So entirely are beauty and delight in it the
native element of Spenser, that, whenever in the "Faery Queen" you come
suddenly on the moral, it gives you a shock of unpleasant surprise, a
kind of grit, as when one's teeth close on a bit of gravel in a dish of
strawberries and cream. He is the most fluent of our poets. Sensation
passing through emotion into revery is a prime quality of his manner. And
to read him puts one in the condition of revery, a state of mind in which
our thoughts and feelings float motionless, as one sees fish do in a
gentle stream, with just enough vibration of their fins to keep
themselves from going down with the current, while their bodies yield
indolently to all its soothing curves. He chooses his language for its
rich canorousness rather than for intensity of meaning. To characterize
his style in a single word, I should call it _costly_. None but the
daintiest and nicest phrases will serve him, and he allures us from one
to the other with such cunning baits of alliteration, and such sweet
lapses of verse, that never any word seems more eminent than the rest,
nor detains the feeling to eddy around it, but you must go on to the end
before you have time to stop and muse over the wealth that has been
lavished on you. But he has characterized and exemplified his own style
better than any description could do:--
"For round about the walls yclothed were
With goodly arras of great majesty,
Woven with gold and silk so close and near
That the rich metal lurked privily
As faining to be hid from envious eye;
Yet here and there and everywhere, unwares
It showed itself and shone unwillingly
Like to a discolored snake whose hidden snares
Through the green grass his long bright-burnished back declares.
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