Part 6 (2/2)

They whilos to say, At morne and even, besides their Anthemes sweete, Their penie Masses, and their Coes, their Trentals, and their shrifts, Their ifts

Now all those needlesse works are laid away; Now once a weeke, upon the Sabbath day, It is enough to doo our small devotion, And then to follow any merrie motion

Ne are we tyde to fast, but e list; Ne to weare garments base of wollen twist, But with the finest silkes us to aray, That before God we lorie in his place: For farre unfit it is, that person bace Should with vile cloaths approach Gods majestie, Whom no uncleannes may approachen nie; Or that all arments for their service should deserve; But he that serves the Lord of hoasts h, And all the peoples prayers to present Before his throne, as on ae sent Both too and fro, should not deserve to weare A garment better than of wooll or heare

Beside, we ht shi+ning Brides: We be not tyde to wilfull chastitie, But have the Gospell of free libertie”

But his weapon is double-edged, and he had not ns deives to the Fox who desires to rise to preferreat Puritan noble

First, therefore, when ye have in handsome wise Your selfe attyred, as you can devise, Then to soreat one in the worldes eye, That hath a zealous disposition To God, and so to his religion

There must thou fashi+on eke a Godly zeale, Such as no carpers ht ravitee, And seeund: Fast round, And unto everie one doo curtesie ) doo a benefice seeke, And be thou sure one not to lack or long

But he is i--by adopting the fashi+ons of the Court, ”facing, and forging, and scoffing, and crouching to please,” and so to ” with a patron to give him half the profits, and in the case of a bishopric, to submit to the alienation of its manors to some powerful favourite, as the Bishop of Salisbury had to surrender Sherborn to Sir Walter Ralegh Spenser, in his dedication of _Mother Hubberd's Tale_ to one of the daughters of Sir John Spencer, Lady Co sithence composed in the raw conceit of youth” But, whatever thisthe publication of it at this time, shows, if the work itself did not show it, that he was in very serious earnest in his bitter sarcasht success at the Court

He stayed in England about a year and a half [1590-91], long enough apparently to reat friends, Ralegh and perhaps Essex, ere busy on their own scheinning to plunge into that extraordinary career, in the thread of which, glory and disgrace, far-sighted and princely public spirit and insatiate private greed, were to be so strangely intertwined In 1592 he planned the great adventure which astonished London by the fabulous plunder of the Spanish treasure-shi+ps; in the same year he was in the Tower, under the Queen's displeasure for his secretaway fro forth his flatteries on this old woman of sixty as if he had no bride of his own to love:--”I that ont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus; the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks like a ny in the shade like a Goddess; so like Orpheus--behold the sorrow of this world--once amiss, hath bereaved me of all” Then came the exploration of Guiana, the expedition to Cadiz, the Island voyage [1595-1597] Ralegh had so else to do than to think of Spenser's fortunes

Spenser turned back once more to Ireland, to his clerkshi+p of the Council of Munster, which he soon resigned; to be worried with law-suits about ”lands in Shanbally and oppressive Irish neighbour, Maurice Roche, Lord Fermoy; to brood still over his lost ideal and hero, Sidney; to write the story of his visit in the pastoral suppleain_; to pursue the story of Gloriana's knights; and to find a the Irish maidens another Elizabeth, a wife instead of a queen, whose wooing and winning were to give new theination

FOOTNOTES:

[107:1] _v Colin Clout_, l 31 _Astrophel_, l 175

CHAPTER V

THE FAERY QUEEN

”_Uncouth_ [= unknown], _unkist_,” are the words from Chaucer,[118:1]

hich the friend, who introduced Spenser's earliest poetry to the world, bespeaks forbearance, and proht in the _Shepherd's Calendar_ ”You have to know my new poet, he says in effect: and when you have learned his ways, you will find how much you have to honour and love him” ”I doubt not,” he says, with a boldness of prediction, manifestly sincere, which is remarkable about an unknown e of men, and his worthiness be sounded in the trump of fame, but that he shall be not only kissed, but also beloved of all, embraced of the most, and wondered at of the best” Never was prophecy nally verified, probably beyond the prophet's largest expectation

