for a long time the fashion. This is evident from the existence of the singular affectation of euphuism for many years at the Court of Elizabeth. John Lyly, a dramatist and poet of high ability, published in 1579 a romance which he called Euphues.1 One of the chief aims of the book was to introduce 66 a pure and reformed English," but this contained an enormous disproportion of Latin words. So fashionable did the style of Lyly become, that Sir Edward Blount, writing in 1632, says, "Our nation are in his debt for a new English which he taught them. All our ladies were then his scholars; and that beauty in Court which could not parley euphuism-that is to say, who was unable to converse in that pure and reformed English, which he had formed his work to be the standard of,—was as little regarded as she who now there speaks not French." We can get a very fair idea of the extravagance to which this fashion of euphuism was carried in the language which Sir W. Scott puts into the mouth of Sir Piercie Shafton in the Monastery. 14. What, then, with the universal study of Latin, and what with this special and fashionable pursuit of euphuism at Court, we can quite well appreciate and understand Sir Thomas Browne when he says, "We shall, within a few years, be fain to learn Latin to understand English, and a work will prove of equal facility in either." Thomas Wilson, who published in 1553 a System of Rhetoric and of Logic, says: "Some seek so far for outlandish English, that they forget altogether their mother's language. And I dare swear this, if some of their mothers were alive, they would not be able to tell what they say; and yet these fine English clerks3 will say they speak in their mother-tongue, if a man should charge them with counterfeiting the king's English." And Dr. Heylin remarks, in 1658, that “more French and Latin words have gained 1 The Fine Speaker. 2 Translate into simple and pure English: (a) Thou shalt manducate thy panicular provisions in the perspiration of thy front. (b) It has not sufficient vitality to preserve it from putrefaction. (c) Deity is my pastor; I shall not be indigent. (d) They had no apprehension of his violating his verbal engagement at any juncture. (e) 3 Scholars. "Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated ground upon us since the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign than were admitted by our ancestors, not only since the Norman, but since the Roman conquest." This use, then, of Latin words had got, not only into written, but into spoken, language; it had made its way into the Court, into the bar, and into the pulpit. It was practised and was understood by every one who had the slightest claim to education. Spenser lived in the midst of all this; and, as himself a learned man and a courtier, he could not have resisted its influence. And thus Spenser could not help using Latin expres. sions where English would have done equally well. 15. But there was in Spenser's case a special influence not less important. And that is-his subject. Had he been describing the every-day life of England, as Chaucer did, he would no doubt have used language more near the common level and high-road of that every-day life; or, had his stories related to the life of a past time and a foreign country, his own good taste would have prompted him to employ a style that suited these stories. But his subject lay entirely out of time and out of space. There was no necessity for a "local colouring;" there was as little necessity for a style that would suit a particular age. Ben Jonson said that " Spenser writ no language." If Jonson meant by this that Spenser did not use the language of ordinary men in ordinary circumstances, or that he did not use the stirring and living language that a dramatist would have been compelled to use, he was perfectly right. Or, if he meant that Spenser's vocabulary was not the vocabulary of the England then existing, or of any England previously existing, then he was right again. But, if he meant that Spenser did not write in a self-consistent and homogeneous English style, then he was wrong, and entirely wrong. The colouring of Spenser's style comes from the brilliance of his own mind; and he did not limit himself to any special age in drawing for himself from the "well of English undefiled," or from the private springs of other poets' fancy, the phrases and words that suited his subject best. The truth is, as Mr. Kitchin well remarks," without any intention of writing in Old English,' he looked always backwards, never forwards, in his choice of words and phrases." He was influenced by the euphuism of his time; but 1 Spenser says of Chaucer : "I follow here the footing of thy feet." he was not subdued. The most ridiculous and opposite accusations have been made against him. Dryden accuses him of using too many Latin words; a "Person of Quality" in the last century finds it necessary, on the contrary, to rid him of his " Saxon dialect;" just as Milton was turned into prose by a clergyman for the benefit of "country readers." 16. Spenser uses words (a) in their old form, and (b) in their old or primary meaning; and (c) he also uses inflections that had dropped out of the language long before his own time. Thus he has (a) been for are, mote for might, gossib for gossip,1 ydle for idle, and lad for led. Then (b) he uses affront in the sense of to face or oppose, bewale for to choose, to bid for to pray, and to blaze for to proclaim. Then, among old and obsolete inflections, he employs (c) such as fone for foes, ydrad for dreaded, glitterand for glittering, and eyne for eyes. But the reader very soon becomes accustomed to these and other peculiarities—comes to like them—and comes to feel that they are the fitting dress of Spenser's beautiful thoughts and wealthy imagery. 