OBSERVATIONS
ON
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS
OF
EDMUND SPENSER.
EULOGY ON SPENSER.
FROM SHAKESPEARE’S PASSIONATE PILGRIM.
“If Musick 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, passing all conceit, needs no defence:
Thou lov’st to hear the sweet melodious sound
That Phœbus’ lute, the Queen of Musick, makes;
And I in deep delight am chiefly drown’d,
When as himself to singing he betakes.
One god is god of both, as poets feign,
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.”
Writers on English Literature are unanimous in assigning to the reign of Elizabeth, the title of the Augustan age; an application in every way just, as, to her encouragement and example may be attributed the revival of letters in this country. From the death of Chaucer to the birth of Spenser, a period of nearly two centuries, but few, and those not important names had been added to the records of our literary history. The writings of Gower, Occleve, Lydgate, and Caxton, with some few monkish legends, and the poems of Surrey, Wyatt, and Sackville, may be enumerated as among the chief additions to our poetry during that stormy period when the public mind was agitated by the struggles between the followers of the Church of Rome, and the advocates of the Reformation, In every age and country, religious dissensions have been unfavourable to the progress of Literature; and to these continued troubles may be ascribed its utter prostration in England at the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth. Her accession was hailed with no common feeling of enthusiasm by both the court and the people, who, weary of the merciless exactions of her father from which the reign of the youthful Edward proved but a transient relief, and groaning beneath the bigotry and sanguinary persecutions of her sister, beheld in their new queen the harbinger of a happier season; nor were these hopes disappointed. During the strict seclusion in which she had been detained by Mary, Elizabeth had acquired, under the able tuition of the erudite and elegant minded Ascham, no small share of those intellectual acquirements which are usually confined to the sterner sex. Thus nurtured, her inclinations naturally leaned to the society of those who were conspicuous for either talent or learning: from among these she selected her counsellors, and, aided by their willing co-operation, laid the foundation of that impulse to literature which has increased rather than diminished under every succeeding sovereign. The forty-five years of her reign must be regarded as the brightest epoch of our national history, and may challenge the annals of Europe to rival the galaxy of men, so illustrious in arms and arts, who flourished under her auspices. It is a period which, of all others, has a peculiar charm for the sympathies of youth; and though in after years reason and experience may in some degree temper the warmth of our imaginations, and dispose us to contemplate the character of Elizabeth in a more just and less romantic light, it must ever retain an especial place in our regards, as the age which produced such men as Spenser, Raleigh, Sidney, and Shakspeare. The life and writings of Spenser, “the fascinating poet of Faerie Land,” and one of the fairest ornaments of this era, the following observations are designed to illustrate.
When Sir James Mackintosh was invited by a body of London Booksellers to superintend an edition of the Poets, from Chaucer to Cowley, he characterized the life of Spenser as one which would offer no little difficulty, on account of the paucity of materials for its execution. This difficulty has certainly not been removed; but though, unable to present the reader with any new facts relating to the “Prince of Poets of his time,” we may, perhaps, while condensing the existing information, so guide him to the beauties of our author, as to obviate the necessity of wading through the more voluminous labours of Todd and Warton.
Edmund Spenser, styled the “Sunrise,” as Chaucer was the “Day Starre,” of English poetry, was born in the year 1553, in East Smithfield,—in
“Merry London, my most kindly nurse,
That to me gave this life’s first native source,
Though from another place I take my name,
A house of ancient fame.”
Although frequently referring in his poems to his gentle birth, and claiming in some of his dedications consanguinity with the noble house of Spencer, of his parentage he has left us no record. The university of Cambridge had the honour of his education; and though the history of his college life partakes of the same obscurity that envelopes his origin, it has been ascertained that he was admitted a sizar of Pembroke Hall, May 20, 1569,—that he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts, June 16, 1572–3,—and that of Master of Arts, June 26, 1576.
