sixty nine-line stanzas. There are also some fragmentary cantos, which appeared after Spenser's death. Spenser hoped to add a second part, consisting likewise of twelve books, which should treat of the twelve public or "politick" virtues, i.e. those of a man in his relation to the state.

The Selections here given are from the first and second books, and are so arranged that they can be read and understood as a continuous narrative. That the underlying, or allegorical, meaning of the story may become plain, a few points should be grasped at the outset and kept in mind. The first book shows us the perils which "enfold" Holiness, or "the righteous man," who is brought before us in the person of the Red-Cross Knight. This knight may be further, as Hallam holds, "the militant Christian," or perhaps England, or the Reformed England of Elizabeth's time, or-as Dean Church suggests-"the conmonalty of England." However this may be, the Knight, or Holiness, is shown to us as the proper mate and champion of Una, or Truth, but beguiled and deceived by the wiles of Duessa, or Falsehood. Further, we are to understand that Una is not only truth, but religious truth, especially as it is embodied in the Church of England, and that similarly Duessa is not only error. but those especial errors with which (as Spenser believed) the Church of Rome was identified. Brieny the subject of the book may then be said to be Righteousness, incomplete and misled if separated from Religion, Detrayed by Error and ultimately restored by being reunited to the true Church. (See Bk. I. Cant. VIII. 1.)

"The second book, Of Temperance," (in the words of Dean Church.) "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." (See Life of Spenser, E. M. L. series, 125-6.) The first book thus deals mainly with faith, or religion, the second with practice, or morality, the outcome, or practical result, of religious belief in the struggle with the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. The two together thus contain, as Dean Kitchin observes, "the substance of man's faith and duty." (See Kitchin's ed. Faerie Queene, Bk. II., Introd.) The selections given in the text deal with the struggle with two out of these three foes; viz., the struggle with Mammon, or the world, and the struggle with the Flesh, or the seductions of idle pleasures and self-indulgence.

1. BOOK I. (Introductory Stanzas.)-Lo I the man, etc. An allusion to Spenser's first important work, The Shepherds Calendar, a pastoral, 1579. The lines follow closely the opening of Vergils Ænead, "Ille ego qui quondam," etc.-7. Areeds: = : directs, counsels.-10. O holy virgin, etc. The muse Clio. Why

is she especially invoked?-13. Scryme a box or case for keeping books. (See Lat. scrimium.)-14. Fayrest Tanaquill. From Bk. II. C. X. 76, it is evident that Spenser refers to Queen Elizabeth under the name of Tanaquill. What induced Spenser to choose this name for the queen is uncertain. Kitchin and others assert that Tanaquill was a British princess, but I have been unable to find on what ground. Mr. J. B. Fletcher, Harvard, has kindly furnished me the following suggestion. He thinks it not improbable that Spenser may have had Tanaquill, the wife of Tarquinius Priscus, in mind. "Spenser the humanist," he says, "might not impossibly have thought to flatter the English queen by an association with the Roman one, especially when the peculiar eminence and influence of Tanaquil is remembered.'

22.-19. Impe of highest Jove = Cupid, or Eros. Imp (Lat. impotus = a graft) was formerly used in a good sense, and meant simply child, or scion. (Cf. Shaks. Hen. IV. IV. 1.) The word is found in the sense of child in some early English epitaphs. There are conflicting accounts of Cupid's parentage in classical mythology. Two distinct mythical accounts are here referred to; according to one he was the son of Jove, according to another of Venus, but no version makes him the child of Jove and Venus.-23. Heben ebony.-25. Mart Mars.-34. Type of thine Una, the type or image of his "Godesse heavenly bright,” Queen Elizabeth, as well as of Truth,

=

23. CANTO I.-44. iolly = gallant, handsome. (O. F. joli.) There is nothing here of the modern use, as we are told later that the knight's bearing was "solemne sad."-54. ydrad = dreaded. (y here a later form of ye, the prefix in M. E. of the past part.—56. Greatest Glorianna: Queen Elizabeth. Spenser says in the explanatory letter to Raleigh: "In that Faerie Queene I mean Glory in my general intention, but in my particular I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our soveraine the Queen."-60. Earne = yearn.-63. A dragon, i.e. Error, or more particularly the false doctrines of the Romish Church which the Red-Cross Knight, or Reformed England, must combat. -64. A lovely lady, i.e. Una, or Truth, which is one, or single, in contrast to Duessa, Falsehood, or Doubleness. Una is also, in a more definite sense, Truth as embodied in the true Church, once supreme from East to West (see Bk. I. C. I. st. v.), but now "forwasted" by errors. 24.-82. A dwarfe-supposed by some to represent common sense or prudence. (See Blackwood's Mag., Nov. 1834.) The explanation is not very satisfactory.-92. A shadie grove = the thick wood of Error, into which the heavenly light of the stars cannot penetrate.

25.-105. The sayling pine "the pine whence sailing ships are made." Kitchin.-113. Sallow for the mill. I am indebted to Mr. J. B. Fletcher for the following explanation: "The allusion here may be as follows. Sallow-the Salix cinerea and caprea-has been recognized almost from the invention of gunpowder to the present day as the best "charcoal" wood for gunpowder. In 1414, Henry V. ordered 'twenty pipes of powder made of willow charcoal."" Spenser has just referred to the willow in general, he then goes on to speak of a particular species of willow, the sallow, and of its most important use. -117. The carver holme, the holly, which is especially fit for carving.

27.-152. Read rede, advice, counsel.-245. To welke = to fade. (M. E. welken.)

28.-257. Lin = cease. (M. E. linnen, A. S. linnan, Sc. blin.)

