t the colour and the taste were easily discovered.--Mr. Rymer
asserts, that Spenser may be reckoned the first of our heroic poets.
He had a large spirit, a sharp judgment, and a genius for heroic
poetry, perhaps above any that ever wrote since Virgil, but our
misfortune is, he wanted a true idea, and lost himself by following an
unfaithful guide. Tho' besides Homer and Virgil he had read Tasso, yet
he rather suffered himself to be misled by Ariosto, with whom blindly
rambling on marvels and adventures, he makes no conscience of
probability; all is fanciful and chimerical, without any uniformity,
or without any foundation in truth; in a word his poem is perfect
Fairy-Land. Thus far Sir William Temple, and Mr. Rymer; let us now
attend to the opinion of a greater name. Mr. Dryden in his dedication
of Juvenal, thus proceeds: The English have only to boast of Spenser
and Milton in heroic poetry, who neither of them wanted either genius
or learning to have been perfect poets, and yet both of them are
liable to many censures; for there is no uniformity in the design of
Spenser; he aims at the accomplishment of no one action; he raises up
a hero for every one of his adventures, and endows each of them with
some particular moral virtue, which renders them all equal, without
subordination or preference: Every one is valiant in his own legend;
only we must do him the justice to observe, that magnanimity, which is
the character of prince Arthur, shines throughout the whole poem, and
succours the rest when they are in distress. The original of every
knight was then living in the court of Queen Elizabeth; and he
attributed to each of them that virtue which he thought was most
conspicuous in them; an ingenious piece of flattery, tho' it turned
not much to his account. Had he lived to finish his poem in the
remaining legends, it had certainly been more of a piece; but could
not have been perfect because the model was not true. But prince
Arthur, or his chief patron Sir Philip Sidney, dying before him,
deprived the poet both of means and spirit to accomplish his design.
For the rest, his obsolete language, and ill choice of his stanza, are
faults both of the second magnitude; for notwithstanding the first, he
is still intelligible, at least after a little practice, and for
the last he is more to be admired, that labouring under such
disadvantages, his verses are so numerous, so various, and so
harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he has pr