66

sillon, if I remember right) describes the model wife as ne partageant son cœur qu'entre Jesus Christ et son époux." I think some texts I could quote forbid us to accept this definition; but, at any rate, Massillon meant the division to be in very different proportions to Ariosto's. Zerbino is Isabella's earthly deity; and her poet knows of no other heaven for her than his society above. Lastly, the compliment to the Isabellas of Ariosto's day, with which the divine speech concludes besides the irreverence of its occurrence there at all— throws an air of unreality over what has gone before, and seems (when one considers what were too probably the persons so complimented) a ludicrous reward for Isabella's self-devotion. Would it be too severe to say that the crown befits the martyr?

I shall not contrast any story from Spenser with this tale, though the patient endurance of his Amoret under equally trying circumstances might be compared with it in many points. But the discussion on suicide in the first book of the Fairy Queen' will supply us with a strong proof of the differences we are in search of. In its ninth canto, its hero, the Red-Cross knight encounters Despair; - not, as Bunyan's pilgrims found him, a giant to enthrall by force; but a subtle arguer, hard to refute by reasoning, and whose words have a persuasive power, to some minds irresistible. The knight falls in with him just where such a spectre might be looked for in his path. Not when innocent and devout he sets off under the guidance of Una (Truth) to slay the Dragon; nor yet when, having been misled by Duessa (Falsehood), he sojourns in the House of Pride; but when he is retracing his steps to the right path, and preparing once more to resume his holy enterprise. Spenser's fine description of Despair's ghastly looks, and the gloomy cave in which he dwelt, will be found in the 33d and three following stanzas. It is said to have been the first passage in the Fairy Queen' which excited Sir Philip Sidney's admiration. Despair is standing over a new-made victim, when the Red-Cross Knight comes up and charges him with his crime. Despair defends the deed, and then proceeds:

XXXIX.

"Who travels by the weary wandering way, To come unto his wished home in haste, And meets a flood, that doth his passage stay,

Is not great grace to help him over-past,

For he that once hath missed the right way, The farther he doth go, the farther he doth stray.

XLIV.

"Then do no farther go, no farther stray, But here lie down, and to thy rest betake, Th' ill to prevent that life ensuen may; For what hath life that may it loved make, And gives nor rather cause it to forsake? Fear, sickness, age, loss, labour, sorrow, strife,

Pain, hunger, cold, that makes the heart to quake,

And ever-fickle fortune rageth rife; All which, and thousands more, do make a loathsome life.'"

In the two next stanzas Despair employs a stronger argument, by reminding the knight of his recent fall, concluding with

| question which could only be proposed, not solved, by the irresolute Prince of Denmark, receives an answer here. The grand old Pythagorean argument against suicide, put by Plato into the mouth of the dying Socrates, was never better stated than in four lines of the 41st stanza. It is one which no Theist can possibly evade; and yet Ariosto's heroine, as we have just seen, takes no account of it. There is great art, too, in Despair's rejoinder, wherein he tries to lull all sense of individual responsibility to sleep by turning Providence into Fate. In the 47th and following stanzas we find the temptation to despair of pardon urged with a keen feeling, that worse far than all the ills of this life is the sense of sin unforgiven. They supply a fine and unexpected illustration of the apostolic saying, that "the strength of sin is the law," by using its terrors to drive the conscience-stricken sufferer to the commission of a yet greater crime. And where shall we look for better consolation under those terrors than that supplied by the 53d stanza, where the same promise which unlocks the prison-door of Bunyan's pilgrims, proves mighty in Una's hand for her knight's deliverance? There are but few poets of any age or nation in whom we find statements of, or references to, distinctively Christian truth, such as we find in Spenser and Shakespeare. them it is looked on as a thing which they have never doubted themselves, which they can conceive no sane man doubting-no more to be argued about than the sun which lights us, or the air we breathe. By too many so called Christian poets it is either passed by in silence, or referred to as that which forms the creed of other men, to be contemplated with interest, perhaps with respect, by the thoughtful mind, but not embraced by it as its own; whilst others go farther, and substitute for it, as Ariosto does, a revived Paganism under Christian names.

By

Let us select for our next comparison the terrestrial paradise of the Orlando Furioso; setting beside it Spenser's Vision of tolpho, having learned the art of guiding the Heavenly Jerusalem.' The paladin Asthat Hippogryph, which bears such a conspicuous part in the strange adventures of Ariosto's poem, traverses many foreign lands on his winged steed. At last he reaches the mouth of the infernal regions; but, turning from its dismal darkness-as we must applaud Ariosto for making him do, when we think of the comparison his further progress in those regions would have provoked - he reaches the earthly par

the brim

In Nabuchodonosor, him at last

We read, so God for seven years punished, While like an ox on grass and hay he fed.

