him the hope that there is a light which God brings at evening, and which atones for the days of darkness, even though they may have been many. But it is not the mere sentiment which appeals to us. It is the genuine feeling which inspires it. The heart lies open to the heart; and our nature responds to what is natural.

CHAPTER IV

EDMUND SPENSER

IT has always been my conviction that every English-speaking child should be brought up on Spenser. The "Faerie Queene" offers good, wholesome, and acceptable mental food for the child's mind. The richly imaginative qualities of the poem, its romantic adventures, its high chivalrous feeling, appeal to the unspoilt heart and unbroken fancy of childhood. Moreover it is allegory, and childhood delights in allegory. There are some who think that children love the story and ignore the meaning of allegorical works. I do not believe it. I believe that the very thing which appeals to the child is the mingling of story and significance. The story appeals to the imagination. In this all are agreed; but children delight in acting everything they see or hear. There is in them a passion for self-identification with whatever appeals

to them. They will play grandfather or grandmother. They will act out the heroic story, as Coleridge did Leander's swimming of the Hellespont. The joy of the allegory or the story with a meaning is to them in the thought that the story is theirs, and can be acted. To say "Quorum pars magna fui," is always a joy; and a feeling akin to this is evoked in the childmind by the allegory. Jack may fight the giant killer; and every boy who hears the tale realises that he is Jack and that the giants are to be met with in life. The "Pilgrim's Progress" is not a sealed tale to children. With a subtle consciousness of larger meanings the child appropriates to itself the opportunities and adventures of the story. Apollyon may be met on the road of life and the sword of God may be in everybody's hand. There are strange anticipations of life's more serious conflicts which visit the hearts of the young and awaken within them a kind of soul-foretaste of the conflict which is to be. We are often over-fearful about a child's comprehension. A child loves to be talked to as if it could understand. "I always liked him," said a clever and well-known lady, speaking of a friend of her family, "I always liked him because when I was a child he spoke to me

as if I were grown up." A child hates to be talked down to. In the "Faerie Queene" there is none of this: there is story; there is variety of adventure; there is the richness of imagery, and the suggestiveness of a personal experience which children delight in. It teaches without appearing to teach its ethical force is pervasive but it does not obtrude itself as the moral frequently does in the didactic tale. Where the purpose is too obvious the child suspects that the incidents are fitted to the moral. So little is this the case in the "Faerie Queene" that it has been disputed whether we ought to consider it as a religious poem. Professor Courthope, while holding the balance between those who regard Spenser as a great religious teacher, and those who treat the religious aspect of the poem as so much loss, yet thinks that art, not religious teaching, was foremost in Spenser's thoughts and intents. There is truth in this. No one can read and enter into the spirit of the "Faerie Queene" without feeling that Spenser delighted in his art: he evidently loved it as his mistress, and followed its behests right worshipfully; but he had clear thoughts and ardent feelings concerning religious and moral life: he understood the perils on one side or the other through which

England had passed and was passing; he saw and approved the solution of religious difficulties towards which England was tending: he fervently believed that truth was worth following and worth fighting for; and he trusted that under the guidance of Elizabeth, his Gloriana, his country would find the way to truth and freedom; what he felt and believed he longed to make others feel and believe. But he was no preacher; he was no professional teacher: he was a poet, and the patriotic thoughts and ethical feelings which belonged to him and to his countrymen blended naturally with his poetic feeling, and kept company with him in his imaginative excursions. He was so far an unconscious religious teacher that he did not think of writing any didactic poem; he gathered into his poem the noble thoughts and the moral aspirations which, as a pure-hearted man of the age of Elizabeth, he cherished, but when he wrote it was his poem which filled his mind; and he joyed in his art as a craftsman who loves his craft and does not think of the purchaser or the public.

But, perhaps for this very reason, he is a powerful religious teacher. The most effective teaching is that which does not proclaim itself