¹ The Vulgate Version of The Arthurian Romances, ed. by H. Oskar Sommer (Washington, 1912), v, 379-381, 393-401.

² Syr Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, ed. by H. Oskar Sommer (London, 1889), Book 11, chaps. 7-9; Book 12, chaps. 1-5.

³ In the course of this adventure he is, according to Malory (12.1) but not according to the French version (pp. 394-395), partly recognized by a dwarf.

⁴ Faerie Queene, 4.7.35-47; 4.8.1-18.

⁵ John Livingston Lowes, “The Loveres Maladye of Hereos,” Modern Philology, xi (1913-14), 491-546.

⁶ Malory says that he “lyued by fruyt and suche as he myght gete and dranke water two yere” (12.1), and puts earlier that he was unknown (11.8).

⁷ Letter to Sir Walter Ralegh with the first three books of the Faerie Queene. Faerie Queene 3. proem. 5.

⁸ It was first made by Upton. See the Variorum Edition, note on 4.24 ff., p. 205. See also The Works of Edmund Spenser, in Eight Volumes (London, 1805), II, clii, and Jewel Wurtsburgh, Two Centuries of Spenserian Scholarship (Baltimore, 1936), p. 86.

⁹ See, e.g., Josephine Waters Bennett, The Evolution of the Faerie Queene (Chicago, 1942), pp. 148-149, 168-170, 209-211.

¹⁰ “The fitting close of this discussion of Spenser's connection with Leicester is found in that later version of the earl's marriage put in the Faerie Queene. Belphoebe (Elizabeth) saves Timias (Leicester) but does not realize his love for her. Afterwards, however, she sees him kissing Amoret (The Countess of Essex), and becomes very angry. He pursues her, vainly; goes into retirement; yields to immeasurable grief. The Dove sees him with the ruby and a little golden chain, makes peace between them and they are happy. The allegory does not end in marriage, or in love in the conventional sense; it represents knightly service. Here is a charming picture of the quarrel of 1579, softened by time, and presenting in the happiest light the attachment of the earl for his Queen” (Edwin Greenlaw, Studies in Spenser's Historical Allegory [Baltimore, 1932], pp. 131-132.)

¹¹ Fred Sorensen, “Sir Walter Ralegh's Marriage,” Studies in Philology, xxxiii (1936), 186 ff.

¹² Sir Walter Ralegh, The Discoverie of… Guiana, ed. by V. T. Harlow (London, 1928), p. xxi.

¹³ In the similar, though more serious situation caused by the secret marriage of Leicester to the Countess of Essex, “the Queen was bitterly angry and was for imprisoning Leicester in the Tower, … Leicester was soon forgiven, his new Countess never” (G. B. Harrison, The Life and Death of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex [New York, 1937], p. 5). ¹⁴ Edward Edwards, The Life of Sir Walter Ralegh (London, 1868), i, 138.

¹⁵ Sorensen, op. cit., p. 195. Cf. also Edward Thompson, Sir Walter Ralegh (New Haven, 1936), p. 90.

¹⁶ J. Hannah, Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh, etc. (London, 1892), p. xv.

¹⁷ E. g., nos. xx, xxii, xxix, in Letters, ii, 43, 47, 69.

¹⁸ Apparently this thought of death continued, at least if the following passage from a letter to the Lord Admiral Howard, June 21, 1594, may be so interpreted: “If your Lordship will vouchsaife her Majesty for me to attend you privatly in her service, I hope I shall stand your Lordship in the place of a poore marriner or soldier. I have no other desire but to serve her Majestye. And seinge I deserve nor place, nor honor, nor rewarde, I hope it will be easely graunted,—if I be not condemned to the grave; no libertye nor hope left that ether tyme or the geving of my life may recover, or be a sacrifice for, my offences” (Letters, ii, 94-95).

¹⁹ William Stebbing, Sir Walter Ralegh, (Oxford, 1891), p. 88.

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ Harrison, loc. cit.

²² Violet A. Wilson, Queen Elizabeth's Maids of Honour (New York, n.d.) pp. 29, 31, 65, 107, 122, 151, 180, 195, 211, 235, 268.

