(4) Singlemindedness is his theme. Spenser does not lose sight of another aspect of the soul's freedom. The true self-control cannot be won without conflict; nevertheless no mere conflict confers true spiritual freedom. The use of external means of self-mortification does not bestow power to subdue the carnal nature, and certainly cannot confer upon man that freedom which can come from within only. Spenser sees this very clearly, and stalwart as he is in his picture of the deadly fights in which the knights of Christ must bravely take their part, he teaches no less the deep and perpetual truth that true liberty, like life, must develop from within. He sets this forth when he speaks of beauty. He has a love of beauty perhaps unequalled among English poets. True beauty is to him a worshipful, a divine thing. He knows that it may be prostituted and misused, but he has no puritan disdain of it. Like all things which can give joy and delight to human life, it is a Godsent gift; and in its most abiding and most fascinating manifestation it is the expression of a beauty which is within. His conception is that where the true soul is, it has the power of expressing itself in beautiful form. Therefore the more of the heavenly there is in man, the

more fair must he grow in outward seeming. So he writes in his "Hymne in Honour of Beautie" :

I that have often proved, too well it know,
And who so list the like assayes to ken,
Shall find by tryall, and confesse it then,
That Beautie is not, as fond men misdeeme,
An outward showe of things that only seeme.

Behind the outward show "there is a heavenly fire and force which survive when the red and white of cheek and lips have faded”: there is a celestial seed of beauty.

It is heavenly borne and cannot die,

Being a parcell of the purest skie.

In proportion to the purity of the soul is its power of robing itself in beautiful form.

So`every spirit, as it is most pure,

And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer bodie doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With chearefull grace and amiable sight;
For of the soule the bodie forme doth take;
For soule is forme and doth the bodie make.

CHAPTER V

MARLOWE'S “FAUSTUS"

THE closing years of the sixteenth century were years of national excitement in England. They were stirring times which appealed to the heart of every patriot; they were years of that experience of adventure and peril which do so much for the bracing of character and the consolidation of national life. In 1577 Drake in his little vessel, the Pelican-a ship of only one hundred tons - sailed through the Straits of Magellan; he passed into the Pacific, and as he went gathered treasure from defeated Spanish vessels, and rounding the Cape of Good Hope finally returned to England after a three years' voyage, the first seaman who had circumnavigated the globe. The massacre of St. Bartholomew in France had in 1572 startled Europe, and had filled all Protestant people with alarm. Fifteen years later the great scheme for the

invasion of England called the country to arms. The vast Armada was known to be ready to sail. Against England, English faith and English freedom, a powerful confederacy was engaged. England had to rely upon herself and upon herself alone. Drake sailed forth and burned the Spanish store-ships; he had, as he expressed it, singed the King of Spain's beard. The following year the great Armada appeared off the shores of England. It was a time to test the courage, the resolution, and the self-reliance of the Queen and her people. And Englishmen rose to the emergency. At sea the English ships harried the Spaniards; and the winds finally scattered the great fleet. Out of 120 ships only 54 returned. On land the spirit of the people was animated by high courage and dauntless determination. They looked up to the God who commanded the winds and the waves; they also girded themselves with indomitable energy and inflexible resolution to hold with both hands the liberty and the homes which they loved. It was an age to breed men, and the manly spirit of the times speaks in deep tones which vibrate through the literature of the period. Its writers are imbued with a love of freedom, but they show also a deep reverence

for the laws of the world in which they live. The splendour of physical laws, and the ethical helpfulness of moral laws in the formation of character are dear to them. We see tokens that these men realise that they live in a world of moral order. The recognition of this does much to strengthen the faith and invigorate the character. The moral ideals which were prevalent, like the hardy circumstances which tested our countrymen, conspired to form men of virile type. Man was man and master of his fate. He did not live in a world of caprice, but in a world so ordered that energy of character and inflexible resolution of will could achieve great things.

It was in this vigorous and masculine age that Christopher Marlowe was born and educated. He was born in 1564; he was consequently about eight years of age when the massacre of St. Bartholomew took place; he was sixteen when Drake returned from his voyage round the world; he was twenty-three when the great Armada was talked about, and the great dread of invasion fell upon England. About the same time he became famous through the success of his first play, "Tamburlaine the Great." The interest of this play is two-fold. It marks the early vigour of Marlowe's genius, and it