2 16. Spenser is the first great writer of the Elizabethan age. He marks the dawn and the early morning, but he did not live to see the full meridian, of the day. One year after the publication of the six books of the Faerie Queene, and two years before his death, he could have read Shakspeare's Early Comedies; but these give a very weak idea of the fulness of power which Shakspeare afterwards displayed. Bacon's Essays were published in the same year; and Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity had appeared three years before. Spenser's command over language is simply marvellous; and there seems to be no limit to his power of description. The most remarkable quality of his style, however, is its music. Hazlitt says: "His versification is at once the most smooth and the most sounding in the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds. . Spenser is the poet of our waking dreams; and he has invented, not only a language, but a music of his own for them. The undulations are infinite, like those of the waves of the sea; but the effect is still the same, lulling the senses into a deep oblivion of the jarring noises of the world, from which we have no wish to be ever recalled." The purpose of his great poem was to fashion a gentleman or noble person in ver 66 1 And in the sense of companion, the one next to the original sense, "related in God." Compare the Scotch sib = related, much used in Sir W. Scott. 2 Compare the Scotch form, een. tuous and gentle discipline." "There is something," says Pope, “in Spenser that pleases one as strongly in one's old age as it did in one's youth. I read the Faerie Queene when I was about twelve, with a vast deal of delight; and I think it gave me as much when I read it over about a year or two ago." He has been called The Poet's Poet, not only because he is the most poetical of poets, but because he has trained more poets in their art than any other writer of verse in England. Milton, Pope, Keats, and many others, have been profoundly influenced by him. The First Book of the Faerie Queene is generally considered to be the best; and next to it in beauty comes the Second. 18. The best final deliverance on Spenser's style has been given by Professor Craik: "These peculiarities—the absence of an interesting story or concatenation of incidents, and the want of human character and passion in the personages that carry on the story, such as it is—are no defects in the Fairy Queen. On the contrary, the poetry is only left thereby so much the purer. Without calling Spenser the greatest of poets, we may still say that his poetry is the most poetical of all poetry. Other poets are all of them something else as well as poets, and deal in reflection, or reasoning, or humour, or wit, almost as largely as in the proper product of the imaginative faculty; his strains alone, in the Fairy Queen, are poetry, all poetry, and nothing but poetry. It is vision unrolled after vision, to the sound of endlessly varying music. The shaping spirit of imagination,' considered apart from moral sensibility,-from intensity of passion on the one hand, and grandeur of conception on the other, certainly never was possessed in the like degree by any other writer; nor has any other evinced a deeper feeling of all forms of the beautiful; nor have words ever been made by any other to embody thought with more wonderful art. On the one hand invention and fancy in the creation or conception of his thoughts; on the other the most exquisite sense of beauty, united with a command over all the resources of language, in their vivid and musical expression-these are the great distinguishing characteristics of Spenser's poetry. What of passion is in it lies mostly in the melody of the verse; but that is often thrilling and subduing in the highest degree. Its moral tone, also, is very captivating: a soul of nobleness, gentle and tender as the spirit of its own chivalry, modulates every cadence." 19. His greatest work is the Faerie Queene; the work in which he shows the most wonderful command of language, his Hymne of Heavenly Love; but the most perfect of all his poems is the Epithalamium —a bridal poem written on his own approaching marriage. In this his full powers, both of heart and head, worked together. The rhythms of this poem are extremely subtle and extraordinarily varied. His Astrophel, an elegy on the death of Sidney, may be compared with other elegiac poems in respect of thought and imagery; for example, with Milton's Lycidas, on the death of King; Shelley's Adonais, on the death of Keats; Tennyson's In Memoriam, on the death of Hallam ; and M. Arnold's Thyrsis, on the death of Clough. EXERCISES TO CHAPTER VI. Ex. 1. Scan the following verse: Thus : As he thereon stood gazing, he might see And what unknowën nation there empeopled were. As hé | thereón | stood gá | zing hé | might sée | =5 x a. Give also the rhymes in their order, calling the first rhyme a, the second b, and so on. Ex. 2. Scan the following, and mark the rhymes:— His sports were faire, his joyance innocent, Sweet without sowre, and honny without gall; Merily masking both in bowre and hall. When Astrophel so ever was away. |