²³ Calendar of Carew MSS., 1515-1574, ed. Brewer and Bullen, p. xxxvi.

²⁴ He speaks of her in a letter to Cecil of August 25, 1594: “if you think we may cum bake in tyme” (Letters of Ralegh, ii, 98). Does this mean that Ralegh and his wife (mentioned in the next sentence) may come back to court?

A letter to Cecil of December, 1594 (Letters, ii, 104) indicates that some knowledge about property is being kept from her.

²⁵ The same type of objection applies to making Serena a symbol of Lady Ralegh (6.6) because she is associated with Timias (Bennett, op. cit., p. 210). Indeed it may be questioned whether anybody would have made the later Timias into Ralegh if it had not been for his earlier appearance. The incident of Belphoebe is quite over. Possibly this looses chronology, permitting Book 6 to refer to incidents at any time in Sir Walter's life; he had plenty of enemies. However, attacks by Despetto, Decetto, and Defetto and wounds inflicted by the Blatant Beast may be suffered by most men.

²⁶ Edward Edwards, Life of Ralegh (London, 1868), i, 139. In DNB (s.v., Ralegh) Lee and Laughton speak of “the queen's wrath on discovering that the man whom she had delighted to honour and enrich, who had been professing a lover's devotion to her, had been carrying on an intrigue with one of her maids of honour.” The word jealousy is not used by Miss Koller (“Spenser and Ralegh,” ELB, i [1934], 47, 59), but the idea, somewhat softened, is implied in “wounded to the quick,” and “wounded Queen Elizabeth's pride, perhaps her love.” It seems also implied by Mr. Sorensen (“Sir Walter Ralegh's Marriage,” Stud. Phil., xxxiii [1936], 196). Ralegh's “brutish offence” is that he made ridiculous the Queen's “demonstration of her affection.” Mr. John E. Neale stems the current by explaining that the Queen was not jealous (Queen Elizabeth [London, 1934], p. 328).

²⁷ Letter to Ralegh, with The Faerie Queene, January 23, 1589.

²⁸ Spenser also knew of Diana's love for Endymion (Epithalamium 372-381) but it is not mentioned in The Faerie Queene.

²⁹ At Hatfield House there is a portrait of Elizabeth as Diana. It is now ascribed to Hendrik Cornelius Vroom (Histoire de l'Art, ed. by André Michel [Paris, 1913], v, 353-354). E. M. Tenison (Elizabethan England [privately printed, 1936], vol. v, description of the frontispiece) names Vroom as the artist, but suggests that the portrait was based on an earlier painting or sketch. For an early equating of Elizabeth with Diana see Freeman M. O'Donoghue, A Descriptive and Classified Catalogue of Portraits of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1894). O'Donoghue does not identify the artist in question (p. 22). He does, however, describe a satirical print dated about 1585 in which Elizabeth appears as Diana and the Pope as Calisto (p. 92).

For Elizabeth as Diana or votaress of that goddess see Elkin Calhoun Wilson, England's Eliza (Cambridge, 1939), pp. 136 ff.; The Princely Pleasures at Kenelworth Castle, in George Gascoigne, The Glasse of Governement, etc., ed. by John W. Cunliffe (Cambridge, 1910), pp. 106 ff.

I wish to thank Professor J. Wilson McCutchan for assistance here and elsewhere.

³⁰ When the Squire gives himself to melancholy, he retires to a cabin in the forest. Arthur, coming that way, supposes that “some holy Hermit” (4.7.42) dwells there. This has been associated with the poem attributed to Ralegh beginning “Like to a Hermite poore in place obscure,” as a further hint that Ralegh is Timias (Bennett, op. cit., p. 168). Apparently, however, Sir Walter was first named as author of the poem in 1644; Sir Edward Hoby's Commonplace Book (circa 1596) puts it under the heading Incerti Authoris (Hyder Edward Rollins, ed. of The Phoenix Nest [Cambridge, 1931], p. 168). See also The Works of Lyly, ed. R. Warwick Bond (Oxford, 1902), iii, 470, for its anonymity.

