ys, or rather the literature, of chivalry; and like theirs, the story rolled on in stanzas, and Spenser invented for his purpose a new form of stanza, one of nine lines, instead of the eight-line one of the Italians. But, unlike them, Spenser avowedly designed to himself a moral purpose and meaning in his poem. It was not merely a brilliant and entertaining series of adventures, like the Orlando. It was not merely a poetical celebration of a great historical legend, a religious epic, like the Gerusalemme. It professed to be a veiled exposition of moral philosophy. It was planned, and all its imaginative wealth unfolded, in order to portray and recommend the virtues, and to exhibit philosophical speculations. It was intended to be a book, not for delight merely, but for instruction. Such a view of poetry was characteristically in harmony with the serious spirit of the time in England, which welcomed heartily all intellectual efforts, but which expected in them a purpose to do more than amuse, and had fashion on its side in putting the note of frivolity on what did not bear this purpose distinctly in view. Spenser thought it right to declare to his friends, and to set down in writing, the aim and intention of his poem. He described it as a work which is in heroical verse under the title of a Faery Queen to represent all the moral virtues, assigning to every virtue a knight as the patron and defender of the same, in whose actions and feats of arms and chivalry the operations of that virtue, whereof he is the protector, are to be expressed, and the vices and unruly appetites that oppose themselves against the same, to be beaten down or overcome. And in a letter to Sir Walter Ralegh, written to give the key to the poem, he says that the general end of his Allegory or dark conceit, and of all his book, is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline. He indeed sees this purpose and intention in the antique poets historical. Homer meant to represent a good governor and virtuous man in Agamemnon and Ulysses, Virgil meant the same in Aeneas, Ariosto in Orlando. Tasso dissevered them, representing the Ethical part of Moral Philosophy, or the virtues of a private man, in Rinaldo; the other, named Politicé, the public virtues of a governor in Goffredo. In King Arthur, Spenser meant once more to join both. By example of which excellent poets, he says, I labour to pourtray in Arthur, before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the XII private moral virtues, as Aristotle hath devised; the which is the purpose of these first twelve books; which if I find to be well accepted, I may be perhaps encouraged to frame the other part of politick virtues in his person, after that he came to be king.
Of this large design of twenty-four books, each of twelve cantos, little more than a fourth part was accomplished, or at any rate has survived. The first three books were published in 1590; three more, books iv, v, vi, were added to them in a second edition in 1596. Two cantos, with a couple of stray stanzas, were published after his death. The political part of the design does not seem to have even come into sight of the poet.
The poem was designed in England, but it was mostly written in Ireland, amid scenes of disorder and wretchedness, which sorely tested not only the courage, but the justice, the wisdom, and the humanity of the Englishmen who had any share in the government of the most unfortunate of the Queens dominions. It needed indeed to be a knight as perfect in strength and goodness as the ideal Arthur, to deal with the evils of Ireland. Spenser, as men do in trying times, thought he saw the virtues partially realised in the friends engaged in the difficult tasks round him: we, at our point of view, are obliged to see how far the best and noblest of them was from the poets ideal. But the presence and actual sight of all this energy, struggle, danger, courage, doubtless gave life to Spensers conception of the life of warfare which he proposed to portray. It was before him on the spot; and The Fa