FOOTNOTES:

"The Shepheard of the Ocean (quoth he)Unto that Goddesse grace me first enhanced,And to mine oaten pipe enclin'd her eare,That she thenceforth therein gan take delight;And it desir'd at timely houres to heare,All were my notes but rude and roughly dight;For not by measure of her owne great mynde,And wondrous worth, she mott my simple song,But joyd that country shepheard ought could fyndWorth harkening to, emongst the learned throng."

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

But if I her like ought on earth might read,I would her lyken to a crowne of lillies,Upon a virgin brydes adorned head,With Roses dight and Goolds and Daffadillies;Or like the circlet of a Turtle true,In which all colours of the rainbow bee;Or like faire Phebes garlond shining new,In which all pure perfection one may see.But vaine it is to thinke, by paragoneOf earthly things, to judge of things divine:Her power, her mercy, her wisdome, noneCan deeme, but who the Godhead can define.Why then do I, base shepheard, bold and blind,Presume the things so sacred to prophane?More fit it is t' adore, with humble mind,The image of the heavens in shape humane.

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

Primo die Decembris [1589].Mr. Ponsonbye—Entered for his Copye, a book intytuled thefayrye Queenedysposed into xij bookes &c., authorysed under thandes of the Archbishop of Canterbery and bothe the Wardens.vjd.

Primo die Decembris [1589].

Mr. Ponsonbye—Entered for his Copye, a book intytuled thefayrye Queenedysposed into xij bookes &c., authorysed under thandes of the Archbishop of Canterbery and bothe the Wardens.

vjd.

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

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

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

Collyn, I see, by thy new taken taske,Some sacred fury hath enricht thy braynes,That leades thy muse in haughty verse to maske,And loath the layes that longs to lowly swaynes;That lifts thy notes from Shepheardes unto kinges:So like the lively Larke that mounting singes.Thy lovely Rosolinde seemes now forlorne,And all thy gentle flockes forgotten quight:Thy chaunged hart now holdes thy pypes in scorne,Those prety pypes that did thy mates delight;Those trusty mates, that loved thee so well;Whom thou gav'st mirth, as they gave thee the bell.Yet, as thou earst with thy sweete roundelayesDidst stirre to glee our laddes in homely bowers;So moughtst thou now in these refyned layesDelight the daintie eares of higher powers:And so mought they, in their deepe skanning skill,Alow and grace our Collyns flowing quyll.And faire befall thatFaery Queeneof thine,In whose faire eyes love linckt with vertue sittes;Enfusing, by those bewties fyers devyne,Such high conceites into thy humble wittes,As raised hath poore pastors oaten reedesFrom rustick tunes, to chaunt heroique deedes.So mought thyRedcrosse Knightwith happy handVictorious be in that faire Ilands right,Which thou dost vayle in Type of Faery land,Elizas blessed field, thatAlbionhight:That shieldes her friendes, and warres her mightie foes,Yet still with people, peace, and plentie flowes.But (jolly shepheard) though with pleasing styleThou feast the humour of the Courtly trayne,Let not conceipt thy setled sence beguile,Ne daunted be through envy or disdaine.Subject thy dome to her Empyring spright,From whence thy Muse, and all the world, takes light.

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

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

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

So mought thyRedcrosse Knightwith happy handVictorious be in that faire Ilands right,Which thou dost vayle in Type of Faery land,Elizas blessed field, thatAlbionhight:That shieldes her friendes, and warres her mightie foes,Yet still with people, peace, and plentie flowes.

But (jolly shepheard) though with pleasing styleThou feast the humour of the Courtly trayne,Let not conceipt thy setled sence beguile,Ne daunted be through envy or disdaine.Subject thy dome to her Empyring spright,From whence thy Muse, and all the world, takes light.

Hobynoll.

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

ToThe Most High, Mightie, and MagnificentEmpresse,Renowmed for piety, vertve, and all gratiovs government,ELIZABETH,By the Grace of God,Qveene of England, Fravnce, and Ireland, and of Virginia,Defendovr of the Faith, &c.Her most hvmble ServavntEdmvnd Spenser,Doth, in all hvmilitie,Dedicate, present, and consecrateThese his labovrs,To live with the eternitie of her fame.

