1When our literary history was only partially cultivated, the readers of Hooker were often disturbed amidst the profound reasonings of “The Ecclesiastical Polity,†by frequent references to volumes and pages of T. C. The editors of Hooker had thrown no light on these mysterious initials. Contemporaries are not apt to mortify themselves by recollecting that what is familiar to them may be forgotten by the succeeding age. Sir John Hawkins, a literary antiquary, drew up a memoir which explains these initials as those of Thomas Cartwright, and has correctly arranged the numerous tracts of the whole controversy. But Hawkins having consigned this accurate catalogue to “The Antiquarian Repertory,†it could be little known; and Beloe, in his “Anecdotes of Literature,†vol. i., transcribing the entire memoir of Hawkins,verbatim, without the slightest acknowledgment, obtains a credit for original research. Beloe is referred to for thisauthenticinformation by Burnet, in his “Specimens of English Prose-Writers.â€2Both these papers of Travers and Hooker are preserved in Hooker’s Works. Many curious points are discussed by Hooker with admirable reasoning. The divinity of Hooker, who is the firm advocate of legal authority, is enlightened and tolerant; while Travers, who advocated unrestrained personal freedom, is in his divinity narrow and merciless. He sees only “the Elect,†and he casts human nature into the flames of eternity.3“A studious and cynical person, who never expected or desired more than his small preferment. He was a great admirer of Richard Hooker, and collected some of his small treatises.â€â€”Athenæ Oxonienses.4Anthony Wood has said it contained all the eight books, (followed by General Dictionary and Biographia Britannica,) and accused Gauden of pretending to publish three books for the first time in 1662.5“Ecclesiastical Polity,†book First.
1When our literary history was only partially cultivated, the readers of Hooker were often disturbed amidst the profound reasonings of “The Ecclesiastical Polity,†by frequent references to volumes and pages of T. C. The editors of Hooker had thrown no light on these mysterious initials. Contemporaries are not apt to mortify themselves by recollecting that what is familiar to them may be forgotten by the succeeding age. Sir John Hawkins, a literary antiquary, drew up a memoir which explains these initials as those of Thomas Cartwright, and has correctly arranged the numerous tracts of the whole controversy. But Hawkins having consigned this accurate catalogue to “The Antiquarian Repertory,†it could be little known; and Beloe, in his “Anecdotes of Literature,†vol. i., transcribing the entire memoir of Hawkins,verbatim, without the slightest acknowledgment, obtains a credit for original research. Beloe is referred to for thisauthenticinformation by Burnet, in his “Specimens of English Prose-Writers.â€
2Both these papers of Travers and Hooker are preserved in Hooker’s Works. Many curious points are discussed by Hooker with admirable reasoning. The divinity of Hooker, who is the firm advocate of legal authority, is enlightened and tolerant; while Travers, who advocated unrestrained personal freedom, is in his divinity narrow and merciless. He sees only “the Elect,†and he casts human nature into the flames of eternity.
3“A studious and cynical person, who never expected or desired more than his small preferment. He was a great admirer of Richard Hooker, and collected some of his small treatises.â€â€”Athenæ Oxonienses.
4Anthony Wood has said it contained all the eight books, (followed by General Dictionary and Biographia Britannica,) and accused Gauden of pretending to publish three books for the first time in 1662.
5“Ecclesiastical Polity,†book First.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
WereI another Baillet, solely occupied in collecting the “jugemens des sçavansâ€â€”the decisions of the learned—the name of Sir Philip Sidney would bring forth an awful crash of criticism, rarely equalled in dissonance and confusion.
He who first ventured to pronounce a final condemnation on “The Arcadia†of SirPhilip Sidneyas a “tedious, lamentable, pedantic, pastoral romance,†was Horace Walpole;—a decision suited to the heartlessness which wounded the personal qualities of an heroic man, the pride of a proud age. Have modern critics too often caught the watchword when given out by an imposing character? The irregular Hazlitt honestly confides to us, in an agony of despair, that “Sir Philip Sidney is a writer for whom I cannot acquire a taste,†tormented by a conviction that a taste should be acquired. The peculiar style of this critic is at once sparkling and vehement, antithetical and metaphysical. The volcano of his criticism heaves; the short, irruptive periods clash with quick repercussion; the lava flows over his pages, till it leaves us in the sudden darkness of an hypercriticism on “the celebrated description of the ‘Arcadia.’â€
Gifford, once the Coryphæus of modern criticism, whose native shrewdness admirably fitted him for a partisan, both in politics and in literature, did not deem Walpole’s depreciation of Sidney “to be without a certain degree of justice; the plan is poor, the incidents trite, the style pedantic.†But our prudential critic harbours himself in some security by confessing to “some nervous and elegant passages.â€
At our northern Athens, the native coldness has touched the leaves of “The Arcadia†like a frost in spring. The agreeable researcher into the history of fiction confesses the graceful beauty of the language, but considers the whole as “extremely tiresome.†Another critic states a more alarming paroxysm of criticism, that of being “lulled to sleep over the interminable ‘Arcadia.’â€
What innocent lover of books does not imagine that “The Arcadia†of Sidney is a volume deserted by every reader, and only to be classed among the folio romances of the Scuderies, or the unmeaning pastorals whose scenes are placed in the golden age? But such is not the fact. “Nobody, it is said, reads ‘The Arcadia;’ we have known very many persons who read it, men, women, and children, and never knew one read it without deep interest and admiration,†exclaims an animated critic, probably the poet Southey.1More recent votaries have approached the altar of this creation of romance.