29.-391. Plutoes griesly dame. Proserpina had both a creative and a destroying power. As the daughter of Demeter we think of her in the first, and as the wife of Pluto and queen of Erebus, in the second capacity. She is here called griesly or terrible, because the poet has the dark and death-dealing side of her function in mind.-395. Great Gorgon, i.e. Demogorgon, a mysterious divinity, associated with darkness and the under world, quite distinct from the Gorgon or Medusa of classical mythology. He reappears in Faerie Queene, IV. II., is introduced into Milton's Paradise Lost, II. 964, and into Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.

30.-415. Double gates. Spenser here follows Homer, Od. XIX. 564, and Vergil, Æn. VI. 894. According to the idea of these poets, true dreams were supposed to pass through a gate of horn, false dreams through one of ivory. The second gate is here spoken of as "overcast" with silver; horn was probably selected by Homer because it was a translucent substance through which actual things beyond could be seen, if but dimly. Cf. Wm. Watson's poem "The Dream of Man."

31.-444. Hecate, a powerful female divinity supposed to have been introduced into the Greek from an earlier mythology. Like Demogorgon she is associated with night or darkness and the nether world. She presides over magic, phantoms, and nocturnal ceremonies, hence Shakespeare appropriately makes her the mistress of the witches in Macbeth.-447. Archimago, by whom Spenser means hypocrisy (Arch = chief, Gr. apx, and Lat. imago image, form, semblance): an allusion to this chief dissembler's power of assuming various guises in order to deceive. Spenser also connects him with the Romish Church. He may be intended," says Kitchin, "either for the Pope, or the Spanish King (Philip II.), or for the general spirit

of lying and false religion." He is first introduced in Cant. I. XXIX. 66 as an aged sire"; see connecting argument on p. 28.

33.-3. (CANTO III.) Then than.-14. True as touch. Touch here probably used for touchstone, as in Shakespeare's Rich. III. IV. 2: "Now do I play the touch, to try," etc. The touchstone used to test the purity of precious metals came to symbolize the power to tell the false from the true.

21. Preace press, a throng.

BOOK II.

40. CANTO VI. 104. Gondelay = gondola. 109-126. Note the formal and artificial character of the description. The second line of the XII. stanza is, however, quoted by Lowell as one of the three which "best characterize the feeling that Spenser's poetry gives us." (See essay on Spenser.) 41, 42.-136-162. This song is a good example of the smoothness and sweetness of Spenser's verse. It appears to imitate Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, Bk. XIV. 62; but if an imitation, it is superior to the original. Tennyson has followed precisely the same line of thought in the Lotus Eaters, Stz. II and III. Spenser's idea that all good things are given to be enjoyed is a frequent one with the poets. Cf. Milton's Comus, 1. 706; Sonnet I of Shakespeare, etc.

BOOK II.

43, 44. CANTO VII.-19-36. Mammon, here introduced as the "God of the world and worldlings," was not a heathen divinity, but, as in the New Testament, a simple personification of money or worldly ambition, from the Syriac word for riches. Cf. St. Mark, vi. 24, and Par. Lost, I. 678 et seq.-40. Of Mulciber's, etc. Mulciber was the name given to Vulcan (Lat. Mulceo, to soften), as the smoother, or softener, of metals by fire. Milton (Par. Lost, I. 740) identifies him with Mammon. Of, here used in the sense of by, as is frequent in the Bible and in Shakespeare; "and should have been killed of them." Acts. xxiii. 27.

=

45.-70. Swink to toil. In Chaucer a swinker is a workman or ploughman.

46.-91. Weet = know. A. S. witan, to know.

48.-194. Payne, "not suffering, but Poena, the avenging punishing deity." (Kitchin.) - 199-225. This description, marked by intensity, compression, and power, may be compared with a similar passage in Vergil's En. VI. 273, and with the fine personifications of Sorrow, Remorse of Conscience, and the rest in the Introduction to Sackville's Mirror for Magistrates. 49.-213. Celeno, one of the Harpies; filthy, vulture-like

Celano is espe

creatures, with head and breast of a woman. cially mentioned by Vergil (En. III. 245).—232. For next to Death is Sleep, etc. Somnus (sleep) and Mors (death) were the sons of Nox (night). The idea is a favorite one with the classic and the English poets. Cf. Vergil, Æn. VI. 278, and Shelley's Queen Mab, "Death and his brother Sleep." Sackville calls sleep "the cousin of Death"; B. Griffen, "brother to quiet death," etc.

50.-264. Breaches stalactites.-268. Arachne spider. Arachne was a skilful needle woman changed into a spider by Minerva.

52.-321. Culver dove. Lat. Columba.

THE COURTIER.

(EXTRACT FROM "MOTHER HUBBARD'S TALE.")

53. The poem from which this extract is taken first appeared in a miscellaneous collection entitled Complaints (1591). It was in this year that Spenser returned to his home in Ireland, after a stay in London of some two years. This visit to England had been made under the encouragement of Raleigh, who, Spenser tells us, secured his admission to the queen. The poet gives us an account of this visit in his Colin Clout's Come Home Again (pub. 1596), but in the lines here given we have probably an insight into the real mood in which he left the court. For this, as well as for the side-light it throws on Elizabeth as a patron of letters, and for its satiric force, the passage is a memorable one.

SONNETS.

54, 55. XL and LXXV. These are from a series of eighty-eight sonnets entitled Amoretti, published together with the splendid Epithalamion, or marriage hymn, in 1595. The sonnets commemorate Spenser's courtship of, and the Epithalamion his marriage to, a certain Irish country girl whose Christian name was certainly Elizabeth, and whose last name (according to Grosart) was Boyle. The marriage was celebrated June 11, 1595.