The Poetical Works of - OUDL Home

xl INTRODUCTION
English poetic diction, lifting it from anarchy and stiffness, daring greatly,
but triumphing whether in the simple or the ornate, widening its scope,
but at the same time never failing to give it ease and flexibility, so that
language became to him a willing servant, and could voice the subtlest
shades of mood or fancy By means of this rich and varied style, fully
expressive of his high seriousness, his spirituality, his inexhaustible sense
of beauty, he has exercised a spell that has been potent for three centuries,
and none has called so many poets to their vocation
The greatness of Spenser was fully recognized in his own day, and he
was accorded praise from writers widely differing from him in method
and ideal To Shakespeare 1 his ' deep conceit' needed 'no defence'
Even Ben Jonson, who disliked his style, ' would have him read for his
matter' Nashe, the brilliant realist and sworn foe to Gabriel Harvey,
could find ' no frailtie ' in the fame of ' immortall Spenser but the imputation
of this Idiot's friendship', eulogized him as the ' sum tot of
whatsoever can be said of sharpe invention and schollership', and called
him ' the Virgil of England \
But the praise that would most have appealed to Spenser came from
honest Dekker ' The abode of the poets in the Insulae For tuna tae,' he
tells us, 2 * are full of pleasant bowers and queint Arboures in all their
walkes. In one of which old Chaucer is circled around with all the makers
or Poets of his time Grave Spenser was no sooner entered into this
chapell of Apollo but these elders, Fathers of the divine Fune, gave him
a Laurer and sung his welcome , Chaucer call de him his Sonne, and
placde htm at his right hand All of them, closing up their lippes in silence
and turning all their eares for attention, to heare him sing out the rest
of his Faerie Queene's praises '
The story of Spenser's life is the key to much in that poem which was
his crowning achievement Written for the most part in the wild and
solitary country of Ireland, the Faerie Queene is reminiscent of the world
from which he was exiled, and expresses his yearning for a fuller life and
for an abundance of all the good things that his spirit and senses lacked
But it is also fully charged with his experience during those years (The
charm of the country-side and the desolation of mountain and forest,
the difficulties and dangers he had to face, the ruffians and the heroes
that he encountered, the friends he made, the woman he loved, all find
their place in the intricate structure of his poem") Its idealism, heightened
by his instinctive desire to escape from a narrow and sordid reality, is thus
combined with a realism that bespeaks his sure sense of the imaginative
value of all experience that is intensely lived
1 If, indeed, the poem in the Passionate Pilgrim, ' If music and sweet poetry agree,'
is by Shakespeare And it seems too good for Barnfield, to whom also it is attributed
2 Dekker A Knights Conjuring