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Updated: May 3, 2025
The two great men, thus alone among the wild Irish, made friends, and they had many a talk together. There within the gray stone walls of the old ivy-covered castle Spenser read the first part of his book, the Faery Queen, to Raleigh. Spenser had long been at work upon this great poem. It was divided into parts, and each part was called a book.
The words "dog" and "cat" have a meaning hardly more clearly defined than the name "Burns" or "Voltaire." An oak-tree can no more be mistaken for a willow than Shakespeare can be confused with Spenser. If we say "Coleridge," there is no possibility of any one thinking that perhaps we meant "Browning."
"I wish he'd teach me a little of his art; I could fill up my time here with making verses." "And who would be your theme, fair sir?" said Spenser. "No 'who' at all. I don't want to make sonnets to blue eyes, nor black either: but if I could put down some of the things I saw in the Spice Islands " "Ah," said Raleigh, "he would beat you out of Parnassus, Mr. Secretary.
We are not called on to understand the intricacies of the allegory, but to read between the lines, catch the noble moral lesson, and drink to our fill at the fountain of beauty and melody. Spenser a Subjective Poet. The subjective cast of Spenser's mind next demands attention. We feel that his is an ideal world, one that does not exist outside of the imagination.
Those in whom the poetical faculty, though great, is less intense, as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have frequently affected a moral aim, and the effect of their poetry is diminished in exact proportion to the degree in which they compel us to advert to this purpose.
Severe and chivalrous, dreaming of things to come, unsuppled by luxury, unenslaved by passion, somewhat scornful and self-sustained, it needed but a tyrannous king, an electrical political atmosphere, and a deeper interest in theology to make a Puritan of him, as these things made a Puritan of Milton. The differences between Chaucer and Spenser are seen at a glance in their portraits.
The reverse in his fortunes may perhaps fail to call forth in us the sympathy which we feel for Milton in his old age doing battle against a Philistine reaction, or for Spenser overwhelmed with calamities at the end of a life full of bitter disappointment.
The costumes of the peasants did not particularly please me. The women wear dresses of green or black woollen stuff, reaching to the ankle, and trimmed at the skirt with broad coloured woollen borders. The seams of the spenser, and the arm-holes, are also trimmed with smaller coloured borders. On their heads they wear a handkerchief, and over this a kind of shade, like a bonnet.
Daniel, who is often classed with the first Metaphysical poets, is interesting to us for two reasons, for his use of the artificial sonnet, and for his literary desertion of Spenser as a model for poets.
Among the English poets fatuous for their imaginative interpretation of nature, high rank must be given to William Browne, who belongs in the list headed by Spenser, and including Thomas Lodge, Michael Drayton, Nicholas Breton, George Wither, and Phineas Fletcher.
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