  Title: A Biography of Edmund Spenser Author: John W. Hales Language: English By John W. Hales Revised 1896 From the Macmillan Globe edition of Please note: Accented, etc. characters are shown thus: {a\} = a + grave accent {e\} = e + grave accent {e"} = e + diaeresis mark {ae} = ae diphthong {oe} = oe dipthong Footnotes for each chapter are enclosed in curly brackets, e.g. {1} Regions of italic type are defined by underscores E D M U N D S P E N S E R. Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim Hither, as to their fountain, other stars The life of Spenser is wrapt in a similar obscurity to that which hides from us his great predecessor Chaucer, and his still greater contemporary Shakspere. As in the case of Chaucer, our principal external authorities are a few meagre entries in certain official documents, and such facts as may be gathered from his works. The birth-year of each poet is determined by inference. The circumstances in which each died are a matter of controversy. What sure information we have of the intervening events of the life of each one is scanty and interrupted. So far as our knowledge goes, it shows some slight positive resemblance between their lives. They were both connected with the highest society of their times; both enjoyed court favour, and enjoyed it in the substantial shape of pensions. They were both men of remarkable learning. They were both natives of London. They both died in the close vicinity of Westminster Abbey, and lie buried near each other in that splendid cemetery. Their geniuses were eminently different: that of Chaucer was the active type, Spenser's of the contemplative; Chaucer was dramatic, Spenser philosophical; Chaucer objective, Spenser subjective; but in the external circumstances, so far as we know them, amidst which these great poets moved, and in the mist which for the most part enfolds those circumstances, there is considerable likeness. Spenser is frequently alluded to by his contemporaries; they most ardently recognised in him, as we shall see, a great poet, and one that might justly be associated with the one supreme poet whom this country had then produced—with Chaucer, and they paid him constant tributes of respect and admiration; but these mentions of him do not generally supply any biographical details. The earliest notice of him that may in any sense be termed biographical occurs in a sort of handbook to the monuments of Westminster Abbey, published by Camden in 1606. Amongst the 'Reges, Regin{ae}, Nobiles, et alij in Ecclesia Collegiata B. Petri Westmonasterii sepulti usque ad annum 1606' is enrolled the name of Spenser, with the following brief obituary: 'Edmundus Spencer Londinensis, Anglicorum Poetarum nostri seculi facile princeps, quod ejus poemata faventibus Musis et victuro genio conscripta comprobant. Obijt immatura morte anno salutis 1598, et prope Galfredum Chaucerum conditur qui felicissime po{e"}sin Anglicis literis primus illustravit. In quem h{ae}c scripta sunt epitaphia:— Hic prope Chaucerum situs est Spenserius, illi Hic prope Chaucerum, Spensere poeta, poetam 'Edmund Spencer of London, far the first of the English Poets of our age, as his poems prove, written under the smile of the Muses, and with a genius destined to live. He died prematurely in the year of salvation 1598, and is buried near Geoffrey Chaucer, who was the first most happily to set forth poetry in English writing: and on him were written these epitaphs:— Here nigh to Chaucer Spenser lies; to whom Here nigh to Chaucer, Spenser, stands thy The next notice is found in Drummond's account of Ben Jonson's conversations with him in the year 1618: 'Spencer's stanzas pleased him not, nor his matter. The meaning of the allegory of his Fairy Queen he had delivered in writing to Sir Walter Rawleigh, which was, "that by the Bleating Beast he understood the Puritans, and by the false Duessa the Queen of Scots." He told, that Spencer's goods were robbed by the Irish, and his house and a little child burnt, he and his wife escaped, and after died for want of bread in King Street; he refused 20 pieces sent to him by my lord Essex, and said he was sure he had no time to spend them.'{2} The third record occurs in Camden's History of Queen Elizabeth (Annales rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha), first published in a complete form in 1628. There the famous antiquary registering what demises marked the year 1598 (our March 25, 1598, to March 24, 1599), adds to his list Edmund Spenser, and thus writes of him: 'Ed. Spenserus, patria Londinensis, Cantabrigienis autem alumnus, Musis adeo arridentibus natus ut omnes Anglicos superioris {ae}vi Poetas, ne Chaucero quidem concive excepto, superaret. Sed peculiari Poetis fato semper cum paupertate conflictatus, etsi Greio Hiberni{ae} proregi fuerit ab epistolis. Vix enim ibi secessum et scribendi otium nactus, quam a rebellibus {e\} laribus ejectus et bonis spoliatus, in Angliam inops reversus statim exspiravit, Westmonasterii prope Chaucerum impensis comitis Essexi{ae} inhumatus, Po{e"}tis funus ducentibus flebilibusque carminibus et calamis in tumulum conjectis.'{3} This is to say: 'Edmund Spenser, a Londoner by birth, and a scholar also of the University of Cambridge, born under so favourable an aspect of the Muses that he surpassed all the English Poets of former times, not excepting Chaucer himself, his fellow-citizen. But by a fate which still follows Poets, he always wrestled with poverty, though he had been secretary to the Lord Grey, Lord Deputy of Ireland. For scarce had he there settled himself into a retired privacy and got leisure to write, when he was by the rebels thrown out of his dwelling, plundered of his goods, and returned to England a poor man, where he shortly after died and was interred at Westminster, near to Chaucer, at the charge of the Earl of Essex, his hearse being attended by poets, and mournful elegies and poems with the pens that wrote them thrown into his tomb.'