland, and a weary head.

And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me
Livelier than elsewhere Stella's image see.

O happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear!
I saw thee with full many a smiling line
Upon thy cheerful face joy's livery wear,
While those fair planets on thy streams did shine.
The boat for joy could not to dance forbear;
While wanton winds, with beauties so divine
Ravished, staid not, till in her golden hair
They did themselves (O sweetest prison) twine:
And fain those Eol's youth there would their stay
Have made; but, forced by Nature still to fly,
First did with puffing kiss those locks display.
She, so dishevelled, blushed. From window I,
With sight thereof, cried out: 'O fair disgrace;
Let Honour's self to thee grant highest place!'

EDMUND SPENSER.

Pope said, 'it is easy to mark out the general course of our poetry Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Dryden are the great landmarks for it.' We can now add Cowper and Wordsworth; but in Pope's generation, the list he has given was accurate and complete. Spenser was a native of London, and has recorded the circum tance in his poetry :

Merry London, my most kindly nurse,

That to me gave this life's first native source,
Though from another place I take my name,
An house of ancient fame.-Prothalamion.

He was born at East Smithfield, near the Tower, about the year 1553. The rank of his parents, or the degree of his affinity with the ancient house of Spenser, is not known. Gibbon says truly that the noble family of Spenser should consider the 'Faery Queen' as the most precious jewel in their coronet.

The family to which the poet's father belonged has been ascertained as one settled at IIurstwood, near Burnley, in Lancashire, where it

flourished till 1690. The poet was entered a sizar (one of the humblest class of students) of Pembroke College, Cambridge, in May 1569, and continued to attend college for seven years, taking his degree of M. A. in June 1576. While Spenser was at Pembroke, Gabriel Harvey, the future astrologer, was at Christ's College, and an intimacy was formed between them, which lasted during the poet's life. Harvey was learned and pedantic, full of assumption and conceit, and in his Venetian velvet and pantofles of pride,' formed a peculiarly happy subject for the satire of Nash, who assailed him with every species of coarse and contemptuous ridicule. Harvey, however, was of service to Spenser. The latter, on retiring from the university, lived with some friends in the north of England. Harvey induced the poet to repair to London, and there he introduced him to Sir Philip Sidney, one of the very diamonds of her majesty's court.' In 1579, the poet published his Shepherd's Calendar,' dedicated to Sidney, who afterwards patronised him, and recommended him to his uncle, the powerful Earl of Leicester. The 'Shepherd's Calendar' is a pastoral poem, in twelve eclogues, one for each month, but without strict keeping as to natural description or rustic character, and deformed by a number of obsolete uncouth phrases (the Chaucerisms of Spenser, as Dryden designated them), yet containing traces of a superior original genius The fable of the Oak and Brier is finely told; and in verses like the following, we see the germs of that tuneful harmony and pensive reflection in which Spenser excelled:

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You naked buds, whose shady leaves are lost,
Wherein the birds were wont to build their bower,
And now are clothed with moss and hoary frost,
Instead of blossoms wherewith your buds did flower:
I see your tears that from your boughs do rain,
Whose drops in dreary icicles remain.

All so my lustful life is dry and sere,
My timely buds with wailing all are wasted;
The blossom which my branch of youth did bear,
With breathed sighs is blown away and blasted,
And from mine eyes the drizzling tears descend,
As on your boughs the icicles depend.

These lines form part of the first eclogue, in which the shepherd-boy (Colin Clout) laments the issue of his love for a 'country-lass,' named Rosalind-a happy female name which Thomas Lodge, and, following him, Shakspeare, subsequently connected with love and poetry. Spenser is here supposed to have depicted a real passion of his own for a lady in the north, who at last preferred a rival, though, as Gabriel Harvey says, 'the gentle Mistress Rosalind' once reported the rejected suitor to have all the intelligences at command, and another time christened him Signior Pegaso. Spenser makes his shepherds discourse of polemics as well as love, and they draw characters of good and bad pastors, and institute comparisons between Ponery and Protestantism. Some allusions to Archbishop Grindal (Algrind

