Spenserian stanza

“ Compared to the Faerie Queene his poem is as his own clear-chiming octave to the sonorous magnificence of the Spenserian stanza. In general, his tone is much more easy and familiar than Spenser's; when he chooses, however, his sentiment is more elevated and his pathos more moving. Poetry has few passages at once so nobly heroic and so exquisitely touching as the combat between Orlando and Agricane, epitomised by Leigh Hunt in his Stories from the Italian Poets. ”

“ The first eight lines are iambic pentameters, and the ninth a hexameter, the stanza thus closing with a lingering cadence which adds greatly to the melody of the verse. This is the "Spenserian stanza," a form of versification very popular with many of our later poets.
"If you love poetry well enough to enjoy it for its own sake," says Leigh Hunt, "let no evil reports of his allegory deter you from an [233] acquaintance with Spenser, for great will be your loss. His allegory itself is but one part allegory and nine parts beauty and enjoyment; sometimes an excess of flesh and blood. ”

“ It is still more irrelevant, though true, to assert that there had been a few attempts (as by More) to add an Alexandrine to other stanzas or to lengthen out their last line into one; for it is of this stanza that we are talking, and not of something else. Therefore it is sufficient to say once more that the Spenserian stanza is the invention of Edmund Spenser, and one of the greatest inventions known in prosody.
IX. Burns Metre.—This arrangement is found first in the verse of the Provençal prince, William IX. Count of Poitiers (poems about 1090) . ”

“ Love gave the magnificent opening stanza, the motto and defence at once of the largest, the most genuine, the most delightful part of poetry. And Christabel, independently of its purple patches, such as the famous descant on the quarrels of friends, and the portents that mark the passage of Geraldine, gave what was far more important—a new metre, destined to have no less great and much more copious influence than the Spenserian stanza itself. It might of course be easy to pick out anticipations in part of this combination of iambic dimeter, trochaic, and anapæstic ”

“ With reference to the versification of this poem, see what is said of the Spenserian stanza, page 232. There are many imitations of Spenser in these verses.
The student is desired to discover for himself the peculiarities of thought, of feeling, of expression, which give interest and beauty to this production. The following are a few of the words and expressions whose meaning he should study: "Gules"; "taint"; "vespers"; "poppied"; "Swart Paynims"; "Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness"; "Morphean amulet"; "affray"; "azure-lidded sleep"; "argosy"; "missal"; "tinct" ”

“ I may here observe that the stanza commonly called “Spenserian” is by no means so purely an original invention of that most imaginative poet as is usually represented. The Alexandrine at the close is the only part that is original. I find the germ of Spenser’s stanza very palpably in the old ballet-staves and in the works of two poets who lived fully a century before him, Skelton who styled himself [22] Poet Laureate to Henry VII. and Stephen Hawes who was Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the same monarch. ”

“ And as for serious imitations, the more cleverly a copyist follows his copy, the less value his work will have. The eighteenth-century Spenserians, like West, Cambridge, and Lloyd, who stuck most closely to their pattern, oblivion has covered. Their real service was done in reviving a taste for a better kind of poetry than the kind in vogue, and particularly in restoring to English verse a stanza form, which became so noble an instrument in the hands of later poets, who used it with as much freedom and vigor as if they had never seen the "Faërie Queene." ”

“ It was Spenser's design that the complete work should contain twelve books, but of the remaining part only a fragment of one book, the "Legend of Constance," is in existence.
The versification of the "Faerie Queene" is based upon the ottava rima, made so popular in Italian poetry by Tasso and Ariosto. Instead of eight lines to a stanza, however, there are nine. ”

“ Spenser is naturally compared with Ariosto. Fierce wars and faithful loves did moralize the song of both poets. But in the constitution of their minds, in the character of their poetry, they were almost the reverse of each other. The Italian is gay, rapid, ardent; his pictures shift like the hues of heaven; even while diffuse, he seems to leave in an instant what he touches, and is prolix by the number, not the duration, of his images. Spenser is habitually serious; his slow stanza seems to suit the temper of his genius; he loves to dwell on the sweetness and beauty which his fancy portrays. ”