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

If music and sweet poetry agree,As they must needs, the sister and the brother,Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me,Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other.Dowlandto thee is dear, whose heavenly touchUpon the lute doth ravish human sense;Spenserto me, whose deep conceit is suchAs passing all conceit, needs no defence.Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious soundThat Phœbus' lute, the queen of music, makes;And I in deep delight am chiefly drown'dWhenas himself to singing he betakes.One god is god of both, as poets feign;One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.

(Shakespere, in thePassionate Pilgrim, 1599.)

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

Ne let Eliza, royall Shepheardesse,The praises of my parted love envy,For she hath praises in all plenteousnessePowr'd upon her, like showers of Castaly,By her own Shepheard, Colin, her owne Shepheard,That her with heavenly hymnes doth deifie,Of rustick muse full hardly to be betterd.She is the Rose, the glorie of the day,And mine the Primrose in the lowly shade:Mine, ah! not mine; amisse I mine did say:Not mine, but His, which mine awhile her made;Mine to be His, with him to live for ay.O that so faire a flower so soone should fade,And through untimely tempest fall away!She fell away in her first ages spring,Whil'st yet her leafe was greene, and fresh her rinde,And whilst her braunch faire blossomes foorth did bring,She fell away against all course of kinde.For age to dye is right, but youth is wrong;She fel away like fruit blowne downe with winde.Weepe, Shepheard! weepe, to make my undersong.

She is the Rose, the glorie of the day,And mine the Primrose in the lowly shade:Mine, ah! not mine; amisse I mine did say:Not mine, but His, which mine awhile her made;Mine to be His, with him to live for ay.O that so faire a flower so soone should fade,And through untimely tempest fall away!

She fell away in her first ages spring,Whil'st yet her leafe was greene, and fresh her rinde,And whilst her braunch faire blossomes foorth did bring,She fell away against all course of kinde.For age to dye is right, but youth is wrong;She fel away like fruit blowne downe with winde.Weepe, Shepheard! weepe, to make my undersong.

Thus in both his literary enterprises, Spenser had been signally successful. TheShepherd's Calendarin 1580 had immediately raised high hopes of his powers. TheFaery Queenin 1590 had more than fulfilled them. In the interval a considerable change had happened in Englishcultivation. Shakespere had come to London, though the world did not yet know all that he was. Sidney had published hisDefense of Poesie, and had written theArcadia, though it was not yet published. Marlowe had begun to write, and others beside him were preparing the change which was to come on the English Drama. Two scholars who had shared with Spenser in the bounty of Robert Newell were beginning, in different lines, to raise the level of thought and style. Hooker was beginning to give dignity to controversy, and to show what English prose might rise to. Lancelot Andrewes, Spenser's junior at school and college, was training himself at St. Paul's, to lead the way to a larger and higher kind of preaching than the English clergy had yet reached. The change of scene from Ireland to the centre of English interests, must have been, as Spenser describes it, very impressive. England was alive with aspiration and effort; imaginations were inflamed and hearts stirred by the deeds of men who described with the same energy with which they acted. Amid such influences, and with such a friend as Ralegh, Spenser may naturally have been tempted by some of the dreams of advancement of which Ralegh's soul was full. There is strong probability, from the language of his later poems, that he indulged such hopes, and that they were disappointed. A year after the entry in the Stationers' Register of theFaery Queen(29 Dec., 1590), Ponsonby, his publisher, entered a volume of "Complaints, containing sundry small poems of the World's Vanity," to which he prefixed the following notice.

The Printer to the Gentle Reader.Sincemy late setting foorth of theFaerie Queene, finding that it hath found a favourable passage amongst you, I have sithenceendevoured by all good meanes (for the better encrease and accomplishment of your delights,) to get into my handes such smale Poemes of the same Authors, as I heard were disperst abroad in sundrie hands, and not easie to bee come by, by himselfe; some of them having bene diverslie imbeziled and purloyned from him since his departure over Sea. Of the which I have, by good meanes, gathered togeather these fewe parcels present, which I have caused to bee imprinted altogeather, for that they al seeme to containe like matter of argument in them; being all complaints and meditations of the worlds vanitie, verie grave and profitable. To which effect I understand that he besides wrote sundrie others, namelieEcclesiastesandCanticum canticorumtranslated,A senights slumber,The hell of lovers,his Purgatorie, being all dedicated to Ladies; so as it may seeme he ment them all to one volume. Besides some other Pamphlets looselie scattered abroad, asThe dying Pellican,The howers of the Lord,The sacrifice of a sinner,The seven Psalmes, &c., which when I can, either by himselfe or otherwise, attaine too, I meane likewise for your favour sake to set foorth. In the meane time, praying you gentlie to accept of these, and graciouslie to entertaine the new Poet,I take leave.

