s and tournaments, in
the knightly accoutrements still worn in the days of the bullet and the
cannon-ball. In the apparatus of the poet, as all were shepherds, when
he wanted to represent the life of peace and letters, so all were
knights or the foes and victims of knights, when his theme was action
and enterprise. It was the custom that the Muse masked, to use Spenser's
word, under these disguises; and this conventional masquerade of
pastoral poetry or knight errantry was the form under which the poetical
school that preceded the dramatists naturally expressed their ideas. It
seems to us odd that peaceful sheepcotes and love-sick swains should
stand for the world of the Tudors and Guises, or that its cunning
statecraft and relentless cruelty should be represented by the generous
follies of an imaginary chivalry. But it was the fashion which Spenser
found, and he accepted it. His genius was not of that sort which breaks
out from trammels, but of that which makes the best of what it finds.
And whatever we may think of the fashion, at least he gave it new
interest and splendour by the spirit with which he threw himself into
it.

The condition which he took as the groundwork of his poetical fabric
suggested the character of his language. Chaucer was then the "God of
English poetry;" his was the one name which filled a place apart in the
history of English verse. Spenser was a student of Chaucer, and borrowed
as he judged fit, not only from his vocabulary, but from his grammatical
precedents and analogies, with the object of giving an appropriate
colouring to what was to be raised as far as possible above familiar
life. Besides this, the language was still in such an unsettled state
that from a man with resources like Spenser's, it naturally invited
attempts to enrich and colour it, to increase its flexibility and power.
The liberty of reviving old forms, of adopting from the language of the
street and market homely but expressive words or combinations, of
following in the track of convenient constructions, of venturing on new
and bold phrases, was rightly greater in his time than at a later stage
of the language. Many of his words, either invented or preserved, are
happy additions; some which have not taken root in the language, we may
regret. But it was a liberty which he abused. He was extravagant and
unrestrained in his experiments on language. And they were made not
merely to preserve or to invent a good expression. On