subtractions.
Our external sources of information are, then,
extremely scanty. Fortunately our internal sources are
somewhat less meagre. No poet ever more emphatically
lived in his poetry than did Spenser. The Muses were,
so to speak, his own bosom friends, to whom he opened
all his heart. With them he conversed perpetually on
the various events of his life; into their ears he
poured forth constantly the tale of his joys and his
sorrows, of his hopes, his fears, his distresses.
He was not one of those poets who can put off
themselves in their works, who can forego their own
interests and passions, and live for the time an
extraneous life. There is an intense personality about
all his writings, as in those of Milton and of
Wordsworth. In reading them you can never forget the
poet in the poem. They directly and fully reflect the
poet's own nature and his circumstances. They are, as
it were, fine spiritual diaries, refined self-
portraitures. Horace's description of his own famous
fore-runner, quoted at the head of this memoir, applies
excellently to Spenser. On this account the scantiness
of our external means of knowing Spenser is perhaps the
less to be regretted. Of him it is eminently true that
we may know him from his works. His poems are his best
biography. In the sketch of his life to be given here
his poems shall be our one great authority.