te quatrains followed by a couplet.
But Sir Philip Sidney, whose familiarity with Italian literature was
intimate, and who had resided long in Italy, perceived that without a
greater complexity and interweaving of rhymes the beauty of the poem
was considerably impaired. He therefore combined the rhymes of the two
quatrains, as the Italians had done, leaving himself free to follow
the Italian fashion in the conclusion, or else to wind up after
English usage with a couplet. Spenser and Drummond follow the rule of
Sidney; Drayton and Daniel, that of Surrey and Shakspere. It was not
until Milton that an English poet preserved the form of the Italian
sonnet in its strictness; but, after Milton, the greatest
sonnet-writers--Wordsworth, Keats, and Rossetti--have aimed at
producing stanzas as regular as those of Petrarch.

The great age of our literature--the age of Elizabeth--was essentially
one of Italian influence. In Italy the Renaissance had reached its
height: England, feeling the new life which had been infused into arts
and letters, turned instinctively to Italy, and adopted her canons of
taste. 'Euphues' has a distinct connection with the Italian discourses
of polite culture. Sidney's 'Arcadia' is a copy of what Boccaccio had
attempted in his classical romances, and Sanazzaro in his
pastorals.[18] Spenser approached the subject of the 'Faery Queen'
with his head full of Ariosto and the romantic poets of Italy. His
sonnets are Italian; his odes embody the Platonic philosophy of the
Italians.[19] The extent of Spenser's deference to the Italians in
matters of poetic art may be gathered from this passage in the
dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh of the 'Faery Queen:'

I have followed all the antique poets historical: first
Homer, who in the persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath
ensampled a good governor and a virtuous man, the one in his
Ilias, the other in his Odysseis; then Virgil, whose like
intention was to do in the person of AEneas; after him
Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando; and lately Tasso
dissevered them again, and formed both parts in two persons,
namely, that part which they in Philosophy call Ethice, or
virtues of a private man, coloured in his Rinaldo, the other
named Politico in his Goffredo.

From this it is clear that, to the mind of Spenser, both Ariosto and
Tasso were authorities of hardly less gravity than Homer and Virgil.
Raleigh, in the s