Part 7 (1/2)
But, because the beginning of the whole worke see upon other antecedents, it needs that ye know the occasion of these three knights seuerall adventures For the Methode of a Poet historical is not such, as of an Historiographer For an Historiographer discourseth of affayres orderly as they were donne, accounting as well the times as the actions; but a Poet thrusteth into the middest, even where it es forepaste, and divining of thinges to co therefore of rapher should be the twelfth booke, which is the last; where I devise that the Faery Queene kept her Annuall feaste xii dayes; uppon which xii severall dayes, the occasions of the xii severall adventures hapned, which, being undertaken by xii severall knights, are in these xii
books severally handled and discoursed The first was this In the beginning of the feast, there presented hi before the Queene of Faries desired a boone (as the ht not refuse; which was that heethat feaste should happen: that being graunted, he rested hih his rusticity for a better place Soone after entred a faire Ladye inon a white asse, with a dwarfe behinde her leading a warlike steed, that bore the Arht, and his speare in the dwarfes hand Shee, falling before the Queene of Faeries, co and Queene, had beene by an huge dragon many years shut up in a brasen Castle, who thence suffred theht the Faery Queene to assygne her sohts to take on hi, desired that adventure: whereat the Queene , yet he earnestly importuned his desire In the end the Lady told hiht would serve him (that is, the armour of a Christian man specified by Saint Paul, vi
Ephes) that he could not succeed in that enterprise; which being forthwith put upon hioodliest man in al that co on hie courser, he went forth with her on that adventure: where beginneth the first booke, viz
A gentle knight was pricking on the playne, &c
That it was not without reason that this explanatory key was prefixed to the work, and that either Spenser or Ralegh felt it to be alraph
Thus much, Sir, I have briefly overronne to direct your understanding to the wel-head of the History; that fro the whole intention of the conceit, ye ripe al the discourse, which otherwiseto the plan thus sketched out, we have but a fragment of the work It was published in two parcels, each of three books, in 1590 and 1596; and after his death two cantos, with two stray stanzas, of a seventh book were found and printed Each perfect book consists of twelve cantos of from thirty-five to sixty of his nine-line stanzas The books published in 1590 contain, as he states in his prefatory letter, the legends of _Holiness_, of _Temperance_, and of _Chastity_ Those published in 1596, contain the legends of _Friendshi+p_, of _Justice_, and of _Courtesy_ The posthumous cantos are entitled, _Of Mutability_, and are said to be apparently parcel of a legend of _Constancy_ The poem which was to treat of the ”politic” virtues was never approached
Thus we have but a fourth part of the whole of the projected work It is very doubtful whether the re six books were completed But it is probable that a portion of them ritten, which, except the cantos _On Mutability_, has perished And the intended titles or legends of the later books have not been preserved
Thus the poe out into twelve separate stories, which theain and involve endless other stories It is a co so has been praised by some of his critics But the art, if there is any, is so subtle that it fails to save the reader fro and connecting a long and coifts In the first two books, the allegorical story proceeds from point to point with fair coherence and consecutiveness After theether, except in the loosest and iven up as too troublesome or too confined The poet prefixes indeed the name of a particular virtue to each book, but, with slender reference to it, he surrenders himself freely to his abundant flow of ideas, and to whatever fancy or invention tees unrestrained over the whole field of knowledge and iory is transparent and the story connected
The allegory is of the nature of the _Pilgriion, purified from falsehood, superstition, and sin, is the foundation of all nobleness in es and with names, for the most part easily understood, and easily applied to real counterparts, the struggle which every one at that tihteousness on one side, and fatal error and bottomless wickedness on the other Una, the Truth, the one and only Bride of man's spirit, marked out by the tokens of humility and innocence, and by her power over wild and untale Truth, in contrast to the counterfeit Duessa, false religion, and its actual embodiment in the false rival Queen of Scots--Truth, the object of passionate hoe, real with many, professed with all, which after the ie, had now become characteristic of that of Elizabeth--Truth, its claiers, and its champions, are the subject of the first book: and it is represented as leading the land, in spite, not only of terrible conflict, but of defeat and falls, through the discipline of repentance, to holiness and the blessedness which coland, whose naest that fro h sorely troubled by the wiles of Duessa, by the craft of the arch-sorcerer, by the force and pride of the great powers of the Apocalyptic Beast and Dragon, finally overcomes them, and wins the deliverance of Una and her love
