these knightly
struggles to uphold the right and placed them in fairyland. This great
poem is the work of a mind that loved to elaborate purely subjective
images. The pictures were not painted from gazing at the outside
world. We feel that they are mostly creations of the imagination, and
that few of them could exist in a real world. There is no bower in the
bottom of the sea, "built of hollow billowes heaped hye," and no lion
ever follows a lost maiden to protect her. We feel that the principal
part of Shakespeare's world could have existed in reality as well as
in imagination. Spenser was never able to reach this highest type of
art.

The world, however, needs poets to create images of a higher type of
beauty than this life can offer. These images react on our material
lives and cast them in a nobler mold. Spenser's belief that the
subjective has power to fashion the objective is expressed in two of
the finest lines that he ever wrote:--

"For of the soule the bodie forme doth take;
For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make."[7]

Chief Characteristics of Spenser's Poetry.--We can say of Spencer's
verse that it stands in the front rank for (1) melody, (2) love of the
beautiful, and (3) nobility of the ideals presented. His poetry also
(4) shows a preference for the subjective world, (5) exerts a
remarkable influence over other poets, and (6) displays a peculiar
liking for obsolete forms of expression.

Spencer's melody is noteworthy. If we read aloud correctly such lines
as these, we can scarcely fail to be impressed with their harmonious
flow:--

"A teme of Dolphins raunged in aray
Drew the smooth charett of sad Cymoent:
They were all taught by Triton to obay
To the long raynes at her commaundement:
As swifte as swallowes on the waves they went.
* * * * *
"Upon great Neptune's necke they softly swim,
And to her watry chamber swiftly carry him.
Deepe in the bottome of the sea her bowre
Is built of hollow billowes heaped hye."[8]

The following lines will show Spenser's love for beauty, and at the
same time indicate the nobility of some of his ideal characters. He is
describing Lady Una, the fair representative of true religion, who has
lost through enchantment her Guardian Knight, and who is wandering
disconsolate in the forest:--

"...Her angel's face,
As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place;
D