them came to a good end. And therefore follow not my example in youth, but follow my counsel in age, if ever you think to come to this place or these years that I am come to less [lest] you meet either with poverty or Tyburn [the gallows] on the way." QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW I. The awakening in verse. In what country did the sonnet originate? What poet's name is associated with its origin? How many lines in a sonnet? How many feet in the line? Into what parts is the "Italian" sonnet divided? Give the rhyme system of each part. Give the rhyme system of the "Shakspere" sonnet. State the advantages of each type. Write, if you can, a sonnet of each kind. Who introduced the sonnet into English verse? Who first used blank verse in English? Why is blank verse important? II. The awakening in prose. Why had learned men neglected English? In what language had they expressed themselves? Why? What effect had the study of Greek and Latin upon English prose? CHAPTER III THE ELIZABETHAN OUTBREAK: POETRY We have seen, on pages 128-136, the causes of the outbreak of creative art that marked the age of Elizabeth. The poet who marks the beginning of this poetic spring is EDMUND SPENSER. If we follow along the tide of poetry from Chaucer to Spenser, we Spenser find nowhere in the interval a man who can be compared with either. Let us see, since Spenser is at once of the old and the new, in what respects he is typical of each. In Spenser's life we find the feudal system of patronage. A poet of modern the public. In feudal days there was no public. The poet, a "troubadour" or minstrel, was a part of the household and retinue of his feudal lord, who supported him either from a love of poetry or from pride in maintaining a poet. The unfortunate part of this system was that often the great man became careless or indifferent, and the poet must, like Chaucer, Dunbar, or Spenser, humble himself to make poetic appeals to his patron's bounty. (See page 151.) In Spenser's day this system of patronage was just beginning to decline. A poet could not yet live by his work, and he needed from the great not only money but protection. And, just as in the days of Chaucer, it seemed to be understood that the literary man should, besides his literary labors, do work of other sorts, executive or diplomatic. As a boy, Spenser seems to have needed assistance in his education. He went to Cambridge, and we find him afterwards attached to the household of Spenser's a powerful nobleman, the Duke of Leicester. Life Through Leicester's influence, Spenser obtained an office in Ireland, where in those days of conquest and uprising, he must have witnessed many scenes of violence. At times we find him also in London. The greater part of his life, however, he passed in Ireland,—one of the unlucky Englishmen sent over to rule a race they could not understand. In life, therefore, Spenser was a poet of feudal days. Thoroughly medieval, too, is the subject and plan of his chief poem, The Faerie Queene. For it is a Medieval moral allegory, a direct descendant of the Elements long allegorical poems of the fourteenth century. Even the stanza used in the poem is related to that used by Chaucer. The story too is the old romance of chivalry. The adventures are of the type of Amadis of Gaul, encounters between armed knights, combats with dragons, ogres, wizards, and beautiful enchantresses. Yet, while every feature of the poem is medieval, while the language itself turns back to the past, in spite of all this, the poem belongs, in tone and spirit, to New the Renaissance. The language bears the Elements mark of its time. The allegory is less medieval than that of the Romaunt of the Rose. By an added line it has passed from the narrative stanza of Chaucer to a new type. And, pervading all, there is a consciousness of new standards of art, an openness to a richer thought. The Faerie Queene, the poem by which Spenser is best known, is an allegory. It presents, just as does Pilgrim's The Faerie Progress, a moral in the form of a story, Queene each character representing some quality or idea. This allegory, however, is less simple than that in Pilgrim's Progress. For not only is there a moral allegory running through all, but there is political allegory as well, and the moral allegory itself is not always consistent. The main story is based upon tales of Arthur's court, the same theme we find in Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette. Knights ride forth upon quests, and achieve adventures. Each knight represents some virtue and performs a task suited to that virtue. To quote Spenser's own words (in modernized spelling), Author's The beginning therefore of my history, if it were to be told by an historiographer [i.e. historian] should be the twelfth book, which is the last; where I devise that the Fairy Queen kept her annual feast twelve days; upon which twelve several days, the occasion of the twelve several adventures happened, which being undertaken by twelve several knights, are in these twelve books severally handled and discoursed. The first adventure begins like the story of Gareth, though it continues differently. The first was this. In the beginning of the feast, there presented himself a tall clownish young man, who falling before the Queen of the Fairies desired a boon (as the manner then was) which during that feast she might not refuse; which was that he might have the achievement of any adventure, which during that feast should happen. That being granted, he rested him on the floore, unfit through his rusticity for a better place. Soon after entered a fair lady in mourning weeds, riding on a white ass, with a dwarf behind her leading a warlike steed that bore the arms of a knight and his spear in the dwarf's hand. She falling before the Queen of Fairies complained that her father and mother, an ancient king and queen, had been by an huge dragon many years shut up in a brazen castle, who thence suffered them not to issue, and therefore besought the faery queen to assign her some one of her knights to take on him that exploit. Presently [i.e. at once] that clownish person, upstarting, desired that adventure: whereat the queen much wondering and the lady much gainsaying, yet he earnestly importuned his desire. In the end the lady told him that unless the armor which she brought, would serve him (that is the armor of a Christian man specified by St. Paul, vi. Ephesians) that he could not succeed in that enterprise; which being forthwith put upon him, with due furnitures thereunto, he seemed the goodliest man in that company, and was well liked of the lady. And eftsoons taking upon him knighthood, and mounting on that strange courser, he went forth with her on that adventure: where beginneth the first book, viz. A gentle knight was pricking on the playne, etc. The twelfth book, which was to explain the story, was never written. The plan of the whole poem is nowhere shown in the poem itself. As for the author's intention in the allegory, we have, in the same letter to Raleigh from which the passage above is taken, his general intention. He tells us that the knight of the first book, the Red Cross knight, stood for Holiness. The knight of the second adventure represented Temperance; the knight of the third adventure, Chastity; and so in each book. Prominent among the evil figures are Archimago, the enchanter, and Duessa, the latter typifying not only deceit but sometimes Mary, Queen of Scotland. The character of the Faerie Queene herself illustrates how conflicting is the allegory. "By her," Spenser says, "I mean glory in my general intention, but in my particular I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our sovereign the Queen." Yet the Queen herself he represents also in other forms. The best thing for the |