Transcriber’s note

In the HTML version the stanza numbers (indicated by Roman numerals) are in the left margin. In the EPUB3, EPUB, and Kindle versions, they are located on the right side after the first line ends.

THE POETICAL WORKS OF EDMUND SPENSER

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOLUME II

SPENSER’S
FAERIE QUEENE

EDITED BY

J. C. SMITH

VOLUME I: BOOKS I-III

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4

GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA
CAPE TOWN SALISBURY NAIROBI IBADAN ACCRA
KUALA LUMPUR HONG KONG

FIRST PUBLISHED 1909
REPRINTED LITHOGRAPHICALLY IN GREAT BRITAIN
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD
FROM SHEETS OF THE FIRST IMPRESSION
1961, 1964

INTRODUCTION.

I.

In these volumes I seek to present a true text of the Faerie Queene, founded upon a fresh collation of the Quartos of 1590 and 1596 and the Folio of 1609. I shall call these editions by their dates for short.

The fragmentary Seventh Book appeared first in 1609: for the rest the text is based on 1596. Some typographical peculiarities—long s, &, ô, and superscribed m and n (e.g. frõ, whẽ)—have not been reproduced, but noted only where they first occur. With these exceptions, the readings of 1596 if not adopted in the text are recorded in the notes; so that text and notes together amount, in effect, to a complete reprint of 1596. No such completeness has been attempted in recording variants from 1590 and 1609. But all verbal differences are recorded, and all differences of punctuation that imply a different view of the meaning. Mere changes of spelling that answer to no change of pronunciation are, as a rule, ignored; but I have recorded such differences of spelling as seemed likely to interest students of Elizabethan phonology, grammar, and usage. The evidence of these variants must be used with caution in view of Spenser’s deliberate archaism. Yet I believe that they have some value. I give one instance in each kind:—

1. A fluid e-sound is indicated by the variants ‘seeldome’ 1590, ‘seldome’ 1596, ‘sildom’ 1609, at I. iv. 23, l. 5.

2. Syllabic -es in possessives and plurals, which still lingered in the early fifteen-nineties, has grown quite strange to the editor of 1609. To this point I shall return.

3. The conjunctions ‘since’ and ‘sith’ are used indifferently in 1590 and 1596, choice of one or other form being determined by euphony alone. But 1609 makes a deliberate, though not quite consistent, attempt to appropriate ‘since’ to the temporal, ‘sith’ to the causal sense. The attempt unfortunately did not avail to save the more primitive form.

I have departed from the punctuation of 1596 only where it seemed likely to puzzle or mislead a modern reader. These departures, which are all recorded, are not very numerous. Spenser’s punctuation, though by no means sacrosanct, is less arbitrary than might at first appear; but, as Mr. Gregory Smith says of the punctuation of Addison, it has a rhetorical rather than a logical value. We feel its force best when we read the poem aloud. Two peculiarities are so common that the reader may be warned of them here. One is the absence of punctuation with vocatives: the other is the single comma after qualifying phrases. With this warning I leave these peculiarities, as a rule, unchanged.

In the treatment of capitals and in the distribution of roman and italic type I have followed the same principle of adhering, wherever possible, to the original text.

I have regularized the spelling of proper names wherever the variation seemed to be due to the printer rather than the poet. And this is generally the case with double letters. But for many variations in proper names Spenser was himself responsible. He varied them sometimes for the sake of the metre, as Serena, Serene; or of the rhyme, as Florimell, Florimele. In two instances he seems actually to have wavered or changed his mind. Braggadocchio’s name is generally spelt thus in Book II; in Books III and IV it varies; in V. iii it is regularly Braggadochio. So we generally find Arthegall in Book III, but Artegall regularly in Book V; 1609, however, returns to Arthegall.

II.

Aiming not at a reprint but a true text, I have not hesitated to depart from 1596 wherever I believed it to be in error and the error the printer’s. But it is no part of an editor’s duty to correct, though he may indicate, mistakes made by the author himself. There are many such in the Faerie Queene.

(1) There are mistakes of fact, of literary allusion, of quantity in classical names, hardly to be avoided by a poet writing far from libraries.

(2) There are confusions of personages, or of names of personages, within the poem itself. Sir Guyon is confused with the Redcrosse Knight in III. ii. 4, and with Prince Arthur in II. viii. 48 (but not in 1609); Æmylia with Pœana in IV. ix. Arg.; Calepine with Calidore in VI. vi. 17; while over Serena Spenser’s confusion becomes comical—he calls her Crispina in VI. iii. 23,[1] and Matilda in VI. v. Arg.

(3) Some lines are hypermetrical; some are short by a foot; and there are two or three broken lines. One of these last (III. iv. 39, l. 7) is certainly intentional, and all may be so; the supposed example of Virgil may have influenced Spenser in this.

