all time as one among the greatest poets the world has seen. It is to the worship of all that is true and beautiful and holy in life that the poem is dedicated. It is not well connected as a story, and the characters are faint and shadowy, but it is a wonderful picture of pure Christian knighterrantry riding upon its course through the darkest and most dangerous places of a troubled world, and the "light" always shining in the "darkness" much as that bright heaven-lit soul of Spenser's must have shone upon the sinful and sorrowful lives of the wild warriors among whom he lived. The first book contains the "Legend of the Red Cross Knight, or of Holinesse;" the second, of "Sir Guyon, or of Temperance;" the third, of "Britomart, or Chastity;" the fourth of "Cambel and Triamond, or Friendship;" the fifth is the "Legend of Artegall, or of Justice;" the sixth of "Sir Calidore, or of Courtesie;" and the cantos of the seventh which remain are on "Mutabelitie, under the Legend of Constance." In a conversation between himself and some of his friends, while composing the "Faerie Queene," Spenser thus speaks of his conception, "To represent all the moral vertues, assigning to every vertue a Knight to be the patron and defender of the same, in whose actions and feates of arms and chivalry the operations of that vertue, whereof he is the protector, are to be expressed, and the vices and unruly appetites that oppose themselves against the same, to be beaten down and overcome." His work was intended, before all things, to instil into the minds of his readers a love of all that was noble and just. He was one of the great workers of the day. While Drake and Raleigh were venturing their lives in search of golden lands beyond the sea, while Bacon was toiling to open men's minds to the boundless. stores of the New Philosophy, and while faithful seekers after truth among priests alike of the old and new Catholicism were willingly spending their lives and shedding their blood for the sake of bringing men nearer to God, so among the shelter of the Irish hills the "New Poet" worked with loving and almost inspired toil, to bring before men's eyes a picture of good conquering evil, and strength upholding weakness, in a more perfect form than English verse had ever yet seen. In 1589 Sir Walter Raleigh was visiting his Irish home at Youghal, not very far distant from Kilcolman, and thither he came, and there he read the early part of the "Faerie Queene," and he recognised its merits at once, and persuaded Spenser to take the first three books to England, where they were published early in the following year, and met with an enthusiastic reception. This visit, and Spenser's consequent return to Court, led to his writing the poem entitled "Colin Clout's come home again," Colin, as before, representing himself. After the years spent in lawless Ireland, heartfelt must have been the words in which he describes the blissful state of England, as it seemed to him :— "There all happie peace and plenteous store No griesly famine, nor no raging sweard; cries; Lore to nis castle in ever increasic of his verse The shepheards there abroad may safely xe had never On hills and downes, withouten dread or No ravenous wolves the good man's hope 'eene" he in- an is given to And Poets wits are had in peerlesse price each verse. He shows his obedience to the fashion of the time in his description of the charms of Elizabeth, then in her fifty-eighth year : "But if I her like ought on earth might read, With Roses dight and Goolds and Daffadillies. But vaine it is to thinke, by paragone Of earthly things, to judge of things divine : Can deeme, but who the Godhead can define." To her he dedicated his "Faerie Queene" in what Dean Church calls "one of the boldest dedications ever penned," but one which "has proved a prophecy": sto. THE MOST HIGH, MIGHTIE, AND MAGNIFICENT . . . seekers ... ELIZABETH ... old and . " DOTH, IN ALL HUMILitie, dedicate, present, iant atmosphere of the Court, amid and its intrigues, which were new n the poet's life, his next two years nd some of his feelings on what he a more pe... "in the satirical poem he wrote at this yet seen. quering ev In 1589, Irish home "Mother Hubberd's Tale of the Ape There the wily ways of diplomacy are criticised, and the Churchmen, Peers, and a "rascall Commons," who all seem to him under the power of the "false Fox," who may easily stand for his life-long opponent Burghley. But Court life was not to Spenser's mind, nor had he much to gain by prolonging his stay there. So he again crossed the stormy channel, beyond which lay the still more stormy island which was to be his home till death. On Midsummer Day, 1594, he took a wife from among the fair maids of Ireland. We know little of her but that she was called Elizabeth, and that she bore him two sons, whom he named Sylvanus and Peregrine. The rest of his life was devoted to the work of the "Faerie Queene," and he returned no more to Court, but dwelt with his Irish bride in his castle of Kilcolman. There his "Faerie Queene" grew in ever increasing beauty; the majesty and music of his verse were such as the English language had never hitherto known: in the "Faerie Queene" he invented the stanza, now called by his name, with the long rolling line at the end of each verse. He had a keener eye for beauty than is given to most men, he saw it everywhere, and he knew how to paint it in words which made others see it |