but she is far more. She is a woman with sufficient individuality to be 'pre-eminently dear' to that poet who of all others delighted to find his happiness ' in this world, which is the world of all of us'. And such in the main is the structural allegory of the Faerie Queene. The characters, indeed, are seldom presented with the subtle and complex detail of a realist. Spenser's whole artistic method is that of idealization, and of emphasis on the essential. But for all that he bases it on life. Sometimes, indeed, it is impossible to determine whether the ideal conception or the character which expresses it was his initial inspiration, whether in Sir Calidore he thought first of Courtesy or of Sir Philip Sidney, whether he drew Timias from Ralegh or found himself in his delineation of reckless honour falling back unconsciously upon his knowledge of his daring and impetuous friend. Allegory of this kind can easily be distinguished from the more obvious personification, however vivid; it has all the character of myth, which, apart from all its symbolism, has complete artistic life. Thus Spenser idealizes real persons, and he breathes life into abstractions. He sees Hope not merely as a symbolic figure leaning upon an anchor, but as a living woman, whose face bears signs of the anguish hidden at her heart. He sees Lord Grey not simply as a sagacious and just-minded man, but as the faery knight of Justice. By his side he sets Talus, the iron man, that most powerful embodiment of Justice in the abstract. In Sir Artegal and his remorseless squire the different types of allegory are seen at once in their boldest contrast and in perfect harmony. And so the Graces who dance before Colin upon the mount of Acidale are not three but four in number; for in the midst of these ancient 'handmaids of Venus, daughters of delight', who to the Greeks symbolized all the grace and charm of womanhood, is ' placed paravaunt' the woman that Colin loved, the heroine of the Amoretti and the Epithalamion. But there is nothing incongruous. The real meets the ideal in faery land, and its kinship is acknowledged. And even where the allegorical form is least spontaneous and most nearly dead, Spenser's imagination breathes life into what seems doomed to be formal and mechanic. The ingenious symbolism of the Castle of Alma might well have been borrowed from the dryest scholasticism, and in the description of its lower regions, where the maister cooke Decoction officiates with the kitchen clerke Digestion, Spenser's art sinks to its lowest. Yet even within these antiquated walls we meet with vividly real people. Like Sir Guyon, we are drawn to that strangely shy maiden, dressed in her thickly folded robe of blue. We watch the flashing blood inflame her lovely face as Guyon addresses her, and the human appeal of the scene is not lessened when Alma reveals its ideal significance : Why wonder yee Faire Sir at that, which ye so much embrace ? She is the fountaine of your modestee; You shamefast are, but Shamefastnesse it selfe is shee. (11. ix. 43.) The ideal conception of modesty is bodied forth in the lady, the human quality of modesty is the very essence of Guyon's personality. The two meet for one vivid moment in the spacious halls of Alma, the Soul. And the larger world in which they meet is the ideal world of Spenser's imagination. This world of faery land is wide enough to embrace all that was most precious to Spenser in his own experience. With its chivalrous combats and its graceful leisure, its tangle of incident and character, its dense forest and glades, and pleasant sunny interspaces, where the smoke rises from the homely cottage or the stream trickles down with a low murmur inviting repose and meditation, it could mirror both the world of his philosophic vision and the real world of the Irish countryside, of court intrigues, of European politics, of his own loves and friendships. The romantic setting of the faery forest and the idealizing form of allegory are more than a picturesque convention. They are the fitting artistic expression of that mood in which he looked out on the strangeness and the beauty of life, and brooded over its inner meaning. It was inevitable that his faery land should be enriched with the spoils of literary reminiscence. A student from his youth, he had lived a full and eager life in books, and his imagination was kindled in the study as in the outer world. To know the sources of his art is to be familiar with the library to which the Elizabethan scholar had access. Spenser draws with equal freedom from the Bible, from the Greek and Latin poets, from the writings of the French and Italian Renaissance, from that mediaeval literature which the learned held up to contempt. La Morte D'Arthur, and kindred romances, Sir Bevis, Guy of Warwick, and the rest'those feigned books of chivalry wherein', says Ascham, 'a man by reading them should be led to none other end but only to manslaughter and bawdry'-suggested to Spenser much incident and inspired many a noble reflection. His art is compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, but whilst few artists have owed more to their predecessors, none has more indelibly marked all that he touched with his own impress. There is hardly an incident that the keen-scented source hunter cannot track down to some earlier writer, obvious or obscure; but more astonishing than the extent and diversity of Spenser's reading is his power to group in one harmonious picture materials drawn from widely varying sources. They harmonize because nothing is left as it was found, but all that passes through his mind is coloured by his imagination, and has caught the distinctive quality of his personality. Distinctions of classical and romantic, ancient and modern, sacred and profane, have no meaning for him. Where others distinguish, he is only conscious of the unity of all that has arrested the human imagination. This eclectic method is pursued alike in the main weaving of his plot, in its incidental embellishment, in the similes and allusions that enrich his style and drive home his imaginative conception. The story of Una and her knight opens with suggestions of Malory's Gareth and Lynette; the enchanter who is their chief enemy is no distant relative of Ariosto's hermit, who deceives Angelica; on their travels they meet with classical satyrs and Elizabethan courtiers, their adventures are reminiscent now of Vergil, now of Sir Bevis and The Seven Champions of Christendom, now of the Apocalypse, and their betrothal is celebrated with a confusion of pagan and