Spenser

He had already too well caught the trick of flattery--flattery in a degree almost inconceivable to us--which the fashions of the time, and the Queen"s strange self-deceit, exacted from the loyalty and enthusiasm of Englishmen. In that art Ralegh was only too apt a teacher. Colin Clout, in his story of his recollections of the Court, lets us see how he was taught to think and to speak there:--

But if I her like ought on earth might read, I would her lyken to a crowne of lillies, Upon a virgin brydes adorned head, With Roses dight and Goolds and Daffadillies; Or like the circlet of a Turtle true, In which all colours of the rainbow bee; Or like faire Phebes garlond shining new, In which all pure perfection one may see.

But vaine it is to thinke, by paragone Of earthly things, to judge of things divine: Her power, her mercy, her wisdome, none Can deeme, but who the G.o.dhead can define.

Why then do I, base shepheard, bold and blind, Presume the things so sacred to prophane?

More fit it is t" adore, with humble mind, The image of the heavens in shape humane.

The Queen, who heard herself thus celebrated, celebrated not only as a semi-divine person, but as herself unrivalled in the art of "making" or poetry,--"her peerless skill in making well,"--granted Spenser a pension of 50_l._ a year, which, it is said, the prosaic and frugal Lord Treasurer, always hard-driven for money and not caring much for poets, made difficulties about paying. But the new poem was not for the Queen"s ear only. In the registers of the Stationers" Company occurs the following entry:--

Primo die Decembris [1589].

Mr. Ponsonbye--Entered for his Copye, a book intytuled the _fayrye Queene_ dysposed into xij bookes &c., authorysed under thandes of the Archbishop of Canterbery and bothe the Wardens.

vj{d.}

Thus, between pamphlets of the hour,--an account of the Arms of the City Companies on one side, and the last news from France on the other,--the first of our great modern English poems was licensed to make its appearance. It appeared soon after, with the date of 1590. It was not the twelve books, but only the first three. It was accompanied and introduced, as usual, by a great host of commendatory and laudatory sonnets and poems. All the leading personages at Elizabeth"s court were appealed to; according to their several tastes or their relations to the poet, they are humbly asked to befriend, or excuse, or welcome his poetical venture. The list itself is worth quoting:--Sir Christopher Hatton, then Lord Chancellor, the Earls of Ess.e.x, Oxford, Northumberland, Ormond, Lord Howard of Effingham, Lord Grey of Wilton, Sir Walter Ralegh, Lord Burleigh, the Earl of c.u.mberland, Lord Hunsdon, Lord Buckhurst, Walsingham, Sir John Norris, President of Munster. He addresses Lady Pembroke, in remembrance of her brother, that "heroic spirit," "the glory of our days,"

Who first my Muse did lift out of the floor, To sing his sweet delights in lowly lays.

And he finishes with a sonnet to Lady Carew, one of Sir John Spencer"s daughters, and another to "all the gracious and beautiful ladies of the Court," in which "the world"s pride seems to be gathered." There come also congratulations and praises for himself. Ralegh addressed to him a fine but extravagant sonnet, in which he imagined Petrarch weeping for envy at the approval of the _Faery Queen_, while "Oblivion laid him down on Laura"s hea.r.s.e," and even Homer trembled for his fame. Gabriel Harvey revoked his judgment on the _Elvish Queen_, and not without some regret for less ambitious days in the past, cheered on his friend in his n.o.ble enterprise. Gabriel Harvey has been so much, and not without reason, laughed at, and yet his verses welcoming the _Faery Queen_ are so full of true and warm friendship, and of unexpected refinement and grace, that it is but just to cite them. In the eyes of the world he was an absurd personage: but Spenser saw in him perhaps his worthiest and trustiest friend. A generous and simple affection has almost got the better in them of pedantry and false taste.

Collyn, I see, by thy new taken taske, Some sacred fury hath enricht thy braynes, That leades thy muse in haughty verse to maske, And loath the layes that longs to lowly swaynes; That lifts thy notes from Shepheardes unto kinges: So like the lively Larke that mounting singes.

Thy lovely Rosolinde seemes now forlorne, And all thy gentle flockes forgotten quight: Thy chaunged hart now holdes thy pypes in scorne, Those prety pypes that did thy mates delight; Those trusty mates, that loved thee so well; Whom thou gav"st mirth, as they gave thee the bell.

