nights of the separate books--the
Red Cross Knight and the rest--were to bring the fruit of their
adventures, everything was to be made clear. Spenser did not live to
finish his work; _The Fairy Queen_, like the _Aeneid_, is an uncompleted
poem, and it is only from a prefatory letter to Sir Walter Raleigh
issued with the second published section that we know what the poem was
intended to be. Had Spenser not published this explanation, it is
impossible that anybody, even the acutest minded German professor, could
have guessed.

The poem, as we have seen, was composed in Ireland, in the solitude of a
colonists' plantation, and the author was shut off from his fellows
while he wrote. The influence of his surroundings is visible in the
writing. The elaboration of the theme would have been impossible or at
least very unlikely if its author had not been thrown in on himself
during its composition. Its intricacy and involution is the product of
an over-concentration born of empty surroundings. It lacks vigour and
rapidity; it winds itself into itself. The influence of Ireland, too, is
visible in its landscapes, in its description of bogs and desolation, of
dark forests in which lurk savages ready to spring out on those who are
rash enough to wander within their confines. All the scenery in it which
is not imaginary is Irish and not English scenery.

Its reception in England and at the Court was enthusiastic. Men and
women read it eagerly and longed for the next section as our
grandfathers longed for the next section of _Pickwick_. They really
liked it, really loved the intricacy and luxuriousness of it, the heavy
exotic language, the thickly painted descriptions, the languorous melody
of the verse. Mainly, perhaps, that was so because they were all either
in wish or in deed poets themselves. Spenser has always been "the
poets' poet." Milton loved him; so did Dryden, who said that Milton
confessed to him that Spenser was "his original," a statement which has
been pronounced incredible, but is, in truth, perfectly comprehensible,
and most likely true. Pope admired him; Keats learned from him the best
part of his music. You can trace echoes of him in Mr. Yeats. What is it
that gives him this hold on his peers? Well, in the first place his
defects do not detract from his purely poetic qualities. The story is
impossibly told, but that will only worry those who are looking for a
story. The allegory is hopelessly difficult; but as H