PAGE Long-while I sought to what I might compare Whose light doth lighten all that here we see. XI. Can Spenser have been thinking of Barnabe Barnes in this sonnet? I fancy I detect in it a double allusion to the Parthenophil and Parthenophe published two years before with ll. 4-7 cf. the Madrigal under LV and with 1. 9 the Sonnet 'If Cupid keepe,' &c., under CVIII. 7-XIII. Helice = "EXlkŋ, or the Circumvolver,—the Greek name for the constellation Ursa Major. Hence perhaps Shakspeare's “loadstars" of eyes, and Milton's idea of his "Cynosure."'-MS. note by Leigh Hunt in his copy of Spenser. 8-XIV. Fondness foolishness. xv, 6-12. The imagery may have been present to Wordsworth (Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Pt. 1, 7). 9-XVII, 5-6. The unconscious action of love has been expressed in a fine metaphor by one of our truest living poets (Poems by Henry S. Sutton, 1848, p. 40): 'Oh, 'tis young Love ;-for he a nest can raise In hearts that never guess his busy wings.' 10-XIX. 'Those who have never felt the need of the divine, entering by the channel of will and choice and prayer, for the upholding, purifying, and glorifying of that which itself first created human, will consider this poem untrue, having its origin in religious affectation. Others will think otherwise.'-Dr. George MacDonald (England's Antiphon, p. 65). II-XX. 'I insert this sonnet on account of the picture at the beginning, which is agreeably in the taste of the age. The sonnet looks like a "Valentine."-Leigh Hunt (Book of the Sonnet, i, 152). With ll. 1-4 cf. Amoretti, 4, 9-12: 'For lusty spring now in his timely howre, Is ready to come forth him to receive : And warnes the Earth with divers colord flowre PAGE Edmund Spenser. stanza 28 of the 2nd of the Two Cantos of Mutabilitie; and Drummond, CXXIII, 1-2, on which see note. note under CXLI. II make mate. See 12-XXII. The reader will compare this with similar vaticinations by Shakspeare and others (LXVII, &c.). XXIII. ensue = follow (intrans.)—more frequently transitive in Spenser = pursue, as in his dedicatory sonnet under CXLV. 13-XXIV. culver dove. In the first and all the early editions this sonnet, the last of the Amoretti, is numbered 'LXXXIX' instead of LXXXVIII, the 35th ('My hungry eyes through greedy covetize') having been repeated by mistake as the 83rd. It may be noted that Todd (1805), who claims and has heretofore been allowed the credit of having first rectified this blunder, was anticipated by Hughes in 1715. 5-13-VIII-XXIV. From Amoretti and Epithalamion. Written not long since by Edmunde Spenser. 1595. Prefixed to these 'sweete conceited Sonets,' as Ponsonby the publisher calls them in the Epistle Dedicatory to Sir Robert Needham, who had come over from Ireland in the same ship that brought the MS. from Spenser, are two commendatory sonnets by 'G. W. senior' and ' G. W. I.' (conjecturally George Whetstone senior and junior) which Prof. Child therefore errs in stating to have been 'first printed' in the 1611 folio. Sir Walter Raleigh. 13-XXV. Appended to Spenser's Faerie Queene, 1590 (Books I-III), and entitled in full A Vision upon this conceipt of the Faery Queene. 'This noble sonnet,' says Dr. Hannah (The Courtly Poets, from Raleigh to Montrose, 1870, p. 215), 'is alone sufficient to place Raleigh in the rank of those few original writers who can introduce and perpetuate a new type in a literature; a type distinct from the "Visions" which Spenser translated. The highest tribute which it has received is the imitation of Milton : "Methought I saw my late espoused saint.” But Mr. Todd quotes a sonnet, printed as early as 1594, beginning:'Methought I saw upon Matilda's tomb."2 Waldron gives another, signed "E. S.," which was printed in 1612 1 See CLIII, p. 77: 2 The Vision of Matilda, prefixed to Drayton's Matilda, 1594, and signed 'H. G. Esquire.' And the echo is still repeated by poets nearer our own times : "Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne." Wordsworth: Miscellaneous Sonnets. "Methought I saw a face divinely