therefore a share given him in every legend; but his part is not considerable enough in any one of them.  He appears and vanishes again like a spirit, and we lose sight of him too soon to consider him as the hero of the poem.  These are the most obvious defects in the fable of the Fairy Queen.  The want of unity in the story makes it difficult for the reader to carry it in his mind, and distracts too much his attention to the several parts of it; and indeed the whole frame of it would appear monstrous, were it to be examined by the rules of epic poetry, as they have been drawn from the practice of Homer and Virgil; but as it is plain, the author never designed it by these rules, I think it ought rather to be called a poem of a particular kind, describing in a series of allegorical adventures, or episodes, the most noted virtues and vices.  To compare it therefore with the models of antiquity, would be like drawing a parallel between the Roman and Gothic architecture.  In the first, there is doubtless a more natural grandeur and simplicity; in the latter, we find great mixtures of beauty and barbarism, yet assisted by the invention of a variety of inferior ornaments; and tho’ the former is more majestic in the whole, the latter may be very surprizing and agreeable in its parts.

[Footnote 1:  Hughes’s Life of Spencer, prefixed to the edition of our author’s works.]

[Footnote 2:  Hughes ubi supra,]

[Footnote 3:  Winst. p. 88.]

[Footnote 4:  Dublin]

[Footnote 5:  The General of the English army in Ireland.]

* * * * *

JASPER HEYWOOD,

the son of the celebrated epigramatist, was born in London, and in the 12th year of his age, 1517, was sent to the University, where he was educated in grammar and logic.  In 1553 he took a degree in Arts, and was immediately elected Probationer fellow of Merton College, where he gained a superiority over all his fellow students in disputations at the public school.  Wood informs us, that upon a third admonition, from the warden and society of that house, he resigned his fellowship, to prevent expulsion, on the 4th of April, 1558; he had been guilty of several misdemeanors, such as are peculiar to youth, wildness and rakishness, which in those days it seems were very severely punished.  Soon after this he quitted England, and entered himself into the society of Jesus at St. Omer’s [1]; but before he left his native country, he writ and translated (says Wood), these things following.

Various Poems and Devices; some of which are printed in a book called the Paradise of Dainty Devices, 1574, 4to.

Hercules Furens, a Tragedy, which some have imputed to Seneca, and others have denied to be his, but it is thought by most learned men to be an imitation of that play of Euripides, which bears the same name, and tho, in contrivance and economy, they differ in some things, yet in others they agree, and Scaliger scruples not to prefer the Latin to the Greek Tragedy [2].