over all actual objects. The two worlds of reality and of
fiction are poised on the wings of his imagination. His ideas, indeed,
seem more distinct than his perceptions. He is the painter of
abstractions, and describes them with dazzling minuteness. In the Mask of
Cupid he makes the God of Love "clap on high his coloured winges _twain_;"
and it is said of Gluttony in the Procession of the Passions,

"In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad."

At times he becomes picturesque from his intense love of beauty; as where
he compares Prince Arthur's crest to the appearance of the almond tree;

"Upon the top of all his lofty crest,
A bunch of hairs discolour'd diversely
With sprinkled pearl and gold full richly drest
Did shake and seem'd to daunce for jollity;
Like to an almond tree ymounted high
On top of green Selenis all alone.
With blossoms brave bedecked daintily:
Her tender locks do tremble every one
At every little breath that under heav'n is blown."

The love of beauty, however, and not of truth, is the moving principle of
his mind; and he is guided in his fantastic delineations by no rule but
the impulse of an inexhaustible imagination. He luxuriates equally in
scenes of Eastern magnificence; or the still solitude of a hermit's
cell--in the extremes of sensuality or refinement.

In reading the Faery Queen, you see a little withered old man by a
wood-side opening a wicket, a giant, and a dwarf lagging far behind, a
damsel in a boat upon an enchanted lake, wood-nymphs, and satyrs; and all
of a sudden you are transported into a lofty palace, with tapers burning,
amidst knights and ladies, with dance and revelry, and song, "and mask,
and antique pageantry." What can be more solitary, more shut up in itself,
than his description of the house of Sleep, to which Archimago sends for a
dream:

"And more to lull him in his slumber soft
A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down,
And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft,
Mix'd with a murmuring wind, much like the sound
Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swound.
No other noise, nor people's troublous cries
That still are wont t' annoy the walled town
Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lies
Wrapt in eternal silence, far from enemies."

It is as if "the honey-heavy dew of slumber" had settled on his pen in
writing these lines. How different in the subject (and yet how lik