fair, Lyra Apost. No. xcii. "Methought there was around me a strange light." Raleigh is here employing a style-truly the very hyperbole of praisewhich the reader will avoid the error of accepting in too prosaic a spirit. It were in Horatio's language to consider too curiously' to interpret the poem as a piece of deliberate critical appraisement, and thus have to qualify our admiration of it with Dr. Trench's protest that 'the great poets of the past lose no whit of their glory because later poets are found worthy to share it;' that 'Petrarch in his lesser, and Homer in his greater sphere, are just as illustrious since Spenser appeared as before.' (A Household Book of English Poetry, ed. 1870, p. 392). Surrey, earlier, had only exercised a poet's privilege, presumably without slighting the Morning Star,' when he sang of his deceased friend Wyat that his hand had 'reft Chaucer the glory of his wit;' and Drummond of Hawthornden furnishes a later example of the same figure in CXXXII. Raleigh has another noble sonnet which must find a place here. It is prefixed to Sir Arthur Gorges' translation of Lucan's Pharsalia: containing the Civill Warres betweene Cæsar and Pompey, 1614. TO THE TRANSLATOR.2 Had Lucan hid the truth to please the time, By flattery, or seeking worthlesse men. For this thou hast been bruis'd; but yet those scarres Receiv'd in just and in religious warres; Though thou hast bled by both, and bearst them too, Change not to change thy fortune tis too late : Who with a manly faith resolves to dye, May promise to himselfe a lasting state, 1 A Vision upon this his Minerva, prefixed to Henry Peacham's Minerva Britanna [1612) The sonnet has a distinctly Spenserian ring. "Sir Arthur Gorges was Raleigh's kinsman; had been captain of Raleigh's own ship in the Island voyage, when he was wounded by his side in the landing of Fayal; Sir Walter Raleigh. From a large number of examples read in the wide and, as was fancied, To thee that art Arts lover, Learnings friend, Thy paines just merit I in right commend, Costing whole years, months, weeks, and daily hours. Where others (who might better) yet forslow it, OF THIS GARDEN OF THe muses. Thou which delight'st to view this goodly plot, and has left a history of that expedition which is of material importance in Raleigh's biography. He is the "Alcyon" of "Colin Clout's come home again:" Collier's 'Spenser," vol. v.. p. 45; cf. " Daphnaida," ib., 229.'-Note, p. 222 Courtly Poets, as before. For some of his original verses see Sir E. Brydges' Restituta, vol. iv., 1816. Excepting Mr. Fry (Biblio. Memoranda, Bristol, 1816, p. 273), the bibliographers seem to ignore a little work by the chevalier-The Wisedome of the Ancients, written in Latine by the Right Honourable Sir Francis Bacon Knight, Baron of Verulam, and Lord Chancellor of England. Done into English by Sir Arthur Gorges Knight. Lond. sm. 8vo, 1619: a copy of which, the reader may remember, was one of Hugh Miller's early possessions (My Schools and Schoolmasters, 1854, chap. xi.). 1paines = pains-taking; forslow to delay, waste in sloth: • Forslow no time, sweet Lancaster; let's march.' Where thou maist find in every curious knot, A. B. TO THE UNIVERSITIE OF OXENFORD. In rich-wrought lines, that yeelde no idle woord. So shall thy name live still, their fame ne're dye, The fourth example referred to, doubtless the work of Sir John Beaumont (being subscribed 'I. B.,' and prefixed to the Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, 1602, an anonymous work now confidently ascribed to his famous younger brother, Francis), must be regarded as the highwater-mark of a style which was then deemed the most elegant vehicle of adulation. The reader will most readily find it among the poems in laudem auctoris, Dyce's edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, xi, 1846, 443; or in Dr. Grosart's Fuller Worthies' Library, The Poems of Sir John Beaumont, Bart., 1869, p. 205, from which latter it is here given :— TO THE AUTHOUR. Eyther the goddesse drawes her troupe of loves |