more.

chiefly interesting as their subject or their occasion. She is a woman, beautiful, and in distress; this, it seems, should be enough. We know how she is snowy white and chaste as snow; we know how true she is to her sea-sprung lover, Marinell; and we know little Were it not that the false snow-lady, who wears her name, is substanceless, and by her unreality makes the true Florimell real, we might think of her as of some vision seen in the curling of great waves upon the strand when the sun shines bright and a land breeze whirls the gleaming spray. Yet we should miss the story of Florimell if removed from Spenser's poem, for it bears us through romantic wood, and wild, and glen, and to the rich seashore, and to the great waters where Proteus drives his scaly herd, and to Proteus's bower under a whelming rock against which the billows for ever roar and rave. And to it belongs the marriage of the Medway and the Thames, with that pompous gathering to the feast of British and Irish rivers. In an epic of the days of Drake and Raleigh we should be ill content unless we grew into acquaintance with Nereus and Neptune, with Panope and Galatea, the nymphs and the gods of sea.

With Britomart it is far otherwise; she does not, like Florimell, remind us of a myth of external nature born of the sea and shore, but is wholly human to the heart. When Spenser would present a patron knight of chastity, he chose a woman; and he made her no vestal vowed to perpetual maidenhood, but the most magnanimous of lovers. That is to say, the highest chastity is no cloistered virtue, but lives in a heart

aflame with pure passion. Such a heart is no cold house swept and garnished; it is rather a sanctuary where a seraph breathes upon the altar coals. Britomart, tall of stature, large of limb, knit strongly for deeds of prowess, follows from childhood upward her appointed way. She is trained to toss the spear and shield, to hunt out perils by sea and land; she cannot endure, like other ladies, "to finger the fine needle and nice thread." There is something at once lovely and awe-inspiring in her aspect. And for a time the great heart is a girl's heart, still a stranger to love.

Then on

a day she wonders musingly who shall be her husband, knowing that fate has allotted her one. She gazes into her father's enchanted mirror, and in that moment her doom comes upon her: in the mirror is presented a knight all armed; the ventayle of his helmet is lifted up; his face, stern yet gracious, looks forth

"As Phoebus' face out of the east Betwixt two shady mountains doth arise."

It is the one face in the world which can subdue Britomart. To Una love had come as a blessedness in giving, a comfort in receiving; to Amoret it had come as a joy fulfilling her life; it comes to Britomart imperiously, tyrannously, laying a burden on her which with all her strength she is hardly able to bear. Her spirits droop during the daytime, and at night, when she lies down by the side of old Glauce, sleep deserts her, her heart beats hard against her side, she cannot check the heavy sighs that come to ease her breast loaded with a mountainous pain.

"For me no usual fire, no usual rage

It is, O nurse, which on my life doth feed."

When the old woman has heard the trouble, glad that it is no worse than honest love, she leans on her weak elbow and kisses softly her child's bosom, feeling how it pants and quakes "as it an earthquake were." Cherished and faintly cheered by Glauce's words, at last a little creeping sleep surprises Britomart; but at morning the pain returns, and neither prayers nor herbs can bring relief. And so they go for advice to learned. Merlin, the nurse, with old wives' cunning, having first disguised her foster child. But the mage, who has been frowning over his necromantic book, looks up and laughs aloud; the royal maiden cannot be so concealed from his recognition, and Britomart, blushing instantly to a clear carnation, reads upon his lips her destiny. glorious destiny it is, for kings and mighty emperors are to be her offspring. Thus heartened, she begins anew her life of enterprise-arrays her limbs in the armour of Angela, the Saxon queen, all fretted round with gold, which hangs in the church of King Ryence, and so sets forth on adventure under the conduct of Love.

A

As Amoret, most faithful of wives, was Love's martyr, so Britomart, the patron of chastity, is Love's champion. Outside the Castle Joyous unworthily so named—a single knight is fiercely assailed by six dastard antagonists. Britomart hastens to the rescue, and having with half a score of strokes dispersed the crew, she mildly inquires the cause of their dissension. It is the custom of the castle to require that each passer shall forsake his own lady and devote himself to its Lady of

Delight.

The indignation of Britomart flames at the thought of love constrained, and turning from one to another of the ignoble knights she overthrows and subdues them. Presently St George-for he was the distressed combatant- and his deliverer are in the presence of the wanton lady Malecasta, who receives them sitting on a sumptuous bed. The knight is straightway disarmed;

"But the brave maid would not disarmed be,

But only vented up her umbriere,

And so did let her goodly visage to appear."

This

The face behind its shadowing armour shines as the moon does when breaking through a cloud and discovering her bright head to the discomfited world. incident of Britomart's beauty of womanhood beaming or flashing forth before men's eyes from its dark coverture is dwelt on by Spenser's imagination with a peculiar fondness, and he repeats it, varying the circumstances, not fewer than three times. Again at Malbecco's inhospitable house, to which the knights have forced an entrance, seeking shelter from the darkness, storm, and rain, when they dry themselves before the blazing fire, Britomart too must be disarrayed—

"Tho', whenas vailed was her lofty crest,
Her golden locks, that were in trammels gay
Upbounden, did themselves adown display,
And raught unto her heels, like sunny beams
That in a cloud their light did sometime stay,
Their vapour vaded, show their golden gleams

And through the persant air shoot forth their azure streams."

She puts off her heavy habergeon, and lets her frock,

tucked short about her as she rode, flow to her foot with "careless modesty." And so disarrayed she seems no other than Bellona returned from the slaughter of the giants, with helmet loosed and untying from the arm her gorgonian shield. In like manner in the castle to which she conducts Amoret, and before which she has jousted with the young knight, when the brave youth would be thrust out because he has no love nor lady, Britomart, his overthrower in arms, with majestic courtesy undoes her helmet to disclose her sex and claim him for her knight. Her falling shower of hair is like the play of summer lightning in the heavens. The youth pours forth his thanks and worships the great lady in his heart.

In Malecasta's abode of false delight the knights whom she has subdued, careless livers in the lap of pleasure, are to Britomart no more than shadows; she heeds them not. But Malecasta, stricken with love for the supposed male warrior whose face has shone beneath the umbriere, claims some pity from Britomart; for has she not herself known the imperious force of love? And so, when the hour for sleep had come, with kindly thoughts

"She 'gan herself despoile

And safe commit to her soft feathered nest."

But at night, turning wearily, she wakes to find the wanton dame couched by her side; she rises in wrath; a cry from the terrified Malecasta rings through the house; the six knights come running hastily to their lady's help; she lies swooning on the ground. We shall not do Britomart's heroic beauty wrong if we