CHAUCER. Born in London, 1328.-Died 1400.* Chaucer must be read with an eye to the Norman-French Trouveres, of whom he is the best representative in English. He had great powers of invention. As in Shakspeare, his characters represent classes, but in a different manner; Shakspeare's characters are the representatives of the interior nature of humanity, in which some element has become so predominant as to destroy the health of the mind; whereas Chaucer's are rather representatives of classes of manners. He is therefore more led to individualize in a mere personal sense. Observe Chaucer's love of nature; and how hap Come si vede qua ne l' Occidente, C. XXV. st. 228, &c. The Morgante was printed in 1488. Ed. Another very curious anticipation, said to have been first noticed by Amerigo Vespucci, occurs in Dante's Purgatorio : I mi volsi a man destra e posi mente All 'altro polo: e vidi quattro stelle C. L. 1. 22-4. * From Mr. Green's note. Ed. pily the subject of his main work is chosen. When you reflect that the company in the Decameron have retired to a place of safety, from the raging of a pestilence, their mirth provokes a sense of their unfeelingness; whereas in Chaucer nothing of this sort occurs, and the scheme of a party on a pilgrimage, with different ends and occupations, aptly allows of the greatest variety of expression in the tales. SPENSER. Born in London, 1553.—Died 1599. There is this difference, among many others, between Shakspeare and Spenser:-Shakspeare is never coloured by the customs of his age; what appears of contemporary character in him is merely negative; it is just not something else. He has none of the fictitious realities of the classics, none of the grotesquenesses of chivalry, none of the allegory of the middle ages; there is no sectarianism either of politics or religion, no miser, no witch, - no common witch,-no astrology-nothing impermanent of however long duration; but he stands like the yew tree in Lorton vale, which has known so many imply ages that it belongs to none in particular; a livingeness" image of endless self-reproduction, like the immortal tree of Malabar. In Spenser the spirit of chivalry is entirely predominant, although with a much greater infusion of the poet's own individual self Fshi playwrt S. I, 33 105 into it than is found in any other writer. He has the wit of the southern with the deeper inwardness of the northern genius. No one can appreciate Spenser without some reflection on the nature of allegorical writing. The mere etymological meaning of the word, allegory,— to talk of one thing and thereby convey another,— is too wide. The true sense is this, the employment of one set of agents and images to convey in disguise a moral meaning, with a likeness to the imagination, but with a difference to the understanding, those agents and images being so combined as to form a homogeneous whole. This distinguishes it from metaphor, which is part of an allegory. But allegory is not properly distinguishable from fable, otherwise than as the first includes the second, as a genus its species; for in a fable there must be nothing but what is universally known and acknowledged, but in an allegory there may be that which is new and not previously admitted. The pictures of the great masters, especially of the Italian schools, are genuine allegories. Amongst the classics, the multitude of their gods either precluded allegory altogether, or else made every thing allegory, as in the Hesiodic Theogonia; for you can scarcely distinguish between power and the personification of power. The Cupid and Psyche of, or found in, Apuleius, is a phænomenon. It is the Platonic mode of accounting for the fall of man. The Battle of the Soul* by Prudentius is an early instance of Christian allegory. Narrative allegory is distinguished from mythology as reality from symbol; it is, in short, the proper intermedium between person and personification. Where it is too strongly individualized, it ceases to be allegory; this is often felt in the Pilgrim's Progress, where the characters are real persons with nick names. Perhaps one of the most curious warnings against another attempt at narrative allegory on a great scale, may be found in Tasso's account of what he himself intended in and by his Jerusalem Delivered. As characteristic of Spenser, I would call your particular attention in the first place to the indescribable sweetness and fluent projection of his verse, very clearly distinguishable from the deeper and more inwoven harmonies of Shakspeare and Milton. This stanza is a good instance of what I mean: Yet she, most faithfull ladie, all this while Far from all peoples preace, as in exile, In wildernesse and wastfull deserts strayd To seeke her knight; who, subtily betrayd Through that late vision which th' enchaunter wrought, F. Qu. B. I. c. 3. st. 3. * Psychomachia. Ed. 2. Combined with this sweetness and fluency, the scientific construction of the metre of the Faery Queene is very noticeable.. One of Spenser's arts is that of alliteration, and he uses it with great effect in doubling the impression of an image: In wildernesse and wastful deserts,- Whereas the damned ghosts in torments fry, And with sharp shrilling shrieks doth bootlesse cry,—&c. He is particularly given to an alternate alliteration, which is, perhaps, when well used, a great secret in melody : A ramping lyon rushed suddenly,— And sad to see her sorrowful constraint,— And on the grasse her daintie limbes did lay,-&c. You cannot read a page of the Faery Queene, if you read for that purpose, without perceiving the intentional alliterativeness of the words; and yet so skilfully is this managed, that it never strikes. any unwarned ear as artificial, or other than the result of the necessary movement of the verse. 3. Spenser displays great skill in harmonizing his descriptions of external nature and actual incidents with the allegorical character and epic acti vity of the poem. Take these two beautiful pas sages as illustrations of what I mean:— By this the northerne wagoner had set |