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lxiv INTRODUCTION
Bower of Bliss (n xii. 71, 74), but it is a manner habitual to him, and it is
capable of infinite variation according to his mood There are few of
those rhetorical figures noted by Puttenham 1 as ' both auricular and
sensible, by which all the words and clauses are made as well tunable to
the ear as stirring to the mind' that do not find perfect illustration in
the Faerie Queene At times a word is so repeated that it gives the luxe
a metrical balance, or'enforces an obvious, antithesis, at times the iteration
is Tittle more than a play upon the meaning of the word , but more often,
by the peculiar quality which it imparts to the music of the stanza it
suggests a subtlety in the poet's thought or feeling
Withall she laughed, and she blusht withall,
That blushing to her laughter gaue more grace,
And laughter to her blushing, as did fall (II xII 68 )2
His skill in playing throughout a whole stanza with recurrent word and
phrase and cadence is that of the deft juggler, who weaves in the air
intricate patterns with balls of divers colours, and yet never allows one of
them to fall out of his control
Amongst those knights there were three brethren bold,
Three bolder brethren neuer were y bone
'Borne of onemother in one happic mold,
Borne at one burden in one happie morne,
Those happie mother, and thrise happie morne,
That bore three such, three such not to be fond,
Her name was Agape whose children werne
All three as one, the first hight Priamond.
The second Dyamond, the youngest Triamond (iv 11 41 )3
Puttenham would call this device the ' translacer, which is when you turn
and translace a word with many sundry shapes as the Tailor doth his
garment, and after that sort to play with him in your dittie ' Spenser
may have been attracted by it in the prose of Sidney, but he caught its
true poetic use from his study of the Latin poets To Dryden 4 it was
known as the * turn ' upon the word or the thought, and he rightly
recognized that its English master was ' Spenser, who had studied Virgil,
and among his other excellences had copied that'
Spenser's studied use of assonance and alliteration springs from the
same musical instinct He commonly employs assonance to give greater
value to the vowel of the rhyme word, by anticipating it in some strong
place within the line
Weening some heauenly goddesse he did see,
Or else vnweeting, what it else might bee , (iv vi 22 )
1 Puttenham, The Arte of English Poetrie, c xix, pp 208 f, ed Arber
2Cf also v v 31, II VII 41
3 Cf also in XII 24, VI xi 26, II iv 35
4 Dryden, Critical Essays, ed Ker, II 109