{4} In 1633, Sir James Ware prefaced his edition of Spenser's prose work on the State of Ireland with these remarks:— 'How far these collections may conduce to the knowledge of the antiquities and state of this land, let the fit reader judge: yet something I may not passe by touching Mr. Edmund Spenser and the worke it selfe, lest I should seeme to offer injury to his worth, by others so much celebrated. Hee was borne in London of an ancient and noble family, and brought up in the Universitie of Cambridge, where (as the fruites of his after labours doe manifest) he mispent not his time. After this he became secretary to Arthur Lord Grey of Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland, a valiant and worthy governour, and shortly after, for his services to the Crowne, he had bestowed upon him by Queene Elizabeth, 3,000 acres of land in the countie of Corke. There he finished the latter part of that excellent poem of his "Faery Queene," which was soone after unfortunately lost by the disorder and abuse of his servant, whom he had sent before him into England, being then a rebellibus (as Camden's words are) {e\} laribus ejectus et bonis spoliatus. He deceased at Westminster in the year 1599 (others have it wrongly 1598), soon after his return into England, and was buried according to his own desire in the collegiat church there, neere unto Chaucer whom he worthily imitated (at the costes of Robert Earle of Essex), whereupon this epitaph was framed.' And then are quoted the epigrams already given from Camden. The next passage that can be called an account of Spenser is found in Fuller's Worthies of England, first published in 1662, and runs as follows:— 'Edmond Spencer, born in this city (London), was brought up in Pembroke-hall in Cambridge, where he became an excellent scholar; but especially most happy in English Poetry; as his works do declare, in which the many Chaucerisms used (for I will not say affected by him) are thought by the ignorant to be blemishes, known by the learned to be beauties, to his book; which notwithstanding had been more saleable, if more conformed to our modern language. 'There passeth a story commonly told and believed, that Spencer presenting his poems to queen Elizabeth, she, highly affected therewith, commanded the lord Cecil, her treasurer, to give him an hundred pound; and when the treasurer (a good steward of the queen's money) alledged that the sum was too much; "Then give him," quoth the queen, "What is reason;" to which the lord consented, but was so busied, belike, about matters of higher concernment, that Spencer received no reward, whereupon he presented this petition in a small piece of paper to the queen in her progress:— I was promis'd on a time, 'Hereupon the queen gave strict order (not without some check to her treasurer), for the present payment of the hundred pounds the first intended unto him. 'He afterwards went over into Ireland, secretary to the lord Gray, lord deputy thereof; and though that· his office under his lord was lucrative, yet he got no estate; but saith my author "peculiari poetis fato semper cum paupertate conflictatus est." So that it fared little better with him than with William Xilander the German (a most excellent linguist, antiquary, philosopher and mathematician), who was so poor, that (as Thuanus saith), he was thought "fami non famae scribere." 'Returning into England, he was robb'd by the rebels of what little he had; and dying for grief in great want, anno 1598, was honourably buried nigh Chaucer in Westminster, where this distich concludeth his epitaph on his monument Anglica, te vivo, vixit plausitque poesis; Whilst thou didst live, liv'd English poetry 'Nor must we forget, that the expence of his funeral and monument was defrayed at the sole charge of Robert, first of that name, earl of Essex.' The next account is given by Edward Phillips in his Theatrum Po{e"}tarum Anglicanorum, first published in 1675. This Phillips was, as is well known, Milton's nephew, and according to Warton, in his edition of Milton's juvenile poems, 'there is good reason to suppose that Milton threw many additions and corrections into the Theatrum Po{e"}tarum.' Phillips' words therefore have an additional interest for us. 'Edmund Spenser,' he writes, 'the first of our English poets that brought heroic poesy to any perfection, his "Fairy Queen" being for great invention and poetic heighth, judg'd little inferior, if not equal to the chief of the ancient Greeks and Latins, or modern Italians; but the first poem that brought him into esteem was his "Shepherd's Calendar," which so endeared him to that noble patron of all vertue and learning Sir Philip Sydney, that he made him known to Queen Elizabeth, and by that means got him preferred to be secretary to his brother{5} Sir Henry Sidney, who was sent deputy into Ireland, where he is said to have written his "Faerie Queen;" but upon the return of Sir Henry, his employment ceasing, he also return'd into England, and having lost his great friend Sir Philip, fell into poverty, yet made his last refuge to the Queen's bounty, and had 500_l_. ordered him for his support, which nevertheless was abridged to 100_l_. by Cecil, who, hearing of it, and owing him a grudge for some reflections in Mother Hubbard's Tale, cry'd out to the queen, What! all this for a song? This he is said to have taken so much to heart, that he contracted a deep melancholy, which soon after brought his life to a period. So apt is an ingenuous spirit to resent a slighting, even from the greatest persons; thus much I must needs say of the merit of so great a poet from so great a monarch, that as it is incident to the best of poets sometimes to flatter some royal or noble patron, never did any do it more to the height, or with greater art or elegance, if the highest of praises attributed to so heroic a princess can justly be termed flattery.'{6} When Spenser's works were reprinted—the first three books of the Faerie Queene for the seventh time—in 1679, there was added an account of his life. In 1687, Winstanley, in his Lives of the most famous English Poets, wrote a formal biography. These are the oldest accounts of Spenser that have been handed down to us. In several of them mythical features and blunders are clearly discernible. Since Winstanley's time, it may be added, Hughes in 1715, Dr. Birch in 1731, Church in 1758, Upton in that same year, Todd in 1805, Aikin in 1806, Robinson in 1825, Mitford in 1839, Prof. Craik in 1845, Prof. Child in 1855, Mr. Collier in 1862, Dr. Grosart in 1884, have re-told what little there is to tell, with various additions and subtractions. Our external sources of information are, then, extremely scanty. Fortunately our internal sources are somewhat less meagre. No poet ever more emphatically lived in his poetry than did Spenser. The Muses were, so to speak, his own bosom friends, to whom he opened all his heart. With them he conversed perpetually on the various events of his life; into their ears he poured forth constantly the tale of his joys and his sorrows, of his hopes, his fears, his distresses. He was not one of those poets who can put off themselves in their works, who can forego their own interests and passions, and live for the time an extraneous life. There is an intense personality about all his writings, as in those of Milton and of Wordsworth. In reading them you can never forget the poet in the poem. They directly and fully reflect the poet's own nature and his circumstances. They are, as it were, fine spiritual diaries, refined self- portraitures. Horace's description of his own famous fore-runner, quoted at the head of this memoir, applies excellently to Spenser. On this account the scantiness of our external means of knowing Spenser is perhaps