"
Verses like these, especially the last (which Dryden would have liked),
were such as English ears had not yet heard, and curiously prophetic of
the maturer man. The language and verse of Spenser at his best have an
ideal lift in them, and there is scarce any of our poets who can so
hardly help being poetical.
It was this instantly felt if not easily definable charm that forthwith
won for Spenser his never-disputed rank as the chief English poet of that
age, and gave him a popularity which, during his life and in the
following generation, was, in its select quality, without a competitor.
It may be thought that I lay too much stress on this single attribute of
diction. But apart from its importance in his case as showing their way
to the poets who were just then learning the accidence of their art and
leaving them a material to work in already mellowed to their hands, it
should be remembered that it is subtle perfection of phrase and that
happy coalescence of music and meaning, where each reinforces the other,
that define a man as poet and make all ears converts and partisans.
Spenser was an epicure in language. He loved "seld-seen costly" words
perhaps too well, and did not always distinguish between mere strangeness
and that novelty which is so agreeable as to cheat us with some charm of
seeming association.
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