Spenser's Britomart: From Books III, IV, and V of the Faery Queene

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Ginn, 1896 - 265 pages

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Page ix - Did both find, helpers to their hearts' desire, And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish, — Were called upon to exercise their skill, Not in Utopia, — subterranean fields, — Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the world Of all of us, — the place where, in the end, We find our happiness, or not at all...
Page xxii - The generall end therefore of all the booke is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline...
Page xxx - Queene to assygne her some one of her knights to take on him that exployt. Presently that clownish person upstarting, desired that adventure; whereat the Queene much wondering, and the Lady much gainesaying, yet he earnestly importuned his desire...
Page xv - Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, What hell it is in suing long to bide : To lose good days, that might be better spent ; To waste long nights in pensive discontent ; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow ; To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow ; To have thy Princes
Page xv - To have thy asking, yet wait many years; To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares ; To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs; To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To spend, to give, to want, to be undone. Unhappy wight, born to disastrous end, That doth his life in so long 'tendance spend...
Page xxvii - I have followed all the antique Poets historicall: first Homere, who in the Persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governour 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...
Page xxix - The beginning therefore of my history, if it were to be told by an Historiographer should be the twelfth booke, which is the last; where I devise that the Faery Queene kept her Annuall feaste xii.
Page xxix - 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 most concerneth him, and there recoursing to the thinges forepaste, and divining of thinges to come, maketh a pleasing analysis of all.
Page 116 - But painted plumes in goodly order dight, Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight ; As those same plumes so...
Page xxvi - Queene, being a continued Allegory, or darke conceit, I have thought good, as well for avoyding of gealous 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.

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