in all that appeals to the sense of hearing-the voices of Nature, and the melody and harmonies of the art of man? Thus Wordsworth, exquisitely organised for enjoying and interpreting all natural, and, if we may so say, homeless and primitive sounds, had little feeling for the delights of music. Can he enrich his poetry by gifts from the sense of smell, as did Keats; or is his nose, like Wordsworth's, an idle promontory projecting into a desert air? Has he, like Browning, a vigorous pleasure in all strenuous muscular movements; or does he, like Shelley, live rapturously in the finest nervous thrills? How does he experience and interpret the feeling of sex, and in what parts of his entire nature does that feeling find its elevating connections and associations ? What are his special intellectual powers? Is his intellect combative or contemplative? What are the laws which chiefly preside over the associations of his ideas? What are the emotions which he feels most strongly and how do his emotions coalesce with one another? Wonder, terror, awe, love, grief, hope, despondency, the benevolent affections, admiration, the religious sentiment, the moral sentiment, the emotion of power, irascible emotion, ideal emotion-how do these make themselves felt in and through his writings? What is his feeling for the beautiful, the sublime, the ludicrous ? Is he of weak or vigorous will? In the conflict of motives, which class of motives with him is likely to predominate? Is he framed to believe or framed to doubt ? Is he prudent, just, temperate, or the reverse of these? These and such like questions are not to be crudely and formally proposed, but are to

be used with tact; nor should the critic press for hard and definite answers, but know how skilfully to glean its meaning from an evasion. He is a dull cross-examiner who will invariably follow the scheme which he has thought out and prepared beforehand, and who cannot vary his questions to surprise or beguile the truth from an unwilling witness. But the tact which comes from natural gift and from experience, may be well supported by something of method-method well hidden away from the surface and from sight.

This may be termed the psychological method of study. But we may also follow a more objective method. Taking the chief themes with which literature ! and art are conversant-God, external Nature, humanity

we may inquire how our author has dealt with each of these. What is his theology, or his philosophy of the universe? By which we mean no abstract creed or doctrine, but the tides and currents of feeling and of faith as well as the tendencies and conclusions of the intellect. Under what aspect has this goodly frame of things, in whose midst we are, revealed itself to him? How has he regarded and interpreted the life of man? Under each of these great themes a multitude of subordinate topics are included. And alike in this and in what we have termed the psychological method of study, we shall gain double results if we examine a writer's works in the order of their chronology, and thus become acquainted with the growth and development of his powers, and the widening and deepening of his relations with man, with external Nature, and with that Supreme Power, unknown yet well known, of which Nature and

man are the manifestation. As to the study of an artist's technical qualities, this, by virtue of the fact that he is an artist, is of capital importance; and it may often be associated with the study of that which his technique is employed to express and render-the characteristics of his mind, and of the vision which he has attained of the external universe, of humanity, and of God.

[Of all our study the last end and aim should be to ascertain how a great writer or artist has served the life of man; to ascertain this, to bring home to ourselves as large a portion as may be of the gain wherewith he has enriched human life, and to render access to that store of wisdom, passion, and power, easier and surer for others. If our study does not directly or indirectly enrich the life of man, it is but a drawing of vanity with cart-ropes, a weariness to the flesh, or at best a busy

idleness. 7

SPENSER, THE POET AND TEACHER.

In England of the age of Elizabeth what place is filled by the poetry of Spenser ? What blank would be. made by its disappearance? In what, for each of us who love that poetry, resides its special virtue ? Shall we say in answer to these questions that Spenser is the weaver of spells, the creator of illusions, the enchanter of the Elizabethan age; and that his name is to us a word of magic by which we conjure away the pain of actual life, and obtain entrance into a world of faery? Was Spenser, as a poet of our own time names himself, "the idle singer" of his day-that day not indeed "an empty day," but one filled with heroic daring and achievement? While Raleigh was exploring strange streams of the New World, while Drake was chasing the Spaniard, while Bacon was seeking for the principles of a philosophy which should enrich man's life, while Hooker, with the care of a wise master-builder, was laying the foundation of polity in the National Church, where was Spenser ? Was he forgetful of England, forgetful of earth, lulled and lying in some bower of fantasy, or moving in a dream among imaginary champions of chivalry, distressed damsels, giants and dragons and satyrs and savage men, or shepherds who pipe and shepherdesses who dance for ever in a serene Arcady?

Assuredly it was not thus that a great Englishman of a later age thought of Spenser. When Milton entered upon his manhood, he entered upon a warfare; the peaceful Horton days, days of happy ingathering of varied culture, days of sweet repose amid rural beauty, were past and gone; and he stood with loins girt, prepared for battle on behalf of liberty. And then, in London, when London was a vast arsenal in which weapons were forging for the defence of truth and freedom, Milton in his moment of highest and most masculine ardour, as he wrote his speech on behalf of unlicensed printing, thought of Spenser. It was not as a dreamer that Milton thought of him. Spenser had been a power with himself in youth, when he, "the lady of his college," but such a lady as we read of in "Comus," grew in virginal beauty and virginal strength. He had listened to Spenser's "sage and solemn tunes," "Of turneys and of trophies hung;

Of forests and enchantments drear,

Where more is meant than meets the ear."

And now, in his manhood, when all of life has grown for him so grave, so glorious with heroic effort, Milton looks back and remembers his master, and he remembers him not as an idle singer, not as a dreamer of dreams, but as "our sage and serious Spenser, whom I dare to name a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas."

A teacher, what is the import of this?

The true

use of Spenser," says a poet of our own day, Mr J. R. Lowell," is as a gallery of pictures which we visit as the mood takes us, and where we spend an hour or two at a time, long enough to sweeten our perceptions, not so long