Christian ritual; yet there is nothing to disturb the harmony of the imaginative atmosphere. The ante-room in the house of Busirane is hung with goodly arras whereon, as in the castle of many a mediaeval poet, are woven legends of classical mythology. Their source is Ovid, but nothing could be less like Ovid than the music and the feeling with which Spenser delineates them. And over the portals of the room are inscribed the words Be bold, which have come from the old wives' tale of Mr. Fox. Among the lovers whose 'spotlesse pleasures' make glad the garden of Venus, David and Jonathan, Pylades and Orestes walk side by side; in the dark river of Cocytus Pilate stands next to Tantalus. Nor is the poet's method different when he is uttering his deepest religious conviction. The well of life into which the Red Cross Knight sinks in his conflict with the dragon is likened not merely to Silo or to Jordan, but to Cephise and to Hebrus, to the English Bath and the German Spau. The guardian angel who watches over the prostrate Sir Guyon after his fierce struggle with the temptations of Mammon, and evokes that superb expression of Christian humility and gratitude : O why should heauenly God to men haue such regard ? (II. viii. 2.) appears to Spenser as a fair young man Of wondrous beautie, and of freshest yeares (11. viii. 5.) like to Phoebus, or 'to Cupido on Idaean hill. The pedant finds the comparison ludicrous, the more prosaic pietist finds it profane. To Spenser it was natural, almost inevitable. As Truth appealed to him in terms of beauty, so all beauty, whatever its source, could be brought to serve and to illuminate the highest truth. This wealth of varied reminiscence he brings into touch with his own observation of nature and of human character. The main features of Irish scenery supplied a background for his poem hardly distinguishable from the traditional landscape of mediaeval romance, and he often treats it in an entirely traditional manner. But it gave him also, as the fruit of intimate observation, pictures of vivid reality. The little mountain path of trodden grass where Una comes upon the damzell ' that on her shoulders sad a pot of water bore' (1. iii. 10), the house of Care under the steep hillside with its muddie brook and few crooked sallows (IV. v. 33), the valley in which, through the tops of the high trees, Florimel descries A little smoke, whose vapour thin and light and the hovel built of stickes and reeds, In homely wize, and walled with sods around, (III. vii. 5, 6.) are all drawn from the life. But Spenser's delicate observation is shown less in set description than in incidental simile and suggestion. In describing the wood of error (1. i. 8, 9) he is content to follow a conventional catalogue that he has drawn from Chaucer: only incidentally does he show his knowledge and love of trees, bringing us in sight of those two goodly trees, that faire did spred Their armes abroad, with gray mosse ouercast, and noting how in winter the Hoarie frost with spangles doth attire The mossy braunches of an Oke halfe ded. (1. x. 48.) In his treatment of the sea he is less hampered by precedent. It is patriotism, doubtless, and the adventurous spirit of his age that suggest the nautical metaphors with which he delights to mark the stages of his poem. But his love for the sea was personal, founded on a familiar knowledge of the coast. He knows the moyst mountains of the Irish shore, that each on other throng'. He has watched the meeting of two billows in the Irish sounds, Forcibly driuen with contrarie tydes. (Iv. i. 42.) With Florimel he has visited the little sheltered bay where A little boate lay houing her before, In which there slept a fisher old and pore, The whiles his nets were drying on the sand. (III. vii. 27.) His ears have caught the hollow thunder of the horses' hoofs upon the beach; and the low boom of the water as it breaks in foam upon the rocks is re-echoed in his verse : With that the rolling sea resounding soft, In his big base them fitly answered, And on the rocke the waues breaking aloft, A solemne Meane vnto them measured. (11. xii. 33.) As the ferryman brushes the sea with his stiff oars he notes That the hoare waters from his frigot ran, And the light bubbles daunced all along, (11. xii. 10.) and his eye detects the 'checked wave' that covers the dangerous quicksand (11. xii. 18). He is deeply sensitive to the beauty of light upon the water. The armour of Pyrochles glitters as the Sunny beames do glaunce and glide Vpon the trembling waue. (II. v. 2). The moistened eyes of Acrasia are like the starry light Which sparckling on the silent waues, does seeme more bright. (11. xii. 78.) The beauty of women again and again suggests to him imaginative effects of light and shade. The angel face' of Una 'makes a sunshine in the shady place', the damsells who dance before Colin have faces 'glancing like evening lights', Britomart, as her hair falls to her feet, ' is creasted all with lines of fierie light,' like the sky upon a summer evening. The conventions of the life of chivalry which have dictated the outward actions of his dramatis personae should not blind our eyes to the truthful simplicity of their emotions. The heroic career of the warrior maid, Britomart, may have little in common with ordinary life, but the manner in which her inner life is revealed, in all its subtle changes of mood, might well excite the envy of a realistic novelist. Spenser's knowledge of a woman's heart and a woman's ways finds constant and subtle expression. With a touch of vivid detail he can invest with living interest a wholly subordinate character. Clarinda, asked for news of her prisoner for whom she has a secret love, is taken off her guard and thrown into confusion, but, so soone As she her face had wypt, to fresh her blood, (v. v. 45.) she recovers herself, and is able to invent a plausible tale. The anxious care of the aged nurse Glauce over her sick mistress is depicted in many delicate strokes of humour and pathos; and the stanza that closes the midnight scene between them would be hard to surpass in its homeliness, its dramatic truth of detail, and its climax of tenderness : Her chearefull words much cheard the feeble spright And set her by to watch, and set her by to weepe. (III. ii. 47.) Spenser's love of children is quickened by a rare sympathy with the experience of woman. He realizes by an intuition, in which he comes near to Wordsworth, her passionate tenderness for the child unborn, for the child that is her living care, for the child that is not hers. When Britomart |