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XXX11 INTRODUCTION
the translation of Du Bellay's Antiquitez de Rome, in the Shakespearian-.
farm, and soon after, whilst still dominated by the influence of the Pleiade,
he must have written his own original sequence, the Visions of the Worlds
Vamtie He was, doubtless, interested in the work of the Pleiade upon its
formal side, but he was attracted to their matter also His natural
addiction to allegory was strengthened by his study of their work, and
the recurrent themes of the vanity of the world, and the degeneracy of
the times, as well as their insistence upon the immortality which verse
alone can bestow, had more than a passing effect upon him
Later than this, and belonging to his early London years, are Virgils
Gnat and Mother Huhberds Tale, though Mother Hubberds Tale was
specially revised and in part rewritten for publication in 1591 Virgils
Gnat was described by Wharton as a ' vague and arbitrary paraphrase'
of the pseudo-Virgihan Culex, and certainly it reads more like an original
poem than a translation It is more than half as long again as the Culex,
and Spenser, with his love of a fluent and leisurely style, has felt himself
free in it to elaborate and expand as his fancy suggested Already his
soft Muse delights to play,
An easie running verse with tender feete,
and in its peculiar use of assonance, alliteration, and the iteration of word
and verbal cadence, Virgils Gnat is not a little suggestive of the style
that Spenser was later to bring to perfection l
Of the political significance of Mother Hubberds Tale I have spoken
already Its poetical importance is even greater Like the early Visions
it is allegorical, but for its inspiration he has turned away from the emblematic
devices of the Pleiade to the more comprehensive methods of
mediaeval allegory Caxton's translation of Renard the Fox has supplied
him with the plot, its manner shows the further influence of Chaucer
In the Shepheardes Calender he had aimed at the formation of an ideal
poetic diction on the model of Chaucer, now he takes the same model
upon simpler lines, his object being to write in the familiar style without
the richness of allusion, so predominant in his work as a whole, and with
only the faintest touch of archaism ' Simple is the devise and the composition
meane,' he tells us The language is essentially plain, and admirably
suited to clear and forcible narrative And his use of the heroic couplet
has all the ease of mastery But not only is the poem in metre and
language Chaucerian, Spenser has here caught successfully something of
1 A comparison of 11 377-84 with Culex 237-40
' Et Tityos, Latona, tuae memor anxius trae
(Implacabihs tra nimis) lacet ahtis esca
terreor, a tantis insistere, terreor, umbris,
ad Stygias revocatus aquas,
will at the same time show the manner in which Spenser expanded his original, and
suggest one at least of the sources whence he learnt his musical device of repetition
of p ban, infra