UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS 
 
 IN 
 
 MODERN PHILOLOGY 
 
 Vol. 2, No. 5, pp. 311-373 June 17, 1912 
 
 SPENSER, THE SCHOOL OF THE 
 FLETCHERS, AND MILTON 
 
 BY 
 
 HERBERT E. CORY 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS 
 
 IN 
 
 MODERN PHILOLOGY 
 
 Vol. 2, No. 5, pp. 311-373 June 17, 1912 
 
 SPENSER, THE SCHOOL OF THE 
 FLETCHERS, AND MILTON 
 
 BY 
 
 HEEBEET E. COEY 
 
 Critics have made merry with the literary alchemists who 
 have striven to analyze Milton. By this study I confess alle- 
 giance to what Mr. Walter Raleigh calls "the ledger school of 
 criticism." Professor Ma.sson asserted that all attempts to find 
 the sources of Milton are ' ' for the most part dull and laborious. ' ' 
 Yet many adventurers in the delightful land of poetry will 
 remain unsatisfied. We all know that a supreme genius exercises 
 much of his creative instinct in the subtle art of selection. He 
 ransacks the supreme poets of the past until they stir him to 
 write. He chooses even from the conventions and commonplaces 
 of a hundred minor men of his day, letting the worthless die, 
 giving final expression to the best. When we follow him in his 
 academe, play the eavesdropper as he listens to the elders of his 
 deep-browed brotherhood, steal after him on his quiet walks to 
 his favorite nooks, we are not blaspheming him. The figure of 
 the exquisite flower, rent by the ruthless hands of the scientist, 
 is overworked. When the analyzer of a great poet has finished 
 his work he has not only increased our understanding and 
 sympathy, but deepened the mystery and our reverence. 
 
 Milton, one of the most composite of poets, certainly learned 
 much of his eloquence from the gentle dreamer Edmund Spenser, 
 who, in his turn, had distilled his magic from a myriad springs. 
 The younger poet, indeed, was proud to call the singer of The 
 
312 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 Faerie Queene his master. ''Milton," said Dryden, "has ac- 
 knowledged to me that Spenser was his original. ' '^ It has been 
 said that Mathew Lownes, who published the folio edition of 
 The Faerie Queene in 1609, furnished the boy Milton with a copy 
 of Spenser.^ The publisher of the volume of 1645 contributed 
 a preface in which, thinks Professor Mackail, "We can certainly 
 hear an echo of Milton's owti voice and judgment." "I know 
 not .... how harmonious thy soul is," writes the publisher, 
 "perhaps more trivial Airs may please thee better. But .... 
 let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the 
 age, by bringing into the Light as true a Birth, as the Muses 
 have brought forth since our famous Spencer wrote ; whose Poems 
 in these .... are as rarely imitated, as sweetly excell'd. " In 
 his maturity Milton wrote of his master as "our admired 
 Spenser"^ and, with characteristic appreciation of the lofty 
 moral purpose of The Faerie Queene, as "our sage and serious 
 Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than 
 Scotus or Aquinas."* From Spenser, the well-beloved of all 
 young poets, Milton learned much of that love for sensuous beauty 
 that fought against his harsher Puritan characteristics and made 
 him more wholesome. From Spenser's diction, a rich composition 
 from choice obsolete words, from racy dialects and colloquial- 
 isms, and from the poet's own fancy, Milton probably drew 
 much which he fused with his sonorous borrowings from the 
 Latin to build up a matchless poetic speech.^ Dryden, in his 
 
 1 Preface to the Fables. 
 
 2 Masson, Life, 1, 89, can find no authority for this statement of 
 Todd's. See also John Mitford, Aldine Edition of Milton, 1857, p. iv: 
 "Humphrey Lownes, the printer who lived in the same street, supplied 
 him with Spenser. ' ' 
 
 s Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus, 
 edition of Prose Worlcs, Symmons, 1, 197. 
 
 4 Areopagitica. 
 
 5 The question of Milton's borrowings from Spenser's diction would 
 make an elaborate linguistic thesis in itself. Many words, of course, 
 could not be settled absolutely. We could not always tell whether Milton 
 was drawing from Spenser or from some Chaucerian predecessor. We 
 could not often tell whether he was borrowing from Spenser directly or 
 from one of the many poets for whom Spenser had given the word cur- 
 rency. I append a brief list of typical examples drawn from hundreds 
 of words which the commentators have set down in their notes as taken 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 313 
 
 Essay on Satire, gives interesting contemporary (if not infal- 
 lible), testimony concerning Milton's free use of Spenser's 
 words : 
 
 "His antiquated words were his choice, not his necessity, for therein he 
 imitated Spenser as Spenser imitated Chaucer. ' ' 
 
 Even if Milton did not take many words from The Shepheards 
 Calender or The Faerie Queene, he found in Spenser stimulating 
 suggestion for enriching poetic utterance with the neglected 
 jewels of antique poets. 
 
 But the boy Milton took some of his Spenser second-hand 
 from contemporary Spenserians who, for the moment, loomed 
 large because they w^ere in the foreground. The juvenilia of 
 great poets are almost always tinged with the intermediary 
 influence of the poetae minimi of the day who echo their masters 
 with facile prettiness. So Keats, in his early work, took some 
 of his Spenser with sugar and water from Hunt. By 1627 the 
 names of Giles and Phineas Fletcher must have been prominent 
 at Milton 's own university, Cambridge, where he was a novitiate 
 in poetry for seven years. The Fletchers seized upon subjects 
 which were in the air. In an age of religious poetry they wrote 
 quaintly and often beautifully, in ingenious and eccentric 
 allegory, of the life of Christ and of the soul of man. They 
 borrowed reverently, but with naive freedom, from the riches 
 of The Faerie Queene, which they ransacked from end to end 
 for allegorical figures, memorable lines, sometimes nearly whole 
 stanzas. Over all they embroidered the curious, stiff conceits 
 that were everywhere high in favor. They were enthusiastic 
 imitators of the Spenserian stanza. As Spenser had given new 
 music to the eight-line stanza by the addition of a final alex- 
 andrine, so the Fletchers experimented by adding the long line 
 to the rhyme-royal, the ottava rima, and many other current 
 
 from Spenser. I do not wish to defend them individually but to make a 
 brief specimen list for the sake of general impressions. 
 
 Assays (= assaults), cease (cause to cease), jolly (handsome), ragged 
 (rugged), descry (describe), dainty limbs, hosting (an Irish word), 
 arborets, infamous (so accented also in Spenser), say (tell), daintest, 
 y-chain'd (and numerous other participles with y-), recure (recover), 
 appaid, far-fet, recreant, in place (on this occasion), purfled, pranckt, 
 turkis, prawest Jcnight, captiv'd, etc. 
 
314 University of California Pithlieations in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 forms. The influence of the Fletchers was far greater than has 
 generally been realized. They founded a distinct school of 
 poetry which outlived the chilling influence of the Restoration. 
 Even in the eighteenth century the school survived in the work 
 of William Thompson, one of the earliest definite romanticists 
 of that period. In Milton's day, most of the Cantabrigians, 
 Crashaw, Joseph Beaumont, Thomas Robinson, and others, 
 wrote more or less in their manner. In his boyhood Milton 
 was enlisted in the School of the Fletchers and their influence 
 is traceable even in his mature poems. Any study of Spen- 
 serian material in Milton, then, should include an elaborate 
 examination of the work of the School of the Fletchers. As 
 the reader follows my elaborate analysis of these old poets he may 
 well criticise me for rummaging in the dustiest rooms of the 
 storehouse of poetry. But if his patience carries him to the dis- 
 cussion of Milton himself he will see that an investigation of 
 what we may call the immediate poetic environs of Milton throws 
 an interesting light on the work of the great poet without in the 
 least besmirching it. 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF THE FLETCHERS 
 
 In 1603, in Sorrowe's Joy, a book of elegies on Queen 
 Elizabeth, Giles and Phineas Fletcher made their first un- 
 obtrusive appearance in print by joining the group of poets who 
 filled this volume with starched lamentations over their adored 
 Eliza. The contribution of Phineas, the elder and more prolific, 
 is significant as a much more elaborate stanzaic experiment than 
 that of his brother. And throughout his many poems Phineas 
 is notable for playing a considerable number of variations on 
 the Spenserian stanza.^ Giles chose to imitate his master simply 
 by taking the rhyme-royal ready-made and by adding an alex- 
 andrine. To this measure he remained faithful in his master- 
 
 6 An enumeration of Fletcher's experiments may be worth while: 
 ababahccC, ababcC, ahahB, ahahhccC, ahaahhccC, ahahhaaccC, aaaabbB, 
 ababbcC (a stanza used by Milton in certain early poems which show the 
 influence of the Fletchers), ababccc, abababcC, ababbcC (with all the &'s 
 feminine rhymes), abbaabcacC, aaAbbBccC etc., ababccC. 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 315 
 
 piece. Significant, too, is the fact that the younger poet's A 
 Canto upon the Death of Eliza, though very boyish, shows far 
 more promise than Phineas Fletcher's On the Death of Queen 
 Elizabeth, The younger brother was the first to publish his 
 ambitious masterpiece, greater than anything Phineas ever did. 
 With its rapturous close his inspiration seems to have flickered 
 out. The gentle, fluent muse of the elder poet was with him 
 throughout the leisurely course of his whole life.''' 
 
 Phineas Fletcher 
 
 Phineas Fletcher (1582-1650) served his apprenticeship in 
 that green-sickness of love which distressed young Colin Clout. 
 Various love-lyrics, now ardent, now bitter, now cynical, all 
 bearing the stamp of extreme youth, establish this. He came 
 into the more ample and pure air of the best sonnets of the 
 Amoretti and the Epithalamion as is evidenced by To My Onely 
 Chosen Valentine and Wife and a Hymefi in close imitation of 
 Spenser's marriage-hymn. Finally he bid regretful farewell to 
 
 7 Text-books usually assert that Giles Fletcher made his stanza by 
 dropping the seventh line of Spenser's stanza (al)abbc[b]cC) , thus, 
 perhaps, shirking the demands of a diflfieult extra rhyme. Similarly many 
 critics, from Edward Phillips to Lowell, give us an impossible description 
 of the Spenserian stanza in the making — an awkward and elaborate shift- 
 ing of lines in the ottava rima. The psychology of the whole matter is far 
 more obvious. Spenser found a solid structure in the ababbcbc stanza, 
 used somewhat by Chaucer and more freely by the fifteenth century poets. 
 Whether or not there had been a suggestive and more than sporadic use 
 of the alexandrine in some of the poetry which Higgins contributed to 
 The Mirror for Magistrates, as Professor Morton argues, it was Spenser 
 who first began any elaborate experimentation with this long line as a 
 regular part of an elaborate stanza composed mainly of shorter verses. 
 As early as the days of The Shepheards Calendar we find him testing the 
 value of the alexandrine as the first line of an elaborate stanza employed 
 in his elegy to Dido {November). He made occasional use of it as the 
 final line of his own peculiar sonnet-form. (See the Amoretti, nos. 10 and 
 45, and, among those prefixed to The Faerie Queene: To the Earl of 
 Ormond, To Lord Grey, To Ealeigh, To the Countess of Pembroke, and To 
 all the gratious and beautifull Ladies in the Court.) He used it for the 
 refrain of each stanza in the Epithalamion. All that the Spenserian 
 stanza is, then, is the ababbcbc form with an alexandrine added. This 
 is all familiar enough to many, but the frequent errors in text-books 
 seem to make a clear statement necessary here. Now the method of 
 the Fletchers was simply to take, as Spenser did, a current stanza form, 
 the rhyme-royal, the ottava rima, the ababcc stanza, and add a final 
 alexandrine. 
 
316 University of California Puhlications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 the little pipe that sang of the seductions of "Norfolk maids 
 and Ida Crue" after a long struggle, which is duly set forth 
 in one of his Piscatorie Eglogs. None of these more subjective 
 poems are of particular interest to us in this study. We may 
 fairly begin with Fletcher's earliest printed religious poem, The 
 Appolyonists, published in 1627. 
 
 The Locusts or Appolyonists is practically a free paraphrase 
 and expansion of Phineas Fletcher's Latin poem, the Locustae, 
 into English stanzas made in imitation of Spenser by an addition 
 of a final alexandrine to the regular oitava rima. Fletcher's 
 utter extravagance, relieved now and again by flashes of vivid 
 power, is more adequately represented in the turbulent rhetoric 
 of the Latin verses, especially in the magnificent speech made 
 by Satan to his cohorts in Hell, the fierce scorn of which was 
 certainly an inspiration to Milton. But the English expansion 
 is naturally more Spenserian and falls more definitely within 
 our province. The allegorical description of Sin is compounded 
 of Spenser's Errour and Duessa, and stands midway between the 
 allegories of The Faerie Queene and of Paradise Lost. 
 
 In the first canto of Fletcher's poem Hell's pursuivants come 
 with dreadful noise to their domain where the gates are opened 
 by friends below. The porter is Sin, shapeless, foul, deformed, 
 "of that first woman and tli' old serpent bred." Yet to some 
 she appears beautiful and Fletcher, tempted in true Spenserian 
 fashion to dilate on the deceitful loveliness of Sin, gives a 
 sensuous description of her allurements. Despair (a woman, 
 but very similar to Spenser's male figure), sits close by Sin. 
 In the entrance dwell also Sickness, Languor, Horror, and other 
 figures similar to those whom Llammon showed to Spenser's 
 Sir Guyon before the mouth of Hell and similar to those in 
 Milton's In Quintum Novemhris, a poem which might be re- 
 garded in some respects as a youthful study for his Paradise 
 Lost. Fletcher then tells us how Satan rises to deliver a fiery 
 speech. Earth is smiling in peace. Superstition and Ignorance 
 fly before Truth and Religion. England especially flourishes. 
 Virginia, which belonged to us, is lost. Arm yourselves against 
 Earth. 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 317 
 
 ' ' Dare we with Heaven and not with Earth to fight ? ' ' 
 
 Tumult reigns in the council. Equivocus, a prototype of Mil- 
 ton's wily Belial, rises to speak. Fletcher's readers are fairly 
 launched by this crafty demon's speech into a review of con- 
 temporary events. We read a violent attack on the Catholic 
 Church w^hich evidently owes quite as much to the first book of 
 The Faerie Queene as to Fletcher's own animus. Spenser's 
 allegorical vituperation — Duessa, or Falsehood and Catholicism, 
 who leads Holiness away from his love Una, or Truth, to the 
 House of Pride where dwell the Seven Deadly Sins; Kirkrapine, 
 the villain who stalks through the forest to the squalid abode 
 where he lives in lust with Abessa, or Superstition, the daughter 
 of Blind Devotion; the giant Orgoglio, who stands for the 
 worldly pride of a corrupt church in temporal power, paramour 
 of Duessa whom he clothes in scarlet and mounts on a mis- 
 shapen beast like the Whore of Babylon — all this distempered 
 fancy fires Fletcher in his intemperate abuse. Equivoeus laments 
 the unmasking of the Church of Rome w^hich is described, as 
 Spenser describes Duessa stripped of her false beauty, in foul 
 language that follows Spenser almost verbatim.^ When lustful 
 Rome w^as stripped of her scarlet ornaments, says Equivoeus, 
 then her friends fell away from her. Who helped the demons 
 then to make her seem fair again? The Jesuits. Let us employ 
 their aid once more. Let us rush to arms and England will fall. 
 
 "With that the bold blacke Spirit invades the Day, 
 And Heav'n and Light and Lord of both defies. 
 All Hell run out and sooty flags display, 
 A foul deformed rout. ' ' 
 
 Most of the evil spirits scatter through Russia, Greece, Spain, 
 and elsewhere. Alone Equivoeus goes to Rome. 
 
