Spenser (EDMUND was excluded from court)

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

EDMUND was excluded from court; Spenser, seeking to aid Leicester, "overshot himself" and was exiled to Ireland, in 1580, as secretary to Lord Grey. Of Spenser's life in Ireland during the next few years we know little. He took with him some part of the "Faerie Queene," his greatest poem, and in 1589 he came in contact with Raleigh, read to him part of his poem, and was persuaded by him to go to London and present it to the Queen. In 1590 the first three books, one-fourth the poem as he had planned it, were published, and immediately won fame. The poem was planned as the epic of the new England, celebrating the return of the old British line through the Welsh house of Tudor; th interpreting certain cardinal events of the time; and pointing out England's destiny. This part of Spenser's design comes out in the chronicle passages, in the love of Arthur (the spirit of England, at times identified with Leicester) for Gloriana, the Faerie Queen (Elizabeth); and and in such passages as the defense of Elizabeth's policy in the fifth book, the legend of Justice. Some of the great knights are to be identified with famous Englishmen, as Artegal for Lord Grey, Calidore for Sidney, and the like. Besides this historical and contemporary matter, the poem was to be a treatise on "the brave courtier," the Renaissance cou ideal of education. Arthur typifies Magnificence, or greatness of mind; Redcross on for Temstands for Holiness; Guyon perance; Calidore for Courtesy, and the like. By this means all the virtues and qualities of the ideal man were to be represented. Finally, the poem is a treasury of romance. England is fairyland, as in the old romance of Malory, and men and their deeds, and the policies of imperial England are seen through the gla glass of enchantment. The poem might, therefore, be read as a moral allegory, as a political allegory, or simply as a treasury of romance. The long stanza lent itself to every variety of pictorial effect and of mood. Spenser can be dramatic, languorous, lyrical. He can be ster stern with moral fervor or sensuous and seductive. He has been called the painter of the English poets. The extraordinary richness and variety of his epic is seen not only in its poetical qualities, which have never been surpassed, but also in the way in which it sums up the thought and ideals of an epoch. Love of travel, of conquest, of science, of every form of philosophy; theories of the state and of conduct; the learning of a time when learning was held to be one of the highest ideals of the man of affairs as well as of the recluse all these are found in combina-