There is reason to believe that the first cantos of this poem were blocked out in his mind before leaving England; perhaps the scheme had been talked over with his friend Sidney; in any event, it is quite certain that they underwent elaboration at Kilcolman Castle, and some portions doubtless took color from the dreary days of rapine and of war he saw there. I will not ask if you have read the Faery Queen: I fear that a great many dishonest speeches are made on that score; I am afraid that I equivocated myself in youngish days; but now I will be honest in saying—I never read it through continuously and of set purpose; I have tried it—on winter nights, and gone to sleep in my chair: I have tried it, under trees in summer, and have gone to sleep on the turf: I have tried it, in the first blush of a spring morning, and have gone—to breakfast.
Yet there are many who enjoy it intensely and continuously: Mr. Saintsbury says, courageously, that it is the only long poem he honestly wishes were longer. It is certainly full of idealism; it is full of sweet fancies; it is rich in dragonly horrors; it is crammed with exquisite harmonies. But—its tenderer heroines are so shadowy, you cannot bind them to your heart; nay, you can scarce follow them with your eyes: Now, you catch a strain which seems to carry a sweet womanly image of flesh and blood—of heartiness and warmth. But—at the turning of a page—his wealth of words so enwraps her in glowing epithets, that she fades on your vision to a mere iridescence and a creature of Cloud-land.
“Her face so faire, as flesh it seemèd not,
But Heavenly Portrait of bright angels hew,
Clear as the skye, withouten blame or blot
Thro’ goodly mixture of Complexion’s dew!
And in her cheeks, the Vermeil red did shew,
Like Roses in a bed of Lillies shed,
The which ambrosial odors from them threw,
And gazers sense, with double pleasure fed,