He is court-painter in
ordinary to each of the senses in turn, and idealizes these frail
favorites of his majesty King Lusty Juventus, till they half believe
themselves the innocent shepherdesses into which he travesties them.[293]
In his great poem he had two objects in view: first the ephemeral one of
pleasing the court, and then that of recommending himself to the
permanent approval of his own and following ages as a poet, and
especially as a moral poet. To meet the first demand, he lays the scene
of his poem in contemporary England, and brings in all the leading
personages of the day under the thin disguise of his knights and their
squires and lady-loves. He says this expressly in the prologue to the
second book:--
"Of Faery Land yet if he more inquire,
By certain signs, here set in sundry place,
He may it find; ...
And thou, O fairest princess under sky,
In this fair mirror mayst behold thy face
And thine own realms in land of Faery."
Many of his personages we can still identify, and all of them were once
as easily recognizable as those of Mademoiselle de Scudery. This, no
doubt, added greatly to the immediate piquancy of the allusions. The
interest they would excite may be inferred from the fact that King James,
in 1596, wished to have the author prosecuted and punished for his
indecent handling of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, under the name of
Duessa.
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