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THE 

COMPLETE    WORKS 

IN 

VERSE    AND    PROSE 

OF 

EDMUND    SPENSER. 

VOL.      I. 
LIFE  OF  SPENSER.     By  the  Editor, 

WITH    APrENDIX. 
ESSAYS: 

I.  Characteristics  of  Spenser's  roETRv. 

By  Aubrey  de  Vere,  Esq. 

2,  Spenser  the  Poet  and  Teacher. 

By  Prof.  Edward  Dowden,  LL.D. 

3.  Certain  Aspects  of  the  Poetry  of  Spenser. 

By  the  Rev.  W.  B.  Philpot,  .M.A. 

4.  The  Introspection  and  Outlook  of  Spenser. 

By  the  Rev.  William  Hubbard. 


is: 


THE 


COMPLETE     WORKS 


VERSE    AND    PROSE 


EDMUND    SPENSER. 

Ed/ted,  ii'ith  a  new  Life,  based  o.v  original  Researches, 
AND  A  Glossary  embracing  Notes  and  Illustrations. 


EV.  ALEXANDER  B.  GROSART,  LL.D.  (Edl\.),  F.S.A. 

St    George's,  Blackburn,  Lancashire; 


IN    ASSOCIAT 

Ikoff^s-iii  ANGUS,  LL.D.,  London. 
Ths   Rbv.    THOMAS  ASHE,    M.A., 

Chewh. 
Tkofessok   child,   LL.D.,    H.\rv.\rd 

University,  Cambridge,  U.S.A. 
The     Right     Honble.     THE     LORD 

CHIEF  JUSTICE  of  ENGLAND. 
Professor      EDWARD      DOWDEN, 

LL.D.,  Tri.sity  College,  Dublin. 
EDMUND  W.  GOSSE,  Es.}.,  London. 
iHE     Rev.     WILLIAM     HUBBARD, 

M.\NCHESTHR. 

Professor  HENRY  MORLEY,  LL.D., 
London. 

Etc.  Etc 


ION  with 
Dr.     P.RINSLEY     NICHOLSON, 

LoNUO.V. 

GEORGE    SAINTSBURY,    Esq., 

London. 
FRANCIS     TURNER      PALGRAVE, 

Estj.,  LL.D.,  London. 
AUBREY   DE  VERE,  Esq.,  Curr.\gh 

Chase,  Adare. 
Professor  WARD,  M.-A..,  Owens   Col. 

LEGE,  Manchester. 
The  Rev.  RICHARD  WILTON,  M.A., 

Londesborough  Rectokv. 
WILLIA.M    ALDIS    WRIGHT,    Esq., 

M.A.,  LL.D.,  Trinity  Coll.,  Ca.md. 
Etc. 


IN  TEN  VOLUMES. 


LIFE   OF   SPENSER. 


I 


VOL.     I. 

By  the  Editor,  with  Api*endi.\. 

ess  A  YS : 

I.  Char.\cteristics  of  Spenser's  Poetry. 

liy  Aubrey  de  Verc,  Esq. 

2.    SPE.NSER  the   PuET  A.NL)  Te.vcher. 

By  Prof.  Edward  Dowden,  LL.D. 

3.  Certain  Aspects  ok  the  Poetry  of  Spe.nser. 

By  the  Rev.  W.  B.  Philpot,  M.A. 

4.  The  Lntkospection  ano  Outlodk  of  Spender. 

By  the  Rev.  William  Hubbard. 

PRINTED  FOR  PRIVATE  CIRCULATION  ONLY. 
1SS2  4. 
100  copks  oiiIy.\ 


PR 


TO 

ALFRED,    LORD    TKXNVSON, 

Poet  Laureate. 

HIE   WORKS  OF  SPENSER  IN  THY  HANDS   I   PLACE, 

AS  FROM  HIS  H.VNDS  THEY  CAilE  ;    AT  LAST  SET  FREE 
FROM  TOUCH    PROFANE— WORTHY   OF   HIM   AND   THEE,— 

THEE  TENNYSON,    TRUE   CHILD   OF   THAT  HIGH   RACE, 

A   SINGER    BORN  !— METHINKS    'TIS    MEET   TO    GRACE 
THIS   LOVING   LABOUR  SO;    THAT   MEN   MAY   SEE 
THRO'    WHAT   A   LUMINOUS    CONTINUITY 

OUR   ENGLISH   MUSE   STILL  LIFTS   HER  AWFUL    FACE. 

niS  THE   RICH   VISION   OF  THE    'FAERIE   QUEENE,' 

'  ECLOGUES,'   AND    MARRIAGE-LAY  ;      THINE,    MATCHLESS 
SONGS, 

'ARTHUR,'    'THE    BOOK   OF    MEMORY';    AND   I    WEEN 
THE  LATER  VOICE  THE  FIRST  FULL    NOTE  PROLONGS: — 

HAPPY   OUR   ENGLAND   THAT   FROM   AGE   TO   AGE 

KEEPS   BRIGHT   HER   GRAND   POETIC   HERITAGE. 

/  \  'ilh  p  ■acious  •  worddd  permission. 

Alexasder  D.  Gi«JSAnr. 


Printed  by  Ha^cll,  U'^ahon,  and  Viiiey,  Limited,  London  and  Ayhslury. 


PREFACE. 


IT   was   promised    from    the    outset  that    this    monu- 
mental edition  of  the  complete  Works  of  Spenser  in 
Verse  and  Prose,  in    integrity  of  reproduction    should 
be  accompanied  with  "A   New  Life  based  on  Original 
Researches,"   by   the   Editor.     The  present  volume  is 
respectfully   offered    as   the  fulfilment   of  this  onerous 
pkdge.       In    so    doing,    I    venture    to    say    that    my 
experience     has    satisfied    me     right    pleasantly     that 
genuine    work    and   honest  and    conscientious    labour 
receive  generous  recognition  from  those  whose  recog- 
nition  one   cares  for;    and   this  without  any  blowing 
of   trumpets,  or   depreciation   of  others.       I    have   no 
wish    to   blow    my    own    trumpet    (even    supposing    I 
owned   the    article),   and  as  for  my   numerous   prede- 
cessors—whether Editors  or  Biographers— it  has  been 
a  pleasure  to   me   to  acknowledge    my   obligations  to 
them  in  the  successive  places.       If-as  was  inevitable 
—criticism   and    difference   in  opinion   and   conclusion 
occur    I  trust  that  such  criticism  and  difference  have 
been 'expressed    in    a  worthy  spirit,  albeit   in   dealing 
with  hereditary  mistakes  and   mendacities,  I  have  not 
shunned   to   call   a   spade    a  spade.     No  criticism  or 
difference     is     advanced    without    a    statement  of    its 

ground.  .     ,        , 

Over  a  goodly  number  of  years  now  it  has  been 
a  rarely  intermitted  labour  of  love,  to  explore  every 
likely   source  toward   a   more  matterful   and   adequate 


vi  PREFA  CE. 

Life  of  the  "  Poet  of  Poets  "  tlian  any  hitherto — from 
Todd  to  Professors  Craik  and  Hales,  and  from 
ColHer  to  Dean  Church.  That  I  have  succeeded 
up  to  my  own  idea  or  ideal  may  not  be  affirmed  ; 
but  a  comparison  with  predecessors  \\\\\  show — and 
it  is  stated  unboastfully — that  on  almost  every  point 
of  the  Biography  new  light  is  thrown  in  this  Life 
of  Spenser  and  related  Essaj-s  :  e.g.^  Things  hitherto 
unknown — as  his  first  love's  (probable)  name — his 
being  in  Ireland  so  early  as  1577 — ^^^  wife's  certain 
name  first  disclosed  ;  other  things  imperfectly  known 
— as  ancestry,  family  and  parentage — use  of  Lancashire 
words,  phrases,  and  idioms  abundantly  —  friendship 
with  Vander  Noodt,  and  Young,  Bishop  of  Rochester  ; 
others  erroneous — as  his  merely  poetical  love  for  Rosa- 
lind— the  chronology  of  his  poems  before  and  contem- 
porary with  the  Shepherd's  Calendar — his  relations  to 
Sidney — his  attitude  tov/ards  Burleigh  ;  others  inade- 
quate— as  his  services  in  Ireland  and  his  vindications 
of  Lord  Grey  of  Wilton  vi  re  Smerwick  and  the 
Forfeitures ;  others,  to  be  deplored — as  his  alleged 
dying  of  a  broken  heart  and  in  beggary;  others, 
vital  MSS.  unutilized  until  now — as  the  Letters  to 
and  from  Gabriel  Harvey,  and  the  State-Papers  written 
\\ithin  a  few  weeks  of  his  death  ;  others  corrective  of 
misrcadings  of  his  poems  —  as  the  Hyr.ins  of  Love 
and  Bcanty  and  the  Avwrctti,  and  throughout  ;  and 
many  minor  yet  in  the  aggregate  considerable  and 
iniporlant  determinations  of  allusions  and  meanings 
—belong  to  and  are  the  fruit  of  the  promised 
•'  Original  Researches,"  and  are  all  dealt  with  critically 
and    thoroughly. 


PREFA  CE.  vii 

It  is  now  my  very  grateful  duty  to  thank  my  friends 
Professor  Gosse,  F.  T.  Palgrave,  Esq.,  LL.D.,  Professor 
Dowden,  Aubrey  de  Vere,  Esq.,  Rev.  W.  B,  Philpot, 
M.A.,  and  Rev.  William  Hubbard,  for  their  several 
Essays.  It  is  scarcely  my  part  to  praise  these  Essays, 
but  I  must  be  permitted  to  commend  them  to  every 
lover  of  Spenser.  In  various  footnotes  will  be  found 
acknowledgment  of  specific  service  rendered.  I  cannot 
deny  myself  the  satisfaction  of  accentuating  my  sense 
of  obligation  to  three  literary  friends  and  bookmatcs 
— viz.,  I\Ir.  Harrold  Littledale,  now  of  Baroda,  India  ; 
Mr.  W.  A.  Abram,  Blackburn  ;  and  the  Rev.  Prebendary 
Hayman,  of  Douglas  Rector}',  Cork.  My  new  Life 
would  have  lacked  a  good  deal  had  not  these  good 
friends  helped  me  from  their  full  stores.  My  gratitude 
in  their  case  takes  the  form  of  "  a  lively  expectation 
of  favours  to  come " ;  for  along  with  the  other 
co-workers  of  my  title-page,  the  closing  volume 
(Vol.  X.,  Glossary-,  with  Notes  and  Illustrations)  will 
largely  benefit  from  their  unflagging  interest  and 
practical  aid.  I  must  also  name  His  Grace  the 
Right  Reverend  (present)  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  ; 
the  Master  of  Pembroke  College,  and  Mr.  R.  A.  Neil, 
M.A.,  Cambridge  ;  Mr.  A.  H.  Bullen,  London  ;  Pro- 
fessor Child,  Boston  ;  Dr.  Caulfield,  Cork,  and  the 
present  Bishop  of  Cork  ;  the  Rev.  Richard  Wilton, 
M.A.,  Londesborough  Rectory,  and  Mr.  Palgrave  (as 
before), — the  last  for  most  painstaking  suggestions 
whilst  my  Life  was  still  in  MS.  For  book-rarities  I 
have  been  laid  under  special  obligations  by  Mr.  Alfred 
H.  Huth,  Mr.  Henry  Pyne,  the  Master  of  Emmanuel 
College,   Cambridge  ;  W.    Aldis  Wright.   Esq.,   LL.D., 


viii  PREFA  CE. 

Trinity  Collcjjc  ;  IIcnr>'  Ikadshaw,  Esq.,  M.A.,  Univer- 
sity Library,  Cambridge  ;  the  British  Museum,  London, 
specially  Mr.  George  Bullen  and  Dr.  Richard  Garnett, 
and  the  erudite  librarian  of  the  Bodleian,  Oxford. 
I  would  further  wish  to  express  my  indebtedness  to 
the  A'tr/7  Magazine  (1852-54)  for  priceless  historical 
papers  and  guidance  on  the  Irish  problems;  and  to 
many  critical  papers  in  home  and  foreign  high-class 
periodicals — by  which  Vol.  X.  will  be  still  more  en- 
riched. Finally — I  must  reiterate  my  thanks  to  Lord 
Fitzhardinge  (through  the  Royal  Librarian,  Mr.  R.  H. 
Holmes),  and  Lord  Derby,  and  the  Rev.  Samuel 
]5aring-Gould,  M.A.,  and  the  eminent  art-critic  and 
artist  Mr.  Philip  G.  Hamerton,  and  Mr.  John 
Lindsay,  Youghal,  for  enabling  me  to  illustrate  the 
L.ARGE-PAl'ER  copies  of  these  volumes  so  authentically 
and  effectively.  For  the  first  time  the  handwriting, 
with  characteristic  autograph  of  Spenser,  is  faithfully 
given,  by  the  kind  permission  of  Sir  William  Hardy. 

Reserving  anything  else  needful  to  be  said  for 
Vol.  X.  (as  above),  on  which  many  like-minded  workers 
are  co-operating  to  make  it  a  success  as  a  permanent 
contribution  to  our  knowledge  of  the  Life  and  Works 
of  Spenser,  I  end  with  words  from  "  gentle  Shake- 
speare "  : 

W'lio  will  believe  my  verse  in  time  to  come, 
If  it  were  lilled  with  your  most  high  deserts  ? 

Thdu^'h  yet,  Heaven  knows,  it  is  but  as  a  tomb 
Which  hides  your  life,  and  shows  not  half  your  parts. 


Alexander  B.  Grosart. 


BkoOKI.VN    IIoISE,    Ih.ACKUURN, 

II /A  ytinc,  18^4. 


CONTENTS   OF   VOL.   I. 


LIFE   OF   SPENSER.     Bv  the  Editor. 

CHAITBR  PAGES 

I.     INTRODL'CTION— The  Ancestry  and  Family  of  Spenser       .         xi— Ixiv 
•»•  Separately  paged  from  the  Life  /•ro/'Cr,  tlwitgh  an  intesral  part  of  it. 
II.     Birth,  and  Birthplace,  and  Boyhood i — 15 

III.  Jean  Vander  Noodt,  and  Blank  Verse  and  Rhymed  Sonnets 

in  The  Theatre  of  Worldlings,  1569 15 — 23 

IV.  At  the  University,  1569 — 1576 23—42 

V.     In  North-East  Lancashire,  and  •'  Rosalind,"  1576-7  .         .     43—61 

VI.    In  the  South.  —  How  occupied.  —  Letters  of  Spenser  and 

Harvey,  1577-8—1580 61 — 76 

VII.     Early  and  "Lost  "  Poems,  and  Publication  of   the  Shef herd's 

Calendar 77 — 121 

VIII.     Love-Experiences. — Shine  and  Shadow    ....  121 — 129 

IX.     In  London,  and  Appointment  to  Ireland. — Capture  of  Fort- 

del-Ore. — Vindication  of  Grey  and  Spenser  .         ,         .  130—139 

X.     In  Ireland. — Dublin  and  Kilcolman,  1580-90   .         .         .  140 — 171 

XI.     "  Home  Again  "  in  Ireland 172 — 190 

Xll.     Wooing  and  Marriage. —Wife's  Name  for  the  first  time  dis- 
closed     190—202 

XIII.  After  Marriage  at  Kilcolman,  and  again  in  London         .         203—217 

XIV.  Back   again    at    Kilcolman. — Rebellion   of  Tyrone. — State- 

Papers. — Death 217 — 256 

APPENDIX    TO    THE    LIFE. 
•«'  Placed  as  AJtpcndix,  but  0/ equal  importance  with  tlu  Text. 
A  (p.  x-xxviii).  Entries  concerning  Spenser  from  the  Burnley  Church 

Register 403 — 407 

B  (p.  .\lvi).     Lancashire  Dialect- Words  and  Phrases  frqm  the  Work 

of  Spenser 403—418 

(p.  105).     North-East  Lanaishire  Words  Common  to  the  TowneUy 

Mysteries  and  the  Slu-pherd's  Calendar        .         .         .  418 — 421 
Points  of  Theology  talked  of  all  over  Lancashire  con- 

tenifjorarily  ........  421 — 422 

C  (p.    l.\ii).     Descent  of  the  Traverses 423 -4j6 

L*  KV     23).    Jean  V;uidcr  Noodi  or  Noot 426—431 


CONT£An'S. 