the less to be regretted. Of him it is eminently true that we may know him from his works. His poems are his best biography. In the sketch of his life to be given here his poems shall be our one great authority. Footnotes ————- {1} Compare 'Underneath this sable hearse, &c.' {2} Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden. Edinburgh, 1711, p. 225. {3} Annales, ed. Hearne, iii. 783. {4} History of Elizabeth, Queen of England. Ed. 1688, pp. 564, 565. {5} Father {6} Theatrum Poet. Anglic., ed. Brydges, 1800, pp. 148, 149. CHAPTER I.1552-1579. FROM SPENSER'S BIRTH TO THE PUBLICATION OF THE SHEPHEARD'S CALENDAR.Edmund Spenser was born in London in the year 1552, or possibly 1551. For both these statements we have directly or indirectly his own authority. In his Prothalamion he sings of certain swans whom in a vision he saw floating down the river 'Themmes,' that At length they all to mery London came, A MS. note by Oldys the antiquary in Winstanley's Lives of the most famous English Poets, states that the precise locality of his birth was East Smithfield. East Smithfield lies just to the east of the Tower, and in the middle of the sixteenth century, when the Tower was still one of the chief centres of London life and importance, was of course a neighbourhood of far different rank and degree from its present social status. The date of his birth is concluded with sufficient certainty from one of his sonnets, viz. sonnet 60; which it is pretty well ascertained was composed in the year 1593. These sonnets are, as well shall see, of the amorous wooing sort; in the one of them just mentioned, the sighing poet declares that it is but a year since he fell in love, but that the year has seemed to him longer Then al those fourty which my life out-went. Hence it is gathered that he was most probably born in 1552. The inscription, then, over his tomb in Westminster Abbey errs in assigning his birth to 1553; though the error is less flagrant than that perpetrated by the inscription that preceded the present one, which set down as his natal year 1510. Of his parents the only fact secured is that his mother's name was Elizabeth. This appears from sonnet 74, where he apostrophizes those Most happy letters! fram'd by skilfull trade The second is the Queen, the third 'my love, my lives last ornament.' A careful examination by Mr. Collier and others of what parish registers there are extant in such old churches as stand near East Smithfield—the Great Fire, it will be remembered, broke out some distance west of the Tower, and raged mainly westward— has failed to discover any trace of the infant Spenser or his parents. An 'Edmund Spenser' who is mentioned in the Books of the Treasurer of the Queen's Chamber in 1569, as paid for bearing letters from Sir Henry Norris, her Majesty's ambassador in France, to the Queen,{1} and who with but slight probability has been surmised to be the poet himself, is scarcely more plausibly conjectured by Mr. Collier to be the poet's father. The utter silence about his parents, with the single exception quoted, in the works of one who, as has been said above, made poetry the confidante of all his joys and sorrows, is remarkable.· Whoever they were, he was well connected on his father's side at least. 'The nobility of the Spensers,' writes Gibbon, 'has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough; but I exhort them to consider the "Faerie Queen" as the most precious jewel of their coronet.' Spenser was connected with the then not ennobled, but highly influential family of the Spencers of Althorpe, Northamptonshire. Theirs was the 'house of auncient fame,' or perhaps we should rather say they too belonged to the 'house of auncient fame' alluded to in the quotation made above from the Prothalamion. He dedicates various poems to the daughters of Sir John Spencer, who was the head of that family during the poet's youth and earlier manhood down to 1580, and in other places mentions these ladies with many expressions of regard and references to his affinity. 'Most faire and vertuous Ladie,' he writes to the 'Ladie Compton and Mountegle,' the fifth daughter, in his dedication to her of his Mother Hubberds Tale, 'having often sought opportunitie by some good meanes to make knowen to your Ladiship the humble affection and faithfull duetie, which I have alwaies professed and am bound to beare to that house, from whence yee spring, I have at length found occasion to remember the same by making a simple present to you of these my idle labours, &c.' To another daughter, 'the right worthy and vertuous ladie the Ladie Carey,' he dedicates his Muiopotmos; to another, 'the right honorable the Ladie Strange,' his Teares of the Muses. In the latter dedication he speaks of 'your particular bounties, and also some private bands of affinitie, which it hath pleased your Ladiship to acknowledge.' It was for this lady Strange, who became subsequently the wife of Sir Thomas Egerton, that one who came after Spenser—Milton—wrote the Arcades. Of these three kinswomen, under the names of Phyllis, Charillis, and sweet Amaryllis, Spenser speaks once more in his Colin Clouts Come Home Again; he speaks of them as The honour of the noble familie For the particular branch of the Spencer or Spenser family—one branch wrote the name with s, another with c—to which the poet belonged, it has been well suggested that it was that settled in East Lancashire in the neighbourhood of Pendle Forest. It is known on the authority of his friend Kirke, whom we shall mention again presently, that Spenser retired to the North after leaving Cambridge; traces of a Northern dialect appear in the Shepheardes Calendar; the Christian name Edmund is shown by the parish registers to have been a favourite with one part of the Lancashire branch—with that located near Filley Close, three miles north of Hurstwood, near Burnley. Spenser then was born in London, probably in East Smithfield, about a year before those hideous Marian fires began to blaze in West Smithfield. He had at least one sister, and probably at least one brother. His memory would begin to be retentive about the time of Queen Elizabeth's accession. Of his great contemporaries, with most of whom he was to be brought eventually into contact, Raleigh was born at Hayes in Devonshire in the same year with him, Camden in Old Bailey in 1551, Hooker near Exeter in or about 1553, Sidney at Penshurst in 1554, Bacon at York House in the West Strand, 1561, Shakspere at Stratford-on-Avon in 1564, Robert Devereux, afterwards second earl of Essex, in 1567. The next assured fact concerning Spenser is that he was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School, then just founded. This we learn from an entry in 'The Spending of the Money of Robert Nowell, Esq.,' of Reade Hall, Lancashire, brother of Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. Paul's. In