[126.] full of vile disdaine, full of vileness that bred disgust in the beholder.
[130.] Of her there bred, etc., of her were born a thousand young ones. Her offspring are lies and rumors of many shapes.
[141.] Armed to point, completely armed. Cf. Fr. à point, to a nicety.
[145.] the valiant elfe, because he was the reputed son of an Elfin or Faerie, though really sprung from "an ancient race of Saxon kings." Three kinds of elves are mentioned in the Edda: the black dwarfs, and brownies, who both dwelt under ground, and the fair elves, who dwelt in Fairyland or Alfheim. "The difference between Spenser's elves and these Teutonic elves shows how he perverts Fairy mythology in the same way as he does Classical myths."—Percival.
[168.] His gall did grate for griefe, his anger was aroused on account of pain. In the old anatomy anger had its seat in the gallbladder. See Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, I, i, 2.
[177.] Her vomit full of bookes, etc. From 1570, when Pope Sixtus V issued his bull of deposition against Queen Elizabeth, to 1590, great numbers of scurrilous pamphlets attacking the Queen and the Reformed church had been disseminated by Jesuit refugees.
[181.] Nilus. Pliny believed that the mud of the Nile had the power of breeding living creatures like mice. Hist. Nat. ix, 84. So Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, II, vii, 29.
[199.] gentle shepheard. In this pastoral simile, Spenser imitates Homer's Iliad, ii, 469, and xvii, 641, and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, xiv, 109.
[208.] Thus ill bestedd. There is a similar combat in the old romance Guy of Warwick, ix, between the hero and a man-eating dragon.
[217.] Her scattred brood. The poet here follows a belief as old as Pliny that the young of serpents fed on their mother's blood. In this entire passage the details are too revolting for modern taste.