This great estimation of the _Faerie Queene_ was
due not only to the intrinsic charms of the poem--to
its exquisitely sweet melody, its intense pervading
sense of beauty, its abundant fancifulness, its subtle
spirituality--but also to the time of its appearance.
For then nearly two centuries no great poem had been
written in the English tongue. Chaucer had died
heirless. Occleve's lament over that great spirit's
decease had not been made without occasion:--

Alas my worthie maister honorable
This londis verray tresour and richesse
Deth by thy dethe hathe harm irreperable
Unto us done; hir vengeable duresse
Dispoiled hathe this londe of swetnesse
Of Rethoryk fro us; to Tullius
Was never man so like amonges us.{2}

And the doleful confession this orphaned rhymer makes
for himself, might have been well made by all the men
of his age in England:--

My dere mayster, God his soule quite,
And fader Chaucer fayne would have me taught,
But I was dull, and learned lyte or naught.

No worthy scholar had succeeded the great master. The
fifteenth century in England had abounded in movements
of profound social and political interest--in movements
which eventually fertilised and enriched and ripened
the mind of the nation; but, not unnaturally, the
immediate literary results had been of no great value.
In the reign of Henry VIII, the condition of
literature, for various reasons, had greatly improved.
Surrey and Wyatt had heralded the advent of a brighter
era. From their time the poetical succession had never
failed altogether. The most memorable name in our
literature between their time and the _Faerie Queene_
is that of Sackville, Lord Buckhurst--a name of note in
the history of both our dramatic and non-dramatic
poetry. Sackville was capable of something more than
lyrical essays. He it was who designed the _Mirror for
Magistrates_. To that poem, important as compared with
the poetry of its day, for its more pretentious
conception, he himself contributed the two best pieces
that form part of it--the _Induction_ and the
_Complaint of Buckingham_. These pieces are marked by
some beauties of the same sort as those which
especially characterise Spenser; but they are but
fragments; and in spirit they belong to an age which
happily passed away shortly after the accession of
Queen Elizabeth--they are penetrated by that despondent
tone which is so strikingly aud