tions from Du Bellay, so far as I have compared those with the original. And the Canzone-stanza consisting here of twelve lines, Spenser has been constrained to expand his reproduction by a process which the notes upon the text elucidate. Yet this is, on the whole, an exquisite work for so young a writer. The sixth sonnet is all Spenser in miniature. The last embodies the thought of Petrarch's brief Envoy; the particular reference to a Ladie faire being Spenser's addition ;— and this sonnet, we may also note, has the structure of the Amoretti.

Petrarch's Canzone, it should be observed, is not a poem eminently characteristic of his lyrics, either in subject or in treatment; it has been recommended to Spenser by its allegorical character. As such, it wants, -if, with the reverence due to this greatest Master of the mediæval lyric, I may say so, that ethereal passion, that "holy simplicity" of phrase and of appeal, which render the translation of Petrarch even more hopeless than the translation of any true poetry must always be found by a true poet.

V. DAPHNAIDA.

In this elegy only Spenser seems to have written without personal knowledge of the subject of his verse. And that the introduction to such a Threnos should be imagined and composed in his most gloomy, most world-weary style, is, of course, natural. But, as with the first two Complaints, we are soon made aware that the poet, for Art's sake, is deepening his tints,-overcolouring his sorrow. Perhaps he wishes at once to

strike the note of despair: yet when we find him, and this in a year which was apparently one of his most prosperous, speaking of himself as

we must infer that the long iteration of grief and doleful scenery exhibited in this and similar pieces is, how far, who should say?-a poetical convention. And a further indication follows, showing how little reliance (here and elsewhere) can be placed upon facts which Spenser seems to narrate autobiographically. For he himself is hère described as suffering from the same grief,-" like wofulnesse,"-as Gorges; the death of whose wife is the subject of Daphnaïda. Little as we know of Spenser's life, we cannot believe that he was at this time a desponding widower.

For the adoption of this style, which, without paradox, we might define as a style of natural artificiality, one may not venture lightly to criticize our great poet. Yet the convention seems inevitably to carry with it no slight obstacles to two elements which poetry can hardly dispense with,-contrast, and sincerity. And the sense of this latter deficiency is intensified by the pastoral form here used without any specific appropriateness, and prolonged through more than eighty stanzas.

Yet, when we have confessed to these signs of human imperfection, our admiration must be freely given to the exquisite melody, the sustained ideal loftiness of diction and manner, of which,-when writing of Spenser's maturer poetry,—it is superfluous

repetition to remark the presence. And a higher tribute is due to the lovely strokes of gentle pathos which abound in Daphnaïda. Here we find even that unmistakeable note of genuine feeling which in Spenser rarely reveals itself; whether because he was a man too self-centred, too wrapt in "dream and solemn vision" for strength of human passion, or because Pastoral and Allegory,-chosen, perhaps, as styles harmonizing with his innermost nature,—bring with them a conventional atmosphere unfavourable to that simplicity which makes even real pathos doubly pathetic. However these things may be, the Daphnaïda, though we cannot rank it with the few loftiest specimens of imaginative Elegy, renders admirably the impression of eternal grief proper to the style: reaching this more by a musical monotone, a low-voiced iteration, than by strong strokes either of sentiment or of natural imagery. It is a twilight landscape, in which the forms, indistinguishable in soft half-tint and shadow, do not reveal themselves in definite shape. We have a cumulative effect of sorrow; and this long elegy, hardly more real than the ancient lamentations for Linus or Adonis, seems finally to leave upon us the impression of genuine feeling.

The first songs have many phrases of perfect charm, and a singularly pervading melody, which the beautiful structure of the stanza, skilfully modified from Chaucer's "Royal" form to elegiac cadence by transposition of rhymes, greatly aids. But the last divisions do not seem to add much to the earlier four;-even with Spenser's fluent copiousness, the lacrymarum fons at last exhausts its energy.

VI. COLIN CLOUT.

Spenser, in this, the most realistic of his poems, reverts to his first published book,-those "laies of love" which he sang after Tityrus-Chaucer,-and hence introduces once more the ungraceful shepherd nomenclature of the Calender, which was, doubtless, familiarly intelligible to his readers. Hobbinol-Harvey is represented as begging him to tell the fortunes of his late visit to England (1589-91): and Spenser preludes by a geographical allegory concerning two rivers near Kilcolman, which he describes himself as reciting to Raleigh during that visit to Ireland when he seems to have persuaded Spenser to bring the Faerie Queene to England and to Elizabeth for publication. That Raleigh is, at the same time, represented as in disfavour with her (for reasons which biographers have variously given), is perhaps here introduced rather as a poetical device than as a distinct record of fact: it allows Spenser to speak of his friend,—that "glory and shame of English manhood" (so Church truly names him), -as his fellowshepherd and comrade in poetry; although if that portion of Cynthia which Dr. Hannay has printed be similar to the "lamentable lay" which Raleigh read at Kilcolman, we cannot wonder much if it did not remove the unkindnesse of the Ladie of the Sea.

In the allegory of the rivers Spenser, before quitting fancy for fact, as it were renders homage to his favourite style; of which, however, this is an unattractive specimen. Here, as elsewhere, we note that, musical as was his ear, he shows little sense of the peculiar music which lies hid in names; nor, in general, is there much

propriety in their selection. Cuddie, Hobbinol, and Lobbin, match well with the Bregog, the Old Mole, and the Mulla.

Hitherto we have had only the machinery and introduction to the poem. The narrative of the journey now begins, and at once Spenser rises to his subject. The description of the sea and ship which carried him across to Cornwall is in his most vigorous and most picturesque style: I know no passage in which he reaches more direct and forcible delineation. It is truly a poet's first impression of the most impressive of all terrestrial spectacles; and Spenser has lawfully painted it as if he had never before crossed the Channel. Often as Englishmen have sung the grandeur and life of our great vessels, in the days of oak and canvas, they have never surpassed, if equalled, this splendid picture.

Ireland is then contrasted with England in some powerful lines; and we now find, in place of the querulous strains on the dishonour and low estate of literature, which begin the Complaints, that here

Learned arts do flourish in great honor,

And Poets wits are had in peerlesse price.

This forms a fit preface to the glories of Elizabeth (here named Cynthia), described in a style of what, however reluctantly, must be termed servile rapture,* though such, of course, as no mere courtier, however servile, could hope to rival. But Poetry avenges herself here

* Some admirable remarks upon this subject will be found in the fifth chapter of Dean Church's unhappily too-brief Life of Spenser. But the true story of Elizabeth's reign (I repeat), still awaits a writer who shall possess the rarest and most npopular gift of the historian, -courageous impartiality.