1 The theme of temperance, intemperance, continence, incontinence, and the mean is agreed to derive from Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Book vii; i.57-58 is in fact a direct paraphrase of EN 1150^b 19 and 1151^b 23ff. (I am indebted to Professor James Hutton for this and other advice on the present article, though the direction it has taken is of course entirely my own); still in all, Aristotle provides no explanation for the problems of why Mordant dies as he does and of the stain on Ruddymane. As for sources of motifs, my chief interest in this paper, Amavia's despair and suicide are modeled on that of Dido, as William Nelson has most recently and thoroughly argued, The Poetry of Edmund Spenser (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1963), p. 142. The Nymph's Well derives in part, along with the name of the book's villain, ‘Acratia,’ from Trissino's L'Italia liberata dai Goti (1547-48), as C. W. Lemmi long ago pointed out (‘The Influence of Trissino on The Faerie Queene,’ PQ, 7 [1928], 220-223); and the myth of the Nymph in ii.7-9 is modeled on the myth of Alpheus and Arethusa along with other nymph-chases in the Metamorphoses (Lemmi, ‘The Symbolism of the Classical Episodes in The Faerie Queene,’ PQ, 8 [1929], 286). The sources previously recognized for ‘So soone as Bacchus with the Nymphe does lincke’ are listed in n. 3, below.

2 Frank Kermode, ‘The Cave of Mammon,’ in Elizabethan Poetry, ed. John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies, 2 (New York: St. Martin's Press, i960), p. 151. To recount the battle over whether the episode should be interpreted theologically is beyond the scope of this paper. The theological critics, who are the more likely beneficiaries of my discoveries, are as follows: A. C. Hamilton, ‘A Theological Reading of The Faerie Queene, Book 11,’ ELH, 24 (1958), 155-162; later incorporated in The Structure of Allegory in ‘The Faerie Queene’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), pp. 106-110; Alastair Fowler, ‘The Image of Mortality: The Faerie Queene, II, i-ii,’ HLQ, 24 (1961), 91-110. Much subsequent criticism agrees that Ruddymane's problem (and possibly even Mordant's) is original sin; but it has joined Kathleen Williams (Spenser's World of Glass [Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1966], p. 43) in rejecting Fowler's ill-founded belief that the well represents baptism, and in substituting one of two alternate meanings. Williams believes it represents ‘natural purity’; in this she is followed by Patrick Cullen, ‘Guyon Microchristus: The Cave of Mammon Re-examined,’ ELH, 37 (1940), 153-174. More closely conformable to the action, though it raises a problem about the Palmer's obtuseness, is the interpretation of the well as the Old or Mosaic Law: Northrop Frye tentatively implied it in his important article, ‘The Structure of Imagery in The Faerie Queene,’ UTQ, 30 (1961), 120, reprinted, among other places, in Hamilton, A. C., ed., Essential Articles for the Study of Edmund Spenser (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1972), p. 164 Google Scholar; Fowler in the article cited above noticed the resemblances to the Old Law but proceeded to ignore them; the first full-scale interpretation of the well as Mosaic Law was my unpublished dissertation, ‘Spenser and the Exegetical Tradition: Nature, Law, and Grace in the Episode of the Nymph's Well,’ Diss. Johns Hopkins U. 1964; see also my review of Williams, , JEGP, 67 (1968), 303 Google Scholar; the idea was further developed by Kellogg, R. and Steele, O., eds., Books I and II of ‘The Faerie Queene’ (New York: Odyssey Press, 1965), pp. 57–58 Google Scholar, and by Evans, Maurice, Spenser's Anatomy of Heroism (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1970), pp. 117–119 Google Scholar, in both cases in tandem with quite different and I think untenable interpretations. The sources I propose in the present essay could support either meaning of the well.

