Upton believed that the Ruddymane episode in II. ii referred to the O’Neills, whose badge was a bloody hand (v. the View of the Present State of Ireland). If there be anything in this, it makes against the view that a book and a half had been written by August, 1580; for Spenser is not likely to have known the O’Neill ‘badge’ till he settled in Ireland.
[4] The passage in Tasso (G. L. ix. 25) is itself an imitation of Virgil, Aen. vii. 785. Yet the ‘greedie pawes’ and ‘golden wings’ of Spenser’s picture seem due to Tasso’s ‘Sù le zampe s’inalza, e l’ali spande.’
Both these arguments, then, are indecisive; and in the absence of decisive proof I find it hard to believe that Harvey, who though a pedant was no fool, can have seen anything like the whole of Book I without recognizing its superlative merits.
[5] Fraunce’s book was licensed on June 11.
[6] From these Pageaunts E. K. quotes a line:
‘An hundred Graces on her eyelidde sate,’
which appears, slightly altered, in F. Q. II. iii. 25.
[7] The ‘fennes of Allan’ (II. ix. 16) would be near New Abbey in Co. Kildare, where Spenser seems to have occasionally resided in the years 1582-4.
[8] In the whole of Books I-III there is only one feminine ending, viz. in II. ix. 47. In Books IV-VI such endings abound.
[9] ‘On the ordinary interpretation,’ I say; for an attempt has recently been made (Mod. Lang. Rev. 1908) to prove that the lady of the Amoretti and the ‘countrey lasse’ of F. Q. VI was not Elizabeth Boyle, but Lady Elizabeth Carey.