Spenser lived in the midst of events of great magnitude and absorbing interest, and in the midst of men who were equal to all occasions; and even in the soarings of his fancy he could not escape from the excitements and intensities of which the life of the time consisted. He could take up mo other theme than the great world in which he found himself. Neither in his head nor his heart was there room for any other story than the Elizabethan, with all its terrible hazards, its strange surprises, its brilliant achievements. He was fascinated and possessed by it. And so, as we have seen, England becomes to him a land of fairy, wrapt in a golden mist of chivalry and romance, populous with knights-errant of divine purpose and indomitable prowess. Like other great works of art, The Faerie Queene is intimately and thoroughly associated with the age in which it was written and published.