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he first mention of the _Faerie Queene_ occurs in a letter ofSpenser’s to Gabriel Harvey, dated _Quarto Nonas Aprilis_ 1580. ‘I wilin hande forthwith,’ he writes, ‘with my _Faery Queene_, whyche I prayeyou hartily send me with al expedition: and your frendly Letters, andlong expected Judgement wythal.’ ‘I haue nowe sent hir home at thelaste,’ writes Harvey in reply. These phrases show that the parcel ofthe _Faerie Queene_ had been in Harvey’s hands for some considerabletime. The poem must therefore have been begun not later than 1579. Nowin 1579 Spenser was an inmate of Leicester House, and the constantassociate of Sir Philip Sidney. There is therefore no reason to doubtthe assertion of W. L. in his commendatory verses that by Sidney thepoem was originally inspired. Harvey’s long-expected judgement, when it came, was far fromfavourable. But the poet was not discouraged, and doubtless took themanuscript with him when he went to Ireland with Lord Grey in August,1580. Though he afterwards spoke of the poem as ‘wilde fruit whichsalvage soyl hath bred’, there is some reason to think that he hadactually 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 ofcommentators has discovered in Book I only one imitation of Tasso’s_Gierusalemme Liberata_, and that doubtful[4] (I. vii. 31); undoubtedimitations begin to appear in II. v, vi, vii, viii, and II. xiiblazes with spoils from the Garden of Armida. Now the _GierusalemmeLiberata_ was published in 1581; an imperfect edition had been issuedsurreptitiously 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 asearly, it would seem, as the spring of 1583. Spenser is one of theinterlocutors. 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 hadbeen by some of them seene’. Parcels of the _Faerie Queene_ had been seen, it appears, not onlyby Spenser’s friends in Dublin, but by his literary contemporariesin London. I. v. 2 is imitated in Peele’s _David and Bethsabe_ (dateunknown, but probably before 1590). I. vii. 32 and I. viii. 11 areimitated in Act IV, Sc. 4 and Act IV, Sc. 3 respectively of the secondpart of Marlowe’s _Tamburlaine_ (published 1590, but acted some yearsearlier). Finally, Abraham Fraunce in his _Arcadian Rhetorike_ (1588)quotes Spenser ‘in his _Fairie Queene_, 2 booke, cant. 4’. Fraunce’squotation is the more interesting inasmuch as it shows that by 1588[5]the _F. Q._ had not only been composed, but disposed into its presentarrangement of books and cantos so far at least as II. iv. It is worthremarking that all these imitations of and quotations from _F. Q._before it was published are from that part of the poem which we haveseen some reason to think was written before Spenser left England.Allusions in the poem shed no certain light on the progress of itscomposition. 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 morelikely that he worked up many incidents and episodes as they occurredto him, and afterwards placed them in the poem. We know that the_Wedding of Thames and Medway_, which now forms IV. xi, is a redactionof an _Epithalamium Thamesis_ which he originally undertook as anexperiment in quantitative metre before April, 1580. And it seemsprobable that the _Legendes_ and _Court of Cupid_ mentioned by E. K. inhis preface to the _Shepheards Calender_, as well as the _Pageaunts_[6]mentioned in the Glosse on _June_, were similarly worked over andincorporated in the _F. Q._ Combining these pieces of evidence, we receive the impression that forsome time after he came to Ireland Spenser worked but intermittentlyon the _F. Q._, resuming the regular composition and arrangement ofthe poem about the time when he ceased to reside in Dublin.[7] By1588--the date of Fraunce’s quotation--he may have already been settledat Kilcolman. There, at least, Raleigh found him in 1589, and was shownthe poem; with the result that in the autumn of that year Spenseraccompanied Raleigh to London, and set about the publication of BooksI-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 volumewas published. The printing shows some signs of haste; there is a longlist of errata or ‘Faults Escaped in the Print’. This list, though notitself faultless, is of paramount authority in determining the text ofBooks I-III; it is cited in the notes as _F. E._ In 1591 Spenser returned to Ireland, a disappointed man. I fear thatBurleigh had taken occasion of the Milesian tone of certain episodesin Book III to stir the ashes of an old resentment: the second partof _F. Q._ begins and ends with complaints of misconstruction by that‘mighty Pere’. But once back at Kilcolman he resumed his task. At firstthe stream of poetry flows languidly. The fable rambles, dispersing itsforce in many channels, like a river choked with sand; the verse flags;the play of alliteration is fitful; and Spenser essays a new, but tomy ear an unhappy, variation in the form of a feminine ending.[8] Butpresently he gathers strength again under some new influence, whichone would fain associate with his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle. Thetreatment of _Britomart_ in Book V has strong, dramatic touches beyondanything in the earlier books; and in the lovely pastoral episodes ofBook VI the poet lives once more in Arcadia. But positive indicationsof 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: thesingular dislocation of the Argument to Canto xii--half of which refersto the incidents of Canto xi--suggests that this _Burbon_ episode wasan afterthought; that it was inserted after Book V had been disposedinto Cantos; and that Spenser meant it to form part of Canto xii. Onthe ordinary interpretation of the _Amoretti_,[9] all these bookswere finished before, but not long before, his wedding on June 11,1594 (_v. Sonnet_ 80); and on any interpretation they must have beenfinished by 1595, when Sir Robert Needham brought the manuscript of the_Amoretti_ to London. Yet Spenser may have added and retouched up tothe date of publication. For, in spite of _Sonnet_ 80, I have fanciedthat when he wrote certain descriptions in Books V and VI Spenser wasnot only a husband but a father. See especially V. v. 53 (simile of thenurse and infant); V. vi. 14 (the child crying in the night); VI. iv.18, 23, 24 (_Calepine’s_ treatment of the foundling, which should becompared with _Guyon’s_ behaviour in a similar situation, II. ii. 1);also VI. iv. 37, particularly line 8. Now Spenser’s eldest child wasborn in 1595. This may be fanciful. What is certain is that towards theclose of 1595 Spenser followed Needham to London with the manuscriptof 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 offenceat the treatment of _Duessa_, and had to be appeased by the EnglishAmbassador, whose letter detailing the incident is dated Nov. 12, 1596.The new edition was in two volumes, the first being a reprint, withalterations, of 1590. Late in 1596, or early in 1597, Spenser returned to Ireland. In 1598Tyrone’s rebellion broke out. In October the rebels attacked and burnedKilcolman Castle. Spenser fled to Cork, whence in December he madehis way to London; and there, on Jan. 16, 1599, he died. Ten yearsafter his death a folio edition of _F. Q._ was published by MathewLownes, which added to the six books already published two Cantosof _Mutabilitie_, ‘which, both for Forme and Matter, appeare to beparcell of some following Booke of the _Faerie Queene_, vnder theLegend of _Constancie_.’ These two cantos, with two stanzas of a third,are all that remain of the third part of _F. Q._ Whether Spenser wrotemore is unknown. But the fact that the two cantos are numbered vi andvii makes it fairly certain that he had at least sketched the wholeSeventh Book. I cannot accept the view that these two cantos are anindependent poem, in the sense that they were not designed to form partof _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 beenwritten independently, in the sense in which the _Wedding of Thamesand Medway_ was written independently, I am not concerned to deny. Theview that these cantos are spurious is unworthy of serious discussion.If they are spurious, there must have been living in 1609 an unknownpoet who could write the Spenserian style and stanza as well as Spenserat his best. For there is nothing of its kind in _F. Q._ superiorto the pageant[10] of the months and seasons; and no one who reallyknows Spenser can doubt that the two stanzas which alone remain of the‘vnperfite’ eighth canto came from his heart.
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