The Printer to the Gentle Reader.

Sincemy late setting foorth of theFaerie Queene, finding that it hath found a favourable passage amongst you, I have sithenceendevoured by all good meanes (for the better encrease and accomplishment of your delights,) to get into my handes such smale Poemes of the same Authors, as I heard were disperst abroad in sundrie hands, and not easie to bee come by, by himselfe; some of them having bene diverslie imbeziled and purloyned from him since his departure over Sea. Of the which I have, by good meanes, gathered togeather these fewe parcels present, which I have caused to bee imprinted altogeather, for that they al seeme to containe like matter of argument in them; being all complaints and meditations of the worlds vanitie, verie grave and profitable. To which effect I understand that he besides wrote sundrie others, namelieEcclesiastesandCanticum canticorumtranslated,A senights slumber,The hell of lovers,his Purgatorie, being all dedicated to Ladies; so as it may seeme he ment them all to one volume. Besides some other Pamphlets looselie scattered abroad, asThe dying Pellican,The howers of the Lord,The sacrifice of a sinner,The seven Psalmes, &c., which when I can, either by himselfe or otherwise, attaine too, I meane likewise for your favour sake to set foorth. In the meane time, praying you gentlie to accept of these, and graciouslie to entertaine the new Poet,I take leave.

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

It is not long, since these two eyes beheldA mightie Prince, of most renowmed race,Whom England high in count of honour held,And greatest ones did sue to gaine his grace;Of greatest ones he, greatest in his place,Sate in the bosome of his Soveraine,AndRight and loyalldid his word maintaine.I saw him die, I saw him die, as oneOf the meane people, and brought foorth on beare;I saw him die, and no man left to moneHis dolefull fate, that late him loved deare:Scarse anie left to close his eylids neare;Scarse anie left upon his lips to laieThe sacred sod, or Requiem to saie.O! trustless state of miserable men,That builde your blis on hope of earthly thing,And vainlie thinke your selves halfe happie then,When painted faces with smooth flatteringDoo fawne on you, and your wide praises sing;And, when the courting masker louteth lowe,Him true in heart and trustie to you trow.

I saw him die, I saw him die, as oneOf the meane people, and brought foorth on beare;I saw him die, and no man left to moneHis dolefull fate, that late him loved deare:Scarse anie left to close his eylids neare;Scarse anie left upon his lips to laieThe sacred sod, or Requiem to saie.

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

For Sidney, the darling of the time, who had been to him not merely a cordial friend, but the realized type of all that was glorious in manhood, and beautiful in character and gifts, his mourning was more than that of a looker-on at a moving instance of the frailty of greatness. It was the poet's sorrow for the poet, who had almost been to him what the elder brother is to the younger. Both now, and in later years, his affection for one who was become to him a glorified saint, showed itself in deep andgenuine expression, through the affectations which crowned the "herse" of Astrophel and Philisides. He was persuaded that Sidney's death had been a grave blow to literature and learning. TheRuins of Time, and still more theTears of the Muses, are full of lamentations over returning barbarism and ignorance, and the slight account made by those in power of the gifts and the arts of the writer, the poet, and the dramatist. Under what was popularly thought the crabbed and parsimonious administration of Burghley, and with the churlishness of the Puritans, whom he was supposed to foster, it seemed as if the poetry of the time was passing away in chill discouragement. The effect is described in lines which, as we now naturally suppose, and Dryden also thought, can refer to no one but Shakespere. But it seems doubtful whether all this could have been said of Shakespere in 1590. It seems more likely that this also is an extravagant compliment to Philip Sidney, and his masking performances. He was lamented elsewhere under the poetical name ofWilly. If it refers to him, it was probably written before his death, though not published till after it; for the lines imply, not that he is literally dead, but that he is in retirement. The expression that he is "dead of late," is explained in four lines below, as "choosing to sit in idle cell," and is one of Spenser's common figures for inactivity or sorrow.[107:1]

The verses are the lamentations of the Muse of Comedy.