(4) Imperfect rhymes and concords are numerous, especially in Books IV, V, and VI.

(5) There is one form of imperfect rhyme so singular as to deserve a fuller discussion. Its nature will be best seen in an example:—

‘Like two faire marble pillours they were seene,

Which doe the temple of the Gods support, (2)

Whom all the people decke with girlands greene,

And honour in their festiuall resort; (4)

Those same with stately grace, and princely port (5)

She taught to tread, when she her selfe would grace,

But with the wooddie Nymphes when she did play, (7)

Or when the flying Libbard she did chace,

She could them nimbly moue, and after fly apace.’

(II. iii. 28.)

Here ‘play’ in l. 7 is rhymed to ‘support’, ‘resort’, ‘port’: ‘sport’ is the obvious correction. There are, in all, nine instances of this singularity in the Faerie Queene. I subjoin them all, citing the rhyme-words only: the number following each word shows the line that it ends:—

1. day (2), dismay (4), way (5), chace (7) (II. ii. 7)
2. make (6), bold (8), told (9) (II. ii. 42)
3. support (2), resort (4), port (5), play (7) (II. iii. 28)
4. leaue (2), cleaue (4), bereaue (5), vpreare (7) (II. viii. 29)
5. spyde (6), law (8), draw (9) (III. vi. 40)
6. enclose (2), plaine (4), Maine (5), complaine (7) (III. vii. 34)
7. times (6), equipage (8), parentage (9) (IV. xi. 17)
8. place (2), aread (4), dread (5), read (7) (V. Proem 11)
9. desyre (2), entyre (4), yre (5), meed (7) (V. xi. 61)

In every case the correction is obvious: ‘chace’ should be ‘pray’ (i.e. prey); ‘make’, ‘hold’; ‘play’, ‘sport’; ‘vpreare’, ‘vpheaue’; ‘spyde’, ‘saw’; ‘enclose’, ‘containe’; ‘times’, ‘age’; ‘place’, ‘stead’ (as in 1609); ‘meed’, ‘hyre’. The phenomenon may now be described in general terms: in these nine places Spenser substitutes for a rhyming word a metrically equivalent synonym which does not rhyme. Our analysis shows further that, the rhyme-scheme of the Spenserian stanza being ababbcbcc, this substitution occurs only in the first or last of the b-group, or in the first of the c-group. It seems as if, borne along on the swell of his metre and the easy flow of his imagination, two words identical in sense and metre but different in sound rose to the poet’s mind almost simultaneously; and the one which he meant to reject slipped nevertheless from his pen, having been (we infer) the first to occur. This explains why this phenomenon always occurs either in the first word of a rhyme-group, where the rhyme is still undetermined; or, if in the last, then only in the last of the b-group, where the ear has already been satisfied with as many as three rhymes; and why it never occurs in the a-group, where two rhymeless endings would at once have alarmed the ear. I have dwelt on this phenomenon at some length because it is, so far as I know, peculiar to Spenser.[2]

(6) I must glance at another, though a rare, source of error. Our sage and serious Spenser was a thoughtful, even a philosophic writer; but his thought is large, simple, contemplative, not acute and analytic. When he has to deal with a subtle or complex situation he sometimes involves himself inextricably. If any lover of Spenser resent this judgement, let him apply his devotion to explain or emend II. v. 12, ll. 8 and 9; V. vi. 5, ll. 6 and 7; V. vi. 26, ll. 5 and 6: to me these passages appear incorrigible.

III.

The first mention of the Faerie Queene occurs in a letter of Spenser’s to Gabriel Harvey, dated Quarto Nonas Aprilis 1580. ‘I wil in hande forthwith,’ he writes, ‘with my Faery Queene, whyche I praye you hartily send me with al expedition: and your frendly Letters, and long expected Judgement wythal.’ ‘I haue nowe sent hir home at the laste,’ writes Harvey in reply. These phrases show that the parcel of the Faerie Queene had been in Harvey’s hands for some considerable time. The poem must therefore have been begun not later than 1579. Now in 1579 Spenser was an inmate of Leicester House, and the constant associate of Sir Philip Sidney. There is therefore no reason to doubt the assertion of W. L. in his commendatory verses that by Sidney the poem was originally inspired.

Harvey’s long-expected judgement, when it came, was far from favourable. But the poet was not discouraged, and doubtless took the manuscript with him when he went to Ireland with Lord Grey in August, 1580. Though he afterwards spoke of the poem as ‘wilde fruit which salvage soyl hath bred’, there is some reason to think that he had actually written as much as a book and a half before he left England. For though allusions to Ireland are not rare in the Faerie Queene, the first of them occurs in II. ix. 16.[3] Moreover, the industry of commentators has discovered in Book I only one imitation of Tasso’s Gierusalemme Liberata, and that doubtful[4] (I. vii. 31); undoubted imitations begin to appear in II. v, vi, vii, viii, and II. xii blazes with spoils from the Garden of Armida. Now the Gierusalemme Liberata was published in 1581; an imperfect edition had been issued surreptitiously in 1580.

