restricted and unpervading; and he lavishes the exuberance of his invention and fancy in depicting manners and customs destined to be forgotten by succeeding generations, Shakspeare is the poet of the passions, while Spenser is the poet of habit: the one has an universal command over our intellect; the other, but a temporary one. The former lakes our sympathies by storm; while the latter wins us by insensible degrees. We fall prostrate before the giant genius of Shakspeare; while we become the willing captives of Spenser. He is at once the most picturesque, the most graceful, and the most visionary of our poets. None has ever treated with a more masterly or more delicate handling the graceful characteristics of woman. He drew her beauties and her virtues in colours not more glowing than true, while her foibles are so lightly touched, and with so much apparent sympathy, that he makes even her failings lean to Virtue’s side.
The same year which brought before the public the last three books of the Faerie Queene, produced the only prose work of our author: in 1596 he presented to Queen Elizabeth his “View of the State of Ireland.” This masterly performance was intended to have had a mediatory effect between the Queen and her Irish subjects, but from its bitter tone, was not likely to have a pacificatory influence, and remained in MS. till 1633, when it was published by Sir James Ware, in his collection of the writers on Ireland, from a MS. in the library of Archbishop Usher. Ledwich, the learned Irish antiquary, writes:—“Civilization having almost obliterated every vestige of our ancient manners, the remembrance of them is only to be found in Spenser; so that he may be considered at this day as an Irish antiquary.” In the opinion of Ware, “He seems rather to have indulged the fancy and licence of a poet, than the judgment and fidelity requisite for an historian.” For this work, which is disfigured by prejudice, Spenser has certainly but little claim upon Irish veneration, but it exhibits vast political knowledge, and ascribes many of the miseries of that unhappy country to their proper sources.[1]
Besides the works we have thus enumerated, we learn from his letters, those of Harvey, and the notes of E. K., that Spenser wrote several, which are now lost; the chief of these were a “‘Translation of Ecclesiasticus;’ a ‘Translation of Canticum Canticorum;’ the ‘Dying Pelican;’ the ‘Hours of Our Lord;’ the ‘Sacrifice of a Sinner;’ the ‘Seven Psalms;’ ‘Dreams;’ the ‘English Poet;’ ‘Legends;’ the ‘Court of Cupid;’ the ‘Hell of Lovers:’ his ‘Purgatory;’ ‘Se’nnight’s Slumber;’ ‘Pageants;’ ‘Nine Comedies;’ ‘Stemmata Dudleiana;’ and ‘Epithalamion Thamesis.’” From this interesting catalogue, it is evident, that Spenser’s muse was as prolific as she was powerful; and it is much to be regretted that not one of these seventeen pieces has ever been recovered. E. K., in the epistle to Harvey prefixed to the Shepheards Calender, speaking of the “Dreams,” “Legends,” and “Court of Cupid,” says, “whose commendation to set out were verie vaine, the things though worthie of many, yet being knowne to fewe,” and in the argument to the Eclogue
- ↑ A MS. copy which belonged to Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy of Ireland, in 1605–6, occurs in one of Mr. Thorpe’s Catalogues, Price £31 10 s. Various other MS. copies are known, and exist one in the public library, at Cambridge, one among Lord Keeper Egerton’s papers at Lambeth, one in Trinity College, Dublin, and one in the Gonville and Cuius College, MS.
