are minute and beautiful pictures of the country and of country life. Indeed, one of his poems may be likened to a country scene. Here are musical brooks; there old woods cloaked in ornamental foliage; here a succession of bold thoughts shaped into a chain of tall hills; there the low vale of quiet unobtrusive beauty—all this, too, mellowed by the gawsy twilight of love. Such are Spenser's early pictures, but after mingling with the world, and losing his primitive simplicity of temper, the elegance and refinement which gave such a charm to the "Fairy Queen," spoiled his rural poetry. It was no longer a picture of nature: his plant was a hot house one: his fruit had the hortus siccus flavor: his nightingales were caged, and sang from an embayed window. This difference may be seen by comparing "Colin come home again" with its predecessors.

But the Fairy Queen is his wonderful work. The elegant and sometimes magnificent beauty of that lay, where the "great bard"

"In sage and solemn tunes hath sung
Of tourneys and of trophies hung,
Of forests and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear"—

has elevated his name to the high place which it fills with such brilliancy. Every poetic palate will relish "the grapes of hidden meaning so abundant under the vine-leaves of his exquisite allegory."

On the whole, as for Spenser as a natural poet, all unite in pronouncing him imaginative, bold, and even witty: as an artist, or educated poet, skilful, elegant, and full. His language is, for the most part, rich and expressive; his verse (remarkably various in arrangement) could scarcely be more melodious and pleasing. I will close this portion of my remarks with a quotation, the source of which I forget, but which I find pencilled upon the margin of my Chaucer.

"Spenser and Chaucer, instead of being forced into death by their antiquated language, will, by their use of it, perpetuate its remembrance. The ancient English is their servant. They are not and never will be its victims."

VI. These are biographical times. A moiety of centuries ago, not even a Shakspeare could find a biographer willing to follow the windings of his career. We know nothing more of him certainly than that he remained on the Avon with his wife Anne Hatheway—his senior by eight years—and three children, the last two of which were twins—until ambition led him to London. That there his plays were written; and his evenings spent with Ned Alleyne, Ben Jonson, Marlow and others, in drinking canary wine, and in "tilting in the lists of literary controversie." We have little knowledge of their pleasant discussions—

"words—
Spoke in the mermaid"—

but in such a company, wit and humor must have been gods of the entertainment. We are told that in table debate, "Jonson was like a great Spanish gallion, and Shakspeare an English man of war. Master Jonson was built far higher in learning; solid but slow in his performances. Shakspeare lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." We can easily fancy the plethoric Ben writhing and chafing under the quickness of his adversary's attacks.

Within the last twenty years Shakspeare has become popular with the German critics—the best perhaps of the age. The critical mania has been imparted to the English, and I have observed lately in the English Magazines several articles pretty much in the German tone. One writer, for example, is engaged in building up a "life" of the poet from rather strange materiel—his sonnets. This idea was started by Schlegel, I believe—and is certainly a happy one: for all authors have sorrows, and at times must seek relief by giving them utterance. Indeed the works of an author's leisure moments are usually all of one piece—all of the same tone—all harping upon the one black thread in his fortune. Shakspeare asks in one of his sonnets—