 "There that stale purple whore in glorious maske 
 Of holy Mother Church he mumming spies, 
 Dismounting from her seven-headed beast 
 Inviting all with her bare painted breast 
 They suck, steep, swell, and burst with that envenom 'd feast. ' '9 
 
 8 Fletcher, canto 1, st. 29. Compare Spenser, bk. 1, e. 8, sts. 45 sq. 
 
 9 Cf . Spenser, The Faerie Queene, 1, 7, 16-17: 
 
318 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 The good fishers of Jordan, now enjoying Heaven's bliss, are 
 supplanted by a crew of idle rascals. For them a great Fisher 
 builds a Babel to Heaven, enlarges his seas and subjects. His 
 tower walls, which are described like Spenser's House of Pride, 
 ''seeme porphyr faire" but are really "base lome."^" The 
 portal seems far off ; the lights are false. There sits dull Ignor- 
 ance, a loathly dame." Beside her sit her two children: he, 
 called Errour, begot by Hate of Truth, she, called Superstition, 
 falsely called Devotion.^- These two store the world with an 
 incestuous brood. The usher of the vast hall is loosest Liberty, 
 its waiters Lusts, its caterer Vain Expense, its bedmakers Ease, 
 Sloth, and soft, wanton Sense, its steward Gluttonie, its high- 
 chamberlain perfumed Lechery, like the creatures who wait upon 
 Pride in The Faerie Queene}^ Equivocus poisons the Pope's 
 mind. Plots are laid, among which the worst is that of Guy 
 Fawkes who has been nursed by Rome jon wolfish milk. But 
 God, always watchful, calls an eagle to warn the council at 
 London. Fawkes is seized and Rome and Spain lament. The 
 poem ends with an apostrophe and prayer to God. 
 
 From The Purple Island Fletcher still claims some honor and 
 something not unlike notoriety. One is forced to admire, if with 
 a smile, the astounding ingenuity with which Fletcher con- 
 structed allegorical poetry, almost always clever, sometimes of 
 rare beauty, out of the physiology of the human body. As his 
 
 "From that day forth Duessa was his [Orgoglio's] deare, 
 And highly honourd in his haughty eye: 
 He gave her gold and purple pall to weare, ' ' 
 and a monstrous beast, more terrible than the Hydra, 
 
 "For seven great heads out of his body grew," 
 to ride upon. Compare also the brood of Errour {The Faerie Queene, 1, 1, 
 25-26), who suck the venom of their dead mother till they burst. 
 
 10 Cf. The Faerie Queene, 1, 4, 4-5: 
 
 "A stately Pallace built of squared brieke, 
 Which cunningly was without mortar laid, 
 Whose wals were high, but nothing strong nor thick 
 And golden foile all over them displaid. ' ' 
 
 11 Cf. The Faerie Queene, 1, 8, 30 sq., Ignaro, porter of Orgoglio's castle, 
 a childish old man. 
 
 12 Cf. The Faerie Queene, 1, 3, 18, ' ' Abessa, daughter of Corceca slow, ' ' 
 that is. Superstition, daughter of Blind Devotion. 
 
 13 Cf. The Faerie Queene, 1-4, passim, but particularly sts. 43 sq. 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 319 
 
 point of departure in The Apollyonists was mainly from the 
 first book of The Faerie Queene, here the description of the 
 Castle of Alma (the soul), in the second book of the same poem, 
 was doubtless Fletcher's most influential source. In the ninth 
 canto Spenser allegorized the human body, which is the House 
 of Alma, more elaborately than one can endure without a laugh. 
 The bulwarks of the House of Alma are the five senses. Its 
 cook. Concoction, and his abode, the stomach, are described with 
 a fidelity which one could well wish less conscientious. In a 
 tower of Alma's castle dwell Fancy, IVIemory, and Common- 
 Sense, a conceit which we shall find Fletcher unblushingly imitat- 
 ing in great detail when it falls to his lot to describe the human 
 head. The attacks of a motley crew of Vices on the bulwarks 
 of sense gave Fletcher a suggestion for his marshalling and battle 
 of the Virtues and Vices. Spenser's imitator, lost in his fetish- 
 worship, multiplied details and made a complete reductio ad 
 absurdum of his master's allegory. But Fletcher's poem is not 
 a mere slavish imitation or merely an ingenious expansion of the 
 episode in The Faerie Queene. Its exuberant stanzas abound in 
 splendid and original bursts that make one feel querulous with 
 Time who denies their enjoyment to all but a few patient 
 students of seventeenth century literature. In The Apollyonists 
 Fletcher left the shadow of his teacher to limn with bold strokes 
 an imposing and noble picture of the rebel Lucifer and his 
 hosts. In The Purple Island his legions of Virtues and Vices are 
 sometimes strikingly independent of many possible models in 
 The Faerie Queene. As an example of Fletcher's own fancy, 
 tinged only with the general quality of the Spenserian pictures, 
 we may anticipate by quoting the artificial but beautiful lines 
 which describe Tapinus or Humility : 
 
 "Next Tapinus, whose sweet, though lowly grace 
 All other higher than himself esteem 'd; 
 He himself priz'd things as mean and base, 
 Which yet in others great and glorious seem 'd 
 All ill due debt, good undeserv'd he thought; 
 His heart a low-rooft house, but sweetly wrought 
 Where God Himself would dwell, though he it dearly bought. 
 
320 University of California PuMications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 "So choicest drugs in meanest shrubs are found; 
 So precious gold in deepest centre dwells; 
 So sweetest violets trail on lowly ground; 
 So richest pearls ly clos'd in vilest shells; 
 So lowest dales we let at highest rates; 
 So creeping strawberries yield daintiest cates 
 The Highest highly loves the low, the loftie hates." 
 
 It is Senser's cloth-of-gold sown more stiff with extravagant 
 
 fancies and antitheses, but it has its own quaint charm. 
 
 The Purple Island begins with a concourse of shepherds who 
 enduce Thirsil, after some difficulty, to sing. To Christ, the 
 great prince of shepherds, he gives lofty praise and then speaks 
 of God's creation of man. God took purple dust and made "the 
 little Isle of man or Purple Island." 
 
 Forthwith we find ourselves lost in a most astounding museum 
 of fanc5^ The general fabric of this island is of bone, gristle, 
 and flesh which is described as a curious stuff like undivided 
 brick, soft, yet durable and concealing the rougher frame. The 
 veins are a thousand brooks in azure channels. The whole isle 
 has three kingdoms ruled by the liver, heart, and brain. The 
 mouth is a cave with twice sixteen porters^* and the tongue, "a 
 groom with wondrous volubilitie. "^^ An astounding journey 
 over the road of the alimentary canal brings us to where 
 "Below dwells in this Citie's market-place 
 The Island's common cook, Concoction. "is 
 
 Having been educated conscientiously in all the functions of the 
 stomach we are conducted to the kingdom of Hepar, the liver, 
 where the steward of the whole isle is placed. So the poet, with a 
 desperately grave face, guides us through the realms of the heart 
 until, with the allegori2dng of the head, we find him pillaging 
 
 14 Cf. The Faerie Queene, 2, 9, 26: 
 
 "And round about the porch on every syde 
 Twise sixteen warders satt, all armed bright." 
 
 15 Cf. The Faerie Queene, 2, 9, 25: 
 
 "Within the barbican a porter sate, 
 Day and night keeping watch and ward; 
 His larumbell might lowd and wyde be hard, 
 When cause requyrd. ' ' 
 
 16 Cf . The Faerie Queene, 2, 9, 31 : 
 
 ' ' The maister cooke was cald Concoction. ' ' 
 For further parallels see: The Purple Island, 3, 36; The Faerie Queene, 
 2, 9, 30 sq., and The Purple Island, 3, 43. 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 321 
 
 almost entire stanzas from the description of the House of Alma. 
 In the head dwell the counsellors of Intellect, the Lord of the 
 Isle. The five lesser counsellors are the Five Senses. The three 
 privy counsellors are, as in the House of Alma, Common-Sense, 
 Phantastes, and Eumnestes. Common-Sense, 
 "Of middle years and seemly personage 
 Father of laws, the rule of wrong and right, "i^ 
 
 dwells in the midst of the high tower. 
 
 ' ' Not those seven Sages might him parallel, 
 Nor he whom Pythian maid did whilome tell 
 To be the wisest man that on our earth did dwell, "is 
 
 Phantastes is "The next that in the castle's front is plac't. " 
 " .... His yeares are fresh and green. 
 His visage old, his face too much def ac 't 
 With ashes pale, his eyes deep sunken been. "i9 
 
 The third is Eumnestes, father of memory, very old, worn of 
 body but fresh of mind :-° 
 
 17 In The Faerie Queene, 2, 9, 53, the wall of Common-Sense's room has 
 pictures ' ' of magistrates, of courts, of tribunals. ' ' 
 
 18 Compare Spenser's general description of the three (st. 48): 
 
 ' ' Not he, whom Greece, the nourse of all good arts. 
 By Phaebus doome, the wisest thought alive. 
 Might be compar'd to these by many parts." 
 
 19 The Faerie Queene, St. 52: 
 
 "Emongst them all sate he which wonned there, 
 
 That hight Phantastes by his nature trew, 
 
 A man of yeares yet fresh, as mote appear 
 
 Of swarth complexion and of crabbed hew, 
 
 That him full of melancholy did shew. 
 
 Bent, hollow beetle browes, sharpe staring eyes." 
 In The Furple Island, Phantastes has "Often thoughts and never slakt 
 intention." In The Faerie Queene, he "never idle was ne once would rest 
 a whit. ' ' In The Furple Island, through his brain 
 
 "Thousand thin forms, and idle fancies flit; 
 
 Which in the world had never being yet." 
 In The Faerie Queene his chamber is painted with 
 "Infinite shapes of things dispersed then 
 Some such as in the world were never yit 
 
 Such as in idle fantasies doe flit." 
 20 Cf. Spenser's Eumnestes, st. 55: 
 
 "And therein sat an old, old man halfe blind 
 And all decrepit in his feeble corse, 
 Yet lively vigour rested in his mind." 
 And cf. The Purple Island, st. 50: 
 
 "Therefore his body weak his eyes halfe blinde. 
 But minde, more fresh and strong; — ah better fate! 
 
322 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 "Well he recalls Nimrods first tyrrannie 
 And Babel's pride daring the loftie skie;"2i 
 
 Like his body is his chamber: 
 
 "And as his carcase, so his house declin'd; 
 Yet were the walls of firm and able state; 
 
 Onely on him a nimble page attends 
 Who when in ought the aged Grandsire sends, 
 With swift, yet backward steps his helping aidance lends. ' '22 
 
 The island's queen is Voletta, the Will, more beautiful than 
 Gloriana, but often caught in the toils of vice and thereby caus- 
 ing her husband, Intellect, sad wars and misfortunes. Synteresis, 
 Conscience, is her faithful counsellor. When Voletta disregards 
 this attendant's warnings, a "sad-fair maid Repentance" holds 
 her fainting. Just now she is prostrated with grief over a recent 
 error and the Vices are marshalling, inspired with a new hope of 
 razing the Castle of Intellect. 
 
 In this latter part of the poem, in which the Vices and 
 Virtues gather and hold battle, Fletcher departs somewhat more 
 freely from the influence of Spenser. But it is evident that 
 Fletcher used the denizens of the House of Pride to some extent 
 and found material elsewhere in The Faerie Queene for other 
 Vices. Thus Caro, the Flesh, is another one of his morbid 
 imitations of Duessa unmasked. But when the last jeer has been 
 east by the painful seeker of parallel passages, one can but 
 admire the bold strokes of originality that flash out capriciously 
 
 21 Cf. The Faerie Queene, st. 56: 
 
 "The warres he well remembred of King Nine, 
 Of old Assaracus, and Inachus divine." 
 
 22 Cf . The Faerie Queene, st. 55 : 
 
 ' ' The chamber seemed ruinous and old. 
 
 Yet were the wals, that did the same uphold, 
 
 Eight firm and strong. ' ' 
 And St. 58: 
 
 "A little boy did on him still attend, 
 
 To reach, whenever he for ought did send. ' ' 
 Lingua, or the Combat of the Tongue and the Five Senses for Superiority 
 (1657), an anonymous comedy, may be mentioned here in passing as using 
 the same allegorical material as that in Spenser's House of Alma and 
 certainly deriving as much from Spenser as from Phineas Fletcher. But 
 the work is of no importance for this study. 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 323 
 
 in many places. Parthenia (Chastity in the single life), is, to 
 be sure, derived from Spenser's Belphoebe and Britomart. But 
 Spenser himself would have admired these lines : 
 ' ' Her armour seem 'd a goodly garden green, 
 
 Where thousand spotless lilies freshly blew; 
 
 And on her shield the 'lone bird might be seen, 
 
 The Arabian bird, shining in colours new; 
 
 Itself unto itself was onely mate; 
 
 Ever the same, but new in newer date; 
 And underneath was writ, ' Such is chaste single state. ' 
 
 ' ' Thus hid in arms, she seem 'd a goodly knight. 
 And fit for any warlike exercise; 
 And when she list lay down her armour bright. 
 And back resume her peaceful maiden's guize; 
 The fairest maid she was, that ever yet. 
 Prison 'd her locks within a golden net. 
 Or let them waving hang, with roses fair beset." 
 
 It is unnecessary to illustrate Fletcher's methods by a further 
 enumeration of these personages. The ensuing battle is managed 
 with nice allegorical but rather doubtful moral propriety. First 
 Parthenia jousts with Porneios (Fornication), and overthrows 
 him. Aselges (Lasciviousness), is bent on revenge but falls 
 before the warlike maid. Other rascals swarm around her but 
 she defends herself valiantly till the Old Dragon sends False 
 Delight, in friendly attire, who wounds her in the side. Agneia 
 (Chastity in married life), and her husband Eucrates (Temper- 
 ance), ride to her rescue. Soon there is a general melee in which 
 Fletcher's allegory works with the preciseness of a machine. It 
 is a rare puppet show, like the first part of the battle of Ron- 
 eesvalles in the Chatison. Often the Vices pretend to yield and 
 then wound their conquerors treacherously. When the Virtues 
 have almost won the field the Old Dragon suddenly marshals 
 a new loathsome crew: Hamartia (Sin), Despair, like a dead 
 man, with a raven on his crest, armed with ropes and knives,^^ 
 Time, and Death. They work havoc, though Faith, Experience, 
 and Hope rally the drooping Virtues. Suddenly an Angel with 
 
 23 Cf. Spenser's Despair, 1, 9, whose hollow eyes look deadly dull. A 
 ghastly owl perches on his cave. He tempts his victims to suicide with 
 ropes and knives. 
 
324 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 a silver trumpet drops into their midst. The Old Dragon knows 
 his doom but rushes fiercely against his foe in blinding arms. 
 He is wounded and bound. Now is the time of festival. Ecleeta, 
 long widowed, welcomes her bridegroom, Christ, who is described 
 with all the pagan rapture of the Canticles, or as an Italian poet 
 of the Renaissance would limn an Adonis : 
 
 "His locks like raven's plumes, or shining jet 
 Falls down in curls along his ivory neck; 
 Within their circlets hundred Graces set, 
 And with love-knots their comely hangings deck: 
 His mighty shoulders, like that giant swain, 
 All heav'n and earth, and all in both sustain; 
 Yet knows no weariness, nor feels oppressing pain. ' ' 
 
 We are left not quite certain whether w^e ought to regard 
 Fletcher as a charlatan or as a true poet. It would be impossible 
 to give space to a complete enumeration of Fletcher's echoes. 
 There are many formal tricks, too, which the zealous pupil is no 
 less assiduous in reproducing. We have seen that Fletcher is 
 indefatigable in his experiments with variations of the Spen- 
 serian stanza. But he never tries the more difficult stanza itself. 
 And a study of his use of the alexandrine, a dangerous line for 
 English poets, does not add much to our faith in him. Various 
 cheap and easy devices, violent antitheses, elaborate play on 
 words, are made use of to make the final lines prominent.^* For 
 
 24 For example: 
 
 ' ' Whereof three noble are, and thinne, three thick and vile. ' ' 
 "All day he rent receives; returns it all the day." 
 "Whose death she all too late, too soon, too much repented." 
 ' ' To give an end to grief e till endless griefs did end her. ' ' 
 "So spring some dawns of joy, so sits the night of sorrow." 
 "Poorly — poore man — he liv'd; poorly — poore man — he di'd. " 
 
 Other members of the School of the Fletchers resort to the same device. 
 
 Here are a few examples taken at random from hundreds equally typical. 
 ' ' How worthily he died, that died unworthily. ' ' 
 "That bloody man to save, man's Saviour shed his blood." ■ 
 ' ' Enjoying but one joy — but one of all joyes best. ' ' 
 ' ' That all might come to see, and all might see that came. ' ' 
 
 — Giles Fletcher. 
 "So fast to spend the time that spends your time so fast." 
 "And fit love to reward, and with love be rewarded." 
 ' ' Thou wilt not love to live, unless thou live to love. ' ' 
 
 — Brittain's Ida. 
 "How sorrowe, joye, and joye again did sorrowe close." 
 