It may be well to remind the reader that, although this volume, in the revolutions of times and tastes, has had the fate to be depreciated by modern critics, it has passed through fourteen editions, suffered translations in every European language, and is not yet sunk among the refuse of the bibliopolists. “The Arcadia†was long, and it may still remain, the haunt of the poetical tribe.Sidneywas one of those writers whom Shakespeare not only studied but imitated in his scenes, copied his language, and transferred his ideas.2Shirley,BeaumontandFletcher, and our early dramatists turned to “The Arcadia†as their text-book. Sidney enchanted two later brothers inWallerandCowley; and the dispassionate SirWilliam Templewas so struck by “The Arcadia,†that he found “the true spirit of the vein of ancient poetry in Sidney.â€The world of fashion in Sidney’s age culled their phrases out of “The Arcadia,†which served them as a complete “Academy of Compliments.â€
The reader who concludes that “The Arcadia†of Sidney is a pedantic pastoral, has received a very erroneous conception of the work. It was unfortunate for Sidney that he borrowed the title of “The Arcadia†from Sannazaro, which has caused his work to be classed among pastoral romances, which it nowise resembles; the pastoral part stands wholly separated from the romance itself, and is only found in an interlude of shepherds at the close of each book; dancing brawls, or reciting verses, they are not agents in the fiction. The censure of pedantry ought to have been restricted to the attempt of applying the Roman prosody to English versification, the momentary folly of the day, and to some other fancies of putting verse to the torture.
“The Arcadia†was not one of those spurious fictions invented at random, where an author has little personal concern in the narrative he forms.
When we forget the singularity of the fable, and the masquerade dresses of the actors, we pronounce them to be real personages, and that the dramatic style distinctly conveys to us incidents which, however veiled, had occurred to the poet’s own observation, as we perceive that the scenes which he has painted with such precision must have been localities. The characters are minutely analyzed, and so correctly preserved, that their interior emotions are painted forth in their gestures as well as revealed in their language. The author was himself the tender lover whose amorous griefs he touched with such delicacy, and the undoubted child of chivalry he drew; and in these finer passions he seems only to have multiplied himself.
The manners of the court of Elizabeth were still chivalric; and Sidney was trained in the discipline of those generous spirits whom he has nobly described as men of “high-erected thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy.†Hume has censured these “affectations, conceits, and fopperies,†as well became the philosopher of the Canongate; but there was a reality in this shadow of chivalry. Amadis de Gaul himself never surpassed thechivalrous achievements of the Earl of Essex; his life, indeed, would form the finest of romances, could it be written. He challenged the governor of Corunna to single combat for the honour of the nation, and proposed to encounter Villars, governor of Rouen, on foot or on horseback. And thus run his challenge:—“I will maintain the justice of the cause of Henry the Fourth of France, against the league; and that I am a better man than thou, and that my mistress is more beautiful than thine.†This was the very language and the deed of one of the Paladins. It was this spirit, fantastic as it may appear to us, which stirred Sidney, when Parsons the Jesuit, or some one who lay concealed in a dark corner of the court, sent forth anonymously the famous state-libel of “Leicester’s Commonwealth.†To the unknown libeller who had reflected on the origin of the Dudleys, that “the Duke of Northumberland was not born a gentleman,†Sir Philip Sidney, in the loftiest tone of chivalry, designed to send a cartel of defiance. Touched to the quick in any blur in theStemmata Dudleiana, which, it is said, occupied the poet Spenser when under the princely roof of Leicester, Sidney exclaims, “I am a Dudley in blood, that Duke’s daughter’s son; my chief honour is to be a Dudley, and truly am I glad to have cause to set forth the nobility of that blood; none but this fellow of invincible shamelessness could ever have called so palpable a matter in question.†He closed with the intention of printing at London a challenge which he designed all Europe to witness. “Because that thou the writer hereof doth most falsely lay want of gentry to my dead ancestors, I say that thou therein liest in thy throat, which I will be ready to justify upon thee in any place of Europe where thou wilt assign me a free place of coming, as within three months after the publishing thereof I may understand thy mind. And this which I write, I would send to thine own hands if I knew thee; but I trust it cannot be intended that he should be ignorant of this printed in London, who knows the very whisperings of the Privy-chamber.â€3
We, who are otherwise accustomed to anonymous libels, may be apt to conclude that there was something fantastical in sending forth a challenge through all Europe:—we, who are content with the obscure rencontre of a morning, and with the lucky chance of an exchange of shots.
The narrative of “The Arcadia†is peculiar; but if the reader’s fortitude can yield up his own fancy to the feudal poet, he will find the tales diversified. Sidney had traced the vestiges of feudal warfare in Germany, in Italy, and in France; those wars of petty states where the walled city was oftener carried by stratagem than by storm, and where the chivalrous heroes, like champions, stepped forth to challenge each other in single combat, almost as often as they were viewed as generals at the head of their armies. Our poet’s battles have all the fierceness and the hurry of action, as if told by one who had stood in the midst of the battle-field; and in his “shipwreck,†men fight with the waves, ere they are flung on the shore, as if the observer had sat on the summit of a cliff watching them.
He describes objects on which he loves to dwell with a peculiar richness of fancy; he had shivered his lance in the tilt, and had managed the fiery courser in his career; that noble animal was a frequent object of his favourite descriptions; he looks even on the curious and fanciful ornaments of its caparisons; and in the vivid picture of the shock between two knights, we see distinctly every motion of the horse and the horseman.4But sweet is his loitering hour in the sunshine of luxuriant gardens, or as we lose ourselves in the green solitudes of the forests which most he loves. His poetic eye was pictorial; and the delineations of objects, both in art and nature, might be transferred to the canvas.
There is a feminine delicacy in whatever alludes to the female character, not merely courtly, but imbued with that sensibility which St. Palaye has remarkably described as “full of refinement and fanaticism.†And this may suggest an idea not improbable, that Shakespeare drew his fine conceptions of the female character from Sidney.Shakespeare solely, of all our elder dramatists, has given true beauty to woman; and Shakespeare was an attentive reader of “The Arcadia.†There is something, indeed, in the language and the conduct of Musidorus and Pyrocles, two knights, which may startle the reader, and may be condemned as very unnatural and most affected. Their friendship resembles the love which is felt for the beautiful sex, if we were to decide by their impassioned conduct and the tenderness of their language. Coleridge observed that the language of these two friends in “The Arcadia†is such as we would not now use, except to women; and he has thrown out some very remarkable observations.5Warton, too, has observed, that the style of friendship between males in the reign of Elizabeth would not be tolerated in the present day; sets of sonnets, in a vein of tenderness which now could only express the most ardent affection for a mistress, were then prevalent.6They have not accounted for this anomaly in manners by merely discovering them in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. It is unquestionably a remains of the ancient chivalry, when men, embarking in the same perilous enterprise together, vowed their mutual aid and their personal devotion. The dangers of one knight were to be participated, and his honour to be maintained, by his brother-in-arms. Such exalted friendships, and such interminable affections, often broke out both in deeds and words which, to the tempered intercourse of our day, offend by their intensity. A male friend, whose life and fortune were consecrated to another male, who looks on him with adoration, and who talks of him with excessive tenderness, appears to us nothing less than a chimerical and monstrous lover! It is certain, however, that in the age of chivalry, a Damon and Pythias were no uncommon characters in that brotherhood.