We gather from their correspondence, that he here became intimate with the learned, but pedantic, Gabriel Harvey, of Christchurch; and to his critical opinions, although occasionally fantastic, he seems to have paid great deference.[1] During his residence at Cambridge, he gave evidence of his poetical abilities, and was well known to his fellow-students as a votary of the Muses, having contributed, although anonymously, several poems to the “Theatre of Worldlings,” published in 1569. But his hopes of further advancement at the university having been annihilated, in consequence of a quarrel with the master of the society to which he belonged, respecting some preferment unjustly conferred upon a rival, he withdrew to the North of England, where he lived as tutor in the family of one of his relatives. In this retirement he became enamoured of the “widdowe’s daughter of the glenne,” a lady of no common accomplishments, whom he has celebrated in his poems, under the name of Rosalind. In one of the notes to “The Shepheards Calendar,” she is said to have been one “that for her rare and singular gifts of person and mind, Spenser need not have been ashamed to love.” Nor was she insensible of her lover’s merit; for, according to Harvey, “gentle Mistresse Rosalinde once reported him to have all the intelligences at commandment, and another time christened him Signor Pegaso.”—To this attachment we are indebted tor many of his sweetest productions. He seems to have loved with the most fervent ardour; and has imparted to the strains in which he sang the praises of his mistress, a tone of tender entreaty inexpressibly beautiful. Of this affair, too little is known; but the very mystery in which it is enshrined, has thrown around the tradition of the poet’s first love, all the “strong interest of reality, and all the charm of romance and poetry.” But the passion which gave birth to so many exquisite lyrics was doomed to be but a day-dream; the affections of Rosalind were transferred to another, the Menaleas of the Shepheards Calendar; and Spenser poured forth in tuneful numbers his complaint, “how he was forsaken unfaithfully; and in his stead another received disloyally.”
Having removed to London at the suggestion of Harvey, he there published the Shepheards Calendar in 1579. This Poem, which is composed in a style of language, nearly obsolete in the age in which it was written, is therefore accompanied by a glosse or commentary, which was furnished, together with an introductory letter to Harvey, by E. K., respecting whose identity many ingenious conjectures have been hazarded; but every attempt at his discovery has been ineffectual: that he was an intimate and partial friend of the author, is evident.
As a Pastoral, the value of the Shepheards Calendar is considerably diminished, by being written in a quaint and antiquated dialect, and by the frequent satire on ecclesiastical matters, certainly incongruous in the mouths of the rustic heroes, who have been not inaptly styled by Campbell, “parsons in disguise.” The consequence of this obtrusion of Church Polemics into the simplicity of rural affairs has been, that the Eclogues for May, July, and September, are anything but Pastorals. Independent, however of these blemishes, the poem is enriched with many passages of exquisite beauty; and in the Eclogues for January, June, October, and December, the descriptions of nature are minute and luxuriant, and may be cited as among the sweetest specimens of their class, extant in our language. Dryden and Pope have bestowed upon it their most emphatic applause; and the former has not hesitated to place it in the same rank with the writings of Theocritus or Virgil. The novelty of its subject and its style; it being the first poem of the kind published in England, with the exception, perhaps, of Lord Buckhurst’s “Induction and Legend of Henry Duke of Buckingham”[2] (the allegorical pictures of which, in the opinion of Warton, “are so beautifully drawn, that in all probability they contributed to direct, or at least to stimulate, Spenser’s imagination”), excited universal attention; and such was its popularity that, during the author’s life time, it passed through no less than five editions. It is supposed that some political passages in these poems, especially the allusions to Abp. Grindall, in the Eclogue for April, excited the wrath of the great Burghley, the effects of which had no inconsiderable influence on the Poet’s after-life. In vain he distinguished the minister with the most flattering adulation in one of the sonnets prefixed to the Faerie Queene: the mighty Peere remained implacable; and it is doubtless to the loss of this noble’s “grace” that he alludes in the following terse and pregnant lines from Mother Hubberds Tale:
“Most miserable man, whom wicked fate
Hath brought to court, to sue, for had-ywist,
That few hath found, and many one hath mist!
Full little knowest thou, that hast not tride,
What hell it is, in suing long to bide:
To loose good dayes, that might be better spent;
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put buck to-morrow;
To feede on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow;
To have thy princes grace, yet want her peeres;
To have thy asking, yet waite manie yeares;
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse despaires;
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne:
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.
Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end,
That doth his life in so long tendance spend!”
But if the Shepheards Calendar procured for its author a powerful enemy, on the other hand it secured him some no less powerful friends. The poem, partly written at Penshurst, was dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, who, from this period to the close of his career, continued the kind protector of Spenser, and obtained for him the countenance and support of his uncle the Earl of Leicester. By Leicester, Spenser was received into his house, for the furtherance, no doubt, of some literary undertaking; probably to assist in the composition of the “Stemmata Dudleiana,” an account of the Earl’s genealogy, on which, in one of his letters, the Poet states himself to have been employed in 1580. About July in the same year, he was indebted to his patron for an appointment as secretary to Arthur Lord Grey de Wilton, then nominated Lord Deputy of Ireland, which situation he held during the two years of that nobleman’s administration. Lord Grey’s measures with the Irish were energetic and severe,—so much so, as to have induced his recall to England: and to this event Spenser alludes in his Faerie Queene, when describing Artegall returning from the succour of Irene, as leaving his labours incomplete:—
“But, ere be could reform it thoroughly,
He through occasion called was away
To Faerie Court, that of necessity
His course of iustice he was forst to stay.”
