Spenser, as well as Chaucer, was engaged in active life; but the genius
of his poetry was not active: it is inspired by the love of ease, and
relaxation from all the cares and business of life. Of all the poets, he
is the most poetical. Though much later than Chaucer, his obligations to
preceding writers were less. He has in some measure borrowed the plan of
his poem (as a number of distinct narratives) from Ariosto; but he has
engrafted upon it an exuberance of fancy, and an endless voluptuousness
of sentiment, which are not to be found in the Italian writer. Farther,
Spenser is even more of an inventor in the subject-matter. There is an
originality, richness, and variety in his allegorical personages and
fictions, which almost vies with the splendor of the ancient mythology.
If Ariosto transports us into the regions of romance, Spenser's poetry
is all fairy-land. In Ariosto, we walk upon the ground, in a company,
gay, fantastic, and adventurous enough. In Spenser, we wander in another
world, among ideal beings. The poet takes and lays us in the lap of a
lovelier nature, by the sound of softer streams, among greener hills and
fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as we find it, but as we expected
to find it; and fulfils the delightful promise of our youth. He waves
his wand of enchantment--and at once embodies airy beings, and throws
a delicious veil over all actual objects. The two worlds of reality and
of fiction are poised on the wings of his imagination. His ideas,
indeed, seem more distinct than his perceptions. He is the painter of
abstractions, and describes them with dazzling minuteness. In the Mask
of Cupid he makes the God of Love "clap on high his coloured winges
_twain_": and it is said of Gluttony, in the Procession of the Passions,

"In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad."

At times he becomes picturesque from his intense love of beauty; as
where he compares Prince Arthur's crest to the appearance of the almond