an accompt of sums 'geven to poor schollers of dyvers gramare scholles' we find Xs. given, April 28, 1569, to 'Edmond Spensore Scholler of the Merchante Tayler Scholl;' and the identification is established by the occasion being described as 'his gowinge to Penbrocke Hall in Chambridge,' for we know that the future poet was admitted a Sizar of Pembroke College, then styled Hall, Cambridge, in 1569. Thus we may fairly conclude that Spenser was not only London born but London bred, though he may have from time to time sojourned with relatives and connections in Lancashire{2} before his undergraduateship, as well as after. Thus a conjecture of Mr. Collier's may confidently be discarded, who in the muster-book of a hundred in Warwickshire has noted the record of one Edmund Spenser as living in 1569 at Kingsbury, and conjectures that this was the poet's father, and that perhaps the poet spent his youth in the same county with Shakspere. It may be much doubted whether it is a just assumption that every Edmund Spenser that is in any way or anywhere mentioned in the Elizabethan era was either the poet or his father. Nor, should it be allowed that the Spenser of Kingsbury was indeed the poet's father, could we reasonably indulge in any pretty picture of a fine friendship between the future authors of Hamlet and of the Faerie Queene. Shakspere was a mere child, not yet passed into the second of his Seven Ages, when Spenser, being then about seventeen years old, went up to the University. However, this matter need not be further considered, as there is no evidence whatever to connect Spenser with Warwickshire. But in picturing to ourselves Spenser's youth we must not think of London as it now is, or of East Smithfield as now cut off from the country by innumerable acres of bricks and mortar. The green fields at that time were not far away from Spenser's birthplace. And thus, not without knowledge and symnpathy, but with appreciative variations, Spenser could re-echo Marot's 'Eglogue au Roy sous les noms de Pan et Robin,' and its descriptions of a boy's rural wanderings and delights. See his Shepheardes Calendar, December:— Whilome in youth when flowrd my joyfull spring, I wont to raunge amid the mazie thicket How often have I scaled the craggie oke To be sure he is here paraphrasing, and also is writing in the language of pastoral poetry, that is, the language of this passage is metaphorical; but it is equally clear that the writer was intimately and thoroughly acquainted with that life from which the metaphors of his original are drawn. He describes a life he had lived. It seems probable that he was already an author in some sort when he went up to Cambridge. In the same year in which he became an undergraduate there appeared a work entitled, 'A Theatre wherein be represented as well the Miseries and Calamities that follow the Voluptuous Worldlings as also the greate Joyes and Pleasures which the Faithful do enjoy. An Argument both Profitable and Delectable to all that sincerely loue the Word of God. Deuised by S. John Vander Noodt.' Vander Noodt was a native of Brabant who had sought refuge in England, 'as well for that I would not beholde the abominations of the Romyshe Antechrist as to escape the handes of the bloudthirsty.' 'In the meane space,' he continues, 'for the avoyding of idlenesse (the very mother and nourice of all vices) I have among other my travayles bene occupied aboute thys little Treatyse, wherein is sette forth the vilenesse and basenesse of worldely things whiche commonly withdrawe us from heavenly and spirituall matters.' This work opens with six pieces in the form of sonnets styled epigrams, which are in fact identical with the first six of the Visions of Petrarch subsequently published among Spenser's works, in which publication they are said to have been 'formerly translated'. After these so-called epigrams come fifteen Sonnets, eleven of which are easily recognisable amongst the Visions of Bellay, published along with the Visions of Petrarch. There is indeed as little difference between the two sets of poems as is compatible with the fact that the old series is written in blank verse, the latter in rhyme. The sonnets which appear for the first time in the Visions are those describing the Wolf, the River, the Vessel, the City. There are four pieces of the older series which are not reproduced in the later. It would seem probable that they too may have been written by Spenser in the days of his youth, though at a later period of his life he cancelled and superseded them. They are therefore reprinted in this volume. (See pp. 699-701.) Vander Noodt, it must be said, makes no mention of Spenser in his volume. It would seem that he did not know English, and that he wrote his Declaration—a sort of commentary in prose on the Visions—in French. At least we are told that this Declaration is translated out of French into English by Theodore Roest. All that is stated of the origin of his Visions is: 'The learned poete M. Francisce Petrarche, gentleman of Florence, did invent and write in Tuscan the six firste . . . . which because they serve wel to our purpose, I have out of the Brabants speache turned them into the English tongue;' and 'The other ten visions next ensuing ar described of one Ioachim du Bellay, gentleman of France, the whiche· also, because they serve to our purpose I have translated them out of Dutch into English.' The fact of the Visions being subsequently ascribed to Spenser would not by itself carry much weight. But, as Prof. Craik pertinently asks, 'if this English version was not the work of Spenser, where did Ponsonby [the printer who issued that subsequent publication which has been mentioned] procure the corrections which are not mere typographical errata, and the additions and other variations{3} that are found in his edition?' In a work called Tragical Tales, published in 1587, there is a letter in verse, dated 1569, addressed to 'Spencer' by George Turberville, then resident in Russia as secretary to the English ambassador, Sir Thomas Randolph. Anthony {a\} Wood says this Spencer was the poet; but it can scarcely have been so. 