in the poem) and Bishop Aylmer are said to have given offence to Lord Burleigh; but the patronage of Leicester and Essex must have made Burleigh look with distaste on the new poet. For ten years we hear little of Spenser. He is found corresponding with Harvey on a literary innovation contemplated by that learned person, and even by Sir Philip Sidney: this was no less than banishing rhymes, and introducing the Latin prosody into English verse. Spenser seems to have assented to it, 'fondly overcome with Sidney's charm ;' he suspended the 'Faery Queen,' which he then begun, and tried English hexameters, forgetting to use the witty words of Nash, that 'the hexameter, though a gentleman of an ancient house, was not likely to thrive in this clime of ours, the soil being too craggy for him to set his plow in.' Fortunately, he did not persevere in the conceit; he could not have gained over his contemporaries to it-for there were then too many poets, and too much real poetry in the landand if he had made the attempt, Shakspeare would soon have blown the whole away. As a dependent on Leicester, and a suitor for courtfavour, Spenser is supposed to have experienced many reverses. The following lines in Mother Hubbard's Tale,' though not printed till 1581, seem to belong to this period of his life:

Full little knowest thou that hast not tried,
What hell it is in suing long to bide;
To lose good days that might be better spent;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow;
To have thy princess' grace, yet want her peers';
To have thy asking, yet wait many years;
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares;
To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to wait, to be undone!

Strong feeling has here banished all antique and affected expression; there is no fancy in this gloomy painting. It appears that Spenser was sometimes employed in inferior state-missions- a task then often devolved on poets and dramatists. At length an important appointment came. Lord Grey of Wilton was sent to Ireland as lord-deputy, and Spenser accompanied him in the capacity of secretary. They remained there two years, when the deputy was recalled, and the poet also returned to England. In June 1586, Spenser obtained from the crown a grant of 3,028 acres in the county of Cork, out of the forfeited lands of the Earl of Desmond, of which Sir Walter Raleigh had previously, for his military services in Ireland, obtained 12,000 acres. The poet was obliged to reside on his estate, as this was one of the conditions of the grant; and he accordingly repaired to Ireland, and took up his abode in Kilcolman Castle, near Doneraile, which had been one of the ancient strongholds or appanages of the Earls of Desmond. The poet's castle stood in the mids✩

of a large plain, by the side of a lake; the river Mulla ran through his grounds, and a chain of mountains at a distance seemed to bulwark in the romantic retreat. Here he wrote most of the Faery Queen,' and received the visits of Raleigh, whom he fancifully styled the Shepherd of the Ocean;' and here he brought home his wife, the Elizabeth' of his sonnets, welcoming her with that noble strain of pure and fervent passion which he has styled the 'Epithalamium,' and which forms the most magnificent 'spousal verse in the language. Kilcolman Castle is now a ruin-its towers almost level with the ground; but the spot must ever be dear to the lovers of genius. Raleigh's visit was made in 1589, and according to the figurative language of Spenser, the two illustrious friends, while reading the manuscript of the 'Faery Queen,' sat

Amongst the coolly shade

Of the green alders, by the Mulla's shore.

We may conceive the transports of delight with which Raleigh perused or listened to those strains of chivalry and gorgeous description, which revealed to him a land still brighter than any he had seen in his distant wanderings, or could have been present even to his romantic imagination! The guest warmly approved of his friend's poem; and he persuaded Spenser, when he had completed the first three books, to accompany him to England, and arrange for their publication. The Faery Queen' appeared in January 1589-90, dedicated to her majesty, in that strain of adulation which was then the fashion of the age. To the volume was appended a letter to Raleigh, explaining the nature of the work, which the author said was 'a continued allegory, or dark conceit.' He states his object to be to fashion a gentleman, or noble person, in virtuous and gentle discipline, and that he had chosen Prince Arthur for his hero. He conceives that prince to have beheld the Faery Queen in a dream, and been so enamoured of the vision, that, on awaking, he resolved to set forth and seek her in Faery Land. The poet further devises' that the Faery Queen shall keep her annual feast twelve days, twelve several adventures happening in that time, and each of them being undertaken by a knight. The adventures were also to express the same number of moral virtues. The first is that of the Redcross Knight, expressing Holiness; the second, Sir Guyon, or Temperance; and the third, Britomartis, a lady knight,' representing Chastity. There was thus a blending of chivalry and religion in the design of the 'Faery Queen.' Spenser had imbibed--probably from Sidney-a portion of the Platonic doctrine, which afterwards overflowed in Milton's Comus,' and he looked on chivalry as a sage and serious thing.* Besides his personification of the abstract virtues, the poet made his

The Platonism of Spenser is more clearly seen in his hymns on Love and Beauty, which are among the most passionate and exquisite of his productions. His account of