"The wanton Maidens him espying, stood Gazing awhile at his unwonted guise; Then the one herself low duckéd in the flood, Abashed that her a stranger did avise; But the other rather higher did arise, And her two lily paps aloft displayed, And all that might his melting heart entice To her delights, she unto him bewrayed; The rest, hid underneath, him more desirous made.
"With that the other likewise up arose, And her fair locks, which formerly were bound Up in one knot, she low adown did loose, Which flowing long and thick her clothed around, And the ivory in golden mantle gowned: So that fair spectacle from him was reft, Yet that which reft it no less fair was found; So hid in locks and waves from lookers' theft, Naught but her lovely face she for his looking left.
"Withal she laughëd, and she blushed withal, That blushing to her laughter gave more grace, And laughter to her blushing, as did fall. * * * * * "Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound, Of all that mote delight a dainty ear, Such as at once might not on living ground, Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere: Right hard it was for wight which did it hear To read what manner music that mote be; For all that pleasing is to living ear Was there consorted in one harmony; Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree.
"The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade, Their notes unto the voice attempered sweet; The angelical soft trembling voices made To the instruments divine respondence mete; The silver-sounding instruments did meet With the base murmur of the water's fall; The water's fall with difference discreet, Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call; The gentle warbling wind low answerëd to all."
Spenser, in one of his letters to Harvey, had said, "Why, a God's name, may not we, as else the Greeks, have the kingdom of our own language?" This is in the tone of Bellay, as is also a great deal of what is said in the epistle prefixed to the "Shepherd's Calendar." He would have been wiser had he followed more closely Bellay's advice about the introduction of novel words: "Fear not, then, to innovate somewhat, particularly in a long poem, with modesty, however, with analogy, and judgment of ear; and trouble not thyself as to who may think it good or bad, hoping that posterity will approve it,--she who gives faith to doubtful, light to obscure, novelty to antique, usage to unaccustomed, and sweetness to harsh and rude things." Spenser's innovations were by no means always happy, as not always according with the genius of the language, and they have therefore not prevailed. He forms English words out of French or Italian ones, sometimes, I think, on a misapprehension of their true meaning; nay, he sometimes makes new ones by unlawfully grafting a scion of Romance on a Teutonic root. His theory, caught from Bellay, of rescuing good archaisms from unwarranted oblivion, was excellent; not so his practice of being archaic for the mere sake of escaping from the common and familiar. A permissible archaism is a word or phrase that has been supplanted by something less apt, but has not become unintelligible; and Spenser's often needed a glossary, even in his own day.[321] But he never endangers his finest passages by any experiments of this kind. There his language is living, if ever any, and of one substance with the splendor of his fancy. Like all masters of speech, he is fond of toying with and teasing it a little; and it may readily be granted that he sometimes "hunted the letter," as it was called, out of all cry. But even where his alliteration is tempted to an excess, its prolonged echoes caress the ear like the fading and gathering reverberations of an Alpine horn, and one can find in his heart to forgive even such a debauch of initial assonances as