gloom, inhabited by beings whose minds, like the features of ordinary mortals, take their complexion from the atmosphere by which they are surrounded-where every scene is a harmony, and every character a sentiment. We look, as through the glass of the magician, upon a wide prospect of hill, streamlet, and woodland, amidst which rise castle and palace, temple and bower, swimming in excess of light like a summer sea-shore; while here and there the expanse is chequered by the purple and undefined shadow of a ruin, or the cold darkness of a cavern. It is here that enchanters breathe their incantations, where the spell is muttered and the mystery performed, where the knight and the maiden are encompassed by wiles and defended by talismans, until the gallantry of the one and the virtue of the other triumph over every fascination in which the genii of evil have striven to entangle them.

The other most popular works of Spenser are the Shepherd's Calendar, the Ruins of Time, and several beautiful sonnets. His life was one of reverses; the morning and sunset of his days were overcast with clouds, and some of his sweetest and most touching poetry is that of his sorrows and lamentings. He possessed susceptible feelings and tender regards, and these threw a warmth and reality over the most creative of his fancies, and rendered his fairy land something more than a beautiful but cold abstraction.

The gallant yet unfortunate SIR WALTER RALEIGH

was a worshipper of the Muses as well as of Mars; but whatever interest attaches to his poetry must chiefly be derived from our historical knowledge of his character, and the associations it is calculated to arouse. Stilted expressions and exaggerated similes were beginning for a time to engage popularity, and not only Raleigh, but other poets of his age, adopted a style which (now that the fashion of it has passed away) excites little interest and less admiration.

JOSHUA SILVESTER, the translator of Du Bartas' Divine Weeks and Works, acquired in his day a popularity which has not triumphantly stood the test of time. His puritanical principles and the occasional excellence of his productions are supposed to have afterwards recommended them to Milton; and some have traced to their influence the first conception of Paradise Lost.* Contemporary with Silvester were WEBSTER, DEKKAR, BEN JOHNSON, SIR JOHN DAVIS, DRAYTON, SOUTHWELL, and the contributors to England's Helicon, GREEN, BRITTON, BAR, Young, and others.

In this age lived SHAKSPEARE, the greatest of our dramatists, the writer also of the most nervous sonnets in our language. They have a consolidation of thought, a

It is difficult to trace every peculiar influence on the mind of an author, but Milton could have received little inspiration either from Du Bartas or Sylvester-His was from nobler sources!

sterling and deep imagination, a terseness yet comprehensiveness of expression unrivalled, almost unattainable. Spenser individualized and abstracted the passions, and produced spiritual characters, Shakspeare massed and blended them, and created living and human beings; the one rendered the most real things fanciful and ideal, the other gave life and substance to the most imaginative. The one was delicate, aerial, and precise, the other glowing, powerful, and impressive. The mistiness of Romance hangs like a vapor over the creations of the one, harmonizing their tints, and softening down their most fantastic forms; the productions of the other stand out in the bold and massive characters and distinct colors of nature thoughts, sensations, affections and passions are not weakened by the refinements of a metaphysical speculation, but burst into poetry in all their freshness and proportion, warm as the mind that conceived them, and genuine as the nature from which they sprang. Spenser was the Claude of poetry, Shakspeare was an Angelo or a Raphael. His Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis, inferior only to his nobler and better works, are full of fine imagination and glowing language. They were the compositions of his early manhood, and were lit with the dawnings of that genius which brightened and immortalized his dramatic works.

The sonnet is perhaps the most difficult style of poetical composition. Being restricted to the exact number of fourteen lines, there is to epitomize into that

narrow compass a complete and dignified image or reflection, every part and expression of which should preserve its due proportion. If the composition be not spiritedly sustained, the whole stanza appears languid and unpleasing; and if it be attempted to crowd too much into the poem, it consequently becomes obscure and confused. To the writers of sonnets great poetic judgment, a delicate power of balancing words and concentrating ideas are indispensable; and these properties the mind of Shakspeare instinctively possessed. An epithet from his pen is often sufficient to form a picture. He has no redundancy of expletives, no rank luxuriance of words, but his images seem thrown off in the fervor of the moment, neither dilated nor distorted, following each other in rapid and continuous succession, yet each separate and complete. He surmounted the complexity of metre and the mechanical difficulties of verse with a master hand, and gave a splendor and variety to the sonnet, unknown in our language before his time; for most of the earlier poets wanted sufficient skill to draw out its true brilliancy from that gem of verse which the Italians had wrought to its highest polish. To his absent mistress he sings,

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing;
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.

Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hue,

Could make me any summer's story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.

Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,

As with your shadow I with these did play.

Sonnet 98.

contrast the power and imagery of this, with the playful tenderness of the following:

Those lips that Love's own hand did make,
Breath'd forth the sound that said, I hate,
To me that languish'd for her sake;
But when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue, that ever sweet
Was us'd in giving gentle doom;
And taught it thus a-new to greet:
I hate she alter'd with an end,
That follow'd it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who like a fiend
From heaven to hell is flown away.
I hate, from hate away she threw,

And sav'd my life, saying-not you.
Sonnet 145.

SIR JOHN DAVIES composed a poem on the Immortality of the soul, the Hymns of Astrea in acrostic verse, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, and Orchestra, or a Poem on Dancing-the first is not wanting in philosophical views or lively fancy, nor the others in conceit. epitaph at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields tells us that "he was a man of fine abilities and uncommon eloquence, and a most excellent writer both in prose and verse.

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