Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Essays, Vol. 1 of 2: Chiefly on Poetry; Criticism on Certain Poets
There are - and we are bound not to conceal the fact - serious blots upon Spenser's poetry, but these are obviously unhappy inconsistencies when compared with its immense merits, moral as well as imaginative; nor is there any poet in whom it is more easy to discriminate between the evil which is accidental, and the good which is essential. Where Spenser is himself, the greatness of his ideal hangs around his poetry like the halo round the head of a saint. His poetry has that gift without which all others, including even that of imagination itself, leaves it but a maimed and truncated thing - a torso without a head. It has a soul. In this respect Spenser was as like Tasso as he was unlike Ariosto, whom he too often imitated, but from whom he derived little save harm. It is note worthy that Shelley, who admired Spenser almost as much as Wordsworth and Southey did, expressed himself in disparaging terms of Ariosto; while Byron, who was a great reader of Ariosto, gave back the volumes of Spenser which Leigh Hunt had urged him to peruse, with no remark except, I can make nothing of him.
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