was changed to "Syr Martyn," he said that: "The fullness and wantonness
of description, the quaint simplicity, and, above all, the ludicrous, of
which the antique phraseology and manner of Spenser are so happily and
peculiarly susceptible, inclined him to esteem it not solely as the best,
but the only mode of composition adapted to his subject."

"Syr Martyn" is a narrative poem not devoid of animation, especially
where the author forgets his Spenser. But in the second canto he feels
compelled to introduce an absurd allegory, in which the nymph Dissipation
and her henchman Self-Imposition conduct the hero to the cave of
Discontent. This is how Mickle writes when he is thinking of the "Faërie
Queene":


"Eke should he, freed from fous enchanter's spell,
Escape his false Duessa's magic charms,
And folly quaid, yclept an hydra fell
Receive a beauteous lady to his arms;
While bards and minstrels chaunt the soft alarms
Of gentle love, unlike his former thrall:
Eke should I sing, in courtly cunning terms,
The gallant feast, served up by seneschal,
To knights and ladies gent in painted bower or hall."

And this is how he writes when he drops his pattern:

"Awake, ye west winds, through the lonely dale,
And, Fancy, to thy faerie bower betake!
Even now, with balmy freshness, breathes the gale,
Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake;