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_.