"A foul and loathly creature sure in sight, And in conditions to be loathed no less: For she was stuffed with rancour and despite Up to the throat, that oft with bitterness It forth would break and gush in great excess, Pouring out streams of poison and of gall 'Gainst all that truth or virtue do profess; Whom she with leasings lewdly did miscall And wickedly backbite; her name men Slander call."

"Hard is to teach an old horse amble true."

"But Spenser I could have read forever. Too young to trouble myself about the allegory, I considered all the knights and ladies and dragons and giants in their outward and exoteric sense, and God only knows how delighted I was to find myself in such society. As I had always a wonderful facility in retaining in my memory whatever verses pleased me, the quantity of Spenser's stanzas which I could repeat was really marvellous."

"Little she weened that love he close concealed; Yet still he wasted as the snow congealed, When the bright sun his beams thereon doth beat."

"Yet was he but a squire of low degree."

"All she did was but to wear out day. Full oftentimes she leave of him did take; And oft again devised somewhat to say, Which she forgot, whereby excuse to make: So loath she was his company for to forsake."

"Some people will say [...] that they cannot understand [the Faery Queen] on account of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if they thought it would bite them: they look at it as a child looks at a painted dragon, and think it will strangle them in its shining folds. This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the allegory, the allegory will not meddle with them. Without minding it at all, the whole is as plain as a pikestaff."

"In every poem there ought to be simplicity and unity; and in the epic poem the unity of the action should never be violated by introducing any ill-joined or heterogeneous parts. This essential rule Spenser seems to me strictly to have followed; for what story can well be shorter or more simple than the subject of this poem? A British prince sees in a vision the Fairy Queen, and he falls in love, and goes in search after this unknown fair; and at length finds her. This fable has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning is, the British prince saw in a vision the Fairy Queen, and fell in love with her; the middle, his search after her, with the adventures that he underwent; the end, his finding whom he sought."

"And her against sweet Cheerfulness was placed, Whose eyes, like twinkling stars in evening clear, Were decked with smiles that all sad humours chased, And darted forth delights the which her goodly graced."

"Moss bestrowed Must be their bed; their pillow was unsewed."

"The "Faerie Queen," like Dante's "Paradise," is only half estimated, because few persons take the pains to think out its meaning."

"For all that nature by her mother-wit Could frame in earth."

"I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say 'at last,' I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he hoped to do so much have I enjoyed it."

"Life is not lost, (said she) for which is bought Endlesse renowm."

"Who, except scholars, and except the eccentric few who are born with a sympathy for such work, or others who have deliberately studied themselves into the right appreciation, can now read through the whole of The Faerie Queene with delight?"

"O sacred hunger of ambitious minds And impotent desire of men to reign, Whom neither dread of God, that devils binds, Nor laws of men, that commonweals contain, Nor bands of nature, that wild beasts restrain, Can keep from outrage and from doing wrong, Where they may hope a kingdom to obtain. No faith so firm, no trust can be so strong, No love so lasting then, that may enduren long."

"Her face was ugly, and her mouth distort, Foaming with poison round about her gills, In which her cursed tongue (full sharp and short) Appeared like asp's sting, that closely kills Or cruelly does wound whomso she wills; A distaff in her other hand she had, Upon the which she little spins, but spills; And fains to weave false tales and leasings bad, To throw amongst the good, which others had disprad."

"And otherwhiles with amorous delights And pleasing toys he would her entertain, Now singing sweetly to surprise her sprites, Now making lays of love and lovers' pain, Bransles, ballads, virelays and verses vain; Oft purposes, oft riddles he devised, And thousands like which flowed in his brain, With which he fed her fancy and enticed To take to his new love and leave her old despised."

"The Faery Queen, it is said, has never been read to the end."

"A famous history to be enrolled In everlasting monuments of brass."

"Her hands were foul and dirty, never washed In all her life, with long nails over-raught, Like puttock's claws with the one of which she scratched Her cursed head, although it itched naught; The other held a snake with venom fraught, On which she fed and gnawed hungrily, As if that long she had not eaten aught; That round about her jaws one might descry The bloody gore and poison dropping loathsomely."

"And made to fly like doves, whom the eagle doth affray."

"The Faerie Queene is perhaps the most difficult poem in English. Quite how difficult, I am only now beginning to realize after forty years of reading it."

"After reading a canto of Spenser two or three days ago to an old lady, between seventy and eighty years of age, she said that I had been showing her a gallery of pictures.—I don't know how it is, but she said very right: there is something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly in one's old age, as it did in one's youth. I read the Faerie Queene when I was about twelve, with infinite delight; and I think it gave me as much, when I read it over about a year or two ago."

"Sweete is the loue that comes alone with willingnesse."

"Foul Jealousy, that turnest love divine To joyless dread, and makest the loving heart With hateful thoughts to languish and to pine And feed itself with self-consuming smart: Of all the passions in the mind thou vilest art."

"Spenser's Faerie Queene. A New Edition with a Glossary, And Notes explanatory and critical, ed. John Upton, Vols. I–II (London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson, 1758)"

"But Virtue's seat is deep within the mind, And not in outward shows but inward thoughts defined."

