sequent humiliation of Essex.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.--With one more interpretation we close. In the fifth
book, Spenser is the apologist of Elizabeth for her conduct to her cousin,
Mary Queen of Scots, and he has been very delicate in his distinctions. It
is not her high abstraction of justice, Sir Artegal, who does the
murderous deed, but his man _Talus_, retributive justice, who, like a
limehound, finds her hidden under a heap of gold, and drags her forth by
her fair locks, in such rueful plight that even Artegal pities her:

Yet for no pity would he change the course
Of justice which in Talus hand did lie,
Who rudely haled her forth without remorse,
Still holding up her suppliant hands on high,
And kneeling at his feet submissively;
But he her suppliant hands, those _hands of gold_,
And eke her feet, those feet of _silver try_,
Which sought unrighteousness and justice sold,
Chopped off and nailed on high that all might them behold.

She was a royal lady, a regnant queen: her hands held a golden sceptre,
and her feet pressed a silver footstool. She was thrown down the castle
wall, and drowned "in the dirty mud."

"But the stream washed away her guilty blood." Did it wash away
Elizabeth's bloody guilt? No. For this act she stands in history like Lady
Macbeth, ever rubbing her hands, but "the damned spot" will not out at her
bidding. Granted all that is charged against Mary, never was woman so
meanly, basely, cruelly treated as she.

What has been said is only in partial illustration of the plan and manner
of Spenser's great poem: the student is invited and encouraged to make an
analysis of the other portions himself. To the careless reader the poem is
harmonious, the pictures beautiful, and the imagery gorgeous; to the
careful student it is equally charming, and also discloses historic
pictures of great value.

It is so attractive that the critic lingers unconsciously upon it.
Spenser's tributes to the character of woman are original, beautiful, and
just, and the fame of his great work, originally popular and designed for
a contemporary purpose only, has steadily increased. Next to Milton, he is
the most learned of the British poets. Warton calls him the _serious
Spenser_. Thomson says he formed himself upon Spenser. He took the ottava
rima, or eight-lined stanza of the Italian poets, and by adding an
Alexandrine line, formed it into what has since been called the Spe