EK

tendency of these poems in two supplementary hymns, one to Heavenly Love, the other to Heavenly Beauty. It was easy for him to extend the idea of the Platonic Eros as Bonaventura and others had done before him-into the conception of the perfect love of God through Christ; but he evidently felt a difficulty in expanding his description of intellectual beauty into a more definitely theological form. Words failed him to paint the Wisdom that dwells in the bosom of God, and his description of the Beatific Vision is pale and cold by the side of the blaze of imagery in which Dante paints the glories of the Heaven of Heavens.

Trained in the Platonic system of interpreting life and nature, Spenser, with the natural impulse of a poet, next turned his thoughts to the invention of forms in which he could most appropriately express his ideas. Two principal modes of personification at once suggested themselves, the figures of the Shepherd and the Knight, and it appears that he began to work on both of these at the same time, for his correspondence with Gabriel Harvey shows that in 1580 not only The Shepherd's Calendar, but some portion of the Faery Queen, had been submitted to his friend's judgment. The former work was completed in 1579. It was published anonymously with a dedication to Philip Sidney, "the President of nobleness and chivalry," signed with the self-depreciating name Immerito (Spenser's pseudonym in his correspondence with Gabriel Harvey), and accompanied by a commentary, the work of one E. K., who has been with much probability identified as Edward Kirke, Spenser's friend and fellow student at Pembroke Hall. E. K., evidently possessing an intimate acquaintance with all the author's intentions, describes his purpose as follows:

Now as touching the general drift and purpose of his Æglogues I mind not to say much, himself labouring to conceal it. Only this appeareth that his unstayed youth had long wandered in the Common Labyrinth of Love, in which time to mitigate and allay the heat of his passion, or else to warn (as he saith) the young shepherds, his equals and companions of his unfortunate folly, he compiled these xii. Æglogues, which for that

they be proportioned to the state of the xii. months he termeth the Shepherd's Calendar, applying an old word to a new work."

The name of the poem was borrowed from the French Kalendrier des Bergers, an almanac which since the beginning of the sixteenth century had been popularised in England by many translations. The "labyrinth of love" referred to by E. K. is an allusion to Colin Clout's professed passion for Rosalynd, "the widow's daughter of the glen," which the poet celebrated at a later date in Colin Clout's Come Home Again. But it must be plain to every reader of The Shepherd's Calendar that the suffering occasioned by the insensibility of this shepherdess accounts but very partially for the character of the composition. The shepherd Colin, who is the martyr, appears but in three of the "Eglogues," viz. January, June, December; and reference to his unhappy state and his poetical genius is made in two more, viz. April and August. But of the remaining seven months five-May, July, September, October, November are devoted to dialogues on religious questions; another, February, to a moralisation on the characters of Youth and Age; while in March the subject of love is treated in a light and fanciful vein, and without any reference to Colin's misfortunes.

If we look below the surface of The Shepherd's Calendar, we can hardly doubt that the "drift and purpose of the composition was not "to warn young shepherds of the folly of Love," but to give a new poetical development to the traditional character of the Eclogue. Spenser observed the various purposes to which the pastoral style had been put by poets differing from each other so widely as Bion, Mantuan, and Marot, and he endeavoured to give unity to their opposite experiments, partly by allegorising the Kalendrier des Bergers, partly by assimilating the emotions of his shepherds to the vicissitudes of the seasons. In almost every "Eglogue" we find an attempt to give a new turn to the practice of some pastoral predecessor. For example, from the earliest days the Eclogue had been used as a vehicle for the complaints of lovers, and in Colin's laments over the

cruelty of Rosalynd the poet was merely following the example set him by Theocritus and Virgil. In his reflections on the faults of the Roman Catholic and Anglican clergy he had been anticipated by Mantuan, on the one hand, and by Googe, on the other; while Barclay, by his praises of Archbishop Morton in the character of a shepherd, had furnished him with the suggestion of a compliment to his old patron Grindal, and with the idea of giving the rustic names Morell and Ruffin to the contemporary bishops, Elmore and Young (Rochester). From Marot he borrowed the motive of the dirge in the eleventh Æglogue, and the Elegy or Complaint of the twelfth. Thus, without departing from the convention of pastoral poetry, Spenser modified it for his own purposes with such admirable delicacy and artistic instinct, that he appears as in a certain sense an inventor, even on well-trodden ground. E. K., when The Shepherd's Calendar first appeared, could say with something like an appeal to authority:

It moved him rather in Eglogues than otherwise to write, doubting perhaps his hability, which he little needed, or minding to furnish our tongue with this kind, wherein it faulteth; or following the example of the best and most ancient Poets which devised this kind of writing, being both so base for the matter, and homely for the manner, at first to try their habilities; and as young birds that be newly crept out of the nest, by little first to try their tender wings, before they make a greater flight.

