The object of this volume is to excite interest in one of the greatest
poems of English literature, which for all its greatness is but little
read and known—to excite this interest not only in young persons who are
not yet able to read “The Faerie Queene,” with its archaisms of
language, its distant ways and habits of life and thought, its exquisite
melodies that only a cultivated ear can catch and appreciate, but also
in adults, who, not from the lack of ability, but because they shrink
from a little effort, suffer the loss of such high and refined literary
pleasure as the perusal of Spenser’s masterpiece can certainly give.
Assuredly, when all that cavillers can say or do is said and done, “The
Faerie Queene” is deservedly called one of the greatest poems of English
literature. From the high place it took, and took with acclamation, when
it first appeared, it has, in fact, never been deposed. It has many
defects and imperfections, such as the crudest and most commonplace
critic can discover, and has discovered with much self-complacency; but
it has beauties and perfections that such critics very often fail to
see; and, so far as the status of “The Faerie Queene” is concerned, it
is enough for the ordinary reader to grasp the significant fact that
Spenser has won specially for himself the famous title of “the poets’
poet.” Ever since his star appeared above the horizon, wise men from all
parts have come to worship it; and amongst these devotees fellow-poets
have thronged with a wonderful enthusiasm. In one point all the poetic
schools of England have agreed together, viz., in admiration for
Spenser. From Milton and Wordsworth on the one hand to Dryden and
Pope—from the one extreme of English poetry to the other—has prevailed a
perpetual reverence for Spenser. The lights in his temple, so to speak,
have never been extinguished—never have there been wanting offerers of
incense and of praise; and, to repeat in other words what has already
been said, as it is what we wish to specially emphasise, amidst this
faithful congregation have been many who already had or were some day to
have temples of their own. We recognise amongst its members not only the
great poets already mentioned, but many others of the divine
brotherhood, some at least of whom rank with the greatest, such as
Keats, Shelley, Sidney, Gray, Byron, the Fletchers, Henry More, Raleigh,
Thomson, not to name Beattie, Shenstone, Warton, Barnefield, Peele,
Campbell, Drayton, Cowley, Prior, Akenside, Roden Noel. To this long but
by no means exhaustive list might be added many of high eminence in
other departments of literature and of life, as Gibbon, Mackintosh,
Hazlitt, Craik, Lowell, Ruskin, R. W. Church, and a hundred more.
Now, of course, the acceptance of a poet is and must be finally due to
his own intrinsic merits. No amount of testimonials from ever so highly
distinguished persons will make a writer permanently popular if he
cannot make himself so—if his own works do not make him so. Of
testimonials there is very naturally considerable distrust—very
naturally, when we notice what second-rate penmen have been and are
cried up to the skies. But in the present case the character of the
testifiers is to be carefully considered; and, secondly, not only their
words but their actions are to be taken into account. Many of our
greatest poets have praised Spenser not only in formal phrases, but
practically and decisively, by surrendering themselves to his influence,
by sitting at his feet, by taking hints and suggestions from him. He has
been their master not merely nominally but actually, and with obvious
results. If all traces of Spenser’s fascination and power could be
removed from subsequent English literature, that literature would be a
very different thing from what it is: there would be strange breaks and
blanks in many a volume, hiatuses in many a line, an altered turning of
many a sentence, a modification of many a conception and fancy. And we
are convinced that the more Spenser is studied the more remarkable will
his dominance and his dominion be found to be. To quote lines that have
been quoted before in this connection—
“Hither, as to their fountain, other stars
Repairing, in their urns draw golden light.”
“The Faerie Queene” is one of the great wellheads of English poetry; or,
in other words, Spenser’s Faerie Land has been and is a favourite haunt
of all our highest poetic spirits.