It is the imperishable diction, the language of Shakespeare, before Shakespeare wrote, which diffuses its enchantmentover “The Arcadia;†and it is for this that it should be studied; and the true critic of Sidney, because the critic was a true poet, offers his unquestioned testimony in Cowper—
Sidney, warbler of poetic prose!
Sidney, warbler of poetic prose!
Even those playful turns of words, caught from Italian models, which are usually condemned, conceal some subtility of feeling, or rise in a pregnant thought.7The intellectual character of Sidney is more serious than volatile; the habits of his mind were too elegant and thoughtful to sport with the low comic; and one of the defects of “The Arcadia†is the attempt at burlesque humour in a clownish family. Whoever is not susceptible of great delight in the freshness of the scenery, the luxuriant imagery, the graceful fancies, and the stately periods of “The Arcadia,†must look to a higher source than criticism, to acquire a sense which nature and study seem to deny him.
I have dwelt on the finer qualities of “The Arcadia;†whenever the volume proves tedious, the remedy is in the reader’s own hands, provided he has the judgment often to return to a treasure he ought never to lose.
It is indeed hardly to be hoped that the volatile loungers over our duodecimos of fiction can sympathise with manners, incidents, and personages which for them are purely ideal—the truth of nature which lies under the veil must escape from their eyes; for how are they to grow patient over the interminable pages of a folio, unbroken by chapters, without a single resting-place?8And I fear they will not allow for that formal complimentarystyle, borrowed from the Italians and the Spaniards, which is sufficiently ludicrous.
The narrative too is obstructed by verses, in which Sidney never obtained facility or grace. Nor will the defects of the author be always compensated by his beauties, for “The Arcadia†was indeed a fervent effusion, but an uncorrected work. The author declared that it was not to be submitted to severer eyes than those of his beloved sister, “being done in loose sheets of paper, most of it in her presence, the rest by sheets sent as fast as they were done.†The writer, too, confesses, to “a young head having many fancies begotten in it, which, if it had not been in some way delivered, would have grown a monster, and more sorry might I be that they came in, than they gat out.†So truly has Sidney expressed the fever of genius, when working on itself in darkness and in doubt—absorbing reveries, tumultuous thoughts, the ceaseless inquietudes of a soul which has not yet found a voice. Even on his death-bed, the author of “The Arcadia†desired its suppression; but the fame her noble brother could contemn was dear to his sister, who published these loose papers without involving the responsibility of the writer, affectionately calling the work, “The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia;†and this volume of melodious prose, of visionary heroism, and the pensive sweetness of loves and friendships, became the delight of poets.
There is one more work of Sidney, perhaps more generally known than “The Arcadiaâ€â€”his “Defence of Poetry.†Lord Orford sarcastically apologised, in the second edition of his “Royal and Noble Authors,†for his omission of any notice of this production. “I had forgotten it,†he says; and he adds, “a proof that I at least did not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character as he acquired.†It was a more daring offence to depreciate this work of love, than the romance which at least lay farther removed from the public eye. The “Defence of Poetry†has had, since the days of Walpole, several editions by eminent critics. Sidney, in this luminous criticism, and effusion of poetic feeling, has introduced the principal precepts of Aristotle, touched by the fire and sentiment of Longinus; and, for the first time inEnglish literature, has exhibited the beatitude of criticism in a poet-critic.
SirPhilip Sidneyassuredly was one of the most admirable of mankind, largely conspicuous in his life, and unparalleled in his death. But was this singular man exempt from the frailties of our common nature? If we rely on his biographer Zouch, we shall not discover any; if we trust to Lord Orford, we shall perceive little else. The truth is, that had Sidney lived, he might have grown up to that ideal greatness which the world adored in him; but he perished early, not without some of those errors of youth, which even in their rankness betrayed the generous soil whence they sprung. His fame was more mature than his life, which indeed was but the preparation for a splendid one. We are not surprised, that to such an accomplished knight the crown of Poland was offered, and that all England went into mourning for their hero. We discover his future greatness, if we may use the expression, in the noble termination of his early career, rather than in the race of glory which he actually ran. The life of Sidney would have been a finer subject for the panegyric of a Pliny, than for the biography of a Plutarch; his fame was sufficient for the one, while his actions were too few for the other.9
1“Annual Review,†iv. 547.2Who does not recognise a well-known passage inShakespeare, copied too byColeridgeandByron, in these words ofSidney—“More sweet than a gentle south-west wind which comes creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the extreme heat of summer.†Such delightful diction, which can only spring out of deep poetic emotion, may be found in the poetic prose of Sidney.“Oh, it came o’er my ear like the sweet south,That breathes upon a bank of violets,Stealing and giving odour.â€â€”Shaks.Twelfth Night, act 1, sc. i.“And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind,O’er willowy meads and shadow’d waters creeping,And Ceres’ golden fields.â€â€”Coleridge’sFirst Advent of Love.“Breathing all gently o’er his cheek and mouth,As o’er a bed of violets the sweet south.â€â€”Don Juan, canto 2, verse 168.3Sidney alludes to all that secret history of Leicester which Parsons the Jesuit pretends to disclose in his “Leicester’s Commonwealth.†This challenge was found among the Sidney papers, but probably was not issued.4See “The Arcadia,†p. 267; eighth edition, 1633.5See Coleridge’s “Table-Talk,†ii. 178.6Richard Barnfielde’s “Affectionate Shepherd†forms such a collection of sonnets which were popular. The poet bewails his unsuccessful love for a beautiful youth, yet professing the chastest affection. Poets, like mocking-birds, repeat the notes of others, till the cant becomes idle, and the fashion of style obsolete.7A lady who has become enamoured of the friend who is pleading for her lover, and suddenly makes the fatal avowal to that friend, thus expresses her emotion—“Grown bolder or madder, or bold with madness, I discovered my affection to him.†“He left nothing unassayed to disgrace himself, to grace his friend.â€â€”p. 39.8In the late Mr. Heber’s treasures of our vernacular literature there was a copy of “The Arcadia,†with manuscript notes by Gabriel Harvey. He had also divided the work into chapters, enumerating the general contents of each.—“Bib. Heberiana,†part the first. A republication of this copy—omitting the continuations of the Romance by a strange hand, and all the eclogues, and most of the verses—would form a desirable volume, not too voluminous.9This summary of the character of Sidney I wrote nearly thirty years ago, in the “Quarterly Review.â€
1“Annual Review,†iv. 547.
