Note 59 — Chapter IV

On the Spenserian stanza see especially Corson, pp. 87 ff. Lowell's characterization of Spenser's use of it is interesting: "In the alexandrine, the melody of one stanza seems forever longing and feeling forward after that which is to follow.... In all this there is soothingness, indeed, but no slumberous monotony; for Spenser was no mere metrist, but a great composer. By the variety of his pauses—now at the close of the first or second foot, now of the third, and again of the fourth—he gives spirit and energy to a measure whose tendency it certainly is to become languorous" (Essay on Spenser). See also Mackail's chapter on Spenser in Springs of Helicon; and Shelley's praise in his Preface to the Revolt of Islam: "I have adopted the stanza of Spenser (a measure inexpressibly beautiful), not because I consider it a finer model of poetical harmony than the blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton, but because in the latter there is no shelter for mediocrity; you must either succeed or fail. This perhaps an aspiring spirit should desire. But I was enticed also by the brilliancy and magnificence of sound which a mind that has been nourished upon musical thoughts can produce by a just and harmonious arrangement of the pauses of this measure."