And yet it is incontrovertible that this poem is very little known as a
whole to most people. Everybody is familiar with the story of Una and
the Lion, and with two or three stanzas of singular beauty in other
parts of “The Faerie Queen,” because these occur in most or all books of
selections: in every anthology occur those fairest flowers. But the
world at large is content to know no more. The size of the poem appals
it. “A big book is a big evil,” it thinks, and it shudders at the idea
of perusing the six twelve-cantoed books in which Spenser’s genius
expressed itself—expressed itself only in an incomplete and fragmentary
fashion, for many more books formed part of his enormous design. “Of the
persons who read the first canto,” says Macaulay in a famous Essay, “not
one in ten reaches the end of the First Book, and not one in a hundred
perseveres to the end of the poem. Very few and very weary are those who
are in at the death of the Blatant Beast. If the last six books, which
are said [without any authority] to have been destroyed in Ireland, had
been preserved, we doubt whether any heart less stout than that of a
commentator would have held out to the end.” And Macaulay speaks truly
as well as wittily. He is as accurate as Poins when Prince Hal asks him
what he would think if the Prince wept because the King his father was
sick. “I would think thee a most princely hypocrite,” replies Poins. “It
would be every man’s thought,” says the Prince: “and thou art a blessed
fellow to think as every man thinks. Never a man’s thought in the world
keeps the roadway better than thine.” Even so is Macaulay “a blessed
fellow to think as every man thinks,” and no doubt his blessedness in
this respect is one of the characteristics—by no means the only one—that
account for his widespread popularity. He not only states that people do
not read “The Faerie Queen,” but he shows that he himself, voracious
reader—_helluo librorum_—as he was, had not done so, or had done so very
carelessly; for, alas! the Blatant Beast, as at all events every student
of the present volume will know, does not die; Sir Calidore only
suppresses him for a time; he but temporarily ties and binds him in an
iron chain, “and makes him follow him like a fearful dog;” and one day
long afterwards the beast got loose again—
“Ne ever could by any, more be brought
Into like bands, ne maystred any more,
Albe that, long time after Calidore,
The good Sir Pelleas him tooke in hand,
And after him Sir Lamoracke of yore,
And all his brethren borne in Britaine land;
Yet none of them could ever bring him into band.
“So now he raungeth through the world againe,
And rageth sore in each degree and state;
Ne any is that may him now restraine,
He growen is so great and strong of late,
Barking and biting all that him doe bate,
Albe they worthy blame, or clear of crime;
Ne spareth he most learned wits to rate,
Ne spareth he the gentle Poets rime;
But rends without regard of person or of time.”
And Spenser goes on to declare that even his “homely verse of many
meanest” cannot hope to escape “his venemous despite;” for, in his own
day, as often since, Spenser by no means found favour with everybody.
Clearly even Macaulay’s memory of the close of “The Faerie Queene” was
sufficiently hazy. But even Milton, to whom Spenser was so congenial a
spirit, and whom he acknowledged as his “poetical father,” on one
occasion at least forgets the details of the Spenserian story. When
insisting in the _Areopagitica_ that true virtue is not “a fugitive and
cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out
and sees her adversary,” but a virtue that has been tried and tested, he
remarks that this “was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser,
whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas,
describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with
his Palmer through the cave of Mammon and the bower of earthly bliss,
that he may see, and know, and yet abstain.” But the Palmer was not with
Sir Guyon in the Cave of Mammon, Phædria having declined to ferry him
over to her floating island. See “The Faerie Queene,” ii, 6, 19:—
“Himselfe [Sir Guyon] she tooke aboord,
But the Black Palmer suffred still to stond,
Ne would for price or prayers once affoord
To ferry that old man over the perlous foord.
“Guyon was loath to leave his guide behind,
Yet being entred might not back retyre;
For the flitt barke, obeying to her mind,
Forth launched quickly as she did desire,
Ne gave him leave to bid that aged sire
Adieu.”
So Macaulay’s lapse must not be regarded too severely, though, as may be
seen, much more prominence is given by Spenser to the fact that the
Blatant Beast was not killed, than to the absence of the Palmer from
Guyon’s side in Mammon’s House. It seems probable, indeed, that Macaulay
mixed up the fate of the Dragon in the eleventh canto of the First Book
with that of the Blatant Beast in the twelfth of the Sixth. But we
mention these things only to prevent any surprise at the general
ignorance of Spenser, when such a confirmed book-lover as Macaulay, and
such a devoted Spenserian as Milton, are found tripping in their
allusions to his greatest work.
Now this ignorance, however explicable, is, we think, to be regretted. A
poet of such splendid attributes, and with such a choice company of
followers, surely deserves to be better known than he is by “the general
reader”; and we trust that this volume may be of service in making the
stories of “The Faerie Queene” more familiar, and so in tempting the
general reader to turn to Spenser’s own version of them, and to
appreciate his amazing affluence of language, of melody, and of fancy.
Clearly, Spenser does not appeal to everybody at first; we mean that to
enjoy him fully needs some little effort to begin with—some distinct
effort to put ourselves in communication with him, so to speak; for he
is far away from us in many respects. His costume and his accent are
very different from ours. He does not seem to be of us or of our world.
