“Loath was the ape (though praised) to adventer
Yet faintly gan into his worke to enter,
Afraid of everie leaf that stir’d him by,
And everie stick that underneath did ly:
Upon his tiptoes nicely he up went,
For making noyse, and still his ears he lent
To everie sound that under heaven blew,
Now went, now stopt, now crept, now backward drew,
That it good sport had been him to have eyde;
Yet at the last (so well he him applyde),
Through his fine handling, and his cleanly play,
He all those royall signes had stolne away,
And with the foxes helpe them borne aside
Into a secret corner unespide.”
In the above, tlie trepidation and anxiety of the robber are admirably drawn. In “The Ruines of Time,” in which he adverts to the untimely death of the Earl of Leicester, are many noble passages; and Mr. Ellis has selected one of the most spirited, for insertion in his valuable Specimens. “Muiopotmos” is one of the most elegant of all Spenser’s minor poems, and possesses much of the lavishness of imagery and description so conspicuous in his more polished works. “The Teares of the Muses” comprise their lament for the decay of learning. “Daphnaida,” an Elegy on Douglas Howard, daughter of Henry Lord Howard, appeared Jan. 1, 1591–2; and in 1595, was published “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe,” in which the Poet gives an account of his visit to England and his introduction to the queen, with familiar sketches of his contemporaries under feigned names. Attached to “Colin Clout” was “Astrophel,” a collection of elegiac poems on the death of Sir Philip Sydney, supposed to have been written on the immediate occasion of his death. The characteristics of this work are conceit and pedantry, but often redeemed by tender sentiments and noble expressions. The best of the poems is “The Mourning Muse of Thestylis;” and in the Elegy, “A Friends Passion for his Astrophel,” we have an atoning charm in the following graceful portrait of Sidney:—
“When he descended downe to the mount
His personage seemed most divine:
A thousand graces one might count
Upon his lovely cheerfull eine:
To heare him speake and sweetly smile
You were in Paradise the while.
“A sweet attractive kinds of grace,
A full assurance given by lookes,
Continuall comfort in a face,
The lineaments of Gospel bookes;
I trowe that countenance cannot lie,
Whose thoughts are legible in the eie.
“Was never eie did see that face,
Was never eare did heare that tong,
Was never minde did minde his grace,
That ever thought the traell longe.
But eies, and eares, and ev’ry thought,
Were with his sweete perfections caught.”