Our next glimpse of the Faerie Queene we owe to Lodovick Bryskett, whose Discourse of Civill Life, though not published till 1606, purports to record a conversation held in his cottage near Dublin as early, it would seem, as the spring of 1583. Spenser is one of the interlocutors. He is made to say that he has already undertaken a work ‘which is in heroical verse under the title of a Faerie Queene’; which work he has ‘already well entered into’. The company express an ‘extreme longing’ after this Faerie Queene, ‘whereof some parcels had been by some of them seene’.

Parcels of the Faerie Queene had been seen, it appears, not only by Spenser’s friends in Dublin, but by his literary contemporaries in London. I. v. 2 is imitated in Peele’s David and Bethsabe (date unknown, but probably before 1590). I. vii. 32 and I. viii. 11 are imitated in Act IV, Sc. 4 and Act IV, Sc. 3 respectively of the second part of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (published 1590, but acted some years earlier). Finally, Abraham Fraunce in his Arcadian Rhetorike (1588) quotes Spenser ‘in his Fairie Queene, 2 booke, cant. 4’. Fraunce’s quotation is the more interesting inasmuch as it shows that by 1588[5] the F. Q. had not only been composed, but disposed into its present arrangement of books and cantos so far at least as II. iv. It is worth remarking that all these imitations of and quotations from F. Q. before it was published are from that part of the poem which we have seen some reason to think was written before Spenser left England. Allusions in the poem shed no certain light on the progress of its composition.

There is no reason to suppose that Spenser composed the whole of the F. Q. in the order in which he gave it to the world. It is more likely that he worked up many incidents and episodes as they occurred to him, and afterwards placed them in the poem. We know that the Wedding of Thames and Medway, which now forms IV. xi, is a redaction of an Epithalamium Thamesis which he originally undertook as an experiment in quantitative metre before April, 1580. And it seems probable that the Legendes and Court of Cupid mentioned by E. K. in his preface to the Shepheards Calender, as well as the Pageaunts[6] mentioned in the Glosse on June, were similarly worked over and incorporated in the F. Q.

Combining these pieces of evidence, we receive the impression that for some time after he came to Ireland Spenser worked but intermittently on the F. Q., resuming the regular composition and arrangement of the poem about the time when he ceased to reside in Dublin.[7] By 1588—the date of Fraunce’s quotation—he may have already been settled at Kilcolman. There, at least, Raleigh found him in 1589, and was shown the poem; with the result that in the autumn of that year Spenser accompanied Raleigh to London, and set about the publication of Books I-III.

The volume was licensed to William Ponsonbye on Dec. 1, 1589. Spenser’s explanatory letter to Raleigh bears date Jan. 23, 1589 (i. e. 1590 N. S.). In the course of 1590, but not before March 25, the volume was published. The printing shows some signs of haste; there is a long list of errata or ‘Faults Escaped in the Print’. This list, though not itself faultless, is of paramount authority in determining the text of Books I-III; it is cited in the notes as F. E.

In 1591 Spenser returned to Ireland, a disappointed man. I fear that Burleigh had taken occasion of the Milesian tone of certain episodes in Book III to stir the ashes of an old resentment: the second part of F. Q. begins and ends with complaints of misconstruction by that ‘mighty Pere’. But once back at Kilcolman he resumed his task. At first the stream of poetry flows languidly. The fable rambles, dispersing its force in many channels, like a river choked with sand; the verse flags; the play of alliteration is fitful; and Spenser essays a new, but to my ear an unhappy, variation in the form of a feminine ending.[8] But presently he gathers strength again under some new influence, which one would fain associate with his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle. The treatment of Britomart in Book V has strong, dramatic touches beyond anything in the earlier books; and in the lovely pastoral episodes of Book VI the poet lives once more in Arcadia. But positive indications of date are very rare. Book V Canto xi must be later than July 25, 1593, when Henri IV heard that mass which was the price of Paris: the singular dislocation of the Argument to Canto xii—half of which refers to the incidents of Canto xi—suggests that this Burbon episode was an afterthought; that it was inserted after Book V had been disposed into Cantos; and that Spenser meant it to form part of Canto xii. On the ordinary interpretation of the Amoretti,[9] all these books were finished before, but not long before, his wedding on June 11, 1594 (v. Sonnet 80); and on any interpretation they must have been finished by 1595, when Sir Robert Needham brought the manuscript of the Amoretti to London. Yet Spenser may have added and retouched up to the date of publication. For, in spite of Sonnet 80, I have fancied that when he wrote certain descriptions in Books V and VI Spenser was not only a husband but a father. See especially V. v. 53 (simile of the nurse and infant); V. vi. 14 (the child crying in the night); VI. iv. 18, 23, 24 (Calepine’s treatment of the foundling, which should be compared with Guyon’s behaviour in a similar situation, II. ii. 1); also VI. iv. 37, particularly line 8. Now Spenser’s eldest child was born in 1595. This may be fanciful. What is certain is that towards the close of 1595 Spenser followed Needham to London with the manuscript of the second part of F. Q. It was licensed to Ponsonbye on Jan. 20, 1596, and published by autumn of that year. James VI took offence at the treatment of Duessa, and had to be appeased by the English Ambassador, whose letter detailing the incident is dated Nov. 12, 1596. The new edition was in two volumes, the first being a reprint, with alterations, of 1590.

