He had not the concentrated power which can
sometimes pack infinite riches in the little room of a single epithet,
for his genius is rather for dilatation than compression.[287] But he
was, with the exception of Milton and possibly Gray, the most learned of
our poets. His familiarity with ancient and modern literature was easy
and intimate, and as he perfected himself in his art, he caught the grand
manner and high bred ways of the society he frequented. But even to the
last he did not quite shake off the blunt rusticity of phrase that was
habitual with the generation that preceded him. In the fifth book of the
"Faery Queen," where he is describing the passion of Britomart at the
supposed infidelity of Arthegall, he descends to a Teniers-like
realism,[288]--he whose verses generally remind us of the dancing Hours
of Guido, where we catch but a glimpse of the real earth and that far
away beneath. But his habitual style is that of gracious loftiness and
refined luxury.
He shows his mature hand in the "Muiopotmos," the most airily fanciful of
his poems, a marvel for delicate conception and treatment, whose breezy
verse seems to float between a blue sky and golden earth in imperishable
sunshine. No other English poet has found the variety and compass which
enlivened the octave stanza under his sensitive touch.
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