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Or it may exist mainly for a decorative purpose, like the frequent golden oriental dawns of Spenser's poem or the superb and colorful symphonies of sky and sea in Pierre Loti's "Iceland Fisherman."
Of course that phrase, 'the armour of light, may be nothing more than a little bit of colour put in by a picturesque imagination, and may suggest simply how the burnished steel would shine and glitter when the sunbeams smote it, and the glistening armour, like that of Spenser's Red Cross Knight, would make a kind of light in the dark cave, into which he went.
He was not the only boy that has enjoyed Shakespeare at the age of ten, but that he should have found interest in Spenser's "Faerie Queene" is somewhat exceptional. Even among professed litterateurs there are few that read that long allegory, and still fewer who enjoy it; and yet Miss Manning assures us that Hawthorne would muse over it for hours.
In Spenser's imaginative mind, these aspirations became real persons who set out to win laurels in a fairyland, lighted with the soft light of the moon, and presided over by the good genius that loves to uplift struggling and weary souls. The allegory certainly becomes confused. A critic well says: "We can hardly lose our way in it, for there is no way to lose."
It was his frequent habit to read aloud to me in the evening; in this way we read, this year, the New Testament, "Paradise Lost", Spenser's "Faery Queen", and "Don Quixote". The very illness that oppressed, and the aspect of death which had approached so near Shelley, appear to have kindled to yet keener life the Spirit of Poetry in his heart.
The four hymns in praise of Love and Beauty, Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beauty, are also stately and noble poems, but by reason of their abstractness and the Platonic mysticism which they express, are less generally pleasing than the others mentioned. Allegory and mysticism had no natural affiliation with Spenser's genius.
Thus Corin is Chapman; Musaeus, of course Marlowe; English Horace, no doubt Jonson; Melicert, Shakespeare; Coridon, Drayton; Anti-Horace, most likely Dekker, and Moelibee, mentioned with him, possibly Marston. Throughout Chettle assumes to himself Spenser's pastoral title.
He took many of his stories from books not read by them, for he was an omnivorous reader, taking special delight in poetry, loving nothing better than a solitary walk with Spenser's "Faerie Queen" in his hand, and often himself composing verses above the average for so young a boy.
Far into the night they sat talking, and he poured out his heart to her, he bore her with him to the mountain-tops of his desire. He took down a book of Spenser's, and read her the "Epithalamium"; he read her Shelley's "Epip sychidion," which they both loved.
It can hardly be said that the verse of these poems attains any very high order of merit, but the imitation of Spenser is evident throughout. In the first eclogue Rowland bewails, in the midst of spring, 'the winter of his grief. In this and the corresponding monologue at the end he clearly follows Spenser's arrangement and likewise adopts his minor key
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