imitation of Spenser is nothing to a reader, however acute, by whom
Spenser has never been perused."

The critic is partly right. The nice points of a parody are lost upon a
reader unacquainted with the thing parodied. And as for serious
imitations, the more cleverly a copyist follows his copy, the less value
his work will have. The eighteenth-century Spenserians, like West,
Cambridge, and Lloyd, who stuck most closely to their pattern, oblivion
has covered. Their real service was done in reviving a taste for a
better kind of poetry than the kind in vogue, and particularly in
restoring to English verse a stanza form, which became so noble an
instrument in the hands of later poets, who used it with as much freedom
and vigor as if they had never seen the "Faërie Queene." One is seldom
reminded of Spenser while reading "Childe Harold"[36] or "Adonais" or
"The Eve of Saint Agnes"; but in reading West or Cambridge, or even in
reading Shenstone and Thomson, one is reminded of him at every turn. Yet
if it was necessary to imitate anyone, it might be answered to Dr.
Johnson that it was better to imitate Spenser than Pope. In the
imitation of Spenser lay, at least, a future, a development; while the
imitation of Pope was conducting steadily toward Darwin's "Botanic
Garden."

It remains to notice one more document in the history of this Spenserian
revival, Thomas Warton's "Observations on the Faërie Queen," 1754.
Warton wrote with a genuine delight in his subject. His tastes were
frankly romantic. But the apologetic air which antiquarian scholars
assumed, when venturing to recommend their favorite studies to the
attention of a classically minded public, is not absent from Warton's
commentary. He writes as if he felt the pressure of an unsympathetic
atmosphere all about him. "We who live in the days of writing by rule