2Who does not recognise a well-known passage inShakespeare, copied too byColeridgeandByron, in these words ofSidney—“More sweet than a gentle south-west wind which comes creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the extreme heat of summer.†Such delightful diction, which can only spring out of deep poetic emotion, may be found in the poetic prose of Sidney.
“Oh, it came o’er my ear like the sweet south,That breathes upon a bank of violets,Stealing and giving odour.â€â€”Shaks.Twelfth Night, act 1, sc. i.“And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind,O’er willowy meads and shadow’d waters creeping,And Ceres’ golden fields.â€â€”Coleridge’sFirst Advent of Love.“Breathing all gently o’er his cheek and mouth,As o’er a bed of violets the sweet south.â€â€”Don Juan, canto 2, verse 168.
“Oh, it came o’er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour.â€â€”
Shaks.Twelfth Night, act 1, sc. i.
“And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind,
O’er willowy meads and shadow’d waters creeping,
And Ceres’ golden fields.â€â€”
Coleridge’sFirst Advent of Love.
“Breathing all gently o’er his cheek and mouth,
As o’er a bed of violets the sweet south.â€â€”
Don Juan, canto 2, verse 168.
3Sidney alludes to all that secret history of Leicester which Parsons the Jesuit pretends to disclose in his “Leicester’s Commonwealth.†This challenge was found among the Sidney papers, but probably was not issued.
4See “The Arcadia,†p. 267; eighth edition, 1633.
5See Coleridge’s “Table-Talk,†ii. 178.
6Richard Barnfielde’s “Affectionate Shepherd†forms such a collection of sonnets which were popular. The poet bewails his unsuccessful love for a beautiful youth, yet professing the chastest affection. Poets, like mocking-birds, repeat the notes of others, till the cant becomes idle, and the fashion of style obsolete.
7A lady who has become enamoured of the friend who is pleading for her lover, and suddenly makes the fatal avowal to that friend, thus expresses her emotion—“Grown bolder or madder, or bold with madness, I discovered my affection to him.†“He left nothing unassayed to disgrace himself, to grace his friend.â€â€”p. 39.
8In the late Mr. Heber’s treasures of our vernacular literature there was a copy of “The Arcadia,†with manuscript notes by Gabriel Harvey. He had also divided the work into chapters, enumerating the general contents of each.—“Bib. Heberiana,†part the first. A republication of this copy—omitting the continuations of the Romance by a strange hand, and all the eclogues, and most of the verses—would form a desirable volume, not too voluminous.
9This summary of the character of Sidney I wrote nearly thirty years ago, in the “Quarterly Review.â€
SPENSER.
Thoughlittle is circumstantially related, yet frequent outbreakings, scattered throughout the writings of Spenser, commemorate the main incidents of his existence. His emotions become dates, and no poet has more fully confided to us his “secret sorrows.â€
Spenser in the far north was a love-lorn youth when he composed “The Shepherd’s Calendar.†This rustic poem, rustic from an affectation of the Chaucerian style, though it bears the divisions of the twelve months, displays not the course of the seasons so much as the course of the poet’s thoughts; the themes are plaintive or recreative, amatorial or satirical, and even theological, in dialogues between certain interlocutors. To some are prefixed Italian mottoes; for that language then stamped a classical grace on our poetry. In the eclogue of January we perceive that it was still the season of hope and favour with the amatory poet, for the motto is,Anchora Speme(“yet I hopeâ€); but in the eclogue of June we discoverGia Speme Spenta(“already hope is extinguishedâ€). A positive rejection by Rosalind herself had for ever mingled gall with his honey, and he ungenerously inveighs against the more successful arts of a hated rival. Rosalind was indeed not the Cynthia of a poetic hour: deep was the poet’s first love; and that obdurate mistress had called him “her Pegasus,†and laughed at his sighs.
It was when the forlorn poet had thus lost himself in the labyrinth of love, and “The Shepherd’s Calendar†had not yet closed, that his learned friend Harvey, or, in his poetical appellative, Hobbinol, to steal him away from the languor of a country retirement, invited him to southern vales, and with generous warmth introduced “the unknown†to Sir Philip Sidney. This important incident in the destiny of Spenser has been carefully noted by a person who conceals himself under the initials E. K., and who is usually designated as “the old commentator on ‘The Shepherd’s Calendar.’†This E. K. is a mysterious personage,and will remain undiscovered to this day, unless the reader shall participate in my own conviction.
