Faery Queen nothing more than a wondrous fairy tale, a wild romance, or a gorgeous pageant of chivalry. Beyond all this, far within it, is an inner life; and that is breathed into it from the Bible. It is the great sacred poem of English literature. "I dare be known to think," said Milton, addressing the Parliament of England, "our sage and serious poet, Spenser, a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas."* When John Wesley gave directions for the clerical studies of his Methodist disciples, he recommended them to combine with the study of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Testament, the reading of the Faery Queen; and, in our own day, Mr. Keble, the poet of "The Christian Year," has described the Faery Queen as "a continual deliberate endeavour to enlist the restless intellect and chivalrous feeling of an inquiring and romantic age on the side of goodness and faith, of purity and justice."+

Spenser himself, expounding his allegory to his friend Sir Walter Raleigh, said, "The general end of all the book is to fashion a gentleman, or noble person, in virtuous and gentle discipline." Christian philosopher, as well as poet, Spenser's deep conviction, manifest throughout the poem, was that the only discipline wherewith to tame the rebellious heart of man is that morality which, in one of his own sweet phrases, bears

"The lineaments of gospel-books."?

*Milton's Prose Works, 8vo.p.108. On Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. † Quarterly Review, vol. xxxii. p. 225, June, 1825. In an article on Sacred Poetry, attributed to Mr. Keble.

Spenser's Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, prefixed to Poetical Works, vol. i. p. 5.

? An Elegie on Friend's Passion for his Astrophell. Spenser's Poetical Works, vol. v. p. 261.

the sacred poetry, but all high and serious poetry, may be traced to some germ of revealed truth. The highest human poetry is in affinity with the divine poetry; and, however they may differ in degree, I do not believe that they are separated by characteristic difference in kind. What are the Latin hymns of the medieval church, such as that famous one on the Day of Judgment, which clung to the dying lips of Walter Scott, murmuring snatches of it when his mind had on all else faded away,—what were those poems but human versions of inspiration?* What are the hymns of Ken and of Keble but echoes from the lyric song of the Bible? Wordsworth's sublime communings with nature do but amplify and reiterate the Psalmist's declaration of the glory of God as manifested in the universe; and when the poet shows that

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy,"t

and teaches the holiness and beauty of the innocence of childhood—a theme for sophisticated man to reflect onwhat is this but an expression of the truth that is contained in the Saviour's words, "of such is the kingdom of heaven?"

Aubrey De Vere's thoughtful lines on Sorrow, are but an echo of the divine teaching:

* "We very often heard distinctly the cadence of the Dies Ira; and I think the very last stanza that we could make out was the still greater favourite :

Stabat mater dolorosa,

Juxta crucem lachrymosa,

Dum pendebat filius."

Lockhart's Scott, vol. x. p. 214. As this volume is passing through the press, we have received the news of Mr. Lockhart's death at Abbotsford, in December, 1854. W. B. R.

† Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality. Works, p. 388.

"Count each affliction, whether light or grave
God's messenger sent down to thee. Do thou
With courtesy receive him: rise and bow,
And ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave
Permission first his heavenly feet to lave.
Then lay before him all thou hast. Allow
No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow,
Or mar thy hospitality; no wave

Of mortal tumult to obliterate

The soul's marmoreal calmness. Grief should be,
Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate,

Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free;

Strong to consume small troubles; to commend

Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end."* Again: another living poet does but teach how to apply a well-known text, and feel its truth the more, when he says:

"We live not in our moments or our years-
The Present we fling from us as the rind
Of some sweet Future, which we after find
Bitter to taste, or bind that in with fears,
And water it beforehand with our tears-
Vain tears for that which never may arrive;
Meanwhile the joy whereby we ought to live
Neglected or unheeded disappears.

Wiser it were to welcome and make ours

Whate'er of good, though small, the Present brings-
Kind greetings, sunshine, song of birds, and flowers,
With a child's pure delight in little things;
And of the griefs unborn to rest secure,
Knowing that mercy ever will endure."†

This is a poet's teaching of the cheerfulness of Christian faith and the love of Christian content and happiness;

* Aubrey De Vere's Waldenses, with other poems quoted in an Essay on De Vere's Poems, in Taylor's Notes from Books, p. 215.

Sonnet by the Rev. R. C. Trench, quoted in Church Poetry, or Christian Thoughts in Old and Modern Verse, p. 62.

and this is but the rebuke of unchristian sullenness, and the praise of Christian thankfulness:

"Some murmur, when their sky is clear

And wholly bright to view,
If one small speck of dark appear

In their great heaven of blue.
And some with thankful love are fill'd
If but one streak of light,

One ray of God's good mercy gild
The darkness of their night.
In palaces are hearts that ask,
In discontent and pride,
Why life is such a dreary task,
And all good things denied?
And hearts in poorest huts admire,
How love has in their aid

(Love that not ever seems to tire)
Such rich provision made."*

Thus do the Poets minister in the Temple.

*Trench's Poems, p. 116.

LECTURE VII.

Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.*

Milton's old age-Donne's Sermons-No great school of poetry without love of nature--Blank in this respect between Paradise Lost and Thomson's Seasons-Court of Charles the Second-Samson Agonistes-Milton's Sonnets-Clarendon's History of the Rebellion-Pilgrim's Progress-Dryden's Odes-Absalom and Achitophel-Rhyming tragedies-Age of Queen Anne-British statesmen-EssayistsTatler-Spectator-Sir Roger De Coverley-Pope-Lord Bolingbroke-English infidels-Johnson's Dictionary-Gray-CollinsCowper-Goldsmith-The Vicar of Wakefield-Cowper-Elizabeth

Browning.

IN proceeding to the literature of the close of the seventeenth century, we approach a period which is marked by great change. Heretofore in the succession of literary eras there had been a continuity of influence, which had not only served to give new strength and develope new resources, but to preserve the power of the antecedent literature unimpaired. The present was never unnaturally or disloyally divorced from the past. The author in one generation found discipline for his genius in reverent and affectionate intercourse with great minds of other days. Such was their dutiful spirit of discipline, strengthening but not surrendering their own native power the discipline so much wiser and so much more richly rewarded in the might it gains, than the self-sufficient discipline, which, trusting to the pride of origi

* Thursday, February 14, 1850.

215