Many years afterwards, he appeared as the advocate of Lord Grey; and in his elaborate “View of the State of Ireland,” has successfully vindicated his measures and his reputation. In 1586, through the combined influence of this nobleman, the Earl of Leicester, and Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser received a grant of 3028 acres of land in the county of Cork, being a portion of the forfeited estates of the rebel earls of Desmond. This was the last kindness which he received from his generous friend and patron Sir Philip Sidney. On the 22d of September of the same year, this accomplished scholar,—this gallant knight,—this “flowre of chivalrie,” received his death-wound before the walls of Zutphen, in Guelderland, while nobly fighting the battles of the Protestant religion. He lingered till the 17th October, when he expired in the arms of his secretary and friend, Mr. William Temple. By the tenor of the grant, our poet was compelled to reside on his newly-acquired property, and accordingly fixed his residence at Kilcolman castle, about two miles distant from Doneraile. Although now presenting a very different aspect, this spot seems to have offered considerable attractions to a man of Spenser’s temperament. The castle was situated on an elevation, on the north side of a fine lake, in the midst of an extensive plain, whose horizon was terminated by the distant mountains of Waterford, Ballyhoura, Nagle, and Kerry. The views from its site are most delightful; and in Spenser’s time, when the adjacent uplands were wooded, it must have been a most pleasant and romantic situation, to which we no doubt are indebted for many of those glowing descriptions of forest and pastoral scenery, with which his writings so richly abound. The river Mulla flowed through his grounds. In this congenial retreat, enlivened by the society of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had succeeded Sidney as his Mæcenas, Spenser finished the first part of his glorious and imperishable Faerie Queene; and having received the critical encomium of the “Shepheard of the Ocean,” accompanied his patron to England, where, in 1590, he gave to the world the fruits of his matured intellect. It was published with the title of “The Faerie Queene; disposed into Twelve Bookes, fashioning XII. Morall Vertues” (although in this first edition only three books were published), and, as appears from a conversation in his friend Ludowick Bryskett’s “Discourse of Civil Life,” was intended “to represent all the Morall Virtues, assigning to every virtue a Knight, to be patron and defender of the same; in whose actions, feats of armes, and chivalry, the operation of that virtue, whereof he is the protector, are to be expressed; and the vices and unruly appetites that oppose themselves against the same, to be beaten downe and overcome.”
At this period Spenser was introduced by Raleigh to Queen Elizabeth, who, in February, 1590–1, as we learn from a patent discovered in the chapel of the Rolls, by the indefatigable Malone, conferred upon him a yearly pension of fifty pounds, which he enjoyed till his death. It has been asserted by some of the poet’s biographers, that attached to this pension was the office of laureat; but it has been satisfactorily proved by Malone, that Spenser, although addressed by that title by his contemporaries, was never officially appointed to the situation. In reference to this office, Gibbon (in the 12th volume of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) remarks, “From Augustus to Louis, the Muse has too often been false and venal; but I much doubt whether any age or court can produce a similar establishment of a stipendiary poet, who, in every reign, and at all events, is bound to furnish, twice a year, a measure of praise and verse, such as may be sung in the chapel, and, I believe, in the presence of the sovereign.” Setting aside the adulation which the appointment entailed, and which is now obsolete, we are not disposed to quarrel with the office; for, at the least, it offers an encouragement to literary men, in the certainty of an income, no unwelcome benefit to a race not generally possessed of a superfluity of this world’s gear, and though originating, no doubt, in royal vanity, it has not unfrequently lightened the sorrows and sweetened the labours of “these Foster-babes of Fame.” After the publication of his poem, Spenser returned to Ireland; and during his absence from court, encouraged by the popularity into which his works were rapidly advancing, his bookseller collected and printed his minor pieces, in a volume, of which the following are the title and contents:—
“Complaints, containing sundrie small Poemes of the World’s Vanitie: viz. 1, The Ruines of Time. 2, The Teares of the Muses. 3, Virgils Gnat. 4, Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubberds Tale. 5, The Ruines of Rome, by Bellay. 6, Muiopotmos, or the Fate of the Butterflie. 7, Visions of the Worlds Vanitie. 8, Bellayes Visions. 9, Petrarches Visions.” These pieces, although considerably inferior to his great work, have yet participated in the fame with which it endowed its author, and, without reference to their intrinsic merits, have been equally lauded by his critics. This want of discrimination may be attributed to the dazzle of his name, which has induced them, with a blind devotion, to heap upon his minor poems those eulogiums which can only be justly claimed by the Faerie Queene. Of these, “Mother Hubberds Tale,” though written in the “raw conceit of youth,” is certainly the best; it abounds with satirical hits at the leading features of the times, the priests and the court: the lines devoted to this latter subject embody the description of the miseries of a place-hunter, already quoted. The language is bold and nervous, and the narrative in general unembarrassed. Take, for example, the following description of the ape purloining the crown, sceptre, and hide “which he had doft for heat,” from the King of the Forest. To this adventure he is incited by the fox:— “Loath was the ape (though praised) to adventer
Yet faintly gan into his worke to enter,
Afraid of everie leaf that stir’d him by,
And everie stick that underneath did ly:
Upon his tiptoes nicely he up went,
For making noyse, and still his ears he lent
To everie sound that under heaven blew,
Now went, now stopt, now crept, now backward drew,
That it good sport had been him to have eyde;
Yet at the last (so well he him applyde),
Through his fine handling, and his cleanly play,
He all those royall signes had stolne away,
And with the foxes helpe them borne aside
Into a secret corner unespide.”