^_   P-    73h     Harvey  s  Letters  to  Spenser  ^      ^-^^ 

<-^  (P-    93)-     Donis  Mor.i/  P/,;/,....,/,,. 435—44° 


_E(p.    69).     Translation  of  Spenser's  Latin  \V—-T  „..„.,._  TT.  ''■^^''^s 

-s  to  Spens 
93)-     'DoniS  Moral  Pkilosofiky 
H(p.  102).     The  Identification  of  "Cuddie- 'Ho-442 

]  t  lit  '^SSi^'^^ '-''  ^-  ^'""p  ^^^-y :   :   :  :-is 

K  (p.  139).     Docun.ents  and  State-Papers*  on  Lord'cre^s  Adn.ini'-  '''~''' 
stration— Smerwick    .  , 

0  ?n   '"'  •  !;*'•  ''■  ^'^^'^'^-^'^  o"  Spenser's  Po'etry  '         '         "         '  '""f 

Qp-03.  After  Marriage  at  Kilcolman,  by  Deal  Church      '         'c,      ^^ 

I<P.204.  Lord  Roche  and  Spenser  Ag;in       ''"^' "-'^"^'^       '         •  S29-530 

i>(p.  208).  Literature  of  the  year  1596  530-532 

r(p.22o)  DeanChurchontheStateofirelandin'i.oe'         '         \        ^^^ 

V   p-  :"•     ?,T  "''^r  °"  ^'^^--'^  IndebtednlL  tolreland        [       ^2 
"  IP- -31  J-     -Spenser  s  State-Paner "A  R,^-^r„  at  .      r  t    ,        .  -'•^^    ^^o 

vv,p.  .3*  Widow  a„.F.„„rofsp4franarc:L;r'';"";  gn,=^ 

ESSAYS. 
"•     '™den:LlS:^^^^°^^^^"-     By  P;ofess-or  Edward  ^^^-^°^ 

III.      CERTAIN  ASPECTS  OF  THE  /v/^^K  Qcr^yjjv.  An'd  SOME  oV  TH;  ^^^"^^^ 

William  Hubbard,  Manchester  ^y  Kev. 

373-400 

ILLUSTRATIOXS 
2.«  Hamerton's  Woodcuts  •  10 face  Fitle-page 

3-  Map  of  the  Land  of  Spenser.         .         '         *         '        '       J ''''"?  P^'Se      i 

4-  Kalegh's  House  at  Youghal    .         [         '        '    ■     '        *         '         •     ..     140 

Nos.  I  and  ,  /„  lay.e pa^cr  only;  Nos.  3  «„./  4  {„  .,u  a,,  , 


•  sizes. 


LIFE   OF   SPENSER. 

By  the  Editor. 


Introduction  :   The  Ancestry  and  Family  of  Spenser. 

"  The  uobility  of  the  Spntsers,  has  been  illustrated  and  enriched  by  the 
trap  net  of  Marlborough  ;  but  I  e:chort  them  to  co,^s^der  'hr^"%9''"'' 
Ts  the  most  precious  jewel  of  the.r  corc«r/."-GiBBON  :  Mcmo.rs  of  hi.  own 
Life. 

It  is  a  some\vhat  noticeable  fact  that  whilst  the  sur- 
name Spencer— spelled  ^vith  a  c,  not  an  .f— is  found 
in  most  of  the  counties  of  England,  that  of  Spenser— 
spelled  with  an  s,  not  a  ^— is  practically  limited— earliest 
and  latest— to  a  small  district  in  the  north-cast  angle 
of  Lancashire.  The  bearing  of  the  latter  on  the  family 
of  Spenser  will  be  seen  in  the  sequel. 

With  respect  to  the  former,  the  present  Writer— 
-rcatly  helped  by  the  late  lamented  Colonel  Chester, 
%cilc  pnnccps  of  English  genealogists  »— has  met  with 
the  surname  Spencer  in  Inquisitions  and  Visitations 
Wills  and  Parish  Registers,  University  and  School 
Records,  all  over  Middlesex  and  Kent,  Surrey  and 
Essex  Norfolk  and  Suffolk,  Warwick  and  Yorkshire 
and  Lancashire,  to  an  aggregate  of  eleven  hundred  and 
upwards.  , 

It  is  much  to   be   wished   that  some   capable   and 

♦  His  Westminster  Abbey  Register  ^^s  ""f^  Tl!:J'^Tn}ld, 
his  laborious,  conscientious  and  admirable  Nvork.  A  more  unscUibh 
generous  worker  has  never  lived. 


xii  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

sympathetic  inheritor  of  the  ilhistrious  name  would 
address  himself  to  give  us  the  annals  of  his  House, 
"  gentle  and  simple,"  Gibbon's  counsel  (as  above)  to 
the  nobles  of  Althorp  and  Blenheim  still  holds  ;  for 
though  Spencers  are  luminous  in  nearly  every  field  of 
achievement,  the  supreme  and  only  immortal  Spenser 
of  them  all  is  the  Poet — Edmund  Spenser.  Never- 
theless an  authentic  and  painstaking  account  of  the 
widely-distributed  representatives  of  this  surname  could 
scarcely  fail  to  be  of  permanent  interest  and  value. 
This  is  not  the  place  to  pursue  such  an  inquiry.  But 
claiming  as  the  Poet  did  to  have  descended  from 

"an  House  of  auncient  fame,"* 

it  seems  an  inevitable  duty  laid  upon  a  Biographer  to 
authenticate  this  by  tracing  in  detail — and  much  more 
fully  and  exactly  and  critically  than  hitherto — his 
ancestry  and  family. 

Ill  limme,  a  just-published  Letter  from  Gabriel 
Harvey  to  Spenser  (as  "  Immerito ")  expressly  de- 
signates "  Pendle  Hill"  as  lying  in  his  shire  {^' your 
shier"),f  Thus  incidentally  but  authoritatively  is 
confirmed  that  localization  of  Spenser's  family  which 
has  been  somewhat  vaguely  and  uncertainly  stated  by 
previous  Biographers,  but  which,  in  the  light  of  the 
facts  now  to  be  submitted,  will  be  finally  accepted  (it 
is  believed).  This  being  so,  I  restrict  myself  (except 
collaterally)  to  Lancashire  Spenscrs  and  Spencers, 
working     my    way    forward     to     the    conclusion     that 

*  Vol.  IV.,  p.  206. 

t  Letter-Book  of  Gabriel  Ilarvcy,  1573-80.     By  E.  J.  Long 
Scott,  M.A.     Camden  Society,  1884,  pp.xi,  63. 


1/ 


FAMILY  OF  SPENSER.  xiii 

l^dmund  Spenser's  Family  was  of  the  "  Tcndle  Forest- 
district  Spcnsers.* 

We  have  now  to  blow  the  dust  off  a  good  many  old 
parchments,  and  I  fear  that  by  some  Readers  I  shall 
be  dubbed  a  Dr.  Drj-asdust  for  my  pains  ;  but  there 
must  be  some  intelligently  antiquarian  enough  to  agree 
with  me  that  it  is  due  to  place  on  record  such  a  mass 
of  hitherto  scattered  and  in  many  instances  unknown 
or  unused  genealogical  Spenseriana. 

The  first  Lancashire  Spensers— known  to  have 
settled  at  an  extremely  remote  period  in  the  vale  of 
Clivi-er  south  of  the  town  of  Burnley  and  of  Townley 
Park— have  left  scarcely  anything  behind  them  until 
we  reach  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth.  The 
ordinary  sources  of  pedigrees— such  as  Inquisitions/^./ 
mortan^  Visitations,  and  the  Duchy  Records-fail  us  in 
our  genealogical  searches,  because  earlier  the  Spensers 
were  not  of  sufficient  importance  as  landholders  to  be 
"diligently  inquired"  for  either  by  the  Kings  officers 
who  directed  the  military  taxation  and  levies,  or  those 
who  saw  after  the  assessments  for  subsidies.  Besides 
this  the  Parish  Registers  and  the  Collections  of 
Lancashire  Wills  do  not  commence  before  the  middle 
of  the  sixteenth  century. 

All  the  more  precious,  therefore,  are  the  few  scanty 
items  that  a  somewhat  disproportionate  search  has 
yielded.  A  charter  of  Roger  de  Laci,  Constable  of 
Chester,  undated,  but  temp.  Richard  L  (a.d.  i  157-99). 

*  With  reference  to  the  local  spelling  with  ..it  is  to  be  noted 
that  awav  from  the  district  Spensers  became  Spencers  ^•/•.  t'^e 
Poet  h"msel7rnd  his  children  are  almost  invariably  spelled  with  c 
in  Irish  documents. 


xiv  riTE  A  NCESTR  J  ^  A  ND 

confirming  to  tlic  monies  of  Kirkstall  a  carucatc  of  land 
in  Clivichcr  [Cliviger]  is  witnessed  among  others  by- 
Thomas  Dispensatore.*  Here  probably  we  must  look 
for  the  origin  of  the  Surname — as  in  so  many  cases — 
for  "  dispensator,"  =  a  steward  or  household  manager, 
doubtless  points  back  to  the  original  function  of  the 
Spensers  or  6\s-spenscrs^  in  relation  to  more  or  fewer 
noble  Houses.  The  truncating  of  the  name  would 
gradually  obliterate  its  primary  humble  meaning,  and 
thus  be  more  acceptable  to  its  owners. 

About  a  century  later,  in  a  deed  dated  the  7th  of 
April,  20th  Edward  I.  (a.D.  1292),  by  which  Henry  de 
Lacy,  Earl  of  Lincoln,  granted  the  lordship  of  VVors- 
thorne  to  his  Receiver  of  the  Castle  of  Pontefract — 
Oliver  de  Stansfield, — the  grant  is  declared  to  include 
the  "  homage  and  service  "  of  a  number  of  local  "  free- 
holding  tenants,"  one  of  whom  was  an  Adam  le  Spenser. 
This  Spenser  freehold  consisted  of  a  single  farm  and 
messuage  in  the  hamlet  of  Hurstwood.f 

In  course  of  time  individuals  of  this  latter  Spenser 
Family  acquired  several  other  (relatively)  small  proper- 
ties in  the  neighbourhood:  e.g.,  Mr.  William  Waddington, 
of  Burnley,  in  recently  transcribing  titles  of  deeds  be- 
longing to  the  Townlcy  Family  in  one  of  the  Townley 
MSS.,  has  noted  the  short  title  of  a  conveyance 
of  half  the  messuage  of  Collinghouse  in  Hapton  by 
Peter  Spenser,  son  of  Robert  Spenser  of  Boteden  (now 
Bottin)  to  John  Townley,  Esq.,  A.D.  1459.  Boteden 
(or  Bottin)  is  situated  not  far  from  Hurstwood.  Thus 
wc  have   in  this  'note'  the  names  of  Robert  Spenser 


Whitaker's  WJiallcy,  cdn.  i8;6,  vol.  ii.,  p.  19;.    f  Ibid., 


p. 229. 


FAMILY  OF  SPENSER.  xv 

of  Botedcn  and  of  Peter  his  son  in  1459,  in  addition  to 
that  of  the  chief  member  of  the  family,  who  then  held 
Hurstwood. 

Onward,  in  the  first  part  of  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII., 
in  the  Roll  of  a  King's  Subsidy  granted  in  the  14th 
Henry  VIII.  (a.d.  1522)  which  is  now  preserved  in 
H.  M.  Public  Record  Office,  is  the  following  entry  : — 
"Jamys  Spenser  in  goodes  ;^ii,  (paid)  2J."  This 
shows  that  James  Spenser  paid  two  shillings  to  that 
Subsidy;  but  not  for  lands,  but  for  "goodes."  Curiously 
and  semi-unaccountably,  in  the  same  Subsidy  under 
Worsthorne-cum-Hurstwood  occur  the  names  of  three 
Halsteds,  a  Jackson,  and  a  Whitham — all  more  or 
less  mixed  up  with  the  Hurstwood  Spensers — but  no 
Spenser. 

In  the  burial-register  of  Burnley — which  commences 
in  1562 — the  earliest  entries  of  the  burial  of  adult 
male  members  of  the  local  families  of  Spenser  are  as 
follows  :  Thomas  Spenser  buried  the  1st  December, 
1572,  and  Edmund  Spenser  buried  the  9th  November, 
1  577.*  It  is  improbable  that  either  of  these  was  father 
of  Edmund  Spenser  of  Hurstwood,  who  will  be  intro- 
duced immediately. 

We  have  now  reached  the  Hurstwood  Spensers 
proper  ;  and  it  is  a  satisfaction  to  be  able  to  furnish  a 
connected  and  well-evidenced  genealogy  of  this  Family. 

Edmund  Spenser,  of  Hurstwood,  gent.,t  appears  first 

•  Once  for  all  I  wish  to  state  (i)  that  in  no  case  are  Parish- 
re;fister  entries  taken  at  second-hand,  and  (2)  that  both  Mr.  Abram 
and  myself  invariably  found  their  custodians  earnest  in  facilitating 
research. 

t  Xot\.<:>  be  confounded  with  Hurstwood  Hall,  seat  of  a  branch 
of  the  Townloys — a  mistake  that  has  misled  many. 


xvi  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

in  the  second  year  of  Elizabeth  (A.n.  1559-60)  in  a 
category  of  the  freeholders  of  Cliviger  of  that  date. 
In  1564  Edmund  Spenser  and  Robert  Spenser  were 
parties  in  a  suit  in  the  Chancery  Court  of  the  Duchy 
of  Lancaster  respecting  a  tenement  called  Whyteside. 
Twenty  years  later,  in  a  list  of  Freeholding  Tenants 
in  Blackburn  Hundred,  occurs  the  name  of  "  Edmund 
Spenser  de  Hurstwood,  gent."  (Corry's  Lancashire, 
ii.,  269).  This  Edmund  Spenser  was  twice  married  ; 
but  the  name  of  his  first  wife  has  not  been  trans- 
mitted. He  had  issue  by  her,  a  son  and  heir,  John 
Spenser.  He  married,  secondly,  Margaret  (either 
Halsted  or  Nutter),  and  by  her  had  issue,  a  second  son, 
who  singularly  (though  not  unexampled)  was  baptized 
by  the  same  Christian  name  as  the  first — namely,  John 
Spenser.  This  latter  John  must  have  been  born  before 
1565,  for  he  was  of  age  and  capable  of  acting  as 
executor  to  his  father  in  1586.  Any  other  issue 
whom  Edmund  Spenser  had  were  apparently  dead 
\  when  he  made  his  Will,  for  these  two  Johns  are  the 
only  children  named  in  it.  Edmund  Spenser  was  an 
old  man  at  the  time  of  his  own  death.  His  Will  bears 
date  the  2  ist  December,  i  5  86.  I  deem  it  expedient  to 
give  here  a  "  true  and  faithful "  transcript  of  this  Will 
from  the  MS.  in  the  Probate  Court  of  Chester.  It 
suggests  a  good  deal— as  will  appear.  Especially  does 
it  certify  to  the  Protestantism,  not  Roman  Catholicism, 
of  the  Spensers— a  preposterous  claim  recently  made 
(as  will  be  noted  onward). 

