life almost as genuine as
some of Wordsworth's poems; but it soon ceased to be that, and in
Alexandrian hands it took its place among the recognized departments of
classic and literary copying, in which Virgil found and used it. But a
further step had been made since Virgil had adopted it as an instrument
of his genius. In the hands of Mantuan and Barclay it was a vehicle for
general moralizing, and in particular for severe satire on women and the
clergy. And Virgil, though he may himself speak under the the names of
Tityrus and Menalcas, and lament Julius Caesar as Daphnis, did not
conceive of the Roman world as peopled by flocks and sheep-cotes, or its
emperors and chiefs, its poets, senators, and ladies, as shepherds and
shepherdesses, of higher or lower degree. But in Spenser's time, partly
through undue deference to what was supposed to be Italian taste, partly
owing to the tardiness of national culture, and because the poetic
impulses had not yet gained power to force their way through the
embarrassment and awkwardness which accompany reviving art,--the world
was turned for the purposes of the poetry of civil life, into a pastoral
scene. Poetical invention was held to consist in imagining an
environment, a set of outward circumstances, as unlike as possible to
the familiar realities of actual life and employment, in which the
primary affections and passions had their play. A fantastic basis,
varying according to the conventions of the fashion, was held essential
for the representation of the ideal. Masquerade and hyperbole were the
stage and scenery on which the poet's sweetness, or tenderness, or
strength was to be put forth. The masquerade, when his subject belonged
to peace, was one of shepherds: when it was one of war and adventure, it
was a masquerade of knight errantry. But a masquerade was necessary, if
he was to raise his composition above the vulgarities and trivialities
of the street, the fire-side, the camp, or even the court; if he was to
give it the dignity, the ornament, the unexpected results, the
brightness, and colour, which belong to poetry. The fashion had the
sanction of the brilliant author of the _Arcadia_, the "Courtier,
Soldier, Scholar," who was the "mould of form," and whose judgment was
law to all men of letters in the middle years of Elizabeth, the
all-accomplished Philip Sidney. Spenser submitted to this fashion from
first to last. When first he ventured on a considerable poetical
enter