creations resemble the blossoms of the epiphytic orchids, which have no root in the soil, but draw their nourishment from the moisture of the air. _Their_ birth was of the womb of morning dew, And _their_ conception of the glorious prime. Among the minor poems of Spenser the most delightful were his _Prothalamion_ and _Epithalamion_. The first was a "spousal verse," made for the double wedding of the Ladies Catherine and Elizabeth Somerset, whom the poet figures as two white swans that come swimming down the Thames, the surface of which the nymphs strew with lilies, till it appears "like a bride's chamber-floor." Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, is the burden of each stanza. The _Epithalamion_ was Spenser's own marriage song, written to crown his series of _Amoretti_ or love sonnets, and is the most splendid hymn of triumphant love in the language. Hardly less beautiful than these was _Muiopotmos; or, the Fate of the Butterfly_, an addition to the classical myth of Arachne, the spider. The four hymns in praise of _Love_ and _Beauty_, _Heavenly Love_ and _Heavenly Beauty_, are also stately and noble poems, but by reason of their abstractness and the Platonic mysticism which they express, are less generally pleasing than the others mentioned. Allegory and mysticism had no natural affiliation with Spenser's genius. He was a seer of visions, of _images_ full, brilliant, and distinct; and not, like Bunyan, Dante, or Hawthorne, a projector into bodily shapes of _ideas_, typical and emblematic; the shadows which haunt the conscience and the mind. * * * * * 1. English Writers. Henry Morley. Cassell & Co., 1887. 4 vols. 2. Skeat's Specimens of English Literature, 1394-1579 (Clarendon Press Series.) Oxford. 3. Morte Darthur. London: Macmillan & Co., 1868. (Globe Edition.) 4. English and Scottish Ballads. Edited by Francis J. Child. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1859. 8 vols. 5. Spenser's Poetical Works. Edited by Richard Morris. London: Macmillan & Co., 1877. (Globe Edition.) 6. "A Royal Poet." In Washington Irving's Sketch Book. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1864. CHAPTER III. THE AGE OF SHAKSPERE. 1564-1616.