3 Alastair Fowler states on the authority of Émile Mâle that the mixing of water with wine is represented in many emblems of temperance, ‘Emblems of Temperance in The Faerie Queene, Book II,’ RES, N.S., 11 (1960), 143-149. Fowler does also cite in passing at second hand via Mignault (a commentator on Alciati) ‘the Greek anthology,’ but not particularly as a source for this episode and only to deny its relevance for Spenser, pp. 147-148. As it happens, Mignault may well be an immediate source, since he adduces from the Greek Anthology exactly the epigram I am about to propose as the ultimate source; see n. 6, below. Erasmus’ Colloquy ‘Convivium Prophanum,’ tr. Craig Thompson (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 597, is cited by Nelson, William, The Poetry, p. 190.Google Scholar Natalis Comes has been proposed as at least one of Spenser's immediate sources here as elsewhere by C. W. Lemmi, ‘Symbolism of the Classical Episodes,’ pp. 276-277. Since Comes too quotes the epigram I am about to propose, he too may well be an immediate source but not for the reasons Lemmi states, which are quite different; see n. 6, below. Heliodorus, Æthiopica, Book v, is cited by Upton, an eighteenth-century editor, in Spenser, Works: A Variorum Edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1932-57), 11, 193. (All Spenser quotations are from this edition, except that I have normalized u-v and i-j-y; prose quotations are entirely in modern spelling.) The Æthiopica was available to Spenser in the original Greek in the ed. of Basle, 1534; I have used the ed. of Commelinus (Lyon: de Harsy, 1611), with parallel Latin translation, sig. P5-P5^V. The French translation by Amyot (1513-93) also preserves the key words: ‘je boy à vous de ceste eau toute pure comme vous l'aymez, ce sont nymphes toutes pures, non meslées avec Bacchus, ains encore veritablement vierges,’ Amours de Théagenes et Chariclée par Héliodore, traduction de Jacques Amyot, Collection des Romans Grecs, ed. M. P. L. Courier (Paris: J. S. Merlin, 1822), 11, 170. The Elizabethan translation of Thomas Underdowne (1587), An Aethiopian Historie, ed. Charles Whibley, The Tudor Translations (London: D. Nutt, 1895), p. 135, resembles neither the original nor Spenser at this point.

4

Tr. Hutton, James, The Greek Anthology in France and in the Latin Writers of the Netherlands to the Year 1800, Cornell Studies in Classical Philology, xxviii (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell U. Press, 1946), p. 353, n. 38Google Scholar; see also for a freer rendering Paton, W. R., The Greek Anthology, Loeb Library (London: W. Heinemann, 1917), III, 179.Google Scholar The Greek original of Meleager's epigram was placed in Book 1, third under the heading EIΣ OINON, in the only version of the Greek Anthology then available, the Planudean. This was available to Spenser in the editio princeps (Florence: Laurentius de Alopa, 1494) and in five later eds. which I have not been able to examine, and in the eds. of Joannes Brodaeus (Basle: Froben, 1549), pp. 115-116, and H. Stephanus ([Paris]: Stephanus, 1566), p. 82, which I have used.

5 Hutton, Greek Anthology in France, ‘Register,’ pp. 697-698, and its cross-references down through Tamisier (1589); The Greek Anthology in Italy to the Year 1800 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell U. Press, 1935), ‘Register,’ p. 547, and its cross-references down through Guicciardini (1565), not counting the version by Erasmus because it was counted in the preceding list but counting both Soter's and Cornarius’ reprintings of it.

6 Comes, Natalis, Mythologiae (Frankfort: A. Wechel, 1588), v.12, sig. G8.Google Scholar In his treatment of Spenser's indebtedness to Comes here, Lemmi overlooks the washing motif supplied by the quoted epigram to fasten on a sexual allegory which has not won general assent, ‘Symbolism,’ pp. 276-277. Alastair Fowler (‘Emblems,’ pp. 147-148) similarly overlooks the washing motif, and hence the epigram, in Mignault, Andreae Akiati… Emblemata cum Claudii Minois … commentariis (Leyden: Plantin, 1591, first printed, 1573). P. 132 on Emblem 25, ‘In statuam Bacchi.’ Indeed, Alciati's emblem itself is in part a version of the epigram: ‘Cum Semeles de ventre parens me fulmine traxit / Ignivomo, infectum pulvere mersit aquis. / Hinc sapit hic liquidis qui nos bene diluit undis…’ (11. 15-17); it evinces the Spenserian motifs of washing and ashes, though Jove (‘parens’) takes the place of the Nymphs.

7 Among many versions of the washing scene, the Photographic Collection of the Warburg Institute contains reproductions of three executed within or before Spenser's time: A sketch by Pirro Ligorio (1513 or 1514-1583) of an ancient relief depicting the washing of a baby presumed to be Bacchus; an ancient relief depicting the Infancy of Bacchus from the Villa Albani, now in the Glyptothek at Munich, one manuscript sketch of which is reportedly located at Eton College, see Reinach, S., Répertoire des reliefs grecs et romains, II (Paris: Leroux, 1912), 74.3Google Scholar; and ‘The Birth and Washing of Bacchus,’ by Taddeo Zuccari (or Zuccaro) and assistants executed 1560-61 on the ceiling of the Stanza del Autunno, Villa Farnese, Caprarola. I am grateful to the Warburg Institute and particularly to Dr. Jennifer Montagu for access to and advice about the Collection.