"In  the  name  of  God,  amen  :  the  xxj^'  of  December  in  theycare 

T\l^^\  9-'",^  ^  thowsand  five  hundrethe  fowre  schore  and 

SIX  L'5«oJ-     I  l'.dmiinde  Spenser  of  Hurstvvoode  in  the  countie  of 


FAMILY  OF  SPFiVSFK.  xvii 

Lnnc.istt?r  yonian,  knowinge  mv  bodic  mortall  and  doatlie  to  be 
to  everie  p'sonc  at  God's  will  and  pleasure,  most  comyn  and 
certayne.  an«l  the  howre  of  deathe  most  unccrtayne;  considenn.i^e 
also  'that  manie  dep'te  this  transitoric  lyfc  soddanhe  withoutt? 
anie  Will  or  dysposicon  of  there  landes  and  .t,'oodes  by  them  maidc 
and  declared,  by  occacone  whereof  manie  tymes  there  wyfes  and 
childrene  be  unholpyne  and  there  debtes  unpayde,  and  manie 
tymes  srreate  stryfe  and  varience  for  the  goodes  and  chattells  of 
suche  as  dye  untestyd  [intestate]  doithe  growe  and  ar>'se  amongest 
there  frendes.  Therefore  I  the  sayde  Kdmunde  Spenser  the  day 
and  yere  above  sayde  my  testamente  conteininge  therem  my  laste 
Will,  do  constitute,  ordayne  and  make  in  forme  and  maner  tol- 
lowinge  :  ffirste  and  moste  especiallie  I  bequethe  my  soule  unto 
Almightie  God  my  maker,  who  haithe  redimed  me  and  all  man- 
kynde.  by  whome  and  throwhe  whome  I  trust  I  shalbe  one  of 
those  that  shalbe  saved.  And  mv  bodie  I  bequethe  to  chnsten 
buriall.  Allso  I  will  that  immediatlie  after  my  decease  my  debtes 
beintfe  payde,  all  my  goodes  and  chattells  shalbe  devyded  mto 
throe  euen  partes,  the  first  p'te  for  myselfe,  the  seconde  for 
Margret  my  vs-j^'e  for  and  in  the  name  of  her  canonicall  parte  and 
porcon,  accordinge  to  the  custome  of  the  cuntrie,  and  the  laste 
and  thirde  p'te  to  John  Spenser  my  yonger  sone  for  and  in  the 
name  of  his  filiall  or  chyldes  p'te.  Allso  1  will  that  my  funerall 
expencis  and  legacies  dischardged,  I  give  and  bequethe  unto 
Johon  [j/r]  Spenser,  my  eldeste  sone.  all  my  stone  troughes  and 
one  olde  Arke  standinge  in  the  over  parler  and  allso  one  Bill, 
one  Jake,  one  Sallet  and  one  payre  of  malt  wymes  [irons],  for 
and  during  the  terme  of  his  natural!  life,  and  after  his  decease 
unto  Kdmonde  Spenser  sone  of  the  afuresayde  John  Spenser  for 
and  duringe  the  tearme  of  his  naturall  life,  and  so  to  remayne  as 
hearelomes  from  one  to  another.  Allso  I  will  that  all  my  waynes. 
plowes.  harrowes.  pokes,  teames.  and  all  other  thinges  bclonginge 
unto  oxen  shall  remavne  and  be  indyseverablie  occupied  betsvixt 
my  wyfe  and  John  Spenser  my  eldeste  sone  for  and  duringe  the 
tearmes  of  there  naturall  lyves  and  for  and  during  the  tearmes  of 
the  naturall  lyffe  of  the  longer  liver  of  them,  and  after  there  decease 
unto  Edmonde  Spenser  sone  of  the  sayde  John  Spenser,  and  so  to 
remavne  as  hearelomes  as  aforesayde.  Allso  I  give  and  bequethe 
unto  Margret  Nutter,  Marie  Nutter  and  Ellene  Nutter,  doughters 
of  Henry"  Nutter,  iijs  iiijd  a  peece.  Allso  I  give  and  bequethe 
unto  Roberte  Hallsted,  Henrie  Hallsted,  Thomas  Hallsted  and 
Isabelle  Hallsted,  sones  and  doughter  of  J..hn  Hallsied,  ijs  \;id  a 
peece.  Allso  I  give  and  bequethe  unto  Marie  Spenser  iijs  lujd. 
and  the  residue  of  my  p'te  and  porcon  1  give  and  bequethe  unto 
John  Spenser  my  yonger  sone,  and  the  sayde  John  I  doe  consti- 

I.  ^ 


xviii  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

tute,  ordayne  and  make  my  executor  of  this  my  laste.Will  and 
testamente,  the  same  to  execute  and  fulfill  as  my  speciall  trust  is 
in  hime  and  as  he  will  answer  at  the  most  dreadfull  day  of  judg- 
ment. These  beinge  witnesses,  Barnard  Townleye,  John  Townleye, 
John  Spenser  of  Haberiameves. 

"  Debtcs  owinge  by  me  the  sayd  tcstatore  : — 
Imprimis  unto  John  Spenser  my  yonger  sone  vjli  xiijs  iiijd 
It'm  unto  William  Cowper  of  Hallifax  xs 

It'm  unto  John  Woodroffe  iiijs 

It'm  unto  the  executors  of  Richard  Bontane  iiijs 

"  Debtes  owinge  unto  the  sayde  testatore  : — 
Imprimis  of  John  Greenewoode  of  Searinges  as  appearethe 

by  an  obligaSon  iiijli 

It'm  of  Edwarde  Shakeldene  of  Monkhall  xxiijs  viijd 

It'm  of  James  Robert  for  bylfes  xxxs  *       " 

The  Edmund  Spenser  of  this  quaint  Will,  and — as 
seen — head  of  the  Hurstwood  Spensers,  died  at  Hurst- 
wood  in  the  beginning  of  April,  1587.  The  burial 
register  of  I^urnley  Church  simply  enters  —  "1587. 
Edmund  Spenser  sepult.  the  iiij  day  of  Aprill."  His 
Will  was  proved  by  John  Spenser,  the  younger  son  and 
executor,  on  the  2nd  of  May,  1587.  The  Marie  Spenser 
named  in  the  Will  may  have  been  a  sister  or  other 
near  kinswoman  of  the  testator. 

Margaret  Spenser,  Edmund's  second  wife  and  his 
widow,  named  in  the  Will,  survived  her  husband  about 
eighteen  years,  and  continued  to  dwell  at  Hurstwood. 
Her  Will — which  is  also  in  the  Probate  Court  of 
Chester — is  dated  the  i  ith  of  April,  1602.  It 
contains  numerous  oddly  trivial  bequests,  I  shall 
here  annex  an  abstract  of  the  items,  as  serving 
T(J      SUPPLY     PARTICULARS      OF      THE      FAMILY     CON- 

*  The  Wills  in  the  Probate  Court  of  Chester  arc  all  contem- 
porary ofTiciaJ  transcripts  lodged  there  ;  and  are  unsigned.  The 
originals,  doubtless,  were  kept  by  the  executors. 


FAMILY  OF  SPFNSFR.  xix 

NEXIONS      OF       THE     HURSTWOOD       SpENSKRS,       and 

SO    touchiii;^     many     personal    allusions    and    circuni- 

stanccs  : — 

"  i6th  April  1602.  Mari^aret  Spenser  of  Hurstwood,  widow, 
makes  this  her  last  Will  and  testament — her  body  to  Christian 
burial  within  the  church  of  Brunley  [Burnley].  Wills  that  imme- 
diately after  her  death  so  much  money  as  remains  of  £,\o  after 
the  funeral  expenses  are  discharged,  be  bestowed  and  given 
unto  the  poor  people  in  Brunley  parish  at  the  discretion  of  her 
executors,  the  first  Good  Friday  which  shall  fall  next  after  her 
death.  Gives  unto  Isabell  Hallsted,  daughter  of  John  Hallsted 
of  Higher  Hallsted  deceased,  one  feather-bed.  etc.,  worset  coat 
and  13s.  4d.  ;  to  John  Hallsted  of  Higher  Hallsted  one  great 
Ark,  one  coverlet,  one  blanket,  one  pair  sheets  and  £3^,  whereof 
he  owed  unto  testatrix  40s.  ;  to  Alice,  wife  of  the  said  John 
Hallsted,  her  best  red  petticoat;  to  John,  Isabell,  Anne,  and 
Elizabethe  Hallsted,  children  of  the  said  John,  i2d.  a  piece;  to 
Robert,  Henry  and  Thomas  Hallsted,  sons  of  John  Hallsted 
deceased,  3s.  4d.  ;  also  to  Alice  Nutter,  wife  of  Henry  Nutter,  one 
blanket,  testatrix's  best  black  gown,  and  13s.  4d.  in  money  ;  also 
to  Mary,  Margaret  and  Frances  Nutter,  daughters  of  the  said 
Henr}-,  3s.  4d.  a  piece  ;  also  to  Edmund  Spenser,  son  and  heir  of 
John  Spenser  deceased,  one  cupboard,  one  pair  of  bedstocks 
standing  in  the  lower  parlour,  one  great  chest,  one  sideboard 
standing  in  the  houseside  and  one  stone  or  milk-board,  all  which 
she  gives  to  the  said  Edmund  during  his  life  :  after  his  death  to 
remain  as  heirlooms,  he  paying  to  Henry  Spenser,  base  son  of 
John  Spenser,  4s.;  also  to  the  said  Edmund,  4s.  4d.  ;  to  Nicholas 
lowne,  3s.  4d.  ;  to  Grace  Towne,  his  wife,  one  churn,  etc.,  and 
6s.  8d.  in  money  ;  also  to  Mary  Spenser,  daughter  of  John 
Spenser,  deceased,  26s.  8d.  ;  also  to  Richard  Carcroft  [or  query 
Barecroft  .••],  whom  she  was  aunt  unto,  £^  ;  also  to  Henry  Bare- 
croft  [or  Carcroft],  of  Birchecliff,  5s.  ;  also  to  John  Spenser  of 
Hurstwood  £\2,  in  consideration  of  his  service  done  unto  her  and 
the  good  will  she  owes  unto  him,  of  which  said  sum  he  owed  her 
£\  ;  also  to  Elinor,  wife  of  the  said  John  Spenser,  one  great  pan 
and  one  coverlet ;  also  to  Edmund  Spenser,  son  of  the  said  John 
Spenser,  los  ;  also  to  John  Hurstwood  and  Alice  Hurstwood 
1 2d.  a-piece  ;  also  to  Ellen  Ryley,  her  maid  servant,  33s.  4d.  ;  to 
Thomas  Clavton  I2d.  ;  to  William  Barecroft  of  Mayroid  3s.  4d.  ; 
to  Easter  Mitchell  one  chafing-dish  ;  to  Grace  Townley,  wife  of 
John  Townley,  her  greatest  brass  pot ;  to  John,  Barnard,  Mary, 
Agnes,  and  Jane  Townley,  sons  and  daughters  of  the  said  John, 
i2d.  a-piece;    to  Anne  Canester,  widow,  one  candlestick  and 


XX  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

2IS.  in  money;  to  Ellen  Banester,  daughter  of  Heniy  Banester 
deceased,  i2d.  ;  also  to  John,  Christopher,  William,  Ellen, 
Margaret,  Anne  and  Elizabeth  Botheman,  sons  and  daughters  of 
John  Botheman,  i2d.  a-piece  ;  also  to  John  Barecroftof  Burlees 
one  silver  spoon  ;  also  to  Ellen,  wife  of  Richard  Smith,  12s.  ;  also 
to  Margaret  Nutter,  wife  of  IIenr)%  one  '  guyshing  rase';  to 
James  Tattersall,  Robert  Hallsted  and  Elizabeth,  wife  of  Oliver 
Ryley,  whom  she  is  godmother  unto,  i2d.  a-piece.  Other  legacies 
to  Henry  Farrer,  Alice  Barecroft  widow,  and  Ambrose  Barecroft ; 
also  to  John  Tovvnley,  in  regard  of  his  pains  taken,  20s.;  to  Agnes 
and  Henry  Wilkinson,  Isabell  Hallsted,  daughter  of  John 
deceased;  and  Isabell  Spenser,  base  daughter  of  John  Spenser  ; 
also  to  Robert  Harrebank,  6s.  8d.  The  rest  and  residue  of  all 
her  goods,  testatrix  bequeaths  to  John  Townley  and  John  Spenser, 
whom  she  makes  her  executors.  Witnesses  John  Ingham,  John 
Botheman,  Henry  Wilkinson,  Nicholas  Towne." 

At  the  end  is  written — 

"Commission  to  be  granted  (o  Thomas  Ryley,  curate  of 
Burnley." 

Margaret  Spenser  of  the  above  Will  lived  three 
years  after  its  execution,  viz.,  to  1605,  as  the  Burnley- 
burial  entry  tells  us—"  Uxor  Edmund  Spenser  of 
Hurstwood  sepult.  the  xj  day  of  June  1605." 

John  Spenser  of  Hurstwood,  gent.,  "son  and  heir" 
of  Edmund  Spenser  (who  died  in  1587),  survived 
his  father  hardly  three  months.  By  Grace  his  wife 
fmaiden  name  probably  Horsfall)  he  had  issue  a  son 
Edmund  ;  and  a  daughter,  Mary,  who  was  baptized 
at  Burnley,  24th  April,  1584.  John  Spenser  made  his 
Will  on  the  28th  of  June,  1587,  and  was  buried  at 
Burnley  Church  next  day,  29th  June,  1587. 

