Spenser's Faerie Queene, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by Edmund Spenser

VI. vii. 3 l. 7. armed] arm’d 1596. See note on V. iii. 11.

VI. vii. 15 l. 9. yearned] earned 1609. See note on II. iii. 46 l. 9.

VI. vii. 49 l. 9. Words] Swords conj. Church. The sense, as often, favours Church’s conjecture; but the alliteration favours the text.

VI. viii. 50 l. 4. what they ought] what shee ought 1609, taking ‘ought’ = owned. For the converse see note on II. viii. 40 l. 4.

VI. ix. 28 l. 6. the heauens] th’heauens 1596, 1609. See note on V. iii. 11.

VI. x. 2 l. 9. in] on 1596. Spenser is apparently thinking of the Latin proverb ‘in portu nauigare’; yet it does not mean exactly what he desires to convey here. In Terence, Andria, i. 3. 22 ego in portu nauigo = I am out of danger: Spenser means ‘never reaching the land’. Possibly 1596 is right, and we have here a nautical phrase that has been lost.

VI. x. 24 l. 7. froward] forward 1596, 1609: corr. 16(11)-12-13. The reading ‘froward’, though not found in any of the genuine 1609 copies examined, is clearly right, as is shown by the Gloss on S. C. for April, where the Graces are thus described:—‘And Boccace saith, that they be painted naked ... the one hauing her backe toward us, and her face fromwarde, as proceeding from us; the other two toward us, &c.’

VI. x. 36 l. 6. And hewing off his head, it presented 1596, 1609: (he) it presented edd. Though Spenser is not above this kind of bad rhyme, I do not find that he ever accents ‘présented’.

VI. x. 44. The reading and punctuation of 1609 (which makes a long parenthesis of ll. 3-7) are, of course, much more logical; but not therefore more Spenserian.

VI. xii. 12 l. 8. loos] praise 1609. We may have here an authentic after-thought of Spenser’s. He may, on reflection, have disliked the collocation of ‘losse’ and ‘loos’. If so, this line should be added to the instances cited in the Introduction, p. xviii. But it is equally probable that the editor of 1609, failing to recognize the obsolescent ‘loos’—which nevertheless occurs in Puttenham—took it for a printer’s repetition of ‘losse’, and corrected accordingly.