He dismounts; maidens purer and more beautiful than
fabled houris, accompanied by slaves bearing rare dishes and goblets of
crusted gold, offer him refreshments: perfumed baths, couches of down,
soft and soothing music are about him in delicious combination. Surely he
is dreaming; or if this be real, were not the burning sun and the sand of
the desert, the panting camel and the dying horse of an hour ago but a
dream?
Such is not an overwrought illustration of English literature in the long,
barren reach from Chaucer to Spenser, as compared with the freshness,
beauty, and grandeur of the geniuses which adorned Elizabeth's court, and
tended to make her reign as illustrious in history as the age of Pericles,
of Augustus, or of Louis XIV. Chief among these were Spenser and
Shakspeare. As the latter has been truly characterized as not for an age,
but for all time, the former may be more justly considered as the highest
exponent and representative of that period. The Faerie Queene, considered
only as a grand heroic poem, is unrivalled in its pictures of beautiful
women, brave men, daring deeds, and Oriental splendor; but in its
allegorical character, it is far more instructive, since it enumerates and
illustrates the cardinal virtues which should make up the moral character
of a gentleman: add to this, that it is teeming with history, and in its
manifold completeness we have, if not an oasis in the desert, more truly
the rich verge of the fertile country which bounds that desert, and which
opens a more beautiful road to the literary traveller as he comes down the
great highway: wearied and worn with the factions and barrenness of the
fifteenth century, he fairly revels with delight in the fertility and
variety of the Elizabethan age.
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