res rare:
So creeping close, as snake in hidden weeds,
Inquireth of our states, and of our Knight'y deeds.

Which when he knew, and felt our feeble hearts
Emboss'd with bale, and bitter-biting grief,
Which love had launced with his deadly darts,
With wounding words, and terms of foul reprief,
He plucked from us all hope of due relief;
That erst us held in love of ling'ring life;
Then hopeless, heartless, 'gan the cunning thief
Persuade us die, to stint all further strife:
To me he lent this rope, to him a rusty knife.

The following is the picture.

The darksome cave they enter, where they find,
That cursed man, low sitting on the ground,
Musing full sadly in his sullen mind;
His greasy locks, long growing and unbound,
Disordered hung about his shoulders round,
And hid his face; through which his hollow eyne,
Look'd deadly dull, and stared as astound;
His raw bone cheeks thro' penury and pine,
Were shrunk into his jaws, as he did never dine,

His garments nought, but many ragged clouts,
With thorns together pinn'd and patched was,
The which his naked sides he wrapt abouts;
And him beside, there lay upon the grass
A dreary corse, whose life away did pass,
All wallowed in his own, yet luke-warm blood,
That from his wound yet welled fresh alas;
In which a rusty knife fast fixed stood,
And made an open passage for the gushing flood.

It would perhaps be an injury to Spenser to dismiss his Life without a
few remarks on that great work of his which has placed him among
the foremost of our poets, and discovered so elevated and sublime a
genius. The work I mean is his allegorical poem of the Fairy Queen.

Sir William Temple in his essay on poetry, says, "that the religion of
the Gentiles had been woven into the contexture of all the ancient
poetry with an agreeable mixture, which made the moderns affect to
give that of christianity a place also in their poems; but the true
religion was not found to become fictitious so well as the false one
had done, and all their attempts of this kind seemed, rather to debase
religion than heighten poetry. Spenser endeavoured to supply this with
morality, and to make instruction, instead of story the subject of an
epic poem. His execution was excellent, and his flights of fancy very
noble and high. But his design was poor; and his moral lay so bare,
that it lost the effect. It is true, the pill was gilded, but so thin
tha