ar_. In the less
deliberately archaic divisions, such as "April" and "November," the command
of metrical form, in which also the poet is almost peerless, discovers
itself. Much the same may be said of the volume of _Complaints_, which,
though published later than _The Faerie Queene_, represents beyond all
question very much earlier work. Spenser is unquestionably, when he is not
at once spurred and soothed by the play of his own imagination, as in _The
Queene_, a melancholy poet, and the note of melancholy is as strong in
these poems as in their joint title. It combines with his delight in
emblematic allegory happily enough, in most of these pieces except _Mother
Hubbard's Tale_. This is almost an open satire, and shows that if Spenser's
genius had not found a less mongrel style to disport itself in, not merely
would Donne, and Lodge, and Hall, and Marston have had to abandon their
dispute for the post of first English satirist, but the attainment of
really great satire in English might have been hastened by a hundred years,
and _Absalom and Achitophel_ have been but a second. Even here, however,
the piece still keeps the Chaucerian form and manner, and is only a kind of
exercise. The sonnets from and after Du Bellay and others are more
interesting. As in the subsequent and far finer _Amoretti_, Spenser prefers
the final couplet form to the so-called Petrarchian arrangement; and,
indeed, though the most recent fashion in England has inclined to the
latter, an impartial judgment must pronounce both forms equally good and
equally entitled to place. The _Amoretti_ written in this metre, and
undoubtedly representing some, at least, of Spenser's latest written work,
rank with the best of Sidney's, and hardly below the best of Shakespere's;
while both in them and in the earlier sonnets the note of regret mingled
with delight--the special Renaissance note--sounds as it rarely does in any
other English verse. Of the poems of the later period, however (leaving
_The Faerie Queene_ for a moment aside), the _Epithalamion_ and the _Four
Hymns_ rank undoubtedly highest. For splendour of imagery, for harmony of
verse, for delicate taste and real passion, the _Epithalamion_ excels all
other poems of its class, and the _Four Hymns_ express a rapture of
Platonic enthusiasm, which may indeed be answerable for the unreadable
_Psyches_ and _Psychozoias_ of the next age, but which is itself married to
immortal verse in the happiest manner.

S