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SPENSER, EDMUND 19 SPENSER, EDMUND extensive, and he had thorough com- mand of French and Italian. In his time learning was regarded as a supreme test of a poet, and Spenser's mind was un- usually sensitive to all intellectual influ- ences: education, statecraft, theories of poetry, religious ideas, the Platonism that was at the foundation of Renais- sance thought, mediasval romance and allegory, history and antiquities, to say nothing of the adventurous and colorful life about him. His friends were men like Raleigh and Sidney; his sympathies were with the progressive party, headed by Leicester and later by Essex, who urged that England's destinies were bound up in curbing the power of Spain, in establishing an English dominion in America, and in gaining the mastery of the sea. All these interests, literary, philosoph- ical, and political, are reflected in his poetry. He left Cambridge in 1576. For some time he was secretary to the Bishop of Rochester, and became in- terested in the political aspects of Puri- tanism. By 1579 he was in London, intimate with Sidney, planning to enter the service of the Earl of Leicester, with a considerable body of poetry ready for publication, and with plans already made for the writing of his great epic. In this year he published his first important poetical work, the "Shepheard's Calen- der," a collection of twelve pastoral eclogues, one for each month of the year. Some of the eclogues deal with the abuses in the church and constitute a defense of political Puritanism; others tell a poetical love story; there are also examples of the singing-match, of the dirge, of the panegyric, and other forms familiar to the pastoral genre. The learning, the variety of theme, the ex- quisite melody of his verse, proved that in the "new poet" England was hearing the first authentic voice of a muse that had been silent since the death of Chaucer. At about the same time, Spenser wrote a satire in the form of a beast epic, "Mother Hubberd's Tale." This is a rogues progress of Fox and Ape. He satirizes the ignorance of the clergy, the folly of the upstart courtier, the new- fangleness of court life. He praises the brave courtier in lines that constitute a famous portrait of Sidney. He also introduces an episode in which the rogues steal the crown of the lion and bring the realm to destruction, identifying the fox-ape conspiracy with the plan of Burghley and Simier to bring about a marriage between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou. The Puritans looked with horror upon the proposed alliance. Sidney wrote in denunciation of it and was excluded from court; Spenser, seek- ing to aid Leicester, "overshot himself" and was exiled to Ireland, in 1580, as secretary to Lord Grey. Of Spenser's life in Ireland dui'ing 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 per- suaded by him to go to London and pre- sent it to the Queen. In 1590 the first three books, one fourth the poem as he had planned it, were published, and im- mediately 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; 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 Eng- land, at times identified with Leicester) for Gloriana, the Faerie Queen (Eliza- beth) ; and in such passages as the de- fense 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 ideal of education. Arthur typifies Mag- nificence, or greatness of mind; Redcross stands for Holiness; Guyon for Tem- 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 fairy- land, as in the old romance of Malory, and men and their deeds, and the policies of imperial England are seen through the glass of enchantment. The poem might, therefore, be read as a moral allegory, as a political allegory, or sim- ply 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 stern with moral fervor or sen- suous 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 sur- passsed, 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-