 — Thomas Robinson. 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 325 
 
 Fletcher had learned from his master that each alexandrine in 
 a perfect stanza must be memorable to bring about the supreme 
 close. But he did not, like Spenser, have an inexhaustible 
 treasury of fancy and sensuous music to draw from. The School 
 of the Fletchers indulged too often in alexandrines both rhetorical 
 and halting. Almost invariably a very heavy caesura, in the 
 middle of the line, divides it unpleasantly and destroys the rich 
 flow. But Fletcher can, on occasion, display real imagination 
 and write verses heavy with rich music. And he is a poet of 
 distinct merit when he is bearing the torch for Milton as he 
 conceives his gloomy and majestic picture of Satan. Most un- 
 erringly is he a poet when he sings, with no small share of his 
 master's gentle sensuousness, of Tapinus and Parthenia. 
 
 Giles Fletcher 
 
 It is probable that Phineas Fletcher was at work on his 
 Purple Island at the same time that Giles was singing of Christs 
 Victorie and Triumph in Heaven, and Earth, over, and after 
 Death. Both poets borrowed freely from each other and in- 
 dulged in considerable mutual praise.^^ There is, indeed, a 
 reference at the close of the Christ to the last episode in The 
 Purple Island, the marriage of Christ and Eclecta : 
 
 "So I my best beloved's am; as he is mine." 
 
 — Francis Quarles. 
 Of course Spenser is not entirely innocent of such devices; e.g., The 
 Faerie Queene, 1, 9, 9: 
 
 "Which still wex old in woe, whiles woe still wexeth new." 
 But Spenser's lapses of this sort are remarkably few considering the 
 immense demands of his huge poem on his metrical resources and the 
 many artificial excesses of his time. 
 
 25 Space will not permit a detailed account of this. For an example of 
 verbal similarity, compare Giles Fletcher: 
 
 ' ' How may a worme, that crawls along the dust 
 Clamber the azure mountaines thrown so high," 
 and Phineas Fletcher: 
 
 "How shall a worm, on dust that crawls and feeds 
 Climb to th' empyreall court, where these States reign?" 
 Both poets give an elaborate picture of the debate of Justice and Mercy 
 over mankind before God which abounds in similarities. See also the 
 descriptions of Christ in both poets which are almost identical and which 
 seem to derive ultimately from The Song of Songs. For Phineas Fletcher's 
 eulogy of his brother see Preliminary Verses for Giles Fletcher's Christ. 
 Giles Fletcher's panegyrical rejoinder is noted in the text below: 
 
326 University of California Puhlications in Modern FhiloJogy. [Vol. 2 
 
 "But my greene Muse, hiding her younger head 
 Under old Chamus' flaggy banks, .... 
 
 Dares not those high amours and love-sick songs assay. ' ' 
 Giles Fletcher, we see, was not a love-poet despite his sensuous 
 picture of the bower of Vaine-Delight. Though his one im- 
 portant poem was published in 1610, perhaps before his brother 
 had bidden farewell to the little pipe which emulated the youth- 
 ful love-plaints of Colin, he is austere sometimes to the point of 
 asceticism. He has a vatic fervor that places the Christ among 
 the greatest religious poems of the period. 
 
 The Christ begins with a notle and impressive allegory of 
 the debate of Justice and Mercy before God. Justice has the 
 winged lightning for her Mercury. About her throng pale 
 Sickness, "with kercher'd head," Famine, bloodless Care, Age, 
 Fear, and many more. Justice leans her bosom on two stony 
 tables. Her speech inflames the Heavenly Hierarchies to destroy 
 corrupted mankind. But Mercy steps forward like the sun from 
 the clouds. Upon her breast sleeps Delight. She pleads for 
 man, especially since Christ is now wandering on earth ; and her 
 efforts are successful. 
 
 On earth Christ is dwelling in the wilderness. Satan comes 
 as an aged hermit, just as Archimago comes to the Red Cross 
 Knight in The Faerie Qneene. Under pretence of leading Christ 
 to his hermitage, Satan leads him to the bower of Despair and 
 we come to Fletcher's superb borrowing from The Faerie 
 Queene, his most important imitation. Headly condemned this 
 passage as "a curious instance of plagiarism." Grosart, the 
 Fletchers' militant champion, protests angrily with some of his 
 characteristic rhetoric: "Who but a man with nose for 'plagiar- 
 ism' as eager-nostrilled as that of your orthodox hunter after 
 ' heresy ' will deem these of any moment. ' '-" He asserts that two 
 lines were intended as a quotation. But many lines which 
 Grosart chooses to ignore are lifted almost bodily out of Spenser. 
 
 26 Grosart, burning with zeal to establish the striking originality of the 
 Fletchers, overlooks the numerous parallels I am noting, but cites scores of 
 passages to prove Milton's indebtedness to the Fletchers that would puzzle 
 even the ' ' eager-nostrilled ' ' Headly to appreciate. 
 
1912] Cory : Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 327 
 
 My own notion is that the whole quarrel is futile and that, 
 although Fletcher's indebtedness amounts to liberal borrowing, 
 he has created a picture which is hardly less impressive after 
 we know its source. Christ comes to the baleful bower, 
 " .... The mouth of that infernal! cave, 
 That gaping stood, all commers to devoure. " 
 
 About the den are venomous herbs and ' ' ragged trees. ' '- ' Every- 
 where 
 
 "Dead bones and skulls were cast and bodies hanged wear. "28 
 Here dwells Despair. 
 
 "His black uncombed lockes dishevelled fell 
 About his face; through which, as brands of Hell, 
 Sunk in his skull, his staring eyes did glowe. 
 That made him deadly looke. .... 
 
 His cloathes were ragged clouts, with thornes pind fast. ' '29 
 Fletcher does not attempt to reproduce Despair's subtle elo- 
 quence in The Faerie Queene that nearly ruins the Red Cross 
 Knight. Christ steals away and flies with Satan to where 
 " .... Presumption her pavilion spread 
 
 Over the temple the bright starres among. ' ' 
 
 Here, too, all temptations prove futile and angels bring the 
 Saviour to a mountain-top at first snowy. Here he endures the 
 supreme temptation. In the description which follows, a famous 
 passage in the Christ, everyone who has read Spenser's mag- 
 nificent outburst on the Bower of Bliss will see both the general 
 indebtedness and the originality of Fletcher. 
 
 27 Cf. Spenser, 1, 9, 34: 
 
 "And all about old stocks and stubs of trees 
 Whereon nor fruite nor leaf was ever seene, 
 Did hang upon the ragged rocky knees. ' ' 
 
 28 Cf . The Faerie Queene, 1, 9, 34 : 
 
 "On which had many wretches hanged beene, 
 Whose carcases were scattered on the greene. ' ' 
 2» The Faerie Queene, st. 35 : 
 
 "His griesie lockes, long growen and unbound, 
 Disordered hong about his shoulders round. 
 And hid his face; through which his hollow eyne 
 Lookt deadly dull, and stared as astound ; ' ' 
 and St. 36: 
 
 "His garments nought but many ragged clouts. 
 With thornes together pind and patched was." 
 
328 University of California Publicatiowi in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 "All suddenly the hill his snowe devours, 
 In lieu whereof a goodly garden grew 
 As if the snowe had melted into flow'rs 
 Which their sweet breath in subtill vapours threw, 
 That all about perfumed spirits flew: 
 For what as ever might aggrate the sense, 
 In all the world, or please the appetence, 
 Here it was poured out in lavish affluence. 
 
 "For in all theseso some one thing most did growe. 
 But in this one grew all things else beside; 
 For sweet Varietie herselfe did throw 
 To every banke; here all the ground she dide 
 In lillie white; there pinks emblazed wide; 
 And damask 't all the earth; and here shee shed 
 Blew violets, and there came roses red; 
 And every sight the yielding sense, as captive led. 
 
 ' ' The garden like a lady f aire was cut, 
 That lay as if she slumber 'd in delight, 
 And to the open skies her eyes did shut ; 
 The azure fields of heav'n wear 'sembled right 
 In a large round, set with the flowr's of light. 
 The flow 're-de-luce, and the round sparks of deaw. 
 That hung upon the azure leaves, did shew. 
 Like twinkling Starrs, that sparkle in th' eavning blew. 
 
 ' ' Upon a hillie banke her head shee cast, 
 On which the bowre of Vaine-delight was built; 
 White and red roses for her face was plac't, 
 And for her tresses marigolds wear spilt; 
 Them broadly shee displaid, like flaming guilt, 
 Till in the ocean the glad day wear drown 'd; 
 Then up again her yellow lockes she wound. 
 And with greene filletts in their prettie calls them bound." 
 
 The quaint, stiff extravagance with which Fletcher strives to 
 outdo his master's gorgeousness is here only delightful. Both 
 poets have fountains adorned with naked, wanton boys. Both 
 have groves where branches twine in drunken abandon. Both 
 Spenser and Fletcher have beds of roses where naked women 
 disport. The "faire witch," so called by both poets, has a herd 
 of enchanted beasts, once men, in both poems. In Fletcher 
 
 30 Viz : Ida, Tempe, etc., which Fletcher says cannot be compared with 
 this garden. 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 329 
 
 Ambition, too, sits enthroned. In Spenser Guyon finds a similar 
 Ambition sitting in state in Mammon's cave. Christ hears 
 someone sing a voluptuous lay like that with which one of 
 Acrasia's damsels greets Sir Guyon 's ears: 
 
 "See see the flowers that belowe, 
 Now as fresh as morning blowe; 
 And of all the Virgin rose, 
 Everything doth passe away 
 Thear is danger in delay 
 Come, come gather then the rose. ' '3i 
 
 Above all Panglorie sits enthroned, crowned with her golden 
 hair and a garland of rosebuds. In one hand she holds a silver 
 wand; in the other, a hollow globe of glass whose colors, like 
 those of the rainbow, are always vanishing. Christ dispels her 
 enchantments and she flees to Hell. Angels bring a banquet to 
 the Lord. 
 
 From now on Fletcher ceases to employ allegory to any 
 extent. The poem gains distinctly in earnest eloquence, greater 
 vigor, and nobler simplicity. Christ passes over the Cedron 
 singing to his death. 
 
 ' ' So downe the silver streames of Eridan, 
 On either side bank't with a lilly wall, 
 Whiter than both, rides the triumphant swan. 
 And sings his dirge and death, and prophesies his fall. ' ' 
 
 The betrayal and crucifixion are described with an eremite's 
 ecstasy and with occasional incursions into the realms of 
 grotesque horror.^- All earth mourns. But the second dawn is 
 
 31 Cf. The Faerie Queene, 2, 12, sts. 74 sq: 
 
 ' ' The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay : 
 Ah! see the Virgin Rose, how sweetly shee 
 
 Doth first peepe forth in bashfuU modestie. 
 That fairer seemes the less ye see her may, 
 Lo! see soone after how more bold and free 
 Her bared bosom she doth broad display; 
 Lo! see soone after how she fades and falls away. 
 
 ' ' Gather therefore the Rose whilst yet is prime 
 For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre. ' ' 
 
 '^ The curious may compare the Devil here with Errour in The Faerie 
 Queene and the Old Dragon in The Purple Island. 
 
330 University of California Fiiblications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 an ecstasy of light. The flowers spring hixuriantly to welcome 
 their Lord. Triumphant from his harrowing of Hell, Christ 
 returns to earth and thence ascends into Heaven. With a real 
 rapture the poet visions the splendors of Paradise. He rejoices 
 in the love of Egliset for Christ. But he is too humble to sing 
 of the great marriage. That is reserved for Thirsil. And with 
 this modest note the noble poem closes. 
 
 "Brittain's Ida" 
 
 In 1628 Thomas Walkley published a fanciful version of the 
 story of Venus and Anchises called Brittain's Ida, "written by 
 that renowned poet Edmond Spencer." Its authorship remained 
 unquestioned for nearly two centuries, although it seems incred- 
 ible to a student of Spenser that its apocryphal nature should 
 have remained so long unnoticed. It is in the stanza of Christ's 
 Victorie (ahabhccC), and is either the work of one of the 
 Fletchers, more probably of Phineas, or of a member of their 
 school. Grosart sought to fix its authorship on Phineas Fletcher 
 by the useless and worn-out method of piling up parallels with 
 the poet's established works (as if most imitators, especially of 
 this period, did not furnish parallels a plenty), and by certain 
 more convincing repentant references to the looser poems of 
 youth. He has but increased the probability at best. 
 
 The poem is a lovely work of youth, sensual, to be sure, but 
 almost too delicate for Phineas Fletcher at any period of his life. 
 It is in six brief cantos. The first simply introduces Anchises. 
 
 "In Ida vale (who knows not Ida vale) 
 When harmless Troy yet felt not Grecian spite," 
 
 dwelt a hundred shepherds, of whom the most beautiful by far 
 was Anchises. Canto two is a description of the Garden of 
 Delight, in imitation of Spenser's Bower of Bliss. Here Venus 
 dwelt and here Anchises came on a day when he was tired from 
 the chase. From the grove came "dainty music." Thither 
 half fearful, half hopeful he stole. Some voice sang a lay like 
 that which Guyon heard in the Bower of Bliss. Anchises entered 
 
1912] Cory: Speaser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 331 
 
 and saw Venus reclining on a bed of lillies, clothed in a veil of 
 thinnest silk. Anchises swooned. Venus awaking almost 
 thought she saw Adonis once more dying at her feet. She 
 revived the youth with tender care. By her surpassing beauty 
 he knew that she could be no other than the Goddess of Love. 
 Ardently he pleaded to be admitted into her service. The 
 gracious goddess granted his suit, gave him a bow and arrows, 
 and placed him with the pretty Graces from whom he won great 
 love. But he nursed a growing passion for Venus in secret until 
 one day she overheard his complaints and begged him to tell her 
 the cause. Falteringly he disclosed his longing and, begging for 
 a single kiss, he won her love. His happiness was long ; but one 
 day he rashly disclosed his bliss to woods and heaven and earth : 
 
 "That Jove upon him downe his thunder darted 
 Blasting his splendent face, and all his beauty swarted. " 
 
 And here the poet steps in quaintly in his own person, blames 
 Anchises for blabbing, and avows his own powers of secrecy 
 would his obdurate mistress but yield. The poem shows a close 
 dependence on Spenser and a fluent mastery of his sensuous 
 cadences, though the rhetorical alexandrine creeps in at times. 
 It is a delightful piece of youthful lawlessness. 
 
 Thomas Robinson 
 
 About 1620, Thomas Robinson, who has suffered more 
 obscurity than many worse poets of his period, wrote his Life 
 and Death of Mary Magdalene in the stanza of Giles Fletcher's 
 Christ and enrolled himself in the School of the Fletchers. The 
 influence of the Christ, in fact, is quite as marked as that of 
 The Faerie Queene. Robinson begins with a quaint paradoxical 
 statement of the argument exactly in the manner of Giles 
 Fletcher 's prelude : 
 
332 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 "The death of her that was but newly borne: 
 The birth of her that long agoe was dead: 
 The life of her whom heaven and earth did scorne: 
 Her beawty, that was erst debellished: 
 How snowy white inveild the crimson red, 
 And yet the lily sprange unto the rose, 
 Under his spiny fortresse to repose; 
 How sorrowe, joye, and joye againe did sorrowe elose.38 
 
 ' ' This be the duty of my oaten reed. ' ' 
 
 "What reader having sped through these astounding lines would 
 not hasten on in search of the wonders that the poet promises 
 from his humble oaten stops ? 
 
 The narrative begins with an account of the gorgeous Palace 
 of Pleasure where dwelt 
 
 "Amorous, younge, faire, slender Aphrodite. 
 
 A goulden bowle in her right hand shee bore. 
 Wherein all pleasure and delight were bred,' 
 
 as Panglorie, in the Christ, holds a hollow glass globe which 
 symbolizes man's vain pleasures. Two ladies held the train of 
 Aphrodite, "Plumpe, pursive Luxury, and quainter Pride." 
 Gilded Flattery supported her right hand, Wantonnesse her left. 
 "Foolish dame Laughter" painted her eyelids. There too were 
 Idleness, Jealousy, Inconstancie, and "a thousand graceless 
 Graces." A song, like those always sung in these Bowers of 
 Bliss, allured. 
 
 "This said, a thousand prostitute delights, 
 Flewe up and downe the courts as bright as day." 
 
 Gluttonie and Bacchus were invited to the feast. After an orgy 
 all dispersed into the arbors. Some were turned to beasts. 
 
 33 Cf . the opening stanzas of the Christ : 
 
 "The birth of Him that no beginning knewe. 
 Yet gives beginning to all that are borne. 
 And how the Infinite farre greater grewe, 
 By growing lesse, and how the rising Morne, 
 That shot from heav'n, did backe to heav'n retourne; 
 The obsequies of Him that could not die 
 And death of life, ende of eternitie 
 How worthily he died that died unworthily ; ' ' etc. 
 
