OBSERVATIONS
ON
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS
OF
EDMUND SPENSER.
EULOGY ON SPENSER.
FROM SHAKESPEARE’S PASSIONATE PILGRIM.
“If Musick and sweet Poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
Then must the love be great ’twixt thee and me,
Because thou lov’st the one, and I the other.—
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;
Spenser, to me, whose deep conceit is such
As, passing all conceit, needs no defence:
Thou lov’st to hear the sweet melodious sound
That Phœbus’ lute, the Queen of Musick, makes;
And I in deep delight am chiefly drown’d,
When as himself to singing he betakes.
One god is god of both, as poets feign,
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.”
Writers on English Literature are unanimous in assigning to the reign of Elizabeth, the title of the Augustan age; an application in every way just, as, to her encouragement and example may be attributed the revival of letters in this country. From the death of Chaucer to the birth of Spenser, a period of nearly two centuries, but few, and those not important names had been added to the records of our literary history. The writings of Gower, Occleve, Lydgate, and Caxton, with some few monkish legends, and the poems of Surrey, Wyatt, and Sackville, may be enumerated as among the chief additions to our poetry during that stormy period when the public mind was agitated by the struggles between the followers of the Church of Rome, and the advocates of the