'Turberville himself,' remarks Prof. Craik, 'is supposed to have been at this time in his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year, which is not the age at which men choose boys of sixteen for their friends. Besides, the verses seem to imply a friendship of some standing, and also in the person addressed the habits and social position of manhood. . . . It has not been commonly noticed that this epistle from Russia is not Turberville's only poetical address to his friend Spencer. Among his "Epitaphs and Sonnets" are two other pieces of verse addressed to the same person.' To the year 1569 belongs that mention referred to above of payment made one 'Edmund Spenser' for bearing letters from France. As has been already remarked, it is scarcely probable that this can have been the poet, then a youth of some seventeen years on the verge of his undergraduateship. The one certain event of Spenser's life in the year 1569 is that he was then entered as a sizar at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. He 'proceeded B.A.' in 1573, and 'commenced M.A.' in 1576. There is some reason for believing that his college life was troubled in much the same way as was that of Milton some sixty years later—that there prevailed some misunderstanding between him and the scholastic authorities. He mentions his university with respect in the Faerie Queene, in book iv. canto xi. where, setting forth what various rivers gathered happily together to celebrate the marriage of the Thames and the Medway, he tells how … the plenteous Ouse came far from land But he makes no mention of his college. The notorious Gabriel Harvey, an intimate friend of Spenser, who was elected a Fellow of Pembroke Hall the year after the future poet was admitted as a sizar, in a letter written in 1580, asks: 'And wil you needes have my testimoniall of youre old Controllers new behaviour?' and then proceeds to heap abusive words on some person not mentioned by name but evidently only too well known to both the sender and the receiver of the epistle. Having compiled a list of scurrilities worthy of Falstaff, and attacked another matter which was an abomination to him, Harvey vents his wrath in sundry Latin charges, one of which runs: 'C{ae}tera fer{e\}, ut olim: Bellum inter capita et membra continuatum.' 'Other matters are much as they were: war kept up between the heads [the dons] and the members [the men].' Spenser was not elected to a fellowship; he quitted his college, with all its miserable bickerings, after he had taken his master's degree. There can be little doubt, however, that he was most diligent and earnest student during his residence at Cambridge; during that period, for example, he must have gained that knowledge of Plato's works which so distinctly marks his poems, and found in that immortal writer a spirit most truly congenial. But it is conceivable that he pursued his studies after his own manner, and probably enough excited by his independence the strong disapprobation of the master and tutor of the college of his day. Among his contemporaries in his own college were Lancelot Andrews, afterwards Master, and eventually Bishop of Winchester, the famous preacher; Gabriel Harvey, mentioned above, with whom he formed a fast friendship, and Edward Kirke, the 'E.K.' who, as will be seen, introduced to the world Spenser's first work of any pretence. Amongst his contemporaries in the university were Preston, author of Cambyses, and Still, author of Gammer Gurtons Needle, with each of whom he was acquainted. The friend who would seem to have exercised the most influence over him was Gabriel Harvey; but this influence, at least in literary matters, was by no means for the best. Harvey was some three or four years the senior, and of some academic distinction. Probably he may be taken as something more than a fair specimen of the average scholarship and culture given by the universities at that time. He was an extreme classicist; all his admiration was for classical models and works that savoured of them; he it was who headed the attempt made in England to force upon a modern language the metrical system of the Greeks and Latins. What baneful influence he exercised over Spenser in this last respect will be shown presently. Kirke was Spenser's other close friend; he was one year junior academically to the poet. He too, as we shall see, was a profound admirer of Harvey. After leaving the university in 1576, Spenser, then, about twenty-four years of age, returned to his own people in the North. This fact is learnt from his friend 'E.K.'s' glosses to certain lines in the sixth book of the Shepheardes Calendar. E.K. speaks 'of the North countrye where he dwelt,' and 'of his removing out of the North parts and coming into the South.' As E.K. writes in the spring of 1579, and as his writing is evidently some little time subsequent to the migration he speaks of, it may be believed that Spenser quitted his Northern home in 1577, and, as we shall see, there is other evidence for this supposition. About a year then was passed in the North after he left the University. These years were not spent idly. The poetical fruits of them shall be mentioned presently. What made it otherwise a memorable year to the poet was his falling deeply in love with some fair Northern neighbour. Who she was is not known. He who adored her names her Rosalind, 'a feigned name,' notes E.K., 'which being well ordered will bewray the very name of hys love and mistresse, whom by that name he coloureth.' Many solutions of this anagram have been essayed, mostly on the supposition that the lady lived in Kent; but Professor Craik is certainly right in insisting that she was of the North. Dr. Grosart and Mr. Fleay, both authorities of importance, agree in discovering the name Rose Dinle or Dinley; but of a person so Christian-named no record has yet been found, though the surname Dyneley or Dinley occurs in the Whalley registers and elsewhere. In the Eclogue of the Shepheardes Calendar, to which this note is appended, Colin Clout—so the poet designates himself—complains to Hobbinol—that is, Harvey—of the ill success of his passion. Harvey, we may suppose, is paying him a visit in the North; or perhaps the pastoral is merely a versifying of what passed between them in letters. However this may be, Colin is bewailing his hapless fate. His friend, in reply, advises him to Forsake the soyle that so doth thee bewitch, &c. Surely E.K.'s gloss is scarcely necessary to tell us what these words mean. 'Come down,' they say, 'from your bleak North country hills where she dwells who binds you with her spell, and be at peace far away from her in the genial South land.' In another Eclogue (April) the subduing beauty is described as 'the Widdowes daughter of the Glen,' surely a Northern address. On these words the well-informed E.K. remarks: 'He calleth Rosalind the Widowes daughter of the glenne, that is, of a country hamlet or borough, which I thinke is rather sayde to coloure and concele the person, than simply spoken. For it is well known, even in spighte of Colin and Hobbinol, that she is a gentlewoman of no meane house, nor endowed with anye vulgare and common gifts, both of nature and manners: but suche indeede, as neede neither Colin be ashamed to have her made known by his verses, nor Hobbinol be greved that so she should be commended to immortalitie for her rare and singular virtues.' Whoever this charming lady was, and whatever glen she made bright with her presence, it appears that she did not reciprocate the devoted affection of the studious young