“The Shepherd’s Calendar†was accompanied by a commentary on every separate month; and this singularity of an elaborate commentary in the first edition of the work of a living author was still more remarkable by the intimate acquaintance of the commentator with the author himself. E. K. assures us, and indeed affords ample evidence, that “he was privy to all his (the poet’s) designs.†He furnishes some domestic details which no one could have told so accurately, except he to whom they relate; and we find our commentator also critically conversant with many of the author’s manuscripts which the world has never seen. Rarely has one man known so much of another. The poet and the commentator move together as parts of each other. In the despair of conjecture some ventured to surmise that the poet himself had been his own commentator. But the last editor of Spenser is indignant at a suggestion which would taint with strange egotism the modest nature of our bard. Yet E. K. was no ordinary writer; an excellent scholar he was, whose gloss has preserved much curious knowledge of ancient English terms and phrases. We may be sure that a pen so abundant and so skilfully exercised was not one to have restricted itself to this solitary lucubration of his life and studies. The commentary, moreover, is accompanied by a copious and erudite preface,addressed to Gabriel Harvey, and the style of these pages is too remarkable not to be recognised. At length let me lift the mask from this mysterious personage, by declaring that E. K. is Spenser’s dear and generous friend Gabriel Harvey himself. I have judged by the strong peculiarity of Harvey’s style; one cannot long doubt of a portrait marked by such prominent features. Pedantic but energetic, thought pressed on thought, sparkling with imagery, mottled with learned allusions, and didactic with subtle criticism—this is our Gabriel! The prefacer describes the state of our bardling as that of “young birds that be nearly crept out of their nest, who, by little, first prove their tender wings before they make a greater flight. And yet our new poet flieth as a bird that in time shall be able to keep wing with the best.â€
From this detection, we may infer that the Commentary was an innocentruseof the zealous friend to overcome the resolute timidity of our poet.1His youthful muse, teeming with her future progeny, was, however, morbidly sensible in the hour of parturition. Conscious of her powers, thus closes the address “To his Booke:â€â€”
And when thou art past jeopardie,Come tell me what was said of me,And I will send more after thee.
And when thou art past jeopardie,
Come tell me what was said of me,
And I will send more after thee.
After several editions, the work still remained anonymous, and the unnamed poet was long referred to by critics of the day only as “the late unknown poet,†or “the gentleman who wrote ‘The Shepherd’s Calendar.’â€
In Sir Philip Sidney the youthful poet found a youthful patron. The shades of Penshurst opened to leisure and the muse. “The Shepherd’s Calendar†at length concluded, “The Poet’s Year†was dedicated to “Maister Philip Sidney, worthy of all titles, both of learning and chivalry.†Leicester, the uncle of Sidney, was gained, and from that moment Spenser entered into a golden servitude.
The destiny of Spenser was to be thrown among courtiers, and to wear the silken trammels of noble patrons—a life of honourable dependence among eminent personages. Here a seductive path was opened, not easily scorned by the gentle mind of him whose days were to be counted by its reveries, and the main business of whose life was to be the cantos of his “Faery Queen.â€
Of the favours and mortifications during his career of patronage, and of his intercourse with the court, too little is known; though sufficient we shall discover to authenticate the reality of his complaints, the verity of his strictures, and all the flutterings of the sickening heart of him who moves round and round the interminable circle of “hope deferred.â€
Our poet was now ascending the steps of favouritism; and the business of his life was with the fair and the great. He looked up to the smiles of distinguished ladies, for to such is the greater portion of his poems dedicated. If her Majesty gloried in “The Faery Queen,†we are surprised to find that the most exquisite of political satires, “Mother Hubbard’s Tale,†should be addressed to the Lady Compton and Monteagle; that “The Tears of the Muses†were inscribed to Lady Strange; and that “The Ruins of Time†are dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke. For others, their nuptials were graced by the music of his verse, or their sorrows were soothed by its elegiac tenderness.2In the Epithalamion on his own marriage, the poet reminds
The sacred sisters who have often timesBeen to the aiding others to adorn,Whom ye thought worthy of your graceful rymes,That even the greatest did not greatly scornTo hear their names sung in your simple lays,But joyed at their praise.
The sacred sisters who have often times
Been to the aiding others to adorn,
Whom ye thought worthy of your graceful rymes,
That even the greatest did not greatly scorn
To hear their names sung in your simple lays,
But joyed at their praise.
“The Tears of the Muses,†as one of his plaintive poems is called, had possibly been spared had the poet only moved among that bevy of ladies whose names are enshrined in his volumes, around the Queen, whose royalty so frequently rises with splendour in his verse. Unawares, perhaps, the gentle bard discovered that personal attachments by cruel circumstances were converted into political connexions; that a favourite must pay the penalty of favouritism; and that in binding himself more closely to his patrons, he was wounded the more deeply by their great adversary; and in gaining Sidney, Leicester, and Essex, Spenser was doomed to feel the potent arm of the scornful and unpoetic Burleigh.
The Queen was the earliest and the latest object of our poet’s musings. “The Maiden Queen†enters into almost every poem. Shortly after the publication of “The Shepherd’s Calendar,†wherein her Majesty occupies the monthof April, Spenser, in writing to Harvey, has this remarkable passage:—“Your desire to hear of my late being with her Majesty must die in itself.†By this ambiguous reply, it is, however, evident that Harvey, and probably Spenser himself, had looked forwards, by the intervention of his great patrons, that “the unknown poet,†as he is called by “the old commentator,†would have been honoured by an interview with the royal poetess. Elizabeth, among her princely infirmities, had the ambition of verse. She was afterwards saluted as
A peerless prince and peerless poetess,
A peerless prince and peerless poetess,
by Spenser, who must, however, have closed his ear at her harsher numbers.3We may regret that we know so little of our Spenser’s intercourse with the Queen. If Sidney made him known to her Majesty, as Philips has told, the poet might have read to the Queen the earlier cantos of his romantic epic. The poet himself has only recorded that “The Shepherd of the Ocean,†Sir Walter Raleigh, brought him into the presence of Cynthia, “The Queen of the Ocean,†who
To his oaten pipe inclined her ear,And it desired, at timely hours, to hear.
To his oaten pipe inclined her ear,
And it desired, at timely hours, to hear.
The Lord Treasurer Burleigh seems to have marred those “timely hours.†Spenser had lingered before the fountain of court favour; and how often the dark shadow of the political minister intervened between the poet and the throne we are reminded by the deep sensitiveness of the victim, the murmurs, and even the scorn of the indignant bard.
Under the patronage of Leicester, the poet’s services were transferred to Lord Arthur Grey, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who appointed Spenser his secretary. He has vindicated this viceroy’s administration in the “Faery Queen,†by shadowing forth his severe justice in Arthegal, accompanied by his “Iron Man,†whose ironflail “threshed out falsehood†in their quest of Ierne, in that “Land of Ire†where justice and the executioner were ever erratic.
