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THE FAERIE QUEENE NATURAL DESCRIPTION, Ivii
and Lynette, the enchanter who is their chief enemy is no distant relative
of Anosto's hermit, who deceives Angelica, on their travels they meet
with classical satyrs and Elizabethan courtiers, their adventures are
reminiscent now of Vergil, now of Sir Bevis and The Seven Champions of
Christendom, now of the Apocalypse, and their betrothal is celebrated with
a confusion of pagan and Christian ritual, yet there is nothing to disturb
the harmony of the imaginative atmosphere The ante-room m the house
of Busirane is hung with goodly arras whereon, as in the castle of many
a mediaeval poet, are woven legends of classical mythology. Their
source is Ovid, but nothing could be less like Ovid than the music and the
feeling with which Spenser delineates them And over the portals of the
room are inscribed the words Be bold, which have come from the old
wives' tale of Mr Fox Among the lovers whose ' spotlesse pleasures.'
make glad the garden of Venus, David and Jonathan, Pylades and Orestes
walk side by side, in the dark river of Cocytus Pilate stands next to Tantalus
Nor is the poet's method different when he is uttering his deepest religious
conviction The well of life into which the Red Cross Knight sinks in
his conflict with the dragon is likened not merely to Silo or to Jordan,
but to Cephise and to Hebrus, to the English Bath and the German
Spau The guardian angel who watches over the prostrate Sir Guyon after
his fierce struggle with the temptations of Mammon, and evokes that
superb expression of Christian humility and gratitude
O why should heauenly God to men haue such regard ? (II VIII 2 )
appears to Spenser as a fair young man
Of wondrous beautie, and of freshest yeares (II vIII 5 )
like to Phoebus, or ' to Cupido on Idaean hill' The pedant finds the
comparison ludicrous, the more prosaic pietist finds it profane. To
Spenser it was natural, almost inevitable As Truth appealed to him in
terms of beauty, so all beauty, whatever its source, could be brought to
serve and to illuminate the highest truth
This wealth of varied reminiscence he brings into touch with his owr
observation of nature and of human character The main features o
Irish scenery supplied a background for his poem hardly distinguishable
from the traditional landscape of mediaeval romance, and he oftertireat
it in an entirely traditional manner ) But it gave him also, as the fruit o
intimate observation, pictures of vivid reality The little mountain patl
of trodden grass where Una comes upon the damzell' that on her shoulder'
sad a pot of water bore' ( I III IO), the house of Care under the steep
hillside with its muddie brook and few crooked sallows (iv v 33), the
valley in which, through the tops of the high trees, Flonmel descries
A little smoke, whose vapour thin and light
Reeking aloft, uprolled to the sky ,