An  abstract  of  his  Will  will  complete  our  docu- 
mentary materials  —  also  taken  from  the  Probate 
Court  at  Chester  :  — 

John  Spenser  the  inkier,  of  Hurstwood,  yeoman,  by  his  Will 
bequeaths  his  body  to  Christian  burial  within  the  Church  of 
15runley  [Burnley],  and  proceeds:   "  Allso   I  will  that  after  my 


FAMILY  OF  SFF.VSFA\ 


decease  my  debtes  being  payde.  my  .?'^o^^,s'^'^•'^V  ^  itv  wife 
three  equal!  partes  or  porcons  :    the  hrst  p'te  for  Orace  my  wife 
for  and    in  the   name    of  her  canonicall  p  te  or   porcon      the 
seconde  p'te  for  Marie  Spenser  my  dau.^^hter ;    the  fhirde  and 
laste  p'te  for  myselfe.    Allso  I  will  that  after  my  f^nerall  expenc  s 
dischkrd^^ed,  the  said  thirde  and  laste  p  te  shalbe  divided  into 
three  equall  partes  or  porCons.  whereof  the  first  p  te  I  give  and 
bequethe   unfo  Grace  my  wife,  and    the  other    two    partes    or 
po?cons,  residue  of  my  said  thirde  p'te,  I   give    ^nd  bequethe 
unto  Mirie  Spenser  my  saide  daughter      Also  I  will  that  G  ace 
my    wife  have   the  goveminge  ^nd  gardenshippe  of   hdmundc 
Spenser  my  sone  until  such  tyme  as  he  accomplish  the  age  of  xinj 
yeares,  if  she  the  said  Grace  keape  herselfe  so  long  unmarried, 
and  if  she  marrie.  then  I  will  that  Richard  Horsfalle  ^Y  bro  her- 
in-lawe    have    the  goveminge    and    gardensh.ppe  o    t-dmunde 
my  saide    sone  during  the  time   aforesaide.     Allso  l.^^''^   ^hat 
Edmunde  Spenser  my  said  sone  shall  paye  unto  Mane  Spenser 
my  doughter  so  much  laufull  English  moneye  as  shall  make  her 
n-te  of  loodes  amounte  to  the  full  value  of  one  hundreth  marke. 
\vhen  he  the  saide  Edmunde  shall  accomplish  the  age  of  twente 
and  one  yeares),  and  if  he  the  saide  Edmunde  doe  retuse  and  will 
not  paye  so  much  moneye  as  aforesaide,  then  1  will  that  al    n  y 
landes   remayne  and  be  unto  the  use    and  behoofe  of    Mane 
Spenser  my  saide  doughter,  until!  such  tyme  as  it  ^aketh  he 
p'te  of  goodes  one  hundreth  markes  as  aforesaide   or  el  s  he  tl^c 
saide  EMmunde  paye  so  much  moneye  as  aforesaide.    Also  1  nm 
that  Marie    my  saide  doughter  and  her  p'te  of  gooses   shall 
remayne  and  be  with  Grace  my  saide  wite  solongeas  she  keapes 
herself  unmarried,  etc.     Allso  I   do  constitute,  etc     Grace  my 
saide  wife  my  sole  executor  of  this  my   last  \\M,  etc.  ;    and 
aUso  I  do  nominate   and  appointe  John  Townley  of  Hurstwoud 
supervisor  of  this  my   last  Will  and  testament.      These  being 
witnesse,    Bamarde    Townley.    John    lownlcy.    John    Spen.er 
younger,  Samuell  Barecroft,  with  others." 

At  the  foot  of  the  Will  is  written  : 

"  Debt  owing  by  me    the    saide  testator   unto  Margaret  my 
mothcr-in-lawe[  =  step-mother  or  mother-by-law.  as  second  wife 
This  father  Edmund]  and   John  Spenser  my  yonger  brother, 
ix"." 
An  Inventory  of  goods  accompanies  the  Will. 

After   the   death   of    John    Spenser  of    Hurstu'ood, 
Grace    Spenser    his     widow    continued     to    reside    at 


xxii  THE  ANCESTRY  AX  J) 

Hurstuood.  Some  three  years  subsequently,  in  the 
33rd  of  Elizabeth  (a.D.  1590),  she  was  plaintiff  and 
John  Spenser,  her  late  husband's  half-brother,  defendant, 
in  a  suit  in  the  Chancery  Court  of  Lancaster  respecting 
the  title  to  certain  messuages  and  lands  at  Hurstwood. 
Then,  about  the  time  her  "guardianship"  of  Edmund 
— as  in  the  Will  of  his  father — ceased,  she  appears  to 
have  re-married;  for  on  the  20th  of  November,  1593, 
Nicholas  Towne  and  Grace  Spenser  ■  were  married  at 
Burnley  Church.  That  this  Grace  Spenser  was  of 
the  household  of  Hurstwood  is  attested  by  the  legacies 
in  the  Will  of  Mistress  Margaret  Spenser  already 
given,  in  1602,  of  3^-.  4^.  to  Nicholas  Towne  and  to 
Grace  Towne,  his  wife,  of  6s.  8d. 

John  Spenser  the  Younger,  second  son  of  Edmund 
Spenser  of  Hurstwood,  and  brother  of  John  the  Elder, 
likewise  resided  at  Hurstwood  for  some  years  after 
his  brother's  death.  Most  likely  he  farmed  the  free- 
hold for  the  benefit  of  his  deceased  brother's  family 
in  the  nonage  of  his  nephew  Edmund — his  mother, 
Margaret  Spenser,  being  still  domiciled  there '  until 
her  death  in  1605.  I  find  his  name — "John  Spenser 
of  Hurstwood,  gent." — in  a  List  of  Free  Tenants  of 
Blackburn  Hundred,  in  A.D.  1600.*  He  married 
at  Burnley,  the  i6th  of  May,  1594,  Ellen  (or  Ellinor) 
Hurstwood,  sister  most  probably  of  John  Hurstwood 
and  Alice  Hurstwood  named  in  his  mother's  Will. 
By  her  he  had  issue,  a  son,  Edmund  Spenser,  who 
was  baptized  at  Burnley  the  20th  of  October,  1595. 
Ikfore  his  marriage  John    Spenser  had   no   fewer  than 

*  Ilarlcian  AIS.  zo\2. 


■•AMILV  OF  SPEXSKH. 


four    illegitimate    or    "base"      h''''-"  '    '-     .'J"    , 
Spenser    base    son    of   John    hpenser,   bapt.   the    7 U> 
of  May    .587";  "Robert  Spenser,  base  son  of  John 
SpenscV,  bapt'th;  3.st  of  Deeember    ,589"  ;     Jcnnc 
Spenser,   base  dat,ghter  of  John    Spenser,    bapt    tic 
Mth  of  Deeember,  ,386";   and  "  'f  :^"  S,,cn^er  ba.e 
daushter  of  John  Spenser,"  so  named  m  Mrs.  Margaret 
Spenslrs  W  11  as  a  small  legatee ;  who  also  gave  money 
fo'^Henr,-,   "natural   son"  of  her  son   John    Spenser 
The  elde    Edmund  Spenser  of  Hurstwood  was  gone 
befle  the  first  of  these  blots  on  his  ^^^^^^^^^^^y 
fudging  by  the  Puritanic  openmg  of  h.5  W  U,  »e  may 
issume%h'at   .the    sin    and    sorrow    would    have    been 

"TilS-jTspenser  the  Younger  appears  to  have 
viefded  up  Hurstwood  to  the  Poss=ssion.of  h>s  broto. 
heir  when  the  latter  attained  h,s  majority  "^  ='<=3; 
to  klve  resided  afterwards  at  Redlees  m  Chv.ger, 
where  he  dted  in  .6,8-. 9,  as  in  the  Burnley  Register: 
" '6,8  '9    John  Spenser  of  Redlees  scpuUus  the  x,x. 

"'E^lVnd-lS-  of  Hurstwood,  yeoman  »  gent 
son  of  John  Spenser  the  elder,  was   born   about  .,80 

He  is  mentioned  in  his  g-"df^"l"J:; """ ^8  7  nd 
,  -SB-  in  his  father  John  Spenser s  Will  m  .587  ,  ana 
in  hi;  step-motheri  W.ll  (Mrs.  Margaret  Spenser s) 
"  ,602  He  married  and  had  issue  sons :  John 
"jl'spenser,  son  of  Edmund  Sp-er  o^  Hu  st- 
wood,  b,ipt.  the  2..st  July.  ,6.3  -''':"„  ,,ul  Spenser 
Edmund  ("Edmund  Spenser,  son  "^  ^^^^^'^ 
of  Hurstwood,  bapt.  the  2yi  Jan.,   .62  '^     0  • 

daughter  AUce  ^"  Alice  Spenser,  daughter  of  l.dmum 


xxiv  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

Spenser  of  Ilurstuood,  bapt.  5th  May,  1637"),  and 
it  may  be  other  children  {e.g.,  "  Marie  Spenser,  daui^diter 
of  Edmundc  Spenser,  was  buried   13th  May,  162  i  "). 

Edmund  Spenser  of  Ilurstwood  was  a  warden  of 
Jkirnley  Church  in  161 7  and  again  in  1649.  He 
occurs  in  164 1  in  a  List  of  Local  Freeholders  as 
"Edmund  Spenser  of  Ilurstwood,  gent"  (MS.)  His 
Will,  dated  1653,  was  prtjvcd  in  the  Prerogative  Court 
t)f  Canterbury,  and  is  preserved  in  Somerset  House, 
London.  He  died  in  September  1654,  and  was  buried 
at  Ikirnley  ("  Edmund  Spenser  of  Hurstwood,  yeoman, 
sepult.  28th  Sept.  [1654]"). 

John  Spenser  of  Hurstwood,  yeoman,  son  of  Edmund, 
entered  upon  his  possession  of  the  freehold  on  his 
father's  death  in  1654,  and  held  it  for  about  thirty- 
three  years.  He  was  born — as  already  stated — in 
1 61 3.  From  a  "Note"  in  Notes  and  Queries  (ist 
Series,  vii.  410)  we  obtain  several  items  respecting 
this  Spenser  of  Hurstwood  and  his  son  John,  and  their 
disposition  of  their  long-transmitted  little  proj^erty. 
His  eldest  son  was  named  John.  \x\  1677  there  was 
an  Indenture  of  Covenants  for  a  fine  between  John 
Spenser  the  elder  and  Oliver  Ormerod  of  Cliviger, 
gent.  The  Will  of  John  Spenser  the  elder,  "  late"  of 
Hurstwood,  yeoman,  contains  a  reference  to  the  Hurst- 
wood tenement  as  the  inheritance  of  his  great-grand- 
father l^dmun.d  Spenser — who,  as  we  have  shown,  had 
died  about  a  century  earlier.  John  Spenser  the  farther 
dii'd  soon  after  the  execution  of  his  Will. 

John  S[)cnser  the  son  c(jimp!eted  the  alienation  of 
the  freehold.  A  dt>cument  dated  1689  sets  forth 
certain    family   arrangements    made   by   him   as   to  the 


U 


FAMILY  at   SPEXSER.  xxv 

Hurstwood  tenement,  then  "in  the  occupation  of  OHvcr 
Ormeryde."  In  1690  a  deed  of  conveyance  was  exe- 
cuted of  the  Hurstwood  tenement  from  John  Spenser, 
then  of  iMarsden,  to  Oliver  Ormerod  of  Hurstwood  and 
his  son  Lawrence. 

And  so  ended  the  connection  of  the  Sfensers  with 
the  ancient  estate  and  house  of  the  family  at  Hurstwood. 
We  shall  by-and-by  find  that  these  were  "  the 
friends  in  the  North  of  England"  with  whom  Edmund 
Spenser  resided  on  leaving  the  University  of  Cambridge  ; 
and  hence  it  is  a  satisfaction  to  be  able  to  place  opposite 
the  commencement  of  this  chapter  a  vignette  of  one  of 
the  residences  of  the  Halsteds — kinsmen  of  the  Spcnscrs 

under   whose    hospitable    roof    doubtless    the    Poet 

was  no  infrequent  visitor.  It  is  at  Worsthorn,  near 
Burnley.* 

Having  thus  traced  out  the  Spensers  of  Hurstwood 
proper,  it  now  falls  to  do  the  like  for  the  branches  from 
this  "house  of  aiincknt  fame" — as  has  been  sufficiently 
made  good. 

These  were  likewise  located  in  the  Burnley  district 
of  North-East  Lancashire.  The  first  is  known  as  of 
Filley  Close,  and  this  family  in  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  occupied  the  tenement  which  is 
called  to  this  day  "  Spensers"— according  to  an  old 
custom  very  general  in  former  times  on  this  side  of 
Lancashire  of  naming  farmsteads  after  the  families 
which  lived  in  them,  whether  as  owners  or  leaseholders. 
We  have   little   except   the  entries    of  the    Church 

*  In  larire-paper  conies  only.  See  preface  on  Mr.  Ilamerton'b 
kindness  in  supplying  this  and  other  North-East  Lancashire 
illustrations. 


XX- vi  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

Registers — and  these,  alas  !  imperfect — of  Ncwchurch 
in  Pcndlc  and  of  Burnley,  to  fall  back  on  in  elucidating 
this  branch  of  the  Spcnsers.  Their  items  will  appear 
in  their  places.  But  at  this  point  I  am  pleased  to 
produce  an  independent  authority — viz.,  "The  Spending 
of  the  Money  of  Robert  Nowell,  of  Reade  Hall, 
Lancashire,  Brother  of  Dean  Alexander  Nowell,  1568- 
80"  (i  vol.  4to,  1877).  This  priceless  manuscript — 
formerly  among  the  Townley  MSS.,  now  in  the 
Chctham  Library,  Manchester — among  many  other 
entries  that  must  hereafter  be  adduced,  contains  an 
interesting  fact  respecting  the  (then)  head  of  the  Filley 
Close  Spcnsers.  In  the  long  roll  of  recipients  of  the 
gifts  of  money  and  cloth  bestowed  by  Dean  Nowell,  as 
trustee  of  his  brother's  bounty,  upon  Robert  Nowell 's 
"  poorc  kynsfolkes"  in  Lancashire,  in  the  months  of 
June  and  July  i  569,  were  these  : — 

"  To  T-yttis  Nowell  wicffe  to  T,a\vrance  Spcnsere  of  Castell 
pislio  ij  yL'ardes  di.  Lyncn  cV'  in  moneye  .         .  .     ijs. 

"  'l"o  iuM-  Sonne  Ellis  Spensere  of  the  same  pishe  ij  veardes 
vvollen '   .         . 

"  Letis  Nowell        ....     one  yearde  di.  wollen." 

(pp.  308-9,  334-5.) 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  in  the  first  entry  the  wife  of 
Lawrence  Spenser  is  mentioned  by  her  maiden  name 
to  s1i(jw  that  slie  was  a  Nowell.  What  her  actual 
kinship  was  to  Robert  Nowell  and  his  brother  the 
illustrious  Dean,  I  cannot  tell.  It  might  not  be  very 
near  ;  but  it  an\how  establishes  a  relationship  betwi.xt 
the  Xowells  of  keade  Hall  and  the  Spensers  of  this 
branch.  The  husband,  Lawrence  Spenser,  is  described 
as    of    "  Caslell     parishe."      The    "Castell"    is    that    of 


(   / 


FA  MIL  V  OF  SPF.VSER.  xxvii 

Clithcroe  certainly;  but  the  "Castle  parish"  embraced 
demesnes  of  the  Castle  in  Pendle  Forest,  Clitheroe 
Castle  being  extra-parochial. 

In  a  note  to  Whitaker's  History  of  Whalhy,  under 
"Pendle  Forest"  (vol.  i.,  p.  299)  it  is  stated — "  Besides 
the  booths  which  constitute  the  chapelry  of  New- 
church,  some  parts  of  Pendle  Forest  to  the  West,  as 
Heyhouses,  are  within  the  chapelry  of  Padiham,  and 
some  to  the  East,  as  Barrowford,  within  that  of  Colne. 
But  Reedly  Hallowes,  Fillcy  Close,  New  Laund  and 
Wheatley  Carr,  together  with  Ightenhill  Park,  having 
been  allotted  to  no  chapelry,  are  considered  as  still 
belonging  to  the  Castle  Parish  ;  in  consequence  of 
which  their  inhabitants  marry  at  Clitheroe." 

Filley  Close  being  reckoned  a  part  of  the  Castle 
Parish  of  Clitheroe,  though  several  miles  distant,  the 
Lawrence  Spenser  of  the  Nowell  MS.  was  doubtless 
Lawrence  Spenser  of  the  ancient  booth  or  vaccary  of 
Filley  Close,  within  the  Forest  of  Pendle. 