“ It is just the difference between a successor and a mere follower, that whereas the second toils to reproduce the letter, the first gives a new form to the spirit. The relation in which Spenser stands to the Italians is that he carried on the torch of great poetry, but he lit it of English wood, and bore it to a measure of his own. His sonnet is hardly less independent than his stanza, and all talk of obligation to any model becomes idle indeed when we think of the melody of the Hymns, the Epithalamium, and the Prothalamium. ”

“ Whether or not any stanza form is as well adapted as blank verse or the rimed couplet for prolonged narrative is an interesting question, but there can be no doubt that Spenser's stanza, firmly unified, in spite of its length, by its central couplet and by the finality of the last line, is a discovery of genius, and that the Alexandrine, 'forever feeling for the next stanza,' does much to bind the stanzas together. ”

“ Spenser is so essentially a picturesque poet, he depends for his rich effects so much on the combination of colour and imagery, and multiplied accessories, that one feels—at least I feel, on laying down a volume of the “Fairie Queene” dazzled as if I had been walking in a gallery of pictures. His “Masque of Cupid,” for instance, although a procession of poetical creations, could not be transferred to a bas-relief without completely losing its Spenserian character—its wondrous glow of colour. Thus Cupid “uprears himself exulting from the back of the ravenous lion;” ”

“ The Spenserians of the early seventeenth century—between whom and Spenser in pastoral poetry Drayton forms an important link—were not courtly poets. Though they look towards the court on occasions, they stand outside its circle. They belong to the Protestant wing of the Anglican Church; and in the somewhat bourgeois and didactic tone of their poetry, their taste for emblems, and the natural, artless tone in which they speak of themselves, resemble the Dutch poets of the same class. ”

“ Before proceeding to examine the works of the other great poets who announce or exemplify the Romantic revival, it will be convenient at this point to look at some of the Spenserian imitations, which helped to inspire and vitalize the revival.
Spenser was the poet of mediaeval allegory. In the “Faerie Queene,” for the first time a real poet, endowed with the highest powers of imagination and expression, was able to present the old traditional abstractions wonderfully decked up in a new and captivating guise. ”

“ Whatever were the misfortunes of Spenser’s life, whatever neglect he might have experienced at the hands of a statesman grown old in cares, which render a man insensible to song, his spirit might be consoled by the prodigious reputation of the Faëry Queen. He was placed at once by his country above all the great Italian names, and next to Virgil among the ancients; it was a natural consequence that some should imitate what they so deeply reverenced. An ardent admiration for Spenser inspired the genius of two young brothers, Phineas and Giles Fletcher. ”

“ Descents to the infernal shades, in the manner of Homer and Vergil, alternate with descriptions of the Palace of Pride in the manner of the Romaunt of the Rose. But Spenser's imagination was a powerful spirit, and held all these diverse elements in solution. He removed them to an ideal sphere "apart from place, withholding time," where they seem all alike equally real, the dateless conceptions of the poet's dream.
The poem was to have been "a continued allegory or dark conceit," in twelve books, the hero of each book representing one of the twelve moral virtues. ”

“ This certainly is not the Greek Cupid, nor the Cupid of sculpture; it is the Spenserian Cupid. So of his Una, so of his Britomart, and the Red Cross Knight and Sir Guyon: one might make elegant statuesque impersonations of the allegories they involve, as of Truth, Chastity, Faith, Temperance; but then they would lose immediately their Spenserian367 character and sentiment, and must become something altogether different. ”

“ It was the custom that the Muse masked, to use Spenser's word, under these [133] disguises; and this conventional masquerade of pastoral poetry or knight errantry was the form under which the poetical school that preceded the dramatists naturally expressed their ideas. It seems to us odd that peaceful sheepcotes and love-sick swains should stand for the world of the Tudors and Guises, or that its cunning statecraft and relentless cruelty should be represented by the generous follies of an imaginary chivalry. But it was the fashion which Spenser found, and he accepted it. ”

