English Poetry," and other historians of English literature have given it considerable attention. Our words on the subject shall be extremely brief. The plan of the work was, perhaps, better fitted for prose than poetry. The "Mirror" is composed of a number of biographies in verse, and is a jeremiad on the melancholy fate of men who once occupied a high place in English history, and who, being visited in the land of shades, are supposed to relate the story of their woes. It was impossible that a work formed on a design like this, and destined to be carried out by various hands, should glow throughout with the white heat of poetry. It did, in fact, degenerate into a mere rhyming chronicle, and the imagination which gives vitality to Sackville's portion of the work is to be found nowhere else. As a poet, Sackville belongs to the reign of Mary; as a statesman to the age of Elizabeth, by whom he was knighted, and ultimately promoted to the peerage, under the title of Lord Buckhurst. Like Chaucer, he was a man of affairs, and proved, as some later and greater poets have done, that it is possible to live two lives, and to live both well. Sackville's integrity was unimpeachable, and how highly the queen estimated his ability is proved by the fact that, on the death of Burleigh, he was appointed Lord High Treasurer. For us it is of greater interest to remember that he was the author of "Gorboduc," the first English tragedy.

Sackville's poetry is not what Spenser terms it,

"golden verse, worthy immortal fame;" but the feeling of the poet may be seen in his work, and there are indications in it which foretell the dawn of a new era. To that brighter period we will now direct our attention.

CHAPTER II.

THE ELIZABETHAN POETS.

EDMUND SPENSER.

THE reign of Queen Elizabeth is illustrious for great deeds and noble words, for the splendour of its achievements on sea and land, for sea-kings and statesmen like Drake and Burleigh, for profound thinkers like Hooker and Bacon, for knights versed in many accomplishments like Raleigh and Sidney. It was an age of enterprise and discovery, of freedom and speculation, and above all of an ardent desire for truth. "Then," in the fine language of Milton, “was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners where profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it, the schools opened, divine and human learning raked out of the embers of forgotten tongues." That an age, full of eager life and rampant with its newly found. strength, should have exhibited signs of literary eccentricity was inevitable. No doubt in such an age strength of thought and originality of concep

tion would be more conspicuous than taste. English writers, like bold sportsmen, rode across country, heedless of all obstacles, and the signs of this rough-riding are evident in their works. Among the characteristics common to the Elizabethan poets we may note a comparative inattention to form and a prodigal expenditure of wealth. They are full of matter, but the manner frequently lacks shape and comeliness. They want the sense of proportion, they do not know where to stop, they are burdened with a weight of imagery and stifled by a plethora of wit. Defects like these, defects nearly allied to virtues, are chiefly evident in the lesser lights of that wonderful period-in Marlowe, Chapman, and Webster, in Sir Philip Sidney and John Lyly. The two great lights of the age, however-Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare—while belonging to all time, are essentially Elizabethans in the royal extravagance with which they scatter broadcast their literary treasures. It is as though their store of fancy and imagination were unfailing; and perhaps it was. Assuredly, when one died at the comparatively early age of forty-six, and the other at fifty-three, there were no indications that the fountain of their genius was dried up.

Spenser was Shakespeare's senior by twelve

Edmund

Spenser, 1552-1598.

years, and as a poet he has therefore the first claim on our attention. What shall we say of the poets' poet-of him who, it might be supposed, did we not know

to the contrary, had lived his whole life in a dream. of glorious romance; of him who is pre-eminently the poet of the beautiful, and is yet at the same time, to use Milton's words, "sage and serious," and, in the highest sense of the term, a Christian poet?*

The first thing that deserves notice is the paucity of our information about him. He was accounted a divine poet by his contemporaries; he was the friend of great men like Sidney and Raleigh; the queen made him her Laureate; and when he died. he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Yet we know not who were the parents of this splendid poet, or whether he was an only child; the date even of his birth is not absolutely certain; and the writer who undertakes to tell the story of his life is forced to feel his way by the help of probabilities and conjectures, and by references to his poetry. Mr. Hales, the editor of the Globe Spenser, states that the poems are the one great authority for the biography prefixed to that edition; and if it be true, as Dean Church observes, that we know more about the circumstances of Spenser's life than about the lives of many men of letters of that time, it is also true that our knowledge is extremely limited. Biography was not encouraged in the Elizabethan age; but considering what Spenser's fame was in

* The revered author of the "Christian Year" has paid the noblest tribute to Spenser, in calling him "pre-eminently the sacred poet of his country." That John Wesley so esteemed him is evident, for he enjoined his divinity students to read the "Faerie Queene."

C