“His soul” is “like a star”: it dwells “apart.” We have, it would appear
at first sight, nothing in common with him: he moves all alone in a
separate sphere—he is not of our flesh and blood. What strikes us at
first sight is a certain artificiality and elaborateness, as we think.
We cannot put ourselves on confidential terms with him; he is too
stately and _point devise_. His art rather asserts than conceals itself
to persons who merely glance at him. But these impressions will be
largely or altogether removed, _if the reader will really read “The
Faerie Queene.”_ He will no longer think of its author as a mere
phrase-monger, or only a dainty melodist, or the master of a superfine
style. He will find himself in communion with a man of high intellect,
of a noble nature—of great attraction, not only for his humanism, but
for his humanity. To Spenser, Wordsworth’s lines in “A Poet’s Epitaph”
may be applied with particular and profound truth:—
“He is retired as noontide dew,
Or fountain in a noonday grove;
And you must love him ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.”
The very opulence of Spenser’s genius stands in the way of his due
appraisement. There can scarcely be a doubt that if he could have
restrained the redundant stream of his poetry, he might have been more
worthily recognised. Had he written less, he would have been praised
more; as it is, with many readers, _mole ruit sua_: they are overpowered
and bewildered by the immense flood. The waters of Helicon seem a
torrent deluge. We say his popularity would have been greater, if he
could have restrained and controlled this amazing outflow; but, after
all, we must take our great poets as we find them. In this very
abundance, as in other ways, Spenser was a child of his age, and we must
accept him with all his faults as well as with all his excellences. Both
faults and excellences are closely inter-connected. _Il a les défauts de
ses qualités._
He said that Chaucer was his poetical master, and more than once he
mentions Chaucer with the most generous admiration:—
“Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,
On Fames eternal beadroll worthy to be fyled.”
“That old Dan Geffrey, in whose gentle spright
The pure well head of Poesie did dwell.”
And Chaucer too may be said to suffer from a very plethora of wealth.
Chaucer is apt to be superabundant; but yet he was a model of
self-restraint as compared with Spenser. One cannot say in this case,
“Like master, like man,” or, “Like father, like son.” Their geniuses are
entirely different—a fact which makes Spenser’s devotion to Chaucer all
the more noticeable and interesting; and the art of the one is in sharp
contrast with the art of the other. Chaucer is a masterly tale-teller:
no one in all English poetry equals him in this faculty; he is as
supreme in it as Shakespeare in the department of the drama. In his
tales Chaucer is, “without o’erflowing, full.” The conditions under
which they were told beneficially bounded and limited them. Each is
_multum in parvo_. They are very wonders of compression, and yet produce
no sense of confinement or excision. Spenser could not possibly have set
before himself a better exemplar; but yet he so set him in vain. The
contrast between the two poets, considered merely as narrators or
story-tellers, is vividly exhibited in the third canto of the Fourth
Book of “The Faerie Queene,” where, after a reverent obeisance to his
great predecessor, he attempts to tell the other half of the half-told
story.
“Of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife,
That owned the virtuous ring and glass,
And of the wondrous horse of brass,
On which the Tartar king did ride.”
It is not without some misgiving that he adventures on such a daring
task:—
“Then pardon, O most sacred happie Spirit!
That I thy labours lost[1] may thus revive,
And steale from thee the meede of thy due merit,
That none durst ever whilest thou wast alive,
And being dead in vain yet many strive.
Ne dare I like; but through infusion swete
Of thine own Spirit which doth in me survive,
I follow here the footing of thy feete,
But with thy meaning so I may the rather meete.”
Footnote 1:
Spenser thought that the latter Part or Parts of the “Squire’s Tale”
had actually been written but been lost—been “quite devoured” by
“cursed eld,” and “brought to nought by little bits,” as he quaintly
expresses it. But it may be taken as certain Chaucer left the tale as
we have it, that is, “half told.” The closing lines of what we have
are clearly unrevised. For some reason or another—trouble or sickness,
or his growing infirmity—what would have been one of the most
brilliant works of the Middle Ages was never completed, and, like
“Christabel” and “Hyperion,” remains only a glorious fragment.
But it can scarcely be allowed either that he follows the footing of his
master’s feet, or that he caught the breath of his master’s spirit.