1912] Cory : Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 333 
 
 Among the revellers the most beautiful was Mary Magdalene. 
 From many rivals she chose the strongest, one who obtained 
 her after a bloody contest. They went into a garden of flowers 
 like those of Spenser strewed at the feet of Elisa. 
 
 ' ' The Damaske-roses heere were brought a bed, 
 Just opposite the Lilie of the Vale, 
 The woody Primrose and the pretty Paunee 
 The Pincke, the Daflfodill and Chevisance 
 All in Perfumed sets their fragrant heads advance. "34 
 
 Heaven, beholding, sent Syneide (Good Conscience), daughter 
 of light. She went to Mary, admonished her, and wounded her 
 with a goad. Mary, however, soon went back to her ways of 
 lust. Then Heaven was angered and sent a tormenting Con- 
 science, "a dreary hagge," who came with other furies. The 
 snakes of Conscience twined around Mary. Sorrow and Care 
 ruled her. She was carried to the Cave of Melancholy, Robin- 
 son's contribution to the Spenserian Despair-poetry. Near the 
 tarn was a steep path leading to Hell. Nemesis hastened thither 
 and called up seven fiery spirits to torture Mary, who wandered 
 distraught through a great desert. But new hope dawned. 
 Christ was approaching. He saw Mary and cast out the evil 
 spirits. Syneide returned to the penitent and bade her go to the 
 Palace of Wisdom. It was surrounded by rich forests like 
 fragrant Lebanon. 
 
 "Pomegranates sweet, and saffron there contend; 
 Spiknard and Camphire and browne Cinnamon. ' ' 
 
 Wisdom's palace stands on a hill because her glory is high; 
 on a rock because she is constant. Thorns grow before it because 
 it is difficult of approach. Though the poet's own glosses refer 
 
 34 Cf. Spenser's Song to Elisa (April). 
 
 ' ' Bring hether the pincke and purple ciillambine 
 
 With gelliflowers; 
 Bring coronations, and sops in wine, 
 Worne of paramoures; 
 Strowe me the ground with daffadowndillies, 
 And cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lillies; 
 The pretie pawnee 
 And the chevisaunce 
 Shall match with the fayre flowre delice. " 
 
334 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 throughout to the Wisdom of Solomon, his more substantial 
 indebtedness to Spenser's episode of the House of Holinesse is 
 unquestionable. As in Spenser, "watchful Humility still kept 
 the dore" and brought Mary before beautiful Wisdom. In the 
 Apocryphal book the only allegorical element is the vague per- 
 sonification of Wisdom. In Robinson's poem IMary was led to 
 Repentance, a woman clothed in sackcloth who continually 
 weeps. Repentance, in The Faerie Queerie, bathed the Red Cross 
 Knight in ' ' salt water smarting sore ' ' after he had been scourged 
 by "bitter Penaunce" and "sharpe Remorse." Mary repented 
 and was soothed by Conscience, as the Red Cross Knight was 
 comforted by Charissa. Robinson's poem closes with an account 
 of Mary's devotion to Christ, her lamentation at the cross, and 
 her meeting with Christ after the resurrection. 
 
 Francis Quarles 
 
 Francis Quarles (1592-1644) should be noted as member of 
 the School of the Fletchers. For Phineas Fletcher he had the 
 highest admiration. He prefixed commendatory verses to The 
 Purple Island, hailing its author as the "Spencer of this age." 
 And he was very partial to the variations of the Spenserian 
 stanzas employed by the Fletchers. He added two similar 
 variations to the group of stanzas in regular pentameters and 
 he experimented further by varying the length of the lines. 
 Most of his Spenserian variations appear in Emhlemes and 
 Hieroglyphikes of the life of Man, groups of poems in which he 
 took a Biblical quotation as a text and either expanded it into 
 a poem in the same mood or wrote a sort of homily in verse on 
 thoughts suggested by it. Probably he was led to vary Fletcher 's 
 stanzas occasionally, by the introduction of some shorter lines, 
 from a desire to make his stanzas more suitable to the mood of 
 some of his texts. The Emblems seem to have achieved consider- 
 able popularity and in fact do contain about all his best work. 
 Almost all those which are based on quotations from the Can- 
 ticles are at least worthy of the Fletchers and rise above the 
 deadly mediocrity of the body of his work. Their content is 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The Scliool of the Fletchers, and Milton. 335 
 
 seldom notably Spenserian, but a few significant verses may be 
 noted as containing material at least familiar to Spenser and his 
 followers. Thus in one Emblem (Book 5, Emblem 3), on the 
 passage in the Canticles (2:5), "Stay me with flowers, and 
 comfort me with apples for I am sick with love, ' ' he contributes 
 a flower passage and writes in a manner perhaps vaguely 
 reminiscent of the Epithalamion. 
 
 "Virgins, tuck up your silken laps and fill ye 
 With the fair wealth of Flora's Magazine; 
 The purple violet, and the pale-fac'd lilly; 
 The pancy and the organ columbine; 
 The flowring thyme, the guilt-boul daffadilly; 
 The lowly pink, the lofty eglentine; 
 The blushing rose, the queen of flowers and best 
 Of Flora 's beauty ; but above the rest, 
 Let Jesse 's soveraigne flower perfume my qualming breast. ' ' 
 
 Joseph Beaumont 
 
 The illustrious family of Beaumonts furnished their member 
 of the School of the Fletchers in the person of Dr. Joseph Beau- 
 mont (1615-1699) whose Psyche is the most ponderous of all 
 the ambitious allegories of this group. Beaumont was a placid 
 dreamer who, however, was shrewd enough to avoid the con- 
 tumely of the howling world. Although he was driven from 
 Cambridge along with his friend Crashaw and other prominent 
 royalists during the troublous times, he contrived to be one who 
 suffered no harm thereby. He occupied several snug positions 
 as pastor and teacher, and discreetly married the daughter of 
 his patron, the Bishop of Ely. His leisure hours were devoted 
 to the production of his unwieldy epic. Spenser's mighty 
 scheme, propounded in the famous letter to Raleigh, was no more 
 heaven-storming. Beaumont linked to the life of Christ an 
 elaborate allegory of Psyche, the soul of man. In 1648 he 
 published his poem in a version said to have been much milder 
 than the one which is now extant. He then devoted himself to 
 putting an edge on the sectarian passages and, in calm certainty 
 of deathless fame, dauntlessly added four cantos to the leviathan. 
 
336 University of California Publications in Modern Fhilology. [Vol. 2 
 
 In 1702 his son, prompted, he tells us, by the demand for the 
 poem, the first edition of which was even then rare, published 
 Psyche, or Love's Mystery, In Tiventy-four Cantos: Displaying 
 the Intercourse Betwixt Christ, and the Soul, The Second 
 Edition, With Corrections throughout and Four new Cantos, 
 never before Printed. 
 
 The Psyche begins with a scene in Hell which may be grouped 
 with those of The Apollyonists, Christ's Victorie, and Paradise 
 Lost. "With a speech of fiery scorn Satan fills his henchmen with 
 a new spirit of rebellion and lays plots to beguile Psyche. Lust 
 is first despatched against the unsuspecting maiden. She is 
 found feasting with Phylax, the emissary of Christ, who pre- 
 pares her for her coming danger by a detailed account of 
 Joseph's life and his temptation by Potiphar's wife. Psyche slips 
 out alone, but sage Syneidesis (Conscience), follows. Charis, 
 an old friend, is also on the watch but decides to let Psyche have 
 a severe lesson. Syneidesis falls asleep and Psyche, pursued by 
 a boar, is rescued by a gallant knight, Aphrodisius. Her rescuer, 
 however, proves to be the seductive emissary of Satan who would 
 have ruined her with his lying tongue had not Charis and 
 Phylax intervened. Aphrodisius is bound, and when repentant 
 Psyche is brought back to behold evil unmasked he proves to be 
 a hideous fiend. 
 
 Beaumont now describes a rebellion which is in the manner 
 of Spenser's episode of the House of Alma and Phineas 
 Fletcher's Purple Island. Psyche's friends murmur against her 
 and meet in an upper chamber of the house whose master is 
 Common-Sense. The maidens Opsis (Sight), Ophresis (Smell), 
 Geusis (Taste), Acoe (Hearing), and Haphe (Touching), all 
 dispute for the supremacy. Opsis begins by describing the 
 wonders of her house in terms of physiological allegory precisely 
 similar to the manner of Phineas Fletcher. She then shows 
 exterior glories, a pageant of the seasons. Here Beaumont 
 derives hints from an analogous scene in the fragmentary 
 seventh book of The Faerie Queene. First : 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 337 
 
 ' ' The Spring marched forth array 'd 
 With fragrant Green, whose sweet embroidery 
 In blooms and buds of Virgin smiles display 'd 
 A scene of living joys all echoed by 
 Ten thousand Birds, which, perch 'd on every Tree 
 Tun'd their soft pipes to Nature's harmony. "35 
 
 In the same manner each Sense puts forth her claim, first by 
 physiological allegory, then by presenting a spectacle of the 
 external wonders which she enjoys. The vision which Acoe dis- 
 plays is of .special interest because of its elaborate account of 
 Beaumont's most cherished poets. A grove suddenly springs up. 
 Here Pindar and Flaccus play rival notes. Homer sits on a 
 mountain and IMaro echoes his princely voice with tones of 
 equal quality. In slightly lower state admirable Tasso rests, 
 
 "Not far from whom, though in a lower clime 
 Yet with a goodly train doth Colin sweep : 
 Though manacled in thick and peevish Ehymes 
 A decent pace his paineful Verse doth keep; 
 Eight fairly dress 'd were his welf eatured Queen 
 Did not her Mask too much her beauties screen. ' ' 
 
 Common-Sense quiets the brawling Senses and advises them 
 to send his sister Fancy to the discontented troop scattered about 
 the Heart. Fancy flies to the Passions and exhorts them to 
 insurrection. They march in array. Psyche, terrified, flees to 
 her inmost fort and sends Logos (Reason), to urge peace. But 
 her advice is spurned and he is imprisoned. Phylax and Charis 
 are nowhere to be seen. Only Thelema (Will), is left. She sallies 
 forth in vengeful mood, but the Passions, by fawning homage 
 and by deceit, lure her to their side. The Passions then send 
 Love, their most subtle champion, to treat with Psyche. He 
 wins her over to their lawlessness. Pride arranges Psyche in 
 gorgeous apparel and the unhappy maid revels and rides far and 
 
 35 Cf . The Faerie Queene, 7, 7, 28 : 
 
 "First lusty Spring, all dight in leaves of flowres 
 That freshly budded and new bloosmes did beare 
 (In which a thousand birds had built their bowres, 
 That sweetly sung, to call forth paramours.) " 
 Beaumont's descriptions of the other seasons are also very similar to 
 Spenser 's. 
 
338 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 wide in a coach of vanities. Syneidesis protests but Psyche 
 shrouds her in a black veil. 
 
 From Heaven Christ sees his bride's fall and despatches 
 Phylax and Charis to her aid. Phylax stops her chariot in its 
 mad course. Angry Thelema, the postillion, would drive on, but 
 Phylax shatters the car and chides both Thelema and the more 
 reluctant Psyche to repentance. Pride is shown in Hell and the 
 other passions are glad to submit to Thelema 's stern orders. 
 Logos and Syneidesis are freed. Psyche is instructed by the 
 story of Adam and Eve and by a long account of the life of 
 Christ, freely interspersed with allegory, which covers nine 
 cantos. 
 
 It seems quite reasonable for Phylax to have supposed that, 
 after his extraordinary biography of Christ, intellectual exhaus- 
 tion alone would have so completely subdued Psyche's moods 
 for unhealthy explorations that she would present in effect an 
 adamantine front to sin. But as soon as he leaves her the busy 
 devil seeks out "a special Fury's den" and despatches the 
 monster against his victim. In short. Psyche is tempted by 
 Heresy and is won over. But Phylax once more intervenes and 
 takes her to her new-found Doctor's tower, to the birthplace of 
 Heretick Sin, where they find 
 
 "Swarms of Doors and Cells and Galleries, 
 Which by quaint Turnings to and fro did wind. ' ' 
 
 They come to a room where 
 
 "A goodly Crucifix was there displaid, 
 Altars were rear'd and reverend Bibles ope, 
 By which majestick Liturgies were laid, 
 And lofty-tuned Anthems; on the top 
 Art plac'd a quire of Angels hovering 
 And made the gorgeous Eoof all seem to sing." 
 
 But at the entrance of Phylax all the falsity becomes apparent. 
 
 "Glozing Deceits and handsome Lyes stood there, 
 With gentle meek demure Hypocrisy, 
 All which in goodly state attended were 
 By treacherous Ehetorick and Phylosophy; 
 With Syllogisms in rank and file array 'd 
 Whose hands three-forked massy halberts sway'd. " 
 
1912] Cory : Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 339 
 
 No doubt the unruly Psyche needed even more persuasion than 
 could come from the disconcerting spectacle of syllogisms in 
 human semblance. So she was shown a long procession of the 
 heretical sects of all ages pressing downward to Death's living 
 fountains. 
 
 Beaumont now contributes to the allegorical purgation scenes 
 which Spenser made popular in this age by his description of the 
 penance of the Red Cross Knight in the House of Holinesse. 
 Phylax carries Psyche a fabulous height in his chariot. She is 
 brought to a majestic palace. To enter its first gate she is com- 
 pelled to bend and shrink. This portal, of transparent crystal, 
 is kept by Sorrow mourning with dishevelled hair and scourging 
 herself continually. After beholding many wonders Psyche is 
 brought before the Queen of the Castle, Ecclesia, the Church 
 and the supreme bride of Christ. In her right hand the stately 
 queen holds the golden key of the Port of Bliss and in her left 
 the iron key which opens the way down to torment. Her maids 
 of honor swarm about her: the sober matron Sanctity, portly 
 Magnanimity with open swelling breasts,^*' and other Spenserian 
 figures. By Truth's embraces Psyche is made whole.^'^ 
 
 After one more vain attempt Satan resorts to a supreme trial. 
 
 "Thus came the monster to his dearest Place 
 On Earth, a Palace wondrous large and high, 
 Which on seav'n Mountains' heads enthroned was. 
 
 Here our fantastic poet attacks religious persecution in the 
 manner of Phineas Fletcher's onslaught on Catholicism in The 
 Appolyonists and even more closely in imitation of Spenser's 
 House of Pride. The exterior walls are of dead men's bones 
 surrounded by a ditch filled with innocent blood.^*^ Satan finds 
 
 36 Compare Charity in the House of Holinesse, The Faerie Queene, 1, 
 
 10. 30. , . , 
 
 37 Compare Una (Truth), who is reinstated once more as the accepted 
 lover of the Eed Cross Knight after his penance, and Browne's Aletheia (in 
 Britannia's Pastorals), who embraces Riot after his conversion following 
 a similar repentance. 
 
 38 Compare The Faerie Queene, 1, 4, 36. The Sins ride forth from the 
 House of Pride. 
 
 "And underneath their feet all scattered lay 
 Dead sculls and bones of men whose life had gone astray." 
 
340 University of Calif orjiia Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 the castle's queen, Persecution, and embraces her with great 
 joy. She promises to proclaim pardon to all who will repent 
 Christianity and come to her. Her departure with her hosts is 
 described in close imitation of Spenser's great pageant of the 
 Seven Deadly Sins. It is the first Spenserian attempt to re- 
 produce the master's great picture of his abstractions of evil in 
 motley procession, mounted on the backs of uncouth beasts. 
 
 "Forthwith, in terrible Magnificence, 
 An hundred Trumpets sent their Voice before, 
 To tell the People that their awful Prince 
 Her Progress now began: that stately Roar 
 Through every Street imperiously flew. 
 And warn 'd all eyes this mighty Sight to view 
 
 "When lo, the sweating Throngs her way bespread 
 "With admirations of her Pomp and Train. 
 Two squires before the rest at distance rid, 
 Suspition and Envy; both did rein 
 Their fitting Steeds, the one a Fox, the other 
 A Wolf and fore'd them on to march together. "39 
 
 ' ' Then came the Coach which two strange Monsters drew, 
 For one a dreadful Lybian Dragon was. 
 Who from his mouth did flaming Sulphur spew, 
 Empoisoning all the Way he was to pass: 
 The other, an enormous crocodile. 
 The most accursed Son of happy Nile. 
 
