He, nor that affable familiar ghost,
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence!
But when your countenance fill'd up his line,
Then lack'd I matter, that enfeebled mine.
S. LXXXVI.

In Spenser, indeed, we trace a mind constitutionally tender, delicate,
and, in comparison with his three great compeers, I had almost said,
effeminate; and this additionally saddened by the unjust persecution
of Burleigh, and the severe calamities, which overwhelmed his latter
days. These causes have diffused over all his compositions "a
melancholy grace," and have drawn forth occasional strains, the more
pathetic from their gentleness. But no where do we find the least
trace of irritability, and still less of quarrelsome or affected
contempt of his censurers.

The same calmness, and even greater self-possession, may be affirmed
of Milton, as far as his poems, and poetic character are concerned. He
reserved his anger for the enemies of religion, freedom, and his
country. My mind is not capable of forming a more august conception,
than arises from the contemplation of this great man in his latter
days;--poor, sick, old, blind, slandered, persecuted,--

Darkness before, and danger's voice behind,--

in an age in which he was as little understood by the party, for whom,
as by that against whom, he had contended; and among men before whom
he strode so far as to dwarf himself by the distance; yet still