En  passant  it  may  be  mentioned  that  Filley  Close 
received  its  name  from  the  circumstance  of  an  enclosure 
having  been  made  in  the  Forest  there  upon  good  land 
on  the  western  bank  of  the  Calder,  for  the  keeping  of 
the  "fillies"  which  were  bred  in  the  royal  stables  of 
Ightenhill  manor  on  the  other  side  of  the  river,  in  the 
Plantagenet  times,  when  a  large  stud  of  the  King's 
horses,  for  use  in  the  hunts  through  the  royal  chases 
of  the  district,  was  maintained  there. 

Lawrence  Spenser  of  Filley  Close  in  1569  had  a 
son  Ellis  Spenser — who  also  had  a  gift  of  cloth.  It 
would  seem  that  he  was  up-grown,  and  not  living  with 
his  father:  for  why  else  the  words  "of  the  same  parishe  "  } 


xxviii  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

Mr.  F.  C.  Sl'KNCER,  in  his  paper  "  Locality  of  the 
Family  of  Fdmund  Spenser," in  iheGeiitlcuunis Magazine 
(1842,  vol.  xviii.,  pp.  138-43) — for  which  he  must  ever 
be  held  in  honour  by  all  lovers  of  Spenser — considered 
it  most  likely  that  this  Lawrence  Spenser  of  Filley  Close 
was  grandfather  of  the  Poet,  whose  own  (second)  son 
was  named  Lawrence.  If  that  conjecture  were  correct, 
Lettice  Xowell  was  grandmother  of  Spenser,  and  Ellis 
Spenser — named  in  1569 — his  uncle.  More  of  this 
ultimately. 

A  Lawrence  Spenser  was  buried  at  Nevvchurch  in 
Pendle  in  1584 — not  improbably  the  same  as  he  of 
Filley  Close  in  1569.  He  was  an  old  man  at  his 
death  if  this  were  he.  But  there  was  another  Lawrence 
Spenser  who  had  a  number  of  children  born  between 
I  564  and  1575.  He  might  be  another  son  of  Lawrence 
the  elder,  settled  somewhere  betwixt  Filley  Close 
and  Burnley — two  miles  to  the  south — perhaps  in 
Igh.tenhill,  or  Ilabergham  Eaves,  on  the  west  side  of 
15urnley.  His  family  were  "christened"  at  Burnley 
Church.  He  had  issue  sons:  John,  "baptized  the 
I  2th  Hecember,  1567";  Barnard,  "  baptized  the  29th 
July,  I  571";  and  Richard,  "  baptized  the  20th  Octo- 
L»er,  1575";  and  a  daughter  Elizabeth,  "  baptized  the 
13th  May,  1564."  This  Lawrence  Spenser  was  buried 
at  Burnley  the  3rd  September,  1593,  and  his  wife  on 
the  3rd  November,  1597. 

John  Spenser,  son  of  this  Lawrence,  married  and  had 
issue:  e.g.,  twins,  "Lawrence  and  Lucy  Spenser,  son 
and  daughter  of  John,  baptized  the  22nd  February, 
'593-4."  <-"tc.  Barnard,  another  son  of  Lawrence, 
had    a    sun    Lawrence,    baptized    the     5th    November, 


FAMILY  OF  SPEXSFR.  xxix 

1598,  and  a  child  buried  26th  April,  159S.  Later 
members  of  the  Filley  Close  and  Pendle  Forest  branch 
were  John  Spenser,  who  had  twins — son  and  daughter, 
Lawrence  and  Mary — born  in  163  i,  baptized  at  New- 
church  ;  Lawrence  Spenser  of  Pendle,  who  had  a 
son  born  in  165 1  ;  George  Spenser  of  Filley  Close, 
who  had  a  son  Edmund,  born  in  1666;  and  John 
Spenser  of  Pendle,  who  had  a  son  Lawrence  born  in 
1666.  . 

Another  member  of  the  Spenser  clan,  most  likely  of 
the  Filley  Close  and  Pendle  Forest  branch,  emigrated 
to  Downham,  on  the  other  side  of  the  mountain  of 
Pendle,  about  three  miles  north-east  of  Clitheroe  in 
Ribblesdale.  This  was  John  Spenser  of  Downham, 
yeoman.  He  had  a  son  Richard  Spenser,  and  three 
daughters — Margaret  (who  married  one  Beaver),  Alice, 
and  Dorothy.  His  wife  apparently  was  a  Hartley — 
Lawrence  Hartley  being  described  as  "  brother-in-law." 
He  had  a  brother  Henry  Spenser. 

These  items  I  glean  from  his  Will,  preserved — like 
the  others — in  the  Probate  Court  of  Chester  (dated 
26th  February,  8  James  L,  161C-1  i). 

There  were  two  or  three  other  branches  of  the 
Spensers  located  in  townships  and  hamlets  about 
15urnley,  which  must  now  have  brief  notice. 

One  Robert  Spenser,  who  resided  in  Habergham 
Eaves  or  Ightenhill  Park,  must  have  been  a  near 
kinsman,  if  not  a  brother,  of  Edmund  Spenser  of 
Hurstwood,  the  head  of  the  House.  I  find  he  was 
associated  with  him  first  as  co-defendant,  and  then  as 
co-plaintiff,  in  two  suits  heard  in  the  Chancer)'  Court 
of  the   Duchy  of   Lancaster   in   the   6th  (;f  PLli/abcth 


^•.\■x  77/ A'  AA'C7-:S7'/^  i'  AX/) 

(a.D.  1563-4).  In  the  former,  Anne  Townlcy,  widow 
of  Nicholas  Townley, claiming  by  lease  from  Henry  VIII., 
was  against  Edmund  and  Robert  Spenser,  Miles  Aspe- 
den  and  Ciiristopher  Ryley,  who  claimed  by  conveyance 
from  plaintiff,  in  an  action  respecting  certain  messuages, 
lands,  and  tenements  in  Burnley  and  in  the  manor 
of  Ightenhill.  In  the  second,  Edmund  Spenser  and 
Robert  Spenser  were  plaintiffs,  and  Anne  Townley, 
widow,  Christopher  Whitacre  and  others  were  defend- 
ants, in  a  dispute  as  to  title  to  a  tenement  called 
Whyteside  in  Ightenhill  lordship.  This  was  about  the 
year  1564.*  In  1569,  when  Dean  Nowell  came  into 
East  Lancashire  to  distribute  the  "gifts"  of  his  brother 
(as  before),  amongst  the  beneficiaries  in  Habergham 
Eaves,  Ightenhill  Park,  and  Filley  Close,  were  gifts  of 
woollen  or  linen  cloth  to  each  of  five  members  of  one 
family  of  Spensers :  namely,  to  the  wife  of  Robert 
Spenser,  to  Edward,  Philip,  and  Alice  Spenser — her 
sons  and  daughter — and  to  Robert  Spenser — either 
liusband  or  son.  I  think  he  must  have  been  the 
husband  and  father,  because  he  had  a  gift  distinct  from 
those  of  the  three  children,  receiving  a  larger  quantity 
of  linen  cloth,  whilst  they  had — with  their  mother — 
woollen  cloth  only,  f 

In  1586  John  Spenser  of  Habergham  Leaves  was  a 
v;itness  to  the  Will  of  Edmund  Spenser  of  Hurstwood. 
Several  baptisms  at  Burnley  between  15CS3  and  1590 
api)ear  to  have  been  of  children  of  this  John  Spenser 
of  Habergham  Eaves.  They  included  Ambrose,  son 
of  John,    "baptized      13th    August,     1583";     Robert, 

'■■■  C.-il.  to  l^l(M(liiiL';s,  Dili  liy  of  T.am-astcr.  s.n. 
t  "  Spendinir,"  ::.//. 


FAMILY  OF  SPEXSER.  xxxi 

"baptized   2  1st  July,   1588"  ;  and  John,  son  of  John, 
"baptized  17th  June,  15 90-1." 

It  would  seem  that  the  following  entrj'  records  the 
marriage  of  the  parents  of  the  above:  — "  1582.  John 
Spenserand  Anne  Whitehead,  married  the  24th  of  October 
1582."  Edmund  Spenser  of  Habergham  Eaves  (son 
of  Robert  in  1569  ?)  was  buried  "  13th  March,  1607," 
and  Alice  Spenser  of  Habergham  Eaves  was  "  buried 
the  1 6th  May,  1608."  Nearly  a  century  later,  George 
Spenser  of  Ightenhill  Park  had  a  son  Lawrence  born 
in  December  1703. 

As  to  Spcnsers  living  in  the  town  or  township  of 
Burnley,  in  the  Nowell  MS.  occur  three  cases  of  "  gifts  " 
to  persons  of  this  surname  who  were  inhabitants  of 
Burnley.      One  entr)'  stands  by  itself : — 

"  To  Edmunde  Spenser  .  .  .  .  iij  yeardes  woUen  "  (p.  352). 
Onward  appears 

"  Isabell  Spensere iij  yeardes  wollen  "  (p.  356) ; 

And  next 

"  AgTies  Spensere iij  yeardes  wollen  "  (p.  358). 

Amongst  so  many  Edmund  Spcnsers  I  have  not 
enough  courage  to  seek  to  identify  this  Edmund  of 
Burnley.  He  was  not  a  son,  but  might  be  cousin, 
of  his  namesake  Edmund  of  Hurstwood,  chief  of  the 
House.  He  may  have  been  an  Edmund  Spenser  who 
was  buried  at  Burnley  the  9th  November,  1577  :  and 
so  the  Isabell  Spenser  an  Isabell  Spenser  buried  14th 
August,  1572. 

And  now  having  presented,  once  for  all,  the  entire 
datiX  resulting  from  our  genealogical  investigations  in 
every  likely  place  in  Lancashire — especially  North-East 


xxxii  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

Lancashire— the  question  is  at  once  started,  Who  of  all 
these  Spensers  were  progenitors  of  the  Poet  ?  and  next, 
What   was    the    connection    of   his    father   with   other 
members  of  the    Spensers   thus  found   settled    in   the 
borderland   of  North-East  Lancashire,  about   Chviger, 
Ikunley,  and  Pendle  Forest  ?      I  fear  that  whilst  there 
can  no  longer  be  any  doubt  that  Edmund  Spenser  was 
sprung  of  these  Spensers,  or  that  Lancashire  in  Gabriel 
Harvey's  phrase  was  his  shire  ("jw/r  shier  "),  and  equally 
as  little  doubt  that  it  was  to  this  district  the  Poet  came 
as  a  visitor-resident  among  relatives  when  he  completed 
his  course  at  the  University,  we  must  rest  content  with 
an  approximation  to  certainty.     The  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  absolute  certainty  are  tantalizingly  multiplied. 
]<rom  the  birth-date  of  the  Poet  (1552)  his  father  must 
have  been  born  somewhere  about  1520  to  1525.     But 
Parish-registers  of  baptisms,  burials,  and  marriages  date 
in  England  only  from  1538,  whilst  the  oldest  at  Burnley 
does  not  begin  until   1562.     Unless,  therefore,  in  some 
(presently)   unknown   title^leed  or  family-document  of 
these    Spensers    of  the   first    quarter   of    the   sixteenth 
century,  no  mention  of  Edmund  Spenser's  grandfather 
and  father  establishing  their  relation  can  exist.    Further, 
the  "  Great  Fire,"  by  its  destruction  of  the  city  churches 
of  London,  has  robbed  us  of  the  baptismal  entry  of  the 
Poet    himself,   which   doubtless    should   have    supplied 
both  father  and  mother's  name. ,    Still  more  trying,  the 
Merchant  Taylors'  School  has  no  record  of  its  proudest 
name  ;   and  even  at  Pembroke   Hall  in   Cambridge  his 
name    alone   appears   without    paternity   or   birthplace. 
We   are    thus   bafHcd   on  all   hands.      A   careful,   long- 
pondered,  semi-conjectural  conclusion  is  all  I  can  submit. 


FAM/LV  OF  SPKXSFR.  xxxiii 

As  anttcipatively  announced,  Edmund  Spenser  was 
educated  at  Merchant  Taj-lors'  School — proofs  from  the 
Nowell  MS.  onward — in  ahnost  its  commencement 
(September  i  560-1).  His  admission  among  the  first 
of  its  pupils  suggests  that  his  father  was  in  some  way 
associated  with  the  City  Company  of  the  Merchant 
Taylors  ;  and  in  the  Records  of  the  Company  between 
1560  and  1570  three  persons  of  the  name  of  Spenser 
occur : — 

I.  Robert  Spenser,  gentleman,  Lincoln's  Inn,  "not 
a  member  of  the  Company,"  but  who  had  pecuniary 
relations  with  it.  2.  Nicholas  Spenser,  a  "  wealthy 
and  able  "  member  of  the  Company,  who  was  elected 
Warden  12th  July,  1568.  3.  John  Spenser,  who  in 
October  i  566  is  designated  "a  free  jorneyman  "  in  the 
"  arte  or  mysterie  of  clothmakynge,"  and  then  in  the 
service  of  Nicholas  Peele,  shcerman  of  Bow  Lane. 

Which  of  these  is  most  likely  to  have  been  the  father 
of  the  Poet  ?  The  first — Robert  Spenser — could  not 
possibly  have  been.  That  is,  a  "gentleman"  in  his 
circumstances  never  would  have  had  a  son  "  entered  " 
as  a  "  poor  scholar "  of  Merchant  Taj-lors'  School  ! 
The  second — Nicholas  Spenser — is  for  similar  reasons 
to  be  put  out  of  the  reckoning.  As  "  wealthy  and 
able,"  he  cannot  be  supposed  to  have  sent  his  son  to 
be  a  beneficiary  of  a  "  charitable  "  school,  or  of  a  "  dole  " 
on  proceeding  to  the  University.  But  Edmund  Spenser 
was  thus  admitted,  and  did  thus  receive  a"  dole,"  in 
the  very  year  (1568-9)  of  Nicholas  Spenser's  warden- 
ship. 

There  remains  the  third — John  Spenser,  "free  jorney- 
man "  cloth-worker.    In  my  judgment  he  was  the  father 

I.  f 


xxxiv  THE  ANCES7'RY  AND 

of  the  Poet.  We  cannot  pronounce  positively ;  but 
the  whole  circumstances  and  chronology  fit  in.  Thus 
he  was  just  the  sort  of  comparatively  poor,  though 
"free"  citizen,  engaged  in  the  craft,  for  whose  sons 
the  Merchant  Taylors'  School  was  designed.  As  Mr. 
R.  B.  Knowles  in  hisaccount  of  the  Townley  MS.  in  the 
Fourth  Report  of  the  Royal  Commission  on  Historical 
Documents  (pp.  406-8)  puts  it — "  Edmund's  position 
as  a  '  poor  scholar '  is  in  striking  harmony  with  the 
supposition  that  his  father  was  a  journeyman  cloth- 
worker — a  '  free  jorneyman  '  of  the  Company  in  whose 
School  his  son  was  receiving  gratuitous  education.  The 
supposition  acquires  weight  from  the  inference  that  the 
Masters  and  Wardens  of  Merchant  Taylors',  in  their 
selection  of  free  scholars,  would  give  a  preference  to 
the  poor  members  of  their  own  mystery,  and  by  the 
fact  that  they  did." 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  Mr.  Knowles,  in  a  Sup- 
plementary Note  to  his  description  of  the  Townley 
Manuscript,  created  an  imaginary  objection  to  his 
previous  surmise  that  John  Spenser  was  the  father 
of  the  Poet.  He  thus  presents  it :  "  Since  writing 
my  report  I  have  gone  through  the  whole  of  Colonel 
Townley's  Spenser  Manuscript,  and  I  have  found 
reason  to  doubt  the  conjecture  that  John  Spenser,  the 
'  free  jorneyman  '  of  Merchant  Taylors',  was  the  father 
of  Edmund  Spenser.  That  conjecture  is  subject  to  the 
drawback  that  John  Spenser,  afterwards  President  of 
Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  and  of  whose  birth 
nothing  seems  to  be  known,  except  that  he  was  a 
'  Suffolk  man  born  '  (Wood's  AtJience  by  Bliss,  ii.  45), 
was  at  Merchant  Taylors'  at  the  same  time  as  Edmund. 