The second book, _Of Temperance_, pursues the subject, and represents the internal conquests of self-mastery, the conquests of a man over his passions, his violence, his covetousness, his ambition, his despair, his sensuality Sir Guyon, after conquering oodness, is the destroyer of the most perilous of the Bower of Bliss But after this, the thread at once of story and allegory, slender henceforth at the best, is neglected and often entirely lost The third book, the _Legend of Chastity_, is a repetition of the ideas of the latter part of the second, with a heroine, Britoht of the previous book, Sir Guyon, and with a special glorification of the high-flown and romantic sentiments about purity, which wore the poetic creed of the courtiers of Elizabeth, in flagrant and soic contrast to their practical conduct of life The loose and ill-compacted nature of the plan becomes still more evident in the second instalment of the work
Even the special note of each particular virtue becomes more faint and indistinct The one lahich the poet feels bound is to have twelve cantos in each book; and to do this he is so One of the cantos of the third book is a genealogy of British kings froend of Friendshi+p_ is e of the Thalish and Irish rivers, and the names of the sea-nyot tired of it His poem became an elastic framework, into which he could fit whatever interested hiravity of the first books disappears He passes into satire and caricature We adochio and Troal troubles of Malbecco and Helenore, with the imitation from Ariosto of the Squire of Day of the huin of human souls; he speculates, too, on social justice, and couht and equality a men As the poem proceeds, he seems to feel himself more free to introduce what he pleases Allusions to real men and events are soh they have now ceased to be intelligible to us His disgust and resentment breaks out at the ways of the Court in sarcastic ery The characters and pictures of his friends furnishon the h, and even of Lord Grey, with sly humour or a word of candid advice He becomes bolder in the distinct introduction of conteuratively shown in the first portion; in the second the subject is resumed As Elizabeth is the ”one form of many naned colours shading a true case” he deals with her rival
Mary seems at one ti up strife, and fought for by the foolish knights whom she deceives, Blandauers of 1571 At another, she is the fierce Aal is brought into disgraceful thraldoainst, delivers him And finally the fate of the typical Duessa is that of the real Mary Queen of Scots described in great detail--a liberty in dealing with great affairs of state for which James of Scotland actually desired that he should be tried and punished[128:2] So Philip II is at one time the Soldan, at another the Spanish ues in France and Ireland, Grantorto But real nauise: Guizor, and Burbon, the Knight who throay his shi+eld, Henry IV, and his Lady Flourdelis, the Lady Beige, and her seventeen sons: the Lady Irena, wholish war in the Low Countries, the apostasy of Henry IV, the deliverance of Ireland froiant Grantorto, forreat part of the _Legend of Justice_ Nay, Spenser's long fostered revenge on the lady who had once scorned him, the _Rosalind_ of the _Shepherd's Calendar_, the _Mirabella_ of the _Faery Queen_, and his own late and happy ht in to supply end of Courtesy_ So ht, or observed, or felt; a receptacle, without much care to avoid repetition, or to prune, correct, and condense, for all the abundance of his ideas, as they welled forth in his mind day by day It is really a collection of separate tales and allegories, as hts_, or, as its counterpart and rival of our own century, the _Idylls of the King_ As a whole it is confusing: but we need not treat it as a whole
Its continued interest soon breaks down But it is probably best that Spenser gave his ue freedom which suited it, and that he did not ed but too ambitious plan We can hardly lose our way in it, for there is no way to lose It is a wilderness in which we are left to wander But there may be interest and pleasure in a wilderness, if we are prepared for the wandering
Still, the coement of the poeets accustons hiives her name to it, never appears: a story, of which the basis and starting-point is whimsically withheld for disclosure in the last book, which was never written If Ariosto's jumps and transitions areAdventures begin which have no finish Actors in them drop from the clouds, claim an interest, and we ask in vain what has become of them A vein of what are manifestly conteory, with an apparently distinct yet obscured , and one of which it is the work of dissertations to find the key The passion of the age was for ingenious riddling in ories we are not seldom at a loss to make out what and how much was really intended, aies and over-subtle conceits, and atteerous identification