In the above, tlie trepidation and anxiety of the robber are admirably drawn. In “The Ruines of Time,” in which he adverts to the untimely death of the Earl of Leicester, are many noble passages; and Mr. Ellis has selected one of the most spirited, for insertion in his valuable Specimens. “Muiopotmos” is one of the most elegant of all Spenser’s minor poems, and possesses much of the lavishness of imagery and description so conspicuous in his more polished works. “The Teares of the Muses” comprise their lament for the decay of learning. “Daphnaida,” an Elegy on Douglas Howard, daughter of Henry Lord Howard, appeared Jan. 1, 1591–2; and in 1595, was published “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe,” in which the Poet gives an account of his visit to England and his introduction to the queen, with familiar sketches of his contemporaries under feigned names. Attached to “Colin Clout” was “Astrophel,” a collection of elegiac poems on the death of Sir Philip Sydney, supposed to have been written on the immediate occasion of his death. The characteristics of this work are conceit and pedantry, but often redeemed by tender sentiments and noble expressions. The best of the poems is “The Mourning Muse of Thestylis;” and in the Elegy, “A Friends Passion for his Astrophel,” we have an atoning charm in the following graceful portrait of Sidney:—
“When he descended downe to the mount
His personage seemed most divine:
A thousand graces one might count
Upon his lovely cheerfull eine:
To heare him speake and sweetly smile
You were in Paradise the while.
“A sweet attractive kinds of grace,
A full assurance given by lookes,
Continuall comfort in a face,
The lineaments of Gospel bookes;
I trowe that countenance cannot lie,
Whose thoughts are legible in the eie.
“Was never eie did see that face,
Was never eare did heare that tong,
Was never minde did minde his grace,
That ever thought the traell longe.
But eies, and eares, and ev’ry thought,
Were with his sweete perfections caught.”
“Underneath this sable herse,
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother.
Death, ere thou hast killed another
Learn’d, and fair, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.”
In the same year were published his “Amoretti,” or Sonnets, apparently written during his courtship of a less faithless fair than Rosalind, whom he afterwards married, and by her left several children. These sonnets overflow with chaste sentiments and beautiful imagery, and are, in truth,
“Such tales, as told to any maid
By such a man, in the green shade,
Were perilous to hear!”
The portrait of his Elizabeth is luxuriant and characteristic:—
“Fayre is my love, when her fayre golden haires
With the loose wynd ye waving chance to marke;
Fayre, when the rose in her red cheekes appeares;
Or in her eyes the fyre of love does sparke;
Fayre, when her brest, lyke a rich laden barke,
With pretious merchandize she forth doth lay;
Fayre, when that cloud of pryde, which oft doth dark
Her goodly light, with smiles she drives away;
But fayrest she, when so she doth display
The gate with pearles and rubyes richly dight;
Throgh which her words so wise do make their way
To beare the message of her gentle spright.
The rest be woikes of Nature’s wonderment;
But this the worke of harts astonishment.”
In the tenth Canto of Book VI. of the Faerie Queene, she is also described; and the poet claims for her the honours of a “Fourth Grace;” and in the seventy-fourth sonnet classing her with his mother, and the queen, as “Ye three Elizabeths,” he calls her,
“The third, my love, my lifes last ornament,
By whom my spirit out of dust was raysed:
To speake her prayse and glory excellent,
Of all alive most worthy to be praysed.”
But the “Epithalamion,” written on his marriage with the lady of his love, far transcends everything of the like description. “It is a strain redolent of a Bridegroom’s joy and of a Poet’s fancy.—It is an intoxication of ecstacy, ardent, noble, and pure.”[3] There is no other nuptial song of equal beauty in our language. Spenser has thrown his whole soul into this glorious lay; and it stands confessed the very essence of his imaginative genius.
