That with the glory of so goodly sight,
The hearts of men, which fondly here admire
Fair seeming shows, and feed on vain delight,
Transported with celestial desire

Of those fair forms, may lift themselves up higher,
And learn to love, with zealous humble duty,
Th' eternal fountain of that heavenly beauty.'

Hymn of Heavenly Beauty.

And in the same, as in a brazen book,
To read, enregistered in every nook

His goodness, which his beauty doth declare;
For all that's good is beautiful and fair.'

Hymn of Heavenly Beauty.

For, having yet in his deducted spright
Some sparks remaining of that heavenly fire,
He is illumined with that goodly light,
Unto like goodly semblant to aspire :
Therefore in choice of love he doth desire
That seems on earth most heavenly to embrace,
That same is Beauty, born of heavenly race.
For sure of all that in this mortal frame
Containéd is, nought more divine doth seem,
Or that resembleth more th' immortal flame
Of heavenly light, than Beauty's glorious beam.'
Hymn in Honour of Love.

That wondrous Pattern, wheresoere it be,
Whether in earth laid up in secret store,
Or else in heaven, that no man may it see
With sinful eyes, for fear it to deflore,
Is perfect Beauty, which all men adore;
Whose face and feature doth so much excel
All mortal sense, that none the same may tell.'
Hymn in Honour of Beauty.

But ah! believe me, there is more than so,

That works such wonders in the minds of men;

I that have often proved, too well it know,

And who so list the like assays to ken,

Shall find by trial, and confess it then,
That Beauty is not, as fond men misdeem,
The outward show of things that only seem.'

Hymn in Honour of Beauty.

These same Hymns also show that Love of Fame was present to Spenser as the 'last infirmity of noble minds,' and that to him Love of Beauty was the only one-if any that could overcome it:

‘And that fair lamp, which useth to inflame
The hearts of men with self-consuming fire,
Thenceforth seems foul, and full of sinful blame;
And all that pomp to which proud minds aspire
By name of honour, and so much desire,
Seems to them baseness, and all riches dross,
And all mirth sadness, and all lucre loss.
So full their eyes are of that glorious sight,
And senses fraught with such satiety
That in nought else on earth they can delight
But in th' aspect of that felicity

Which they have written in their inward eye,
On which they feed, and in their fastened mind
All happy joy and full contentment find.'

Hymn in Honour of Beauty.

Thenceforth all world's desire will in thee die,
And all earth's glory on which men do gaze
Seem dirt and dross in thy pure-sighted eye
Compared to that celestial beauty's blaze

Whose glorious beams all fleshly sense doth daze
With admiration of their passing light,

Blinding the eyes and lumining the spright.'

Hymn of Heavenly Love.

This is not all. In the letter which he affixed to his great poem the Faerie Queene,' he informed Sir Walter Raleigh that in that continued allegory or dark conceit,' 'I labour to pourtray in Arthur, before he was King, the image of a brave knight perfected in the twelve private moral virtues, as Aristotle doth devise, the which is the purpose of these first twelve books. So have I laboured to do in the person of Arthur, whom I conceive . . . to have seen in a dream or vision the Faerie Queene, with whose excellent beauty ravished, he awaking, resolved to seek her out . . . in Faerie land. In that Faerie Queene I mean Glory in my general intention.'

So that the concern of the greatest poem of that age is 'moral beauty'; and the whole soul of the knight perfected in the twelve private moral virtues or beauties, is possessed by love of Glory or Fame. And we find that, though for the purpose of the poem Glory is supposed to be all-beautiful and the love of Glory all-sufficient, Spenser cannot refrain from making, incidentally, this so-perfected knight conscious that his Love of Glory is an infirmity:

The Prince by chance did on a Lady light
That was right fair and fresh as morning rose,
But somewhat sad and solemn eke in sight,

As if some pensive thought constrained her gentle spright.

In a long purple pall whose skirt with gold
Was fretted all about, she was arrayed;
And in her hand a poplar branch did hold:
To whom the Prince in courteous manner said:
"Gentle Madam why bene you thus dismayed

And your fair beauty do with sadness spill?
Lives any that you hath thus ill apayd?

Or doen you love? or doen you lack your will?
Whatever be the cause, it sure beseems you ill."

"Fair Sir," said she, half in disdainful wise,
"How is it that this mood in me ye blame
And in yourself do not the same advise?
How ill beseems another's fault to name,
That may unwares be blotted with the same :
Pensive I yield I am, and sad in mind

Through great desire of glory and of fame

Ne aught I weene are you therein behind

That have three years sought one yet nowhere can her find."

The Prince was inly movéd at her speech,

Well weeting true what she had rashly told;

Yet with fair semblaunt sought to hide the breach
Which change of colour did perforce unfold,

Now seeming flaming hot, now stony cold:
Tho' turning soft aside he did enquire

What wight she was that poplar branch did hold?
It answered was her name was Praise-desire,
That by well doing sought to honour to aspire.'

Faerie Queene, Book ii., Canto ix.

So that Milton may well call Love of Fame that last infirmity of noble minds'; and the love against which such a noble mind as Shakespeare's struggled, may well be this.

Although the pitch of devotion to Beauty reached by Shakespeare, and shown in his Sonnets, is approached, as far as contemporary poets are concerned, by Spenser only, the Platonic ideas of Love and Beauty were the creed of all. In connection with the 'Phoenix and Turtle' we shall see this evidenced; but by tapping one of the

many channels by which had travelled from Italy that influence which flooded and fertilized the England that was to produce Shakespeare, we may see still more plainly how perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the age it was for him to so address Ideal Beauty;-and not this alone.

In his introduction to a reprint of Hoby's translation of Castiglioni's 'Il Cortegiano,' Professor Raleigh says: 'No single book can serve as a guide to the Renaissance, or as an index to all that is embraced by the comprehensive energy of that significant appelation." But if one, rather than another, is to be taken for an abstract or epitome of the chief moral and social ideas of the age that one must be "The Courtier." It is far indeed from being the greatest book of its time; it is hardly among the greatest. But it is in many ways the most representative. Take it for all in all, the "Book of the Courtier" reflects as in a mirror the age that gave it birth.'1

First published in Italy in 1528, it was translated into French in 1538, into Spanish in 1540, and into English in 1561.

The English translator, Hoby, says Professor Raleigh, 'was a pioneer of Italian studies in England; and his book, reprinted again and again, became one of the most influential books of the ensuing age,-the age of Shakespeare and Spenser and Sidney.' 2 There were English re-issues in 1565 (?), 1577, 1588, and 1603; and the book

1 The Tudor translations, vol. xxiii., The Courtier (1900), pp. viii-x.

2 We owe our illustration from The Courtier to Mr. George Wyndham's notice of the book in his Introduction to his edition of Shakespeare's "Poems." Except as regards The Courtier, our Introduction and Analysis were written before we had had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Wyndham's book.