Indeed Spenser's ory, which was historical as well as ood deal of history, if we knew it, often seems devised to throw curious readers off the scent It was purposely baffling and hazy A characteristic trait was singled out A naram, like Irena, or distorted, as if by ial, or invented to express a quality, like Una, or Gloriana, or Corceca, or Fradubio, or adopted with no particular reason from the _Morte d'Arthur_, or any other old literature The personage is introduced with some feature, or a But e look to the sequence of history being kept up in the sequence of the story, we find ourselves thrown out A character which fits one person puts on the marks of another: a likeness which we identify with one real person passes into the likeness of some one else The real, in person, incident, institution, shades off into the ideal; after showing itself by plain tokens, it turns aside out of its actual path of fact, and ends, as the poet thinks it ought to end, in victory or defeat, glory or failure Prince Arthur passes froain to Leicester There are double or treble allegories; Elizabeth is Gloriana, Belphoebe, Britomart, Mercilla, perhaps Amoret; her rival is Duessa, the false Floriund Thus, what for a e of a dispersing cloud The character which we identified disappears in other scenes and adventures, where we lose sight of all that identified it A coun There is an intentional dislocation of the parts of the story, when they ht make it imprudently close in its reflection of facts or resemblance in portraiture A feature is shown, a manifest allusion made, and then the poet starts off in other directions, to confuse and perplex all atteht be too particular and too certain This was no doubtto the fashi+on of the tirown But there were often reasons for it, in an age so suspicious, and so dangerous to those who h matters of state
2 Another feature which is on the surface of the _Faery Queen_, and which will displease a reader who has been trained to value what is natural and genuine, is its affectation of the language and the custoe which is not its own It is indeed redolent of the present: but it is almost avowedly an imitation of as current in the days of Chaucer: of ere supposed to be the words, and the social ideas and conditions, of the age of chivalry He looked back to the fashi+ons and ideas of the Middle Ages, as Pindar sought his ends and customs of the Hoe of the Heroes in an age of tyrants and incipient dee of chivalry, in Spenser's day far distant, had yet left two survivals, one real, the other formal The real survival was the spirit of ar than in the gallants and discoverers of Elizabeth's reign, the captains of the English companies in the Low Countries, the audacious sailors who explored unknown oceans and plundered the Spaniards, the scholars and gentleh and Sir Richard Grenville, of the ”Revenge” The fors of knightly tis, court dresses, and Lord Mayor's shows In actual life it was seen in pageants and cere parade of jousts and tournahtly accoutrements still worn in the days of the bullet and the cannon-ball In the apparatus of the poet, as all were shepherds, when he wanted to represent the life of peace and letters, so all were knights or the foes and victihts, when his theme was action and enterprise It was the custom that the Muse uises; and this conventional ht errantry was the form under which the poetical school that preceded the dramatists naturally expressed their ideas It seems to us odd that peaceful sheepcotes and love-sick swains should stand for the world of the Tudors and Guises, or that its cunning statecraft and relentless cruelty should be represented by the generous follies of an iinary chivalry But it was the fashi+on which Spenser found, and he accepted it His genius was not of that sort which breaks out from trammels, but of that which makes the best of what it finds
And whatever we ave it new interest and splendour by the spirit hich he threw hiroundwork of his poetical fabric suggested the character of his language Chaucer was then the ”God of English poetry;” his was the one nalish verse Spenser was a student of Chaucer, and borrowed as he judged fit, not only froraiving an appropriate colouring to as to be raised as far as possible above fae was still in such an unsettled state that from a man with resources like Spenser's, it naturally invited attempts to enrich and colour it, to increase its flexibility and power
The liberty of reviving old fore of the street and market ho in the track of convenient constructions, of venturing on new and bold phrases, was rightly greater in his tie Many of his words, either invented or preserved, are happy additions; soret But it was a liberty which he abused He was extravagant and unrestrained in his experie And they were ood expression On his own authority, he cuts down, or he alters a word, or he adopts a mere corrupt pronunciation, to suit a place in his metre, or because he wants a rime