FAMILY  OF  SPENSER.  xxxv 

His  Christian  name  would  give  him  a  stronger  claim  to 
be  the  son  of  the  '  free  jorneyman  '  than  the  poet's." 

Mr.  Knowles  was  strangely  hasty  in  his  withdrawal, 
and  in  "  putting  in  abeyance  a  theory,  which  he  had 
entertained  with  no  little  pleasure."  For  John  Spenser 
the  scholar  of  Merchant  Taylors'  School,  described  as 
son  of  John,  must  have  been  quite  another  person  from 
the  John  Spenser  whom  Anthony  a-Wood  speaks  of  as 
a  "  Suffolk  man,"  and  who  became  eventually  President 
of  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  as  this  very  Townley 
MS.  demonstrates.  In  the  Spending  of  the  Afoney  of 
Robert  Noivell  two  John  Spenscrs  occur  as  recipients 
of  gifts,  contemporaries  and  undergraduates  at  the  same 
time,  but  one  of  them  at  Cambridge  and  the  other  at 
Oxford.  On  the  29th  April,  1578,  amongst  gifts  to 
students  at  Cambridge,  Dean  Nowell  gave  vs.  to  "  one 
John  Spenser  of  Pembroke  Hall  in  Canibtidge"  [s.n.). 
Over  two  years  earlier,  on  the  7th  of  November,  1575, 
he  had  given,  amongst  gifts  to  Oxford  students,  xj.  "  to 
Mr.  Doctor  Coole  [Cole]  to  the  use  of  John  Spenser 
of  Corpus  Christi  College  in  Oxforde."  These  could 
not  be  the  same  person.  The  Oxford  John  Spenser, 
born  in  Suffolk  "about  1560,"  was  at  Corpus  Christi 
'"  ^575  {'ii  supra),  became  first  Clerk  of  the  College, 
then  B.A.,then  Greek  Reader  in  1578,  P^cllow  in  1579, 
afterwards  D.D.,  and  finally  President  of  Corpus  Christi 
9th  June,  1607,  and  died  3rd  April,  1614. 

The  John  Spenser  of  Cambridge  I  identify  with 
the  John  Spenser  admitted  a  "  scholar  "  of  Merchant 
Taylors'  School  on  the  3rd  August,  i  57 1,  and  described 
in  the  School  Register  as  "John  Spenser,  son  of  John 
Spenser,    gent."       He    proceeded    to    Pembroke    Hall, 


.xxxvi  Jill':  ANCKSTKY  AXJ> 

Cai)ihrit!-c,  before  I  577-8,  for  he  commenced  HA.  in 
that  \  i.-ar. 

Here,  then,  is  a  Jolm  Spenser  educated  at  the  same 
school  as  luhnund  S[)enser,  and  then  passed  on  to  the 
same  col!e'_;e  ("  Pembroke  Hall  ")  at  Cambridge.  What 
more  likely  than  that  he  was  son  of  the  same  John 
Sjjcnser  "  free  jorne\-man,"  and  so  a  younger  brother 
of  ICdmund.^  J5y  1571  the  "  free  jorneyman  "  might 
easily  have  become  a  ''Master"  Merchant  Taylor.  But 
if  this  John  Spenser  was  son  of  the  "  free  jorneyman" 
of  I  566,  it  is  equally  probable  that  Edmund  was 
an  elder  son — which  brings  us  back  to  our  former 
conclusion. 

Is  it  objected  that  the  designation  "gent."  could  not 
be  accorded  to  one  in  the  circumstances  of  a  "  free 
jrirneyman  "  }  Ikit  I  accentuate  that  while  a  "  free 
jorneyman"  in  1566,  he  might  well  be  something 
very  different  before  I  57  I.  Isesides,  had  he  been  of 
j)lebeiari  famil)',  the  objection  might  have  been  valid. 
Ikit  as  having  been  almost  certainly  of  the  Hurstvvood 
Si)ensers — a  younger  brother  or  near  kinsman  of  a  real 
anil  recognized  "  gentleman,"  tlie  owner  of  a  freehold 
estate—  he  was  entitled  to  add  or  have  added  "gent." 
l-A'cry  one  knows  with  what  pathetic  insistence  decayed 
J'dizabcthans  j)]aced  "  gent."  after  their  names,  as  wit- 
ness the  many  title-pages  of  Nicholas  Breton,  Robert 
(ireene,  Thomas  Churchyard,  George  Whetstone,  and 
many  others. 

As  a  \()unger  son  I  conceive  John  Spenser  had 
puslied  his  way  to  London, — originally  it  might  be  as 
"  gcnilenian-servant  "  (as  William  l^asse  sang  finely) 
witli   .some  North- Last   Lancashire   "  "cntleman." — and 


FAMILY  OF  SPF.XSER.  xxxvii 

that  ultimately, — as  havinj^  no  chance  of  succession  to 
lands, — in  order  to  earn  an  honourable  living,  he  became 
a  "  craftsman."  This  was  not  at  all  uncommon  at 
the  period  and  later.  It  is  a  modern  and  degenerate 
idea  (or  ideal)  that  is  ashamed  of  "  trade  "  or  "  handi- 
craft." As  many  an  entry  in  Guild  Books  and 
"  Mysteries  "  goes  to  show,  "  younger  sons  "  thus  gave 
themselves,  and  as  the  same  authorities  testify,  the 
"  gent."  was  never  withheld  after  their  names. 

More  specifically — Reverting  to  our  previous  genea- 
logical details,  as  Edmund  Spenser  who  held  the 
freehold  of  Hurstwood  in  Clivigcr  at  this  time  was 
invariably  recorded  as  "gent,"  I  ask,  Was  John  Spenser 
a  younger  brother  who  had — as  I  have  conjectured — 
gone  up  to  London  to  make  his  way  >  If  so — and  I 
for  one  believe  it — he  was  both  son  and  brother  of  a 
landed  gentleman  of  the  lesser  gentry,  descended  of 
"  a  house  of  auncient  fame,"  and  thus  entitled  to  the 
"  gent."  or  "  yeoman." 

Edmund  Spenser  of  Hurstwood — as  our  many 
entries  show — had  succeeded  to  his  estate  before 
1559.  Me  had  two  sons,  the  eldest  of  whom  was 
probably  born  about  1550  or  earlier — for  he  died 
leaving  a  young  son  the  same  year  as  his  father 
(15S7).  The  other  data  seem  to  fix  Edmund 
Spenser  of  Ilurstwood's  own  birth  soon  after  1520. 
John  Spenser — if  he  were  father  of  the  Poet — would 
be  born  about  1525,  and  thus  might  go  to  the  metro- 
polis betwixt  1545  and  1550.  Edmund  Spenser  we 
know  was  born  in  London  in  1552.  John  the  son 
of  John  Spenser,  who  followed  Edmund  at  Merchant 
Taylors'  School,  may   have   been    born   between    1555 


xxvviii  ////;  AXCJ'STA'V  ANJ) 

and  I  5  Go.  All  this  would  hold  whether  John  Spenser 
of  London — the  assumed  father  of  Edmund  as  well  as 
tlie  ascertained  father  of  the  younger  John — were  brother 
or  cousin  of  lulmund  S|)cnser  of  Hurstwood.  That  he 
was  one  of  the  two  is  surely  pretty  certain  :  for  the 
Pfurstwood  and  North-East  Lancashire  Spensers  were 
indubitably  the  "  friends "  in  the  North  of  England 
with  whom  the  Poet  sojourned.  It  is  congruous,  too, 
with  his  "  gentle  "  blood  that  John  Spenser  should  have 
sought  academic  training  for  two  sons.  Then,  the 
genealogical  details  of  the  Hurstwood  Spensers  reveal 
how  the  name  John  alternates  continuously  with 
lidmund,  there  being  two  Edmunds  and  three  Johns 
in  the  chief  descent  in  the  five  generations.  Again,  in 
the  Pendle  Eorcst  branch,  Lawrences  and  Edmunds 
appear  and  reappear — as  afterwards  in  the  Poet's  own 
family.* 

Only  other  two  questions  of  primary  interest  strike 
me  in  this  connection,  i.  Was  the  Poet's  father  living 
in  1577-8  when  Spenser  went  down  to  North-East 
Lancashire  1      2.  Was  his  mother  then  living  > 

To  the  former  I  answer  '  No.'  I  conclude  that  he 
had  died  whilst  his  son  the  Poet  was  at  Cambridge. 
This  would  break  up  his  'home,'  and  so  make  it  more 
inevitable  that  he  should  have  gone  North  to  Hurst- 
wood and  Pendle  Forest.  I  regard  it  as  unlikely  that 
the  father  in  his  latter  years  had  wandered  back  to  his 
native  place  in  Lancasliire.  Nor  among  the  many 
burial  entries  is  there  one  of  a  John  Spenser  answering 
to   him.      It   was  to  'relatives'   there,   not   to  his   own 

111   ApjK  ndix  A  to  this   Life  are  given  extracts   concerning 
S|.(ns(r>,  liom  the  Burnley  Registers. 


FAMILY  OF  SPRXSFR.  xxxix 

paternal  home,  the  Poet  retreated  from  the  bickerings 
and  exacerbations  of  the  University.  To  the  latter 
question — I  must  again  answer  '  No,'  on  the  same 
grounds  ;  for  I  cannot  accept  "  Isabel!  "  as  a  synonym 
of  '•  Elizabeth,"  as  Mr.  Knovvles  has  done.*  No  Eliza- 
beth   Spenser    is    anywhere    found    corresponding    to 

•  It  is  due  to  Mr.  Knowles  to  reproduce  his  second  theory  in 
substitution  for  his  orig-inal  and  accurate  one: — "I  can  now 
substitute  for  the  other  another,  which  has  the  advantage  of 
making  an  approach  to  certainty,  and  of  disclosing,  if  it  is  sound, 
a  fact  in  Spenser's  life  hardly  less  interesting  than  the  discovery 
of  his  Grammar  School.  In  a  list  of  gifts  made,  July  1569,  to  the 
pour  of  several  Lancashire  parishes,  fhe  name  of  Spenser  occurs 
frequently.  Under  the  heading  '  Habergham  Eaves,  Ightnell 
Parke,  and  Fillye  Close,'  there  are  these  items  (fol.  136) : — 
Ux'  Robte.  Spensere    .     .     iij  yeardes  wollen. 


Edmund  Spencere 
Philippe  Spencere 
Ales  Spencere  . 
Robte.  Spencere 


one  yeard  wollen. 
one  yeard  one  qtr.  wollen. 
one  yeard  di  wollen. 
ij  yeards  linen. 


At  folio  137,  under  the  same  heading  : — 

Jenet  Spensore    .     .     .     .     ij  yeards  di  wollen. 

And  at  folio  139  : — 

Ales  Spensere  .  .  .  .  ij  yeards  di  linen. 
John  Spensore     .     .     .     .     ij  yeards  linen. 

There  is  here  one  Edmund  Spenser  from  whom  the  poet  might 
have  taken  his  name.  But  at  folios  132-3,  under  the  heading 
Bromley  [Burnley],  there  are  three  entries,  two  of  which  are  very 
remarkable  : — 

Edmunde  Spenser  .  .  .  iij  yeards  wollen. 
Isabell  Spenser  ....  iij  yeards  wollen. 
Agnes  Spensore  ....     iij  yeards  wollen. 

The  date  of  these  entries  is  '  the  vij'"  of  Julii  A"  1569.'  shortly 
after  the  poet  went  to  Cambridge.  'Isabell'  and  'Elizabeth' 
are  substantially  the  same  name.  In  Moreri's  Dictiotniaire 
Hisforiquc  they  are  repeatedly  used  synonymously,  and  at  all 
events  their  identity  is  sufficient  to  have  justified  Spenser  in  link- 
ing his  mother,  supposing  that  her  name  was  Isabel,  with  his 


xl  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

one  who  could  have  been  "  widow  "  of  John  Spenser  of 
London. 

The  "  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter,"  then,  in  the 
light  of  all  the  Facts  and  Illustrations  given,  is  summarily 
this: — That  Edmund  Spenser's  father  was  John  Spenser 
of  London,  a  "free  jorneyman  "  cloth-maker  in  1566, 
but  described  as  "gent,"  in  1571 — That  John  Spenser, 
scholar  of  Merchant  Taylors'  School  and  of  Pembroke 
Hall,  Cambridge,  who  was  son  of  the  same  John 
Spenser,  was  a  younger  brother  of  the  Poet — That 
their  father  wa«  younger  brother  or  cousin  of  Edmund 
Spenser  of  Hurstwood — That  he  was  dead  before  the 
Poet  went  thither,  about  1577-8. 

There  would  thus  be  "  open  welcome  "  to  their  kins- 
man from  the  University  of  Cambridge  in  North-East 
Lancashire.     There  would  be  community  of  religious 

wife  and  the  Queen  in  the  Sonnet  (Ixxiv.)  in  which  he  praises  the 
'  most  happy  letters  '  that  compose  that  '  happy  name  '  : — 
'  The  which  three  times  thrise  happy  hath  me  made, 
With  guifts  of  body,  fortune,  and  of  mind, 
The  first  my  being  to  me  gave  by  kind, 
From  mother's  womb  deriv'd  by  dew  descent ; 
The  second  is  my  sovereigne  queene,  most  kind, 
That  honour  and  large  richesse  to  me  lent ; 
The  third,  my  Love,  my  lives  last  ornament.' 

Were  the  Edmunde  and  Isabel  Spenser  of  Burnley  the  poet's  father 
and  mother  ?  Apart  from  the  coincidence  of  their  Christian  names, 
the  supposition  that  they  were,  derives  an  air  of  probability  from 
the  fact  that  after  leaving  Cambridge  he  is  believed  to  have 
gone  to  reside  with  his  relations  in  the  North  of  England.  If  his 
parents,  for  one  of  whom  at  least  he  cherished  a  tender  affection, 
were  alive,  they  were  most  likely  the  relatives  \vith  whom  he  took 
up  his  abode  on  quilting  the  University.  Spenser  would  there- 
fore have  passed  some  portion  of  the  interval  between  his  leaving 
Cambridge  and  his  coming  to  London  at  Burnley  ;  and,  if  so, 
it  is  a  happy  circumstance  that  from  the  venerable  Hall,  at  whose 
gales  Burnley  lies,  a  manuscript  should  come  into  the  hands  of 


FA.U/LY^  OF  SJ'FXSFR.  xli 

opinion  and  sentiment  between  Edmund  Spenser  and 
his  "  relations."  The  Spensers  of  Hurstwood  were 
Protestant,  and  Edmund  Spenser  Puritan — as  was  the 
Poet — and  he  accordingly  in  a  sense  a  protege  of  the 
brothers  Xowell,  who  were  Puritans,  whilst  the  Townleys 
of  Townley  (the  great  family  by  Hurstwood)  were  always 
Roman  Catholics. 

But  the  evidence  for  the  North-East  Lancashire 
origin  of  our  Poet's  ancestry  and  family  is  by  no  means 
exhausted. 