Thalia.Where be the sweete delights of learning's treasureThat wont with Comick sock to beautefieThe painted Theaters, and fill with pleasureThe listners eyes and eares with melodie;In which I late was wont to raine as Queene,And maske in mirth with Graces well bescene?O! all is gone; and all that goodly glee,Which wont to be the glorie of gay wits,Is layed abed, and no where now to see;And in her roome unseemly Sorrow sits,With hollow browes and greisly countenaunce,Marring my joyous gentle dalliaunce.And him beside sits ugly Barbarisme,And brutish Ignorance, ycrept of lateOut of dredd darknes of the deepe Abysme,Where being bredd, he light and heaven does hate:They in the mindes of men now tyrannize,And the faire Scene with rudenes foule disguize.All places they with follie have possest,And with vaine toyes the vulgare entertaine;But me have banished, with all the restThat whilome wont to wait upon my traine,Fine Counterfesaunce, and unhurtfull Sport,Delight, and Laughter, deckt in seemly sort.All these, and all that els the Comick StageWith seasoned wit and goodly pleasance graced,By which mans life in his likest imageWas limned forth, are wholly now defaced;And those sweete wits, which wont the like to frame,Are now despizd, and made a laughing game.And he, the man whom Nature selfe had madeTo mock her selfe, and truth to imitate,With kindly counter under Mimick shade,Our pleasant Willy, ah!is dead of late;With whom all joy and jolly merrimentIs also deaded, and in dolour drent.* * * * *But that same gentle Spirit, from whose penLarge streames of honnie and sweete Nectar flowe,Scorning the boldnes of such base-borne men,Which dare their follies forth so rashlie throwe,Doth rather choose to sit in idle Cell,Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell.

Thalia.

Where be the sweete delights of learning's treasureThat wont with Comick sock to beautefieThe painted Theaters, and fill with pleasureThe listners eyes and eares with melodie;In which I late was wont to raine as Queene,And maske in mirth with Graces well bescene?

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

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

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

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

And he, the man whom Nature selfe had madeTo mock her selfe, and truth to imitate,With kindly counter under Mimick shade,Our pleasant Willy, ah!is dead of late;With whom all joy and jolly merrimentIs also deaded, and in dolour drent.

* * * * *

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

But the most remarkable of these pieces is a satirical fable,Mother Hubberd's Tale of the Ape and Fox, which may take rank with the satirical writings of Chaucer and Dryden for keenness of touch, for breadth of treatment, for swing and fiery scorn, and sustained strength of sarcasm. By his visit to the Court, Spenser had increased his knowledge of the realities of life. That brilliant Court, with a goddess at its head, and full of charming swains and divine nymphs, had also another side. It was still his poetical heaven. But with that odd insensibility to anomaly and glaring contrasts, which is seen in his time, and perhaps exists at all times, he passed from the celebration of the dazzling glories of Cynthia's Court, into a fierce vein of invective against its treacheries, its vain shows, its unceasing and mean intrigues, its savage jealousies, its fatal rivalries, the scramble there for preferment in Church and State. When it is considered what great persons might easily and naturally have been identified at the time with theApe and the Fox, the confederate impostors, charlatans, and bullying swindlers, who had stolen the lion's skin, and by it mounted to the high places of the State, it seems to be a proof of the indifference of the Court to the power of mere literature, that it should have been safe to write and publish so freely, and so cleverly. Dull Catholic lampoons and Puritan scurrilities did not pass thus unnoticed. They were viewed as dangerous to the State, and dealt with accordingly. The fable contains what we can scarcely doubt to be some of that wisdom which Spenser learnt by his experience of the Court.

So pitifull a thing is Suters state!Most miserable man, whom wicked fateHath brought to Court, to sue forhad-ywist,That few have found, and manie 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 back to morrow;To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow;To have thy Princes grace, yet want her Peeres;To have thy asking, yet waite manie yeeres;To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires;To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne,To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.Unhappie wight, borne to disastrous end,That doth his life in so long tendance spend!Who ever leaves sweete home, where meane estateIn safe assurance, without strife or hate,Findes all things needfull for contentment meeke,And will to Court for shadowes vaine to seeke,Or hope to gaine, himselfe will a daw trie:That curse God send unto mine enemie!

Spenser probably did not mean his characters to fit too closely to living persons. That might have been dangerous. But it is difficult to believe that he had not distinctly in his eye a very great personage, the greatest in England next to the Queen, in the following picture of the doings of the Fox installed at Court.