Precedents, as Mr Guest has said, may no doubt be found for each one of these sacrifices to the necessities of e, or even in printed books--”_blend_” for ”_blind_,” ”_misleeke_” for ”_mislike_,” ”_kest_” for ”_cast_,”
”_cherry_” for ”_cherish_,” ”_vilde_” for ”_vile_,” or even ”_es_”
for ”_waves_,” because it has to rime to ”_jaws_” But when they are profusely used as they are in Spenser, they argue, as critics of his own age such as Puttenham, remarked,--either want of trouble, or want of resource In his i a hich he wants--”fortunize,” ” one word do the duty of another, interchanging actives and passives, transferring epithets frorass on which a man lies humbled: the ”lamentable eye,”
is the eye which laments ”His treatment of words,” says Mr Craik, ”on such occasions”--occasions of difficulty to his verse--”is like nothing that ever was seen, unless it ives them any sense and any shape that the case may demand Sometimes he merely alters a letter or two; sometimes he twists off the head or the tail of the unfortunate vocable altogether But this fearless, lordly, truly royal style makes one only feel the more how easily, if he chose, he could avoid the necessity of having recourse to such outrages”
His own generation felt his licence to be extre the ancients,” said Ben Jonson, ”he writ no language” Daniel writes sarcastically, soon after the _Faery Queen_ appeared, of those who
Sing of knights and Palladines, In aged accents and untie must always find interest in the storehouse of ancient or invented language to be found in Spenser, this mixture of what is obsolete or capriciously new is a bar, and not an unreasonable one, to a frank welcome at first acquaintance Fuller remarks with some slyness, that ”the many Chaucerisht by the ignorant to be blemishes, known by the learned to be beauties, in his book; which notwithstanding had been e” The grotesque, though it has its place as one of the instruerous elee was very insensible to the presence and the dangers of the grotesque, and he was not before his tiruousof his day, a style of learning, which in his case was strangely inaccurate, he not only mixed the past with the present, fairyland with politics, y with the ether the very features which are most discordant, in the colours, forht to produce the effect of his pictures
3 Another source of annoyance and disappointment is found in the imperfections and inconsistencies of the poet's standard of what is becoeration, diffuseness, prolixity, were the literary diseases of the age; an age of great excitement and hope, which had suddenly discovered its wealth and its powers, but not the rules of true econo them With the classics open before it, and alive to , it was almost blind to the spirit of self-restraint, proportion, and sireat e to discern these and appreciate theeration produced the extravagance and the horrors of the Elizabethan Drainality It only too naturally led the earlier Spenser astray What Dryden, in one of his interesting critical prefaces says of hihts, such as they are, co in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or to reject; to run theive them the other har to account all inal or borrowed, an incontinence of the descriptive faculty, which was ever ready to exercise itself on any object, theand loathsome, as on the noblest, the purest, or the most beautiful There are pictures in him which seem meant to turn our stomach Worse than that there are pictures which for a time rank the poet of _Holiness_ or _Tereat art to represent at once the most sacred and holiest forms, and also scenes which few people now like to look upon in company--scenes and descriptions which may perhaps from the habits of the time may have been playfully and innocently produced, but which it is certainly not easy to dwell upon innocently now And apart fro us, aour, and beauty, a sense that the work is over-done Spenser certainly did not want for humour and an eye for the ridiculous There is no want in hirae valued and cultivated But when he gets on a story or a scene, he never knohere to stop His duels go on stanza after stanza till there is no sound part left in either chaeants, feasts, are taken to pieces in all their parts, and all these parts are likened to sos ”His abundance,”
says Mr Craik, ”is often oppressive; _it is like wading arass_” And he drowns us in words His abundant and incongruous adjectives may sometimes, perhaps, startle us unfairly, because their associations and suggestions have quite altered; but very often they are the idle outpouring of an unrestrained affluence of language The impression remains that he wants a due perception of the absurd, the unnatural, the unnecessary; that he does not care if he makes us smile, or does not kno to help it, when he tries to make us admire or sympathize