Cambridge graduate who, with probably no apparent occupation, was loitering for a while in her vicinity. It was some other—he is called Menalacas in one of his rival's pastorals—who found favour in her eyes. The poet could only wail and beat his breast. Eclogues I. and VI. are all sighs and tears. Perhaps in the course of time a copy of the Faerie Queene might reach the region where Menalcas and Rosalind were growing old together; and she, with a certain ruth perhaps mixed with her anger, might recognise in Mirabella an image of her fair young disdainful self{4}. The poet's attachment was no transient flame that flashed and was gone. When at the instance of his friend he travelled southward away from the scene of his discomfiture, he went weeping and inconsolable. In the Fourth Eclogue Hobbinol is discovered by Thenot deeply mourning, and, asked the reason, replies that his grief is because . . . the ladde whome long I loved so deare Shepheards delights he dooth them all forsweare; . . . . . Colin thou kenst, the Southerne shepheardes boye; The memory of Rosalind, in spite of her unkindness, seems to have been fondly cherished by the poet, and yielded to no rival vision—though there may have been fleeting fits of passion—till some fourteen years after he and she had parted—till the year 1592, when, as we shall see, Spenser, then living in the south of Ireland, met that Elizabeth who is mentioned in the sonnet quoted above, and who some year and a half after that meeting became his wife. On the strength of an entry found in the register of St. Clement Danes Church in the Strand—'26 Aug. [1587] Florenc Spenser, the daughter of Edmond'—it has been conjectured that the poet was married before 1587. This conjecture seems entirely unacceptable. There is nothing to justify the theory that the Edmund Spenser of the register was the poet. It is simply incredible that Spenser, one who, as has been said, poured out all his soul in his poems, should have wooed and won some fair lady to his wife, without ever a poetical allusion to his courtship and his triumph. It is not at all likely, as far as one can judge from their titles, that any one of his lost works was devoted to the celebration of any such successful passion. Lastly, besides this important negative evidence, there is distinct positive testimony that long after 1587 the image of Rosalind had not been displaced in his fancy by any other loveliness. In Colin Clouts Come Home Again, written, as will be seen, in 1591, though not published until 1595, after the poet has 'full deeply divined of love and beauty,' one Melissa in admiration avers that all true lovers are greatly bound to him—most especially women. The faithful Hobbinol says that women have but ill requited their poet:— 'He is repayd with scorne and foule despite, Lucid however would defend her on the ground that love may not be compelled:— 'Beware therefore, ye groomes, I read betimes This caution Colin eagerly and ardently reinforces, and with additions. His heart was still all tender towards her, and he would not have one harsh word thrown at her:— Ah! Shepheards, then said Colin, ye ne weet This residence of Spenser in the North, which corresponds with that period of Milton's life spent at his father's house at Horton in Buckinghamshire, ended, as there has been occasion to state, in the year 1577. What was the precise cause of Spenser's coming South, is not known for certain. 'E.K.' says in one of his glosses, already quoted in part, that the poet 'for speciall occasion of private affayres (as I have bene partly of himselfe informed) and for his more preferment, removing out of the North parts, came into the South, as Hobbinoll indeede advised him privately.' It is clear from his being admitted at his college as a sizar, that his private means were not good. Perhaps during his residence in the North he may have been dependent on the bounty of his friends. It was then in the hope of some advancement of his fortunes that, bearing with him no doubt in manuscript certain results of all his life's previous labour, he turned away from his cold love and her glen, and all her country, and set his face Town-ward. It is said that his friend Harvey introduced him to that famous accomplished gentleman—that mirror of true knighthood—Sir Philip Sidney, and it would seem that Penshurst became for some time his home. There has already been quoted a line describing Spenser as 'the southern shepheardes boye.' This southern shepherd is probably Sidney. Sidney, it would seem, introduced him to his father and to his uncle, the Earl of Leicester. If we are to take Iren{ae}us' words literally—and there seems no reason why we should not—Spenser was for a time at least in Ireland, when Sidney's father was Lord Deputy. Iren{ae}us, in A View of the Present State of Ireland, certainly represents Spenser himself; and he speaks of what he said at the execution of a notable traitor at Limerick, called Murrogh O'Brien; see p. 636 of this volume. However, he was certainly back in England and in London in 1579, residing at the Earl of Leicester's house in the Strand, where Essex Street now stands. He dates one of his letters to Harvey, 'Leycester House, this 5 October, 1579.' Perhaps at this time he commenced, or renewed, or continued his acquaintance with his distinguished relatives at Althorpe. During the time he spent now at Penshurst and in London, he mixed probably with the most brilliant intellectual society of his time. Sidney was himself endowed with no mean genius. He, Lord Leicester, Lord Strange, and others, with whom Spenser was certainly, or in all probability, acquainted, were all eminent patrons and protectors of genius. This passage of Spenser's life is of high interest, because in the course of it that splendid era of our literature commonly called the Elizabethan Period may be said to have begun. Spenser is the foremost chronologically of those great spirits who towards the close of the sixteenth century lifted up their immortal voices, and spoke words to be heard for all time. In the course of this present passage of his life, he published his first important work—a work which secured him at once the hearty recognition of his contemporaries as a true poet risen up amongst them. This work was the Shepheardes Calendar, to which so many references have already been made. It consists of twelve eclogues, one for each month of the year. Of these, three (i., vi., and xii.), as we have seen, treat specially of his own disappointment in love. Three (ii., viii., and x.) are of a more general character, having old age, a poetry combat, 'the perfect pattern of a poet' for their subjects. One other (iii.) deals with love-matters. One (iv.) celebrates the Queen, three (v., vii, and ix.) discuss 'Protestant and Catholic,' Anglican and Puritan questions. One (xi.) is an elegy upon 'the death of