Besides giving a picturesque utterance in pastoral images to the commonplaces of contemporary thought, Spenser had another, and more purely artistic, purpose; he was making experiments, like Ronsard, though on very different principles, in poetical diction. His design in this direction is thus defended by E. K. :

And first of the words to speak, I grant they be something hard, and of most men unused, yet both English, and also used of most excellent Authors and most famous Poets. In whom, whenas this our Poet hath been much travailed and throughly read, how could it be (as that worthy Orator said) but that walking in the sun, although for other cause he walked, yet needs he mought be sunburnt; and having the sound of those ancient Poets still ringing in his ears, he mought needs in

singing hit out some of their tunes. . . . But if any will rashly blame such his purpose in choice of old and unwonted words, him may I more justly blame and condemn, or of witless headiness in judging or of heedless hardiness in condemning; for not marking the compass of his bent, he will judge of the length of his cast; for in my opinion, it is one special praise of many which are due to this Poet, that he hath laboured to restore, as to their rightful heritage, such good and natural English words, as have been long time out of use, and almost clean disherited. Which is the only cause that our Mother Tongue, which truly of it self is both full enough for prose, and stately enough for verse, hath long time been accounted most bare and barren of both. Which default whenas some endeavoured to salve and recure, they patched up the holes with pieces and rags of other languages, borrowing here of the French, there of the Italian, everywhere of the Latin, not weighing how ill those tongues accord with themselves, but much worse with ours: So now they have made our English tongue a gallimaufray, or hodge-podge of all other speeches.

Let us now turn to the design of the Faery Queen. It should be remembered that Spenser's account of his motives in this poem is an after-thought, due to the suggestion of Raleigh, to whom the poet addressed the following letter on January 23, 1589-90:

"SIR-Knowing how doubtfully all allegories may be construed, and this book of mine, which I have entitled the Faery Queen, being a continued allegory or dark conceit, I have thought good, as well for avoiding of jealous opinions and misconstructions, as also for your better light in reading thereof (being so by you commanded) to discover unto you the general intention and meaning which in the whole course thereof I have fashioned, without expressing of any particular purposes, or by-accidents, therein occasioned. The general end therefore of all the book is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline. Which for that I conceived should be most plausible and pleasing, being covered with an historical fiction, the which the most part of men delight to read, rather for variety of matter than for profit of the ensample: I chose the history of King Arthur as most fit for the excellency of his person, being made famous by many men's former works, and also furthest from the danger of envy and suspicion of present time. In which I have followed all the antique poets historical: first Homer, who in the persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good

governor and a virtuous man, the one in his Ilias, the other in his Odysseis: then Virgil, whose like intention was to doe in the person of Æneas: after him Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando and lately Tasso dissevered them again, and formed both parts in two persons, namely, that part which they in philosophy call Ethice, or virtues of a private man, coloured in his Rinaldo: the other, named Politice, in his Godfredo. By ensample of which excellent Poets, I labour to portray in Arthur, before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private moral virtues, as Aristotle hath devised; the which is the purpose of these first twelve books: which if I find to be well accepted, I may perhaps be encouraged to frame the other part of politic virtues, in his person, after he came to be king.

To some I know this method will seem displeasant, which would rather have good discipline delivered plainly by way of precepts, or sermoned at large, as they use, than thus cloudily enwrapt in allegorical devices. But such, me seem, should be satisfied with the use of these days, seeing all things accounted by their shows, and nothing esteemed of that is not delightful and pleasing to common sense. For this cause is Xenophon preferred before Plato, for that the one, in the exquisite sense of his judgment, formed a commonwealth such as it should be; but the other, in the person of Cyrus and the Persians, fashioned a government, such as might best be: So much more profitable and gracious is doctrine by ensample than by rule. So have I laboured to do in the person of Arthur: whom I conceive, after his long education by Timon (to whom he was by Merlin delivered to be brought up, so soon as he was born, by the Lady Igrayne) to have seen in a dream or vision the Faery Queen, with whose excellent beauty ravished, he awaking resolved to seek her out and so, being by Merlin armed, and by Timon thoroughly instructed, he went to seek her forth in Faery Land. In that Faery Queen I mean Glory in my general intention: but in my particular I conceive the most excellent and gracious person of our Sovereign the Queen, and her kingdom in Faery Land. And yet in some places else I do otherwise shadow her. For considering she beareth two persons, the one of a most royal Queen or Empress, the other of a most virtuous and beautiful lady, this latter part in some places I do express in Belphoebe, fashioning her name according to your own excellent conceit of Cynthia (Phoebe and Cynthia being both names of Diana). So in the person of Prince Arthur I set forth Magnificence in particular, which virtue for that (according to Aristotle and all the rest) it is the perfection of all the rest, and containeth in it them all, therefore in the whole course I mention the deeds