Late in 1596, or early in 1597, Spenser returned to Ireland. In 1598 Tyrone’s rebellion broke out. In October the rebels attacked and burned Kilcolman Castle. Spenser fled to Cork, whence in December he made his way to London; and there, on Jan. 16, 1599, he died. Ten years after his death a folio edition of F. Q. was published by Mathew Lownes, which added to the six books already published two Cantos of Mutabilitie, ‘which, both for Forme and Matter, appeare to be parcell of some following Booke of the Faerie Queene, vnder the Legend of Constancie.’ These two cantos, with two stanzas of a third, are all that remain of the third part of F. Q. Whether Spenser wrote more is unknown. But the fact that the two cantos are numbered vi and vii makes it fairly certain that he had at least sketched the whole Seventh Book. I cannot accept the view that these two cantos are an independent poem, in the sense that they were not designed to form part of F. Q. The lines (VII. vi. 37)—

‘And, were it not ill fitting for this file,

To sing of hilles and woods, mongst warres and Knights’—

show clearly that they were so designed. That they may have been written independently, in the sense in which the Wedding of Thames and Medway was written independently, I am not concerned to deny. The view that these cantos are spurious is unworthy of serious discussion. If they are spurious, there must have been living in 1609 an unknown poet who could write the Spenserian style and stanza as well as Spenser at his best. For there is nothing of its kind in F. Q. superior to the pageant[10] of the months and seasons; and no one who really knows Spenser can doubt that the two stanzas which alone remain of the ‘vnperfite’ eighth canto came from his heart.

IV.

The chief critical problem that confronts an editor of F. Q. concerns the text of Books I-III. Should the text of these books be based on 1590 or on 1596? I have chosen the latter. And I have done so, in the main, for a quite general reason. 1596 was produced under Spenser’s eye and by his authority. That authority must be held to cover both volumes, not the second only. Behind this we cannot go. The case is quite different with the later quartos of the Shepheards Calender, which were produced in Spenser’s absence.

This general position is confirmed by a minute comparison of 1590 and 1596. To take the more massive changes first: in 1 596 Spenser completely remodelled the conclusion of Book III. Instead of bringing Scudamour and Amoret together, as in 1590, he left them still parted, hoping thus to prolong the interest of their story into Book IV, and so to form a link between the two volumes, which he desired to be read as one continuous poem. For this he sacrificed five glorious stanzas, one of them the most rapturous that he ever wrote. The three stanzas which he substituted are far inferior, as he must have known; but they served his purpose. He also added a new stanza at I. xi. 3. He rewrote single lines, in the interests of sound or sense; he altered single words or phrases; and he made—what is even more significant—several minute changes of order designed to improve the rhythm. Let me add that most of these changes are more happily inspired than the second-thoughts of poets have sometimes been.

I hasten to make two admissions. The first volume of 1596 was not reset afresh from Spenser’s manuscript. It was printed from a copy of 1590. In the nature of the case, while it escapes some of the blunders of its original, it reproduces others, and perpetrates some new. Nor did Spenser do more than glance at the proof. The 1596 volumes, as we have seen, were printed rapidly; the poet was busy,[11] and such time as he had for proof-reading was given to the new books. I infer that the alterations which he made in 1590 were made not on the proof, but on the copy. In no other way can we account for that combination of author’s corrections with printer’s errors which marks the first volume of 1596. And this conclusion is strengthened by another consideration. It is one of the worst faults of 1596 that it so often ignores F. E. But the significance of the fault has been overlooked. Making corrections on the copy, Spenser did not trouble himself about errors that he had already noted in F. E.; had he made his corrections on the proof, they could not have escaped him.

