Who here appeal unto your grace; It was in too much praising you. And though this judge doth make such haste, Yet let your pity first be placed To save the man that meant you good; Quoth Beauty: 'Well; because I guess Than justice here hath judged thee; 'Yea, madam,' quoth I, that I shall; "Why, then,' quoth she,come when I call, Thus am I Beauty's bounden thrall, 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 With dearth of words, or answers quite awry To them that would make speech of speech arise, That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie So in my swelling breast, that only I Fawn on myself, and others do despise. With how sad steps, O Moon! thou climb'st the skies, I read it in thy locks, thy languished grace Come, Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, I will good tribute pay, if thou do so. And if these things, as being thine by right, O happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear! 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, 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: ་ You naked buds, whose shady leaves are lost, All so my lustful life is dry and sere, 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, 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 |