Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/81

Rh to seek those many forms of error which do mischief in the world, and to overcome them for the world's welfare. This is a bald statement, but it indicates well enough in what way Spenser employed the knightly ideal of succor on the one hand, and the Christian ideal of moral perfection on the other, in order to make a poem which should instruct as well as delight the world. He himself asserts that his aim was so lofty, and to a man such as he was a lower aim, a merely artistic purpose, would have been impossible. It is fortunate that he was not less endowed with the sense of loveliness than with a serious mind; for he thus illustrates not only the possible union of the two principal aims of poetry in all times, but also the truth that to a man whose perception of beauty is most perfect the beauty of holiness is the more impressive and authoritative in its commands. Aubrey de Vere devotes himself especially to the declaration and the proof that Spenser's poetic character was essentially that of a man deeply interested in human life, and he tries to prevent the poet's severely ideal, and sometimes fantastic, method from obscuring, as for many minds it does, the real nature of that