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Swift (search for this): chapter 2
the accent, which sometime gapeth, and, as it were, yawneth ill-favoredly, coming short of that it should, and sometime exceeding the measure of the number, as in Carpenter; the middle syllable being used short in speech, when it shall be read long in verse, seemeth like a lame gosling that draweth one leg after her; and Heaven being used short as one syllable, when it is in verse stretched out with a diastole, is like a lame dog that holds up one leg. Nash, who has far better claims than Swift to be called the English Rabelais, thus at once describes and parodies Harvey's hexameters in prose, that drunken, staggering kind of verse, which is all up hill and down hill, like the way betwixt Stamford and Beechfield, and goes like a horse plunging through the mire in the deep of winter, now soused up to the saddle, and straight aloft on his tiptoes. It was a happy thought to satirize (in this inverted way) prose written in the form of verse. It is almost inconceivable that Spenser's h
Phoebe (search for this): chapter 2
ily! B. II. c. VIII. 3. Joseph Warton objects to Spenser's stanza, that its constraint led him into many absurdities. Of these he instances three, of which I shall notice only one, since the two others (which suppose him at a loss for words and rhymes) will hardly seem valid to any one who knows the poet. It is that it obliged him to dilate the thing to be expressed, however unimportant, with trifling and tedious circumlocutions, namely, Faery Queen, II. II. 44:— Now hath fair Phoebe with her silver face Thrice seen the shadows of this nether world, Sith last I left that honorable place, In which her royal presence is enrolled. That is, it is three months since I left her palace. Observations on Faery Queen, Vol. I. pp. 158, 159. Mr. Hughes also objects to Spenser's measure, that it is closed always by a fullstop, in the same place, by which every stanza is made as it were a distinct paragraph. （Todd's Spenser, II. XLI.) But he could hardly have read the poem atten
Ariadne (search for this): chapter 2
hundred naked maidens lily-white, All ranged in a ring and dancing in delight. All they without were ranged in a ring, And danced round; but in the midst of them Three other ladies did both dance and sing, The while the rest them round about did hem, And like a garland did in compass stem. And in the midst of these same three was placed Another damsel, as a precious gem Amidst a ring most richly well enchased, That with her goodly presence all the rest much graced. Look how the crown which Ariadne wove Upon her ivory forehead that same day, That Theseus her unto his bridal bore, (When the bold Centaurs made that bloody fray, With the fierce Lapithes, that did them dismay) Being now placed in the firmament, Through the bright heaven doth her beams display, And is unto the stars an ornament, Which round about her move in order excellent; Such was the beauty of this goodly band, Whose sundry parts were here too long to tell, But she that in the midst of them did stand, Seemed all the re
Shakespeare (search for this): chapter 2
ng that Nash had called him an ass, probably gave Shakespeare the hint for one of the most comic touches in thety Do wander up and down despised of all. Compare Shakespeare's LXVI. Sonnet. And again in his Mother Hubberd'passionate vox humana! It might almost seem as if Shakespeare had typified all this in Miranda, when she cries nd Porrex to the Damascus pliancy of Fletcher and Shakespeare. It was he that Taught the dumb on high to sne of the last stanza cited above was clinging in Shakespeare's ear when he wrote those exquisite verses in Mid, Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears. Shakespeare had read and remembered this pastoral. Compare All thy friends are lapt in lead. It is odd that Shakespeare, in his apt in lead, is more Spenserian than Spenot have regretted the plundered abbeys as perhaps Shakespeare did when he speaks of the winter woods as bare ruer of versification, and not only did Marlowe and Shakespeare learn of him, but I have little doubt that, but f
Brus (search for this): chapter 2
ind a sort of national savor therein, such as delights his countrymen in a haggis, or the German in his sauer-kraut. The uninitiated foreigner puts his handkerchief to his nose, wonders, and gets out of the way as soon as he civilly can. Barbour's Brus, if not precisely a poem, has passages whose simple tenderness raises them to that level. That on Freedom is familiar. Though always misapplied in quotation, as if he had used the word in that generalized meaning which is common now, but whic He came right to the king in hy [hastily] And said, ‘Sir, since that is so That ye thus gate your gate will go, Have ye good-day, for back will I: Yet never fled I certainly, And I choose here to bide and die Than to live shamefully and fly.’ The Brus is in many ways the best rhymed chronicle ever written. It is national in a high and generous way, but I confess I have little faith in that quality in literature which is commonly called nationality,—a kind of praise seldom given where there is <
Collins (search for this): chapter 2