But the false Foxe most kindly plaid his part;For whatsoever mother-wit or arteCould worke, he put in proofe: no practise slie,No counterpoint of cunning policie,No reach, no breach, that might him profit bring,But he the same did to his purpose wring.Nought suffered he the Ape to give or graunt,But through his hand must passe the Fiaunt.* * * * *He chaffred Chayres in which Churchmen were set,And breach of lawes to privie ferme did let:No statute so established might bee,Nor ordinaunce so needfull, but that heeWould violate, though not with violence,Yet under colour of the confidenceThe which the Ape repos'd in him alone,And reckned him the kingdomes corner stone.And ever, when he ought would bring to pas,His long experience the platforme was:And, when he ought not pleasing would put byThe cloke was care of thrift, and husbandry,For to encrease the common treasures store;But his owne treasure he encreased more,And lifted up his loftie towres thereby,That they began to threat the neighbour sky;The whiles the Princes pallaces fell fastTo ruine (for what thing can ever last?)And whilest the other Peeres, for povertie,Were forst their auncient houses to let lie,And their olde Castles to the ground to fall,Which their forefathers, famous over-all,Had founded for the Kingdome's ornament,And for their memories long moniment:But he no count made of Nobilitie,Nor the wilde beasts whom armes did glorifie,The Realmes chiefe strength and girlond of the crowne.All these through fained crimes he thrust adowne,Or made them dwell in darknes of disgrace;For none, but whom he list, might come in place.Of men of armes he had but small regard,But kept them lowe, and streigned verie hard.For men of learning little he esteemed;His wisdome he above their learning deemed.As for the rascall Commons, least he cared,For not so common was his bountie shared.Let God, (said he) if please, care for the manie,I for my selfe must care before els anie.So did he good to none, to manie ill,So did he all the kingdome rob and pill;Yet none durst speake, ne none durst of him plaine,So groat he was in grace, and rich through gaine.Ne would he anie let to have accesseUnto the Prince, but by his owne addresse,For all that els did come were sure to faile.

* * * * *

He chaffred Chayres in which Churchmen were set,And breach of lawes to privie ferme did let:No statute so established might bee,Nor ordinaunce so needfull, but that heeWould violate, though not with violence,Yet under colour of the confidenceThe which the Ape repos'd in him alone,And reckned him the kingdomes corner stone.And ever, when he ought would bring to pas,His long experience the platforme was:And, when he ought not pleasing would put byThe cloke was care of thrift, and husbandry,For to encrease the common treasures store;But his owne treasure he encreased more,And lifted up his loftie towres thereby,That they began to threat the neighbour sky;The whiles the Princes pallaces fell fastTo ruine (for what thing can ever last?)And whilest the other Peeres, for povertie,Were forst their auncient houses to let lie,And their olde Castles to the ground to fall,Which their forefathers, famous over-all,Had founded for the Kingdome's ornament,And for their memories long moniment:But he no count made of Nobilitie,Nor the wilde beasts whom armes did glorifie,The Realmes chiefe strength and girlond of the crowne.All these through fained crimes he thrust adowne,Or made them dwell in darknes of disgrace;For none, but whom he list, might come in place.Of men of armes he had but small regard,But kept them lowe, and streigned verie hard.For men of learning little he esteemed;His wisdome he above their learning deemed.As for the rascall Commons, least he cared,For not so common was his bountie shared.Let God, (said he) if please, care for the manie,I for my selfe must care before els anie.So did he good to none, to manie ill,So did he all the kingdome rob and pill;Yet none durst speake, ne none durst of him plaine,So groat he was in grace, and rich through gaine.Ne would he anie let to have accesseUnto the Prince, but by his owne addresse,For all that els did come were sure to faile.

Even at Court, however, the poet finds a contrast to all this: he had known Philip Sidney, and Ralegh was his friend.