“ Though the Spenserian imitations continued beyond the year which saw the birth of Wordsworth, [147] it is not necessary to mention further examples, except perhaps that of William Mickle, who, in 1767, published “The Concubine,” a Spenserian imitation of two cantos, which afterwards appeared in a later edition (1777) under the title “Sir Martyn.” ”

“ The reader hears in its lines a stately and undulating rhythm that intoxicates the ear and carries him on with an irresistible fascination, he sees the unsubstantial forms of fairyland go sweeping by in a gorgeous and dreamlike pageantry, and he feels pulsing in its luxuriant and enchanted atmosphere the warm and beauty-loving temper of the Italian Renaissance. "Spenser is superior to his subject," says Taine, "comprehends it fully, frames it with a view to the end, in order to impress upon it the proper mark of his soul and his genius. ”

“ In Shenstone’s “Schoolmistress” (1737-1742) instances of personification are rare, and, where they do occur, are merely faint abstractions like “Learning near her little dome.” It is noteworthy that one of the most successful of the Spenserian imitations should have dispensed with the cumbrous machinery of abstract beings that, on the model of the “Faerie Queene,” might naturally have been drawn upon. ”

“ CHAPTER II. THE NEW POET—THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR. [1579.]
It is clear that when Spenser appeared in London, he had found out his powers and vocation as a poet. He came from Cambridge, fully conscious of the powerful attraction of the imaginative faculties, conscious of an extraordinary command over the resources of language, and with a singular gift of sensitiveness to the grace and majesty and suggestiveness of sound and rhythm, such as makes a musician. And whether he knew it or not, his mind was in reality made up, as to what his English poetry was to be. ”

“ Spenser, the courtly spectator of the tilt, the pageant, and the masque—musing over the tome of old Gothic romances, and striking into the vein of fabling of Italian poesy, whose novelty had nearly supplanted the ancient classics—was at once Ariosto and Tasso and Ovid.
Spenser composed with great facility; incessant production seems to have been his true existence. His was one of those minds whose labour diffuses their delight, and whose delight provokes to labour. He seems always to be in earnest, and sometimes in haste, for he had much to work. ”

“ Every poetic palate will relish "the grapes of hidden meaning so abundant under the vine-leaves of his exquisite allegory."
On the whole, as for Spenser as a natural poet, all unite in pronouncing him imaginative, bold, and even witty: as an artist, or educated poet, skilful, elegant, and full. His language is, for the most part, rich and expressive; his verse (remarkably various in arrangement) could scarcely be more melodious and pleasing. I will close this portion of my remarks with a quotation, the source of which I forget, but which I find pencilled upon the margin of my Chaucer. ”

“ Spenser accepted from his age the quaint stateliness which is characteristic of his poem. His poetry is not simple and direct like that of the Greeks. It has not the exquisite finish and felicity of the best of the Latins. It has not the massive grandeur, the depth, the freedom, the shades and subtle complexities of feeling and motive, which the English dramatists found by going straight to nature. ”

“ Yet long before this hobnobbing with the later generation of poets, Spencer had ceased to admire German romanticism, for in 1802 he burlesqued the German ghost literature in a play called Urania, which was performed at Drury Lane theatre. He published volumes of poems in 1804 and 1811, while a collected edition appeared in 1835, a year after his death. [4]
Lady Diana Beauclerk, who had become interested in Mr. Stanley's translation because it furnished subjects for her pencil, was the eldest daughter of Charles Spencer, third Duke of Marlborough, [5] and was thus Mr. W. R. Spencer's aunt. ”

“ In England numerous Eclogues made their appearance. Amongst the earliest and the best of these were Spenser's. It would perhaps be unjust to treat this modern pastoral literature as altogether an affectation. However unreal, the pastoral world had its charms—a pleasant feeling imparted of emancipation, a deep quietude, a sweet tranquillity. If vulgar men discovered their new worlds, and trafficked and bustled there, why should not the poet discover his Arcadia, and repose at his ease in it, secure from the noises of feet coming and going over the roads of the earth? ”