8 See for example Hellman, Alfred, A Collection of Early Obstetrical Books (New Haven: no pub., 1952), illustrations on pp. 27, 39, 66, 73.Google Scholar

9 Warton, , Var., II, 196 Google Scholar; Hamilton, , Structure of Allegory, p. 108 Google Scholar; Kellogg and Steele; Bayley, P. C., ed., The Faerie Queene, Book II (London: Oxford U. Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Williams, Kathleen, Spenser's World, p. 42.Google Scholar

10 Greek Anthology in France, pp. 13-22, ‘The Greek Epigrams as Schoolbook,’ see also pp. 85 et passim; ix, 331, occurs in editions of selections of Epigrammata Graeca which were used as or drawn upon for school textbooks—Soter (2nd ed., Cologne, 1528, not in 1st ed.), Cornarius (Basle, 1529), Stephanus (Paris, 1570), see Registers of this and Greek Anthology in Italy, of which see also p. 38.

11 Erasmus's version, Adagia, Book II.2.96, ‘Perdidisti vinum infusa aqua,’ LB 2, 482b. For Comes and Alciati, see n. 6, above.

12 Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser (Geneva: Droz, 1960), e.g., on the works of Louis le Roy and Guy le Fèvre de la Boderie, pp. 99-105; 114-120.

13 (Paris: Jean Richer, 1585, 1586). I quote the modern edition based on both of these eds. by Lapp, John C., Œuvres poetiques complètes (Paris: Didier, 1966), pp. 257–259.Google Scholar

14 Greek Anthology in France, p. 377. Unaware of the Meleager epigram, John C. Lapp, in his note on the accompanying ‘Fable,’ cites only the quite different enfances of Bacchus in Ovid (Met., III, 254[Sic]-315). He then correctly muses: ‘Nous n'avons trouvé’ aucune mention d'une nymphe Clitorie. Pontus se souvenait sans doute d'Ovide, Méta., xv, 322-328, où il s'agit de la source de Clitor, qui fait prendre en dé;goût le vin à quiconque y boit, et dont l'eau sert d'antidote contre la chaleur du vin,’ p. 258, n.

15 Ovids Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologiz'd, and Represented in Figures … (Oxford: Lichfield, 1632), sigs. Nnn4^v, Qqq2^v.

16 Williams, Kathleen, Spenser's World, pp. 40–41 Google Scholar, and n.: ‘To a contemporary reader the reversal of a familiar emblem must have been striking’; Nelson, , Poetry, p. 190 Google Scholar; and on the critique of classical temperance, speaking of Book II in general, Nelson says, p. 195, ‘[Aristotle] concludes, “Why then should we not say that he is happy, who is active in accordance with complete virtue … ?” But, for Spenser, no man since Adam could conceivably live his life “in accordance with complete virtue.” Herein lies the critical difference between the pagan philosophers and the Christian poet.’ Kellogg and Steele see this ‘impossibility in the Christian world view of perfect temperance’ in the well's refusal to wash Ruddymane, p. 57. In a sense, I am simply hooking the critique of classical ethics already recognized elsewhere in Spenser onto the inversion of a classical allegory of temperance already partially recognized here.

17 On the unattainability of temperance, see the citations from Nelson and Kellogg and Steele, n. 15, above; on the well as Law, see the critics in n. 2, above. The interpretation of Paul's and the Mosaic Law's commandment ‘Thou shalt not lust’ (so Geneva version; Vulgate, ‘Non concupisces’) as ‘Thou shalt not have concupiscence’ is that of the Reformers, though originating with Augustine; counter-reformation Catholics wrested Paul's absolutist commandment more in the direction of Aristotle and common sense; see, for a useful survey of opinions, Cornelius a Lapide, a Flemish Jesuit (1567-1637), Commentaria … (Antwerp: Nutius & Meursius, 1616-1653), PP. 94-2.d-95.2.c on Rom. 7:7.

