unsentimental as themselves. If princes and princesses, fine lords and ladies, be the heroes and heroines of the Tale, a certain amount of conventional pity is extended to their woes. But if the personages of the story be, as they for the most part are, common folk, and such as the story-tellers themselves would be likely to know, their misfortunes and mishaps are used merely as a theme for mirth and merciless banter. The humour displayed is excellent, but it is not the humour of charity. It is not compassionate, and it is not feminine. The feminine note is not absent from Chaucer’s Tales, but it is generally a subordinate note, a rare note,[Pg 34] a note scarcely heard in his great concert of masculine voices.

[Pg 33]

[Pg 34]

Passing from the pages of Chaucer to those of Spenser is like passing from some cheery tavern where the ale is good and the jokes are excellent, but a trifle coarse, and the company diverting but a little mixed, to the banqueting-hall of some stately palace, where the wines and meats are of the choicest, where all the guests are of high degree, the women all fair, the men all courtly, and where fine manners and dignified speech leave no place for loud lewd laughter or even for homely familiarity. Surely in one who is such a poet, and such a gentleman, and in every respect, to quote a line of his own “a very perfect gentle knight,” we shall come across, ever and anon at least, the feminine note. And indeed we do. The first three stanzas of the Fairy Queen are dedicated to the description of the Knight that was pricking on the plain. But listen to the fourth:

A lovely lady rode him fair beside, Upon a lowly ass more white than snow; Yet she much whiter; but the same did hide Under a veil that wimpled was full low, And over all a black stole did she throw; As one that inly mourned, so was she sad, And heavy sate upon her palfrey slow. Seemëd at heart some hidden care she had. And by her in a line a milk-white lamb she lad. So pure and innocent as that same lamb She was, in life and every virtuous lore. She by descent from royal lineage came.

Her name, as doubtless you well know, was Una, and, when by foul enchantment she is severed a while from her true knight, harken with what a truly feminine note Spenser bewails her misfortune:

[Pg 35] Nought is there under heaven’s wide hollowness Did recover more dear compassion of the mind Than beauty brought to unworthy wretchedness Through envy’s snare, or fortune’s freaks unkind. I, whether lately through 

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