I believe this to be a true account of the relations of these two texts. But when all is said there remain many places where we cannot pronounce on mere inspection whether an alteration is the author’s or the printer’s, but must be guided by a calculation of probabilities, inclining (e. g.) to the author where there is clear evidence of his hand in the neighbourhood of the vexed passage, to the printer where the ductus litterarum in both readings is suspiciously alike. The most important of these places are discussed in the Critical Appendix to Vol. III.

Has 1609 any independent authority? In the main a reprint of 1596, it is certainly a respectable piece of work, in punctuation especially far more logical and consistent than either of the quartos: the editor seldom fails to show exactly how he understands his text. Our respect for 1609 would be enhanced if we could believe that the editor was Gabriel Harvey, as Todd at one time fancied. But that notion is untenable, and Todd himself abandoned it. We may go further: the editor of 1609 did not belong to the generation of Harvey and Spenser. For this conclusion I will adduce only one piece of evidence, but it is decisive. In the last decade of the sixteenth century syllabic -es in possessives and plurals still lingered even in verse not deliberately archaic. But it was strange to the editor of 1609. Sometimes he remarks it, and signalizes his discovery by printing it -ez, as ‘woundez’, ‘beastez’, ‘clothez’. Sometimes he fails to remark it, and fills up the syllable by conjecture: thus ‘Nightes children’ becomes ‘Nights drad children’ (I. v. 23); ‘th’Earthes gloomy shade’ becomes ‘the Earthes gloomy shade’ (III. x. 46). He seems, moreover, to have made little or no use of 1590. When, as sometimes happens, a word has been dropped in 1596, he emends by conjecture: thus at I. ii. 29:—

‘For the coole shade him thither hastly got’ 1590;

‘For the coole shade thither hastly got’ 1596;

‘For the coole shadow thither hast’ly got’ 1609.

Cf. also III. ix. 13, l. 9, III. xi. 26, l. 7, &c. The few instances in which 1590 and 1609 agree as against 1596 may fairly be set down to coincidence.

Yet I am disposed to assign some independent authority to 1609.[12] The grounds for this view are slight, and may be stated in full:—

(1) At I. x. 20, l. 5, 1609 adds the missing line, ‘Dry-shod to passe, she parts the flouds in tway.’

(2) At II. viii. 48, l. 8, it corrects ‘Sir Guyon’ to ‘Prince Arthur’.

(3) At III. iii. 50, l. 9, it completes the imperfect Alexandrine by adding ‘as earst’.

(4) At III. vi. 45, l. 4, it adds a broken line, ‘And dearest loue,’ to an eight-line stanza.

(5) At IV. xii. 13, ll. 1, 2, 1596 reads:—

‘Thus whilst his stony heart with tender ruth

Was toucht, and mighty courage mollifide’;

1609 reads:—

‘Thus whilst his stony heart was toucht with tender ruth,

And mighty courage something mollifide.’

(6) At V. Proem 11, l. 2, it reads ‘stead’ for the non-rhyming ‘place’.

Of these changes, (2) and (3) are not beyond the capacity of an ordinary editor; yet it is worth noting that 1609 does not correct other confusions of names almost as obvious as (2). Even the missing line (1), Spenserian as it sounds, might conceivably be editorial. But to add a broken line, like (4), seems to me a touch beyond an editor. And (5) is most easily explained by supposing that Spenser altered the text, meaning to omit ‘tender’, but left that word standing. (6) is an instance of a phenomenon that has already been discussed. The significant point is that this is the only instance of that phenomenon which is corrected in 1609. An editor who corrected one of these mistakes might be expected to correct others; but the author who perpetrated these non-rhymes would more easily overlook them.

The addition of the Mutabilitie cantos in 1609 must be allowed to create a prejudice in favour of the view for which I argue. The editor who recovered so much of Spenser’s manuscript may have recovered more: parcels of F. Q., as we have seen, were handed about in London in Spenser’s absence. Or—and the form of the variants at IV. xii. 13 makes this the more probable hypothesis—the editor of 1609 may have had a copy of 1596 with some corrections by the author. Finally, it is not impossible that these corrections were actually embodied in exemplars of 1596 which no longer survive. Elizabethan writers were in the habit of correcting sheets as they passed through the press: in F. Q. itself I have noted more than a score of places in which the readings of the copies used for this edition differ from those of other copies in the Bodleian or the British Museum, or of copies used by previous editors; and the notes of Church, Upton, and Todd show that they had seen copies which differ in minute points from any now available. As the sheets were probably bound indiscriminately, it is possible that no two exemplars exactly correspond. The charges of careless collation freely bandied among Spenser’s editors are sometimes due to this cause.

