and scarcely any superior. The variety of humors which is to be found in her novels is immense; and though the talk of each person separately is monotonous, the general effect is not monotony, but a very lively and agreeable diversity. Her plots are rudely constructed and improbable, if we consider them in themselves. But they are admirably framed for the purpose of exhibiting striking groups of eccentric characters, each governed by his own peculiar whim, each talking his own peculiar jargon, and each bringing out by oppositing the oddities of all the rest. We will give one example out of many which occur to us. All probability is violated in order to bring Mr. Delvile, Mr. Briggs, Mr. Hobson, and Mr. Albany into a room together. But when we have them there, we soon forget probability in the exquisitely ludicrous effect which is produced by the conflict of four old fools, each raging with a monomania of his own, each talking a dialect of his own, and each inflaming all the others anew every time he opens his mouth. SPENSER AND HIS CRITICS JOHN WILSON [This selection is an abbreviation of one of a series of garrulous appreciative papers on Spenser which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, the present one in September, 1834,under Wilson's pen-name of "Christopher North." The opening sentences refer to Thomas Warton's work called Observations on the Fairy Queen, published 1754.] All honor to the memory of Tom Warton!-all honor and all love. He was a poet as well as an antiquary, and understood Spenser far better than he thought; and had he not had the fear of Aristotle before his eyes, and an awe in his soul, not too profound-for that was impossible but habitual rather than reflective, for the Greek and the Roman genius-the Classics-he would have left unsaid many questionable, many important, and many untrue sayings (vet has he said many that are most true) about the Faerie Queene. He was in his day, and is now, one of the brightest ornaments, the greatest glories, of Oxford, of her whom Lord Brougham (not in the Edinburgh Review) rightly calls that "old, renowned, and famous university." He wonders to find Ariosto, many years after the Revival of Letters, "rejecting truth for magic, and preferring the ridiculous and incoherent excursions of Boiardo to the propriety and uniformity of the Grecian and Roman models." Propriety and uniformity! You must take the terms in an enlarged sense indeed, before you can justly apply them to the adventures of Ulysses. And was not Medea an enchantress, as well as Calypso and Ciree? Beni, he says, one of the most celebrated critics of the sixteenth century, was still so infatuated with a fondness for the old Provençal vein that he ventured to write a regular dissertation in which he compares Ariosto and Homer. And why not? There are in the Ariosto of the South and in the Ariosto of the North-you know whom Byron so designated 1-as fine things as in Homer. They are Homeric. Warton speaks contemptuously of the unnatural events of the romantic school of Provençal bards, the machinations of imaginary beings and adventures, entertaining only as they were improbable, and wonders why, when the works of Homer and Aristotle were restored and studied in Italy, and every species of literature at last emerged from the depths of Gothic ignorance and barbarity, poets followed not the example and precept of antiquity, in justness of thought and design, and the decorum of nature. The answer is plain and pleasant-because original genius is not imitative of models, however admirable, and, inspired by what is old, invents what is new- -"alike, but oh, how different!" Ariosto, with all his extravagances-sad to say was preferred by the Italians to Tasso, who "composed his poem in some measure on a regular plan." The genius of both was, is, and ever will be justly, and raptly, admired by all civilized men; for there is truth in magic; strangest and wildest events are natural, or may be made to seem so,—which is all the same; the machinations of imaginary beings rule all the characters and events in the Iliad, even more than in the Odyssey,adventures, not only improbable but repugnant to reason, 1 Scott (in Childe Harold, canto iv, stanza 40). become sworn articles in the creed of Fancy's faith; and the "decorum which nature dictates" Nature herself rejoices to give to the winds. Genius, being familiar with what Warton, inconsistently with his own fine fancy, calls the illegitimate and romantic manner of composition introduced and exhibited by the Provençal bards, kindled into higher and stronger flame at the inspiring touch of the old Greek fire that had smouldered for so many ages beneath the ruins Time had made, and again burst forth into day from the dust. But Tasso and Ariosto, favorites of Nature and confident in her love, too deeply felt their power to deign to follow afar off; and all followers, however near they may think themselves, or may be thought, lag behind the guiding stars,-— and yet, remote as they are, are eclipsed by the very luminaries from which in vain they seek to draw their light. Such was the prevailing taste, continues Warton, when Spenser projected his Faerie Queene, "a poem which, according to the practice of Ariosto, was to consist of