Both should be borne in
mind as coefficients in a perfectly fair judgment. If his positive merit
is to be settled irrevocably by the former, yet an intelligent criticism
will find its advantage not only in considering what he was, but what,
under the given circumstances, it was possible for him to be.
The fact that the great poem of Spenser was inspired by the Orlando of
Ariosto, and written in avowed emulation of it, and that the poet almost
always needs to have his fancy set agoing by the hint of some
predecessor, must not lead us to overlook his manifest claim to
originality. It is not what a poet takes, but what he makes out of what
he has taken, that shows what native force is in him. Above all, did his
mind dwell complacently in those forms and fashions which in their very
birth are already obsolescent, or was it instinctively drawn to those
qualities which are permanent in language and whatever is wrought in it?
There is much in Spenser that is contemporary and evanescent; but the
substance of him is durable, and his work was the deliberate result of
intelligent purpose and ample culture. The publication of his "Shepherd's
Calendar" in 1579 (though the poem itself be of little interest) is one
of the epochs in our literature. Spenser had at least the originality to
see clearly and to feel keenly that it was essential to bring poetry back
again to some kind of understanding with nature.
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