The Faëry Queen stanza must be regarded as a felicitous discovery rather than invention, and even the merit of the addition becomes diminished by the consideration that Alexandrine verse had become a great favourite amongst his contemporary poets before he used it. It was the favourite metre of a Howard and a Sidney at the commencement of the era of Elizabeth, and is frequently met in our alliterative poems, both early English and Anglo-Saxon. Yet Dr. Johnson has most erroneously represented Spenser as the inventor of the Alexandrine! But so fortunate was Spenser’s completion of the stanza, that all the attempts of Phineas Fletcher, Giles Fletcher, Prior, and even Milton, to improve on it were unavailing, and it may now be regarded as one of the special glories of England.
The stanza of Spenser, as used by that poet, was by no means the perfect musical stave that it is at present, so exquisitely attuned with the dominant quadruple rhyme for its key-note. Thomson appears to me to have brought it very nearly to perfection—his sole drawback being a too frequent indulgence in imperfect rhymes. In Byron’s fourth canto of Childe Harold I conceive it to be brought to perfection. Spenser indulges constantly in imperfect rhymes, and though sometimes musical as well as often charmingly fanciful and suggestive, he was by no means such a master of language and rhythm as Shakspeare, whose influence, followed up by the examples of Milton, Dryden, and Pope, is felt in the excellence of the poetical diction of the poets of this century. Though Spenser in some degree discovered the stanza which bears his name, he did not complete the discovery, for his Alexandrine is commonly deficient in the cæsural pause, which is absolutely essential to the satisfaction of the ear and to the majestic close of the stanza, and now almost as much de rigueur as it is in the French Alexandrine, which is the common heroic measure of our neighbours. The Alexandrine in every second stanza of Spenser is without it, and the effect is very bad, as may be seen from the following examples:—
“So shall wrath, jealousy, grief, love, die and decay.”
“You shame-faced are but Shame-facedness itself is she.”
“Save an old nymph, hight Panope, to keep it clean.”
“Of turtle doves, she sitting in an ivory chaire.”
“And so had left them languishing ’twixt hope and feare.”
“Excludes from faire hope withouten further triall.”
“All mindless of the golden fleece which made them strive.”
“The other back retired, and contrary trode.”
“With which it blessed concord hath together tied.”
“Did waite about it, gaping griesly, all begor’d.”
“Yet spake she seldome, but thought more the less she said.”
“But of her love to lavish, little have she thank.”
“And unto better fortune doth herself prepare.”
“Fails of her souse, and passing by doth hurt no more.”
“Forgetful of his safety hath his right way lost.”
“But with entire affection, and appearance plaine.”
“Great liking unto many, but true love to few.”
“Into most deadly danger and distressed plight.”
“Whilst loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.”
“They have him taken captive, tho’ it grieve him sore.”
“So kept she them in order, and herself in hand.”
“’Mongst which crept the little angels through the glittering gleames.”
“And thereout sucking venom to her parts intire.”
“Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please.”
Admitting the richness and fertility of Spenser’s fancy, I cannot find that he has depth, originality, or brilliancy of thought to compensate for a roughness, which is amazing by the side of Shakspeare’s exquisite versification, or to justify the high opinion expressed by Wordsworth. Compare Spenser’s Description of Lucifer’s Palace, commencing
“A stately palace built of squared brick,
“Which cunningly was without mortar laid”
with Milton’s Pandemonium!
Superadded to Spenser’s roughness, which the antique style affected by him in some degree palliates, are very frequent imperfect rhymes and slovenly repetitions of the same identical metrical sounds, as plain, plane, and complain, see and sea, rhyming in the same stanza—liberties which now are utterly inadmissible. It is very true that the recurrence of four lines which rhyme together and of three lines which likewise rhyme with each other in each stanza makes the Spenserian stanza in a long poem extraordinarily difficult, without an occasional manifestation of these defects; but the exigencies of modern criticism, I think justly, require that the difficulty be overcome. And a portion, doubtless, of the superiority of modern English to modern French and Italian poetry arises from explosion of imperfect rhymes. If the poets of these days are degenerate in grasp of thought, they are at least superior to their predecessors and to their continental contemporaries in the mechanism of their art.
Having said thus much of the stanza which I have chosen, I shall add that, rejecting classical conformity in all those matters wherein I conceive the advanced spirit of the age to demand modern treatment, I have availed myself largely of classical allusion, and to a certain extent of classical imagery, to impart interest to a subject which might otherwise smell too much of “villanous saltpetre,” and have in some cases adhered more closely to true classical nomenclature than has hitherto been the custom. I regard it as one of the advantages of the acuteness of modern scholarship to have cleared away much rubbish and removed many an excrescence. But the Grecian may unhappily descend into the Græculist, and by adopting too much spoil every thing. Thus I conceive no good effect to be produced by writing the name Pisistratus in a serious work “Peisistratus,” and I would not imitate in modern poetry Homer’s not at all ignobly meant comparison of Aias (Ajax) to an ass any more than I would adopt the word hog as applied to Achilles: ὅγ’ ὣς εἰπὼν “he thus speaking”—“Hog thus speaking” would be rather offensive to English ears. Neither would I write “Klutaimnestra” for Clytemnestra, “Loukas” for Luke, “Dabid” for David, or “Eua” for our first mother. In matters of taste, like these, above all things we must observe the modus in rebus. Quintilian, a master in all that relates to elegance of speech, explains very well that such things must be regulated by feeling. Speaking of the beauty of one of the smallest of particles in a passage of Cicero, he says: “Cur hosce potiùs quàm hos? Rationem fortassè non reddam; sentiam esse melius,” Instit. ix. 4. “Aias” I would at once reclaim from the vulgar tyranny of “Ajax,” which, as we pronounce it, scarcely differs from a jakes. This pronunciation, be it observed, is purely British and German, for it is nearly certain that the Latins pronounced the word which they spelt Ajax quite like the Greek Aias, Ajax being pronounced Aias in nearly all the languages of Southern Europe at this day. In this poem, accordingly, I spell the name “Aias.” In the same way I restore the ancient and true spelling of the name “Leonides.” (Herod. lib. vii. passim. Thucyd. i, 132.) Achilles I would retain because more musical than “Achilleus;” but I would expunge the word “Hectoring” from our language, as originating in disgraceful ignorance, because so far from being a bully, Hector was a hero of the noblest and most amiable character, and is so described by Homer. Helen thus apostrophizes his dead body:
Ἕκτωρ, ἐμῷ θυμῷ δαέρων πολὺ φίλτατε πάντων, * *