"[266] It is almost inconceivable that Spenser's hexameters
should have been written by the man who was so soon to teach his native
language how to soar and sing, and to give a fuller sail to English
verse.
One of the most striking facts in our literary history is the
pre-eminence at once so frankly and unanimously conceded to Spenser by
his contemporaries. At first, it is true, he had not many rivals. Before
the "Faery Queen" two long poems were printed and popular,--the "Mirror
for Magistrates" and Warner's "Albion's England,"--and not long after it
came the "Polyolbion" of Drayton and the "Civil Wars" of Daniel. This was
the period of the saurians in English poetry, interminable poems, book
after book and canto after canto, like far-stretching _vertebrae_, that
at first sight would seem to have rendered earth unfit for the habitation
of man. They most of them sleep well now, as once they made their readers
sleep, and their huge remains lie embedded in the deep morasses of
Chambers and Anderson. We wonder at the length of face and general
atrabilious look that mark the portraits of the men of that generation,
but it is no marvel when even their relaxations were such downright hard
work. Fathers when their day on earth was up must have folded down the
leaf and left the task to be finished by their sons,--a dreary
inheritance.
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