The “Fowre Hymnes on Love and Beautie,” dedicated to the Countesses of Cumberland and Warwick, the dedication to whom is not a little curious, and the “Prothalamion,” in honour of the marriages of Ladies Elizabeth and Catherine Somerset, to H. Gifford and W. Peters, Esqrs., were also published in 1596. In the first are some spirited lines in honour of beauty; and the latter contains much poetical imagery, melodiously expressed.
Having thus cursorily enumerated the chief of what are generally called Spenser’s Minor Poems, we may here hazard a few words as to their general merit in relation to “The Faerie Queene.” Though possessed in the highest degree of poetical feelings and imagination, Spenser was evidently of an indolent turn of mind, and required a strong excitement to exhibit his intellect in all its force. In the production of these stray pieces, these waifs,—if they may be so denominated, no such inducement was offered. Enamoured of its “dark conceit,” he seems to have placed his whole hopes of fame on his Faerie Queene, and to have considered the labour bestowed on any other production, as so much stolen from his great work; and this may perhaps account for the vast abyss which in general separates it from the offspring of his less disciplined muse. But though thus dissenting from the judgment of those who assert that he has no faults, we reverentially concur in the dictum of Warton, that, “in reading Spenser, if the critic is not satisfied, yet the reader is transported.” Perhaps the most vigorous of the pieces now under consideration are the fables of “The Oake and the Brier,” and “The Kidde and the Foxe,” in “The Shepheard’s Calendar,” and “Mother Hubberds Tale,” “Muiopotmos,” and the “Epithalamion.”
During this period Spenser had not, notwithstanding the fecundity of his muse, neglected the Faerie Queene; and accordingly in 1596 appeared a new edition of the first three books, with the addition of a second part, containing the fourth, fifth, and sixth. These, with two imperfect cantos of “Mutabilitie,” first published in the folio of 1609, as a recovered portion of the lost “Legend of Constancie,” comprise all that now remains of “the XII. books fashioning the XII. morall vertues.” The opinions of his biographers have been at variance, as to whether the poem was ever finished, or whether it was purposely left in its present incomplete state. With these opinions, the arguments in support of which must almost all originate in conjecture, we will refrain from meddling; and while we admire the ingenious statements of Sir James Ware, Birch, and Farmer, and the no less sagacious retorts of their learned adversaries, Fenton, Dryden, and Todd, without staying to investigate their abstruse theories, we will proceed to the far more pleasing occupation of considering what remains of this immortal work.
There is no despot so absolute as fashion; and, in the days of Elizabeth, the fashion, whether in literature or manners, was derived from Italy, as now from France; and the glowing tales of knight-errantry and magic, which Ariosto had given to the world, had strongly imbued our ancestors with a taste for the chivalric and marvellous. To this passion we are certainly indebted for the structure of the Faerie Queene; and though Spenser has far outstripped the Italian in richness of imagery and fertility of conception, the plot of his poem, although inferior to the Orlando, from its want of uniformity, is evidently borrowed from Ariosto. In no other respect, however, can the two be considered as rivals: in delineation of character and lavish minuteness of description, our countryman stands alone. His creations partake not of the undisciplined and libertine genius of Ariosto: though perhaps too evanescent and shadow-like to retain a lasting hold on the attention, they possess all the imagined grace of the inhabitants of another world,—a region of enchantment, created by himself, in which fresh flowers are ever springing, and new beauties are presented to us at each step in our progress. The success of the Faerie Queene was instantaneous. “It became at once the delight of every accomplished gentleman, the model of every poet, the solace of every scholar;”[4] Panegyrics were written on its author,—it strengthened his position at court,—it extended the circle of his friends,—it won for him the smiles of his sovereign, and secured him the applause of the good. Its publication exercised an influence on our literature and on our language, whose effects are even yet experienced. To enumerate its imitators would be to recount the names of the most distinguished of our poets; for all have been more or less indebted to the inspiration of Spenser’s genius.
The plot of the Faerie Queene is far more entangled than is at first sight apparent; and too many are disposed, in the more conspicuous attractions of its poetical embellishment, to forget the moral which is conveyed beneath its surface. Besides the moral allegory which is the distinguishing feature of the poem, Spenser has embodied in his story a second and political one. “Not only is Gloriana the imaginary concentration of glory sought by every true knight—she is Queen Elizabeth too: not only does King Arthur present the spirit and essence of pure chivalry—he is likewise Spenser’s (unworthy) patron, the Earl of Leicester; and many of the adventures which describe the struggles of virtue and vice, also shadow forth anecdotes and intrigues of the English court, invisible to those, as Spenser himself insinuates,
“Who n’ote without a hound fine footing trace.”