"A Complete Dictionary of Poetical Quotations, ed. Sarah Josepha Hale (Philadelphia: E. Claxton & Co., 1881)"

"Yet is that glass so gay that it can blind The wisest sight, to think gold that is brass."

"The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations, ed. Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, a new edition, revised, corrected and enlarged (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1896)"

"I don't wonder that you are in such raptures with Spenser! What an imagination! What an invention! What painting! What colouring displayed throughout the works of that admirable author! and yet, for want of time, or opportunity, I have not read his Fairy Queen through in series, or at a heat, as I may call it."

"Spenser, and the same may be said of Ariosto, did not live in an age of planning. His poetry is the careless exuberance of a warm imagination and a strong sensibility. It was his business [in his Faerie Queen] to engage the fancy, and to interest the attention by bold and striking images, in the formation and the disposition of which little labour or art was applied."

"Spenser's noble book."

"Thus warred he long time against his will, Till that through weakness he was forced at last To yield himself unto the mighty ill, Which, as a victor proud, 'gan ransack fast His inward parts and all his entrails waste, That neither blood in face nor life in heart It left, but both did quite dry up and blast: As piercing levin, which the inner part Of everything consumes and calcineth by art."

"There is no uniformity in the design of Spenser: he aims at the accomplishment of no one action; he raises up a hero for every one of his adventures, and endows each of them with some particular moral virtue, which renders them all equal, without subordination or preference. Every one is valiant in his own legend; only we must do him the justice to observe, that magnanimity, which is the character of Prince Arthur, shines throughout the whole poem, and succours the rest when they are in distress. The original of every knight was then living in the court of Queen Elizabeth; and he attributed to each of them that virtue which he thought was most conspicuous in them; an ingenious piece of flattery, though it turned not much to his account. Had he lived to finish his poem in the six remaining legends, it had certainly been more of a piece; but could not have been perfect, because the model was not true. But Prince Arthur, or his chief patron, Sir Philip Sidney, whom he intended to make happy by the marriage of his Gloriana, dying before him, deprived the poet both of means and spirit to accomplish his design. For the rest, his obsolete language, and ill choice of his stanza, are faults both of the second magnitude; for notwithstanding the first, he is still intelligible, at least after a little practice, and for the last he is more to be admired, that labouring under such a difficulty, his verses are so numerous, so various, and so harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he has professedly imitated, has surpassed him among the Romans, and only Mr. Waller among the English."

"Rude was his garment, and to rags all rent, Ne better had he, ne for better cared: With blistred hands emongst the cinders brent, And fingers filthie, with long nayles vnpared, Right fit to rend the food, on which he fared. His name was Care; a blacksmith by his trade, That neither day nor night from working spared, But to small purpose yron wedges made; Those be vnquiet thoughts, that carefull minds inuade."

"A fool I do him firmly hold That loves his fetters, though they were of gold."

"For like the stings of Aspes, that kill with smart, Her spightfull words did pricke, & wound the inner part."

"Old Spenser next, warmed with poetic rage, In ancient tales amused a barbarous age; An age that, yet uncultivate and rude, Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursued, Through pathless fields and unfrequented floods, To dens of dragons and enchanted woods. But now the mystic tale, that pleased of yore, Can charm an understanding age no more: The long-spun allegories fulsome grow, While the dull moral lies too plain below. We view well-pleased at distance all the sights Of arms and palfreys, battles, fields, and fights, And damsels in distress, and courteous knights. But when we look too near, the shades decay, And all the pleasing landscape fades away."

"Allegorical poetry, through many gradations, at last received its ultimate consummation in the Fairy Queen."

"The noblest allegorical poem in our own language,—indeed, the noblest allegorical poem in the world,—is Spenser's "Faerie Queene;" at the same time, it is probable, that if it had not been allegorical at all, it would have been a far more felicitous and attractive work of imagination."

"Ye gentle ladies, in whose sovereign power Love hath the glory of his kingdom left, And the hearts of men, as your eternal dower, In iron chains, of liberty bereft, Delivered hath into your hands by gift; Be well aware how ye the same do use, That pride do not to tyranny you lift; Lest, if men you of cruelty accuse, He from you take that chiefdom which ye do abuse."

"And after all came Life, and lastly Death; Death with most grim and griesly visage seene, Yet is he nought but parting of the breath; Ne ought to see, but like a shade to weene, Vnbodied, vnsoul'd, vnheard, vnseene."

"He lowered on her with dangerous eye-glance, Showing his nature in his countenance; His rolling eyes did never rest in place, But walked each where for fear of hid mischance, Holding a lattice still before his face, Through which he still did peep as forward he did pace."

"But Times do change and moue continually."

"Iolly Iune, arrayd All in greene leaues, as he a Player were."

"Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled, On Fame's eternal beadroll worthy to be filed."

"Next was Nouember, he full grosse and fat, As fed with lard, and that right well might seeme; For, he had been a fatting hogs of late."