on high his colour'd winges twain,
That all his many it afraid did make:
Tho, blinding him again, his way he forth did take."

The description of Hope, in this series of historical portraits, is one
of the most beautiful in Spenser: and the triumph of Cupid at the
mischief he has made, is worthy of the malicious urchin deity. In
reading these descriptions, one can hardly avoid being reminded of
Rubens's allegorical pictures; but the account of Satyrane taming the
lion's whelps and lugging the bear's cubs along in his arms while yet an
infant, whom his mother so naturally advises to "go seek some other
play-fellows," has even more of this high picturesque character. Nobody
but Rubens could have painted the fancy of Spenser; and he could not
have given the sentiment, the airy dream that hovers over it! With all
this, Spenser neither makes us laugh nor weep. The only jest in his poem
is an allegorical play upon words, where he describes Malbecco as
escaping in the herd of goats, "by the help of his fayre hornes on
hight." But he has been unjustly charged with a want of passion and of
strength. He has both in an immense degree. He has not indeed the pathos
of immediate action or suffering, which is more properly the dramatic;
but he has all the pathos of sentiment and romance--all that belongs
to distant objects of terror, and uncertain, imaginary distress. His
strength, in like manner, is not strength of will or action, of bone and
muscle, nor is it coarse and palpable--but it assumes a character of
vastness and sublimity seen through the same visionary medium, and
blended with the appalling associations of preternatural agency. We need
only turn, in proof of this, to the Cave of Despair, or the Cave of
Mammon, or to the account of the change of Malbecco into Jealousy. The
following stanzas, in the description of the Cave of Mammon, the grisly
house of Plutus, are unrivalled for the portentous massiness of the
forms, the splendid chiaro-scuro, and shadowy horror.

"That house's form within was rude and strong,
Like an huge cave hewn out of rocky clift,
From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hung,
Embossed with massy gold of glorious gift,
And with rich metal loaded every rift,
That heavy ruin they did seem to threat:
And over them Arachne high did lift
Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net,
Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds more b