of reality; the brevity of the style which prevents all feeling of languor; the approximation to prose idiom so judiciously combined with the musical ring of the disyllabic rhymes, and the skill with which the active narrative is accentuated by simile.

Spenser's manner is different enough. He first of all gives us a description of the dragon, extending over seven stanzas a splendid painting. This is a sample of the manner in which the monster impresses his form on the poet's brilliant imagination :

His flaggy wings when forth he did display
Were lyke two sayles, in which the hollow wind
Is gathered full and worketh speedy way;
And eke the pennes that did his pinions bind
Were lyke mayne yards with flying canvass lynd,
With which whenas him list the ayre to beat,

And there by force unwonted passage fynd,
The clouds before him fledd for terror great,

And all the heavens stood still amazed at his threat.

Now, remembering that Ariosto's description of the Ork was given in a simile of four lines, we expect something tremendous from an animal whose properties require sixtythree, and the impetus of whose body can stop the revolution of the spheres. The monster, however, is far from making the most of his advantages. His first movement is to upset horse and man with a brush of his tail. He then carries them both up into the air

So far as ewen bow a shaft may send,

but it never occurs to him to drop them. The Ork was a better general, as we have seen him force Orlando to leave his throat by the manoeuvre of diving. The dragon is wounded under the wing, at which he roars like an angry sea, and tears out the spear with his claws. These three actions occupy three stanzas. Winding his tail round the horse, he compels him to throw his rider, who attacks the dragon on foot but is unable to penetrate his brazen scales. The dragon, impatient of the combat, and endeavouring to fly off, is prevented by his wounded wing; whereat filled with fury, and remember

ing his tail, he again fells the knight to the ground. These incidents carry us forward fifty-four lines. Fortunately the champion falls backwards into a well of remarkable virtue ::

Both Silo this and Jordan did excel,

And the English Bath, and eke the German Spau,

Ne can Cephise nor Hebrus match this well.

It is the Well of Life.

The golden Phoebus now begins to steep his fiery face in the western billows, and St. George spends the night in the well, while his lady betakes herself to prayer. The fortunes of the second day's fight are much the same as the first, except that the dragon leaves off in worse case, having his head cloven, five joints of his tail cut off, and one of his paws hewn in sunder. He pours blasts of fire out of his mouth, and the knight, being forced to retire, stumbles and falls, this time under a tree whence flows a stream of balm. The dragon dares not approach the holy place, so that his enemy refreshes himself all night, Una being still in prayer.

The joyous daye gan early to appeare,
And fayre Aurora from the deawy bed
Of aged Tithone gan herself to reare,

With rosy cheeks for shame as blushing red;

and the knight, arising at the same time, defies his enemy, who comes open-mouthed to make away with him at a rush. His impetuosity proves his destruction. A thrust of the sword into his throat puts an end to his abominable existence, and he falls to the ground with the shock of an earthquake.

The battle thus lasts through three days and fifty-five stanzas, or nearly five hundred lines. It is evident that the small number of incidents in proportion to the length of the story must prevent all rapidity of movement. The dilettante manner in which Spenser treats the whole affair is illustrated by the four lines of description, cited above, that open the third day's combat. There is also

VOL. II

T

a want of realistic imagination about the narrative which prevents belief. The stupidity of the dragon in not making better of his wings has already been condemned. In the description we hear the clashing of his brazen scales, and feel his fiery eyes, which blaze like two great beacons; but during the fight these picturesque circumstances are not brought to our memory. Ariosto would have given life to this part of the story by striking terror into St. George's horse. We see no reason why, when the dragon has once carried horse and man off their feet, he should not grind them to pieces in his three ranks of iron teeth,

In which yet trickling blood and gobbets raw
Of late devoured bodies did appeare.

If, however, it be urged that Spenser had no need of such realistic minuteness as the fight is an allegory, then it must be remembered that, except the Well and the Tree of Life, there is nothing in the adventure to recall the allegory to our mind. The dragon is the best described dragon in romance, but he has no diabolical symbols. St. George loses the shield of Faith, and scarcely feels the want of it; and when the monster is killed by a thrust of the knight's sword in his throat, we forget that this weapon is the Sword of the Spirit. If Spenser is not to be compared with Ariosto, he must be compared with Bunyan, and the necessary inference can be drawn from the parallel battle between Christian and Apollyon.