It remains for me to acknowledge with gratitude the unwearied help that I have received in preparing this edition, first, from my wife, who read 1609 with me twice; next, from my friend Dr. Soutar, of University College, Dundee, who revised the difficult proofs of Books I-III; last, from an unknown coadjutor, Mr. Ostler of the Clarendon Press, to whose skill and vigilance above all I owe whatever measure of accuracy has been secured. An edition like this has little claim to any higher virtue; yet perfect accuracy, even, is too much to hope for in the reproduction, by ordinary typography, of the original spelling and punctuation of a poem which runs to more than 35,000 lines. In the Critical Appendix I have called attention to one or two places in which I have noted what now seem to me to be errors, or on which I have changed my mind since the sheets were printed.

I have also to thank Sir James Murray, Dr. Bradley, and Dr. Craigie for information on points of lexicography; and Mr. Charles Cannan for the protracted loan of his copy of the first folio.

J. C. Smith.

St. Andrews,
September, 1909.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] But this was corrected as the sheet passed through the press. See note ad loc. in the Critical Appendix.

[2] The peculiarity consists not in the occasional occurrence of a rhymeless line—a thing that can easily be paralleled from Shelley or any poet of equal fluency—but in the fact that the right word is in every case so obvious that we cannot but believe it to have been in Spenser’s mind.

[3] This argument loses some of its weight from the likelihood that Spenser had been in Ireland before 1580. In his View of the Present State of Ireland, Irenæus, who is Spenser’s mouthpiece, speaks of himself as an eyewitness of the execution of Murrogh O’Brien, which took place at Limerick in July, 1577. The statement, of course, is not conclusive, as it would be if made in Spenser’s own person. Yet Spenser’s account of this hideous incident has the stamp of personal observation, and, taken with the evidence of Phillips’s Theatrum Poetarum Anglicorum, points to the conclusion that in 1577 Spenser had been sent to Ireland by Leicester with letters to Sir Henry Sidney. His visit, however, must have been brief, and may well have left no trace in his poetry.

Upton believed that the Ruddymane episode in II. ii referred to the O’Neills, whose badge was a bloody hand (v. the View of the Present State of Ireland). If there be anything in this, it makes against the view that a book and a half had been written by August, 1580; for Spenser is not likely to have known the O’Neill ‘badge’ till he settled in Ireland.

[4] The passage in Tasso (G. L. ix. 25) is itself an imitation of Virgil, Aen. vii. 785. Yet the ‘greedie pawes’ and ‘golden wings’ of Spenser’s picture seem due to Tasso’s ‘Sù le zampe s’inalza, e l’ali spande.’

Both these arguments, then, are indecisive; and in the absence of decisive proof I find it hard to believe that Harvey, who though a pedant was no fool, can have seen anything like the whole of Book I without recognizing its superlative merits.

[5] Fraunce’s book was licensed on June 11.

[6] From these Pageaunts E. K. quotes a line:

‘An hundred Graces on her eyelidde sate,’

which appears, slightly altered, in F. Q. II. iii. 25.

[7] The ‘fennes of Allan’ (II. ix. 16) would be near New Abbey in Co. Kildare, where Spenser seems to have occasionally resided in the years 1582-4.

[8] In the whole of Books I-III there is only one feminine ending, viz. in II. ix. 47. In Books IV-VI such endings abound.

[9] ‘On the ordinary interpretation,’ I say; for an attempt has recently been made (Mod. Lang. Rev. 1908) to prove that the lady of the Amoretti and the ‘countrey lasse’ of F. Q. VI was not Elizabeth Boyle, but Lady Elizabeth Carey.

[10] The occurrence of feminine endings makes it very unlikely that this was among the Pageaunts mentioned by E. K. The greater part of the Mutabilitie cantos was certainly written in Ireland, probably in 1597-8.

[11] The scene of the dialogue on the Present State of Ireland is laid in England; so that, unless this is a mere literary device, the tract must have been written, or at least begun, during this visit in 1596.

[12] No such authority, I think, belongs to the ‘Second Folio’, though it sometimes corrects printer’s errors. In the Critical Appendix I have cited some of its characteristic variants in support of this view.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

Of the copies collated for this edition, three are in the Bodleian, viz.:—

(1) Malone 615, Books I-III, 1590.
(2) Malone 616, Books IV-VI, 1596.
(3) 4^o Art. Seld. S. 22, Books I-VI, 1596 (collated for Books I-III).
For 1609 I have used (4) a copy belonging to Mr. Charles Cannan.

The following copies, though not collated verbatim, have been examined for variants:—

The bibliographical note on Spenser in the Dictionary of National Biography appears to ignore 4^o Art. Seld. S. 22.