Of the brief life of the poet, his better years were consumed in Ireland, where he filled several appointments more honourable than lucrative. His slender revenue seems not to have flourished under a grant of land from the crown, on the conditions attached to it in 1585.4Cast into active service, the musings of the “Faery Queen†were assuredly often thrown aside; its fate was still dubious, for Ireland was not a land of the muses, as he himself declared, when a chance occurrence, the visit of Rawleigh to that country, gave Spenser another Sidney. The “Faery Queen†once more opened its mystical leaves on the banks of the Mulla, before a judge, whose voice was fame.
And when he heard the music that I made,He found himself full greatly pleased at it;He gan to cast great liking to my lore,And great disliking tomy luckless lot,That banish’d had myself, like wight forlore,Into that waste where I was quite forgot.
And when he heard the music that I made,
He found himself full greatly pleased at it;
He gan to cast great liking to my lore,
And great disliking tomy luckless lot,
That banish’d had myself, like wight forlore,
Into that waste where I was quite forgot.
Spenser has here disclosed involuntarily “the secret sorrow.â€
The acres of Kilcolman offered no delights to “the wight forlore, forgotten in that waste.†Our tender and melancholy poet was not blessed with that fortitude which, even in a barren solitude, can muse on its own glory, as Petrarch and Rousseau were wont, and which knows also to value a repose freed from spiteful rivalries and mordacious malignity. And now opened his tedious suings at court, for what, but to obtain some situation in his native home, which offered repose of mind, and carelessness of the future? We know of his restless wanderings to England, and his constant returns to Ireland. We find the poet,in 1590, wearied by solicitations, throwing out the immortal lines so painfully descriptive of
What hell it is in suing long to bide.
What hell it is in suing long to bide.
It was in this year that the first three books of the romantic epic were published, which was followed by the grant of a pension in February, 1591. But five years afterwards the poet still remains the same querulous court-suitor; the miserable man wasting his days and his nights; for then he tells us in his “Prothalamion,†how on a summer’s day he
Walk’d forth to ease his pain,Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames.————————I whose sullen care,Through discontent of my long fruitless stayIn princes’ court, and expectation vainOf idle hopes which still do fly away,Like empty shadows, to afflict my brain.
Walk’d forth to ease his pain,
Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames.
————————I whose sullen care,
Through discontent of my long fruitless stay
In princes’ court, and expectation vain
Of idle hopes which still do fly away,
Like empty shadows, to afflict my brain.
When this was written Spenser had possessed the lands of Kilcolman more than ten years, and held his pension. Were the lands profitless, and the pension still to be solicited? The poet has only perpetuated his “secret sorrows;†his pride or his delicacy has thrown a veil over them. He has sent down to posterity his disappointments, without alluding to the nature of his claims.
It was in 1597 that Spenser laid before the Queen his memorable “View of the State of Ireland.†This state-memorial still makes us regret that our poet only wrote verse; there is a charm in his sweet and voluble prose, a virgin grace which we have long lost in the artificial splendour of English diction. Here is no affectation of Chaucerian words; the gold is not spotted with rust. The vivid pictures of the poet; the curiosity of the antiquary; and above all, a new model of policy of the practical politician, combine in this inestimable tract. Spenser suggested that the popular hero of that day, his noble friend the Earl of Essex, would be more able to conciliate popular favour in Ireland. By an alternate policy, from that day to the present, has our government tried to rule that fair “Land of Ire,†either by a Lord Grey’s severity of justice—the Arthegal, accompanied by his “iron man,†with his “iron flail;†or by the generous graciousness of an Earl of Essex,courting popularity: but neither would serve; the more quiet wisdom lay in colonization, happily begun, and so fatally neglected. The powerful eloquence of the poet and the secretary attracted the Queen’s attention. She recommended Spenser to the Irish Council to be Sheriff of Cork; again was “the wight forlore†sent back to his undesired locality; yet now, perhaps, honours and promotion were awaiting the “miserable man.†The royal letter was dated in September, and in the following month, suddenly, the Irish insurrection broke out. The flight of Spenser and his family from the Castle of Kilcolman was momentous—perhaps they witnessed the flames annihilating their small wealth. Spenser himself lost more than wealth; for the father beheld the sacrifice of his child, and the author was bereaved of all his manuscripts, now lost or scattered—his hopes, his pride, and his fame! He flew to England, not to live, but to experience how this last stroke of fortune went beyond the force of his own passionate descriptions, or of his nature to endure. In an obscure lodging, and within three short months, the most sensitive of men, broken-hearted, closed his eyes in mute grief, and in a premature death; Spenser perished at the zenith of human life.
Curiosity has been excited to learn the occasion of the inveterate prejudice of an insensible Lord Treasurer against a tender poet, who had courted his favour. This hostility of “the mighty peer†seems not to have broken forth openly till the publication of the first three books of the “Faery Queen;†for all the poet’s personal allusions to Burleigh were written shortly after that event.
Can so small a creature as a poet when it creeps into the sphere of a jealous statesman’s policy draw on itself his hateful attention? Are crafty politicians in office like richly-laden travellers who start at a crossing shadow? Burleigh possessed the full confidence of his sovereign from her youth; but she was a woman subject to caprices, and would call her ancient friend and servant “an old fool.†Burleigh was fearfully jealous of two potent rivals—the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Essex; these “men of arms,†the patrons of Spenser, were each subsequently the head of the opposition to the pacific administration of the Lord Treasurer.
“The sage old sire,†moreover, well knew the romantic self-idolatry of his royal mistress; her infirmity of poetical susceptibility; her avidity of poignant flatteries on her beauty, her chastity, and even on her verse. Her Majesty was now in the ascension of that glorified beatitude, the “Faery Queen;†and this transfiguration was the work of him whom he held to be a creature of his great rivals!
We are interested to detect the vacillating conduct of the poet to the implacable statesman. Spenser accompanied his presentation copy of the “Faery Queen†to the Lord-Treasurer with a sonnet, in which he humiliated the muse before his great court-enemy—
On whose mighty shoulders most doth restThe burden of this kingdom’s government,Unfitly I these idle rimes present,The labour of lost time and wit unstay’d.
On whose mighty shoulders most doth rest
The burden of this kingdom’s government,
Unfitly I these idle rimes present,
The labour of lost time and wit unstay’d.