It must be decided then that, in the poetical qualities required to sustain the interest of the reader through a poem so vast in its scope and in its actual length as the Faery Queen, Spenser was far inferior to the master whom he imitated. His poem is deficient alike in unity of action and in clearness of moral. But it must be at once added that, if we are content with Lowell to set aside the design of the work, to regard the Faery Queen as a great picture gallery, and to fix our attention on the detached ideas and conceptions that it embodies, the imagination of Spenser is frequently found mounting to

heights of poetry which are beyond the reach of Ariosto. The Italian poet was incapable of conceiving the sublime image of Chivalric Honour which is enshrined by Spenser in the following most noble stanza :

In woods, in waves, in warres, she wonts to dwell,
And shall be found with perill and with paine;

Ne can the man that moulds in idle cell

Unto her happy mansions attaine :

Before her gate high God did sweat ordaine,
And wakeful watches ever to abide ;

But easy is the way and passage plaine

That leads to pleasure: it may soon be spied;
And day and night to all her gates stand open wide.1

Ariosto's representation of character again,—especially female character, though full of human interest, wants fineness and delicacy. Spenser's female portraits are coloured with a purity and refinement of feeling worthy of Homer in his character of Nausicaa. His "maidenliness" of feeling, as Coleridge well calls it, is brilliantly exemplified in the episode of Britomart, one of the few actors in the Faery Queen who awakes living interest. Several of the situations in which this heroine is involved, arising out of the mistakes caused by her masculine attire, are devised and treated with great beauty of imagination. Her "maidenliness," with its freedom from prudery, in the episode of Malecasta, makes a fine contrast to the effrontery of Ariosto in the parallel story of Ricciardetto and Fiordispina; and there is much charm in her assumption of bravado to conceal her womanly softness, and in Amoret's mixed feelings of gratitude and reserve towards her supposed male preserver. In such passages we feel the influence of Sidney's knightly ideal, a standard which was practically unknown in Italy, as we see from Ariosto's treatment of the story of Bradamante. Not less admirable is the description of Una's adventures in the first book, and of the temptations of Sir Guyon in the second, episodes in which Spenser reaches the highest level of poetical invention.

Ariosto occasionally introduces allegorical personages 1 Faerie Queene, book ii. canto iii. 41.

unto his Orlando, but always with very ill success; indeed these conceptions of his want sublimity as much as Spenser's abstract knights want human interest. Compare his description of the monster, who attacks Rinaldo in the Forest of Ardennes, and who is apparently the impersonation of jealousy, with any of Spenser's Seven Deadly Sins :

Tutto in tratto vide il ciel turbato,
Sparito il sol tra nuvoli nascoso,
Ed uscir fuor d' una caverna oscura
Un strano mostro in femminil figura.

Mill' occhi in capo avea senza palpebre ;
Non può serrarli, e non credo che dorma.

Non men che gli occhi avea l' orecchie crebre ;
Avea, in loco di crin, serpi a gran torma.
Fuor delle diaboliche tenebre

Nel mondo usci la spaventevold forma.

Un fiero e maggior serpe ha per la coda
Che pel petto si gira, e che l' annoda.1

Here, on the other hand, is the figure of Avarice in the procession in the House of Pride:

Next greedy Avarice by him did ride
Upon a camel loaden all with gold:

Two iron coffers hong on either side,

With precious metall full as they might hold;
And in his lap an heape of coine he told,
For of his wicked pelfe his God he made,
And unto hell himself for money sold;
Accursed usury was all his trade,

And right and wrong y-like in equall balance waide.

His life was nigh unto deth's dore y-plaste,
And thredbare cote and cobled shoes he ware,
Ne scarse good morsell all his life did taste,
But both from backe and belly still did spare,
To fill his bags and richesse to compare :

1 "Suddenly he saw the heaven darkened, and the sun hidden in clouds, and issuing from a dark cavern a strange monster in female form. In her head she had a thousand eyes without eyelashes: she cannot close them and I believe she never sleeps: her ears are as numerous as her eyes in place of hair she had a host of serpents. Forth from the darkness of hell issued the frightful shape into the world, holding by the tail a fierce serpent huger than all the rest, which winds round her breast in a knot."--O. F. canto xlii. 46, 47.