some maiden of great blood, whom he calleth Dido.' These poems were ushered into the world by Spenser's college friend Edward Kirke, for such no doubt is the true interpretation of the initials E.K. This gentleman performed his duty in a somewhat copious manner. He addressed 'to the most excellent and learned both orator and poet Mayster Gabriell Harvey' a letter warmly commending 'the new poet' to his patronage, and defending the antique verbiage of the eclogues; he prefixed to the whole work a general argument, a particular one to each part; he appended to every poem a 'glosse' explaining words and allusions. The work is dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. It was published in the winter of 1579-80. More than once in the course of it, Spenser refers to Tityrus as his great master. The twelfth eclogue opens thus: The gentle shepheard sat beside a springe Tityrus, on E.K.'s authority, was Chaucer. It is evident from the language—both the words and verbal forms—used in this poem that Spenser had zealously studied Chaucer, whose greatest work had appeared just about two centuries before Spenser's first important publication. The work, however, in which he imitates Chaucer's manner is not the Shepheardes Calendar, but his Prosopopoia or Mother Hubberds Tale, which he says, writing in a later year, he had 'long sithens composed in the raw conceipt of my youth.' The form and manner of the Shepheardes Calendar reflected not Chaucer's influence upon the writer, but the influence of a vast event which had changed the face of literature since the out-coming of the Canterbury Tales—of the revival of learning. That event had put fresh models before men, had greatly modified old literary forms, had originated new. The classical influence impressed upon Europe was by no means an unmixed good; in some respects it retarded the natural· development of the modern mind by overpowering it with its prestige and stupefying it with a sense of inferiority; while it raised the ideal of perfection, it tended to give rise to mere imitations and affectations. Amongst these new forms was the Pastoral. When Virgil, Theocritus, 'Daphnis and Chloe,' and other writers and works of the ancient pastoral literature once more gained the ascendancy, then a modern pastoral poetry began to be. This poetry flourished greatly in Italy in the sixteenth century. It had been cultivated by Sannazaro, Guarini, Tasso. Arcadia had been adopted by the poets for their country. In England numerous Eclogues made their appearance. Amongst the earliest and the best of these were Spenser's. It would perhaps be unjust to treat this modern pastoral literature as altogether an affectation. However unreal, the pastoral world had its charms—a pleasant feeling imparted of emancipation, a deep quietude, a sweet tranquillity. If vulgar men discovered their new worlds, and trafficked and bustled there, why should not the poet discover his Arcadia, and repose at his ease in it, secure from the noises of feet coming and going over the roads of the earth? That fine melodiousness, which is one of Spenser's signal characteristics, may be perceived in his Eclogues, as also a native gracefulness of style, which is another distinguishing mark of him. Perceivable, too, are his great, perilous fluency of language and his immense fecundity of mind. The work at once secured him a front place in the poetical ranks of the day. Sidney mentions it in his Apologie for Poetrie;{5} Abraham Fraunce draws illustrations from it in his Lawyers Logicke, which appeared in 1588; Meres praises it; 'Maister Edmund Spenser,' says Drayton, 'has done enough for the immortality, had he only given us his Shepheardes Calendar, a masterpiece, if any.' It is easy to discern in Lycidas signs of Milton's study of it. During Spenser's sojourn in the society of the Sidneys and the Dudleys, letters passed between him and Harvey, some of which are extant. From these, and from the editorial notes of Kirke, we hear of other works written by Spenser, ready to be given to the light. The works thus heard of are Dreames, Legends, Court of Cupide, The English Poet, The Dying Pelican, Stemmata Dudleiana, Slomber, Nine English Comedies, The Epithalamion Thamesis, and also The Faerie Queene commenced. Of these works perhaps the Legends, Court of Cupide, and Epithalamion Thamesis were subsequently with modifications incorporated in the Faerie Queene; the Stemmata Dudleiana, Nine English Comedies, Dying Pelican, are altogether lost. The Faerie Queene had been begun. So far as written, it had been submitted to the criticism of Harvey. On April 10, 1580, Spenser writes to Harvey, wishing him to return it with his 'long expected judgment' upon it. Harvey had already pronounced sentence in a letter dated April 7, and this is the sentence: 'In good faith I had once again nigh forgotten your Faerie Queene; howbeit, by good chaunce I have nowe sent hir home at the laste, neither in a better nor worse case than I founde hir. And must you of necessitie have my judgement of hir indeede? To be plaine, I am voyde of al judgement, if your nine Com{oe}dies, whereunto, in imitation of Herodotus, you give the names of the Nine Muses, and (in one man's fansie not unworthily), come not neerer Ariostoes Com{oe}dies, eyther for the finenesse of plausible elocution, or the rareness of poetical invention, than that Elvish queene doth to his Orlando Furioso, which notwithstanding, you will needes seem to emulate, and hope to overgo, as you flatly professed yourself in one of your last letters. Besides that, you know it hath bene the usual practise of the most exquisite and odde wittes in all nations, and especially in Italie, rather to shewe and advaunce themselves that way than any other; as namely, those three notorious dyscoursing heads Bibiena, Machiavel, and Aretine did (to let Bembo and Ariosto passe), with the great admiration and wonderment of the whole countrey; being indeede reputed matchable in all points, both for conceyt of witte, and eloquent decyphering of matters, either with Aristophanes and Menander in Greek, or with Plautus and Terence in Latin, or with any other in any other tong. But I will not stand greatly with you in your owne matters. If so be the Faery Queen be fairer in your eie than the Nine Muses, and Hobgoblin runne away with the garland from Apollo; marke what I saye, and yet I will not say that I thought; but there is an end for this once, and fare you well, till God or some good Aungell putte you in a better minde.' Clearly the Faerie Queene was but little to Harvey's taste. It was too alien from the cherished exemplars of his heart. Happily Spenser was true to himself, and went on with his darling work in spite of the strictures of pedantry. This is not the only instance in which the dubious character of Harvey's influence is noticeable. The letters, from one of which the above doom is quoted, enlighten us also as to a grand scheme entertained at this time for forcing the English tongue to conform to the metrical rules of the classical languages. Already in a certain circle rime was discredited as being, to use Milton's words nearly a century afterwards, 'no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre.' A similar attempt was made in the course of the sixteenth century in other parts of Europe, and with the same final issue. Gabriel Harvey was an active leader in this deluded movement. When Sidney too, and Dyer, another poet of the time, proclaimed a 'general surceasing and silence of bald rhymes, and also of the very best too, instead whereof they have by authority of their whole senate, prescribed certain laws and rules of quantity of English syllables for English verse, having had already thereof great practice,' Spenser was drawn 'to their faction.' 