order to see the Queen and if possible secure some post at home. Doubtless as means to this end, though literary ambition must also have played its part, Spenser published the three books of the Faerie Queen, dedicating them to Elizabeth and explaining in an introduction addressed to Ralegh what was to be done in the twelve books of the whole poem. This, as "a continued Allegory, or darke conceit," must have its general intention clearly set forth: it is "to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline." Such a moral, the poet goes on, should be "coloured with an historicall fiction, the which the most part of men delight to read, rather for variety of matter then for profite of the ensample." The fiction which he chose was the "historye of King Arthure." The Faerie Queen herself, he explains, in the general sense is glory, for which the true knight should strive; but in particular is "the most excellent and glorious person of our Soveraine;" and then follows an analysis of part of the intended poem. That such an undertaking flattered the vanity of Elizabeth and filled what modern slang terms "a long-felt want" among the splendid and adventurous nobles as well as the gentry of England, is evident enough. Moreover, the moral part of Spenser's plan, springing from certain Puritan proclivities which seem to have remained alive in him despite his courtier's career, appealed not only to spirits akin to his own, but to that large class of men who made the ideal, no matter in what sordid mixture, a part of their lives. Ralegh himself is a case in point, but thousands of his countrymen were inspired by these glittering dreams. Men sought a fountain of youth, a land of gold, a Northwest Passage; in brief, the old knightly quest seemed close enough to reality for Elizabethan minds. Hence the large appeal of Spenser's poem and the instant favor which it received. The stingy Queen granted him a goodly pension which Burleigh is said to have cut down to fifty pounds. The court was enthusiastic and made this new poem a kind of gentleman's handbook; and its author, already famous as the New Poet, received in that great decade of our literature what may fairly be called the homage of his fellow poets. In a poem which Spenser composed after his return to Ireland, for his quest had been in vain so far as English preferment was concerned, he wrote, under the title of Colin Clout's Come Home Again, a pastoral addressed to his friend Ralegh from Kilcolman in December, 1591, in which many of the English poets are named. The stanza, "And then, though last not least, is Ætion, A gentler shepheard may no where be found: of which the last line would fit Shakespeare, is prob ably though not certainly a genuine allusion to the greater poet. 1 Although this poem was not published for some years, the publisher of the Faerie Queen put forth a volume of Spenser's minor poems in 1591. In the Ruines of Time Spenser bewails the deaths of his friend Sidney 1 and of his patron Leicester; but in Mother Hubberd's Tale, quoted above for its satire on the court, as well as in the Teares of the Muses, with its lament for the decadence of poetry, there was opportunity for offense in high places. Tradition has it that offense was taken. 1 Of the elegies on Sidney, published in 1595 with Colin Clout, only the Astrophel belongs to Spenser. In June, 1594, the poet married Elizabeth, daughter of James Boyle. Eighty-eight sonnets and an epithalamion, the latter a most exquisite poem, record his courtship and marriage. In one of the sonnets he praises the name of his bride as belonging to his own mother and to his Sovereign Queen, tells what they have done for him, and cries, "Ye three Elizabeths! for ever live, That three such graces did unto me give." In the marriage lay he tells us that the time of year is "when the Sunne is in his chiefest hight," that is, the middle of June; and thus pictures his bride: "Behold, whiles she before the altar stands, By his wife Spenser had three sons and a daughter; descendants of the eldest son are still living. Late in 1595 Spenser journeyed again to London, taking with him three more books of the Faerie Queen. The King of Scotland, afterwards James I of England, complained through the English ambassador of the calumny thrown upon his mother, Queen Mary, who appears in no attractive guise as Duessa in the fourth book of the poem. "False Duessa" she is called, and is recorded as guilty of the worst crimes conceivable. In fact, she is foil to the perfectly virtuous Elizabeth, who is represented by both Gloriana and Belphœbe. This protest, though it failed to bring about the punishment of the poet, is good proof of the wide circulation and the popularity of the book. Spenser, moreover, had a powerful protector in the Earl of Essex, at whose house he was for some time a guest; and it was proba bly to show his usefulness as an official, his loyalty, and his claims for promotion to more congenial service, that he wrote the above-mentioned View of the Present State of Ireland, licensed in 1598, but not printed until after his death. But as in Swift's case, there was to be no return from Spenser's Irish exile. It was after a year of unavailing endeavors that he wrote, in his Prothalamion, a wedding lay for two daughters of the Earl of Worcester, those lines about his "long fruitless stay in Princes Court and expectation vain," which we have quoted above. Early in 1597 Spenser returned to Ireland; nor could his appointment in September, 1598, as sheriff of Cork, a high and dignified office, console him for his failure. It was no sinecure. In October thousands of rebels, under the Earl of Desmond, swarmed through this part of Ireland, and Kilcolman Castle was burned to the ground. Spenser escaped to Cork with his wife and children; it was reported on the authority of Ben Jonson, though the fact needs better proof, that one of the children was burned to death. In December Spenser was sent to England with official dispatches about the war; but he seems to have been a dying man, and survived his arrival in London little over a month. Ben Jonson told Drummond, in the famous Conversations, that the poet "died for lack of bread, in King Street, and refused twenty pieces sent to him by my Lord of Essex, saying that he had no time to spend them." Other writers of the time refer to his poverty and the misery of his death, and the general fact must be accepted as true; on the other hand, starvation seems an almost impossible assumption. His friends were numerous; he was a kind of royal messenger, and could have been neither neglected nor utterly destitute. What seems most likely is that a broken-hearted man, with mortal illness upon him, fresh from the overwhelming tragedy of Kilcolman, crept into those obscure lodgings in Westminster and called for "easeful death." Biographers quote Aubrey's statement on the authority of an old actor that Spenser was 66 а little man, wore short hair, little bands, and little cuffs." As a writer he has been placed among the foremost English poets. In his own day he was not popular in the ordinary sense, but he was the favorite of the aristocracy and of the leading men of letters. As the people of Queen Anne's age saw themselves depicted in Gulliver's Travels, the Elizabethan gentleman saw in the Faerie Queen, though by a very different method and with praise and abuse substituted for satire, the great characters of his time in transparent disguise. He saw his enemies attacked, his friends and his sovereign praised to heart's desire. He could recognize Ireland in the scenery of the Faerie Queen, and the revival of chivalry and knightly deeds could blind him to the horrors of actual Irish war. All these elements of interest are now stripped from Spenser's verse, and what remains is poetry pure and simple. Spenser wrote his poetry with consummate ease, and we may be sure that, like Shakespeare, he "never blotted." But he differs from Shakespeare, he differs from his own master Chaucer, in shunning the real. His feet are almost never on the ground. Lovers of poetry for poetry's sake, however, will always turn to him; and he gave England its first great poem in its greatest age. |