one an unappreciable service to
Spenser. He has improved upon a picture in "The Fairy Queen"--making
"the beauty still more beauteous," by a single touch of a pencil dipped
in moonlight, or in sunlight tender as Luna's smiles. Through Spenser's
many nine-lined stanzas the lovely lady glides along her own world--and
our eyes follow in delight the sinless wanderer. In Wordsworth's one
single celestial line we behold her neither in time nor space--an
immortal omnipresent idea at one gaze occupying the soul.

And is not "The Fairy Queen" a Great Poem? Like "The Excursion," it is
at all events a long one--"slow to begin, and never ending." That fire
was a fortunate one in which so many books of it were burnt. If no such
fortunate fire ever took place, then let us trust that the moths
drillingly devoured the manuscript--and that 'tis all safe. Purgatorial
pains--unless indeed they should prove eternal--are insufficient
punishment for the impious man who invented Allegory. If you have got
anything to say, sir, out with it--in one or other of the many forms of
speech employed naturally by creatures to whom God has given the gift of
"discourse of reason." But beware of misspending your life in perversely
attempting to make shadow substance, and substance shadow. Wonderful
analogies there are among all created things, material and
immaterial--and millions so fine that Poets alone discern them--and
sometimes succeed in showing them in words. Most spiritual region of
poetry--and to be visited at rare times and seasons--nor all life long
ought bard there to abide. For a while let the veil of Allegory be drawn
before the face of Truth, that the light of its beauty may shine through
it with a softened charm--dim and drear--like the moon gradually
obscuring in its own halo on a dewy night. Such air-woven veil of
Allegory is no human invention. The soul brought it with her when

"Trailing clouds of glory she did come
From heaven, which is her home."

Sometimes, now and then, in moods strange and high--obey the bidding of
the soul--and allegorise; but live not all life-long in an
Allegory--even as Spenser did--Spenser the divine; for with all his
heavenly genius--and brighter visions never met mortal eyes than
his--what is he but a "dreamer among men," and what may save that
wondrous poem from the doom of oblivion?

To this conclusion must we come at last--that in the English language
there is but one Great Poem. What! Not "L