But he goes on to explain and indeed apologize for certain features of the new poet's work, which even to readers of that day ht seem open to exception And to readers of to-day, the phrase, _uncouth, unkist_, certainly expresses what many have to confess, if they are honest, as to their first acquaintance with the _Faery Queen_ Its place in literature is established beyond controversy Yet its first and unfamiliar aspect inspires respect, perhaps interest, rather than attracts and satisfies It is not the remoteness of the subject alone, nor the distance of three centuries which raises a bar between it and those to whom it is new Shakespere becoends of Arthur have been e of to-day once more to touch our syhts But at first acquaintance the _Faery Queen_ toIt has seemed not only antique, but artificial It has see, tiresome It is not till the early appearances have worn off, and we have learned to s and the standards by which it claiovern us, that we really find under what noble guidance we are proceeding, and what subtle and varied spells are ever round us

I The _Faery Queen_ is the work of an unforlish poetry, English language, in Spenser's, nay in Shakespere's day, had much to learn, er or richer, than in that marvellous burst of youth, with all its freedom of invention, of observation, of reflection

But they had not that which only the experience and practice of eventful centuries could give theifts of time

It cannot forerun the limitations of its day, nor anticipate the conquests and cos are ireat masters of art which are easy to their second-rate successors The possibility, or the necessity of breaking through so soreat enterprises, occurred to thenificent fashi+on on which those after theht not to shut our eyes to mistakes or faults to which attention had not yet been awakened, or for avoiding which no reasonable enius, we nize, both what is still irandly and unwontedly successful There is no great work of art, not excepting even the Iliad or the Parthenon, which is not open, especially in point of ornament, to the scoff of the scoffer, or to the injustice of those who do not s to reatest, is always limited and imperfect

The _Faery Queen_, as a whole, bears on its face a great fault of construction It carries with it no adequate account of its own story; it does not explain itself, or contain in its own structure ould enable a reader to understand how it arose It has to be accounted for by a prose explanation and key outside of itself The poet intended to reserve the central event, which was the occasion of all the adventures of the poe the books the reader should at last be told how the whole thing had originated, and what it was all about

Hethe answer to a riddle with the crisis which unties the tangle of a plot and satisfies the suspended interest of a tale None of the great ression and episode, had failed to arrange their story with clearness They needed no coan as they did, and out of what antecedents they arose If they started at once fros, they made their story, as it unfolded itself, explain, by more or less skilful devices, all that needed to be known about their beginnings They did not think of rules of art They did of theood story-teller does, to ; and it is not easy to be interesting, unless the parts of the story are in their place

The defect seems to have come upon Spenser when it was too late to remedy it in the construction of his poe us what the poeeneral story, in a letter to Sir Walter Ralegh Ralegh hiested the letter: apparently (froone through the press And without this after-thought, as the twelfth book was never reached, we should have been left to gather the outline and plan of the story, frolimpses and allusions, as we have to fill up froaps of an unskilful narrator, who leaves out what is essential to the understanding of his tale

Incidentally, however, this letter is an advantage: for we have in it the poet's own state, as well as a necessary sketch of his story His allegory, as he had explained to Bryskett and his friends, had a ures of twelve knights, and in their various exploits, the characteristics of ”a gentleentle discipline” He took hisArthur, and his heads of ue of the Schools

Sir, knowing how doubtfully all Allegories may be construed, and this booke ofa continued Allegory, or darke conceit, I haue thought good, as well for avoyding of gealous opinions andthereof, (being so by you coeneral intention and , which in the whole course thereof I have fashi+oned, without expressing of any particular purposes, or by accidents, therein occasioned The generall end therefore of all the booke is to fashi+on a gentleentle discipline: Which for that I conceived shoulde becoloured with an historicall fiction, the which the ht to read, rather for variety of matter then for profite of the ensa Arthure, asmade famous by er of envy, and suspition of present time In which I have followed all the antique Poets historicall; first Hoaovernour 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 theaine, 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 excellente Poets, I labour to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the iht, perfected in the twelve private morall vertues, as Aristotle hath devised; the which is the purpose of these first twelve bookes: which if I finde to be well accepted, I ed to frame the other part of polliticke vertues in his person, after that hee ca that he eneral intention, but in particular” for Elizabeth, and his Faery Land for her kingdom, he proceeds to explain, what the first three books hardly explain, what the Faery Queen had to do with the structure of the poem