 "On them two fierce Postillions mounted were 
 Intolerable headstrong Anger, who 
 Her Dragon's sides with restless Lashes tore 
 Yet knew not why she him tormented so:*o 
 And Cruelty, whose heart was harder than 
 His knotty Crocodile's black iron skin. 
 
 "Upon the Coachbox sate a Driver, hight 
 Selfwil, a madbrain'd most outrageous He; 
 Who makes devouring Speed his sole Delight, 
 Though thousand Perils chide his Fervency 
 Never could Hills or Dales, or Sea or Land, 
 Or desperate Precipices make him stand. "4i 
 
 39 So in Spenser, The Faerie Queene, 1, 4, 30, Envy rides on a wolf. 
 
 40 Cf . The Faerie Queene, 1, 4, 34. Spenser 's Wrath has equally blind 
 passions : 
 
 "Yet, willfull man, he never would forecast, 
 How many mischieves should ensue his heedless hast. ' ' 
 
 41 Cf. The Faerie Queene, 1, 4, 34, Satan, the postillion of Pride's chariot. 
 
1912] Cory : Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 341 
 
 On the brazen chariot sat the dreadful queen as, in Spenser, 
 
 Pride sat in her car drawn by the six unequal beasts of the 
 
 other Sins: 
 
 "Her steely Coat's all smear 'd with gore; her Hands 
 Gripe two imprison 'd Twists of angry Snakes, 
 With which though still her Coachman never stands 
 Eternally she threshes him, and makes 
 His furious speed more speedy grow, that she 
 Might at her Prey as soon 's her Wishes be. ' ' 
 
 Her infernal brood followed her: Ravishment, riding upon a 
 goat,^' Heresy on a Hydra,*^ and many others. 
 
 Persecution goes to England and, at her summons, many 
 flock to her standards. Psyche and the few who stand fast are 
 driven forth while the lawless rob, murder, and burn. Psyche 
 and a friend, Uranius, take refuge in a cave. A lion, in search 
 of prey, rushes into their harborage. But he suddenly becomes 
 mild at the sight of the two sufferers, as does the lion before 
 Una in Spenser. The two exiles are captured, Uranius is burned 
 at the stake, and Psyche is tortured in prison. But Phylax 
 frees her and tells her that an even more exalted martyrdom is 
 reserved for her lot. Psyche is brought to a desert and aban- 
 doned to many trials. Satan sends against her Despair, the 
 usual Spenserian figure with hollow, staring eyes and all the 
 foulness of Duessa unmasked, armed with rust-eaten swords and 
 daggers. This fury makes a long and subtle speech, taunts 
 Psyche with her many sins, as Spenser's apparition taunts the 
 Red Cross Knight with his association with Duessa, and incites 
 her to suicide. But Psyche remains firm and the hag vanishes 
 with a shriek. Psyche burns in a sort of inner fire of religious 
 exaltation. 
 
 42 Cf. The Faerie Queene, 1, 4, 24, Lechery riding on a goat. 
 
 43 Of. The Faerie Queene, 1, 7, 16 sq., Duessa rides on a hydra-like beast 
 given her by Orgoglio. Cf. also Beaumont: 
 
 "When lo, the sweating throngs her way bespread 
 With admiration of her Pomp and Train." • 
 
 and Spenser: 
 
 ' ' Huge routs of people did about them band 
 Shouting for joy." (1,4,36) 
 
342 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 Samuel Woodford 
 
 Beaumont's huge epic was ushered into the world with some 
 rapturous commendatory verses by Samuel Woodford, who, 
 although he wrote later than Milton, is worth brief considera- 
 tion for the more complete understanding of this eccentric 
 though once important school of poetry. Woodford used the 
 favorite stanzas of the Fletchers very freely in his paraphrases of 
 the Psalms. He added variations of his own and experimented, 
 even more freely than Quarles, in shortening the lines occasion- 
 ally to give more lyrical quality to the paraphrases where the 
 originals seemed to demand it. In 1679 he published A Para- 
 phrase upon the Canticles with a preface that is full of interest 
 to the student of the history of criticism.** But what interests 
 us here is that Woodford, lest the frail reader should find 
 poison in the Oriental langors of the paraphrase, added an 
 Epoda or Legend of Love, so styled "for honour's sake to the 
 great Spenser, whose Stanza of Nine I have used, and who has 
 Intituled the six Books which we have compleat of his Faery 
 Queen, by the several Legends of Holiness, Temperance, 
 Chastity, Friendship, Justice and Courtesy." This Epoda, 
 imitated partly from Spenser's Hymne to Divine Love and 
 partly from the pageant of the Seven Deadly Sins in The Fasrie 
 Queene, shows strongly the exaggerated Puritanism of the School 
 of the Fletchers and their prurience, which despite its idealistic 
 theory is nothing short of strumpet-minded. We cannot be too 
 severe with these tough old divines. 
 
 The first canto of Woodford's poems sounds in harsh, sturdy 
 echoes the thought of Spenser's Hymne. In the second canto he 
 juggles fluently with Spenserian allegory. Lust, or the devil 
 Legion, came to possess a lost soul. Before he arrived Idleness 
 had swept the empty rooms and darkened the lights and win- 
 dows. Fancy let in loose Desire. After him the Fiend rode in 
 
 44 I have discussed this preface at some length in ' ' The Critics of 
 Edmund Spenser," Univ. Calif. 'Puhl. Modern Philology, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 
 122 sq. 
 
1912] Cory : Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 343 
 
 in triumph at the head of a pageant like that which issued from 
 Spenser 's House of Pride : 
 
 "So in Desire came vainest of the Three, 
 And after him in Triumph rode the Fiend; 
 Whom seven Spirits, full as bad as he. 
 And lo sang to Love, that Heav'n did tend 
 So sang they all, but with unequal grace 
 As were their looks; for some their brows did bend. 
 And grin'd most horrid with distorted Face; 
 Others were blithe and smiled as they along did pass. 
 
 "Folly, the First, by her Habit seem'd a Maid, 
 And by her Face, which was excelling fair; 
 
 Mirth was a youth of beautiful regard, 
 
 With chearful Eyes, plump downy Cheeks and Chin, 
 
 Him Dalliance followed next, a Damsel gay. 
 Of light behaviour, as she well could feign; 
 And wantonly her Brest did open lay, 
 The Lover who came next to entertain; 
 Tho who the He were of her mighty Train, 
 She was not much solicitous to know. ' ' 
 
 Then came Genius or Comus: 
 
 "A right good Fellow, as his Belly show'd 
 Which in a Swath reacht almost to his Knee 
 And made him passage through th ' admiring crowd, 
 Which shouting to him louted, as to them he bow 'd. ' ' 
 
 More grisly figures followed like consequences: Sin with a 
 thousand heads, wretched Poverty, and Death, described with a 
 line plundered from Milton, 
 
 "But Death the third, the same shape always kept. 
 If Shape it might be call 'd, that shape had none. ' ' 
 
 Wherever he went he was attended by unquiet Care, Suspicion, 
 Impudence, Riotice, and Irreligion. Without the door waited 
 Distrust, Jealousy, Fear. Such was the company that entered 
 the soul of a wretched man who sought only earthly Love. 
 
 We need not follow Woodford in his third canto, where he 
 writes of the moral anarchy described in some of the historical 
 passages in the Old Testament and hymns the rise of lawful 
 
344 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 marriage. Nor is it necessary to meddle further with the 
 work of other poets of this school who persisted even into the 
 eighteenth century. Indeed to many readers I shall seem to have 
 exhumed freakish poems out of all proportion. But it is high 
 time that we understood more clearly than any critic has yet 
 set forth the immediate poetic environment of Lycidas, Paradise 
 Lost, and Paradise Regained, the welter of religion and sensu- 
 ality, of lofty idealism and ferocious bigotry, from which the 
 great Puritan drew far more than we commonly realize. Too 
 much attention has been given to Vondel, Andreini, and other 
 remote influences. Apart from the great Greek and Latin poets 
 and from the great books of philosophy and religion, Milton's 
 literary lineage is to be traced from his master Spenser and from 
 these strange perverted works of a group of poets who had a 
 much greater academic vogue than is now generally understood, 
 the School of the Fletchers.*^ 
 
 These curious, half-diseased, half-divine poets were in one 
 respect the truest Spenserians who ever lived. They did not 
 distil the rarest essence of their master as did Milton and Keats 
 and other great English poets. But they did more than merely 
 loot The Faerie Queene for lines and stanzas. With the passing 
 of the School of the Fletchers there passed the last ambitious, 
 absurd attempts to rear the cumbersome, tottering framework 
 of The Faerie Queene to the very stars. The eighteenth century 
 poets imitated Spenser elegantly and superficially, for the most 
 part, as they imitated all their masters. The romanticists, when 
 they reached their period of full triumph, did not imitate ; they 
 were inspired. But the Fletchers and their crew, besides plun- 
 dering and botching lines and stanzas, outlined gigantic schemes 
 like that set forth in Spenser's letter to Raleigh, that superb 
 manifesto of idealism, and turned Milton from his dreams of 
 Arthur to write audaciously of God and Satan. With the School 
 of the Fletchers such heaven-storming became the fashion in 
 
 45 I have analyzed the work of the last known poet of this school, 
 William Thompson, in my "Spenser, Thomson, and Romanticism," Publ. 
 Mod. Lang. Asoc., xxvi, 1. 
 
\ 
 
 1912] Cory: Spenser, The Scliool of the Fletchers, and Milton. 345 
 
 England as it was already the fashion on the continent. We 
 cannot fairly but admire as well as laugh at the rare audacity 
 with which the School of the Fletchers strove to rear Babels of 
 poetry. And in this chaos Milton saw light. 
 
 This is the wholesome value of noting the relation of such 
 queer stuff (if you will), and the master work. And the literary 
 historian wonders as he looks down the long avenues of literature 
 at great men and small, whether our hordes of little realists and 
 little romanticists who huddle about the feet of our living masters 
 will have as much to give, two centuries hence, as these Fletchers 
 at whom it is so easy to laugh. 
 
 MILTON 
 
 For a while Milton was certainly definitely enlisted in this 
 school. And even when he rose above it in many respects, some 
 influence lingered long. In his earliest poems he followed these 
 academic elders rather closely. He mourns the death of a fair 
 infant prettily and inappropriately enough in cadences that will 
 sound sufficiently familiar to the student of the Fletchers : 
 
 "Yet thou art not inglorious in thy fate; 
 For so Apollo with unweeting hand, 
 Whilom did slay his dearly loved mate, 
 Young Hyacinth, born on Eurotas' strand, 
 Young Hyacinth, the pride of Spartan land; 
 But then transformed him to a purple flower: 
 Alack, that so to change thee Winter had no power!" 
 
 Like a true Spenserian of his time, he made his subject (in lyric 
 poetry), a mere makeshift for the enumeration of lovely details. 
 Like the Fletchers, he experimented with stanza forms, making 
 the last line of the rhyme-royal an alexandrine. But he had not 
 arrived. In The Passion (1630) he employed the same stanza 
 and style to celebrate the subject-matter which was the most real 
 to him all his life. The poet is trying to soar. But, like many 
 far humbler undergraduate poets, he masks his sincerity in the 
 affectations of contemporaries. There is no doubt that he was 
 profoundly stirred by the passion of Christ. But he wrote : 
 
346 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 "Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock 
 That was the casket of Heaven's richest store, 
 And here, through grief my feeble hands uplock, 
 Yet on the softened quarry would I score 
 My plaining verse as lively as before; 
 For sure so well instructed are my tears 
 That they would fitly fall in ordered characters. ' ' 
 
 Milton could not as yet distinguish between Spenser and Spen- 
 serians, William Browne, who, in his garrulous Britannia's 
 Pastorals could often follow Spenser very charmingly, was also 
 capable of writing : 
 
 "My blubb'ring pen her sable tears lets fall 
 In characters right." 
 
 But Milton was coming to a realization of his faults. At the end 
 of The Passion we read : 
 
 ' ' This Subject the Author finding to be above the years he had when he 
 wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished. ' ' 
 
 Yet Milton's aspirations were already as immense and as 
 impressive as when he began Paradise Lost. I like to compare 
 Milton and Keats when they wrote At a Vacation Exercise in the 
 College (1628) and the Specimen of an Induction to a Poem. 
 Both were dreaming vaguely and delightedly with Spenser. 
 They were toying with boundless ambitions. Keats was lost in 
 the delight of dancing plumes, glittering cuirasses, and Gothic 
 arches. He had no story to tell. But he was strengthening his 
 wings for The Eve of Saint Agnes. Milton's dreams were pleas- 
 antly obscured by his luxurious memories of Spenser and his 
 followers. He was poring over Drayton's Poly-Olhio7i and its 
 source, the description of the marriage of the Thames and the 
 Medway in The Faerie Queeyie. He was dazzled by the pageants 
 of stately rivers and aglow with the historical and legendary 
 associations that haunted their banks. With boyish ardor he 
 invoked them : 
 
 "Eivers arise; whether thou be the son 
 Of utmost Tweed, or Ouse, or gulfy Dun, 
 Or Trent, who, like some earth-born Giant spreads 
 liis thirty arms along indented meads. 
 Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath, 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 347 
 
 Or Sevren swift, guilty of maiden's death, 
 
 Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lea, 
 
 Or coaly Tyne, or ancient hallowed Dee, 
 
 Or Humber loud, that keeps the Scythian's name. 
 
 Or Medway smooth, or royal-towered Thame. ' ' 
 
 But his desires were not lulled to slumber by the warm glow and 
 pomp of these visions. He longed to use his language for greater 
 purposes : 
 
 "Yet I had rather, if I were to choose, 
 Thy service in some graver subject use, 
 Such as may make thee search thy coffers round, 
 Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound: 
 Such where the deep transported mind may soar 
 Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven's door 
 Look in, and see each blissful Deity 
 How he before the thunderous throne doth lie. 
 Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings." 
 
 His youthful Latin poems were more often playful because 
 they followed the lighter verse of Ovid and Horace rather than 
 the high seriousness of Virgil, Tasso, and Spenser. But his In 
 Quint iim Novemhris (1626), a poem on the anniversary of the 
 Gunpowder Plot, celebrated the supposed attempts of Satan and 
 the Pope to ruin England through the agency of Guy Fawkes 
 in the academic Spenserian manner then in vogue. In 1626, too, 
 Phineas Fletcher probably completed or was completing his 
 Latin poem on the same subject, the Locustae with its English 
 paraphrase The Appolyonists, already discussed. Fletcher's 
 poem was not published until the following year and we can 
 establish no definite relationship between his work and Milton's. 1 
 Both used popular contemporary ideas. Both treated a popular.' 
 superstition in a vein of classical and Spenserian allegory. But) 
 we know that upon Paradise Lost Fletcher's poem left a strong! 
 impress. And in this academic exercise of IMilton's the young '^ 
 poet was strengthening himself for the great epic. He was 
 making his first studies for his picture of the Prince of Darkness : 
 
 "And now, in his flight, Satan sees appear the fields girdled by white 
 wave-beaten cliffs, the land loved by the sea-god, named of old from 
 Neptune's son Albion 
 
 "Now his swift flight had carried him beyond the rimy Alps to the 
 
348 University of California Puhlications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 borders of Italy. On his left hand were the ancient land of the Sabines 
 and the cloud-wrapped Apennine; on his right Etruria, ill-famed for its 
 poisoners. Thee too, Tiber, he saw, giving furtive kisses to Thetis." 
 There follows fierce satire on Catholicism, of the kind which 
 Milton and the Fletchers took too readily from The Faerie 
 Queene. Satan came to the Pope as the vile Archimago came to 
 the Red Cross Knight and as the Tempter came to Christ in 
 Giles Fletcher's poem — in the guise of a hermit. In dreams he 
 incited the Pope against England. The poet conjures up a place 
 of horror in the manner of the classical poets and of Spenser's 
 description of Hell in his tale of Guy on 's visit to Mammon's 
 dark realms: 
 
 ' ' There is a place girt eternally with the darkness of night, the vast 
 foundations of a building long since given to ruin, now the cave of fierce 
 Murder and double-tongued Treachery, whom the hag Discord brought forth 
 at one birth. Here amid heaps of rubble and broken stones lie the unburied 
 bodies of men, corpses impaled on steel. Here forever sits Craft, black, 
 with distorted eyes; and Fury; and Fear; and a thousand types of death. 
 Pale Horror flies about the place. ' '-is 
 
 These apparitions "the Babylonish priest" sent against England. 
 But the Heavenly Father pitied his people and frustrated ''the 
 daring cruelty of the Papists." This crude and abusive poem, 
 though drawing the most tasteless elements from Spenser and 
 the Spenserians, foreshadowed vaguely the epic to come.'*^ 
 
 But Milton's mind was not yet embittered. From some of 
 his more intimate Latin poems we learn that England, at least, 
 was still Fairyland to him. While in Italy he confessed his 
 aspirations to Manso in his most interesting Latin poem. His 
 thoughts go back to his own land and its poets, to Chaucer whom, 
 like Spenser in The Shepheards Calendar, he worships as "our 
 Tityrus." "You," he writes Manso, 
 
 46 Cf. The Faerie Queene, 2, 7, 22-23. In Mammon's cave, hard by the 
 gates of Hell, lurked "cruel Kevenge, " Despight, Treason, "gnawing 
 Gealosy, " Feare, and many more. 
 
