to impress upon it the proper mark of his soul and
his genius. Each story is modified with respect
to another, and all with respect to a certain effect
which is being worked out. Thus a beauty issues
from this harmony,—the beauty in the poet’s
heart,—which his whole work strives to express;
a noble and yet a laughing beauty, made up of moral
elevation and sensuous seductions, English in sentiment,
Italian in externals, chivalric in subject, modern
in its perfection, representing a unique and admirable
epoch, the appearance of paganism in a Christian race,
and the worship of form by an imagination of the North.”
CHRONOLOGICAL
TABLE
EVENTS IN SPENSER’S LIFE A.D. CONTEMPORARY EVENTS
Birth of Edmund Spenser (about) 1552 Birth of Sir
Walter Raleigh
1553
Death of Edward VI; Mary crowned.
1554
Mary marries Philip of Spain.
1558
Death of Mary; Elizabeth crowned.
1560
Charles IX, king of France.
1568
Council of Trent. Visions of Bellay, published, 1569 Sonnets of Petrarch, published, 1569
Enters Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, 1569
1572
Gregory XIII, Pope of Rome.
1572
Massacre of St.
Batholomew.
1574
Henry III, king of France.
Received M.A., leaves Cambridge, 1576 Rudolph II,
emperor.
Leaves Lancashire, 1578 Elizabeth
aids the Netherlands.
Visits Lord Leicester, 1579 The Shepheards Calender, 1579
Goes to Ireland, 1580 Massacre of
Smerwick.
1581
Tasso’s Jersalem Delivered.
Lord Grey’s return to England, 1582
1584
Assassination of William the
Silent.
1585
Sixtus V, Pope. Drake’s voyage.
1585
Leicester goes to the Netherlands.
1586
Death of Sir Philip Sidney.
First marriage (before) 1587 Execution
of Mary Queen of Scots.
Clerk to the Council of
Munster, 1588
Defeat of Spanish Armada.
Death
of Leicester.
Visits England with Raleigh, 1589 Assassination
of Henry III;
Henry
IV crowned. The Faerie Queene, Books I, 1590 Shakespeare’s
Love’s
II, III,
Labour’s Lost. Mother Hubberds Tale, Tears of 1591 Shakespeare’s
Comedy of Errors,
the Muses, Ruines of Time,
Henry VI_.
