I. c. vii. 32. Into what a breezy couplet trailing off with
an alexandrine has Homer's [Greek: pnoiai pantoion anemon] expanded!
Chaplin unfortunately has slurred this passage in his version, and
Pope _tittivated_ it more than usual in his. I have no other
translation at hand. Marlowe was so taken by this passage in
Spenser that he put it bodily into his _Tamburlaine_.
[309] Inferno, XXIV. 46-52.
"For sitting upon down,
Or under quilt, one cometh not to fame,
Withouten which whoso his life consumeth
Such vestige leaveth of himself on earth
As smoke in air or in the water foam."
_Longfellow._
It shows how little Dante was read during the last century that none
of the commentators on Spenser notice his most important obligations
to the great Tuscan.
[310] Faery Queen, B. II. c. iii. 40, 41.
[311] Ibid., B. I. c. v. 1.
[312] Ibid., B. II. c. viii. 1,2.
[313] B. III. c. xi. 28.
[314] B. I. c. i. 41.
[315] This phrase occurs in the sonnet addressed to the Earl of
Ormond and in that to Lord Grey de Wilton in the series prefixed to
the "Faery Queen". These sonnets are of a much stronger build than
the "Amoretti", and some of them (especially that to Sir John Norris)
recall the firm tread of Milton's, though differing in structure.
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