 "And over them sad Horror with grim hew 
 Did always sore, beating his yron wings. ' ' 
 Of course the famous similar description in the sixth book of Virgil probably 
 stimulated most of these passages. 
 
 47 The quotations above and all subsequent citations from Milton's Latin 
 poems are from William Vaughn Moody 's translation, the Cambridge Edition 
 of Milton, Boston and New York, 1899. 
 
1912] Cory : Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 349 
 
 " .... You, who are so kind, will not scorn a stranger's muse, she who 
 , nourished sparely in the frozen north, lately dared a venturesome flight 
 through the cities of Italy. I too, methinks, have heard, through the obscure 
 shades of night, the swans singing in my river at home, where Thames, 
 bending her argent urns, lets her glaucous locks stream wide into the ocean. 
 What do I say? did not Chaucer himself, our Tityrus, come once to these 
 shores ? ' ' 
 
 He speaks of his haunting desire to write of Arthur, the national 
 
 hero whom Spenser had chosen for his Faerie Queene. And 
 
 it seems reasonable to believe that the hero of Spenser was 
 
 as much in Milton's mind as the hero of the chronicles and 
 
 romances. For he writes of him as : ' ' Arthur, who carried war 
 
 into fairyland. ' '** To the end his dreams of Arthur were tinged 
 
 by Spenser's vague, magnificent abstraction. One thinks as 
 
 much of the dim paths of The Faerie Queene as of Malory, 
 
 despite the citation of names familiar from the Morte Darthur, 
 
 when, in Paradise Begained, the blind poet describes the ' ' ladies 
 
 of the Hesperides," with a characteristic, wistful reminiscence 
 
 of his earlier epic dreams, as : 
 
 "Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since 
 Of faery damsels met in forest wide 
 By knights of Logres, or of Lyones, 
 Launcelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore. ' '49 
 
 ' ' On the Morning of Christ 's Nativity ' ' 
 
 Before Milton had left college, while he was writing for the 
 most part in the ephemeral modes of his day, he spoke out bold 
 and clear once with his own voice. The hymn, On the Morning 
 of Christ's Nativity (1629) is far more significant than its 
 slightly later companion-piece The Passion, which I have already 
 
 48 It is more likely that this is inspired by Spenser than by the legend 
 of Arthur brought to Avalon. The wounded Arthur did not sail to Avalon 
 to carry on war. 
 
 49 Paradise Begained, book 2, lines 357 sq. As significant evidence in 
 connection with Milton's fusion of Spenser with sources like Geoffrey of 
 Monmouth, we may note that Milton, in his History of England (ed. Sym- 
 mons, vol. 4, p. 13), quotes a passage from Spenser to supplement Geoffrey 
 much as a modern historian draws from two sources of equal repute. Lest 
 I give false impression here I should add that Milton was sceptical enough 
 about the historical Arthur. The point is that Spenser was clearly almost 
 always in his mind when he thought of the British king. 
 
350 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 discussed. It opens with a typical seventeenth century Spen- 
 serian prelude in that Spenserian variation of the rhyme-royal 
 for which we have already seen his partiality. William Vaughn 
 Moody chooses a word with a very expressive connotative value 
 when he speaks of the "quaint dulcity" which, through the 
 influence of Giles Fletcher, appears in the opening stanzas. 
 
 "See how from far upon the Eastern road 
 The star-led Wizards haste with odours sweet! 
 Oh! run; prevent them with thy humble ode, 
 And lay it lowly at his blessed feet. ' ' 
 
 Then the poem leaps into the swift, abrupt, ringing music of 
 The Hymn, proper. Whatever lyrical strophes may have been 
 suggestive, the stanza was Milton's own. And here was the first 
 distinctly creative use of a final alexandrine since Spenser had 
 shown its possibilities when he used it to give delicate music to 
 the heavy, pedantic stanza-of -eight (abahhchc). In Milton's 
 new stanza the sharp strokes of the trimeter couplets were con- 
 trolled by the succeeding pentameters and a tetrameter modu- 
 lated not too abruptly into the long, solemn swing of the final 
 alexandrine. There are tasteless conceits here and there. But 
 unhappy is he whose sensibilities are so fragile that the flaws 
 blind him to the superb lyrical flashes that abound. Milton 
 seems to have had Spenser as well as the Spenserians in his 
 consciousness. It is probable that he borrowed an elaborate 
 conceit from the Song to Elisa in the April eclogue of The 
 Shepheards Calender, unhappily, to gild over his gold. Spenser 
 wrote : 
 
 ' ' I sawe Phoebus thrust out his golden hedde, 
 
 Upon her to gaze: 
 But when he sawe how broade her beames did spredde. 
 
 It did him amaze. 
 He blusht to see another Sunne belowe, 
 Ne durst againe his fyrie face out showe: 
 
 Let him, if he dare, 
 
 His brightnesse compare 
 With hers, to have the overthrown ' ' 
 
 The more sonorous lines of Milton, despite their imitative 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 351 
 
 artificiality of concept, are significant in the development of the 
 music of his maturity : 
 
 ' ' And, though the shady gloom 
 Had given day her room, 
 The Sun himself withheld his wonted speed, 
 And hid his head for shame, 
 As his inferior flame 
 The new-enlightened world no more should need: 
 
 He saw a greater Sun appear 
 Than his bright Throne or burning axletree could bear. ' ' 
 
 But Milton was not yet large enough to borrow masterfully, to 
 combine subtly from a dozen sources. How little he had yet 
 accomplished he himself admitted, as he left Cambridge, in the 
 famous sonnet that has been as a quiet, heartening hymn to 
 thousands of young men who have that noble combination of 
 pride and humility. 
 
 "How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, 
 
 Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year! 
 My hasting days fly on with full career, 
 But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. 
 
 Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth. 
 That I to manhood am arrived so near. 
 And inward ripeness doth mvich less appear. 
 
 That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th. 
 
 Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, 
 
 It shall be still in strictest measure even 
 To that same lot, however mean or high, 
 
 Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. 
 All is, if I have grace to use it so. 
 
 As ever in my great Task-master 's eye. ' ' 
 
 "L 'Allegro and "II Penseroso" 
 In rural retirement at Horton Milton's genius developed by 
 leaps and bounds. That Spenser was good leaven in those days 
 of golden quietude we can hardly doubt when we think of 
 Milton's ideal surroundings and youthful idealism, perfectly 
 appropriate for a continued perusal of the leisurely Faerie 
 Queene. The days of L' Allegro and II Penseroso were the 
 
352 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 fullest days of detachment and dreams. L' Allegro derives 
 remotely from the Spenserian pastoral as developed by Drayton 
 and his friends, Brown and Wither.^" Spenser, though he had, 
 in the main, followed the beaten path of the Renaissance pas- 
 toral, had suggested much to his ingenious followers in his 
 ShepJieards Calender. He strove to nationalize the pastoral by 
 transfering the crown from the ''Romish Tityrus," Virgil, to the 
 English Tityrus, Chaucer. He introduced the more brisk style 
 of the fable, following Chaucer at a great distance. Above all, 
 in the airy roundelay of Willy and Perigot, with its adroit sug- 
 gestion of popular improvisation, he enlivened the pastoral with 
 a species of light-hearted, semi-popular song like the French 
 pastourelle — which had been forgotten in England since the days 
 of Henryson's Bohin and Mahyne but which had been preserved 
 in effect in Prance in the blithe notes of Clement Marot. Of the 
 many imitators of The ShepJieards Calender Drayton and his 
 group were by far the most astute in seizing upon and develop- 
 ing those most fertile ideas which Spenser had barely suggested. 
 Drayton introduced tangibly the much needed element of humor. 
 The languid, plaining shepherd lived on, but Drayton and his 
 friends were for the most part more interested in such lilting 
 creations as the ballad of bonny Dowsabelle, imitated from Sir 
 Thopas at the suggestion of Spenser's pseudo-Chaucerian poems. 
 Drayton and Browne gossiped with real countrywives and conned 
 their wondrous lore about Queen Mab and her fairy rout. 
 Browne and Wither sang of may-poles and country-folk so 
 blithely in the light tetrameter measure that Milton doubtless 
 learned much from them when he chose the same metre and very 
 similar subject-matter. L 'Allegro — peering through the two 
 aged oaks at the cottage chimney, watching Corydon and Thyrsis 
 at their savory dinner, 
 
 50 This and the following generalizations, relating Milton's L' Allegro 
 even remotely with the Spenserian pastorals may seem fanciful to many here. 
 In my "Golden Age of the Spenserian Pastoral," Publ. Mod. Lang. Assoc, 
 XXV, 2, I have tried to show in detail what I conceive to have been the 
 peculiar development of the Spenserian pastoral towards a delicate gaiety 
 that distinguishes it sharply from the English eclogues of Virgilian and 
 Italian lineage. 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 353 
 
 "Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses," 
 attending a holiday with young and old, drinking the spicy ale 
 while some one told of fairy Mab and the drudging Goblin — is 
 the kinsman of Willy and Perigot, of Drayton's Batte and 
 Gorbo, Browne's Willy and Roget, and Wither 's Philarete who 
 sang of fields and dainty nosegays even in prison. II Penseroso 
 is a bit more personal. We catch the young poet at his dearer 
 dreams. Like Spenser he is poring over Chaucer's alluring 
 fragment. The Squire 's Tale : 
 
 ' ' The story of Cambuscan bold, 
 Of Camball and of Algarsife, 
 And who had Canace to wife, 
 That owned the virtuous ring and glass. 
 And of the wondrous horse of brass 
 On which the Tartar King did ride." 
 
 Into the magic glass that Chaucer and Spenser described with 
 wondering delight, Milton had peered as eagerly as Britomart 
 in search of Arthegal. For in earlier days, too, At a Vacation 
 Exercise, he dreamed of a cave like Spenser's and Ariosto's cave 
 of Merlin wherein dwelt 
 
 ' * A Sybil old, bow-bent with crooked age. 
 That far events full wisely could presage. 
 And in Time's long and dark prospective-glass 
 Foresaw what future days should bring to pass. ' ' 
 
 II Penseroso was reading, too, of the great battle of Camball 
 and Triamond in Spenser's continuation of The Squire's Tale. 
 He writes of what 
 
 " .... Great Bards beside 
 In sage and solemn tunes have sung. 
 Of turneys and inchantments drear, 
 Where more is meant than meets the ear. ' ' 
 
 Critics have hardly been fanciful in describing this last line as 
 a reference to the allegory of The Faerie Queene. And when 
 Milton prepared his Arcades for Lady Strange, Countess of 
 Derby, he must have remembered the prodigal honors that 
 Spenser had heaped upon her in The Teares of the Muses and 
 in his graceful picture of his other two cousins and her as 
 
354 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 "Phyllis, Carilis, and sweet Amarylis, " in Colin Clouts Come 
 Home Again. The younger poet wrote : 
 
 "Fame, that her high worth to raise 
 Seemed erst so lavish and profuse, 
 We may justly now accuse 
 Of detraction from her praise. ' ' 
 
 Perhaps these last lines have in them a touch of that bitter- 
 ness which came to the young idealist, even in the seclusion of 
 Horton, w^ith a growing sense of real life. It is the bitterness 
 that afflicts a young poet when he first lifts his eyes from the 
 charmed books over which he has been poring, intolerant, 
 because of his idealism, of human failing, and oppressed with a 
 belief that his own times are degenerate. 
 
 "COMUS" 
 
 In Comus and Lycidas, despite the lofty faiths which Milton 
 brought to bear against his doubts, the tone of complaint is 
 insistent and impressive. He was turning from the realms of 
 pure romance, from the dim lands of Cambuscan and of 
 Gloriana. Or rather he was coming to question their reality. 
 In Spenser he had read : 
 
 ' ' Of Court, it seemes, men Courtesie doe call, 
 For that it there most useth to abound: 
 And well beseemeth that in Princes hall 
 That vertue should be plentifully found. 
 Which of all goodly manners is the ground, 
 And roote of civill conversation: 
 Eight so in Faery court it did redound. 
 Where eurteous Knights and Ladies most did won 
 Of all on earth, and made a matchlesse paragon, "si 
 
 In Comus Milton accepted from his master the etymology of 
 the word ' * courtesy ' ' but found the virtue no longer in the place 
 where it originated. His heroine imagined that in the magician 
 disguised as a rustic she had seen 
 
 51 The Faerie Queene, 6, 1, 1. 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 355 
 
 " .... Honest-offered courtesy, 
 Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds, 
 With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls 
 And courts of princes, where it first was named, 
 And yet is most pretended. "52 
 
 "When Milton came to create a Bower of Bliss in Comus he could 
 no longer write with the irresponsible, almost innocent, delight 
 in voluptuousness with M^hich Spenser described the arbors and 
 drunken vines of the languorous Acrasia. The Circe of Homer, 
 Tasso's Armida, Spenser's Acrasia, who all doubtless lingered 
 in the mind of the poet of Comus, seduced their victims by sheer 
 bodily beauty. Hazlitt has an ingenious remark worth ponder- 
 ing at this point : 
 
 * ' The character which a living poet has given of Spenser would be 
 much more true of Milton. 
 
 ' . . . . Yet not more sweet 
 
 Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise 
 
 High Priest of all the Muses' mysteries.' 
 Spenser, on the contrary, is very apt to pry into mysteries which do not 
 belong to the Muses. Milton's voluptuousness is not lascivious or sensual. 
 He describes beautiful objects for their own sakes. Spenser has an eye 
 to the consequences and steeps everything in pleasure not of the purest 
 kind." 
 
 This is a reasonable comparison. But I still urge that Spenser 
 had an almost innocent delight in voluptuousness when he made 
 vivid the temptations of Acrasia ostensibly for the glory of 
 Guyon's temperance. It is to be remembered that in an age of 
 enthusiasm art and morals may be perfectly reconciled by the 
 greater minds, while in an age of reason comes restless doubt. 
 Men take sides violently and become cynics or militant moral- 
 ists, voluptuaries or prudes. In Milton's age sophistication 
 had followed the death of the "first, fine, careless rapture." 
 Acrasia, as I have said, enticed her victims by frankly exposing 
 her beautiful, naked body. It does not seem necessary to Spenser 
 to inform us that this attractive creature would have us reel 
 back into the beast. Sin may be lovely, but Temperance is so 
 strong that it needs no sight of ugliness to fire it to conquest. 
 
 52 Comus, lines 322 sq. 
 
356 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 Ariosto, writing in a very sophisticated period and country, was 
 fain to show that the beautiful Alcina unmasked was a loath- 
 some hag, though he was not, of course, seriously concerned with 
 morality. Spenser borrowed this picture but only for the pur- 
 poses of religious satire when he created Duessa. Acrasia 
 remained beautiful even when overcome. Milton is more nearly 
 like Ariosto, in this one respect, in temper. But he is even more 
 severe. He never allows us to lose sight of the bestial that leers 
 through all the allurements of sin in Comus. Then too, while 
 Acrasia proudly displays her body, Comus must appeal to 
 reason. He is the polished sophist who argues with wonderful 
 plausibility. It is necessary for him to try to buttress frank 
 desire with sneaking reason. 
 
