Y me! how many perils doe enfold fall, Were not that heavenly grace doth him And stedfaft truth acquite him out at all. Els fhould this Redcroffe knight in bands have dyde, For whofe deliverance fhe this Prince doth thether guyd. 2. They fadly traveild thus, untill they came Nigh to a castle builded ftrong and hye: Then cryde the Dwarfe, "Lo! yonder is the fame, In which my Lord, my liege, doth luckleffe ly a Who flayes the Gyaunt.] It is "that Gyaunt" in the 4to. 1590, but an erratum directs us to read "the Gyaunt," as in our text. Todd and others differ about what, in fact, is too clear for doubt. C. Thrall to that Gyaunts hatefull tyranny: Therefore, deare Sir, your mightie powres affay." From loftie fteed, and badd the Ladie stay, 3. So with his Squire, th' admirer of his might, He marched forth towardes that castle wall; 4. Was never wight that heard that shrilling sownd, 5. The fame before the Geaunts gate he blew, balighted by and by.] Equivalent to immediately, or presently, as it was formerly understood; viz. at that present time. C. With staring countenance fterne, as one astownd, And staggering steps, to weet what suddein stowre Had wrought that horror strange, and dar'd his dreaded powre. 6. And after him the proud Dueffa came, High mounted on her many headed beast; And at him fierfly flew, with corage fild, 7. Therewith the Gyant buckled him to fight, Inflamd with scornefull wrath and high disdaine, с And, lightly leaping from so monstrous maine, It booted nought to thinke such thunderbolts to beare. 8. Ne shame he thought to shonne so hideous might: But wife and wary.] It is "wift and wary" in the oldest impression, but the lift of errata teaches us to read as in our text. C. d Did fall to ground, &c.] Such is the unavailing blow of the giant, levelled at Graunde Amoure, from which, as we have just seen, he lept afide: fo that the ftroke withall "In the grounde lighted, beside a stone wall, So deepely dinted in the driven clay, That three yardes deepe a furrow up did throw. The fad earth, wounded with fo fore affay, Did grone full grievous underneath the blow, And trembling with strange feare did like an erthquake show. 9. As when almightie Jove, in wrathfull mood, IO. His boyftrous club, so buried in the grownd, "Thre fote and more; and anon then I "Did lepe vnto him, ftrikyng full quickely." A fruitless stroke of the fame kind, aimed at Gerard by a giant, is thus well defcribed in "Hift. de tres-noble et chevaleureux Prince Gerard, Comte de Nevers," &c. Par. 1520. "Se Gerard ne se fust destourné, moult grant dommaige lui euft fait pour le coup qui eftoit moult grant & pefant, fi vint defcendant comme la fouldre plus d'ung grant pied dedans la terre." Ch. xiii. P. 2nd. TODD. • As when, &c.] Longinus would have written a whole chapter on the boldness and fublimity of the thoughts and terrible images in this fimilitude. Compare this fimile with that in F. Q. iv. vi. 14. See also what Pope has obferved on Homer, Il. xiv. 480. UPTON. Hurles forth his thundring dart with deadly food.] Food is Spenfer's way of fpelling feud, which fignifies an irreconcileable hatred. So all the editions, except Hughes's fecond edition, which here alters the spelling to feud. CHURCH. Spelman tranflates the A. S. febth, inimicitia; and foe is fuppofed to be derived from the fame word: " feud" rather means hoftility, the consequence of hatred, than hatred itself. Spenfer here does not fpell it "food" for the fake of the rhyme with "mood," becaufe in a fubfequent Canto (B. ii. C. i. St. 3,) where it occurs in the middle of a line, it also stands "food." C. But that the Knight him at advantage fownd; And, whiles he strove his combred clubbe to quight Out of the earth, with blade all burning bright He fmott of his left arme," which like a block Did fall to ground, depriv'd of native might: Large streames of blood out of the truncked stock Forth gushed, like fresh water streame from riven rocke. II. Dismayed with fo defperate deadly wound, As great a noyfe, as when in Cymbrian plaine And fill the fieldes with troublous bellowing: 12. That when his deare Dueffa heard, and faw Her dreadfull beaft; who, fwolne with blood of late, He fmott of his left arme.] i. e. fmote off: nothing was much more common of old than to print off" of," as here: in the fol. 1611 it stands, "He fmote off his left arme." C. h whom kindly rage doth fting.] "Kindly" is according to kind, or nature. The bulls (as Church justly explains it, in oppofition to Jortin's notion of a fuppofed catachrefis) roared after their kind with the want of the milky mothers: it was not the calves who bleated for their daily nutriment. The use of kind and kindly in this way was practised by nearly all the poets of Spenfer's day. C. i with hollow murmur ring.] In the errata we are told to read "murmur ring" as two words, and not murmuring, as it stands, not only in the 4to. 1590, but in the fol. 1611. The printer of that edition did not introduce the alteration. C. |