NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
A WEEKLY: JOURNAL DEVOTED-TO-THE: BEST: INTERESTS-OF THENORTHSHORE 
Vol. I. No. 33 
MASTERS OF 
ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
Edmund Spenser, 1553 — 1599. 
BY D. F. LAMSON. 
What we loosely call in literary 
history the Elizabethan Age may be 
said to extend over the 16th century 
and the early part of the 17th, a period 
almost short enough to justify Ben 
Johnson’s remark of Lord Bacon, 
‘about his time and within his view, 
were born all the wits that could 
honor a nation or help study.” Its 
great interest, intellectual as well as 
political, centres in or receives its 
lustre from the reign of the great 
Elizabeth, that masterful spirit and 
ruler of men, that learned, sagacious, 
imperious Queen. 
It was an age of fancy and romance, 
an age of unreality, an age in which 
men lived in visions. Kings were 
still, in Bacon’s language, ‘mortal 
gods;”’ the world was a stage, on 
which men like Raleigh, Essex, 
Leicester and Burleigh were moving 
in stately procession, decked in finery, 
revelling in wealth and power, dying 
on scaffolds or pining in prisons, or. 
living in sumptuous,dramatic splendor. 
On the other hand, Puritanism was 
already making itself felt as a power 
to be reckoned with in church and 
state; it was to some extent curbing 
the excess and license of the age, and 
preparing the way for a nobler and 
purer era of thought and feeling. 
Edmund Spenser was the product 
of his time, of both the Classic and 
Romantic schools, of Medizevalism and 
the New Learning. At the same 
time he helped to mould the rich and 
nascent life of his luxuriant age. 
Spenser was born about 15538, in Lon- 
don, ‘‘merrie London, my most kindly 
nursse.” The learning of the schools 
enriched a naturally gitted mind. His 
nature was both deeply ethical and 
highly imaginative. He was born a 
poet, but a poet with a strenuous 
moral aim. In writing of the Irish 
bards he unconsciously draws his own 
BEVERLY, MASS., SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1904 
Three Cents 
portrait : ‘‘such poets as in their writ- 
ings do labor to better the manners 
of men, and through the sweet bait of 
‘their numbers to steal into the young 
spirits a desire of honor and _ vir- 
tue, are worthy to be held in great 
respect.” 
» The first of Spenser’s best known 
works, ‘“‘ The Shepheardes Calender,”’ 
shows that he was versed in books; 
he adopted the style of ‘Theocritus and 
Virgil, and their Italian successors 
and imitators. The first eclogue has 
to do with unrequited love, and may 
have been suggested by Spenser’s own 
early disappointment, it having been 
claimed that there was a real Rosalind 
who would not be won. But no expe- 
rience, even of ill-placed affection, 
could make of Spenser a misanthrope ; 
his.sweet and gentle spirit was never 
embittered ; he had always a noble 
conception of womanhood; some of 
his finest creations are those of 
womanly character. The ‘‘Calender’’ 
follows the months of the year, and 
on a slender thread of romance weaves 
beautiful descriptions of scenes and 
employments of rural life. It may be 
called the precursor of Thomson’s 
«« Seasons,”’ and other idyls of English 
country life. 
Spenser's great work, that with 
which his name is chiefly associated, 
“The Faery Queen,” took the world 
of his day by surprise, by its fertility 
of invention, its richness of fancy, its 
melodious numbers. It is now but 
little read, partly because of its antique 
style, partly on account of its prolixity, 
and partly because there is no longer 
a personal interest in the characters of 
the time. It may be added that alle- 
gory as a fashion in literature is out of 
date at the present day. The poem, 
of which we have but a fragment, is 
in part an attempt to set forth the 
magnificence of Queen Elizabeth and 
herreign. The leading characters are 
Prince Arthur, a “goodlie knight ;”’ 
the Knight of the Red Cross; other 
knights personifying such virtues as 
Temperance, Friendship, Courtesy, 
Justice, Chastity ; the false Duessa, 
with her train of witches, enchanters, 
goblins —Idleness, Avarice, Gluttony, 
Envy, etc. By Gloriana, the “ Faery 
Queen,” he means Glory in general, 
but in particular Queen Elizabeth, 
and by ‘“‘ Faery Land”’ her kingdom. 
It is a mirror of his age in its fanciful 
and dazzling garniture, but to us its 
sweetness and nobleness are its chief 
charm. The doubleallegory, in which 
moral virtues and vices are represented 
as well as courtiers, statesmen and 
soldiers, under fictitious names, is so 
intricate and long-drawn-out that it 
almost invariably perplexes and tires 
the reader. It is no doubt, as it has 
been called, ‘‘a master-piece of opu- 
lent genius,” but like the “ Paradise 
Lost,” it has probably more to praise 
it than to read it. Besides its allegor- 
ical form, ‘‘ where more is meant than 
meets the ear,” its imaginative cast 
and its middle-age coloring and 
thought, make it difficult of interpre- 
tation to most modern readers, who 
must content themselves with the 
smoothness of its versification. 
Nothing, however, can be more 
beautiful than the picture of the Red 
Cross Knight, 
“And on his breast 2 bloodie crosse he bore, 
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,” 
or the cantos beginning: 
“And is there care in heaven? 
love 
In heavenly spirits to these creatures face?” 
And is there 
and concluding, 
“They for us fight, they watch and duly 
ward, 
And their bright squadrons round about us 
plant; 
And all for love, and nothing for reward. 
O! why should heavenly God to men have 
such regard?” 
Spenser was the poet, not only of 
fancy and chivalry, but of the moral 
virtues and of religious faith. ‘‘ The 
sage and serious Spenser,’ Milton 
says. 
We see him “ sitting like a looker- 
on of the worlde’s stage,’’ noting with 
‘critique pen”’ the wisdom and folly 
of men, delighting “ more than larke 
on sommer dayes’’ in justice, truth 
and charity, 