 But enough on the sensual in Spenser and Milton. From his 
 "sage and serious Spenser" Milton could certainly draw high 
 moral truths. Belphoebe, Spenser's huntress wandering like 
 Diana through the deep woods, Britomart, the warrior-maiden 
 conquering all lustful knights, Spenser's perfect types of 
 chastity, inspired Milton with faith to write his credo boldly in 
 Comus. He speaks through the steadfast brother who believes 
 that chastity is a defence in itself. Still the benignant influence 
 of Spenser 's dreams keeps Milton from absolute bitterness : 
 
 " 'Tis Chastity, my brother, Chastity, 
 She that has that is clad in complete steel, 
 And like a quivered nymph with arrows keen, 
 May trace huge forests, and unharboured heaths, 
 Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds; 
 Where, through the saered rays of chastity, 
 No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaineer 
 Will dare to soil her virgin purity. ' ' 
 
 Spenser also had made his Red Cross Knight give Una lofty 
 assurance as he entered the dark and squalid den of Error : 
 
 ' ' Vertue gives her selfe light through darknesse for to wade. ' ' 
 
 And the poet of Comus made the confident elder brother say: 
 
 * ' Virtue could see to do what Virtue would 
 By her own radiant light. ' ' 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 357 
 
 Everywhere the presence of Spenser's influence is elusively 
 apparent. Where Milton borrowed so masterfully from Homer, 
 Tasso, Spenser, Peele, John Fletcher, and perhaps many more, it 
 becomes mere pedantry to attempt a collection of unquestionable 
 parallels. Yet the temptation is great. As Milton wrote of his 
 Lady, Virtue incarnate, perhaps it was the memory of Spenser's 
 Sir Guyon or Temperance who, under similar temptations, was 
 protected by the sage advice of a palmer, to describe twilight as 
 
 " .... Grey-hooded Even, 
 Like a sad Votarist in palmer's weed." 
 
 This is an example instructive of how a Spenserian fancy might 
 cling in the background of Milton's consciousness. More strik- 
 ing parallels are not wanting. Spenser writes of "Fayre 
 Cynthia," who through a cloud 
 
 "Breaks forth her silver beames and her bright head 
 Discovers to the world discomfited: 
 Of the poore traveller that went astray, 
 With thousand blessings she is berried." 
 
 In Comus the moon is similarly apostrophized : 
 
 " .... And thou, fair Moon, 
 That wont'st to love the traveller's benison, 
 Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud, 
 And disinherit Chaos. ' '53 
 
 When, at the close of Milton's poem, the guardian spirit tells 
 how he had heard from Meliboeus, 
 
 "The soothest Shepherd that ere piped on plains," 
 
 how to summon the water-nymph Sabrina, we remember how 
 tenderly she had been sung by Spenser and feel that this 
 Meliboeus, hovering in the background, more powerful even than 
 the protector of the Lady, is a veiled reference, of the kind of 
 which Milton was particularly fond, to his own guardian spirit, 
 Spenser, whose lofty faith in chastity and virtue encouraged 
 Milton to overrule his bitterness in Comus. 
 
 53 The Faerie Queene, 3, 1, 43, and Comus, lines 331 sq. 
 
358 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 "Lycidas" 
 
 In Lycidas this bitterness is more unruly and is, in this case, 
 plausibly traceable, in part, to the influence of Spenser. At 
 least as early as Thomas Warton, critics have pointed out the 
 similarity between the abusive digression of religious polemics 
 in Lycidas and the religious janglings of Piers and Palinode in 
 the Maye eclogue of The Shepheards Calender. Mantuan and 
 Petrarch had attacked bad clergy in their eclogues. But their 
 influence is more remote than that of Milton's chosen master. 
 Moreover Spenser's eclogue was the specific attack of Protestant 
 upon Catholic. In this he was followed by some of his imitators, 
 notably Phineas Fletcher, in The Appolyonists and in his 
 Piscatorie Eclogues (1633). We have good evidence that Spen- 
 ser's abusive eclogue appealed particularly to Milton. In 
 Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against 
 Smectymnuus^* he quotes from Maye one of Spenser's fierce 
 thrusts at corrupt prelates. And the satire in Milton's elegy is 
 markedly similar in spirit and phrase to the harsh lines in 
 Spenser's discordant pastoral. Milton makes Saint Peter, "the 
 Pilot of the Galilean Lake, ' ' utter characteristic reproof : 
 
 ' ' How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, 
 Anow of such as, for their bellies' sake. 
 Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! 
 Of other care they little reckoning make 
 Than how to scramble at the shearer 's feast. 
 And shove away fhe worthy bidden guest. 
 Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
 A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least 
 That to the faithful Herdman's art belongs! 
 What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; 
 And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
 Grate on their scannel pipes of wretched straw; 
 The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed. 
 But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, 
 Kot inwardly, and foul contagion spread. ' ' 
 
 54 Ed. Symmons, vol. 1, p. 197, 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 359 
 
 And Spenser wrote: 
 
 "Those faytours little regarden their charge, 
 While they, letting their sheepe rimne at large, 
 Passen their time, that should be sparely spent, 
 In lustihede and wanton meryment. 
 Thilke same bene shepeheardes for the Devils stedde, 
 That playen while their flockes be unf edde. " 
 
 It is interesting to observe that while Lycidas, in its general 
 character, turns away from the Spenserian pastoral to the Vir- 
 gilian, its digressions, the most earnest and personal parts of the 
 poem, derive almost certainly from The Shepheards Calender. 
 The ecclesiastical satire, though the lines burn with Milton's 
 fine strength, is not pleasant reading. But the other famous 
 digression — the momentary doubt of the youthful idealist — con- 
 tains the most beautiful and the most human lines in the elegy. 
 
 "Alas! what boots it with uncessant care 
 To tend the homely, slighted, Shepherd's trade, 
 And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? 
 Were it not better done, as others use. 
 To sport with Amarylis in the shade, 
 Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? 
 Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 
 (That last infirmity of noble mind) 
 To scorn delights and live laborious days; 
 But the fair guerdon when we hope to find. 
 And think to burst out into sudden blaze, 
 Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, 
 And slits the thin-spun life. 'But not the praise,' 
 Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears; 
 'Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 
 Nor in the glistering foil 
 
 Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies. 
 But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes 
 And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; 
 As he pronounces lastly on each deed, 
 Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed. ' ' ' 
 
 It is important, for students of literary influence, to notice that 
 while Milton took some of his impulse for this passage from the 
 despair of the young poet Cuddie and the lofty encouragement 
 of Piers in Spenser's October, yet he was experiencing, at first 
 hand, precisely the mood which Spenser expressed. Spenser 
 
360 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 was doubting, but aspiring to rise to epic heights in his Faerie 
 Queene. Milton was expressing the same temporary unfaith and 
 discouragement of youth but meditating none the less upon his 
 great national poem. 
 
 In the serene Arcadia of Spenser and his followers, where 
 came no botanists, Milton learned the graceful trick of weaving 
 artificial garlands of flowers from every season. Spenser adopted 
 the flower-passage from earlier Elizabethans and gave it cur- 
 rency in his song to Elisa and his elegy to Dido in The Shep- 
 heards Calender. He was enthusiastically imitated in the pas- 
 torals of Drayton, Barnefield, Wither, Basse and by the School 
 of the Fletchers many times. Milton followed exquisitely the 
 fashion when he bid the valleys — 
 
 "Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, 
 J That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers, 
 
 ! And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. 
 
 Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, 
 
 The tufted crow-toe, and pale gessamine. 
 
 The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet. 
 
 The glowing violet, 
 
 The musk-rose, and the well-attired wood-bine. 
 
 With cowslips wan that hang with pensive head. 
 
 And every flower that sad embroidery wears; 
 
 Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, 
 
 And daffadillies fill their cups with tears. 
 
 To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. ' ' 
 
 It is likely, too, that Spenser had his share in inculcating one 
 more faith with which Milton answered the various question- 
 ings of his "still small voice." Spenser, when, in his lament 
 for Dido, he had popularized the pastoral elegy in England, 
 employed a Renaissance convention, the abrupt hopeful turn at 
 the close. In this he was followed by his imitators, Drayton. 
 Browne, and others, and finally by Milton when he wrote : 
 
 * ' Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more. 
 For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 
 Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. 
 So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
 And yet anon repairs his drooping head. 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 361 
 
 So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, 
 
 Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, 
 
 And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, 
 In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. 
 There entertain him all the saints above, 
 In solemn troops and sweet societies. 
 That sing, and singing in their glory move. 
 And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. 
 Now, Lycidas, the Shepherds weep no more. ' ' 
 
 In the same manner, in imitation of Marot, Spenser had written : 
 
 "Why wayle we then? why weary we the gods with playnts. 
 As if some evill were to her betight? 
 She raignes a goddess now emong the saintes, 
 That whilome was the saynt of shepheards light: 
 And is enstalled nowe in heavens hight. 
 I see thee, blessed soule, I see, 
 Walke in Elisian fieldes so free. 
 O happy herse! 
 Might I once come to thee! O that I might! 
 O joyful verse! "55 
 
 We have already seen, from his Latin poem to Manso, that 
 Milton in Italy was still as much in Fairyland as he was when 
 at Horton. The rude awakening, signs of which appear in 
 Comus and Lycidas, was delayed by travel. But when he 
 returned to England and devoted his activities to the bitter 
 political struggles (1642-1658) he bade farewell to all dreams 
 of an ideal England and an ideal Arthur. The tragedy of the 
 fall of man and the loss of Paradise was more appropriate to his 
 distressed mind. From now on the gentle, passionless visions 
 came back to him only in moods of momentary and wistful 
 reminiscence. Dryden has suggested that Spenser was dis- 
 couraged from continuing The Faerie Queen because the living 
 court of Gloriana fell more and more short of his dreams. 
 Arthegal, or Lord Grey, was ignominiously deprived of his high 
 trust. Sidney, the noblest knight in Fairyland, was slain at the 
 
 55 In my treatment of Lycidas I am under great obligations to Dr. J. H. 
 Hanf ord. He has made a sound study of this type in his essay on ' ' The 
 Pastoral Elegy and Milton's Lycidas," Publ. Mod. Lang. Assoc, vol. xxv, 
 no. 3, September, 1910, pp. 403 sq. 
 
362 University of California PuMications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 climax of his career. Perhaps Milton gave up Arthur because 
 long years of political wrangling made him, like Spenser, lose 
 faith in England's brilliant future. Sir Calidore, Sir Lamorack, 
 and Sir Pelleas had failed to bind Slander, the Blatant Beast. 
 The monster lived on to bring shame and distress and disillusion- 
 ment upon Milton. 
 
 "Paradise Lost" 
 
 But when the storm and stress period ceased for Milton he 
 bethought him of another subject upon which, along with that 
 of King Arthur, he had long pondered. Milton manuscripts 
 have preserved for us a number of drafts of a projected play 
 on the subject of the fall of Adam. One striking fact has not 
 been hitherto commented upon. Had Milton worked out Para- 
 dise Lost along the lines of these early drafts he would un- 
 questionably have written a Spenserian poem quite in the manner 
 of the School of the Fletchers. His sketches are full of the 
 allegories particularly cultivated by his early favorites, the 
 seventeenth century Spenserians. He may have seen the Adamo 
 of Andreini while in Italy and have derived inspiration from its 
 allegorical episodes. But the allegories of Spenser and the 
 Fletchers are much closer to the manuscript jottings. And we 
 know that Spenser and the Fletchers ranked high among his 
 favorite poets. Faith, Hope, and Charity are called in to 
 instruct Adam at his repentance as they instruct Spenser's 
 remorseful Red Cross Knight in the House of Holiness. Spen- 
 ser's allegory of repentance was closely imitated by William 
 Browne in his Britannia's Pastorals and, as we have seen, by 
 Thomas Robinson and Dr. Joseph Beaumont, two members of 
 the School of the Fletchers. Mercy and Justice debate as they 
 debated in Giles Fletcher's Christ^^ and Phineas Fletcher's 
 Purple Island. Conscience, a favorite with Phineas Fletcher, 
 Thomas Robinson, and Dr. Joseph Beaumont, was to have been 
 active in the story of Adam. There is more than enough to 
 show that Milton was full of the fancies of Spenser and of his 
 
 56 A very popular mediae\-al allegory, of course. See Miss Hope Travers ' 
 The Allegory of the Four Daughters of God, Bryn Mawr Dissertation, 1908. 
 
1912] Cory : Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Miltoii. 363 
 
 Cambridge followers. And Milton never passed utterly beyond 
 this type of influence even in his mature epic period. I have 
 already stated that Phineas Fletcher had given in his Apollyon- 
 ists and Locustae a spirited picture of the conclave in Hell. 
 With him the character of Lucifer, the fiery orator and un- 
 repentant rebel, assumed some of the grandeur that we now 
 call Miltonic." The Psyche of Dr. Joseph Beaumont has been 
 plausibly conceived to have influenced Milton in his portrait of 
 Satan and his cohorts, though Milton's fiends are far less 
 grotesque. As Macaulay puts it : " They have no horns, no tails, 
 none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock," — and, we 
 may well add, of Beaumont. Vondel and other continental poets 
 had been mindful of the impressiveness of Lucifer. But for our 
 purposes we might even accept without question every new 
 source that is suggested for Paradise Lost without taking from 
 the importance of the Fletchers in their relation to Milton.^® 
 Milton seldom conceived a picture that was not vivified by com- 
 bined impressions from a dozen sources from which he extracted 
 his elixir. 
 
 From now on, except for brief and exquisite allusions to the 
 land of Faerie, we shall find Milton influenced mostly by the 
 sterner side of Spenser. In the very first book of Paradise Lost 
 the picture of Mammon among the fallen angels derives from 
 Spenser's grim IMammon who lured Sir Guy on underground: 
 
 "Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell 
 Prom Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts 
 Were always downward bent, admiring more 
 The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold, 
 Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed , 
 
 In vision beatific. . . . ." 
 
 5T We may note here that Dr. Grosart, in his preface to his edition of 
 Phineas Fletcher, lists a great number of passages from Milton 's works which 
 he considers to be verbal echoes of the poems of the two Fletchers. Some 
 of thQse are certainly convincing; others as certainly absurd. 
 
 58 In regard to Vondel 's influence it is to be observed that Mr. Edmund- 
 son 's excellent, if too enthusiastic, Milton and Vondel pleads very per- 
 suasively for Vondellian inspiration. Yet Mr. Verity in the preface to his 
 edition of Paradise Lost, denies the possibility with strong arguments. The 
 present writer has already stated that this paper is, to a certain extent, 
 a protest against the over-emphasis which he conceives to be placed on 
 Milton's continental sources. 
 
364 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 Spenser had already placed Mammon's abode near the gate of 
 
 Hell where sat the terrible figures of Revenge, Treason, Hate, 
 
 Jealousy, and Fear, — a scene which we have found Milton closely 
 
 imitating in his In Quintum Novemhris. In both Spenser and 
 
 Milton, Mammon is assisted by fiends who in cells and furnaces 
 
 prepare the liquid gold. It is a stimulating study in artistry to 
 
 compare the quaint, grotesque lines of Spenser with the gloomy 
 
 pomp of Milton. In The Faerie Queene : 
 
 "One with great bellowes gathered filling ayre 
 And with forst wind the fewell did inflame; 
 Another did the dying bronds repayre 
 With yron tongs, and sprinckled ofte the same. 
 With liquid waves, fiers Vulcans rage to tame. 
 Who, maystring them, renewd his former heat; 
 Some scumd the drosse, that from the metall came. "59 
 
 So Milton's fiends, in three groups, with "hands innumerable" 
 and "incessant toil" were busy 
 
 "Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion-dross." 
 
 Spenser's fiends are grim as Durer's grotesque woodcuts are grim. 
 
 The figures in Milton's passages have the impressive Miltonic 
 
 vagueness. There are, as in Spenser, imps with bellows who 
 
 "By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook; 
 As in an organ, from one blast of wind. 
 To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes." 
 
 a sounding and inappropriate simile that would have stirred 
 Spenser with a childlike delight if he could have read it. But 
 these Spenserian demons, in Milton's hands, reared Pande- 
 monium, a massive structure which human eyes had never really 
 seen till Milton sang grandly of it : 
 
 "Anon out of the earth a fabric huge 
 Eose like an exhalation, with the sound 
 Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet — 
 Built like a temple, where pilasters round 
 Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid 
 With golden architrave; nor did there want 
 Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven: 
 The roof was fretted gold. Not Babilon 
 
 59 The Faerie Queene, 2, 7, 35 sq. 
 
1912] Cory : Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 365 
 
 Nor great Alcairo such magnificence 
 Equalled in all their glories, to enshrine 
 Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat 
 Their kings, when Aegypt with Assyria strove 
 In wealth and luxury." 
 
 The famous allegory of Sin and Death, in the second book, 
 has a long and complicated genealogy including a number of 
 Spenserian ancestors. Satan, ascending to seek the World and 
 Man found the gates of Hell closed and 
 
 "On either side a formidable Shape. 
 The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, 
 But ended foul in many a scaly fold, 
 Voluminous and vast — a serpent armed 
 With mortal sting. About her middle round 
 A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked 
 With wide Cerberean mouths full loud and rung 
 A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep, 
 If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb. 
 And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled 
 Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these 
 Vexed Seylla, bathing in the sea that parts 
 Calabria from the hoarse Tinacrian shore." 
 