With  a  word  of  cordial  admiration  and  gratitude  to 
Mr.  R.  B.  Knowles  for  his  inestimable  "  Find  "  of  the 
Townley  MS.  of  the  "  Spending  of  the  Money  of 
Robert  Nowell,"  and  for  his  open-eyed  study  of  it,  and 
first  revelation  of  the  Spenser  entries — not  one  iota 
the  less  cordial  that  I  have  been  constrained  to  criticise 


the  Commission  to  reveal,  after  the  lapse  of  three  centuries,  facts 
so  interestino;^  in  his  life  as  the  later  residence  of  his  parents,  his 
father's  Christian  name,  and  the  grammar  school  in  which  he 
was  taught  the  elements  of  learning."  (4th  Report,  as  before.)  To 
all  this  gossamer  web  in  "  Pleasures  of  Imagination  "  I  answer 
summarily  (i)  That  whereas  Mr.  Knowles  places  "  Edmunde 
Spenser"  and  "  Isabell  Spenser"  together,  they  are  separated 
in  the  MS.  by  two  full  pages  and  a  half.  Surely  it  is  most 
improbable  that  a  husband  and  wife  would  have  been  thus  sepa- 
rated }  The  widely  severed  entries  suggest  different  households. 
(2)  Whatever  Moreri  may  say  or  do,  it  is  not  the  fact  that  in 
North-East  Lancashire  "Elizabeth"  and  "Isabell"  were  regarded 
"  as  substantially  the  same."  On  the  contrary,  there  are  families 
by  the  score  with  both  names  for  their  children.  (3)  The  other 
two  Elizabeths  of  the  Sonnet  were  unquestionably  Elizabeths, 
and  nothing  but  the  stress  or  distress  of  a  theory  would  have 
transmogritied  "  Isabell  "  into  "  Elizabeth."  (4)  Not  a  shred  of 
evidence  is  adduced  that  this  Edmunde  and  Isabell  Spenser  had 
"flitted'"  from  London  to  Lancashire.  (5)  Who  in  all  the  world 
would  have  described  the  parents  of  the  Poet  as  "  relations"? 
(6)  More  likely  Isabell  and  Agnes  were  two  "  old  maids." 


xlii  THE  A  ATE  S  TRY  AND 

and  reject  his  (mis)use  of  some  of  the  entries,  and 
emphatically  his  withdrawal  from  John  Spenser  of 
London — I  have  now  to  go  forward  along  other  lines 
of  perhaps  equal  interest  and  satisfactoriness.  For 
strikingly  ancillary  to  these  genealogical  localizations 
and  recognitions  of  the  Spensers  is  a  twofold  simple 
matter  of  fact. 

{a)  That  in  agreement  therewith  the  entire  Poetry 
of  Spenser  has  worked  into  it  a  relatively  large  number 
of  Lancashire,  and  notably  of  North-East  Lancashire, 
words  and  idiomatic  phrases. 

{b)  That  North-East  Lancashire  scenery,  as  distin- 
guished from  Southern  {e.g.,  Kent  and  its  dales  and 
downs),  and  the  historically-known  character  of  the 
people  of  the  district,  are  similarly  reflected  in  the 
Poems  ;  whilst  the  places  in  the  "  Glosse,"  etc.,  can  only 
be  understood  as  applied  to  North-East  Lancashire. 

It  is  now  my  pleasant  duty  to  give  illustrative 
evidence  of  these  two  inter-related  points,  under  the 
advantage  of  a  long  residence  in  North-East  Lancashire, 
familiarity  with  its  people,  "  gentle  and  simple,"  and  its 
racy  dialect  and  ancient-dated  usages,  and  the  well- 
informed  helpfulness  of  my  good  friend — the  Historian 
of  Blackburn — Mr.  W.  A.  Abram  (as  before).  I  have 
to  prove — 

(a)  That  in  agreement  with  the  North-East  Lancashire 
localization  of  the  Family  of  Spenser,  the  entire  Poetry  of 
Spenser  has  worked  into  it  a  relatively  large  number  of 
Lancashire,  and  specifically  Nofth-East  Lancashire,  tvords 
and  idiomatic  phrases.. 

It  is  the  more  obligatory  to  enter  on  and  complete 
this  inquiry,  in  that   Editors  and  Commentators  have 


FAMILY  OF  SPENSER.  xliii 

too  readily  satisfied  themselves  with  classing  all  (to 
them)  archaic  and  obscure  words  as  "  Chaucerisms  " — 
much  as  your  perfunctory-  Exegete  finds  it  convenient 
to  generalize  peculiarities  of  New  Testament  and  Sep- 
tuagint  Greek  under  "  Hebraisms." 

Spenser's  use  of  North-East  Lancashire  dialect-words 
puzzled  Edward  Kirke.  He  in  a  manner  apologizes  in 
his  "Glosse"  for  the  introduction  of  so  many  "uncouth 
and  obsolete  words,"  though  prepared  to  defend  their 
employment  in  such  a  set  of  poems  as  the  Shepherd's 
Calendar.  Dr}'den,  in  a  later  day,  in  the  dedication  of 
his  translation  of  Vergil's  Pastorals  to  Lord  Clifford, 
notices  the  mastery  of  "our  northern  dialect"  shown  by 
Spenser.  There  have  been  also  vague  and  incidental 
mentionings  of  the  fact  of  the  occurrence  of  such 
dialect-words:  e.g.^  the  Rev.  William  Gaskell,  in  his  two 
Lectures  on  tJic  La?icashire  Dialect,  thus  writes :  "  It  is 
interesting  to  read  this  poem  {Shepherd's  Calendar)  with 
the  knowledge  gained  a  few  years  ago,  that  the  Author 
spent  the  earlier  part  of  his  life  in  the  northern  part  of 
this  count>',  and  this  may  account  for  the  introduction 
of  some  words  that  are  strongly  Lancashire."  The 
expression  "  some  words "  shows  how  superficial  was 
the  Lecturer's  study  of  the  Shepherd's  Calendar.  It 
was  reserved  to  the  late  Mr.  T.  T.  Wilkinson,  of 
Burnley,  to  go  more  thoroughly  into  the  investigation. 
His  "  Edmund  Spenser  and  the  East  Lancashire 
Dialect,"  read  before  the  "  Historic  Society  of  Lanca- 
shire and  Cheshire"  on  the  loth  January,  1867,  and 
published  in  its  Transactions  (New  Series,  vol.  vii,, 
1867,  pp.  87-102)  deserves  full  recognition.  But  how 
inadequate  it  is  will  appear  when   it  is  stated  that  the 


xliv  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

sum-total  of  its  dialect-words  is  — 45,  and  some  of  these 
doubtful,  and  which  might  have  been  fetched  from 
books.  It  will  be  seen  that  our  investigations  have 
resulted  in  an  aggregate  of  upwards  of  200  North-East 
Lancashire  words  in  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  alone,  and 
a  good  many  beyond  300  in  the  other  Poems,  or  a 
sum-total  of  fully  550  distinctly  dialectal  words  and 
phrases.  It  must  be  carefully  and  critically  noted  that 
only  a  very  few  of  these  North-East  Lancashire  words 
and  phrases  are  met  with  in  the  South  Lancashire 
dialect  as  given  by  Tim  Bobbin  (Collier),  Bamford, 
Gaskell,  Hcywood,  Picton,  and  later  Glossaries.  Both 
contain  an  admixture  of  words  from  across  the  Scottish 
Border,  as  exemplified  by  Chambers  in  his  Book  of 
Days  (vol.  i.,  5  7) ;  and  also  from  the  Danes  and  North- 
men who  settled  in  the  county,  and  numbers  belong  or 
belonged  to  Derbyshire  and  other  counties,  but  then 
and  now  each  word  enumerated  is  strictly  North-East 
Lancashire.  The  peculiar  '  blend  '  of  form  and  pro- 
nunciation pervades  Spenser.  I  do  not  think  that  any 
one  who  is  at  all  familiar  with  the  North-East  Lanca- 
shire dialect  and  people  will  hesitate  in  pronouncing 
that  none  but  a  native  (for  the  accident  of  birth 
in  London  does  not  touch  the  origin)  could  have  so 
idiomatically,  and  in  nicest  closeness  to  what  was 
meant  to  be  expressed,  employed  these  North-East 
Lancashire  words  and  turns  of  phrase.  His  North-Ea.st 
Lancashire  phrases,  even  where  "  learned  men  "  have 
set  them  down  for  archaic,  or  Chaucerisms,  are  the 
"  living  speech  "  of  to-day.* 

*  ll.nco   a   criticism   of    Mr.   Thomas   Bayne   {St.    James's 
jUu<fazi/n\  1879,  4th  Series,  vol.  vi..  pp.  105— 118)  must  be  read 


FAMILY  OF  SPEXSER.  xlv 

I  cannot  find  space — even  if  it  were  desirable — to 
give  references  to  the  occurrence  of  the  words  and 
phrases — a  large  number  frequently  repeated,  or  to 
examine  critically  the  alphabetically-arranged  list  which 
I  am  about  to  present.  Each  separate  word  will  be 
found  referred  to  its  place  or  places,  and  amply 
explained  and  illustrated,  in  the  Glossary  (in  Vol.  X.). 
But  ad  interim  I  give  after  each  word  its  present-day 
meanings  and  applications.  The  critic-student  who 
would  really  master  this  other  line  of  proof  of  Spenser's 
North-East  Lancashire  origin,  will  not  grudge  to  take 
pains  (I  feel  assured)  to  study  the  successive  words  in 
their  places.  Only  thus  will  their  spontaneit)',  their 
naturalness,  their  flexibility,  their  melody,  their  inncr- 
ness,  be  felt. 

I  have  not  exhausted  the  roll  of  North-East  Lanca- 
shire dialect-words  in  Spenser, — as  the  Glossary  will 
abundantly  evidence, — but  unless  I  egregiously  mistake, 
these  carefully  gleaned  examples  will  convince  every 
judicial  and  capable  student  of  our  Poet  that  Edmund 
Spenser  was  "  a  Lancashire  man,"  and  patriotic  and 
penetrative  enough  to  discern  the  unutilized  capabilities 
of  his  "  native  tongue,"  and  courageous  enough — with 
all  his  scholarly  culture — to  emulate  Bion,  Moschus, 
Hesiod,  Theocritus,  Vergil  in  their  cunning  adoption 
and  adaptation  and  transfiguration  of  "  rustic "  or 
dialect  forms. 


cum  grano  sails:  "  It  would  have  shown  greater  strength  of 
cliaracter  in  Spenser,  perhaps,  had  he  boldly  used  the  Ian 
guage  of  his  own  time  ;  but  then  his  strength  of  character  might 
have  been  apparent  at  the  expense  of  his  poetic  excellence" 
(p.  io6).  But  he  did  "  boldly  use  the  language  of  his  own  time" 
substantively. 


*lvi  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

With  these  prefatory  observations,  I  ask  genuine 
Spcnserians  to  read  and  re-read  reflectively  our 
alphabetically-arranged  table  of  North-East  Lancashire 
words,  (mainly)  from  the  Shepherd's  Calendar.  I 
place  under  some  of  the  examples  actual  usings  of 
the  words  heard  by  myself  in  intercourse  with  the 
people.  My  verdict  is  none  is  '  uncouth,'  and  that 
'  obsolete '  is  incorrect.  It  is  indeed  surprising  how 
little  of  Spenser  is  found  even  at  this  late  day  '  obso- 
lete,' when  one  goes  out  among  the  people  of  North 
and  South  Lancashire,  and  elsewhere. 

I  would  fain  have  placed  this  remarkable  List  here 
in  the  Life  in  extenso,  because  it  is  all-important  that 
it  should  be  before  every  reader  of  Spenser,  but  per- 
chance it  would  too  much  interrupt  the  biographic 
narrative.* 

Assuming  that  this  surely  very  memorable  collection 
of  dialect-words  in  Spenser  has  been  turned  to  and 
pondered,  these  notes  at  this  point  may  be  acceptable : — 

{a)  Whilst  every  word  enumerated  belongs  to  North- 
East  Lancashire,  there  is  this  peculiarity,  that  a  number 
of  them  were,  and  still  are,  found  in  use  in  neighbouring 
Yorkshire  and  even  remoter.  This,  instead  of  dimi- 
nishing, strengthens  the  Spenser  localization,  seeing 
that  the  liurstwood  or  Pendle  district  abuts  on  York- 
shire, etc.,  and  that  to-day  towns,  and  even  hamlets 
and  farms,  separated  by  a  few  miles  only,  yield  the 
same    blend    and    the    same    variants.       Personally    I 

•  See  Appendix  B,  after  the  Essays  in  this  volume,  for  it.  I 
must  be  allowed  to  state  that  the  matter  in  the  Appendix  will  all 
be  found  vital  to  the  comprehension  of  the  Life,  not  mere  dry 
documents. 


FAMILY  01'   SPEXSER.  xlvii 

have  found  it  hard  to  understand  "the  people"  in  their 
differin<j  speech  at  startHngly  short  distances:  e.g.,  "Lij^" 
is  now  much  more  common  in  Yorkshire  than  in  East 
Lancashire,  but  most  common  there  on  tlic  border  next 
to  East  Lancashire. 

[b)  The  North-East  Lancashire  addition  of  -en  (also 
found  elsewhere),  as  "  brought^w "  for  "brought" — 
"butttv/"  for  "butt" — "cart'w"  for  "care" — "chattiV/" 
for  "  chat,"  and  a  multitude  of  others,  establishes  that 
Spenser's  frequent  use  of  "en"  was  no  mtre  fa ntastiqne 
of  prolongation  of  the  given  words  to  tide  over  a 
difficult  rhyme  or  rhythm,  but  the  adoption  of  existent 
words  that  approved  themselves  to  his  subtilcly  judging 
ear.  His  prefixed  "  y"  is  dealt  with  by  Professor 
Angus  (in  Vol,  X.,  on  Spenser's  English)  ;  but  I  deem 
it  expedient  to  accentuate  the  then  and  still  quick  use 
of  -en  in  North-East  Lancashire,  and  otherwhere. 

{c)  These  dialect-words  also  ought  to  mitigate  the 
alleged  '  uncouthness'  of  Spenser's  vocabulary.  It  is 
found  that  the  most  oittrc  and  manufactured-like 
rhyme-words  were  genuine  and  still  living  words :  e.g., 
in  Faery  Queen,  Book  L,  c.  x.,  11.  515-17,  we  find — 

....  that  vnspotted  Lam 
That  for  the  sinnes  of  all  the  world  was  kilt  : 
Now  are  they  Saints  all  in  that  citie  sum 
More  deare  unto  their  God,  then  youglings  to  their  dam. 

So,  too,  in  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  (Eel.  v.  17C-7)  : — 

For  what  concord  han  light  and  darkc  safu  ? 
Or  what  peace  has  the  Lion  with  the  Lambe  ? 

In  the  former  the  Poet,  after  his  custom,  reduced  the 
.spelling  to  the  eye  uniformly  and  so  arbitrarily,  but 
"sam"  =  together,  he  found  in  regular  and  familiar  use 


xlviii  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

in  East  Lancashire ;  and  to-day  it  is  an  every-day 
phrase  amongst  boon-companions,  "  I  will  stand  sam',' 
i.e.  pay  for  the  drinks  altogether.  So  with  "  rine"  in 
the  Shepherd's  Calendar  (Eel.  v,  I2i)  we  read — 

But  now  the  gray  inosse  marred  his  rme ; 

a  very  suspicious-looking  rhyme  with  "swine":  but 
once  more,  "rine"  was  a  livingly  used  word  in  East 
Lancashire,  as  it  still  is. 