The 1590, 1596, 1609 editions of F. Q. have been described already. In 1611 Lownes (the publisher of the 1609 F. Q.) set about a complete edition of Spenser’s poems. But having on hand unsold copies of 1609, he incorporated parts of these under the new title-page.[13] This has happened to (6), the first part of which is identical with 1609, except for the title-page and dedication. The genuine 1611 edition of F. Q. I-III is represented by

the first part of (14). The second part of (6), bearing date 1612, has been reset: it is identical with the second parts of (7), (13), (14), which bear date 1613. No 1611 edition of F. Q. IV-VII is known to me. But in the footnotes I have followed the custom of citing this ‘Second Folio’ as 1611, except where readings not found by me in editions prior to 1612-13 have been attributed to 1609 by previous editors, misled perhaps by the omission from the British Museum catalogue of the second title to (13). In the Critical Appendix on Books IV-VII I cite this Second Folio (for these Books) as 16(11)-12-13.

Subsequent editions of Spenser’s works:—The folios of 1617, 1679 (the latter said to have been overseen by Dryden); ed. J. Hughes, 1715; H. J. Todd, 1805; F. J. Child, 1855; J. P. Collier, 1862; R. Morris, 1869; A. B. Grosart, 1882-4.

Separate editions of Faerie Queene:—ed. J. Upton, 1758; R. Church, 1758-9; Kate M. Warren, 1897-1900.

Commentaries:—Remarks on Spenser’s Poems, by J. Jortin, 1734.
Observations on the Faerie Queene, by T. Warton, 1754.

[For the matter of this note I am largely indebted to Mr. Ostler and Mr. Percy Simpson.]

FOOTNOTES:

[13] From a MS. note of Malone’s I learn that Ponsonbye had played the same trick in 1596; and even of the 1617 folio Church avers that some copies are made up with sheets of the old 1611.

CONTENTS.

THE FAERIE QVEENE.

THE FAERIE
QVEENE.

Disposed into twelue bookes,

Fashioning

XII. Morall vertues.

LONDON

Printed for VVilliam Ponsonbie.

1596.

TO
THE MOST HIGH,
MIGHTIE
And
MAGNIFICENT
EMPRESSE RENOVVMED
FOR PIETIE, VERTVE,
AND ALL GRATIOVS
GOVERNMENT ELIZABETH BY
THE GRACE OF GOD QVEENE
OF ENGLAND FRAVNCE AND
IRELAND AND OF VIRGINIA,
DEFENDOVR OF THE
FAITH, &c. HER MOST
HVMBLE SERVAVNT
EDMVND SPENSER
DOTH IN ALL HVMILITIE
DEDICATE,
PRESENT
AND CONSECRATE THESE
HIS LABOVRS TO LIVE
VVITH THE ETERNITIE
OF HER
FAME.

THE FIRST
BOOKE OF THE
FAERIE QVEENE.
Contayning
THE LEGENDE OF THE
KNIGHT OF THE RED CROSSE,
OR
OF HOLINESSE.

Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske, i

As time her taught[14], in lowly Shepheards weeds,

Am now enforst a far vnfitter taske,

For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,

And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;

Whose prayses hauing slept in silence long,

Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds

To blazon broad emongst[15] her learned throng:

Fierce warres and faithfull loues shall moralize my song.

Helpe then, O[16] holy Virgin chiefe of nine, ii

Thy weaker Nouice to performe thy will,

Lay forth out of thine everlasting scryne

The antique rolles, which there lye hidden still,

Of Faerie knights and fairest Tanaquill,

Whom that most noble Briton Prince so long

Sought through the world, and suffered so much ill,

That I must rue his vndeserued wrong:

O helpe thou my weake wit, and sharpen my dull tong.

And thou most dreaded impe of highest Ioue, iii

Faire Venus sonne, that with thy cruell dart

At that good knight so cunningly didst roue,

That glorious fire it kindled in his hart,

Lay now thy deadly Heben bow apart,

And with thy mother milde come to mine ayde:

Come both, and with you bring triumphant Mart,

In loues and gentle iollities arrayd,

After his murdrous spoiles and bloudy rage allayd.

And with them eke, O Goddesse heauenly bright, iv

Mirrour of grace and Maiestie diuine,

Great Lady of the greatest Isle, whose light

Like Phœbus lampe throughout the world doth shine,

Shed thy faire beames into my[17] feeble eyne,

And raise my thoughts too humble and too vile,

To thinke of that true glorious type of thine,

The argument of mine afflicted stile:

The which to heare, vouchsafe, O dearest dred a-while.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] i 2 taught 1596

[15] 8 ’broad, amongst 1609

[16] ii 1 O] ô 1596, 1609 passim

[17] iv 5 my] mine 1590

Canto I.

The Patron of true Holinesse,

Foule Errour doth defeate:

Hypocrisie him to entrapp’[18],

Doth to his home entreate.

A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine, i

Y cladd in mightie armes and siluer shielde,

Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine,

The cruell markes of many’ a bloudy[19] fielde;

Yet armes till that time did he neuer wield:

His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,

As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:

Full iolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,

As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.

