Epic Poetry

"I never meet a man who says that he used to like the Faerie Queene."

"It is not, perhaps, absolutely necessary to have a large edition in fact; but it is imperative that you should think of The Faerie Queene as a book suitable for reading in a heavy volume, at a table—a book to which limp leather is insulting—a massy, antique story with a blackletter flavour about it—a book for devout, prolonged, and leisurely perusal."

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

"The Faerie Queene is the most extended and extensive meditation on sex in the history of poetry."

"The first essential is, of course, not to read The Faery Queen."

"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?"

"I am reading The Faery Queen—with delight. [...] I can't think out what I mean about conception: the idea behind F.Q. How to express a kind of natural transition from state to state. And the air of natural beauty."

"The things we read about in [The Faerie Queene] are not like life, but the experience of reading it is like living."

"For Merlin had in Magick more insight, Then euer him before or after liuing wight.'For he by wordes could call out of the sky Both Sunne and Moone, and make them him obay: The Land to sea, and sea to maineland dry, And darksom night he eke could turne to day: Huge hostes of men he could alone dismay, And hostes of men of meanest thinges could frame, When so him list his enimies to fray: That to this day for terror of his fame, The feends do quake, whē any him to them does name."

"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."

"Beyond all doubt it is best to have made one's first acquaintance with Spenser in a very large—and, preferably, illustrated—edition of The Faerie Queene, on a wet day, between the ages of twelve and sixteen."

"[Mr. John Bailey] related a story of an officer who read the Faerie Queene to his men when they were in a particularly difficult situation. The men did not understand the words, but the poetry had a soothing influence upon them. Nothing better could be said of poetry than that."

"There has been and continue to be controversy about the nature and status of to be sex in The Faerie Queene. Most criticism assumes that what Spenser says is what he means. But a poet may not always be master of his own poem, for imagination can overwhelms moral intention. Some of the poetically strongest and most fully realized material in The Faerie Queene is pornographic. Like Blake's Milton, Spenser may be one of the devil's party without knowing it. In a paradox cherished by Sade and Baudelaire, the presence of moral sexual law and taboo intensifies the luxury of evil. A great poet always has profound ambivalences and obscurities whose motivation criticism has scarcely begun to study in this case. The Faerie Queene is didactic but also self-pleasuring. Not despite the complexity of erotic response, Spenser was a sexual psychologist of the first rank, surpassed only by Freud and Shakespeare. His treatment of erotic archetype, and perversion, dream, civilization, fantasy, obsession, and sacrifice lifts The Faerie Queene out of national into world literature."

"Even Spenser himself, though assuredly one of the greatest poets that ever lived, could not succeed in the attempt to make allegory interesting. It was in vain that he lavished the riches of his mind on the House of Pride and the House of Temperance. One unpardonable fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades the whole of the Fairy Queen. We become sick of cardinal virtues and deadly sins, and long for the society of plain men and women. Of the persons who read the first Canto, not one in ten reaches the end of the First Book, and not one in a hundred perseveres to the end of the poem. Very few and very weary are those who are in at the death of the Blatant Beast. If the last six books, which are said to have been destroyed in Ireland, had been preserved, we doubt whether any heart less stout than that of a commentator would have held out to the end."

"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."

"No young lady of the present generation falls to a new novel of Sir Walter Scott's with keener relish than I did that morning to the Faery Queen."

"No allegorical poem, either previous or succeeding, has approached the Faerie Queen within half the diameter of the earth."

"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."

"You will take especial note of the marvellous independence and true imaginative absence of all particular space or time in the "Faery Queene." It is in the domains neither of history or geography; it is ignorant of all artificial boundary, all material obstacles; it is truly in land of Faery, that is, of mental space. The poet has placed you in a dream, a charmed sleep, and you neither wish, nor have the power, to inquire where you are, or how you got there."

"Spenser's poetry is all fairy-land. [...] The poet takes and lays us in the lap of a lovelier nature, by the sound of softer streams, among greener hills and fairer valleys. He paints nature not as we find it, but as we expected to find it, and fulfils the delightful promise of our youth. He waves his wand of enchantment, and at once embodies airy beings, and throws a delicious veil over all actual objects. The two worlds of reality and of fiction are poised on the wings of his imagination."

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

"It is scarcely possible to accompany Spenser's allegorical heroes to the end of their excursions. They want flesh and blood—a want for which nothing can compensate. The personification of abstract ideas furnishes the most brilliant images of poetry; but these meteor forms, which startle and delight us when our senses are flurried by passion, must not be submitted to our cool and deliberate examination."

"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."

"Without being insensible to the defects of the Fairy Queen, I am never weary of reading it."