This complication of meanings may render the Faerie Queene doubly valuable to the antiquary who can explore its secret sense; but it must always be an objection to Spenser’s plan, with the common reader, that the attempt at too much ingenuity has marred the simplicity of his allegory, and deprived it in a great degree of consistency and coherence.”[5]
The prevailing though less prominent tone of the poem betrays a mildness and gentleness eminently characteristic of the author’s disposition: beneath the garb of his bewitching allegories we trace his desire to inculcate those virtues which are the peculiar attributes of Christianity. Spenser’s feeling for sacred subjects, is admirably pourtrayed in those exquisite stanxas which form the opening of the eighth Canto of Book II. How naturally does he burst forth,
“But O! th’ exceeding grace
Of Highest God that loves his creatures so,
And all his workes with mercy doth embrace,
That blessed Angels he sends to and fro,
To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe!
***** O, why should Hevenly God to min have such regard!
But while he thus paints, in the most vivid and alluring colours, those endearing sympathies which hallow existence; with an energy startling as unexpected, he appears as the delineator of our evil passions, depicting them in all the force of their hideous reality, and in a manner approaching the sublime.
By those who have misunderstood him, it has been asserted that Spenser’s poetry is all sweetness and destitute of strength. For a refutation of this opinion I need only direct the attention of the reader to the sublime descriptions of “Him who with the night durst ride,” the House of Riches, the Court of Jealousy, the Caves of Mammon and Despair: the latter, especially, is nervously written, and the choice of words, as suited to the object described, admirable; we see before us the very picture of this gloomy den. The poet was perfectly master of his art, and possessed that secret which gives one of its greatest charms to poetry, a choice of expression and epithet extremely apposite to the subject. Virgil has been much praised for a similar quality; but the description of the trees which form the “shadie grove,” Book I., canto i., may bear comparison with any of the finest passages of the Mantuan bard.
Of the sweetness of his verse every one must be sensible; it has the melody of falling waters, and wins upon the senses as imperceptibly. Speaking of this characteristic of our poet’s numbers, Campbell has elegantly said, “He is like a speaker whose tones continue to be pleasing, though he may speak too long; or like a painter, who makes us forget the defect of his design, by the magic of his colouring. We always rise from perusing him with melody in the mind’s ear, and with pictures of romantic beauty impressed on the imagination.” That the Faerie Queene has faults, every one unblinded by prejudice, must be ready to allow; for though teeming with passages of grandeur, beauty, pathos, and sublimity,yet, as a whole, it is wanting in uniformity and compactness. Each of the books might have been published as a separate poem, without injury to the remainder. Indeed, the first, esteemed as by far the best of the six, is a complete work in itself; and, but for the reappearance of Prince Arthur, has little connection with the others. But even this character “appears and vanishes like a spirit, and we lose sight of him too soon to consider him as the hero of the poem.”[6] To account for the unfinished state of the Faerie Queene, it is said that a servant, entrusted with his manuscripts, lost the six remaining books in the precipitate retreat from Ireland at the time of the insurrection. This story is much discountenanced by others, who suppose that it was purposely left incomplete. Whatever be the fact, we are inclined to consider that, for the author’s fame, the poem has not lost in the curtailment, the last three books are much inferior to their predecessors; and we may infer that the subject had already grown too tedious to the author to allow of future improvement.
Spenser has been not unfrequently compared with Shakspeare; we should suppose more for the sake of contrast than from any similarity that exists between them. The one was truly, not of an age, but for all time! the other is uniformly tinctured with the manners of his age. “Shakspeare (as Coleridge has finely written) stands like the yew-tree in Lorton Vale, which has known so many ages that it belongs to none.” With Spenser how different! In his writings we have the same fertility of imagination, the same vivid powers of description, the same nervous grasp of his subject;—but that subject is restricted and unpervading; and he lavishes the exuberance of his invention and fancy in depicting manners and customs destined to be forgotten by succeeding generations, Shakspeare is the poet of the passions, while Spenser is the poet of habit: the one has an universal command over our intellect; the other, but a temporary one. The former lakes our sympathies by storm; while the latter wins us by insensible degrees. We fall prostrate before the giant genius of Shakspeare; while we become the willing captives of Spenser. He is at once the most picturesque, the most graceful, and the most visionary of our poets. None has ever treated with a more masterly or more delicate handling the graceful characteristics of woman. He drew her beauties and her virtues in colours not more glowing than true, while her foibles are so lightly touched, and with so much apparent sympathy, that he makes even her failings lean to Virtue’s side.
