to appear, the brightness of
brave and glorious words. So oftentimes a discord in music
maketh a comely concordance.

But when allowance is made for an eclectic and sometimes pedantic
phraseology, and for mannerisms to which the fashion of the age tempted
him, such as the extravagant use of alliteration, or, as they called it,
"hunting the letter," the _Shepherd's Calendar_ is, for its time, of
great interest.

Spenser's force, and sustained poetical power, and singularly musical
ear are conspicuous in this first essay of his genius. In the poets
before him of this century, fragments and stanzas, and perhaps single
pieces might be found, which might be compared with his work. Fugitive
pieces, chiefly amatory, meet us of real sprightliness, or grace, or
tenderness. The stanzas which Sackville, afterwards, Lord Buckhurst,
contributed to the collection called the _Mirror of Magistrates_,[46:3]
are marked with a pathetic majesty, a genuine sympathy for the
precariousness of greatness, which seem a prelude to the Elizabethan
drama. But these fragments were mostly felicitous efforts, which soon
passed on into the ungainly, the uncouth, the obscure or the grotesque.
But in the _Shepherd's Calendar_ we have for the first time in the
century, the swing, the command, the varied resources of the real poet,
who is not driven by failing language or thought into frigid or tumid
absurdities. Spenser is master over himself and his instrument even when
he uses it in a way which offends our taste. There are passages in the
_Shepherd's Calendar_ of poetical eloquence, of refined vigour, and of
musical and imaginative sweetness, such as the English language had
never attained to, since the days of him, who was to the age of Spenser,
what Shakespere and Milton are to ours, the pattern and fount of poetry,
Chaucer. Dryden is not afraid to class Spenser with Theocritus and
Virgil, and to write that the _Shepherd's Calendar_ is not to be matched
in any language.[46:4] And this was at once recognized. The authorship
of it, as has been said, was not formally acknowledged. Indeed, Mr.
Collier remarks that seven years after its publication, and after it had
gone through three or four separate editions, it was praised by a
contemporary poet, George Whetstone, himself a friend of Spenser's, as
the "reputed work of Sir Philip Sidney." But if it was officially a
secret, it was an open secret, known to every one who cared to be well
informe