This circumstance, you know, has given offence to the austerer and more mechanical critics. They are ready to censure his judgment, as juvenile and unformed, when they see him so delighted, on all occasions, with the Gothic romances. But do these censors imagine that Milton did not perceive the defects of these works, as well as they? No: it was not the composition of books of Chivalry, but the manners described in them, that took his fancy; as appears from his Allegro—
Towred cities please us then
And the busy hum of men,
Where throngs of knights and barons bold
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit, or arms, while both contend
To win her grace, whom all commend.
And when in the Penseroso he draws, by a fine contrivance, the same kind of image to sooth melancholy which he had before given to excite mirth, he indeed extols an author, or two, of these romances, as he had before, in general, extolled the subject of them: but they are authors worthy of his praise; not the writers of Amadis, and Sir Launcelot of the Lake; but Fairy Spenser, and Chaucer himself, who has left an unfinished story on the Gothic or feudal model.
Or, call up him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball and of Algarsiff,
And who had Canace to wife,
That own’d the virtuous ring and glass,
And of the wondrous horse of brass,
On which the Tartar king did ride;
And if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung
Of turneys and of trophies hung,
Of forests and inchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.
The conduct then of these two poets may incline us to think with more respect, than is commonly done, of the Gothic manners; I mean, as adapted to the uses of the greater poetry.
I shall add nothing to what I before observed of Shakespear, because the sublimity (the divinity, let it be, if nothing else will serve) of his genius kept no certain rout, but rambled at hazard into all the regions of human life and manners. So that we can hardly say what he preferred, or what he rejected, on full deliberation. Yet one thing is clear, that even he is greater when he uses Gothic manners and machinery, than when he employs classical: which brings us again to the same point, that the former have, by their nature and genius, the advantage of the latter in producing the sublime.
LETTER VIII.
I spoke “of criticizing Spenser’s poem under the idea, not of a classical, but Gothic composition.”
It is certain, much light might be thrown on that singular work, were an able critic to consider it in this view. For instance, he might go some way towards explaining, perhaps justifying, the general plan and conduct of the Fairy Queen, which, to classical readers, has appeared indefensible.
I have taken the fancy, with your leave, to try my hand on this curious subject.