ly enough, that Spenser could not have read the rules of Bossu, but adds that no man was ever born with a greater genius or more knowledge to support it. Pope says, There is something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly in one's old age as it did in one's youth. I read the Faery Queen when I was about twelve with a vast deal of delight; and I think it gave me as much when I read it over about a year or two ago. Thomson wrote the most delightful of his poems in the measure of Spenser; Collins, Gray, and Akenside show traces of him; and in our own day his influence reappears in Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Landor is, I believe, the only poet who ever found him tedious. Spenser's mere manner has not had so many imitators as Milton's, but no other of our poets has given an impulse, and in the right direction also, to so many and so diverse minds; above all, no other has given to so many young souls a consciousness of their wings and a delight in the use of them. He is
Charles Lamb (search for this): chapter 2
Faery Queen, B. I. c x. 43. that with him sensation and intellection seem identical, and we can almost say his body thought. This subtle interfusion of sense with spirit it is that gives his poetry a crystalline purity without lack of warmth. He is full of feeling, and yet of such a kind that we can neither say it is mere intellectual perception of what is fair and good, nor yet associate it with that throbbing fervor which leads us to call sensibility by the physical name of heart. Charles Lamb made the most pithy criticism of Spenser when he called him the poets' poet. We may fairly leave the allegory on one side, for perhaps, after all, he adopted it only for the reason that it was in fashion, and put it on as he did his ruff, not because it was becoming, but because it was the only wear. The true use of him is as a gallery of pictures which we visit as the mood takes us, and where we spend an hour or two at a time, long enough to sweeten our perceptions, not so long as to c
Lusty Juventus (search for this): chapter 2
t may be suspected, rather than his praising love, that made Lord Burleigh shake his rugged forehead. Spenser's gamut, indeed, is a wide one, ranging from a purely corporeal delight in precious odors fetched from far away upward to such refinement as Upon her eyelids many graces sate Under the shadow of her even brows, where the eye shares its pleasure with the mind. He is court-painter in ordinary to each of the senses in turn, and idealizes these frail favorites of his majesty King Lusty Juventus, till they half believe themselves the innocent shepherdesses into which he travesties them. Taste must be partially excepted. It is remarkable how little eating and drinking there is in the Faery Queen. The only time he fairly sets a table is in the house of Malbecco, where it is necessary to the conduct of the story. Yet taste is not wholly forgotten:— In her left hand a cup of gold she held, And with her right the riper fruit did reach, Whose sappy liquor, that with fuln
Joseph Warton (search for this): chapter 2
oak Whose body is sere, whose branches broke, Whose naked arms stretch unto the fire. It is one of those verses that Joseph Warton would have liked in secret, that Dr. Johnson would have proved to be untranslatable into reasonable prose, and which the first person in the last two verses. or this, Come hither, come hither, O, come hastily! B. II. c. VIII. 3. Joseph Warton objects to Spenser's stanza, that its constraint led him into many absurdities. Of these he instances three, of whicve little doubt that, but for the Faery Queen, we should never have had the varied majesty of Milton's blank-verse. But Dr. Warton should have remembered (what he too often forgets in his own verses) that, in spite of Dr. Johnson's dictum, poetry is not prose, and that verse only loses its advantage over the latter by invading its province. As where Dr. Warton himself says:— How nearly had my spirit past, Till stopt by Metcalf's skilful hand, To death's dark regions wide and waste And the bl
John Florio (search for this): chapter 2
n the character of Dogberry. Between 1576 and 1578 Spenser seems to have been with some of his kinsfolk in the North. It was during this interval that he conceived his fruitless passion for the Rosalinde, whose jilting him for another shepherd, whom he calls Menalcas, is somewhat perfunctorily bemoaned in his pastorals. The late Major C. G. Halpine, in a very interesting essay, makes it extremely probable that Rosalinde is the anagram of Rose Daniel, sister of the poet, and married to John Florio. He leaves little doubt, also, that the name of Spenser's wife (hitherto unknown) was Elizabeth Nagle. (See Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II. 674, November, 1858.) Mr. Halpine informed me that he found the substance of his essay among the papers of his father, the late Rev. N. J. Halpine, of Dublin. The latter published in the series of the Shakespeare Society a sprightly little tract entitled Oberon, which, if not quite convincing, is well worth reading for its ingenuity and research. Befor
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