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

""Much depends," says Charles Lamb, "upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy Queen for a stop-gap?" Select rather a June morning, when the brilliant white clouds are sailing slowly through a blue sky, a grassy bank under a tree, looking down a long valley with broken hills in the distance; let mind and body both be at ease, and both disposed to dream, but not to sleep, and when the influences of nature have had their due effect, open, if you please, at the middle of the Legend of Sir Guyon."

"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."

"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."

"I have finished the 'Faerie Queene.' I never parted from a long poem with so much regret. He is a poet of a most musical ear—of a tender heart—of a peculiarly soft, rich, fertile, and flowery fancy. His verse always flows, with ease and nature, most abundantly and sweetly; his diffusion is not only pardonable, but agreeable. Grandeur and energy are not his characteristic qualities. He seems to me a most genuine poet, and to be justly placed after Shakspeare and Milton, and above all other English poets."

"Though the Faerie Queene does not exhibit that economy of plan and exact arrangement of parts which epic severity requires, yet we scarcely regret the loss of these while their place is so amply supplied by something which more powerfully attracts us, as it engages the affection of the heart, rather than the applause of the head; and if there be any poem whose graces please, because they are situated beyond the reach of art, and where the faculties of creative imagination delight us, because they are unassisted and unrestrained by those of deliberate judgment, it is in this of which we are now speaking. To sum up all in a few words; though in the Faerie Queene we are not satisfied as critics, yet we are transported as readers."

"No man can read the "Faery Queen" and be anything but the better for it. Through that rude age, when maids of honor drank beer for breakfast and Hamlet could say a gross thing to Ophelia, he passes serenely abstracted and high, the Don Quixote of poets. Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the "Faery Queen." There is the land of pure heart's ease, where no ache or sorrow of spirit can enter."

"Whereof she seemes ashamed inwardly."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Where is the Antique glory now become, That whylome wont in wemen to appeare? Where be the braue atchieuements doen by some? Where be the batteilles, where the shield & speare, And all the conquests, which them high did reare, That matter made for famous Poets verse, And boastfull men so oft abasht to heare? Beene they all dead, and laide in dolefull herse? Or doen they onely sleepe, and shall againe reuerse?"

"Full many mischiefes follow cruell Wrath; Abhorred bloodshed, and tumultuous strife, Vn manly murder, and vnthrifty scath, Bitter despight, with rancours rusty knife, And fretting griefe the enemy of life; All these, and many euils moe haunt ire, The swelling Splene, and Frenzy raging rife, The shaking Palsey, and Saint Fraunces fire: Such one was Wrath, the last of this vngodly tire."

"A cruell craftie Crocodile, Which in false griefe hyding his harmefull guile, Doth weepe full sore, and sheddeth tender teares."

"At last the golden Orientall gate Of greatest heauen gan to open fayre, And Phoebus fresh, as brydegrome to his mate, Came dauncing forth, shaking his deawie hayre:, And hurls his glistring beams through gloomy ayre."

"He hated all good workes and vertuous deeds, And him no lesse, that any like did vse, And who with gratious bread the hungry feeds, His almes for want of faith he doth accuse; So euery good to bad he doth abuse: And eke the verse of famous Poets witt He does backebite, and spightfull poison spues From leprous mouth on all, that euer writt: Such one vile Enuy was, that first in row did sitt."

"The noble hart, that harbours vertuous thought, And is with childe of glorious great intent, Can neuer rest, vntill it forth haue brought Th'eternall brood of glorie excellent."

"But as it falleth, in the gentlest harts Imperious Loue hath highest set his throne, And tyrannizeth in the bitter smarts Of them, that to him buxome are and prone:"

"Sad, solemne, sowre, and full of fancies fraile She woxe; yet wist she nether how, nor why, She wist not, silly Mayd, what she did aile, Yet wist, she was not well at ease perdy, Yet thought it was not loue, but some melancholy."

"A stately Pallace built of squared bricke, Which cunningly was without morter laid, Whose wals were high, but nothing strong, nor thick And golden foile all ouer them displaid, That purest skye with brightnesse they dismaid."

"And all the hinder partes, that few could spie, Were ruinous and old, but painted cunningly."

"Dischord ofte in Musick makes the sweeter lay."

"One louing howre For many yeares of sorrow can dispence: A dram of sweete is worth a pound of sowre."

"Shee greatly gan enamoured to wex, And with vaine thoughts her falsed fancy vex: Her fickle hart conceiued hasty fyre, Like sparkes of fire, that fall in sclender flex, That shortly brent into extreme desyre, And ransackt all her veines with passion entyre."

"Nought so of loue this looser Dame did skill, But as a cole to kindle fleshly flame, Giuing the bridle to her wanton will, And treading vnder foote her honest name."

"Her angels face As the great eye of heauen shyned bright, And made a sunshine in the shady place; Did neuer mortall eye behold such heauenly grace."