Fair child of beauty! glorious lamp of love! And seem'st to laugh atween thy twinkling light! As Ariosto has contrived to introduce his personal feelings, and the memory of his love, into the Orlando Furioso, so Spenser has enshrined his in the Fairy Queen; but he has not, I think, succeeded so well in the manner of celebrating the woman he delighted to honour. Ariosto has the advantage over the English poet, in delicacy and propriety of feeling as well as power. Spenser's picture of the swelling eminence, the lawn, the clustering trees, the cascade Whose silver waves did softly tumble down, haunted by nymphs and fairies; the bevy of beauties who dance in a circle round the lady of his love, while he himself, in his character of Colin Clout, sits aloof piping on his oaten reed, remind us of one of Claude's landscapes: and the difference between the pastoral luxuriance of this diffuse description, and the stately magnificence of Ariosto's, is very characteristic of the two poets. Were I to choose, however, I would rather have been the object of Ariosto's compliment than of Spenser's. The passage in the Fairy Queen occurs in the 10th canto of Legend of Sir Calidore; and all his commentators are agreed that the allusion is to his Elizabeth, and not to Rosalind. Both are mentioned in "Colin Clout's come home again." Rosalind, and her disdainful rejection of the poet's love, are alluded to near the end, in some lines already quoted; but a very beautiful passage, near the commencement of the poem, clearly alludes to Elizabeth, under whose thrall he was at the time it was written. Ah! far be it, (quoth Colin Clout,) fro me, To her, my thoughts I daily dedicate; My thought, my heart, my life, my love, is she! &c. Spenser married his Elizabeth about the year 1593. He resided at this time at the Castle of Kilcolman, in the south of Ireland, a portion of the forfeited domains of the Earl of Desmond having been assigned to him: but the adherents of that unhappy chief saw in Spenser only an invader of their rights, a stranger living on their inheritance, while they were cast out to starvation or banishment. He and his family dwelt in continual fears and disturbance from the distracted state of the country; and at length, about two years after his marriage, he was attacked in his castle by the native Irish. He and his wife escaped with difficulty, and one of their children perished in the flames. After this catastrophe they came to England, and Spenser died in 1598, about five years after his marriage with Elizabeth. The short period of their union, though disturbed by misfortunes, losses and worldly cares, was never clouded by domestic disquiet. This haughty beauty, Whose lofty countenance seemed to scorn Base thing, and think how she to heaven might climb, became the tenderest and most faithful of wives. How long she survived her husband is not known; but though scarce past the bloom of youth at the period of her loss, we have no account of her marrying again. CHAPTER XV. ON THE LOVE OF SHAKSPEARE SHAKSPEARE-I approach the subject with reverence, and even with fear,-is the only poet I am acquainted with and able to appreciate, who appears to have been really heaven-inspired: the workings of his wondrous and allembracing mind were directed by a higher influence than ever was exercised by woman, even in the plenitude of her power and her charms. Shakspeare's genius waited not on Love and Beauty, but Love and Beauty ministered to him; he perceived like a spirit; he was created, to create; his own individuality is lost in the splendour, the reality, and the variety of his own conceptions. When I think what those are, I feel how needless, how vain it were to swell the universal voice with one so weak as mine. Who would care for it that knows and feels Shakspeare? Who would listen to it that does not, if there be such? 66 - It is not Shakspeare as a great power bearing a great name, but Shakspeare in his less divine and less known character, as a lover and a man, who finds a place here. The only writings he has left, through which we can trace any thing of his personal feelings and affections, are his Sonnets. Every one who reads them, who has tenderness or taste, will echo Wordsworth's denunciation against the flippant insensibility" of some of his commentators, who talked of an Act of Parliament not being strong enough to compel their perusal, and will agree in his opinion, that they are full of the most exquisite feelings, most felicitously expressed; but as to the object to whom they were ad dressed, a difference of opinion prevails. From a reference, however, to all that is known of Shakspeare's life and fortunes, compared with the internal presumptive evi dence contained in the Sonnets, it appears that some of them are addressed to his amiable friend, Lord Southampton: and others, I think, are addressed in Southampton's name, to that beautiful Elizabeth Vernon, to whom the Earl was so long and ardently attached.* The Queen, who did not encourage matrimony among her courtiers, absolutely refused her consent to their union. She treated him as she did Raleigh in the affair of Elizabeth Throckmorton; and Southampton, after four years' impatient submission and still increasing love, as tenderly returned by his mistress, married without the Queen's knowledge, lost her favour forever, and nearly lost his head.t That Lord Southampton is the subject of the first fiftyfive Sonnets is sufficiently clear; and some of these are perfectly beautiful,-as the 30th, 32d, 41st, 54th. There are others scattered through the rest of the volume, on the same subject; but there are many which admit of no such interpretation, and are without doubt inspired by the real object of a real passion, of whom nothing can be discovered, but that she was dark-eyed‡ and dark-haired,‡ that she excelled in music;§ and that she was one of a class of females who do not always, in losing all right to our respect, lose also their claim to the admiration of the sex who wronged them, or the compassion of the gentler part of their own, who have rejected them. This is so clear from various passages, that unhappily there can be no doubt of it. He has flung over her, designedly it should seem, a veil of immortal texture and fadeless hues, "branched and embroidered like the painted Spring," but almost impenetrable even to our imagination. There are few allusions to her personal beauty, which can in any way individualize her, but bursts of deep and passionate feeling, and eloquent reproach, and contending emotions, She was the grandmother of Lady Russell. Elizabeth Vernon was first cousin to Essex. "Was it treason?" asks Essex indignantly, in one of his eloquent letters; "Was it treason in my Lord of Southampton to marry my poor kinswoman, that neither long imprisonment, nor any punishment besides that hath been usual in such cases, can satisfy or appease?" + Sonnets 127, 130. See "Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare." § Sonnet 128. which show, that if she could awaken as much love and impart as much happiness as woman ever inspired or bestowed, he endured on her account all the pangs of agony, and shame, and jealousy;-that our Shakspeare,-he who, in the omnipotence of genius, wielded the two worlds of reality and imagination in either hand, who was in conception and in act scarce less than a GOD, was in passion and suffering not more than MAN. Instead of any elaborate description of her person, we have, in the only Sonnet which sets forth her charms, the rich materials for a picture, rather than the picture itself. The forward violet thus did I chide: Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, If not from my Love's breath? The purple pride Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells, In my Love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd. The lily I condemned for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair: One blushing shame, another white despair; A vengeful canker eat him up to death. He intimates that he found a rival in one of his own most intimate friends, who was also a poet.* He laments her absence in this exquisite strain ; How like a winter hath my absence been For Summer and his pleasure wait on thee, He dwells with complacency on her supposed truth and tenderness, her bounty like Juliet's, "boundless as the sea, her love as deep." Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, * Sonnets 80, 83. |