The Faerie Queene - Volume 01

O THE PUBLICATION OF T

statements we have directly or indirectly his own authority. In his Prothalamion he s

y all to mery

on, my most

this lifes fir

nother place

of aunc

s 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

fourty which m

Westminster Abbey errs in assigning his birth to 1553; though the error is less flagrant than that

his mother's name was Elizabeth. This appears

ters! fram'd b

t happy name w

times thrise hap

f body, fortu

being to me

womb deriv'd

tward- 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 probabil

he 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

of the no

eanest boast

urhood 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 Sheph

o 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

ollege, 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 a

nd 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

h when flowrd m

wift I wandred

eedlesse lust

ubted daunger

tefull woodes

ad of wolves

nge amid the

tes to make my

o chace the tre

tlesse hare til

I of wintri

my spring wou

e I scaled th

dge the rave

aried, with m

lnut-tree, the

fell all for nu

me was liber

uage of this passage is metaphorical; but it is equally clear that the writer was intimately and thoroughly a

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

leman 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 V

y 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

bearing letters from France. As has been already remarked, it is scarcely probable that this ca

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 mentio

eous Ouse cam

ity and by

vers taking

ers, as he p

, the Grant, the

Huntingdon and

ridge, whom as

ne, and is a

le Muse, and man

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. Ther

th 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 clas

alendar. 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

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. I

e that so doth t

oman 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

e whome long I

se that all his

ne, his tressed

hts he dooth the

ipe, whych mad

ath broke, an

ngs, wherein

.

, the Southerne

ounded with a d

penser, 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 t

with scorne an

gentle heart whi

s Lucid, 'I h

nd of divers

that swaine t

d her on the ground that

re, ye groomes,

ame of Rosali

with additions. His heart was still all tender towards h

, then said Co

uilt upon you

d a doome, wit

stiall which

ot like as t

aughters which

e regard and

ll that eve

r that scorned

the blame tha

ghts as she her

lowly thing w

ace let her vo

ne, sith her I

may her hon

worth, though f

l be some guerd

iction which

times shall giv

ine which cann

low shepheard

languors of my

ld for ever

e, nought to t

rophe of her

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. Perhap

hould 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,

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 i

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 excell

enser refers to Tityrus as his great m

epheard sat b

hadow of a b

, which well coul

ityrus his s

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

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 a

ment' 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

g 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 w

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 quote

UM TRI

the witnesse of

was in a sen

luttring winge o

ou

nto my love whe

astlesse in heav

lesse at the chee

l

elesse on hir hea

ir that my eyes c

ell hir that my

et

ls, tell her I ca

ing love suffe

ove doth appall t

ing love marret

r pleasures were

le

r beauty was won

y

sweete tongue wa

rt

y waste, wanting

starve, wantin

s dye wanting m

ho will bewaile

, who will reco

ho will saye, T

e 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 spee

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

mely verse, of

pe his venem

mer writs, all w

blot, and fro

wicked tongues d

a mighty Pere

so deserved

my rimes keep

se, that now is

eas

Calliope says of certain

venues all in

nought to learni

fee which Poe

s and Sycoph

his 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 Burgh

tno

-

ningham's Introdu

the Revels at C

iet

ggested that wha

enser's style m

long residence i

forms of the la

spoken by hi

y in part, becau

aucer must be ta

ard Morris has r

rawn from Chauce

hern dialect wh

end

ven in the Appen

o

description of h

during the courts

in his marriage

rtrayed in cant.

k vi. of the Fa

ion of Rosalind

conjecture, and i

gos

rk amongst Mr.

sh Re

cal Essays, ed. H

, 2