If Spenser had complained of former cold neglect, now he had to endure, what a poet can never forgive, bitter disdain.
Wounded in spirit, the poet composed, immediately after the first appearance of the “Faery Queen,†“The Ruins of Time;†there, eulogising the departed Sir Francis Walsingham for his love of learning and care of “men of arms,†he launches forth a thunderbolt against the wary and frigid Burleigh—
For he that now wields all things at his will,Scorns one and th’ other, in his deeper skill.
For he that now wields all things at his will,
Scorns one and th’ other, in his deeper skill.
And he repeats the accusation in “Mother Hubbard’s Taleâ€â€”
Oh, grief of griefs! Oh, gall of all good hearts!To see that virtue should despised beOf him, that first was raised for vertuous parts;And now, broad spreading like an aged tree,Lets none shoot up that nigh him planted be.Oh, let the man by whom the Muse is scorn’d,Nor alive nor dead be of the Muse adorn’d.
Oh, grief of griefs! Oh, gall of all good hearts!
To see that virtue should despised be
Of him, that first was raised for vertuous parts;
And now, broad spreading like an aged tree,
Lets none shoot up that nigh him planted be.
Oh, let the man by whom the Muse is scorn’d,
Nor alive nor dead be of the Muse adorn’d.
We have, too, a more finished portrait of an evilministerwho “lifted up his lofty towers,â€
That they begin to threat the neighbour sky;
That they begin to threat the neighbour sky;
in which unquestionably we find some of the deformities of Burleigh’s political physiognomy.
He no count made of nobility;The realm’s chief strength and girlond of the crown—He made them dwell in darkness of disgrace,For none but whom he list might come in place.Of men of armes he had but small regard,But kept them low, and strained very hard;For men of learning little he esteem’d,His wisdome he above their learning deem’d.As for the rascal commons least he cared,For not so common was his bounty shared.Let God, said he, if please care for the manie,I for myself most care before else anie.Yet none durst speak, ne none durst of him plaine,So great he was in grace, and rich through gaine.
He no count made of nobility;
The realm’s chief strength and girlond of the crown—
He made them dwell in darkness of disgrace,
For none but whom he list might come in place.
Of men of armes he had but small regard,
But kept them low, and strained very hard;
For men of learning little he esteem’d,
His wisdome he above their learning deem’d.
As for the rascal commons least he cared,
For not so common was his bounty shared.
Let God, said he, if please care for the manie,
I for myself most care before else anie.
Yet none durst speak, ne none durst of him plaine,
So great he was in grace, and rich through gaine.
The gentle bard of the “Faery Queen†now sate down to continue his great work; but haunted by this spectral and iron-eyed monster of an unpatronising minister, he actually violates the solemnity of his theme by opening with another recollection, so fatal to his own repose:—
The rugged forehead that, with grave foresight,Welds kingdoms, causes, and affairs of state,My looser rimes I wote doth sharply wite,For praising love as I have done of late.Such ones ill judge of love, that cannot love,Ne in their frozen heart feel kindly flame.
The rugged forehead that, with grave foresight,
Welds kingdoms, causes, and affairs of state,
My looser rimes I wote doth sharply wite,
For praising love as I have done of late.
Such ones ill judge of love, that cannot love,
Ne in their frozen heart feel kindly flame.
But the minister could not banish him from the sovereign:—
To such therefore I do not sing at all,But to that Sacred Saint, my sovereign Queen;To her I sing of love that loveth best,And best is loved.
To such therefore I do not sing at all,
But to that Sacred Saint, my sovereign Queen;
To her I sing of love that loveth best,
And best is loved.
About the same time Spenser had written “The Tears of the Muses,†where, expressing a poet’s wish that the royal palaces of Eliza should be filled with
————Praises of divinest wits,Who her eternize with their heavenly writs,
————Praises of divinest wits,
Who her eternize with their heavenly writs,
I suspect that Burleigh figures again among
——————The salvage brood,Who, having been with acorns always fed,Can no whit cherish this celestial food;But, with base thoughts, are unto blindness led,And kept from looking on the lightsome day.
——————The salvage brood,
Who, having been with acorns always fed,
Can no whit cherish this celestial food;
But, with base thoughts, are unto blindness led,
And kept from looking on the lightsome day.
After these indignant effusions, Spenser in proceeding with the “Faery Queen†tergiversated in his feelings.The poet had shadowed with some tenderness the calamities of the Scottish Mary, in the gentle characters of Amoret and Florizel. Yielding to political changes, the Queen of Scots is suddenly horribly transformed into the false Duessa. For the honour of the poet we may concede that he partook of those party-passions which great statesmen know to raise up at will, and which never fail to influence contemporaries. Burleigh never paused till he laid the head of Mary on the block.5In the fifth book of the “Faery Queen†the poet has exhibited the trial of this state victim, and has made her sister-sovereign gracefully conceal tears which possibly were never shed; but who could expect that “the rugged foreheadâ€â€”him whom he had denounced that “alive or dead†should by “the muse be ever scornedâ€â€”should appear with all the dignity of wisdom!
The sage old Sire, that had to nameThe kingdom’s care, with a white silver head,That many high regards and reasons ’gainst her read.
The sage old Sire, that had to name
The kingdom’s care, with a white silver head,
That many high regards and reasons ’gainst her read.
The poet did worse as he advanced in his work, for in the sixth book he absolutely denies that it was his intention in any of his “former writs†to reflect on “this mighty peer.†To what “former writs†Spenser alludes is not clear. The matchless picture of the fruitless days of a court-expectant in “Mother Hubbard’s Tale,†which many of my readers may have by heart, is supposed to have been represented to Lord Burleigh by “backbiters†as a censure on him; it was an immortal one! and the application was easy.
It was after the appearance of the “Faery Queen†that Elizabeth, economical as were her bounties, sealed her delight by a permanent pension. Was it on this occasion that the remonstrance of the prudential Lord Treasurer diminished by half its amount? “All this for a song!â€exclaimed Burleigh. “Then give him what is reason,†rejoined the Queen. The words were remembered by the bard, but the royal command lay neglected at the exchequer. On a progress Spenser reminded her Majesty, by a petition, in the smallest space that ever suitor presented one, and in a style of which it was not easy to forget a word.6The Lord Treasurer got reprimanded, and the poet present payment. We cannot avoid associating the anecdote with these lines—
To have thy Prince’s grace, yet want her Peer’s;To have thy asking, yet wait many years.
