“I have dwelt at length with this poem because it epitomizes and transforms much eighteenth-century criticism of Spenser and because, like any other imitation, it acts as an implicit criticism of the original. The Minstrel takes up major themes in mid-century poetics and criticism - speculative interest in origins, natural descriptions, humble life, the supernatural, education, political corruption - and merges them, awkwardly it must be said - into something recalling a Spenserian romance. The celebrity of Beattie's poem has more to do with its intellectual than its poetic achievements. The Minstrel demonstated that romance could take on the serious social business hitherto treated in epic and georgic, epistle and satire; it proved to an age obsessed with originality that a poet might imitate wihout copying, and emulate Spenser in a way that avoided objections to archaism, allegory, and the use of stanzas in a long poem. Beattie did all these things but did them imperfectly. For the next fifty years, romantic Spenserians would retain beattie's doctrines while refining his poetics.” PoetryRomanticismEdmund SpenserJames BeattieThe Minstrel1771 Book:Edmund Spenser: A Reception History Source: Edmund Spenser: A Reception History