Page:Works of Edmund Spenser - 1857.djvu/28

12 In this collection occurs “An Elegy on Sir Philip Sidney,” written by his sister, Mary Countess of Pembroke, the celebrated subject of Jonson’s pregnant Epitaph:—

In the same year were published his “Amoretti,” or Sonnets, apparently written during his courtship of a less faithless fair than Rosalind, whom he afterwards married, and by her left several children. These sonnets overflow with chaste sentiments and beautiful imagery, and are, in truth,

The portrait of his Elizabeth is luxuriant and characteristic:—

In the tenth Canto of Book VI. of the Faerie Queene, she is also described; and the poet claims for her the honours of a “Fourth Grace;” and in the seventy-fourth sonnet classing her with his mother, and the queen, as “Ye three Elizabeths,” he calls her,

But the “Epithalamion,” written on his marriage with the lady of his love, far transcends everything of the like description. “It is a strain redolent of a Bridegroom’s joy and of a Poet’s fancy.—It is an intoxication of ecstacy, ardent, noble, and pure.” There is no other nuptial song of equal beauty in our language. Spenser has thrown his whole soul into this glorious lay; and it stands confessed the very essence of his imaginative genius.

The “Fowre Hymnes on Love and Beautie,” dedicated to the Countesses of Cumberland and Warwick, the dedication to whom is not a little curious, and the “Prothalamion,” in honour of the marriages of Ladies Elizabeth and Catherine Somerset, to H. Gifford and