The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser

She with the sting which in her vile tongue grew Did sharpen them, and in fresh poyson steepe: Yet he past on, and seem'd of them to take no keepe.1

43 But Talus, hearing her so lewdly 2 raile

And speake so ill of him that well deserved,
Would her have chastiz'd with his yron flaile,
If her Sir Artegall had not preserved,
And him forbidden, who his heast observed:
So much the more at him still did she scold,

And stones did cast; yet he for nought would

swerve

From his right course, but still the way did hold To Faery Court; where what him fell shall else be

told.

1 Keepe, heed.

2 Lewdly, impudently, wickedly.

NOTE TO BOOK V.

WILL it appear too refining, if we suppose that the Sarazin Pollante (Canto II.), with his trap-falls, and his groome of evill guize, hence named Guizor, alludes to Charles the Ninth, king of France, who by sleights did underfong the Protestants, and thus perfidiously massacred them? If this is allowed, who can help applying the name of Guizor to the head of the Popish League, and chief persecutor, the Duke of Guise? And, to carry on still this allusion, what is all that plot laid in the dead of night, by the same sort of miscreants, to murder the British Virgin (Canto VI. 27), but a type of that plot laid against the chief of the British, as well as other Protestant noblemen, "that being thus brought into the net," as Camden relates, "both they, and with them the evangelical religion, might with one stroke, if not have their throats cut, yet at least receive a mortal wound "?—a plot which, though not fully accomplished, yet ended in a massacre, and was begun at midnight, at a certain signal given, on the eve of St. Bartholomew, anno 1572.

What shall we say of the tilts and tournaments at the spousal of fair Florimel? Had the poet his eye on those tiltings, performed at a vast expense, by the Earl of Arundel, Lord Windsor, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sir Fulk Greville, who challenged all comers, and which were intended to entertain the French nobility and the ambassadors, who came to treat of Anjou's marriage with the Queen? Methinks also I sometimes see a faint resemblance between Braggadochio and the Duke of Anjou, and their buffoon servants, Trompart and Simier.

In the fifth canto, Artegal is imprisoned by an Amazonian dame called by a French name, Radigund; for Radegonda was a famous Queen of France. Now as Spenser carries two faces under one hood, and means more always than in plain words he tells you, why, I say, does he, who writes in a "continued allegory," give you this episode, if there is not more meant than what the dull letter contains? The story, I think, is partly moral, but chiefly historical, and alludes to Artegal's father being taken prisoner in France; who almost ruined his patrimony to pay his ransom. See Camden, and Lloyd's Life of Arthur Grey,

Baron of Wilton.

UPTON.

APPENDIX.

VARIATIONS FROM THE FIRST EDITION, 1596.

Page 3, 1. 5, Triamond, O. Telamond.

51, st. 8, v. 8, avengement, O. advengement.