bound Ulysses from the
longing arms of Penelope--and Jason, leading the flower of a prior and yet
more heroic generation, must first win the heart of Medea before he may
attain the Golden Fleece--though the veritable nature of the human being
have ever thus, through its strongest passion, imaged itself in its most
exquisite mirror, Poetry--yet there did, in reawaking Europe, a new
love-poetry arise, distinctively characterised by the omnipotence which it
ascribed to the Love-god, legitimating in him an usurped supremacy, and
exhibiting, in artificial and wilful excess, that passion which the older
poets drew in its powerful but unexaggerated and natural proportions.

Thenceforwards the verse of the South and of the North, and alike the
forgotten and the imperishable, all attest the predominancy of the same
star. Diamond eyes and ruby lips stir into sound the lute of the
Troubadours and the Minnesingers. Famous bearers of either name were
knights distinguished in the lists and in the field. And who is it that
stole from heaven the immortal fire of genius for Petrarch? Laura. Who is
the guide of Dante through Paradise? Beatrice. In our own language, the
spirit of love breathes, more than in any other poet, in Spenser. His
great poem is one Lay of Love, embodying and associating that idealized,
chivalrous, and romantic union of "fierce warres and faithful loves." It
hovers above the earth in some region exempt from mortal footing--wars
such as never were, loves such as never were--and all--Allegory! One
ethereal extravagance! A motto may be taken from him to describe that
ascendancy of the love-planet in the poetical sky of renewed Europe. It
alludes to the love-freaks of the old Pagan deities upon earth, in which
the King of the Gods excelled, as might be supposed, all the others.

"While thus on earth great Jove these pageants play'd,
_The winged boy did thrust into his throne_;
And scoffing thus, unto his mother sayde,
'_Lo! now the heavens obey to me alone
And take me for their Jove, now Jove to earth is gone_.'"

The pure truth of the poetical inspiration which rests upon Spenser's
poems, when compared to the absolute departure from reality apparent in
the manners of his heroes and heroines, and in the physical world which
they inhabit, is a phenomenon which may well perplex the philosophical
critic. You will hardly dare to refuse to any true poet the self-election
of his materials. Grant, therefore, to Sp