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 wide
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,

"And eke Sir Paridell, all were he deare,
Who from her went to seek another lott,
And now by fortune was arrived here.

*

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

1

"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 trans-
formation into Jealousy itself! a poetical flight, the dar-
ingness 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

into a deerskin, and she and her nymphs hunt him through wood and dale. Fauns and Satyrs, it is to be observed, are represented as wise or foolish, according as the poet allegorizes the elements of a country life, and the reflections, or clownish impulses, of sequestered people. The Faun, in particular, who was the more oracular of the two, might be supposed either to speak from his own knowledge, or to be merely the channel of a higher one, and so to partake of that reverend character of fatuity, which is ascribed in some countries to idiots. The Satyr was more conscious and petulant: he waited more especially upon Bacchus; was loud and saucy; may easily be supposed to have been noisiest and most abusive at the time of grapes; and it is to him, we think, and him alone (whatever learned distinctions have been made between satyri and saturæ, or the fruit which he got together, and him who got them), that the origin of the word satire is to be traced; that is to say, satire was such free and abusive speech, as the vintagers pelted people with, just as they might with the contents of their baskets.

To make Satyr, therefore, clever or clownish, or both, just as it suits the writer's purpose, is in good keeping. To make him revengeful for not having his will, is equally good, as Tasso has done in the "Aminta." To make him old, and scorned by a young mistress, is warrantable, as Guarini has done in the "Pastor Fido;" and even a touch of sentiment may not be refused him, if visited by a painful sense of the difference of his shape; which is an imitation of the beautiful Polyphemic invention of Theocritus, and was introduced into modern poetry by the precursor of those poets, the inventor of the sylvan drama "Beccari." But we cannot say so much for another great poet of ours, Fletcher, who, spoilt by his town breeding, and

thinking he could not make out a case for chastity, and the admiration of it, but by carrying it to a pitch of the improbable, introduces into his “Faithful Shepherdess ” a Satyr thoroughly divested of his nature, the most sentimental and Platonical of lovers, and absolute guardian of what he exists only to oppose. The clipping of hedges into peacocks was nothing to this. It was like changing warmth into cold, and taking the fertility out of the earth. Elegance was another affair. The rudest things natural contain a principle of that. You may show even a Satyr in his graces, as you may a goat in a graceful attitude, or the turns and blossoms of a thorn. But to make the shaggy and impetuous wood-god, with his veins full of the sap of the vine, a polished and retiring lover, all for the metaphysics of the passion, and bowing and backing himself out of doors like a "sweet signior," was to strike barrenness into the spring, and make the “swift and fiery sun,” which the poet so finely speaks of, halt and become a thing deliberate. Pan, at the sight, should have cut off his universal beard. Certainly, the Satyr ought to have clipped his coat, and withdrawn into the urbanities of a suit of clothes. He should have "walked gowned."

However, there is a ruddy and rough side of the apple still left; and with this we proceed to indulge ourselves, cutting away the rest. Fletcher is a true poet, and could not speak of woods and wood-gods without finding means to give us a proper taste of them. His Satyr comes in

well.

ENTER A SATYR WITH A BASKET OF FRUIT.

Satyr. Through yon same bending plain,

That flings his arms down to the main,
And through these thick woods have I run,
Whose bottom never kiss'd the sun