And why? Browne and Fletcher
wrote because Spenser had written, but Spenser wrote from a strong inward
impulse--an instinct it might be called--to escape at all risks into the
fresh air from that horrible atmosphere into which rhymer after rhymer
had been pumping carbonic-acid gas with the full force of his lungs, and
in which all sincerity was on the edge of suffocation. His longing for
something truer and better was as honest as that which led Tacitus so
long before to idealize the Germans, and Rousseau so long after to make
an angel of the savage.
Spenser himself supremely overlooks the whole chasm between himself and
Chaucer, as Dante between himself and Virgil. He called Chaucer master,
as Milton was afterwards to call _him_. And, even while he chose the most
artificial of all forms, his aim--that of getting back to nature and
life--was conscious, I have no doubt, to himself, and must be obvious to
whoever reads with anything but the ends of his fingers. It is true that
Sannazzaro had brought the pastoral into fashion again, and that two of
Spenser's are little more than translations from Marot; but for manner he
instinctively turned back to Chaucer, the first and then only great
English poet. He has given common instead of classic names to his
personages, for characters they can hardly be called.
Pages:
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225