the thought and feeling of
England in this glorious era.

The special development of the national mind with which we are now
concerned, however, did not by any means arrive at its largest and
clearest result until the following century. Still its progress is
sufficiently remarkable. For, while everything that bore upon the mental
development of the nation must bear upon its poetry, the fresh vigour
given by the doctrines of the Reformation to the sense of personal
responsibility, and of immediate relation to God, with the grand
influences, both literary and spiritual, of the translated, printed, and
studied Bible, operated more immediately upon its devotional utterance.

Towards the close of the sixteenth century, we begin to find such verse
as I shall now present to my readers. Only I must first make a few
remarks upon the great poem of the period: I mean, of course, _The Faerie
Queen_.

I dare not begin to set forth after any fashion the profound religious
truth contained in this poem; for it would require a volume larger than
this to set forth even that of the first book adequately. In this case it
is well to remember that the beginning of comment, as well as of strife,
is like the letting out of water.

The direction in which the wonderful allegory of the latter moves may be
gathered from the following stanza, the first of the eighth canto:

Ay me! how many perils do enfold
The righteous man to make him daily fail;
Were not that heavenly grace doth him uphold, _it_ understood.
And steadfast Truth acquit him out of all!
Her love is firm, her care continual,
So oft as he, through his own foolish pride
Or weakness, is to sinful bands made thrall:
Else should this Redcross Knight in bands have died,
For whose deliverance she this Prince doth thither guide.

Nor do I judge it good to spend much of my space upon remarks personal to
those who have not been especially writers of sacred verse. When we come
to the masters of such song, we cannot speak of their words without
speaking of themselves; but when in the midst of many words those of the
kind we seek are few, the life of the writer does not justify more than a
passing notice here.

We know but little of Spenser's history: if we might know all, I do not
fear that we should find anything to destroy the impression made by his
verse--that he was a Christian gentleman, a noble and pure-minded man, of
highest purposes and aims.