'I am of late,' he writes to Harvey, 'more in love wyth my Englishe versifying than with ryming; whyche I should have done long since if I would then have followed your councell.' In allying himself with these Latin prosody bigots Spenser sinned grievously against his better taste. 'I like your late Englishe hexameters so exceedingly well,' he writes to Harvey, 'that I also enure my pen sometime in that kinde, whyche I find in deed, as I have heard you often defende in word, neither so harde nor so harsh [but] that it will easily and fairly yield itself to our mother tongue. For the onely or chiefest hardnesse whyche seemeth is in the accente; whyche sometimes gapeth and as it were yawneth il-favouredly, comming shorte of that it should, and sometimes exceeding the measure of the number; as in carpenter the middle sillable being used short in speache, when it shall be read long in verse, seemeth like a lame gosling that draweth one legge after hir. And heaven being used shorte as one syllable, when it is in verse stretched with a Diastole is like a lame dogge, that holdes up one legge.'{6} His ear was far too fine and sensitive to endure the fearful sounds uttered by the poets of this Procrust{ae}an creed. The language seemed to groan and shriek at the agonies and contortions to which it was subjected; and Spenser could not but hear its outcries. But he made himself as deaf as might be. 'It is to be wonne with custom,' he proceeds, in the letter just quoted from, 'and rough words must be studied with use. For why, a God's name, may not we, as the Greekes, have the kingdom of oure owne language, and measure our accentes by the sounde, reserving the quantitie to the verse? . . . I would hartily wish you would either send me the rules or precepts of arte which you observe in quantities; or else follow mine that Mr. Philip Sidney gave me, being the very same which Mr. Drant devised, but enlarged with Mr. Sidney's own judgement, and augmented with my observations, that we might both accorde and agree in one, leaste we overthrowe one another and be overthrown of the rest.' He himself produced the following lines in accordance, as he fondly hoped, with the instructions of the new school:— IAMBICUM TRIMETRUM. Unhappie verse! the witnesse of my unhappie state, Whether lying reastlesse in heavy bedde, or else If in bed, tell hir that my eyes can take no reste; Asked why? Waking love suffereth no sleepe; Tell hir that hir pleasures were wonte to lull me Now doe I nightly waste, wanting my kindlie rest, And if I waste who will bewaile my heavy chance? Spenser of the sensitive ear wrote these lines. When the pedantic phantasy which had for a while seduced and corrupted him had gone from him, with what remorse he must have remembered these strange monsters of his creation! Let us conclude our glance at this sad fall from harmony by quoting the excellent words of one who was a bitter opponent of Harvey in this as in other matters. 'The hexameter verse,' says Nash in his Fowre Letters Confuted, 1592, 'I graunt to be a gentleman of an auncient house (so is many an English beggar), yet this clyme of ours hee cannot thrive in; our speech is too craggy for him to set his plough in; hee goes twitching and hopping in our language like a man running upon quagmiers up the hill in one syllable and down the dale in another; retaining no part of that stately smooth gate, which he vaunts himselfe with amongst the Greeks and Latins.' Some three years were spent by Spenser in the enjoyment of Sidney's friendship and the patronage of Sidney's father and uncle. During this time he would seem to have been constantly hoping for some preferment. According to a tradition, first recorded by Fuller, the obstructor of the success of his suit was the Treasurer, Lord Burghley. It is clear that he had enemies at Court—at least at a later time. In 1591, in his dedication of Colin Clouts Come Home Again, he entreats Raleigh, to 'with your good countenance protest against the malice of evil mouthes, which are always wide open to carpe at and misconstrue my simple meaning.' A passage in the Ruines of Time (see the lines beginning 'O grief of griefs! O full of all good hearts!') points to the same conclusion; and so the concluding lines of the Sixth Book of the Faerie Queene, when, having told how the Blatant Beast (not killed as Lord Macaulay says in his essay on Bunyan, but 'supprest and tamed' for a while by Sir Calidore) at last broke his iron chain and ranged again through the world, and raged sore in each degree and state, he adds:— Ne may this homely verse, of many meanest, In the Tears of the Muses Calliope says of certain persons of eminent rank:— Their great revenues all in sumptuous pride Several causes have been suggested to account for this disfavour. The popular tradition was pleased to explain it by making Burghley the ideal dullard who has no soul for poetry—to whom one copy of verses is very much as good as another, and no copy good for anything. It delighted to bring this commonplace gross-minded person into opposition with one of the most spiritual of geniuses. In this myth Spenser represents mind, Burghley matter. But there is no justification in facts for this tradition. It may be that the Lord Treasurer was not endowed with a high intellectual nature; but he was far too wise in his generation not to pretend a virtue if he had it not, when circumstances called for anything of the sort. When the Queen patronized literature, we may be sure Lord Burghley was too discreet to disparage and oppress it. Another solution refers to Burghley's Puritanism as the cause of the misunderstanding; but, as Spenser too inclined that way, this is inadequate. Probably, as Todd and others have thought, what alienated his Lordship at first was Spenser's connection with Leicester; what subsequently aggravated the estrangement was his friendship with Essex. Footnotes {1} See Peter Cunningham's Introduction to Extracts |
|