Note 1227 — Chapter XIV · (continued 2)

Coleridge, who had a very strong perception of the beauty of Spenser’s poetry, has observed his alternate alliteration, which when well used is a great secret in melody; as ’sad to see her sorrowful constraint’;—’on the grass her dainty limbs did lay.’ But I can hardly agree with him when he proceeds to say it never strikes any unwarned ear as artificial, or other than the result of the necessary movement of the verse. The artifice seems often very obvious. I do not also quite understand, or, if I do, cannot acquiesce in what follows, that Spenser’s descriptions are not in the true sense of the word picturesque, but are composed of a wondrous series of images, as in our dreams. Coleridge’s Remains, vol. i. p. 93.