The same year which brought before the public the last three books of the Faerie Queene, produced the only prose work of our author: in 1596 he presented to Queen Elizabeth his “View of the State of Ireland.” This masterly performance was intended to have had a mediatory effect between the Queen and her Irish subjects, but from its bitter tone, was not likely to have a pacificatory influence, and remained in MS. till 1633, when it was published by Sir James Ware, in his collection of the writers on Ireland, from a MS. in the library of Archbishop Usher. Ledwich, the learned Irish antiquary, writes:—“Civilization having almost obliterated every vestige of our ancient manners, the remembrance of them is only to be found in Spenser; so that he may be considered at this day as an Irish antiquary.” In the opinion of Ware, “He seems rather to have indulged the fancy and licence of a poet, than the judgment and fidelity requisite for an historian.” For this work, which is disfigured by prejudice, Spenser has certainly but little claim upon Irish veneration, but it exhibits vast political knowledge, and ascribes many of the miseries of that unhappy country to their proper sources.[7]
Besides the works we have thus enumerated, we learn from his letters, those of Harvey, and the notes of E. K., that Spenser wrote several, which are now lost; the chief of these were a “‘Translation of Ecclesiasticus;’ a ‘Translation of Canticum Canticorum;’ the ‘Dying Pelican;’ the ‘Hours of Our Lord;’ the ‘Sacrifice of a Sinner;’ the ‘Seven Psalms;’ ‘Dreams;’ the ‘English Poet;’ ‘Legends;’ the ‘Court of Cupid;’ the ‘Hell of Lovers:’ his ‘Purgatory;’ ‘Se’nnight’s Slumber;’ ‘Pageants;’ ‘Nine Comedies;’ ‘Stemmata Dudleiana;’ and ‘Epithalamion Thamesis.’” From this interesting catalogue, it is evident, that Spenser’s muse was as prolific as she was powerful; and it is much to be regretted that not one of these seventeen pieces has ever been recovered. E. K., in the epistle to Harvey prefixed to the Shepheards Calender, speaking of the “Dreams,” “Legends,” and “Court of Cupid,” says, “whose commendation to set out were verie vaine, the things though worthie of many, yet being knowne to fewe,” and in the argument to the Eclogue for October, on the subject of poetry, which he calls a “worthie and commendable art: or rather no art, but a divine gift and heavenly instinct not to be gotten by labour and learning, but adorned with both; and poured into the witte by a certain enthousiasmos and celestiall inspiration, as the author hereof elsewhere at large discourseth in his booke called The English Poete, which booke being lately come to my hands, I minde also by Gods grace, upon further advisement, to publish.” This advisement the worthy commentator never fulfilled, and the world is thus deprived of one of the most interesting treatises on his art by him, whom Camden justly calls Poetarum nostri seculi facilè princeps. In the Nine Comedies,[8] Spenser would have appeared before us in a new character, rivalling Shakspeare on his own ground, while in the Pageants we might have traced some of the first shadowings of the curious productions of “rare Ben.” That our loss is great, all must feelingly confess who can appreciate the manner in which Spenser would have treated these various subjects, shrining them in the graceful beauty of his Faerie numbers.
In this cursory review of his life, it has been our delight, while culling the flowers of his sweet poesy, to contemplate the career of Spenser still brightened by success, unclouded by sorrow and unembittered by misfortune. The discontents occasioned by the capriciousness of court favour, the vexations of—
“expectation vayne
Of idle hopes, which still doe fly away,
Like empty shadows,”
were of brief duration, and up to this period of his history, the Poet’s life had been bright as a summer holiday. We have seen his name by slow but sure degrees assume that proud pre-eminence in our literature which it will for ever retain. We have beheld him “shining like a starre” among his brilliant contemporaries, claiming alike their admiration and regard—and we have lingered over the details of his domestic life sympathising in the poet’s affection for his Elizabeth in whose fair heart
“Their dwells sweet love, and constant chastity,
Unspotted fayth, and comely womanhood,
Regard of honour and mild modesty,”
and envying those “celestial threasures, and unrevealed pleasures,” which shed a radiance round his Bower of Bliss.
“O Fortuna, ut nunquàm perpetuò es bona!”—
In 1597 Spenser had been recommended to the Irish government by the queen, to be sheriff of Cork. His tenure of this office was soon ended. In October, the storm which was to crush at once his prosperity and his life burst forth with resistless fury. Tyrone having gained that signal victory over Sir Henry Bagnal, long remembered as the defeat of Blackwater, incited his confederates to aid him in expelling the English settlers from Ireland. The Munster insurgents were headed by James Fitzthomas Geraldine, titular Earl of Desmond, to whose family the castle and estates of Kilcolman had be longed. Spenser and his family fled. One of his children was left behind, and perished in the ruins of his dwelling, which had been fired by the rebels.
