Perhaps one may venture to
hint that the animal instincts are those that stand in least need of
stimulation. Spenser's notions of love were so nobly pure, so far from
those of our common ancestor who could hang by his tail, as not to
disqualify him for achieving the quest of the Holy Grail, and accordingly
it is not uninstructive to remember that he had drunk, among others, at
French sources not yet deboshed with _absinthe_.[292] Yet, with a purity
like that of thrice-bolted snow, he had none of its coldness. He is, of
all our poets, the most truly sensuous, using the word as Milton probably
meant it when he said that poetry should be "simple, sensuous, and
passionate." A poet is innocently sensuous when his mind permeates and
illumines his senses; when they, on the other hand, muddy the mind, he
becomes sensual. Every one of Spenser's senses was as exquisitely alive
to the impressions of material, as every organ of his soul was to those
of spiritual beauty. Accordingly, if he painted the weeds of sensuality
at all, he could not help making them "of glorious feature." It was this,
it may be suspected, rather than his "praising love," that made Lord
Burleigh shake his "rugged forehead." Spenser's gamut, indeed, is a wide
one, ranging from a purely corporeal delight in "precious odors fetched
from far away" upward to such refinement as
"Upon her eyelids many graces sate
Under the shadow of her even brows,"
where the eye shares its pleasure with the mind.
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