The description of annihilation, in the same canto, is forcible :
"Their rotten relicks lurk close under ground:
With living weight no sense or sympathy
They have at all; nor hollow thundring sound
Of roring winds, that cold mortality
Can wake, ywrapt in sad fatality.
To horses hoof that beats his grassie dore
He answers not: The moon in silency,
Doth passe by night, and all bedew him o'er
With her cold humid rayes; but he feels not heaven's power."
The portrait of " Old Mnemon," might almost seem intended for a prophetic picture of the author in his old age.
"Old Mnemon's head and beard was hoary white,
But yet a chearfull countenance he had:
His vigorous eyes did shine like starres bright,
And in good decent freez he was yclad,
As blith and buxom as was any
Of one-and-twenty cloth'd in forrest green;
Both blith he was, and eke of counsell sad:
Like winter-morn bedight with snow and rine
And sunny rayes, so did his goodly Eldship shine."
Our next extract shall be of greater length. It is truly Spenserian :
"It was to weet, a trimly decked close
Whose grassie pavement, wrought with even line,
Ran from the morn upon the evening-close.
The eastern end by certain steps they climbe
To do their holy things, (O sight divine!)
There on the middle of the highest flore
A large green turf squar'd out, all fresh and fine
Not much unlike to altars us'd of yore
Right fairly was adorn'd with every glittering flower.
"At either end of this well-raised sod
A stately stalk shot up of Torchwort high,
Whose yellow flames small light did cast abroad,
But yet a pleasant shew they yield the eye.
A pretty space from this we did descry
An hollow oak, whose navell the rough saw
Long since had clove: so standing wet and dry
Around the stumped top soft mosse did grow,
Whose velvet hue and verdure cushion-like did show.
"Within the higher hedge of thickn'd trees
A lower rank on either side we saw
Of lesser shrubs even-set with artifice.
There the wood-queristers sat on a row
And sweetly sung while Boreas did blow
Above their heads, with various whistling,
As his blasts hap to break (now high, now low)
Against the branches of the waving pines
And other neighbour plants, still rocking with the winds.
"But above these, birds of more sightly plume
With gold and purple feathers gayly dight
Are rank'd aloft. But th' eagle doth assume
The highest sprig. For his it is by right.
Therefore in seemly sort he there is pight
Sitting aloft in his green cabinet,
From whence he all beholds with awfull sight,
Who ever in that solemn place were met,
At the west end for better view, right stately set."
We give the following as a specimen of our author's powers of satirical description:
With a dry wall-nut shell to fence his wit.
Which like a quilted cap on's head he wore
Lin'd with white taffity, wherein were writ
More trimly than the Iliads of yore
The laws of mood and figure, and many precepts more.
"All the nice questions of the school-men old
And subtilties as thin as cobwebs bet,
Which he wore thinner in his thoughts yrold.
And his warm brains, they say, were closer set
With sharp distinctions than a cushionet
With pins and needles; which he can shoot out
Like angry porcupine, where e're they hit.
Certes a doughty clerk and champion stout
He seem'd and well appointed against every doubt."
The next is from the same canto.
"I was a crank wit, a brisk young boy; But naturally abhorr'd hypocrisie,
And craft the upshot of experienc'd age;
And more than life I lov'd my liberty,
And much suspected all that would engage
My heart to their own sect, and free born soul encage.
"For I ev'n at those years was well aware
Of man's false friendship, and grown subtilty,
Which made me snuf the wind, drink the free aire
Like a young colt upon the mountains high,
And turning tail my hunters all defie.
Ne took I any guide but th' innate light
Of my true conscience, whose voice to deny,
Was the sole sting of my offended spright:
Thus God and Nature taught their rude cosmopolite.
"I mean not Nature's harsh obdurate light,
The shamelesse eye-brows of the serpent old,
That arm'd with custome will not stick to fight
With God, and him affront with courage bold:
But that sweet temper we may oft behold
In virgin youth as yet immaculate,
And unto drudging policy unsold,
Who do without designe, now love, now hate,
And freely give and take withouten price or rate.