Yet the brave Courtier, in whose beauteous thoughtRegard of honour harbours more than ought,Doth loath such base condition, to backbiteAnies good name for envie or despite:He stands on tearmes of honourable minde,Ne will be carried with the common windeOf Courts inconstant mutabilitie,Ne after everie tattling fable flie;But heares and sees the follies of the rest,And thereof gathers for himselfe the best.He will not creepe, nor crouche with fained face,But walkes upright with comely stedfast pace,And unto all doth yeeld due curtesie;But not with kissed hand belowe the knee,As that same Apish crue is wont to doo:For he disdaines himselfe t' embase theretoo.He hates fowle leasings, and vile flatterie,Two filthie blots in noble gentrie;And lothefull idlenes he doth detest,The canker worme of everie gentle brest.Or lastly, when the bodie list to pause,His minde unto the Muses he withdrawes:Sweete Ladie Muses, Ladies of delight,Delights of life, and ornaments of light!With whom he close confers with wise discourse,Of Natures workes, of heavens continuall course,Of forreine lands, of people different,Of kingdomes change, of divers gouvernment,Of dreadfull battailes of renowned Knights;With which he kindleth his ambitious sprightsTo like desire and praise of noble fame,The onely upshot whereto he doth ayme:For all his minde on honour fixed is,To which he levels all his purposis,And in his Princes service spends his dayes,Not so much for to gaine, or for to raiseHimselfe to high degree, as for his grace,And in his liking to winne worthie place,Through due deserts and comely carriage.

Or lastly, when the bodie list to pause,His minde unto the Muses he withdrawes:Sweete Ladie Muses, Ladies of delight,Delights of life, and ornaments of light!With whom he close confers with wise discourse,Of Natures workes, of heavens continuall course,Of forreine lands, of people different,Of kingdomes change, of divers gouvernment,Of dreadfull battailes of renowned Knights;With which he kindleth his ambitious sprightsTo like desire and praise of noble fame,The onely upshot whereto he doth ayme:For all his minde on honour fixed is,To which he levels all his purposis,And in his Princes service spends his dayes,Not so much for to gaine, or for to raiseHimselfe to high degree, as for his grace,And in his liking to winne worthie place,Through due deserts and comely carriage.

The fable also throws light on the way in which Spenser regarded the religious parties, whose strife was becoming loud and threatening. Spenser is often spoken of as a Puritan. He certainly had the Puritan hatred of Rome; and in the Church system as it existed in England he saw many instances of ignorance, laziness, and corruption; and he agreed with the Puritans in denouncing them. His pictures of the "formal priest," with his excuses for doing nothing, his new-fashioned and improved substitutes for the ornate and also too lengthy ancient service, and his general ideas of self-complacent comfort, has in it an odd mixture of Roman Catholic irony with Puritan censure. Indeed, though Spenser hated with an Englishman's hatred all that he considered Roman superstition and tyranny, he had a sense of the poetical impressiveness of the old ceremonial, and the ideas which clung to it, its pomp, its beauty, its suggestiveness, very far removed from the iconoclastic temper of the Puritans. In hisView of the State of Ireland, he notes as a sign of its evil condition the state of the churches, "most of them ruined and even with the ground," and the rest "so unhandsomely patched and thatched, that men do even shun the places, for the uncomeliness thereof." "The outward form (assure yourself)," he adds, "doth greatly draw the rude people to the reverencing and frequenting thereof,whatever some of our late too nice fools may say, that there is nothing in the seemly form and comely order of the church."

"Ah! but (said th' Ape) the charge is wondrous great,To feede mens soules, and hath an heavie threat.""To feed mens soules (quoth he) is not in man;For they must feed themselves, doo what we can.We are but charged to lay the meate before:Eate they that list, we need to doo no more.But God it is that feeds them with his grace,The bread of life powr'd downe from heavenly place.Therefore said he, that with the budding rodDid rule the Jewes,All shalbe taught of God.That same hath Jesus Christ now to him raught,By whom the flock is rightly fed, and taught:He is the Shepheard, and the Priest is hee;We but his shepheard swaines ordain'd to bee.Therefore herewith doo not your selfe dismay;Ne is the paines so great, but beare ye may,For not so great, as it was wont of yore,It's now a dayes, ne halfe so streight and sore.They whilome used duly everie dayTheir service and their holie things to say,At morne and even, besides their Anthemes sweete,Their penie Masses, and their Complynes meete,Their Diriges, their Trentals, and their shrifts,Their memories, their singings, and their gifts.Now all those needlesse works are laid away;Now once a weeke, upon the Sabbath day,It is enough to doo our small devotion,And then to follow any merrie motion.Ne are we tyde to fast, but when we list;Ne to weare garments base of wollen twist,But with the finest silkes us to aray,That before God we may appeare more gay,Resembling Aarons glorie in his place:For farre unfit it is, that person baceShould with vile cloaths approach Gods majestie,Whom no uncleannes may approachen nie;Or that all men, which anie master serve,Good garments for their service should deserve;But he that serves the Lord of hoasts most high,And that in highest place, t' approach him nigh,And all the peoples prayers to presentBefore his throne, as on ambassage sentBoth too and fro, should not deserve to weareA garment better than of wooll or heare.Beside, we may have lying by our sidesOur lovely Lasses, or bright shining Brides:We be not tyde to wilfull chastitie,But have the Gospell of free libertie."

