ind. That the _ottava rima_ on
the one hand, and the sonnet on the other, may have suggested the idea of
it is quite possible. But the Spenserian stanza, as it is justly called, is
his own and no one else's, and its merits, especially that primal merit of
adaptation to the subject and style of the poem, are unique. Nothing else
could adapt itself so perfectly to the endless series of vignettes and
dissolving views which the poet delights in giving; while, at the same
time, it has, for so elaborate and apparently integral a form, a singular
faculty of hooking itself on to stanzas preceding and following, so as not
to interrupt continuous narrative when continuous narrative is needed. Its
great compass, admitting of an almost infinite variety of cadence and
composition, saves it from the monotony from which even the consummate art
of Milton could not save blank verse now and then, and from which no writer
has ever been able to save the couplet, or the quatrain, or the stanzas
ending with a couplet, in narratives of very great length. But the most
remarkable instance of harmony between metrical form and other
characteristics, both of form and matter, in the metrist has yet to be
mentioned. It has been said how well the stanza suits Spenser's pictorial
faculty; it certainly suits his musical faculty as well. The slightly (very
slightly, for he can be vigorous enough) languid turn of his grace, the
voluptuous cadences of his rhythm, find in it the most perfect exponent
possible. The verse of great poets, especially Homer's, has often been
compared to the sea. Spenser's is more like a river, wide, and deep, and
strong, but moderating its waves and conveying them all in a steady, soft,
irresistible sweep forwards. To aid him, besides this extraordinary
instrument of metre, he had forged for himself another in his language. A
great deal has been written on this--comments, at least of the
unfavourable kind, generally echoing Ben Jonson's complaint that Spenser
"writ no language"; that his dialect is not the dialect of any actual place
or time, that it is an artificial "poetic diction" made up of Chaucer, and
of Northern dialect, and of classicisms, and of foreign words, and of
miscellaneous archaisms from no matter where. No doubt it is. But if any
other excuse than the fact of a beautiful and satisfactory effect is wanted
for the formation of a poetic diction different from the actually spoken or
the ordinarily written tongue of t