allegories, enchantments, and romantic expeditions, conducted by knights, giants, magicians, and fictitious beings. It may be urged that Spenser made an unfortunate choice. and discovered but little judgment!" Anything may be urged, and the more foolish the better; it may be urged that Milton made an unfortunate choice, and discovered but little judgment, in Paradise Lost,-and that Shakes peare was culpable beyond pardon in having imagined Lear; for there is nothing like that epic, or that tragedy, in Homer or Eschylus. As for the Midsummer Night's Dream, 'tis mere lunacy; and Macbeth is a madman, though kept in countenance by Hercules Furens.2 Yet the critic who maunders thus oftener writes in the spirit of a true creed, and even at the close of this very paragraph says truly that Spenser, with whom Ariosto was a favorite, was naturally led "to prefer that plan which would admit the most extensive range for his unlimited imagination." In other words, his unlimited imagination looked over the whole field of human life, and saw all the powers and passions of humanity there passing 2 By Euripides. to and fro; and, impersonating them all, made them all visible, giving them duties to perform, and triumphs to achieve, and defeats to sustain,—and furnishing a purgatory for the erring, a hell for the guilty, and a heaven for the good, entrancing and astounding all generations by the ineffable beauty of the Bower of Bliss, and the inutterable dismalness of the Cave of Despair! Warton is himself again—though not always—in his chapter on "Spenser's Allegorical Character." Hume says "that Homer copied true natural manners, which, however rough and uncultivated, will always form an agreeable and interesting picture, but the pencil of the English poet [Spenser] was employed in drawing the affectations and conceits and fopperies of chivalry." 3 That is sad stuff. Was Achilles rough and uncultivated? And lived there ever on this earth such a being? Nonever. But, not to dwell on that, there were chivalrous ages, just as there were heroic ages; and if they had their affectations and conceits and fopperies, you will seek in vain for them in the Faerie Queene. Almost all Spenser's critics, however encomiastic, have strenuously exerted their wits, great or small, to find out defects and faults in his allegories, and in the general conduct of the poem. Sir William Temple must have been hard put to it when he said that, though Spenser's flights of song were very noble and high, yet his moral lay so bare that it lost the effect. According to this authority, your moral should lie cunningly concealed, that it may rise unexpectedly out of the murk, like a ghost in its grave-clothes, and, after a solemn but not very intelligible warning, melt away into the nearest stanza. Hughes, in his sensible Essay on Allegorical Poetry, thinks that a moral which is not clear is next to no moral at all, and complains bitterly on the darkness of many of the ancient fables. Even Lord Bacon, in his Wisdom of the Ancients, has often failed in deciphering the best known traditions in the heathen mythology,— many of which, it is not to be doubted, were allegorical; but an allegory, says Hughes, somewhat nettled, "which See the History of England, end of “Appendix III." In his essay "Of Poetry." Published in his edition of Spenser, 1715. is not clear is a riddle"; and conscious, perhaps, that he was himself no Edipus, he is intolerant of Sphinx. He mentions some properties which seem requisite in all wellinvented fables of this kind, and then perpends, in a wiseacreish pause, to consider if they are all to be found always in the Faerie Queene. One is, that the fable shall everywhere be consistent with itself; and the sage, seeming to shake his head, finally declares that "most of the allegories in the Faerie Queene are agreable to this rule; but in one of his other poems the author has manifestly transgressed it,-the poem I mean is that which is called 'Prothalamion.' In this the two brides are figured by two beautiful swans, sailing down the river Thames. The allegory breaks before the reader is prepared for it; and we see them, at their landing, in their true shapes, without knowing how this sudden change is effected." requires small shrewdness to know how the sudden change was effected: Spenser merely lifted up his forefingerand the swans became virgins, and the virgins brides; nay, he had not even to lift up his little finger, for the "beauty still more beauteous" had kept for so long a time brightening before his eyes that the fairest swans that ever floated in watery light grew of themselves, without any conscious magic on his part, into the fairest of England's daughters; and then Above the rest were goodly to be seene Two gentle knights of lovely face and feature, That like the twins of Jove they seemed in sight Received those two fair brides, their loves' delight. It O, ghost of Mr. Hughes! as you love us for speaking handsomely of that gentleman in this magazine, revoke his sentence of condemnation on this close of the "Prothalamion," and puzzle not your own worthy self in Hades with vainly attempting to see into the mystery of that transfiguration; for pardon us for saying that the wisest specter may study all death long, without catching so |