And when him list the raskall routes appall,
Men into stones therewith he could transmew,
And stones to dust, and dust to nought at all;
And, when him list the prouder lookes subdew,
He would them gazing blind, or turne to other hew.

Ne let it seem that credence this exceedes;
For he that made the same was knowne right well
To have done much more admirable deedes.
It Merlin was, which whylome did excell
All living wightes in might of magicke spell :
Both shield and sword, and armour all he wrought
For this young Prince, when first to armes he fell ;
But, when he dyde, the Faery Queene it brought
To Faerie lond, where yet it may be seene, if sought."

I have given you this long extract because Prince Arthur is at once one of the most important personages in the "Faery Queene," and the one whose place in it the reader finds it hardest to understand. I shall not try to explain what his office is, because I believe the poet will give a much clearer explanation of the whole subject than I can. I will merely give you a hint or two, which perhaps may somewhat assist your own thoughts.

Prince Arthur is, as I have said, in the stories of the Middle Ages, at once the leading Champion of Christendom and the British Prince-the champion of our soil. All the tales of him, surrounded by the twelve Knights of his Round Table, make us think of the land of our fathers as a sacred land, over which heavenly eyes are watching, for which heavenly powers are fighting. All the stories at the same time of his education by

Merlin, of his enchanted sword, of his death, of his appearance again some other day, carry us beyond anything that is merely local; he seems to belong altogether to another and more sublime region, without losing for a moment his relationship to this..

I apprehend that it was the desire of the author of the "Faery Queene" to make this bright vision, with the various seemingly contradictory elements of which it is composed, a substantial one for his contemporaries, and for all Britons who should come after them. I think he wanted us to feel not less, but more attachment, to the land of our nativity, and to the homes and tombs of our fathers, than we have been wont to feel. I think that he had no fear of confounding the Queen Gloriana with the Queen Elizabeth, that he chose to leave something of that confusion, because he thought there could be nothing true, nothing heavenly, in the aspirations or the purposes of his fellow-men, if they lost their interest in their own country under pretence of any wider sympathies with the world, or any solitary devotion to God. If they did not understand that their battle was here, and that their victory was to be here-if they did not feel that they were struggling for their country when they were struggling for themselves, he believed they would become very worthless and contemptible creatures. But, on the other hand, he wished every man to know that a whole host of invisible enemies are about him at every instant that Idleness, Gluttony, Envy, Hypocrisy, and Falsehood, the ruler of them all, are the most actual

and tremendous foes with which every man is contending, but one of which assails this man more, another that; he wished us to feel that the battle is an individual one and yet a common one, that every knight who is doing his work must needs be aiding every other knight; that no one can be doing his work unless he is setting before himself some high ideal, some noble standard, after which, amidst all discomfitures, he is to strive; and that there must be some ideal in which all these are united together, some perfect Knight and Deliverer, belonging to earth and heaven, in Whom they are expressed.

I have spoken to you very little of the exquisite pictures in this poem, and of the music of its verse, because it seems to me these come home to our hearts much more as we read the poem, or hear it read, than through any criticism. I wished rather to remove an impression, which I think hinders our pleasure and profit in reading any poem, that the writer has devised some artificial machinery for the sake of giving effect and interest to his thoughts. I am sure nothing delights us at last but what we feel to have truth at the foundation of it, no poetical inventions but what we feel are used as the most transparent medium that can be found, for enabling us to discern truths which would otherwise be hidden from us. Spenser, it seems to me, invented nothing; he took that which he found lying idle, and useless, and unintelligible. He showed us what sense, and beauty, and harmony there lay beneath it, what help we may get from Fairyland, if we

understand that Fairyland is about the noble, and the shopkeeper, and the peasant; that even in the midst of the city where he was born a poor man, and died perhaps for lack of bread, there is a way by which our spirits may ascend into it, may see its bright skies, and taste its fresh fountains; that everyone who seeks his help and armour there, may become as gentle a knight as he was who wore the Red Cross shield, may be able to vanquish as many giants and enchanters as any who went forth from the palace of Gloriana.

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IX.

MILTON.1

You will find among Mr. Wordsworth's Sonnets this very memorable one; it was written in London in 1802:

"Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men :
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart :

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.

So didst thou travel on life's common way
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay."

I open my lecture with these words, partly because no one had so good a right to speak of a poet as a poet, still more because the poet speaks so much more of what Milton was than of what he wrote. It is the

1 Delivered at the Birmingham and Midland Institute.