in the order in which they first appeared, on being found
of sufficient bulk to fill a volume of the desired size. Nor is it to
be supposed that they indicate a particular course of study pursued
with reference to their production. Though the author has had the
works on which he comments beside him while he wrote, his long and
close familiarity with them, as well as with the range of literature
to which they belong, and with the principles and necessary details
which help to illustrate them, is apparent throughout. Seldom, indeed,
except in the case of a specialist devoting himself to some single
field, has a critical panoply been more complete than that with which
Mr. Lowell has armed himself. He discusses with equal learning and
enthusiasm the profoundest and the minutest questions, mysteries of
consciousness and niceties of metre and accent. Yet this laboriousness
is curiously conjoined with something of a sybaritic tone, as of a
taste cultivated to hyper-fastidiousness and courting a languorous
enjoyment of flavors rather than the satisfaction of a keen appetite.
There are in this book some passages in which the thought is so
attenuated in the process of elaboration and figurative adornment that
we are tempted to regard the whole as a mere effort of fancy, not as
the expression of a serious conviction. It might have been appropriate
and suggestive to characterize the poetry of Spenser by some allusions
to the splendors and bizarreries of Venetian art; but when it is
asserted as a proposition logically formulated and supported that "he
makes one think always of Venice; for not only is his style Venetian,
but as the gallery there is housed in the shell of an abandoned
convent, so his in that of a deserted allegory; and again, as at
Venice you swim in a gondola from Gian Bellini to Titian, and from
Titian to Tintoret, so in him, where other cheer is wanting, the
gentle sway of his measure, like the rhythmical impulse of the oar,
floats you lullingly along from picture to picture,"--we are rather
reminded of Venetian filigree than struck by the force and truth
of the analogy. The statement that Spenser's style is Venetian is a
puzzling one, and we are not much helped by the explanation given in
a foot note, where Mr. Lowell, citing from the _Muiopotmos_ a
description of the rape of Europa, asks, "Was not this picture painted
by Paul Veronese, for example?" and then adds, "Spenser begins a
complimentary sonnet prefixed to