Yet, as thou earst with thy sweete roundelayes Didst stirre to glee our laddes in homely bowers; So moughtst thou now in these refyned layes Delight the daintie eares of higher powers: And so mought they, in their deepe skanning skill, Alow and grace our Collyns flowing quyll.

And faire befall that _Faery Queene_ of thine, In whose faire eyes love linckt with vertue sittes; Enfusing, by those bewties fyers devyne, Such high conceites into thy humble wittes, As raised hath poore pastors oaten reedes From rustick tunes, to chaunt heroique deedes.

So mought thy _Redcrosse Knight_ with happy hand Victorious be in that faire Ilands right, Which thou dost vayle in Type of Faery land, Elizas blessed field, that _Albion_ hight: That shieldes her friendes, and warres her mightie foes, Yet still with people, peace, and plentie flowes.

But (jolly shepheard) though with pleasing style Thou feast the humour of the Courtly trayne, Let not conceipt thy setled sence beguile, Ne daunted be through envy or disdaine.

Subject thy dome to her Empyring spright, From whence thy Muse, and all the world, takes light.

HOBYNOLL.

And to the Queen herself Spenser presented his work, in one of the boldest dedications perhaps ever penned:--

To The Most High, Mightie, and Magnificent Empresse, Renowmed for piety, vertve, and all gratiovs government, ELIZABETH, By the Grace of G.o.d, Qveene of England, Fravnce, and Ireland, and of Virginia, Defendovr of the Faith, &c.

Her most hvmble Servavnt EDMVND SPENSER, Doth, in all hvmilitie, Dedicate, present, and consecrate These his labovrs, To live with the eternitie of her fame.

"To live with the eternity of her fame,"--the claim was a proud one, but it has proved a prophecy. The publication of the _Faery Queen_ placed him at once and for his lifetime at the head of all living English poets. The world of his day immediately acknowledged the charm and perfection of the new work of art which had taken it by surprise. As far as appears, it was welcomed heartily and generously. Spenser speaks in places of envy and detraction, and he, like others, had no doubt his rivals and enemies. But little trace of censure appears, except in the stories about Burghley"s dislike of him, as an idle rimer, and perhaps as a friend of his opponents. But his brother poets, men like Lodge and Drayton, paid honour, though in quaint phrases, to the learned Colin, the reverend Colin, the excellent and cunning Colin. A greater than they, if we may trust his editors, takes him as the representative of poetry, which is so dear to him.

If music and sweet poetry agree, As they must needs, the sister and the brother, Then must the love be great "twixt thee and me, Because thou lov"st the one, and I the other.

_Dowland_ to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch Upon the lute doth ravish human sense; _Spenser_ to me, whose deep conceit is such As pa.s.sing all conceit, needs no defence.

Thou lov"st to hear the sweet melodious sound That Phoebus" lute, the queen of music, makes; And I in deep delight am chiefly drown"d Whenas himself to singing he betakes.

One G.o.d is G.o.d of both, as poets feign; One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.

(_Shakespere_, in the _Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim_, 1599.)

Even the fierce pamphleteer, Thomas Nash, the scourge and torment of poor Gabriel Harvey, addresses Harvey"s friend as heavenly Spenser, and extols "the Faery Singers" stately tuned verse." Spenser"s t.i.tle to be the "Poet of poets," was at once acknowledged as by acclamation. And he himself has no difficulty in accepting his position. In some lines on the death of a friend"s wife, whom he laments and praises, the idea presents itself that the great queen may not approve of her Shepherd wasting his lays on meaner persons; and he puts into his friend"s mouth a deprecation of her possible jealousy. The lines are characteristic, both in their beauty and music, and in the strangeness, in our eyes, of the excuse made for the poet.

Ne let Eliza, royall Shepheardesse, The praises of my parted love envy, For she hath praises in all plenteousnesse Powr"d upon her, like showers of Castaly, By her own Shepheard, Colin, her owne Shepheard, That her with heavenly hymnes doth deifie, Of rustick muse full hardly to be betterd.

She is the Rose, the glorie of the day, And mine the Primrose in the lowly shade: Mine, ah! not mine; amisse I mine did say: Not mine, but His, which mine awhile her made; Mine to be His, with him to live for ay.