But his weapon is double-edged, and he had not much more love for

That ungracious crew which feigns demurest grace.

The first prescription which the Priest gives to the Fox who desires to rise to preferment in the Church is to win the favour of some great Puritan noble.

First, therefore, when ye have in handsome wiseYour selfe attyred, as you can devise,Then to some Noble-man your selfe applye,Or other great one in the worldës eye,That hath a zealous dispositionTo God, and so to his religion.There must thou fashion eke a godly zeale,Such as no carpers may contrayre reveale;For each thing fained ought more warie bee.There thou must walke in sober gravitee,And seeme as Saintlike as Sainte Radegund:Fast much, pray oft, looke lowly on the ground,And unto everie one doo curtesie meeke:These lookes (nought saying) doo a benefice seeke,And be thou sure one not to lack or long.

But he is impartial, and points out that there are other ways of rising—by adopting the fashions of the Court, "facing, and forging, and scoffing, and crouching to please," and so to "mock out a benefice;" or else, by compounding with a patron to give him half the profits, and in the case of a bishopric, to submit to the alienation of its manors to some powerful favourite, as the Bishop of Salisbury had to surrender Sherborn to Sir Walter Ralegh. Spenser, in his dedication ofMother Hubberd's Taleto one of the daughters of Sir John Spencer, Lady Compton and Monteagle, speaks of it as "longsithence composed in the raw conceit of youth." But, whatever this may mean, and it was his way thus to deprecate severe judgments, his allowing the publication of it at this time, shows, if the work itself did not show it, that he was in very serious earnest in his bitter sarcasms on the base and evil arts which brought success at the Court.

He stayed in England about a year and a half [1590-91], long enough apparently to make up his mind that he had not much to hope for from his great friends, Ralegh and perhaps Essex, who were busy on their own schemes. Ralegh, from whom Spenser might hope most, was just beginning to plunge into that extraordinary career, in the thread of which, glory and disgrace, far-sighted and princely public spirit and insatiate private greed, were to be so strangely intertwined. In 1592 he planned the great adventure which astonished London by the fabulous plunder of the Spanish treasure-ships; in the same year he was in the Tower, under the Queen's displeasure for his secret marriage, affecting the most ridiculous despair at her going away from the neighbourhood, and pouring forth his flatteries on this old woman of sixty as if he had no bride of his own to love:—"I that was wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus; the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks like a nymph; sometimes, sitting in the shade like a goddess; sometimes, singing like an angel; sometimes, playing like Orpheus—behold the sorrow of this world—once amiss, hath bereaved me of all." Then came the exploration of Guiana, the expedition to Cadiz, the Island voyage [1595-1597]. Ralegh had something else to do than to think of Spenser's fortunes.

Spenser turned back once more to Ireland, to his clerkship of the Council of Munster, which he soon resigned; to be worried with law-suits about "lands in Shanballymore and Ballingrath," by his time-serving and oppressive Irish neighbour, Maurice Roche, Lord Fermoy; to brood still over his lost ideal and hero, Sidney; to write the story of his visit in the pastoral supplement to theShepherd's Calendar,Colin Clout's come home again; to pursue the story of Gloriana's knights; and to find among the Irish maidens another Elizabeth, a wife instead of a queen, whose wooing and winning were to give new themes to his imagination.

[107:1]v. Colin Clout, l. 31.Astrophel, l. 175.