18 ‘Paul speaketh not here chiefly of the death of the body, although it also do follow, but rather of that death, whereinto we incur, when we earnestly feel our sin by the knowledge of the Law… . we feel in our selves some taste of eternal condemnation,’ Peter Martyr Vermigli, Most learned and fruitfull Commentaries … upon … Romanes, tr. H[einrich?] B[ullinger?] (London: John Daye, 1568), sigs. li.i and Gg.vi^v; see also the still-important ‘ordinary gloss,’ Glossa ordinaria cum postilla … Nicolai de Lyra (Venice: Paganinus de Paganinis, 1495), vi, interlinear gloss on ‘Ego autem mortuus sum,’ i.e., ‘Novi me mortuum,” sig. 20iiii, col. 1; and col. 2 on 7:9-10; 13; Hugh of St. Cher, Opera (Lyon: Societas Bibliopolarum, 1645), vii, 42.3 on 7:9; 43 on 7:13; Luther, Werke (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883-1972), LVI, 65 on 7:4; 67-69 on 7:9-10; 69 on 7:13; Melanchthon, ‘Annotationes in Ep… . Rom.,’ Opera, ed. C. G. Bretschneider, Corpus Reformatorum (Halle: C. Schwetschke & Sons, 1834-60), xv, 464-465.

19 Exactly this point is made by Vermigli, Peter Martyr, The Common Places, tr. Marten, Anthony (1574) [Colophon, London: Denham, Chard, Broome, & Mansell, 1583], 2.9, sig. Rrii^v Google Scholar: ‘The first way is civil, to wit, through moral virtues. For those do reduce them [involuntary yet sinful desires] to a mediocrity; and those would suffice, if we should only have respect unto the present life. But in truth before God they are not sufficient.’

20 The Geneva was the ordinary Bible of Elizabethan homes. In the Variants, Vulg. stands for Vulgate: R-D for the Rheims-Douai English translation of the Vulgate, of which only the New Testament would have been in print (1582) when Spenser was composing this episode; Calvin's Latin trans, is found in the lemmata of his commentary; JTB stands collectively for the O.T. trans, by Junius and Tremellius (my ed., London: Middleton, 1585) and the N.T. trans, by Beza, rev. by Junius (my ed., Frankfurt: Wechel, 1590), which together formed the main Protestant Latin version; ‘Great’ refers to the Great Bible, ordinarily used in Elizabethan churches, also called Cranmer's Bible, essentially reproduced in the Bishop's Bible; KJV is of course the King James version. The Douai O.T. and the King James version, while appearing after Spenser's time, are often relevant as apparent reflections of a sense latent in earlier versions

21 Origen, PG 13, 712 on 16:4; 715 on 16:5; Jerome, PL 25, 127 on 16:4; Rabanus Maurus, PL 110, 668 on v. 4, quoting Jerome, above; Glossa ordinaria, iv, sig. uuiiii^v on 16:4; Hugh of St. Cher, Opera, fol. 58.b on 16:9; Calvin, , Commentaries: Ezekiel, tr. Myers, T. (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1850), II, 108–109 Google Scholar; Cornelius a Lapide, Commentaria, pp. 1047.2.b on 16:6.

22 Origen, , PG 13, 713–714 Google Scholar on 16:4; Jerome, , PL 25, 127 Google Scholar on 16:4; Maurus, Rabanus, PL 110, 668 Google Scholar on 16:4; Glossa, iv, sig. uuv interlinear (not found in the PL ed., which is why I do not use it) on 16:9; Hugh of St. Cher, Opera, fol. 56.C on 16:4; 58.b on 16:9; Lauretus, Hieronymus, Sylva allegoriarum totius Sacrae Scripturae (Lyon: Vincentius, 1622)Google Scholar, ‘Abluere,’ sig. A5; Lapide, Commentaria, p. 1046.2.d on 16:4. Lauretus omitted original sin, Calvin, baptism, and the glosses to the Geneva Bible, both.

23 Fowler, ‘Image,’ p. 110; Kellogg and Steele, p. 58; Evans perceives the contrast with the Well of Life or baptism, Anatomy, p. 114, but still confusedly feels that the well ‘slays but… saves’ somebody, presumably Ruddymane, p. 118.

24 ‘Abluere,’ p. 9; Origen, , PG 13, 713–714 Google Scholar; Jerome, , PL 25, 127 Google Scholar; Maurus, Rabanus, PL 110, 668, all on 16:4.Google Scholar

25 Anatomy, p. 119.

26 ‘En amorem Dei obstetricantis infantulos Hebraeorum: quis ergo, quantusque amor eius, cum ipse pro parvulis factus est parvulus, et sordes infantiae nostrae suscepit?’ p. 1047.2.C on 16:6.

27 See critics in n. 9, above.

28 ‘A Secular Reading of the Faerie Queene, Book II,’ ELH, 33 (1966), 155-158, reprinted in Essential Articles, pp. 300-302.

29 Fowler, ‘Image,’ p. 110; Kellogg and Steele, p. 58.

30 Fowler, ‘Emblems,’ pp. 147-148, and Evans, , Anatomy, pp. 113, 115-117, 120.Google Scholar