There are “diversities of operations”; and Spenser’s method and manner
were not those of Chaucer, however sincere the allegiance he professed,
and however sincere his intentions to tread in his footsteps and march
along the same road. He wanted some gifts and some habits that are
necessary for the perfect story-teller—gifts and habits which Chaucer,
by nature or by discipline, possessed in a high degree, such as humour,
concentration, realism. The very structure of “The Faerie Queene” is
defective. It begins in the middle—at its opening it takes us _in medias
res_, seemingly in accordance with the precedent of the _Iliad_ or of
the _Æneid_, but only seemingly, for both Homer and Virgil very soon
finish the explanation of their opening initial scenes, and their
readers know where they are. But the first six books of “The Faerie
Queene” are very slightly connected together; and what the connection is
meant to be we learn only from the letter of the poet to Sir Walter
Raleigh, which it was thought well to print with the first three books,
no doubt in consequence of some complaints of obscurity and
disattachment. This letter is significantly described as “expounding
his” (the author’s) “whole intention in the course of this work,” and as
“hereunto annexed, for that it giveth great light to the reader for the
better understanding.” Certainly a story ought not to require a prose
appendix to set forth its arrangement and its purpose, even if only a
fourth of it is completed. The exact correlation of eleven books was to
remain unrevealed till the Twelfth Book appeared. In fact, had the poem
ever been completed, we should have had to begin its perusal at the end!
Thus “The Faerie Queene,” as has often been remarked, lacks unity and
cohesion. It is not so much one large and glorious mansion as a group of
mansions. To use the metaphor of Professor Craik, to whom many
subsequent writers on Spenser have been so considerably indebted, and
often without any at all adequate acknowledgment, it is a street of fine
houses, or, to use another metaphor of Professor Craik’s, which also has
been freely adopted by other critics, it is in parts a kind of
wilderness—a wilderness of wonderful beauty and wealth, in which it is a
delight to wander, but yet a wilderness with paths and tracks dimly and
faintly marked, often scarcely to be discerned.
Such was the abundance of Spenser’s fancy, and so various and extensive
was his learning, that he wrote, it would seem, with an amazing
facility, never checked by any paucities of either knowledge or ideas.
His pen could scarcely keep pace with his imagination. His material he
drew from all accessible sources—from the Greek and Latin classics (his
sympathetic acquaintance with Plato is one of his distinctions), from
the Italian poets (not only from Ariosto and Tasso, but Berni, Boiardo,
Pulci, and others), from the old Romances of Chivalry (especially the
Arthurian in Malory’s famous rendering, Bevis of Southampton, Amadis de
Gaul), from what there was of modern English literature (above all,
Chaucer’s works, but also Hawes and other minor writers) and of modern
French literature (especially Marot), from contemporary history (all the
great personages of his time are brought before us in his pages): but
all these diverse elements he combines and assimilates in his own
fashion, and forms into a compound quite unique, and highly
characteristic both of the hour and of the man. No wonder if the modern
reader is at first somewhat perplexed and confused; no wonder if he
often loses the thread of the story, and fails to comprehend such an
astonishing prodigality of incident and of personification. Figure after
figure flits before his eyes—the cry is still “They come”; one seems to
be in the very birthplace and home of dreams, knights, ladies, monsters,
wizards, and witches; all forms of good and evil throng by in quick
succession, and we are apt to forget who is who and what is what.
Probably some candid good-natured friend complained to Spenser of this
complicatedness, which is certainly at its worst in the Third and Fourth
Books; and in a certain passage in the Sixth he makes some sort of
defence of himself for what might seem divisions or aberrations in the
story of Sir Calidore. He compares himself to a ship that, by reason of
counter-winds and tides, fails to go straight to its destination, but
yet makes for it, and does not lose its compass; see VI. xii. 1 and 2.
We are sure that for all young readers such a version of Spenser’s
stories as is given in this volume may be truly serviceable in preparing
them for the study of the poem itself. And with some older readers
too—and it is to them this Introduction is mainly addressed—we would
fain hope this volume may find a hearty welcome, as providing them with
a clue to what seems an intricate maze. What we should like to picture
to ourselves is young and old reading these stories together, and the
elder students selecting for their own benefit, and for the benefit of
the younger, a few stanzas here and there from “The Faerie Queene” by
way of illustration. Of course we do not make this humble suggestion to
the initiated, but to those—and their name is Legion—who at present know
nothing or next to nothing of what is certainly one of the masterpieces
of English literature.