After so long a race as I have run Through Faery Land, which those six books compile, Give leave to rest me, being half foredonne, And gather to myself new breath awhile; Then, as a steed refreshed after toyle, Out of my prison will I break anew, And stoutly will that second work assoyle, With strong endevour, and attention due. It was not, therefore, the death of Sir Philip Sydney which deprived him of spirit to continue his captivating poem, since the greater part was written after that event; but the poet's domestic misfortunes, occasioned by Tyrone's rebellion, which seem at once to have ruined his fortune, and broken his heart. See TODD'S _Life of Spenser_, and MALONE'S Note on this passage. It seems unlikely, that Sydney was Spenser's Prince Arthur. Upton more justly considers Leicester, a worthless character, but the favourite of Gloriana, (Queen Elizabeth,) and who aspired to share her bed and throne, as depicted under that character. See TODD'S _Spenser_, Vol. I. Life, p. clxviii. [14] This was a charge brought against Spenser so early as the days of Ben Jonson; who says, in his Discoveries, "Spenser, in affecting the ancients, writ no language; yet I would have him read for his matter, but as Virgil read Ennius." This has been generally supposed to apply only to Spenser's "Pastorals;" but as in these he imitates rather a coarse and provincial than an obsolete dialect, the limitation of Jonson's censure is probably imaginary. It is probable, that, as the style of poetry in the latter part of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and in that of her successor, had become laboured and ornate, Spenser's imitations of the old metrical romances had to his contemporaries an antique air of rude and naked simplicity, although his "Faery Queen" seems more intelligible to us than the compositions of Jonson himself. Dryden, whose charge was afterwards echoed by Pope, probably adopted it without very accurate investigation. Our idea of what is ancient does not necessarily imply obscurity; on the contrary, I am afraid that to modern ears the style of Addison sounds more antiquated than that of Dr Johnson; so that simplicity may produce the same effect as unintelligibility. [15] Mr Rymer, who was pleased to call himself a critic, had promised to favour the public with "some reflections on that Paradise Lost of Milton, which some are pleased to call a poem, and to assert rhime against the slender sophistry wherewith he attacks it." But this promise, which is given in the end of his "Remarks on the Tragedies of the last Age," he never filled up the measure of his presumption, by attempting to fulfil. [16] _Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum Reddiderit junctura novum_----