OR OUGHT HAVE DONE, or have done
something
to displease you.
Spenser - Faerie Queene - 1
Spenser represents in him the peculiar vices of the Irish clergy and laity.
166. STAY HIM TO ADVIZE, stop to reflect.
172. HIM BOOTETH NOT RESIST, it does him no good to resist. This whole
passage refers, perhaps, to Henry VIII's suppression of the monasteries and
convents in 1538-39.
185. THAT LONG WANDRING GREEKE. Ulysses, or Odysseus, the hero of Homer's
_Odyssey_, who wandered ten years and refused immortality from the goddess
Calypso in order that he might return to Penelope.
xxii. Note the rhymes _deare_, _heare_, and _teare_ (air). This 16th
century pronunciation still survives in South Carolina. See Ellis's _Early
English Pronunciation_, III, 868. This stanza reads like the description of
an Irish wake.
238.
OR OUGHT HAVE DONE, or have done something to displease you.
239. THAT SHOULD AS DEATH, etc. , that should settle like death, etc.
248. AND CHOSE IN FAERY COURT. See Spenser's letter to Sir W. Raleigh, p.
6.
250. HER KINDLY SKILL, her natural power.
276. FIERCE ORIONS HOUND, Sirius, the Dog-star, the brightest of the fixed
stars. The constellation Orion was named from a giant hunter who was
beloved by Aurora and slain by Diana.
279. AND NEREUS CROWNES WITH CUPS, and Nereus drinks bumpers in his honor.
