on of the Purple Island. What renders the conception yet more
amazing is the fact that the whole ponderous mass of anatomy and
metaphysics, nearly as long as the _Paradise Lost_, is put as a song, in
a succession of twelve cantos, in the mouth of a shepherd, who begins a
canto every morning to the shepherds and shepherdesses of the
neighbourhood, and finishes it by folding-time in the evening. And yet
the poem is full of poetry. He triumphs over his difficulties partly by
audacity, partly by seriousness, partly by the enchantment of song. But
the poem will never be read through except by students of English
literature. It is a whole; its members are well-fitted; it is full of
beauties--in parts they swarm like fire-flies; and _yet_ it is not a good
poem. It is like a well-shaped house, built of mud, and stuck full of
precious stones. I do not care, in my limited space, to quote from it.
Never was there a more incongruous dragon of allegory.

Both brothers were injured, not by their worship of Spenser, but by the
form that worship took--imitation. They seem more pleased to produce a
line or stanza that shall recall a line or stanza of Spenser, than to
produce a fine original of their own. They even copy lines almost word
for word from their great master. This is pure homage: it was their
delight that such adaptations should be recognized--just as it was
Spenser's hope, when he inserted translated stanzas from Tasso's
_Jerusalem Delivered_ in _The Fairy Queen_, to gain the honour of a true
reproduction. Yet, strange fate for imitators! both, but Giles
especially, were imitated by a greater than their worship--even by
Milton. They make Spenser's worse; Milton makes theirs better. They
imitate Spenser, faults and all; Milton glorifies their beauties.

From the smaller poems of Phineas, I choose the following version of

PSALM CXXX.

From the deeps of grief and fear,
O Lord, to thee my soul repairs:
From thy heaven bow down thine ear;
Let thy mercy meet my prayers.
Oh! if thou mark'st what's done amiss,
What soul so pure can see thy bliss?

But with thee sweet Mercy stands,
Sealing pardons, working fear.
Wait, my soul, wait on his hands;
Wait, mine eye; oh! wait, mine ear:
If he his eye or tongue affords,
Watch all his looks, catch all his words.

As a watchman waits for day,
And looks for light, and looks again:
When the night grows old and gray,
To be relieved he