an
households where the stricter conception of the diabolical nature of all
poetry had not penetrated, his works were read--standing on a shelf, may
be, between the new translation of the Bible and Sylvester's translation
of the French poet Du Bartas' work on the creation, that had a large
popularity at that time as family reading. Probably the Puritans were as
blind to the sensuousness of Spenser's language and imagery as they were
(and are) to the same qualities in the Bible itself. _The Fairy Queen_
would easily achieve innocuousness amongst those who can find nothing
but an allegory of the Church in the "Song of Songs." His followers made
their allegory a great deal plainer than he had done his. In his poem
called _The Purple Island_, Phineas Fletcher, a Puritan imitator of
Spenser in Cambridge, essayed to set forth the struggle of the soul at
grip with evil, a battle in which the body--the "Purple Island"--is the
field. To a modern reader it is a desolating and at times a mildly
amusing book, in which everything from the liver to the seven deadly
sins is personified; in which after four books of allegorized
contemporary anatomy and physiology, the will (Voletta) engages in a
struggle with Satan and conquers by the help of Christ and King James!
The allegory is clever--too clever--and the author can paint a pleasant
picture, but on the whole he was happier in his pastoral work. His
brother Giles made a better attempt at the Spenserian manner. His long
poem, _Christ's Victory and Death_, shows for all its carefully
Protestant tone high qualities of mysticism; across it Spenser and
Milton join hands.

It was, however, in pastoral poetry that Spenser's influence found its
pleasantest outlet. One might hesitate to advise a reader to embark on
either of the Fletchers. There is no reason why any modern should not
read and enjoy Browne or Wither, in whose softly flowing verse the
sweetness and contentment of the countryside, that "merry England" which
was the background of all sectarian and intellectual strife and labour,
finds as in a placid stream a calm reflection and picture of itself. The
seventeenth century gave birth to many things that only came to maturity
in the nineteenth; if you care for that kind of literary study which
searches out origins and digs for hints and models of accented styles,
you will find in Browne that which influenced more than any other single
thing the early work of Keats. Browne has another