r, seriousness, and magnificence. From
the poor and rude play-houses, with their troops of actors most of them
profligate and disreputable, their coarse excitements, their buffoonery,
license, and taste for the monstrous and horrible,--denounced not
without reason as corruptors of public morals, preached against at
Paul's Cross, expelled the city by the Corporation, classed by the law
with rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, and patronized by the great
and unscrupulous nobles in defiance of it--there burst forth suddenly a
new poetry, which with its reality, depth, sweetness and nobleness took
the world captive. The poetical ideas and aspirations of the Englishmen
of the time had found at last adequate interpreters, and their own
national and unrivalled expression.

And in this great movement Spenser was the harbinger and announcing
sign. But he was only the harbinger. What he did was to reveal to
English ears as it never had been revealed before, at least, since the
days of Chaucer, the sweet music, the refined grace, the inexhaustible
versatility of the English tongue. But his own efforts were in a
different direction from that profound and insatiable seeking after the
real, in thought and character, in representation and expression, which
made Shakespere so great, and his brethren great in proportion as they
approached him. Spenser's genius continued to the end under the
influences which were so powerful when it first unfolded itself. To the
last it allied itself, in form, at least, with the artificial. To the
last it moved in a world which was not real, which never had existed,
which, any how, was only a world of memory and sentiment. He never threw
himself frankly on human life as it is; he always viewed it through a
veil of mist which greatly altered its true colours, and often distorted
its proportions. And thus while more than any one he prepared the
instruments and the path for the great triumph, he himself missed the
true field for the highest exercise of poetic power; he missed the
highest honours of that in which he led the way.

Yet, curiously enough, it seems as if, early in his career, he was
affected by the strong stream which drew Shakespere. Among the
compositions of his first period, besides _The Shepherd's Calendar_, are
_Nine Comedies_,--clearly real plays, which his friend Gabriel Harvey
praised with enthusiasm. As early as 1579 Spenser had laid before
Gabriel Harvey for his judgement and advic