³¹ In political allegory this jewel is equated with the 80,000 pounds that Ralegh reckons the Queen received from his share of the booty from the Grand Carrack. Yet Sir Walter almost says that the Queen cheated him out of this sum (Edwards, op. cit., ii, 68, letter of September 1S92). Belphoebe had given the jewel to Timias. The Variorum Spenser quotes A. A. Jack's opinion that the dove is an allegory for Spenser himself. Can one protest that the poet did not carry to the Queen the proceeds from Sir Walter's share in the Grand Carrack?

³² Clara W. Crane, “A Source for Spenser's Story of Timias and Belphoebe,” PMLA, xliii (1928), 635-644.

³³ This silence has been connected with Ralegh's poem To Queen Elizabeth (Bennett, op. cit., pp. 148-149). Miss Latham (Poems of Ralegh [Boston, 1929], pp. 104-105) puts this among the authentic poems, but in her note indicates that it is not always assigned to Sir Walter, and that it is sometimes headed merely “To his Mistresse.” She does not discuss the comparative value of the titles.

³⁴ F.Q., 3.5.54; 3.6.28.

“Spenser's apologists have devised an interpretation of chastity to fit the contents of the book. But Spenser's own conception of that virtue was thoroughly conventional, as is indicated by what he says of it directly in the letter to Ralegh and in this book and by his motive for including a book of chastity in the first instalment. He wished to flatter the Queen by praising a virtue on which she prided herself. He could hardly have hoped to please her if he had given that virtue the interpretation which his critics have credited to him [see Variorum, iii, 312-329]. He has much to say of chastity, by which he evidently means virginity, in the Timias-Belphoebe episode” (Bennett, op. cit., p. 144).

³⁵ Cf. the broadside ballad, A song between the Queen's Majesty and England, in J. William Hebel and Hoyt H. Hudson, Poetry of the English Renaissance 1509-1660 (New York, 1934), 408-410.

³⁶ Frederick Chamberlin, The Sayings of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1923), p. 57. Cf. also the following:

“This proposal [of marriage] of the King of Sweden she wisely rejected … so she could not but declare, that, if left to her own will, she would always prefer a single condition of life (Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1823), i, 22).

“She still persisted in those vows of virginity which she had formerly made to Sir Thomas Pope at Hatfield” (ibid., p. 28).

“I stay, for whither should Chastety fly for succour, but to the Queene of Chastety” (Speeches to the Queen at Sudeley, 1592, in Nichols, iii, 139).

See also Dan S. Norton, “Queen Elizabeth's ‘Brydale Day’,” Mod. Lang. Quart., v (1944), 149-154.

³⁷ Mrs. Bennett calls the passage “voluptuous and suggestive” and the Squire's action “fondling” (op. cit., p. 169).

³⁸ In this respect it is like Ralegh's historical offence. See p. 624, above.

³⁹ Thomas Heywood, The Faire Maid of the West, Part i, act 5.

⁴⁰ Bennett, op. cit., p. 170. The argument for date is valid in proportion to the certainty that Timias is Ralegh.

⁴¹ In a letter to Cecil on November 13, 1595, Ralegh writes: “If I be thought unworthy to be imployed, or that because of my disgrace all men feare to adventure with me,—if it may not be otherwise,—I wishe sume other, of better sufficiency and grace, might undertake it, that the Queen loose not that which shee shall never fynde agayne” (Letters of Ralegh, ii, 110). He had already used the word disgrace, or disgraces, in letters to Cecil in July, 1592, and on August 25, 1594 (Letters, ii, 48, 98).

⁴² I assume with Miss Koller (“Spenser and Ralegh,” ELH [1934], i, 37 ff.) that lines 164-171 refer to the eleventh book of The Ocean to Scinthia, not to the lost books. Otherwise it seems necessary to make lines 174-175 refer to Ralegh's supposed loss of favor in 1589 and subsequent restoration. But if the lost Cynthia was not a “lamentable lay,” one is thrust on toward saying that lines 164-171 represent a revision such as Miss Koller suggests, but that lines 174-175 were not revised. Or is such interpretation of the pastoral too literal? Or do the lines refer to unpublished and now unknown poetry?

⁴³ Of a different situation in the poem Mrs. Bennett remarks that what Spenser “wrote was a prophecy which did not happen to come true” (op. cit., p. 205). This can be said of various parts of the poem. But in the realm where the shows of things are subdued to the mind's desire for a perfect world, the best can come true; good men may fall short in real life, but not in Baconian or Sidnean poetry.

