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XXXVI
INTRODUCTION
or feigned, there is much also that, to the sympathetic reader at least,
seems circumstantial in detail, both in the progress of his suit and in the
character of his mistress Anyhow, it is evident from their publication
with the Epithalamion that Spenser intended them to be regarded as
addressed:to his"future wife, and if he had been criticized for incorporating
in the sequence poems of earlier date, his reply, like Donne's in his Good
Morrow, would have been
But this, all pleasures fancies be
If any beauty I did see
Which I desired and got, 'twas but a dream of thee
In Astrophel, with more daring poetic licence, he had identified Stella
with Sidney's wife, the Lady Francis Walsingham , and it was natural
to the Platonist to gather into his present emotion the tribute that he
had paid to other women
The Amoretti are written with an easy and familiar grace, at once clear
and melodious, capable of touching into beauty the ordinary changes and
chances of the lover's fortune, or of voicing the rarer ecstasy, so typically
Spenserian, of the sonnet Most glorious Lord of Lyfe As a series they
are incomplete, for when the lover seems already to have reached the goal
venomous tongues cause misunderstanding and separation, and the last
four sonnets are in a minor key The consummation is read in the
Epithalamion, the most magnificent lyric ever penned of love triumphant
The Epithalamion seems to concentrate into itself the essence of Spenser's
art" Nowhere else is there a more magic union of the lover's passion with
deep religious feeling , of a free and .ardent joy with a deep and tender
reverence The style ranges from utter simplicity to highly wrought and
richly coloured imagery, and draws alike upon the resources of mediaeval
superstition and classic myth. And Spenser's unfailing power over music
is here unsurpassed His intricate stanza form was suggested by the canzoni
of Petrarch, but it is all his own The linked melody of the rhymes, the
varying rhythms, the relief of the occasional short line, and the lingering
refrain of the final Alexandrine unite in a metrical design sustained
throughout with marvellous beauty This song is Spenser's highest
poetic achievement
In the winter of 1595-6, Spenser was again in London, for the
second instalment of the Faerie Queene was entered at the Stationers'
Hall on the 20th of January. What hopes of personal advancement he
had were now centred in the Earl of Essex, but they can hardly have
been sanguine The influence of Burghley was still unshaken, and
Spenser, as walking ' beside the silver-streaming Themmes ', he looked
up at Essex House, and praised the Spanish victories of the noble
peer who was lodged therein, thought less of what he might secure
through his new friend than of ' the gifts and goodly grace ' that he had
gained from Leicester its former owner, the patron of his youth During