O that so faire a flower so soone should fade, And through untimely tempest fall away!

She fell away in her first ages spring, Whil"st yet her leafe was greene, and fresh her rinde, And whilst her braunch faire blossomes foorth did bring, She fell away against all course of kinde.

For age to dye is right, but youth is wrong; She fel away like fruit blowne downe with winde.

Weepe, Shepheard! weepe, to make my undersong.

Thus in both his literary enterprises, Spenser had been signally successful. The _Shepherd"s Calendar_ in 1580 had immediately raised high hopes of his powers. The _Faery Queen_ in 1590 had more than fulfilled them. In the interval a considerable change had happened in English cultivation. Shakespere had come to London, though the world did not yet know all that he was. Sidney had published his _Defense of Poesie_, and had written the _Arcadia_, though it was not yet published.

Marlowe had begun to write, and others beside him were preparing the change which was to come on the English Drama. Two scholars who had shared with Spenser in the bounty of Robert Newell were beginning, in different lines, to raise the level of thought and style. Hooker was beginning to give dignity to controversy, and to show what English prose might rise to. Lancelot Andrewes, Spenser"s junior at school and college, was training himself at St. Paul"s, to lead the way to a larger and higher kind of preaching than the English clergy had yet reached.

The change of scene from Ireland to the centre of English interests, must have been, as Spenser describes it, very impressive. England was alive with aspiration and effort; imaginations were inflamed and hearts stirred by the deeds of men who described with the same energy with which they acted. Amid such influences, and with such a friend as Ralegh, Spenser may naturally have been tempted by some of the dreams of advancement of which Ralegh"s soul was full. There is strong probability, from the language of his later poems, that he indulged such hopes, and that they were disappointed. A year after the entry in the Stationers" Register of the _Faery Queen_ (29 Dec., 1590), Ponsonby, his publisher, entered a volume of "_Complaints, containing sundry small poems of the World"s Vanity_," to which he prefixed the following notice.

THE PRINTER TO THE GENTLE READER.

SINCE my late setting foorth of the _Faerie Queene_, finding that it hath found a favourable pa.s.sage amongst you, I have sithence endevoured by all good meanes (for the better encrease and accomplishment of your delights,) to get into my handes such smale Poemes of the same Authors, as I heard were disperst abroad in sundrie hands, and not easie to bee come by, by himselfe; some of them having bene diverslie imbeziled and purloyned from him since his departure over Sea. Of the which I have, by good meanes, gathered togeather these fewe parcels present, which I have caused to bee imprinted altogeather, for that they al seeme to containe like matter of argument in them; being all complaints and meditations of the worlds vanitie, verie grave and profitable. To which effect I understand that he besides wrote sundrie others, namelie _Ecclesiastes_ and _Cantic.u.m canticorum_ translated, _A senights slumber_, _The h.e.l.l of lovers_, _his Purgatorie_, being all dedicated to Ladies; so as it may seeme he ment them all to one volume. Besides some other Pamphlets looselie scattered abroad, as _The dying Pellican_, _The howers of the Lord_, _The sacrifice of a sinner_, _The seven Psalmes_, &c., which when I can, either by himselfe or otherwise, attaine too, I meane likewise for your favour sake to set foorth. In the meane time, praying you gentlie to accept of these, and graciouslie to entertaine the new Poet, _I take leave_.

The collection is a miscellaneous one, both as to subjects and date: it contains among other things, the translations from Petrarch and Du Bellay, which had appeared in Vander Noodt"s _Theatre of Worldlings_, in 1569. But there are also some pieces of later date; and they disclose not only personal sorrows and griefs, but also an experience which had ended in disgust and disappointment. In spite of Ralegh"s friendship, he had found that in the Court he was not likely to thrive. The two powerful men who had been his earliest friends had disappeared. Philip Sidney had died in 1586; Leicester, soon after the destruction of the Armada, in 1588. And they had been followed (April, 1590) by Sidney"s powerful father-in-law, Francis Walsingham. The death of Leicester, untended, unlamented, powerfully impressed Spenser, always keenly alive to the pathetic vicissitudes of human greatness. In one of these pieces, _The Ruins of Time_, addressed to Sidney"s sister, the Countess of Pembroke, Spenser thus imagines the death of Leicester,--

It is not long, since these two eyes beheld A mightie Prince, of most renowmed race, Whom England high in count of honour held, And greatest ones did sue to gaine his grace; Of greatest ones he, greatest in his place, Sate in the bosome of his Soveraine, And _Right and loyall_ did his word maintaine.

