The Faerie Queene - The Original Classic Edition. Spenser Edmund

and semi-obsolete language to more modern forms. He uses four classes of words that were recognized as the proper and conventional language of pastoral and romantic poetry; viz. (a) archaisms, (b) dialect, (c) classicisms, and (d) gallicisms. He did not hesitate to adopt from Chaucer many obsolete words and grammatical forms. Examples are: the double negative with ne; eyen, lenger, doen, ycladd, harrowd, purchas, raught, seely, stowre, swinge, owch, and withouten. He also employs many old words from Layamon, Wiclif, and Langland, like swelt, younglings, noye, kest, hurtle, and loft. His dialectic forms are taken from the vernacular of the North Lancashire folk with which he was familiar. Some are still a part of the spoken language of that region, such as, brent, cruddled, forswat, fearen, forray, pight, sithen, carle, and carke. Examples of his use of classical constructions are: the ablative absolute, as, which doen (IV, xliii); the relative construction with when, as, which when (I, xvii), that when (VII, xi); the comparative of the adjective in the sense of "too," as, weaker (I, xlv), harder (II, xxxvi); the participial construction after till, as, till further tryall made (I, xii); the superlative of location, as, middest (IV, xv); and the old gerundive, as, wandering wood (I, xiii). Most of the gallicisms found are anglicized loan words from the French romans d'aventure, such as, disseized, cheare, chappell, assoiled, guerdon, palfrey, recreaunt, trenchand, syre, and trusse. Notwithstanding Spenser's use of foreign words and constructions, his language is as thoroughly English in its idiom as that of any of our great poets. "I think that if he had not been a great poet," says Leigh Hunt, "he would have been a great painter." "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 Birth of Edmund Spenser (about)

      A.D.

      1552

      CONTEMPORARY EVENTS 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.

       8

       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, II, III, 1590 Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost.

       Mother Hubberds Tale, Tears of the Muses, Ruines of Time, Daphnaida, The Visions, 1591 Shakespeare's Comedy of

       Errors, Henry VI.

       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 Ireland, 1598 Edict of Nantes, Philip III crowned. Death of Spenser, 1599 Revolt of Irish. Expedition of Essex to Ireland.

       THE FAERIE QUEENE

       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, be-ing 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 AEneas: 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