Unnerved by these calamities, turning from the scene of former happiness, he made his way to London, where, after a fruitless struggle against poverty and sickness, in a lodging house in King-street, Westminster, died the poet of the Faerie Queene! He was buried in the abbey, near the tomb of Chaucer, with a splendid funeral, at the expense of the Earl of Essex. The pall was borne by poets; and with a true poetic feeling, tributary verses by the most illustrious of his contemporaries, with the pens that wrote them, were thrown into his grave. About thirty years after his death Anne Countess of Dorset erected a monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey. It was executed by Stone, at a cost of forty pounds.
In Camden’s little tract entitled, “Reges, Reginæ, Nobiles, et alii in Ecclesia Collegiata B. Petri Westmonasterii sepulti,” 1606, 4 to., we find the following notice of this monument, which was defaced by the Puritans during the civil wars, and the present one erected or restored in 1778:—
“Edmundus Spencer Londinensis, Anglicorum Poetarum nostri seculi facile princeps quod ejus poemata faventi bus Musis et victuro genio conscripta comprobant. Obiit immatura morte anno salutis 1598, et prope Galfredum Chauccrum conditur qui fœlicissmè poesin Anglicis literis primus illustravit. In quem hæc scripta sunt Epitaphia:—
“Hic prope Chaucerum situs est Spenserius, illi
Proximus ingenio, proximus ut tumulo.
Hic prope Chaucerum Spensere poeta poetam
Conderis, et versu, quàm tumulo propior.
Anglica te vivo vixit, plausit que Poesis
Nunc moritura timet, te moriente, mori.”
The inscription on the restored monument is thus: “Heare lyes (expecting the second comminge of our Saviour Jesus) the body of Edmond Spenser, the Prince of Poets in his tyme, whose divine spirit needs noe othir witnesse then the works which he left behinde him. He was borne in London, in the yeare 1553, and died in the yeare 1598.”
His contemporaries, by whom he had never been addressed without the epithet ‘great,’ or ‘learned,’ vied with each other in Elegiac tributes to his memory; and the most eminent of our later poets have successively confessed their obligations to him. Milton acknowledged to Dryden that Spenser was his master, and Dryden has said of him, “no man was ever born with a greater genius, or had more knowledge to support it.” But the enumeration of all the eulogies which gratitude or admiration has showered upon him, would too much amplify our sketch, which has already extended beyond the prescribed limit. In concluding these “Observations,” the writer has only to remark, that the quotations introduced have been selected rather to illustrate the particular subject under discussion, than as specimens of Spenser’s “Beauties,” a just appreciation of which can only be acquired by an attentive study of his writings. J. C.
- ↑ “Harvey,” says D’Israeli, in those curious and entertaining volumes, “The Calamities of Authors,” “is not unknown to the lover of poetry, from his connection with Spenser, who loved and revered him. He is the Hobynol, whose poem is prefixed to the Faerie Queene, who introduced Spenser to Sir Philip Sidney, and besides his intimacy with the literary characters of his time, he was a Doctor of Laws, an erudite scholar, and distinguished as a poet.” The most remarkable feature of his life was his quarrel with Nash, Greene, and the most “pregnant Lucianic wits who ever flourished at one time,” for an account of which, see the work quoted above.
- ↑ Published in “The Mirror for Magistrates,” 1559—a collection of stories by different authors, on the plan of Boccaccio’s “De Casibus Virorum Illustrium.” Of this Induction and Legend, Hallam, in his Introduction to the Literature of Europe, says, “It displays a fertility of imagination, vividness of description, and strength of language, not only superior to the productions of any of his predecessors, but will beat comparison with some of the most poetical passages of Spenser.”
- ↑ Hallam.
- ↑ Hallam.
- ↑ Sir Walter Scott.
- ↑ Hughes.
- ↑ A MS. copy which belonged to Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy of Ireland, in 1605–6, occurs in one of Mr. Thorpe’s Catalogues, Price £31 10 s. Various other MS. copies are known, and exist one in the public library, at Cambridge, one among Lord Keeper Egerton’s papers at Lambeth, one in Trinity College, Dublin, and one in the Gonville and Cuius College, MS.
- ↑ In the opinion of Harvey they were superior to the Faerie Queene. In one of his letters to Spenser, he says, “to be plain, I am voyde of all judgement, if your nine Comedies, whereunto, in imitation of Herodotus, you give the names of the nine muses, (and in one mans fansie not unworthily) come not nearer Ariostoes Comædies, eyther for the finenesse of plausible eloqution, or the rareness of poetical invention, than that Elvish Queene doth to his Orlando Furioso.”