A History of English Literature

Ireland, where in satirical poems he proceeded to attack the vanity of the
world and the fickleness of men. His courtship and, in 1594, his marriage
produced his sonnet sequence, called 'Amoretti' (Italian for 'Love-poems'),
and his 'Epithalamium,' the most magnificent of marriage hymns in English
and probably in world-literature; though his 'Prothalamium,' in honor of
the marriage of two noble sisters, is a near rival to it.
Spenser, a zealous Protestant as well as a fine-spirited idealist, was in
entire sympathy with Lord Grey's policy of stern repression of the Catholic
Irish, to whom, therefore, he must have appeared merely as one of the hated
crew of their pitiless tyrants. In 1598 he was appointed sheriff of the
county of Cork; but a rebellion which broke out proved too strong for him,
and he and his family barely escaped from the sack and destruction of his
tower. He was sent with despatches to the English Court and died in London
in January, 1599, no doubt in part as a result of the hardships that he had
suffered. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Spenser's 'Faerie Queene' is not only one of the longest but one of the
greatest of English poems; it is also very characteristically Elizabethan.
To deal with so delicate a thing by the method of mechanical analysis seems
scarcely less than profanation, but accurate criticism can proceed in no
other way.
1. _Sources and Plan_. Few poems more clearly illustrate the variety
of influences from which most great literary works result. In many respects
the most direct source was the body of Italian romances of chivalry,
especially the 'Orlando Furioso' of Ariosto, which was written in the early
part of the sixteenth century. These romances, in turn, combine the
personages of the medieval French epics of Charlemagne with something of
the spirit of Arthurian romance and with a Renaissance atmosphere of magic
and of rich fantastic beauty. Spenser borrows and absorbs all these things
and moreover he imitates Ariosto closely, often merely translating whole
passages from his work. But this use of the Italian romances, further,
carries with it a large employment of characters, incidents, and imagery
from classical mythology and literature, among other things the elaborated
similes of the classical epics. Spenser himself is directly influenced,
also, by the medieval romances. Most important of all, all these elements
are shaped to the purpose of the poem by Spenser's high moral aim, which in
turn springs largely from his Platonic idealism.
What the plan of the poem is Spenser explains in a prefatory letter to Sir
Walter Ralegh. The whole is a vast epic allegory, aiming, in the first
place, to portray the virtues which make up the character of a perfect
knight; an ideal embodiment, seen through Renaissance conceptions, of the
best in the chivalrous system which in Spenser's time had passed away, but
to which some choice spirits still looked back with regretful admiration.
As Spenser intended, twelve moral virtues of the individual character, such
as Holiness and Temperance, were to be presented, each personified in the
hero of one of twelve Books; and the crowning virtue, which Spenser, in
Renaissance terms, called Magnificence, and which may be interpreted as
Magnanimity, was to figure as Prince (King) Arthur, nominally the central
hero of the whole poem, appearing and disappearing at frequent intervals.
Spenser states in his prefatory letter that if he shall carry this first
projected labor to a successful end he may continue it in still twelve
other Books, similarly allegorizing twelve political virtues. The
allegorical form, we should hardly need to be reminded, is another heritage
from medieval literature, but the effort to shape a perfect character,
completely equipped to serve the State, was characteristically of the
Platonizing Renaissance. That the reader may never be in danger of