 Homer's Seylla is indeed like Milton's Sin. But Homer's en- 
 chantresses and monsters, Circe, Calypso, the Sirens, Seylla, had 
 a complicated development which must be glanced at here. 
 Sometimes the enchantress became merely a beautiful mortal 
 tempting the hero to give over his perilous quest. So Virgil's 
 Dido allured Aeneas. Tasso's Armida, the Venus of Camoens, 
 Spenser's Acrasia are poetic daughters of Circe, portrayed with 
 all the charm that exquisite art can give to wantonness. Ariosto 's 
 Alcina and Spenser's Duessa, for whose loathsomeness the poet 
 of The Faerie Queen was impelled to borrow unhappily from 
 Ariosto 's picture of the unmasking of Alcina, are beautiful to 
 the deluded sinner whom they enchant but in reality are horrible 
 and filthy hags. From Duessa Phineas Fletcher developed those 
 unspeakably nasty figures of Caro (the Flesh), and Harmatia 
 (Sin), in The Purple Island and of Sin in The Apollyonists. 
 We have already seen that Spenser adopted from Virgil the 
 device of placing grim allegorical figures at the gates of Hell 
 
366 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 and that Milton followed him closely in his vicious attack upon 
 Roman Catholicicism, In Quintum Novemhris. We have also 
 seen that in the first canto of The A'pollyonists Phineas Fletcher 
 combines Spenser's scenes at the gates of Hell and the concep- 
 tion of Duessa. We must remember, too, that we find here in 
 Fletcher the spirited conclave in Hell, the fiery speeches of 
 Satan, the advice of various subtle demons, an episode which 
 immediately precedes Satan's ascent to the gates of Hell in 
 Paradise Lost. The porter of Hell in Fletcher's poem is Sin, 
 depicted with an imaginative vagueness that is in striking antici- 
 pation of Milton 's manner : 
 
 "The Porter to th' infernal gate is Sin, 
 A shapelesse shape, a foule deformed thing, 
 Nor nothing, nor a substance: as those thin 
 And empty formes which through the ayer fling 
 Their wandring shapes. ' 'so 
 
 Like Milton's figure she is the daughter of the Devil. But to 
 deluded youth she is beautiful : 
 
 "Her rosie cheeke, quick eye, her naked brest, 
 
 And whatsoe'er loose fancie might entice. 
 She bare expos 'd to sight, all lovely drest 
 
 In beauties livery, and quaint devise." 
 
 Close by her sits Despair. In the entrance dwells Sickness, 
 Languor, Fear, Horror. Milton's only other guardian of Hell's 
 gate in Paradise Lost is Death : 
 
 " .... The other Shape— 
 If shape it might be called that shape had none 
 Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb; 
 Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, 
 For each seemed either — black it stood as Night, 
 Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, 
 And shook a dreadful dart "6i 
 
 Spenser, who frequently described Death, anticipated Milton in 
 the effective use of vagueness : 
 
 60 The Apollyonists, canto 1, st. 10. 
 81 Paradise Lost, book 2, lines 666 sq. 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 367 
 
 "Death with most grim and griesly visage seene 
 Yet is he nought but parting of the breath; 
 Ne ought to see but like a shade to weene, 
 Unbodied, unsourd, unheard, unseene. "62 
 
 A sentence in The Gospel of James (1, 15) suggested the allegory 
 of Satan's offspring, Sin and Death, which became a convention 
 in mediaeval and Renaissance literature. 
 
 But we have looked closely enough at the epic characters who 
 did the most to inspire the terrible figures in Milton. To pry 
 further would be vain and pedantic here. On the other hand, 
 frail must be the sensibilities of the Milton admirer who finds 
 this study of sources any occasion for depreciation of Milton's 
 fathomless creative power. Thomas Warton well says : 
 
 "We feel a sort of malicious triumph in detecting the latent and 
 obscure source from which an original author has drawn some celebrated 
 description: yet this .... soon gives way to the rapture that naturally 
 results from contemplating the chymical energy of true genius, which can 
 produce so noble a transmutation." 
 
 And Shelley felt no shame in prefacing Prometheus Unbound, 
 which has the very white-heat of creative power, with a passage 
 that should be deeply pondered by those who think that imitation 
 is only the faith of the scorned critic and the second-rate poet. 
 
 "As to imitation, poetry is mimetic art. It creates, but it creates by 
 combination and representation. Poetical abstractions are beautiful and 
 new, not because the portions of which they are composed had no previous 
 existence in the mind of man or in Nature, but because the whole pro- 
 duced by their combination has some intelligible and beautiful analogy 
 with those sources of emotion and thought and with the contemporary 
 condition of them. One great poet is a masterpiece of Nature which 
 another not only ought to study but must study. He might as wisely 
 and as easily determine that his mind should no longer be the mirror of 
 all that is lovely in the visible universe as exclude from his contemplation 
 the beautiful which exists in the writings of a great contemporary. The 
 pretence of doing it would be a presumption in any but the greatest; 
 the effect, even in him, would be strained, unnatural and ineffectual. A 
 poet is the combined product of such internal powers as modify the 
 nature of others, and of such external influences as excite and sustain 
 these powers; he is not one, but both. Every man's mind is, in this 
 respect, modified by all the objects of Nature and art; by every word and 
 every suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness; 
 
 62 The Faerie Queene, 7, 7, 46. 
 
368 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 it is the mirror upon which all forms are reflected and in which they 
 compose one form. Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, 
 sculptors and musicians are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, 
 the creations of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do not 
 escape. There is a similarity between Homer and Hesiod, between 
 Aeschylus and Euripides, between Virgil and Horace, between Dante and 
 Petrarch, between Shakespeare and Fletcher, between Dryden and Pope; 
 each has a generic resemblance under which their specific distinctions are 
 arranged. If this similarity be the result of imitation, I am willing to 
 confess that I have imitated. ' '63 
 
 To the discerning reader a study of these intricate sources of 
 Milton 's Sin and Death gives a wonderful glimpse into the poet 's 
 workshop. More mysterious than ever, with his manifold sources, 
 he is like Spenser 's sage Phantastes : 
 
 "His chamber was dispainted all with in 
 With sondry colours, in the which were writ 
 Infinite shapes of thinges dispersed thin; 
 Some such as in the world were never yit, 
 Ne can devized be of mortall wit." 
 
 The sterner side of Spenser, I have said, was what Milton 
 found most congenial during the composition of Paradise Lost. 
 Many of the minute traces of Spenser's influence here, found in 
 abundance by the commentators, support my assertion as well, 
 in their way, as the examination of the Sin and Death allegory. 
 Such an imposing example of Milton's grandeur, for example, as 
 the famous picture of Satan staggering under Michael's terrific 
 stroke like a toppling mountain has been shown to bear striking 
 resemblance to Spenser's identical simile in the magnificent if 
 rhetorical passage which describes the fall of the old Dragon who 
 symbolizes the Devil.**^ Interesting, too, it is to compare many 
 other parallel passages. Loads of learned lumber on the subject 
 are easily accessible in the numerous editions of Milton where the 
 younger poet's possible indebtedness in line and phrase seems 
 now convincing, noAV doubtful. Out of so many possible borrow- 
 ings a fair proportion may be safely accepted. It is hardly neces- 
 sary, however, to transcribe them here. 
 
 ^s Shelley's Complete Poetical WorTcs (Cambridge Edition, Boston and 
 New York, 1901), p. 164. 
 
 64 Paradise Lost, book 6, lines 195 sq. The Faerie Queene, 1, 11, 54. 
 
1912] Cory: Speaser, Tlie School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 369 
 
 Though the sterner side of Spenser illumined Milton 's gloomy 
 sublimity at times when he dwelt upon the tragic contest of pas- 
 sions and forces good and evil, there is another striking aspect of 
 Spenser's influence upon IMilton in his maturity that is charm- 
 ingly inconsistent. We have already seen, in our examination of 
 the later poems at Horton, how Spenser's idealism helped Milton 
 to overrule his rising bitterness. So too in the stern epics one 
 finds, at times, a spirit of wistful reminiscence gracious and heal- 
 ing as well as melancholy, which is certainly due in part to the 
 persuasive inspiration of the acknowledged master. The coldest 
 readers of Milton are won completely by the austere poet when 
 he allows himself brief recollections of the sensuous dreams of 
 The Faerie Queene. Eden is described with Spenserian ardor. 
 In a passage rich w-ith allusion Milton recalls one of Spenser's 
 most enchanting additions to classical mythology, the Gardens 
 of Adonis.^^ Satan saw : 
 
 ' ' Among thick-woven arborets, and flowers 
 Imbordered on each bank, the hand of Eve: 
 Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned 
 Or of revived Adonis, or renowned 
 Alcinoiis, host of old Laertes ' son, 
 ' Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king 
 Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse. ' ' 
 
 Though Milton was sternly renouncing these fancies he was 
 
 renouncing them with an audible sigh. The beautiful lines in 
 
 the ninth book in which he puts them from him, touching them, 
 
 as he turns from them, with a splendor like a lingering sunset, 
 
 cannot be read without a feeling of longing for what Milton 
 
 might have done. , He invokes 
 
 " .... My celestial Patroness, who deigns 
 Her nightly visitation unimplored. 
 And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires 
 Easy my unpremeditated verse 
 Since first this subject for heroic song 
 Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late. 
 Not sedulous by nature to indite 
 
 65 Milton, Paradise Lost, 9, 437 sq. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, 3, 6. 
 Unsuccessful attempts have been made to find the tradition of the Gardens 
 of Adonis in Pliny, Nat. Hist., xix, 4. 
 
370 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 Wars, hitherto the only argument 
 Heroic deemed, chief maistrie to dissect 
 With long and tedious havoc fabled knights 
 In battles feigned (the better fortitude 
 Of patience and heroic matyrdom 
 Unsung), or to describe races and games, 
 Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields, 
 Impreses quaint, caparisons and steeds. 
 Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights 
 At joust and tournament. ' '66 
 
 "Paradise Regained" 
 
 Yet with all his austerity this spirit of wistful reminiscence 
 was to survive, throughout Paradise Regained, although that 
 poem begins to show traces, as everybody knows, of the severity 
 which culminates in the rarified music of Samson Agonistes. 
 Giles Fletcher's Christ's Triumph and Victory had dwelt with 
 the subject of the Saviour's temptation, always with quaint, stiff 
 beauty, occasionally with religious fire that burns clear white 
 even to-day. We have seen how closely he followed Spenser. 
 Satan, disguised as an aged hermit, is no more than Archimago 
 who masqueraded in similar fashion to deceive the Red Cross 
 Knight. Like the Red Cross Knight, Christ is brought to the 
 Cave of Despair where, as we have seen, Fletcher follows his 
 master almost verbatim. Satan then tempts Christ with the true 
 luxurious abandon of the Renaissance. Christ's worldly am- 
 bition is tested by Presumption in her airy pavilion, 
 
 "Over the Temple, the bright stars among." 
 He is then brought to the "Bowre of Vaine-Delight. " It is 
 worth while intrinsically to quote once more two of the stanzas 
 which follow Spenser's Bower of Bliss so quaintly and prettily: 
 
 "The garden like a Ladie faire was cut, 
 That lay as if shee slumber 'd in delight. 
 And to the open skies her eyes did shut; 
 The azure fields of heav'n wear sembled right 
 In a large round, set with flow 'rs of light. 
 The flow'rs-de-luce, and the round sparks of deaw, 
 That hung upon their azure leaves, did shew 
 Like twinkling Starrs, that sparkle in the eavning blew. 
 
 «6 Paradise Lost, book 9, lines 20 sq. 
 
1912] Cory: Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 371 
 
 "Upon a hillie banke her head shee cast, 
 On which the bowre of Vaine-Delight was built, 
 White and red roses for her face wear plac't, 
 And for her tresses Marigolds wear spilt: 
 Them broadly shee displaid, like flaming guilt, 
 Till in the ocean the glad day wear drown 'd. 
 Then up againe her yellow locks she wound, 
 And with green fillets in their prettie calls them bound. ' ' 
 
 This is exactly what we should expect from a pleasure-loving 
 worldly son of the Renaissance. These voluptuous ascetics were 
 fain to decorate the spare lines of the Scriptural stories with 
 delight on delight until they forgot the motif of their poems in 
 their naive joy in the World and the Flesh. Milton seems to 
 have intended a conscious revolt against the Bowre of Bliss 
 device. "Set women in his eye and in his walk," said dissolute 
 Belial to Satan, meditating an assault on Christ. But Satan 
 rejects the advice with magnificent scorn. Here the poet speaks 
 in person. Practice, however, fell somewhat short of what Milton 
 undoubtedly intended in theory. As Spenser tempted Guyon 
 with Philotime (Worldly Ambition), and the lascivious Acrasia, 
 as Giles Fletcher followed by choosing Ambition and Wanton- 
 ness, so Milton, following too at a greater distance, did nothing 
 more than discard the allegory and chose precisely the same 
 epicurian type of temptation. Such Spenserianism lent only 
 a gaudy color to the sober me?" ares of Paradise Regained and 
 we cannot thank Milton's mascer for an influence which caused 
 such futile divagations. What does, however, dwell with the 
 lover of Spenser is Milton 's brief, wistful recollection of what he 
 might have written ha^^ he remained in Fairyland, the thoughts 
 
 "Of faery dam&els met in forest wide 
 By knights of Logres, or of Lyones, 
 Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore. " 
 
 ''Samson Agonistes" 
 
 There is no Spenser in Samson Agonistes. It is the most 
 personal of Milton's poems. In music rarified like mountain 
 air Milton spoke entirely of his own griefs and closed with a 
 hymn of victory so austere that to the weak majority of men it 
 
372 University of California Publications in Modern Philology. [Vol. 2 
 
 sounds like despair. The last gleam of the faiths that Spenser 
 cherished had Moaned. It is difficult for us to realize with 
 sufficient dramatic intensity the awful depth of the spiritual 
 tragedy that reached its catastrophe for Milton with the Restora- 
 tion. Elsewhere I have written of this age as an Age of Literary 
 Anarchy, a period of intellectual strife and bewilderment that 
 struck dead most faiths. Samson Agonisies, if we understand it 
 with dramatic sympathy, should appeal to us more than any of 
 Milton's other poems. It should set fire to the spirit of hero- 
 worship that is in all of us. For while this grand poem burns 
 with his sorrow over his blindness, his bitterness towards women, 
 the defeat of his political cause, while it breathes his large hatreds 
 and his petty hatreds, yet from the depths Samson emerges. The 
 poem trumpets Milton 's love and fear of God, a God as terrible as 
 the Hebraic Jehovah, but a God who has his appeal to all good 
 fighting-men. Milton drew proudly aloof from his age and rose 
 above it — not selfishly but to show to his distracted fellow-men 
 the triumph of life. He who would truly love Milton must learn 
 to love him not only when he dreamed delightedly with Spenser 
 and when he looked back longingly to the Fairyland of Spenser 
 which he had elected to leave, but also finally when in all his 
 gloom he forged out the proud faith that is uttered in the noble 
 stoical lines of Manoa : 
 
 "Come, come; no time for lamentation now, 
 Nor much more cause. Samson hath quit himself 
 Like Samson, and heroicly hath finished 
 A life heroic." 
 
 Here, not in the noisy bravado of Nietzche's creation, de we find 
 the true superman. This sternness was not Spenser 's. The spirit 
 of wistful reminiscence had faded. The gentle land of Faerie 
 had crumbled away. But out of all the sorrows of its loss what 
 a mighty victory had Milton won when his voice uttered the 
 last words of his chorus ! I am not concerned with the truth or 
 untruth of its orthodox tenets. It is so easy to jeer at high 
 heaven that these last words of Milton may seem superficial 
 enough to many. But as a faith sounded forth from the depths, 
 
1912] Cory : Spenser, The School of the Fletchers, and Milton. 373 
 
 after the bitterest of life-struggles, is there not the awe of divine 
 things in its calm? 
 
 "All is best, though we oft doubt 
 What the unsearchable dispose 
 Of Highest Wisdom bring about, 
 And ever best found in the close. 
 Oft He seems to hide his face, 
 But unexpectedly returns, 
 And to his faithful Champion hath in place 
 Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns. 
 And all that band them to resist 
 His uncontrollable intent. 
 His servants He, with new acquist 
 Of true experience from this great event, 
 With pride and consolation hath dismissed, 
 And calm of mind, all passion spent. ' ' 
 
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