The "Faëry Queen," long as it is, is but a fragment: six books are said to have been lost or destroyed when the poet escaped from Ireland. The incidents of Spenser's life are most affecting. Queen Elizabeth, who was not insensible to the honour of being celebrated by so exquisite a poet, had patronised him. One of her few acts of munificence was that of ordering him a sum of money; which her treasurer, Lord Burleigh, knowing her usual economy, and having no sympathy himself with poets, ventured to grumble at, saying "so much for a song!" Few things in Elizabeth's personal history redound more to her honour than that gift. Subsequently the poet had a grant of three thousand acres of land in the county of Cork. Here he wrote his great allegorical poem. The rebellion of the Earl of Tyrone broke out, and Kilcolman Castle, the residence of Spenser, was burned, he, his wife and family, escaping in such haste and peril, that his infant child was left behind, and perished in the flames. The poet never recovered this calamity: he returned to England broken in heart and fortune, and died a year after.

No genuine lovers of descriptive poetry will complain at the absence of unity in the design of the "Faëry Queen," they will read on and on, forgetful of every thing but the exceeding beauty of the descriptions. Indeed, it is evident that Spenser

never intended to fetter himself with a distinct narrative, but followed on wherever imagination led him, exclaiming

"The ways through which my weary steps I guide,
In this delightful land of Faërie,
Are so exceeding spacious and wide;
And sprinkled with such sweet variety
Of all that pleasant is, to ear or eye;

That I, nigh ravished with rare thought's delight,
My tedious travel do forget thereby;

And when I 'gin to feel decay of might,

It strength to me supplies; and cheers my dulled sprite."

Spenser's two poems of Heavenly Love, and Heavenly Beauty, abound in passages the Christian must delight in. James Montgomery, indeed, says, that these contain the germ of Milton's "Great Argument." The following description is peculiarly fine of

WISDOM.

"There in his bosom Sapience † doth sit,
The sovereign darling of the Deity;
Clad like a queen in royal robes, most fit
For so great power and peerless majesty,
And all with gems and jewels gorgeously
Adorn'd, that brighter than the stars appear,

And make her native brightness seem more clear.

* Montgomery's Christian Poet.

† Wisdom.

"Both Heaven and Earth obey unto her will,
And all the creatures which they both contain ;
For of her fulness which the world doth fill,
They all partake, and do in state remain,
As their great Maker did at first ordain,
Through observation of her high behest,

By which they first were made, and still increast.

"The fairness of her face no tongue can tell, For she the daughters of all woman's race, And angels too, in beautie doth excel, Reflected on her from God's glorious face, And more increased by her own goodly grace, That it doth far exceed all human thought, Nor can on earth compared be to ought.

"Let angels which her goodly face behold,
And see at will, her sovereign praises sing;
And those most sacred mysteries unfold,
Of that fair love of mighty heaven's King;
Enough is me to admire such heavenly thing,
And being thus with her huge love possest,
In only wonder of herself to rest.

"But whoso may, thrice happy man him hold Of all on earth, whom God so much doth grace, And lets his own beloved * to behold;

For in the view of that celestial face

All joy, all bliss, all happiness have place. Nor aught on earth can want unto the wight, Who of herself can win that wishful sight.

*Christ "the wisdom of God."

"Ah then, my hungry soul! which long hast fed
On idle fancies of thy foolish thought,

And with false beauties' flattering bait misled,
Hast after vain deceitful shadows sought,

Which all have fled, and now have left thee nought
But late repentance through thy follies brief;
Ah! cease to gaze on matter of thy grief.

"And look at last up to that sovereign light,
From whose pure beams all perfect beauty springs,
That kindleth love in every godly sprite,
Even the love of God, which loathing brings
Of this vile world, and these gay seeming things;
With whose sweet pleasures being so possest,
Thy straying thoughts henceforth for ever rest."

Some idea of the linked sweetness long drawn. out of Spenser's style in his favourite stanza, may be gathered from his description of

AERIAL MUSIC.

"Eftsoons they heard a most melodious sound
Of all that might delight a dainty ear,
Such as, at once, might not on living ground,
Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere:
Right hard it was for wight that did it hear,
To weet what manner music that might be,
For all that pleasing is to living ear

Was there consorted in one harmony;

Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree.

"The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade,
Their notes unto the voice attempered sweet;

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Th' angelical soft trembling voices, made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmur of the water's fall;
The water's fall, with difference discreet,
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call ;
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all."

terms.

Sir Philip Sydney, the friend and patron of Spenser, was in the court of Queen Elizabeth what the accomplished Earl of Surrey had been in that of her father-the glass of fashion and the mould of form. His poetry, however, is not read except by the antiquarian. Two faults prevent the modern reader enjoying it-length and artificiality. That was the age, notwithstanding all its literary greatness, of quaint conceits and artificial A plain answer to a plain question was rarely returned in that luxuriant and imaginative time; and Sir Philip Sydney's "Arcadia” is full of this peculiarity, which would weary even in a short work, but is oppressive when it goes through five hundred folio pages. His essay in "Defence of Poesy "is more read in the present day than any other of his writings; and deservedly, for it ranks in beauty, and power, and completeness with Milton's essay on "Unlicensed Printing," and Foster's on "Decision of Character." In his "Defence of Poesy" he mourns that "poesy thus embraced in all other places, should only find in our time a bad welcome in England." After excepting Sackville,