Spenser's Faerie Queene, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Chapter II

Aiming not at a reprint but a true text, I have not hesitated to depart from 1596 wherever I believed it to be in error and the error the printer’s. But it is no part of an editor’s duty to correct, though he may indicate, mistakes made by the author himself. There are many such in the Faerie Queene.

(1) There are mistakes of fact, of literary allusion, of quantity in classical names, hardly to be avoided by a poet writing far from libraries.

(2) There are confusions of personages, or of names of personages, within the poem itself. Sir Guyon is confused with the Redcrosse Knight in III. ii. 4, and with Prince Arthur in II. viii. 48 (but not in 1609); Æmylia with Pœana in IV. ix. Arg.; Calepine with Calidore in VI. vi. 17; while over Serena Spenser’s confusion becomes comical—he calls her Crispina in VI. iii. 23,[1] and Matilda in VI. v. Arg.

(3) Some lines are hypermetrical; some are short by a foot; and there are two or three broken lines. One of these last (III. iv. 39, l. 7) is certainly intentional, and all may be so; the supposed example of Virgil may have influenced Spenser in this.