Excerpt from An Essay on the Life and Writings of Edmund Spenser, With a Special Exposition of the Fairy Queen Tm; present Essay is an attempt to reproduce, under modern forms, some of those agreeable ideas which instructed and entertained a former generation. Spenser was once regarded as one of the great store-houses of moral and intellectual truth. But the fashion of literature changes, and the Fairy Queen has now become not unlike a half decayed and unfrequented Cathedral Of the olden time. The Object of the Essayist is to remove something of the repulsive gloom that has gathered around this venerable pile, to brush away a portion of the dust and cobwebs, and to throw once more the cheerful light Of heaven upon its untold splendours -in short, to make this famous shrine, if possible, once more a favourite resort, not merely for the lovers of the antique and the curious, but for all the genuine votaries of truth and goodness. The aim is, in a word, and to drop the metaphor, not so much to advance Opinions about this great work of art, as to show the work itself, to put the reader in posses. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.