"Uncouth[= unknown],unkist," are the words from Chaucer,[118:1]with which the friend, who introduced Spenser's earliest poetry to the world, bespeaks forbearance, and promises matter for admiration and delight in theShepherd's Calendar. "You have to know my new poet, he says in effect: and when you have learned his ways, you will find how much you have to honour and love him." "I doubt not," he says, with a boldness of prediction, manifestly sincere, which is remarkable about an unknown man, "that so soon as his name shall come into the knowledge of men, and his worthiness be sounded in the trump of fame, but that he shall be not only kissed, but also beloved of all, embraced of the most, and wondered at of the best." Never was prophecy more rapidly and more signally verified, probably beyond the prophet's largest expectation. But he goes on to explain and indeed apologize for certain features of the new poet's work, which even to readers of that day might seem open to exception. And to readers of to-day, the phrase,uncouth, unkist, certainly expresses what many have to confess, if they are honest, as to their first acquaintance with theFaery Queen. Its place in literature is established beyond controversy. Yet its first and unfamiliar aspect inspires respect, perhaps interest, rather than attracts and satisfies. It is not the remoteness of the subject alone, nor the distance of three centuries which raises a bar between it and those to whom it is new. Shakespere becomes familiar to us from the first moment. The impossible legends of Arthur have been made in the language of to-day once more to touch our sympathies, and have lent themselves to express our thoughts. But at first acquaintance theFaery Queento many of us has been disappointing. It has seemed not only antique, but artificial. It has seemed fantastic. It has seemed, we cannot help avowing, tiresome. It is not till the early appearances have worn off, and we have learned to make many allowances and to surrender ourselves to the feelings and the standards by which it claims to affect and govern us, that we really find under what noble guidance we are proceeding, and what subtle and varied spells are ever round us.

I. TheFaery Queenis the work of an unformed literature, the product of an unperfected art. English poetry, English language, in Spenser's, nay in Shakespere's day, had much to learn, much to unlearn. They never, perhaps, have been stronger or richer, than in that marvellous burst of youth, with all its freedom of invention, of observation, of reflection. But they had not that which only the experience and practice of eventful centuries could give them. Even genius must wait for the gifts of time. It cannot forerun the limitations of its day, nor anticipate the conquests and common possessions of the future. Things are impossible to the first great masters of art which are easy to their second-rate successors. The possibility, or the necessity of breakingthrough some convention, of attempting some unattempted effort, had not, among other great enterprises, occurred to them. They were laying the steps in a magnificent fashion on which those after them were to rise. But we ought not to shut our eyes to mistakes or faults to which attention had not yet been awakened, or for avoiding which no reasonable means had been found. To learn from genius, we must try to recognize, both what is still imperfect, and what is grandly and unwontedly successful. There is no great work of art, not excepting even the Iliad or the Parthenon, which is not open, especially in point of ornament, to the scoff of the scoffer, or to the injustice of those who do not mind being unjust. But all art belongs to man; and man, even when he is greatest, is always limited and imperfect.

TheFaery Queen, as a whole, bears on its face a great fault of construction. It carries with it no adequate account of its own story; it does not explain itself, or contain in its own structure what would enable a reader to understand how it arose. It has to be accounted for by a prose explanation and key outside of itself. The poet intended to reserve the central event, which was the occasion of all the adventures of the poem, till they had all been related, leaving them as it were in the air, till at the end of twelve long books the reader should at last be told how the whole thing had originated, and what it was all about. He made the mistake of confounding the answer to a riddle with the crisis which unties the tangle of a plot and satisfies the suspended interest of a tale. None of the great model poems before him, however full of digression and episode, had failed to arrange their story with clearness. They needed no commentary outside themselves to say why they began as they did, and out ofwhat antecedents they arose. If they started at once from the middle of things, they made their story, as it unfolded itself, explain, by more or less skilful devices, all that needed to be known about their beginnings. They did not think of rules of art. They did of themselves naturally what a good story-teller does, to make himself intelligible and interesting; and it is not easy to be interesting, unless the parts of the story are in their place.

The defect seems to have come upon Spenser when it was too late to remedy it in the construction of his poem; and he adopted the somewhat clumsy expedient of telling us what the poem itself ought to have told us of its general story, in a letter to Sir Walter Ralegh. Ralegh himself, indeed, suggested the letter: apparently (from the date, Jan. 23, 1590), after the first part had gone through the press. And without this after-thought, as the twelfth book was never reached, we should have been left to gather the outline and plan of the story, from imperfect glimpses and allusions, as we have to fill up from hints and assumptions the gaps of an unskilful narrator, who leaves out what is essential to the understanding of his tale.

Incidentally, however, this letter is an advantage: for we have in it the poet's own statement of his purpose in writing, as well as a necessary sketch of his story. His allegory, as he had explained to Bryskett and his friends, had a moral purpose. He meant to shadow forth, under the figures of twelve knights, and in their various exploits, the characteristics of "a gentleman or noble person," "fashioned in virtuous and gentle discipline." He took his machinery from the popular legends about King Arthur, and his heads of moral philosophy from the current Aristotelian catalogue of the Schools.

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