I saw him die, I saw him die, as one Of the meane people, and brought foorth on beare; I saw him die, and no man left to mone His dolefull fate, that late him loved deare: Sca.r.s.e anie left to close his eylids neare; Sca.r.s.e anie left upon his lips to laie The sacred sod, or Requiem to saie.

O! trustless state of miserable men, That builde your blis on hope of earthly thing, And vainlie thinke your selves halfe happie then, When painted faces with smooth flattering Doo fawne on you, and your wide praises sing; And, when the courting masker louteth lowe, Him true in heart and trustie to you trow.

For Sidney, the darling of the time, who had been to him not merely a cordial friend, but the realized type of all that was glorious in manhood, and beautiful in character and gifts, his mourning was more than that of a looker-on at a moving instance of the frailty of greatness. It was the poet"s sorrow for the poet, who had almost been to him what the elder brother is to the younger. Both now, and in later years, his affection for one who was become to him a glorified saint, showed itself in deep and genuine expression, through the affectations which crowned the "herse" of Astrophel and Philisides. He was persuaded that Sidney"s death had been a grave blow to literature and learning.

The _Ruins of Time_, and still more the _Tears of the Muses_, are full of lamentations over returning barbarism and ignorance, and the slight account made by those in power of the gifts and the arts of the writer, the poet, and the dramatist. Under what was popularly thought the crabbed and parsimonious administration of Burghley, and with the churlishness of the Puritans, whom he was supposed to foster, it seemed as if the poetry of the time was pa.s.sing away in chill discouragement.

The effect is described in lines which, as we now naturally suppose, and Dryden also thought, can refer to no one but Shakespere. But it seems doubtful whether all this could have been said of Shakespere in 1590. It seems more likely that this also is an extravagant compliment to Philip Sidney, and his masking performances. He was lamented elsewhere under the poetical name of _w.i.l.l.y_. If it refers to him, it was probably written before his death, though not published till after it; for the lines imply, not that he is literally dead, but that he is in retirement. The expression that he is "dead of late," is explained in four lines below, as "choosing to sit in idle cell," and is one of Spenser"s common figures for inactivity or sorrow.[107:1]

The verses are the lamentations of the Muse of Comedy.

THALIA.

Where be the sweete delights of learning"s treasure That wont with Comick sock to beautefie The painted Theaters, and fill with pleasure The listners eyes and eares with melodie; In which I late was wont to raine as Queene, And maske in mirth with Graces well bescene?

O! all is gone; and all that goodly glee, Which wont to be the glorie of gay wits, Is layed abed, and no where now to see; And in her roome unseemly Sorrow sits, With hollow browes and greisly countenaunce, Marring my joyous gentle dalliaunce.

And him beside sits ugly Barbarisme, And brutish Ignorance, ycrept of late Out of dredd darknes of the deepe Abysme, Where being bredd, he light and heaven does hate: They in the mindes of men now tyrannize, And the faire Scene with rudenes foule disguize.

All places they with follie have possest, And with vaine toyes the vulgare entertaine; But me have banished, with all the rest That whilome wont to wait upon my traine, Fine Counterfesaunce, and unhurtfull Sport, Delight, and Laughter, deckt in seemly sort.

All these, and all that els the Comick Stage With seasoned wit and goodly pleasance graced, By which mans life in his likest image Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced; And those sweete wits, which wont the like to frame, Are now despizd, and made a laughing game.

And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made To mock her selfe, and truth to imitate, With kindly counter under Mimick shade, Our pleasant w.i.l.l.y, ah! _is dead of late_; With whom all joy and jolly merriment Is also deaded, and in dolour drent.

But that same gentle Spirit, from whose pen Large streames of honnie and sweete Nectar flowe, Scorning the boldnes of such base-borne men, Which dare their follies forth so rashlie throwe, Doth rather choose to sit in idle Cell, Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell.