"After reading," says Pope, "a canto of Spenser two or three days ago to an old lady, between seventy and eighty years of age, she said that I had been showing her a gallery of pictures. I do not know how it is, but she said very right. There is something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly in old age as it did in youth. I read the _Faerie Queene_ when I was about twelve, with infinite delight; and I think it gave me as much, when I read it over about a year or two ago."
The imperishable charm of the poem lies in its appeal to the pure sense of beauty. "A beautiful pagan dream," says Taine, "carries on a beautiful dream of chivalry." The reader hears in its lines a stately and undulating rhythm that intoxicates the ear and carries him on with an irresistible fascination, he sees the unsubstantial forms of fairyland go sweeping by in a gorgeous and dreamlike pageantry, and he feels pulsing in its luxuriant and enchanted atmosphere the warm and beauty-loving temper of the Italian Renaissance. "Spenser is superior to his subject," says Taine, "comprehends it fully, frames it with a view to the end, in order to impress upon it the proper mark of his soul and his genius. Each story is modified with respect to another, and all with respect to a certain effect which is being worked out. Thus a beauty issues from this harmony,--the beauty in the poet's heart,--which his whole work strives to express; a noble and yet a laughing beauty, made up of moral elevation and sensuous seductions, English in sentiment, Italian in externals, chivalric in subject, modern in its perfection, representing a unique and admirable epoch, the appearance of paganism in a Christian race, and the worship of form by an imagination of the North."
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
EVENTS IN SPENSER'S LIFE A.D. CONTEMPORARY EVENTS
Birth of Edmund Spenser (about) 1552 Birth of Sir Walter Raleigh 1553 Death of Edward VI; Mary crowned. 1554 Mary marries Philip of Spain. 1558 Death of Mary; Elizabeth crowned. 1560 Charles IX, king of France. 1568 Council of Trent. _Visions of Bellay_, published, 1569 _Sonnets of Petrarch_, published, 1569 Enters Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, 1569 1572 Gregory XIII, Pope of Rome. 1572 Massacre of St. Batholomew. 1574 Henry III, king of France. Received M.A., leaves Cambridge, 1576 Rudolph II, emperor. Leaves Lancashire, 1578 Elizabeth aids the Netherlands. Visits Lord Leicester, 1579 _The Shepheards Calender_, 1579 Goes to Ireland, 1580 Massacre of Smerwick. 1581 Tasso's _Jersalem Delivered_. Lord Grey's return to England, 1582 1584 Assassination of William the Silent. 1585 Sixtus V, Pope. Drake's voyage. 1585 Leicester goes to the Netherlands. 1586 Death of Sir Philip Sidney. First marriage (before) 1587 Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Clerk to the Council of Munster, 1588 Defeat of Spanish Armada. Death of Leicester. Visits England with Raleigh, 1589 Assassination of Henry III; Henry IV crowned. _The Faerie Queene_, Books I, 1590 Shakespeare's _Love's II, III, Labour's Lost_. _Mother Hubberds Tale, Tears of 1591 Shakespeare's _Comedy of Errors, the Muses, Ruines of Time, Henry VI_. Daphnaida, The Visions_ 1591 Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_, trans. 1593 Shakespeare's _Midsummer Night's Dream_. 1593 _Richard III._ Second marriage, 1594 Shakespeare's _Richard II_. _Colin Clout's Come Home Again_, 1595 Shakespeare's _King John_. _Amoretti, Epithalamion, Hymns_ 1595 Johnston's _Seven Champions of Christendom._ _Astrophel, Prothalamion,_ 1596 Shakespeare's _Merchant of Venice_. _The Faerie Queene_, Books I-VI 1596 Ben Jonson's _Every Man in his Humour._ _Vision of the Present State of 1598 Edict of Nantes, Ireland_ Philip III crowned. Death of Spenser, 1599 Revolt of Irish. Expedition of Essex to Ireland.
* * * * *
THE FAERIE QUEENE
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LETTER TO SIR WALTER RALEIGH
A LETTER of the Authors expounding his whole intention in the course of this worke;[1] which, for that it giveth great light to the reader, for the better understanding is hereunto annexed.
TO THE RIGHT NOBLE AND VALOROUS
SIR WALTER RALEIGH, KNIGHT.
_Lo: Wardein of the Stanneries, and her majesties lieutenaunt of the countie of Cornewayll._
SIR,
Knowing how doubtfully all Allegories may be constructed, and this booke of mine, which I have entituled _The Faery Queene_, being a continued Allegorie, or darke conceit, I have thought good, as well for avoyding of jealous opinions and misconstructions, as also for your better light in reading thereof, (being so, by you commanded) to discover unto you the generall intention and meaning, which in the whole course thereof I have fashioned, without expressing of any particular purposes, or by-accidents therein occasioned. The generall end therefore of all the booke, is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline. Which for that I conceived shoulde be most plausible and pleasing, beeing coloured with an historicall fiction, the which the most part of men delight to read, rather for varietie of matter than for profit of the ensample: I chose the historie of king Arthure, as most fit for the excellencie of his person, beeing made famous by many mens former workes, and also furthest from the danger of envie, and suspicion of present time. In which I have followed all the antique poets historicall: first Homer, who in the persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governour and a vertuous man, the one in his _Ilias_, the other in his _Odysseis_: then Virgil, whose like intention was to doe in the person of _Æneas_: after him Ariosto comprised them both in his _Orlando_: and lately Tasso dissevered them againe, and formed both parts in two persons, namely, that part which they in philosophy call _Ethice_, or vertues of a private man, coloured in his _Rinaldo_: the other named _Politice_, in his _Godfredo_. By ensample of which excellent Poets, I laboure to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private morall vertues, as Aristotle hath devised: which if I find to be well accepted, I may be perhaps encoraged to frame the other part of pollitike vertues in his person, after he came to bee king.
To some I know this Methode will seem displeasant, which had rather have good discipline delivered plainly in way of precepts, or sermoned at large, as they use, then thus clowdily enwrapped in Allegoricall devises. But such, mee seeme, should be satisfied with the use of these dayes, seeing all things accounted by their showes, and nothing esteemed of, that is not delightfull and pleasing to common sense. For this cause is Xenophon preferred before Plato, for that the one, in the exquisite depth of his judgement, formed a Commune-wealth, such as it should be; but the other, in the person of Cyrus and the Persians, fashioned a government, such as might best be: So much more profitable and gracious is doctrine by ensample then by rule. So have I laboured to do in the person of Arthure: whom I conceive, after his long education by Timon (to whom he was by Merlin delivered to be brought up, so soone as he was borne of the Lady Igrayne) to have seen in a dreame or vision the Faerie Queene, with whose excellent beautie ravished, hee awaking, resolved to seek her out: and so, being by Merlin armed, and by Timon throughly instructed, he went to seeke her forth in Faery land. In that Faery Queene I mean _Glory_ in my generall intention: but in my particular I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our soveraine the Queene, and her kingdome in Faery land. And yet, in some places else, I doe otherwise shadow her. For considering shee beareth two persons, the one of a most royall Queene or Empresse, the other of a most vertuous and beautifull lady, this latter part in some places I doe expresse in Belphoebe, fashioning her name according to your owne excellent conceipt of Cynthia,[2] (Phoebe and Cynthia being both names of Diana). So in the person of Prince Arthure I sette forth magnificence in particular, which vertue, for that (according to Aristotle and the rest) it is the perfection of all the rest, and containeth in it them all, therefore in the whole course I mention the deeds of Arthure appliable to the vertue, which I write of in that booke. But of the twelve other vertues I make XII other knights the patrons, for the more varietie of the historic: Of which these three bookes containe three. The first, of the Knight of the Red crosse, in whom I expresse Holinesse: the second of Sir Guyon, in whome I set foorth Temperance: the third of Britomartis, a Lady knight, in whom I picture Chastitie. But because the beginning of the whole worke seemeth abrupt and as depending upon other antecedents, it needs that yee know the occasion of these three knights severall adventures. For the Methode of a Poet historicall is not such as of an Historiographer. For an Historiographer discourseth of affaires orderly as they were done, accounting as well the times as the actions; but a Poet thrusteth into the middest, even where it most concerneth him, and there recoursing to the things forepast, and divining of things to come, maketh a pleasing analysis of all. The beginning therefore of my historie, if it were to be told by an Historiographer, should be the twelfth booke, which is the last; where I devise that the Faery Queene kept her annuall feast twelve daies; uppon which twelve severall dayes, the occasions of the twelve severall adventures hapned, which being undertaken by XII severall knights, are in these twelve books severally handled and discoursed.