J. C. SMITH.
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T. ANDREWS,_September, 1909_. FOOTNOTES: [1] But this was corrected as the sheet passed through the press. Seenote _ad loc._ in the Critical Appendix. [2] The peculiarity consists not in the occasional occurrence of arhymeless line--a thing that can easily be paralleled from Shelley orany poet of equal fluency--but in the fact that the right word is inevery case so obvious that we cannot but believe it to have been inSpenser’s mind. [3] This argument loses some of its weight from the likelihood thatSpenser had been in Ireland before 1580. In his _View of the PresentState of Ireland_, Irenæus, who is Spenser’s mouthpiece, speaks ofhimself as an eyewitness of the execution of Murrogh O’Brien, whichtook place at Limerick in July, 1577. The statement, of course, isnot conclusive, as it would be if made in Spenser’s own person. YetSpenser’s account of this hideous incident has the stamp of personalobservation, and, taken with the evidence of Phillips’s _TheatrumPoetarum Anglicorum_, points to the conclusion that in 1577 Spenser hadbeen sent to Ireland by Leicester with letters to Sir Henry Sidney. Hisvisit, however, must have been brief, and may well have left no tracein his poetry. Upton believed that the _Ruddymane_ episode in II. ii referred to theO’Neills, whose badge was a bloody hand (_v._ the _View of the PresentState of Ireland_). If there be anything in this, it makes againstthe view that a book and a half had been written by August, 1580; forSpenser is not likely to have known the O’Neill ‘badge’ till he settledin Ireland. [4] The passage in Tasso (_G. L._ ix. 25) is itself an imitation ofVirgil, _Aen._ vii. 785. Yet the ‘greedie pawes’ and ‘golden wings’ ofSpenser’s picture seem due to Tasso’s ‘Sù le zampe s’inalza, e l’alispande.’ Both these arguments, then, are indecisive; and in the absence ofdecisive proof I find it hard to believe that Harvey, who though apedant was no fool, can have seen anything like the whole of Book Iwithout 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 years1582-4. [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 hasrecently been made (_Mod. Lang. Rev._ 1908) to prove that the lady ofthe _Amoretti_ and the ‘countrey lasse’ of _F. Q._ VI was not ElizabethBoyle, but Lady Elizabeth Carey. [10] The occurrence of feminine endings makes it very unlikely thatthis was among the _Pageaunts_ mentioned by E. K. The greater part ofthe _Mutabilitie_ cantos was certainly written in Ireland, probably in1597-8. [11] The scene of the dialogue on the _Present State of Ireland_ islaid in England; so that, unless this is a mere literary device, thetract must have been written, or at least begun, during this visit in1596. [12] No such authority, I think, belongs to the ‘Second Folio’, thoughit sometimes corrects printer’s errors. In the Critical Appendix I havecited some of its characteristic variants in support of this view.
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