"Dear lads! How do I love your harmlesse years
And melt in heart while I the morning-shine
Do view of rising virtue, which appears
In your sweet faces, and mild modest eyne.
Adore that God that doth himself enshrine
your untainted breasts; and give no eare
To wicked voice that may your souls encline
Unto false peace, or unto fruitlesse fear,
Least loosened from yourselves harpyes away you bear."
The narrowness of our limits prevents us from quoting the passage in the Faerie Queene, of which the following is an imitation:
" "Twixt two huge walls on solitary green,
Of funerall cypresse many groves there been,
And eke of ewe, eben, and poppy trees:
And in their gloomy shade foul grisly fiend
Use to resort, and busily to seize
The darker phansied souls that live in ill disease.
"Hence you may see, if that you dare to mind,
Upon the side of this accursed hil,
Many a dreadfull corse ytost in wind,
Which with hard halter their loath'd life did spill.
There lives another which himself did kill
With rusty knife, all roll'd in his own blood,
And ever and anon a dolefull knill
Comes from the fatall owl, that in sad mood
With drery sound doth pierce through the death-shadowed wood."
In the succeeding parts, the author's genius, escaping from the incumbrances of his allegory, takes a freer flight, and developes itself more at leisure. The opening of the second part is very fine.
"Whatever man he be that dares to deem
True poets' skill to spring of earthly race,
I must him tell, that he doth misesteem
Their strange estate, and eke himselfe disgrace
By his rude ignorance. For there's no place
For forced labour, or slow industry
Of flagging wits, in that high fiery chace;
So soon as of the muse they quickned be,
At once they rise, and lively sing like lark in skie.
"Like to a meteor, whose materiall
Is low unwieldy earth, base unctuous slime,
Whose inward hidden parts ethereall
Ly close upwrapt in that dull sluggish fime,
Ly fast asleep, till at some fatall time
Great Phoebus' lamp has fir'd its inward spright,
And then even of itself on high doth climb;
That earst was dark becomes all eye, all sight,
Bright starre, that to the wise of future things gives light.
"Even so the weaker mind, that languid lies
Knit up in rags of dirt, dark cold and blind,
So soon that purer flame of love unties
Her clogging chains, and doth her spright unbind,
Shee sores aloft; for shee herself doth find
Well plum'd; so rais'd upon her spreaden wing,
She softly playes, and warbles in the wind,
And carols out her inward life and spring
Of overflowing joy, and of pure love doth sing."
The following appears to have been in Milton's eye, when he wrote his noble exordium:
"O thou eternall spright, cleave ope the skie,
And take thy flight into my feeble breast,
Enlarge my thoughts, enlight my dimmer eye
That wisely of that burthen, closely prest
In my straight mind, I may be dispossest:
My muse must sing of things of mickle weight;
The soul's eternity is my great quest :
Do thou me guide, that art the soul's sure light,
Grant that I never erre, but ever wend aright."
The two succeeding extracts are from another canto :
"In silent night, when mortalls be at rest,
And bathe their molten limbs in slothfull sleep,
My troubled ghost strange cares did straight molest
And plung'd my heavie soul in sorrow deep:
Large floods of tears my moistned cheeks did steep,
My heart was wounded with compassionate love
Of all the creatures: sadly out I creep
From men's close mansions, the more to improve
My mournfull plight, so softly on I forward move.
Aye me! said I, within my wearied breast,
And sighed sad, wherefore did God erect
This stage of misery? thrice, foure times blest
Whom churlish Nature never did eject
From her dark womb, and cruelly object
By sense and life unto such balefull smart;
Every slight entrance into joy is checkt
By that soure step-dame's threats, and visage tart :
Our pleasure of our pain is not the thousandth part.
"Thus vex'd I was 'cause of mortality:
Her curst remembrance cast me in this plight,
That I grew sick of the world's vanity
Ne ought recomfort could my sunken spright,
What so I hate may do me no delight,
Few things (alas) I hate, the more my wo,
The things I love by mine own sad foresight
Make me the greater torments undergo,
Because I know at last they're gone like idle show."
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