The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume I Part 16

[Footnote 1: From Mr. Green's note. Ed.]

SPENSER.

Born in London, 1553.--Died 1599.

There is this difference, among many others, between Shakspeare and Spenser:--Shakspeare is never coloured by the customs of his age; what appears of contemporary character in him is merely negative; it is just not something else. He has none of the fict.i.tious realities of the cla.s.sics, none of the grotesquenesses of chivalry, none of the allegory of the middle ages; there is no sectarianism either of politics or religion, no miser, no witch,--no common witch,--no astrology--nothing impermanent of however long duration; but he stands like the yew tree in Lorton vale, which has known so many ages that it belongs to none in particular; a living image of endless self-reproduction, like the immortal tree of Malabar. In Spenser the spirit of chivalry is entirely predominant, although with a much greater infusion of the poet's own individual self into it than is found in any other writer. He has the wit of the southern with the deeper inwardness of the northern genius.

No one can appreciate Spenser without some reflection on the nature of allegorical writing. The mere etymological meaning of the word, allegory,--to talk of one thing and thereby convey another,--is too wide. The true sense is this,--the employment of one set of agents and images to convey in disguise a moral meaning, with a likeness to the imagination, but with a difference to the understanding,--those agents and images being so combined as to form a h.o.m.ogeneous whole. This distinguishes it from metaphor, which is part of an allegory. But allegory is not properly distinguishable from fable, otherwise than as the first includes the second, as a genus its species; for in a fable there must be nothing but what is universally known and acknowledged, but in an allegory there may be that which is new and not previously admitted. The pictures of the great masters, especially of the Italian schools, are genuine allegories. Amongst the cla.s.sics, the mult.i.tude of their G.o.ds either precluded allegory altogether, or else made every thing allegory, as in the Hesiodic Theogonia; for you can scarcely distinguish between power and the personification of power. The 'Cupid and Psyche' of, or found in, Apuleius, is a phenomenon. It is the Platonic mode of accounting for the fall of man. The 'Battle of the Soul' [1] by Prudentius is an early instance of Christian allegory.

Narrative allegory is distinguished from mythology as reality from symbol; it is, in short, the proper intermedium between person and personification. Where it is too strongly individualized, it ceases to be allegory; this is often felt in the 'Pilgrim's Progress', where the characters are real persons with nick names. Perhaps one of the most curious warnings against another attempt at narrative allegory on a great scale, may be found in Ta.s.so's account of what he himself intended in and by his 'Jerusalem Delivered'.

As characteristic of Spenser, I would call your particular attention in the first place to the indescribable sweetness and fluent projection of his verse, very clearly distinguishable from the deeper and more inwoven harmonies of Shakspeare and Milton. This stanza is a good instance of what I mean:--

Yet she, most faithfull ladie, all this while Forsaken, wofull, solitarie mayd, Far from all peoples preace, as in exile, In wildernesse and wastfull deserts strayd To seeke her knight; who, subtily betrayd Through that late vision which th' enchaunter wrought, Had her abandond; she, of nought affrayd, Through woods and wastnes wide him daily sought, Yet wished tydinges none of him unto her brought.

F. Qu. B. I. c. 3. st. 3.

2. Combined with this sweetness and fluency, the scientific construction of the metre of the 'Faery Queene' is very noticeable. One of Spenser's arts is that of alliteration, and he uses it with great effect in doubling the impression of an image:--

In _w_ildernesse and _w_astful deserts,-- Through _w_oods and _w_astnes _w_ilde,-- They pa.s.se the bitter _w_aves of Acheron, Where many soules sit _w_ailing _w_oefully, And come to _fi_ery _fl_ood of _Ph_legeton, Whereas the d.a.m.ned ghosts in torments _f_ry, And with _sh_arp _sh_rilling _sh_rieks doth bootlesse cry,--&c.

He is particularly given to an alternate alliteration, which is, perhaps, when well used, a great secret in melody:--

A _r_amping lyon _r_ushed suddenly,-- And _s_ad to _s_ee her _s_orrowful constraint,-- And on the gra.s.se her _d_aintie _l_imbes _d_id _l_ay,--&c.

You cannot read a page of the Faery Queene, if you read for that purpose, without perceiving the intentional alliterativeness of the words; and yet so skilfully is this managed, that it never strikes any unwarned ear as artificial, or other than the result of the necessary movement of the verse.

