d extols in his poem, and whom his alter ego, the mysterious "E.K.,"
extols in preface and notes. The longest of the passages in which
reference is made by Spenser to Chaucer, under the pseudonym of
Tityrus, is more especially noteworthy, both as showing the veneration
of the younger for the older poet, and as testifying to the growing
popularity of Chaucer at the time when Spenser wrote.

The same great poet's debt to his revered predecessor in the
"Daphnaida" has been already mentioned. The "Fairy Queen" is the
masterpiece of an original mind, and its supreme poetic quality is a
lofty magnificence upon the whole foreign to Chaucer's genius; but
Spenser owed something more than his archaic forms to "Tityrus," with
whose style he had erst disclaimed all ambition to match his pastoral
pipe. In a well-known passage of his great epos he declares that it is
through sweet infusion of the older poet's own spirit that he, the
younger, follows the footing of his feet, in order so the rather to
meet with his meaning. It was this, the romantic spirit proper, which
Spenser sought to catch from Chaucer, but which, like all those who
consciously seek after it, he transmuted into a new quality and a new
power. With Spenser the change was into something mightier and
loftier. He would, we cannot doubt, readily have echoed the judgment
of his friend and brother-poet concerning Chaucer. "I know not,"
writes Sir Philip Sidney, "whether to marvel more, either that he in
that misty time could see so clearly, or that we, in this clear age,
walk so stumblingly after him. Yet had he," adds Sidney with the
generosity of a true critic, who is not lost in wonder at his own
cleverness in discovering defects, "great wants, fit to be forgiven in
so reverent an antiquity." And yet a third Elizabethan, Michael
Drayton, pure of tone and high of purpose, joins his voice to those of
Spenser and Sidney, hailing in the "noble Chaucer"

--the first of those that ever brake
Into the Muses' treasure and first spake
In weighty numbers,

and placing Gower, with a degree of judgment not reached by his and
Chaucer's immediate successors, in his proper relation of poetic rank
to his younger but greater contemporary.

To these names should be added that of George Puttenham--if he was
indeed the author of the grave and elaborate treatise, dedicated to
Lord Burghley, on "The Art of English Poesy." In this work mention is
repeatedly made of Chauce