Compared to Ariosto. 83. Spenser is naturally compared with Ariosto. “Fierce wars and faithful loves did moralize the song” of both poets. But in the constitution of their minds, in the character of their poetry, they were almost the reverse of each other. The Italian is gay, rapid, ardent; his pictures shift like the hues of heaven; even while diffuse, he seems to leave in an instant what he touches, and is prolix by the number, not the duration, of his images. Spenser is habitually serious; his slow stanza seems to suit the temper of his genius; he loves to dwell on the sweetness and beauty which his fancy portrays. The ideal of chivalry, rather derived from its didactic theory, than from the precedents of romance, is always before him; his morality is pure and even stern, with nothing of the libertine tone of Ariosto. He worked with far worse tools than the bard of Ferrara, with a language not quite formed, and into which he rather injudiciously poured an unnecessary archaism, while the style of his contemporaries was undergoing a rapid change in the opposite direction. His stanza of nine lines is particularly inconvenient and languid in narration, where the Italian octave is sprightly and vigorous; though even this becomes ultimately monotonous by its regularity, a fault from which only the ancient hexameter and our blank verse are exempt.
84. Spenser may be justly said to excel Ariosto in originality of invention, in force and variety of character, in strength and vividness of conception, in depth of reflection, in fertility of imagination, and above all, in that exclusively poetical cast of feeling, which discerns in everything what common minds do not perceive. In the construction and arrangement of their fable neither deserve much praise; but the siege of Paris gives the Orlando Furioso, spite of its perpetual shiftings of the scene, rather more unity in the reader’s apprehension than belongs to the Faery Queen. Spenser is, no doubt, decidedly inferior in ease and liveliness of narration, as well as clearness and felicity of language. But, upon thus comparing the two poets, we have little reason to blush for our countryman. Yet the fame of Ariosto is spread through Europe, while Spenser is almost unknown out of England; and even in this age, when much of our literature is so widely diffused, I have not observed proofs of much acquaintance with him on the continent.
Style of Spenser. 85. The language of Spenser, like that of Shakspeare, is an instrument manufactured for the sake of the work it was to perform. No other poet had written like either, though both have had their imitators. It is rather apparently obsolete by his partiality to certain disused forms, such as the y before the participle, than from any close resemblance to the diction of Chaucer or Lydgate.[1226] The enfeebling expletives, do and did, though certainly very common in our early writers, had never been employed with such an unfortunate predilection as by Spenser. Their everlasting recurrence is among the great blemishes of his style. His versification is in many passages beautifully harmonious; but he has frequently permitted himself, whether for the sake of variety, or from some other cause, to baulk the ear in the conclusion of a stanza.[1227]
[1226] “Spenser,” says Ben Jonson, “in affecting the ancients writ no language; yet I would have him read for his matter, but as Virgil read Ennius.” This is rather in the sarcastic tone attributed to Jonson.
[1227] Coleridge, who had a very strong perception of the beauty of Spenser’s poetry, has observed his alternate alliteration, “which when well used is a great secret in melody; as ’sad to see her sorrowful constraint’;—’on the grass her dainty limbs did lay.’” But I can hardly agree with him when he proceeds to say “it never strikes any unwarned ear as artificial, or other than the result of the necessary movement of the verse.” The artifice seems often very obvious. I do not also quite understand, or, if I do, cannot acquiesce in what follows, that “Spenser’s descriptions are not in the true sense of the word picturesque, but are composed of a wondrous series of images, as in our dreams.” Coleridge’s Remains, vol. i. p. 93.
Inferiority of the latter books. 86. The inferiority of the last three books to the former is surely very manifest. His muse gives gradual signs of weariness; the imagery becomes less vivid, the vein of poetical description less rich, the digressions more frequent and verbose. It is true that the fourth book is full of beautiful inventions, and contains much admirable poetry; yet even here we perceive a comparative deficiency in the quantity of excelling passages, which becomes far more apparent as we proceed, and the last book falls very short of the interest which the earlier part of the Faery Queen had excited. There is perhaps less reason than some have imagined, to regret that Spenser did not complete his original design. The Faery Queen is already in the class of longest poems. A double length, especially if, as we may well suspect, the succeeding parts would have been inferior, might have deterred many readers from the perusal of what we now possess. It is felt already in Spenser, as it is perhaps even in Ariosto, when we read much of either, that tales of knights and ladies, giants and savage men, end in a satiety which no poetical excellence can overcome. Ariosto, sensible of this intrinsic defect in the epic romance, has enlivened it by great variety of incidents, and by much that carries us away from the peculiar tone of chivalrous manners. The world he lives in is before his eyes, and to please it is his aim. He plays with his characters as with puppets that amuse the spectator and himself. In Spenser, nothing is more remarkable than the steadiness of his apparent faith in the deeds of knighthood. He had little turn for sportiveness; and in attempting it, as in the unfortunate instance of Malbecco, and a few shorter passages, we find him dull as well as coarse. It is in the ideal world of pure and noble virtues, that his spirit, wounded by neglect, and weary of trouble, loved to refresh itself without reasoning or mockery; he forgets the reader, and cares little for his taste, while he can indulge the dream of his own delighted fancy. It may be here also observed, that the elevated and religious morality of Spenser’s poem would secure it, in the eyes of every man of just taste, from the ridicule which the mere romances of knight-errantry must incur, and against which Ariosto evidently guarded himself by the gay tone of his narration. The Orlando Furioso and the Faery Queen are each in the spirit of its age; but the one was for Italy in the days of Leo, the other for England under Elizabeth, before, though but just before, the severity of the Reformation had been softened away. The lay of Britomart, in twelve cantos, in praise of Chastity, would have been received with a smile at the court of Ferrara, which would have had almost as little sympathy with the justice of Arthegal.
Allegories of the Faery Queen. 87. The allegories of Spenser have been frequently censured. One of their greatest offences, perhaps, is that they gave birth to some tedious and uninteresting poetry of the same kind. There is usually something repulsive in the application of an abstract or general name to a person, in which, though with some want of regard, as I have intimated above, to the proper meaning of the word, we are apt to think that allegorical fiction consists. The French and English poets of the Middle Ages had far too much of this; and it is to be regretted, that Spenser did not give other appellations to his Care and Despair, as he has done to Duessa and Talus. In fact, Orgoglio is but a giant, Humiltà a porter, Obedience a servant. The names, when English, suggest something that perplexes us; but the beings exhibited are mere persons of the drama, men and women, whose office or character is designated by their appellation.
Blemishes in the diction. 88. The general style of the Faery Queen is not exempt from several defects, besides those of obsoleteness and redundancy. Spenser seems to have been sometimes deficient in one attribute of a great poet, the continual reference to the truth of nature, so that his fictions should be always such as might exist on the given conditions. This arises in great measure from copying his predecessors too much in description, not suffering his own good sense to correct their deviations from truth. Thus, in the beautiful description of Una, where she first is introduced to us, riding
Upon a lowly ass more white than snow;
Herself much whiter.
This absurdity may have been suggested by Ovid’s Brachia Sithonia candidiora nive; but the image in this line is not brought so distinctly before the mind as to be hideous as well as untrue; it is merely a hyperbolical parallel.[1228] A similar objection lies to the stanza enumerating as many kinds of trees as the poet could call to mind, in the description of a forest,—