Spenser a Subjective Poet.—­The subjective cast of Spenser’s mind next demands attention.  We feel that his is an ideal world, one that does not exist outside of the imagination.  In order to understand the difference between subjective and objective, let us compare Chaucer with Spenser.  No one can really be said to study literature without constantly bringing in the principle of comparison.  We must notice the likeness and the difference between literary productions, or the faint impression which they make upon our minds will soon pass away.

Chaucer is objective; that is, he identifies himself with things that could have a real existence in the outside world.  We find ourselves looking at the shiny bald head of Chaucer’s Monk, at the lean horse and threadbare clothes of the Student of Oxford, at the brown complexion of the Shipman, at the enormous hat and large figure of the Wife of Bath, at the red face of the Summoner, at the hair of the Pardoner “yelow as wex.”  These are not mere figments of the imagination.  We feel that they are either realities or that they could have existed.

While the adventures in the Irish wars undoubtedly gave the original suggestions for many of the contests between good and evil in the Faerie Queene, Spenser intentionally idealized these knightly struggles to uphold the right and placed them in fairyland.  This great poem is the work of a mind that loved to elaborate purely subjective images.  The pictures were not painted from gazing at the outside world.  We feel that they are mostly creations of the imagination, and that few of them could exist in a real world.  There is no bower in the bottom of the sea, “built of hollow billowes heaped hye,” and no lion ever follows a lost maiden to protect her.  We feel that the principal part of Shakespeare’s world could have existed in reality as well as in imagination.  Spenser was never able to reach this highest type of art.

The world, however, needs poets to create images of a higher type of beauty than this life can offer.  These images react on our material lives and cast them in a nobler mold.  Spenser’s belief that the subjective has power to fashion the objective is expressed in two of the finest lines that he ever wrote:—­

  “For of the soule the bodie forme doth take;
  For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make."[7]

Chief Characteristics of Spenser’s Poetry.—­We can say of Spencer’s verse that it stands in the front rank for (1) melody, (2) love of the beautiful, and (3) nobility of the ideals presented.  His poetry also (4) shows a preference for the subjective world, (5) exerts a remarkable influence over other poets, and (6) displays a peculiar liking for obsolete forms of expression.

Spencer’s melody is noteworthy.  If we read aloud correctly such lines as these, we can scarcely fail to be impressed with their harmonious flow:—­