The _Amoretti_, as Spenser has fancifully entitled his Sonnets, are certainly tinctured with a good deal of the verbiage and pedantry of the times; but I think I have shown that they contain passages of earnest feeling, as well as high poetic beauty. Spenser married his Elizabeth, about the year 1593, and he has crowned his amatory effusions with a most impassioned and triumphant epithalamion on his own nuptials, which he concludes with a prophecy, that it shall stand a perpetual monument of his happiness, and thus it has been. The passage in which he describes his youthful bride, is perhaps one of the most beautiful and vivid _pictures_ in the whole compass of English poetry. Behold, while she before the altar stands, Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks, And blesses her with his two happy hands. How the red roses flush up in her cheeks. And the pure snow, with goodly vermeil stain, Like crimson died in grain! That even the angels, which continually About the sacred altar do remain, Forget their service, and about her fly, Oft peeping in her face, which seems more fair, The more they on it stare. But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground, Are governed with a goodly modesty That suffers not a look to glance away, Which may let in a little thought unsound. Why blush ye, love! to give to me your hand The pledge of all our band! Sing! ye sweet angels! Hallelujah sing! That all the woods may answer, and their echoes ring! And the rapturous apostrophe to the evening star is in a fine strain of poetry. Late, though it be, at last I see it gloom, And the bright evening star, with golden crest, Appear out of the west! Fair child of beauty! glorious lamp of love! That all the host of heaven in ranks dost lead, And guidest lovers through the night's sad dread, How cheerfully thou lookest from above, And seem'st lo laugh atween thy twinkling light! As Ariosto has contrived to introduce his personal feelings, and the memory of his love, into the Orlando Furioso, so Spenser has enshrined _his_ in the Fairy Queen; but he has not, I think, succeeded so well in the _manner_ of celebrating the woman he delighted to honour. Ariosto has the advantage over the English poet, in delicacy and propriety of feeling as well as power. Spenser's picture of the swelling eminence, the lawn, the clustering trees, the cascade-- Whose silver waves did softly tumble down,