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The "Spenserian stanza," in which the Faerie Queene was written, was adapted from the ottava rima of Ariosto. Spenser changed somewhat the order of the rimes in the first eight lines and added a ninth line of twelve syllables, thus affording more space to the copious luxuriance of his style and the long-drawn sweetness of his verse.
To him his life there was an exile, yet perhaps even in spite of himself he breathed in the land of fairies and of "little people" something of their magic: his fingers, unwittingly perhaps, touched the golden and ivory gate so that he entered in and saw. *Charles Lamb. That it is a fairyland and no real world which Spenser opens to us is the great difference between Chaucer and him.
In your notice of Southey's new volume you omit to mention the most pleasing of all, the "Miniature." "There were Who formed high hopes and flattering ones of thee, Young Robert!" "Spirit of Spenser! was the wanderer wrong?" Fairfax I have been in quest of a long time.
But a feeling of common loyalty, and the anger which a true man of letters feels when a genuine poet is traduced by a pedant, led Nash to take up a very strong position as a defender of the reputation of Greene. Gabriel Harvey, although the friend of Spenser, is a personage who fills an odious place in the literary history of the last years of Elizabeth.
Further indebtedness has, it is true, been found to Spenser, but some hint of the transformation of Amarillis, a few names and an occasional reminiscence, make up the sum total of specific obligations. Endowed with a poetic gift which far surpassed the imitative facility of Guarini and approached the consummate art of Tasso himself, Fletcher attempted to rival the Arcadian drama of the Italians.
But bright as was the promise of coming song, no great imaginative poem had broken the silence of English literature for nearly two hundred years when Spenser landed at Bristol with the "Faerie Queen." From that moment the stream of English poetry has flowed on without a break.
Our own Spenser has imbibed the spirit of some of its most beautiful passages; and several striking coincidences between his Faerie Queen and the Rinaldo can be traced, particularly in the account of the lion tamed by Clarillo, and the well-known incident of Una and the lion in Spenser.
All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Conrady, in her pre-existent state, was no great judge of architecture. To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour of Beauty, divine Spenser, platonizing, sings: "Every spirit as it is more pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight With cheerful grace and amiable sight.
I wish they had thrown them in the Cam, or sent them, after the latter cantos of Spenser, into the Irish Channel.
Is not that a good characterisation? Good-bye for the moment, as I must see about Benella's luncheon. Yours affectionately S.P. 'The spreading Lee that, like an Island fayre, Encloseth Corke with his divided floode. Edmund Spenser.
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