3. Spenser displays great skill in harmonizing his descriptions of external nature and actual incidents with the allegorical character and epic activity of the poem. Take these two beautiful pa.s.sages as ill.u.s.trations of what I mean:--

By this the northerne wagoner had set His sevenfol teme behind the stedfast starre That was in ocean waves yet never wet, But firme is fixt, and sendeth light from farre To all that in the wide deepe wandring arre; And chearefull chaunticlere with his note shrill Had warned once, that Phoebus' fiery carre In hast was climbing up the easterne hill, Full envious that Night so long his roome did fill;

_When_ those accursed messengers of h.e.l.l, That feigning dreame, and that faire-forged spright Came, &c.

B. I. c. 2. st. 1.

At last, the golden orientall gate Of greatest Heaven gan to open fayre; And Phoebus, fresh as brydegrome to his mate, Came dauncing forth, shaking his deawie hayre; And hurld his glistring beams through gloomy ayre.

Which when the wakeful Elfe perceiv'd, streightway He started up, and did him selfe prepayre In sunbright armes and battailons array; For with that Pagan proud he combat will that day.

Ib. c. 5. st. 2.

Observe also the exceeding vividness of Spenser's descriptions. They are not, in the true sense of the word, picturesque; but are composed of a wondrous series of images, as in our dreams. Compare the following pa.s.sage with any thing you may remember 'in pari materia' in Milton or Shakspeare:--

His haughtie helmet, horrid all with gold, Both glorious brightnesse and great terrour bredd For all the crest a dragon did enfold With greedie pawes, and over all did spredd His golden winges; his dreadfull hideous hedd, Close couched on the bever, seemd to throw From flaming mouth bright sparkles fiery redd, That suddeine horrour to faint hartes did show; And scaly tayle was stretcht adowne his back full low.

Upon the top of all his loftie crest A bounch of haires discolourd diversly, With sprinkled pearle and gold full richly drest, Did shake, and seemd to daunce for jollitie; Like to an almond tree ymounted hye On top of greene Selinis all alone, With blossoms brave bedecked daintily, Whose tender locks do tremble every one At everie little breath that under heaven is blowne.

Ib. c. 7. st. 31-2.

4. You will take especial note of the marvellous independence and true imaginative absence of all particular s.p.a.ce or time in the Faery Queene.

It is in the domains neither of history or geography; it is ignorant of all artificial boundary, all material obstacles; it is truly in land of Faery, that is, of mental s.p.a.ce. The poet has placed you in a dream, a charmed sleep, and you neither wish, nor have the power, to inquire where you are, or how you got there. It reminds me of some lines of my own:--

Oh! would to Alla!

The raven or the sea-mew were appointed To bring me food!--or rather that my soul Might draw in life from the universal air!

It were a lot divine in some small skiff Along some ocean's boundless solitude To float for ever with a careless course And think myself the only being alive!

Remorse, Act iv. sc. 3.

Indeed Spenser himself, in the conduct of his great poem, may be represented under the same image, his symbolizing purpose being his mariner's compa.s.s:--

As pilot well expert in perilous wave, That to a stedfast starre his course hath bent, When foggy mistes or cloudy tempests have The faithfull light of that faire lampe yblent, And coverd Heaven with hideous dreriment; Upon his card and compas firmes his eye, The maysters of his long experiment, And to them does the steddy helme apply, Bidding his winged vessell fairely forward fly.

B. II. c. 7. st. 1.

So the poet through the realms of allegory.

5. You should note the quintessential character of Christian chivalry in all his characters, but more especially in his women. The Greeks, except, perhaps, in Homer, seem to have had no way of making their women interesting, but by uns.e.xing them, as in the instances of the tragic Medea, Electra, &c. Contrast such characters with Spenser's Una, who exhibits no prominent feature, has no particularization, but produces the same feeling that a statue does, when contemplated at a distance:--

From her fayre head her fillet she undight, And layd her stole aside: her angels face, As the great eye of Heaven, shyned bright, And made a suns.h.i.+ne in the shady place; Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace.

B. I. c. 3. st. 4.

6. In Spenser we see the brightest and purest form of that nationality which was so common a characteristic of our elder poets. There is nothing unamiable, nothing contemptuous of others, in it. To glorify their country--to elevate England into a queen, an empress of the heart--this was their pa.s.sion and object; and how dear and important an object it was or may be, let Spain, in the recollection of her Cid, declare! There is a great magic in national names. What a damper to all interest is a list of native East Indian merchants! Unknown names are non-conductors; they stop all sympathy. No one of our poets has touched this string more exquisitely than Spenser; especially in his chronicle of the British Kings (B. II. c. 10.), and the marriage of the Thames with the Medway (B. IV. c. 11.), in both which pa.s.sages the mere names const.i.tute half the pleasure we receive. To the same feeling we must in particular attribute Spenser's sweet reference to Ireland:--

Ne thence the Irishe rivers absent were; Sith no lesse famous than the rest they be, &c.

Ib.