It is later said that in his “happie bliss” Timias did not fear envy nor change (6.S.12). Yet, as perhaps the story of Despetto, Decetto, and Defetto hints, Spenser knew that Ralegh had many enemies not likely to abandon their hostility.

⁴⁴ Allan H. Gilbert, “The Function of the Masques in Cynthia's Revels,” PQ., xxii (1943), 213-214.

⁴⁵ Bennett, op. cit., 169-170.

⁴⁶ Bennett, op. cit., pp. 170, 243-244.

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 279.

⁴⁸ He is loved by Arthur and dear to him (1.7.37; 1.8.15; 4.7.43; 6.5.23).

⁴⁹ The name Timias occurs thrice in Book 6, where the story of the Squire is resumed and he is identified with the Squire of Belphoebe and with Arthur's follower (6.5.11, 12, 23). The word Squire is, however, applied to him some twenty times.

⁵⁰ Bennett, op. cit., p. 176.

⁵¹ It is true that Spenser said that these things would “moralize” his song. N.E.D. is obliged to give a special meaning for this passage: “To supply with a moral or subject for moralizing.” If a special sense is to be given, why not fall back on the derivation? The meaning would then be: Fierce wars and faithful loves shall give my song its quality or nature, determine its mores or character. A suggestion is perhaps furnished by Sir Thomas Overbury: “He makes some other quality moralize his affection” (An Amorist).

⁵² Epistola 13.8, in Le Opere di Dante (Firenze, 1921), pp. 438-439.

⁵³ Alfred B. Gough, The Faerie Queene, Book 5 (Oxford, 1918), pp. 259, 264 (note on 5.8.28). Cf. also the interpretation of Belphoebe's ruby p. 631 above.

⁵⁴ In Orlando Furioso 8.5-11 a knight fights mobile adversaries whom he cannot reach and escapes by unveiling a magic shield. This incident, much adapted by Spenser, escaped both Dodge and myself; see PMLA, xii (1897), 151-204; xxxiv (1919), 231.

⁵⁵ Works of Spenser, Globe edition (London, 1907), p. 640.

⁵⁶ Dekker in The Whore of Babylon, p. 219, makes them seventeen daughters.

⁵⁷ Edward Edwards, The Life of Sir Walter Ralegh (London, 1868), i, 140.

⁵⁸ R. W. Church, Spenser (London, 1888), pp. 169-170.

⁵⁹ Kathrine Koller, “Spenser and Ralegh,” ELH, i (1934), 48. Upton writes on the combat of Arthur with the Souldan: “I believe … that in this whole episode he keeps his eye (as far forth as his fairy tale will permit) on this remarkable victory over this falsely called Invincible Armada” (Variorum ed., on 5.8.30-45). Gough omits the parenthesis from his note based on Upton.

⁶⁰ Benedetto Croce writes:

“I thus defined allegory (and I believe that I was the first to do so) as a practical art, a form of writing (for writing is practical), a cryptography, if the term can be applied to the use of images spoken or figured, instead of letters and numerals; and from this definition I obtained the laws of allegory and explained why, where the express declaration or the authentic interpretation of their authors are wanting, where a solidly established cryptographic system with the keys appertaining to it are not available, the task of deciphering allegories is altogether desperate, perpetually conjectural, and capable at the most of laying claim to a greater or less degree of probability” (“On the Nature of Allegory,” trans, by Douglas Ainslie, The Criterion, iii (1924-25), 405-412.

See also Croce, The Poetry of Dante (New York, 1922), p. 7.

⁶¹ Gabriel Harvey, Works (Huth library, 1884), 1, 95.

⁶² Lectures on the English Poets, Lecture ii, in Complete Works, ed. Howe (London, 1930), 5.38. Hazlitt's further assertion that if wé do not mind the allegory “at all, the whole is as plain as a pike-staff” was not comprehended by Dean Church (Spenser, pp. 166-170), whose method was to accept the commentators and then to complain because “the real,” as presented by them, “turns aside out of its actual path of fact.” The Dean's book is still influential.