But[20] on his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore, ii

The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,

For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,

And dead as liuing euer him ador’d:

Vpon his shield the like was also scor’d,

For soueraine hope, which in his helpe he had:

Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,

But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;

Yet nothing did he dread, but euer was ydrad.

Vpon a great aduenture he was bond, iii

That greatest Gloriana to him gaue,

That greatest Glorious Queene of Faerie lond,

To winne him worship, and her grace to haue,

Which of all earthly things he most did craue;

And euer as he rode, his hart did earne

To proue his puissance in battell braue

Vpon his foe, and his new force to learne;

Vpon his foe, a Dragon horrible and stearne.

A louely Ladie rode him faire beside, iv

Vpon a lowly Asse more white then snow,

Yet she much whiter, but the same did hide

Vnder a vele, that wimpled was full low,

And ouer all a blacke stole she did throw,

As one that inly mournd: so was she sad,

And heauie sat[21] vpon her palfrey slow:

Seemed in heart some hidden care she had,

And by her in a line a milke white lambe she lad.

So pure an innocent[22], as that same lambe, v

She was in life and euery vertuous lore,

And by descent from Royall lynage came

Of ancient Kings and Queenes, that had of yore

Their scepters stretcht from East to Westerne shore,

And all the world in their subiection held;

Till that infernall feend with foule vprore

Forwasted all their land, and them expeld:

Whom to auenge, she had this Knight from far compeld[23].

Behind her farre away a Dwarfe did lag, vi

That lasie seemd in being euer last,

Or wearied with bearing of her bag

Of needments at his backe. Thus as they past,

The day with cloudes was suddeine ouercast,

And angry Ioue an hideous storme of raine

Did poure into his Lemans lap so fast,

That euery wight to shrowd it did constrain,

And this faire couple eke to shroud themselues were fain.

Enforst to seeke some couert nigh at hand, vii

A shadie groue not far away they spide,

That promist ayde the tempest to withstand:

Whose loftie trees yclad with sommers pride,

Did spred so broad, that heauens light did hide,

Not perceable with power of any starre:

And all within were pathes and alleies wide,

With footing worne, and leading inward farre:

Faire harbour that them seemes; so in they entred arre.

And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led, viii

Ioying to heare the birdes sweete harmony,

Which therein shrouded from the tempest[24] dred,

Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky.

Much can they prayse the trees so straight and hy,

The sayling Pine, the Cedar proud and tall,

The vine-prop Elme, the Poplar neuer dry,

The builder Oake, sole king of forrests all,

The Aspine good for staues, the Cypresse funerall.

The Laurell, meed of mightie Conquerours ix

And Poets sage, the Firre that weepeth still,

The Willow worne of forlorne Paramours,

The Eugh obedient to the benders will,

The Birch for shaftes, the Sallow for the mill,

The Mirrhe sweete[25] bleeding in the bitter wound,

The warlike Beech, the Ash for nothing ill,

The fruitfull Oliue, and the Platane round,

The caruer Holme, the Maple seeldom[26] inward sound.

Led with delight, they thus beguile the way, x

Vntill the blustring storme is ouerblowne;

When weening to returne, whence they did stray,

They[27] cannot finde that path, which first was showne,

But wander too and fro in wayes vnknowne,

Furthest from end then, when they neerest weene,

That makes them doubt, their wits be not their owne:

So many pathes, so many turnings seene,

That which of them to take, in diuerse doubt they been.

At last resoluing forward still to fare, xi

Till that some end they finde or in or out,

That path they take, that beaten seemd most bare,

And like to lead the labyrinth about;

Which when by tract they hunted had throughout,

At length it brought them to a hollow caue,

Amid the thickest woods. The Champion stout

Eftsoones dismounted from his courser braue,

And to the Dwarfe a while his needlesse spere he gaue.

Be well aware, quoth then that Ladie milde, xii

Least suddaine mischiefe ye too rash prouoke:

The danger hid, the place vnknowne and wilde,

Breedes dreadfull doubts: Oft fire is without smoke,

And perill without show: therefore your stroke[28]

Sir knight with-hold, till further triall made.

Ah Ladie (said he) shame were to reuoke

The forward footing for an hidden shade:

Vertue giues her selfe light, through darkenesse for to wade.

Yea but (quoth she) the perill of this place xiii

I better wot then you, though now too late[29]

To wish you backe returne with foule disgrace,

Yet wisedome warnes, whilest foot is in the gate,

To stay the steppe, ere forced to retrate.

This is the wandring wood, this Errours den,

A monster vile, whom God and man does hate:

Therefore I read beware. Fly fly (quoth then

The fearefull Dwarfe:) this is no place for liuing men.

But full of fire and greedy hardiment, xiv

The youthfull knight could not for ought be staide,