be sufficient to suggest the fancy to an imaginative people. The Satyr Islands of Pausanias are evidently islands frequented by apes, or rather baboons; unless, indeed, we、 are to believe with Monboddo, that men once had tails s; which is hardly a greater distinction from some men without them, than a philosopher is from a savage. Orang Outang signifies a wild man; and Linnæus has called the Great Ape the Ape Satyr (Simia Satyrus). Again, there have been real wild men ; and a single one of these, such as Peter the Wild Boy, would people a country like Greece with Satyrs.

But it is not necessary to recur to palpable beings for a poetical stock. A sound, a shadow, a look of something in the dark, was enough to make them; and if this had not been found, they would still have been fancied. Satyrs, in an allegorical sense, are the animal spirits of the creation, its exuberance, its natural health and vigor, its headlong tendency to reproduction. In a superstitious and popular point of view, they were the spirits of the woods, a branch of the universal family of genii and fairies. Finally, in the great world of poetry, they partake, on both these accounts, of whatever has been said or done for them, that remains interesting to the imagination; and are still to be found there, immortal as their poets. As long as there is a mystery in the world, and men are unable to affirm what beings may not exist, so long poetry will have what existence it pleases, and the mind will have a corner in which to entertain them. Therefore, sage and serious Spenser" tells us wisely of

"The wood-god's breed which must for ever last."

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the

In no part of the world of poetry were they ever more alive or lasting, than in the woods of his "Faerie Queene.”

You have, indeed, a stronger sense of them in his pages, than in the works of antiquity. The ancient poets appear to have been too close at hand with them. The familiarity, though of a religious sort, had in it something of contempt. Spenser is always remote,—in the uttermost parts of poetry; and thither shall he take us to meet them. Here they are, on a bright morning, in the thick of their glades. Una is in distress, and has cried out, so that her voice is heard throughout the woods.

"A troope of Faunes and Satyres, far away

Within the wood, were dancing in a rownd,
Whiles old Sylvanus slept in shady arber sownd:

Who when they heard that pitteous, strained voice,
In haste forsooke their rurall merriment,
And ran towards the far rebownded noyce,
To weet what wight so loudly did lament.
Unto the place they came incontinent:
Whom when the raging Sarazin espyde,
A rude, mishappen, monstrous rablement,
Whose like he never saw, he durst not byde;
But
got his ready steed, and fast away gan ryde.

Such fearefull fitt assaid her trembling hart,
Ne word to speake, ne joynt to move, she had.
The salvage nation feele her secret smart,
And read her sorrow in her count'nance sad;
Their frowning forheades, with rough hornes yclad
And rustick horror, all asyde doe lay;

And, gently grenning, shew a semblance glad
To comfort her; and, feare to put away,

Their backward-bent knees teach her humbly to obay.

The doubtfull damzell dare not yet committ
Her single person to their barbarous truth;
But still twixt feare and hope amazd does sitt,
Late learnd what harme to hasty truth ensu'th;
They in compassion of her tender youth
And wonder of her beautie soverayne,
Are wonne with pitty and unwonted ruth;

And, all prostráte upon the lowly playne,

Doe kisse her feete, and fawne on her with count'nance fayne.

Their harts she ghesseth by their humble guise,

And yieldes her to extremitie of time:

So from the ground she fearelesse doth arise,
And walketh forth without suspect of crime:
They, all as glad as birdes of joyous pryme,
Thence lead her forth, about her dauncing round,
Shouting, and singing all a shepheard's ryme;
And, with greene branches strowing all the ground,
Do worship her as queene, with olive girlond cround.

And all the way their merry pipes they sound,
That all the woods with doubled eccho ring;
And with their horned feet doe weare the ground,
Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring.
So towards old Sylvanus her they bring ;
Who, with the noyse awaked, commeth out
To weet the cause, his weake steps governing
And aged limbs on cypresse stadle stout;
And with an yvie twyne his waste is girt about.

The wood-borne people fall before her flat,
And worship her as goddesse of the wood;
And old Sylvanus self bethinkes not, what
To think of wight so fayre; but gazing stood
In doubt to deeme her born of earthly brood.

The wooddy nymphes, faire Hamadryades,
Her to behold doe thether runne apace;
And all the troupe of light-foot Naiades
Flocke all about to see her lovely face."

Book I. canto 6.

Spenser has a knight among his chivalry, who was the son of a Satyr by the wife of a country gentleman, one Therion (or Brute) by name, -a severe insinuation on . the part of the gentle poet :

"A loose unruly swayne,

Who had more joy to raunge the forrest wyde,
And chase the salvage beast with busie payne,
Then serve his ladie's love."

Perhaps the poet intended a hint to the squires of his time. He tells us of another wife, who had a considerable acquaintance among the wood-gods. It is not so easy to relate her story; but she would be a charming person by the time she was thirty, and make a delicate heart content! His account of her is certainly intended as a lesson to old gentlemen.

"The gentle lady, loose at random lefte,

The greene-wood long did walke, and wander wid
At wilde adventure, like a forlorne wefte;

Till on a daye the Satyres her espide

Straying alone withouten groome or guide:

Her up they tooke, and with them home her ledd,

With them as housewife ever to abide,

To milk their goats, and make them cheese and bredd."

She forgets her old husband Malbecco, who has just arrived at the spot where she lives, —

Soone as the old man saw Sir Paridell,

(who was the person that had taken his wife from him).

He fainted, and was almost dead with feare,
Ne word he had to speake, his griefe to tell,
But to him louted low, and greeted goodly well;

And, after, asked him for Hellenore.
'I take no keepe of her,' sayd Paridell,
'She wonneth in the forest, there before.'

So forth he rode as his adventure fell."

A great noise is afterwards heard in the woods, of bagpipes and "shrieking hubbubs;" the old man hides in a bush; and after awhile

"The jolly Satyres full of fresh delight

Came dauncing forth, and with them nimbly ledd
Faire Hellenore, with girlonds all bespredd,

Whom their May-lady they had newly made:

She, proude of that new honour which they redd,

And of their lovely fellowship full glade,

Daunst lively, and her face did with a lawrell shade."

What a sunny picture is in this line!

"The silly man, that in the thickett lay
Saw all this goodly sport, and grieved sore;
Yet durst he not against it do or say,
But did his hart with bitter thoughts engore,
To see th' unkindness of his Hellenore.

All day they daunced with great lustyhedd,

And with their horned feet the greene grass wore ;

The wiles their gotes upon the brouzes fedd,
Till drouping Phoebus gan to hyde his golden hedd.

Tho up they gan their merry pypes to trusse,
And all their goodly heardes did gather rownd."

The old gentleman creeps to his wife's bed's-head at night, and endeavors to persuade her to go away with him; but she is deaf to all he can say; so in the passion of his misery, and supernatural strength of his very weakness, he runs away, "runs with himself away," — till, under the most appalling circumstances, he undergoes a transformation into Jealousy itself! a poetical flight, the daringness of which can only be equalled (and vindicated, as it is) by the mastery of its execution. See the passage; which, though a half-allegory, is calculated to affect the feelings of the poetical reader, almost as much as Burley and his cavern in "Old Mortality" do readers in general. It is at the end of Canto X. book 3.

Spenser has a story of "Foolish God Faunus," who comes on Diana when she is bathing; for which he is put