Let us, then, at this moment, rather endeavor to look at the happiness which Spenser enjoyed here for ten bright years, than at the melancholy finale. Here he worked busily and blissfully at his great poem. Forms of glory, of high valor and virtue, of female beauty and goodness, floated richly through his mind. The imperial Gloriana, the heavenly Una,
"Whose angel face,
As the great eye of Heaven, shinéd bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place;"
the sweet Belphœbe, the gallant Britomart, and the brave troop of knights, Arthur the magnanimous, the Red-Cross Knight, the holy and hardly-tried, the just Artegall, and all their triumphs over Archimagos, false Duessas, and the might of dragon natures. This was a life, a labor which clothed the ground with golden flowers, made heaven look forth from between the clouds and the mountain tops, and songs of glory wake on the winds that swept past his towers. Here he accomplished and saw given to the world half his great work—a whole, and an immortal whole as it regarded his fame and great mission in the world—to breathe lofty and unselfish thoughts into the souls of men; to make truth, purity, and high principle the objects of desire.
Here, too, he married the woman of his heart, chosen on the principle of his poetry, not for her lands, but for her beauty and her goodness. Nothing is known of her, not even her name, except that it was Elizabeth, that she was eminently beautiful, and of low degree. Some conjecture her to be of Cork, and a merchant's daughter, but Spenser himself says she was a country lass. Thus, in the Faërie Queene:
"Such were these goddesses which you did see:
But that fourth maid, which there amid them traced
Who can aread what creature may she bee;
Whether a creature, or a goddess graced
With heavenly gifts from heaven first enraced!
But whatso sure she was, she worthy was
To be the fourth with these three other placed:
Yet was she certes but a country lasse;
Yet she all other country lasses far did passe.
So far, as doth the daughter of the day
All other lesser lights in light excell:
So far doth she in beautiful array
Above all other lasses bear the bell:
Ne less in virtue that beseemes her well
Doth she exceede the rest of all her race;
For which the Graces that there wont to dwell
Have for more honor brought her to this place,
And gracéd her so much to be another Grace.
Another Grace she well deserves to be,
In whom so many graces gathered are,
Excelling much the mean of her degree;
Divine resemblance, beauty sovereign rare,
Firm chastity, that spight no blemish dare;
All which she with such courtesie doth grace
That all her peres can not with her compare,
But quite are dimméd when she is in place;
She made me often pipe, and now to pipe apace.
Sunne of the world, great glory of the sky,
That all the earth doth lighten with thy rayes,
Great Gloriana, greatest majesty,
Pardon thy shepherd, 'mongst so many lays
As he hath sung of thee in all his days,
To make one mencine of thy poor handmaid,
And underneath thy feet to place her praise,
That when thy glory shall be far displayed
In future age, of her this mention may be made."
Faërie Queene, b. xii., c. x.
These were known in Spenser's days to be an affectionate monument of immortal verse to his wife, still more nobly erected in his Epithalamion; and to identify it more, in his Amoretti he tells us that his queen, his mother, and his wife were all of the same name.