To have thy Prince’s grace, yet want her Peer’s;
To have thy asking, yet wait many years.
We may now close with Burleigh; but much remains to be developed in the fortunes of a court-suitor, as we trace them in the history of our Spenser. The coldness of the Lord Treasurer may not have been the only cause of the poet’s deep and constant laments. The sojourner in the circle of a court may be mortified not only by its repulse or its neglect, but also by the capricious favour of his patron. A devotion of service may provoke offence,whether it be from zeal too improvident, from officiousness too busy, or from an ingenuousness too open. He is thrown into a position in which he must preserve silence, and cannot always hope for pardon.
One incident of this nature deeply affected our poet in his intercourse with Lord Leicester. We only discover it by a remarkable dedicatory sonnet to his translation of Virgil’s “Gnat.†Had the poet not decided that the mysterious tale should reach posterity, he would not have published the sonnet several years after it was composed, for it is dedicated “to the deceased lord!†The poet has energetically described the delicacy and difficulty of the position into which he had been cast.
Wrong’d, yet not daring to express my painTo you, good lord! the causer of my care,In cloudy tears my caseI thus complainUnto yourself, that only privy are.But if that any Œdipus, unware,Shall chance, through power of some divining spright,To readthe secret of this riddle rare,And know the purport of my evil plight;Let him rest pleased with his own insight,Ne further seek to gloze upon the text;But grief enough it is to grieved wight,To feel hit fault, and not be further vext.But what so by myself may not be shown,May by this Gnat’s complaint be easily known.
Wrong’d, yet not daring to express my pain
To you, good lord! the causer of my care,
In cloudy tears my caseI thus complain
Unto yourself, that only privy are.
But if that any Å’dipus, unware,
Shall chance, through power of some divining spright,
To readthe secret of this riddle rare,
And know the purport of my evil plight;
Let him rest pleased with his own insight,
Ne further seek to gloze upon the text;
But grief enough it is to grieved wight,
To feel hit fault, and not be further vext.
But what so by myself may not be shown,
May by this Gnat’s complaint be easily known.
The Gnat of Virgil, observing a serpent in the act of darting on a sleeping swain, stings the eye of the sleeper; starting at the pain, the disturbed man crushes the gnat, but, thus awakened, he saves himself from the crested serpent. The poem turns on the remonstrance of the ghost of the gnat, which had no other means than by inflicting its friendly sting to warn him of his peril who had thus hastily deprived it of its own innocent existence. What was “the serpent,†and why the poet was hardly used as “the gnat,†and why he was
Wrong’d, yet not daring to express his pain,
and yet “grieved to feelhis fault,†is “a riddle rare,†supposed to require some Å’dipus of secret history to solve. The moral is obvious. The character of the royal favourite may give rise to many suggestions; but if I may venture a conjecture on what the parties themselves “were onlyprivy to,†Spenser had touched on some high matter, where his affectionate zeal, however sagacious, on this occasion hurt the pride of Leicester—too haughty or too mortified to be lessoned by his familiar dependant, who, like the gnat, found that his timely warning was “his fault.â€
A sage of the antiquarian school imagined that he could solve the enigma of Spenser’s sorrows, by arranging, with dates and accounts of salaries, the official situations which the poet held. To remove the odium attached to Burleigh’s prepossessions against the poet, he assumes that without the Lord Treasurer’s consent Spenser could not have received his lands or his pensions. But the royal grant of the forfeited lands was obviously the reward for his conduct, suggested by those under whose eye he had served: the patronage of Sidney and the Lords Leicester and Grey may be imagined to have greatly outweighed any cavils of Burleigh. George Chalmers infers that all the complaints of the poet are “too highly coloured,if they really were complaints respecting himself!†and concludes that all the poet’s querulousness must be ascribed, not to Burleigh, but to the Irish rebellion. But the calamity of the Irish rebellion occasioned no complaints from the poet—only his death! for we have not a line by Spenser during the short interval which elapsed between his flight from Ireland and his decease in London.
It was not by an estimate of salaries and an arrangement of dates, which yield no result, but by a statement of feelings, in which the “secret sorrows†of Spenser lie concealed, that we can decide on the real source of his continued complaints. The poet must be judged by the habits of his mind, and by those interior conflicts which are often unconnected with those external circumstances open to common observers. Of all the tuneful train Spenser was the most poetical in the gentlest attributes of the poet. That robust force which the enterprise of active life demands was not lodged in that soul of tenderness; and worldly cares, like that cancer in the breast which the sufferer hides from others, dejected the fancy which at all times was working ceaselessly among its bright creations. His vein was inexhaustible, and we have lost perhaps more than we possess of his writings. The author of “TheFaery Queen†required above all things leisure and the muse. His first steppings into life were auspicious. To Sir Philip Sidney he had opened the first cantos of his romantic epic; the catastrophe of that poet-hero made our poet a mourner all his days. There was no substitute for a congenial patron: all other patrons could be but the very statues of patronage, cold representatives of the departed, but no longer the bosom companion of the poet’s thoughts, and the generous arbiter of his fortunes.
In his last days Spenser has not dropped even one “melodious tear;†but he was wept by his brothers the poets, who held his pall and bestrewed his hearse with their elegies, and beheld in the fate of their great master their own. And thus truly, though ambiguously, Phineas Fletcher described his destiny—
Poorly, poor man! he lived; poorly, poor man! he died.
So many living details of that golden bondage into which our poet was thrown, from his earliest to his latter days, discover the real source of his “secret sorrowsâ€â€”his unceasing and vain solicitation at court, the suitor of so many patrons; theres angusta domiperpetually pressed on the morbid imagination of the fortuneless man.
I know of no satire aimed atSpenser; a singular fate for a great poet: even “satyric Nash†revered the character of the author of “The Faery Queen.†I have often thought that among the numerous critics ofSpenser, the truest was his keen and witty contemporary; for this town-wit has stamped all our poet’s excellences by one felicitous word—“Heavenly Spenser.â€