66.

"But since than that proud Babylonian's sin Much less hath Roland's been, three months

are set

All this transgression of the Paladin
By will divine to purge away; nor yet
For other purpose entrance here to win,
Had the Redeemer suffered without let
Thy journey, were it not from us to learn
How unto Roland may his wits return."

'Orlando Furioso,' canto xxxiv.

To effect this (the Apostle goes on to say) they must ascend to the moon, where the great Paladin's wits will be found amongst other lost earthly things. He places Astolpho beside him in the fiery chariot of Elijah, and its mighty steeds quickly bear them to the lunar regions. There he displays to him the strange storehouse of things good and bad which have disappeared from our world. And having seen the Fates spinning the threads of mortal lives, and repossessed himself of a large portion of his own sense, which had escaped him unawares, Astolpho returns to earth with the phial which holds Roland's wholly lost wits, and which is to restore its great defender to the Faith.

There is inimitable wit, which no one can fail to be struck with (imbittered a little by the poet's own disappointments), in his famous catalogue of the earth's lost treasures.* And there is a liquid sweetness which delights us in his description of the happy region from whence the knight ascends to the moon. But this must not blind us to the fact that Ariosto's terrestrial paradise is, after all, a mere garden of material delights

more innocent, but not more heavenly, than Alcina's. Contrast it with the spiritual beauty of Dante's, where we encounter some high mystery at each step we take, and where the air we breathe is so full of foretastes of heaven that it seems but natural when the poet's flight to the true heaven above begins from such holy ground. Or, again, compare the later Italian poet's conception of St John with that of the earlier the beloved Apostle allowed as a privilege to remain "at home in the body, but absent from his Lord," until the last day! employed by Ariosto as the exhibitor of the lunar marvels to Astolpho; and made

* I much regret that want of space forbids me to insert it.

the Fates) the flatterer of Ariosto's patron! Set beside this Dante's simple and affectionate mention of St John:

Was chosen to fulfil the great behest.)

Remember the almost indignant repudia tion by the St. John of Dante of the invidious privilege, seen for him by the earthlyminded in his Saviour's words. You will then

see something of the change wrought by two The elder poet wings his strong flight aloft, centuries in the religious state of Italy. and soars (grace-aided) without external help, till he reaches the heaven of heavens: of fire and horses of fire" for his hero, and, the younger bard borrows Elijah's "chariot him to the moon! even with their help, only succeeds in lifting

the New Jerusalem. After the Red-Cross Let us now turn to Spenser's vision of the House of Pride, where he abode, knight's deliverance by Prince Arthur from amongst it and the six other deadly sins, at first a guest, at last a captive; and after his escape from Despair, he is guided by Una to the House of Holiness. The canto which

rehearses their visit, opens with the following stanza, as precise in its definition of grace and free-will as the tenth article of the Church of England:

I.

"What man is he that boasts of fleshly might, And vain assurance of mortality,

Which all, so soon as it doth come to fight
Against spiritual foes, yields by-and-by,
Or from the field most cowardly doth fly?
Ne let the man ascribe it to his skill-
That thorough grace hath gainèd victory.
If any strength we have, it is to ill;
But all the good is God's, both power and
eke will."

the "strait and narrow Una and the knight are admitted through "" entrance to HoliZeal and Reverence, they are welcomed by ness by its porter Humility. Led in by the mistress of the mansion and her three The first of these is thus described:daughters, Fidelia, Speranza, and Charissa.

XLII.

"She was arrayed all in lily-white,

And in her right, hand bore a cup of gold,

Mercy leads him to a "holy hospital," where she introduces him to her seven "Beadmen." Each of these seven has charge of one of those good works which, found in, or inferred from that marvellous conclusion of the 25th chapter of St. Matthew, which in every age since it was spoken has never ceased to procure alms for the needy, have been known for many centuries as the seven works of mercy. There is a solemn pathos in Spenser's description of these two, which he ranks as the fifth and sixth, the last good offices to the dying and the dead: —

XLI.

"The fifth had charge six persons to attend, And comfort those in point of death which lay;

For them most needeth comfort in the end, When sin, and hell, and death do most dismay

The feeble soul departing hence away.
All is but lost that living we bestow,
If not well ended at our dying day.

O man! have mind of that last bitter throw;
For as the tree does fall, so lies it ever low.

. XLII.

"The sixth had charge of them now being dead,

In seemly sort their corses to engrave, And deck with dainty flowers their spousal bed,

That to their heavenly spouse both sweet and brave

They might appear, when he their souls shall save.