Although we are anticipating, it is better to mention here another book,
published in the same year, namely, 1590, when Shakspere was
six-and-twenty: the first three books of Spenser's "Faery Queen." Of its
reception and character it is needless here to say anything further
than, of the latter, that nowadays the depths of its teaching, heartily
prized as that was by no less a man than Milton, are seldom explored.
But it would be a labour of months to set out the known and imagined
sources of the knowledge and spiritual pabulum of the man who laid every
mental region so under contribution, that he has been claimed by almost
every profession as having been at one time or another a student of its
peculiar science, so marvellously in him was the power of assimilation
combined with that of reproduction.
To go back a little: in 1587, when he was three-and-twenty, Mary Queen
of Scots was executed. In the following year came that mighty victory of
England, and her allies the winds and the waters, over the towering
pride of the Spanish Armada. Out from the coasts, like the birds from
their cliffs to defend their young, flew the little navy, many of the
vessels only able to carry a few guns; and fighting, fire-ships and
tempest left this island,--
"This precious stone set in the silver sea,"
still a "blessed plot," with an accumulated obligation to liberty which
can only be paid by helping others to be free; and when she utterly
forgets which, her doom is sealed, as surely as that of the old empires
which passed away in their self-indulgence and wickedness.
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