Some  of  the  most  seeming-artificial  rhymes  represent 
the  North-East  Lancashire  pronunciation  to-day,  e.g. — ■ 

Seest  how  brag  yon  bullock  beares, 

So  swinck,  so  smoothe,  his  pricked  eares  (Vol.  II.,  p.  6i). 

1  notice  here  (i)  That  "beares,"  pronounced  invariably 
as  though  spelled  "beers,"  rhymes  at  once  with  "eares"; 
(2)  That  "seest"  is  a  special  Lancashire  phrase=  seest 
thou,  as  Lane,  "sees  ta'."  Similarly  "wark"  is  no 
mere  spelling  to  rhyme  with  "ark"  or  "dark,"  but  the 
actual  North-East  Lancashire  pronunciation. 

It  will  doubtless  interest  to  bring  together  from  the 
full  List  (in  Appendix  B),  representative  examples 
of  Spenser's  thoroughly  idiomatic  use  of  the  local 
words  and  turns  of  expression.  There  is  this 
peculiarity  about  them  likewise,  that  while  Tennyson 
has  composed  a  few  dialect  (Lincolnshire)  poems — 
inestimable  poems — he  drops  dialect  in  his  other 
poems.  Not  so  with  Spenser.  In  the  Shepherd's 
Calendar,  which  he  mainly  wrote  in  the  Pendlc  dis- 
trict, he  of  course  is  strongest  in  his  use  of  Lancashire 
words  and  phrases.  Still,  throughout,  local  dialect 
words  are  worked  in.  And  if  they  fade  away  in  his  later 
poems,  this   is  unly  what   might  have   been    looked   for, 


FAMirlY  OF  SPE.YSFR.  j\\x 

after  he  had  \on^  min£^led  with  the  'gentle'  society 
of  the  South.  Be  it  understood  that  I  note  only 
some  of  his  idiomatic  and  racy  words  and  turns,  still 
\n  every-day  use  among  the  farmers  : — 

I.  From  the  Shepherd's  Calendar. 

My  rag-ged  ronts  all  shiver  and  shake 

As  doen  high  towers  in  an  earthquake  (Vol.  II.,  p.  57). 

Lewdly  emplaincst  thou,  laesie  ladde, 

Of  winter's  wracke,  for  making  thee  sadde  (p.  53)^ 

not  "  lazy,"  but  "  laesie,"  as  now. 

Sa  loytring  live  you  little  heard-groomes, 

Keeping  your  beasts  in  the  budded  broomes  (p.  59). 

Hard  by  his  side  grew  a  bragging  breere, 
WTiich  proudly  thrust  into  tli'element  (p.  64) — 

quite  common  as  "  th',''  not  apostrophe  or  contraction, 

but  the  present-day  pronunciation,  as  in  "t'one"  for  "the 

one,"  etc.,  etc. 

.  .  .  like  for  desperate  dole  to  die  (p.  66). 

With  painted  wordes  tho  gan  this  proude  wecde, 
(As  most  usen  ambitious  folke)  (p.  67). 

Seest  not  thilke  same  hawthorne  studde, 
How  bragly  it  begins  to  budde  (p.  81). 

The  while  thilke  same  unhappie  ewe, 

Whose  clouted  legge  her  hurt  doth  shew  (p.  83). 

He  was  so  wimble,  and  so  wight 

From  bough  to  bough  he  leaped  light  (p.  86). 

Soone  as  my  yonglings  cryen  for  the  dam  (p.  100). 

...  How  finely  the  graced  can  it  foote 

To  the  instrument. 
They  dauncen  deflly,  and  singen  soote, 

In  their  meriment  (p.  loi). 

Leave  to  live  hard  and  learne  to  ligge  soft  (p.  126) 
=on  a  soft  bed. 

I.  ^ 


1  TIT?:  AXCESTRY  AND 

Sparrc  the  yate  fast  (p.  132). 

His  hinder  heel  was  wrapt  in  a  clout  (p.  133). 

Ah,  goud  yong  maister  (then  gan  he  crie) 
Jesus  blesse  that  sweet  face  (p.  134)— 
quite  common,  "God  blesse  thy  bonnie  face." 

The  false  Foxc,  as  he  were  starke  lame, 

His  tail  he  tlapt  betwixt  his  legs  twain  (p.  135). 

.  .  .   l'"or  time  in  passing  weares, 

As  garments  doen,  which  wexen  old  above  (p.  153). 

Tel  the  lasse,  whose  flowre  is  woxe  a  weede  (p.  157). 

Syker,  thous  but  a  laesie  loord, 

And  rekes  much  of  thy  swinke  (p.  16;) 
^^  lord  of  the  manor,  who  in  to-day's  phrase  "  toil  not, 
neither  do  they  spin." 

Hereto  the  hilles  bene  nigher  heaven  (p.  170) 

To  kirke  the  narre,  to  God  more  farre  (//^.) — 
in  familiar  use. 

They  raigne  and  rulen  over  all, 

And  lord  it  as  they  list  (p.  175). 

For  shcpheards  (said  he)  there  doen  lead, 

As  lords  doen  otherwhere  ; 
Their  sheepe  han  crustes,  and  they  the  bread, 

The  chippes,  and  they  the  cheere  {ib.') 

They  setten  to  sale  their  shops  of  shame, 

And  maken  a  mart  of  their  good  name. 

The  shepheards  there  robben  one  another  (p.  207). 

They  looken  biggc  as  bulles  that  bene  bate, 
And  bearen  the  cragge  so  stiffe  and  so  state 
As  cocke  on  his  dunghill,  crowing  cranke  {ib.') — 

"  state  "  =  stcat  =  stout } 

2.   iM-om  Colin  Cloitfs  Conic  Home  Again. 

So  of  a  river,  which  he  was  of  old, 

He  none  was  made,  but  scattred  all  to  nought. 

And  lust  emong  those  rocks  into  him  rold  (Vol.  IV.,  p.  42). 


{/ 


FAMILY  OF  SPENSER.  li 

Ah  Cuddy  (then  quoth  Colin)  thous  a  son 

'Ihat  hast  not  scene  least  part  of  nature's  wark, 

Much  more  there  is  unkend,  then  thou  doest  kon  (p.  46). 

Tiiere  is  a  new  shepheard  late  up  sprong,  etc.  (p.  50). 

....  like  bladders  blowen  up  with  wynd, 

That  being  prickt  do  vanish  into  nought  (p.  59). 

Like  mouldwarps  nousling  still  they  lurke  (p.  61). 

3.  From  the  Faery  Queen. 

With  ruffled  rayments,  and  faire  blubbrcd  face 

(Vol.  v.,  p.  99). 

Till  crudled  cold  his  corage  gan  assaile  (p.  1 15). 

As  when  that  divelish  yron  engin  wrought 
In  deepest  Hell,  and  framd  by  Furies  skill. 
With  windy  nitre  and  quick  sulphur  fraught, 
And  ramd  with  bullet  round  ...  (p.  117). 

His  garment  nought  but  many  ragged  clouts, 

With  thornes  together  pind  and  patched  was  (p.  163). 

Crept  in  by  stouping  low,  or  stealing  of  the  kaies 

(Vol.  VII.,  p.  198) 

Soft  rombling  brookes,  that  gentle  slomber  drew  (p.  200). 

=  rambling,  not  rumbling. 

To  sit  and  rest  the  walkers  wearie  shankes  (p.  201). 

Clad  in  a  vesture  of  unknowen  geare,  etc.  (p.  226). 

As  doth  a  steare  in  heat  of  sommers  day, 

With  his  long  tailethe  br>'zes  brush  a  way  (Vol.  VI 1 1.,  p.  93). 

....  He  was  fierce  and  whot, 

Ne  time  would  give,  nor  any  termes  aby. 

But  at  him  flew,  and  with  his  spcare  him  smot  (p.  107). 

{(T)    One    of   these    special    North-East    Lancashire 

words  or  phrases  makes  erudite   Dr.  Richard  Morris's 

guessing  at  it  somewhat  grotesque.      In  the  SJieplicrcTs 

Calendar  (Eel.  ix.,  11.  229-32)  we  thus  read  : — 

Marry  Diq-gon,  what  should  him  affray. 
To  take  his  ownc  where  ever  it  lay  ? 


1  i i  77 fK  A NCESTR Y  AND 

For  had  his  ^vcasp,ncl  bene  a  litlle  widdor, 

lie  would  liave  devoured  both  liidder  and  shidder. 

Dr.  Morris  annotates— "  lliddcr  (if  not  an  error  for 
///Vt7'  =  hither) ^he-deer,  animals  of  the  male  kind" 
(Globe  edition,  Glossary),  and  "  Shidder  (generally 
explained  as  she),  but  if  not  a  corruption  of  thider 
(thither)  must  mean  ^//t'-deer,  she  animals "  (ibid.). 
"  l\Iust  mean."  "  Must"  is  a  strong  word  ;  but  as 
"  Hidder  and  shidder"  then  and  to-day  is  =  he  and 
she,  or  him  and  her,  Spenser  must  not  be  held  respon- 
sible for  such  guesses,  nor  the  text  to  be  corrupt. 
Local  knowledge  would  have  saved  our  learned  Editors 
from  many  and  man)-  kindred  blunders. 

r<')  I  wish  to  recall  that  as  with  the  spelling  of 
Spenser — an  .y  not  a  e — the  most  characteristic  North- 
East  Lancashire  words  used  by  the  Poet  are  still  found 
chiefly,  if  not  entirely,  within  the  district  of  which 
Ilurstwood  and  Pendlc  are  the  centre  of  a  not  wide 
circumference.  Of  a  sunny  summer  afternoon  it  has 
been  my  delight  to  peregrinate  among  the  thinly- 
scattered  "hill  country"  of  Pcndle,  and  to  get  into 
field  and  fireside  talk  with  the  people — most  bearing 
the  names  to  be  read  by  the  hundred  in  the  "  Spending 
of  the  Money  of  Robert  Nowell"  (as  before),  and  I 
have  never  once  gone  away  without  actually  hearing 
spontaneously  some  Spenser  dialect-word.  This  caps 
the  whole  evidence. 

I  iiave  to  prove 

(n)  77i(7^  North-East  7.aneasJiire  scenery  as  distin- 
i^iiished  from  S  out  Item  (e.g.,  7<cnt  and  its  dales  and 
dozens),  and  the  historieallj'-knozu7i  cJiaraeter  of  tfie  people 
if  the    district,   are    similarly   reflected  in   the  Poems ; 


FAMILY  OF  SPEXSER.  liii 

ivJiilst  the  places  in  the  "  G fosse,"  etc.,  can  only  be  under- 
stood as  applied  to  North- East  Lancashire. 

I  can  afford  to  be  less  full  on  this,  inasmuch  as  I 
have  already  so  far  put  it  in  answering  the  question, 
"Who  were  Rosalindc  and  Menalcas?"  (Vol.  III.,  pp. 
civ-v,  ct  alibi). 

In  the  outset  let  it  be  recalled  that  when  Gabriel 
Harvey  (as  "Hobbinol")  in  "June"  of  the  Shepherd's 
Calendar  addresses  Spenser  while  he  was  in  the  throes 
of  his  love-despondency,  to  "leave"  his  then  residence, 
he  thus  remonstrates  : — 

....  if  by  me  thou  list  advised  be 
Forsake  thy  soyl,  tliat  so  doth  thee  bewitch  : 
Leave  me  those  hilles,  where  harbrough  nis  to  see, 
Kox  holly  bush,  nor  brere.  nor  winding  witch. 
And  to  the  dales  resort,  where  shepheards  ritch, 
And  fruitful  flocks  bene  every  where  to  see  : 
Here  no  night  Ravenes  lodge,  more  black  then  pitch. 
Nor  elvish  ghosts,  nor  gastly  Owles  do  flee. 

There  follow  like  reference  to  the  "  wasteful  hills" 
wherein  he  ("  Colin  "j  had  been  wont  to  "  sing,"  and  to 
"  these  woods  "  where  he  "  wayled  his  woe." 

On  all  this  Edward  Kirke  thus  writes  in  his 
"  Glosse,"  as  must  again  be  quoted  : — 

"  Forsake  the  soyl.  This  is  no  Poeticall  fiction,  but 
unfeynedly  spoken  of  the  Poet  selfe,  who  for  speciall 
occasion  of  private  affaires  (as  I  have  been  partly  of 
himself  informed),  and  for  his  more  preferment,  re- 
moving out  of  the  North  partes,  came  into  the  South,  as 
Hobhinoll  indeed  advised  him  privately. 

"  Those  hilles,  that  is  in  the  North  countrc)',  where 
he  dwelt. 

"  The    dales.       The    South    [jarts,    where    he     now 


I IV  Tit/':  A.XCESTRY  AND 

abidcth,  which  though  they  be  full  of  hilles  and  woods 
(for  Kent  is  very  hilly  and  woody,  and  therefore  so 
called  :  for  Kantsch  in  the  Saxons  toong,  signifieth 
woody),  yet  in  respect  of  the  North  parts  they  be 
called  dales.  For,  indeed,  the  North  is  counted  the 
higher  countrey"  (Vol.  II.,  pp.   158-9)- 

I  would  call  attention  to  several  things  in  the  text 
and  comment  here  : — 

{a)  It  is  specially  to  be  noted  that  "  Hobbinol" 
(=  Harvey)  advises — 

Forsake  thy  soyl. 

"  K.  K."  misreads  "Forsake  the  .soyl";  but,  as  will 
appear  immediately,  "  iJiy'" — Spenser's  own  word — is 
vital  in  evidence. 

{U)  The  description  of  "  the  hilles" — 

where  hnrbrough  nis  to  see 
Nor  holly  bush,  nor  brere,  nor  winding-  witch,* 

and  of  "the  woods"  and  "wasteful  hills,"  is  just  Pendle 
to  the  life  and  its  renowned  forest  ;  whilst  the  vast 
"  moreland"  ["moor"]  and  "the  glen  "  for  ever  asso- 
ciated with  Rosalind  arc  just  what  the  visitor  sees 
to-day  in  this  district.  So  much  is  this  the  case  that, 
standing  at  Downham  and  surveying  the  scene,  there 
fla.shcs  up  before  one  that  picture  in  the  Faery  Queen — 

a  lille  lowly  Hermitage  it  was, 
DoTx'ite  in  a  da/e,  hard  by  ajarests  side; 
Far  from  resort  of  people  that  did  pas 
To  travell  to  and  froe.  .  .  .  (B.  1.,  11.  303-6.) 

"  I)()wn-in-a-dale "    is    just    Downham;     and   in   the 

'  Witcli '— from  A.S.  w/t:,  a  winding,  sinuous  bank,  not  "a 
iced,"  a.s  iJr.  Morris,  .v.;/. 


FAMILY  OF  SFEXSEK.  Iv 

Dincley  and  Aspinall  country  riijht  and  left  "  glcnncs  " 
and  the  "  Forest"  district  in  perpetual  view. 

{c)  Belief  in  the  omen  of  "Night-ravens" — "more 
black  then  pitch,"  and  in  "elvish  ghosts"  of  every 
type  and  form,  and  in  the  diablerie  of  witches  and 
"gastly  owls,"  and  the  entire  brood  of  spirits  o'  the 
air  and  of  darkness,  interwoven  with  legend  and  ballad 
and  folk-lore,  is  historically  notorious  in  this  very 
region — as  Richard  James  onward  celebrated  in  his 
Iter  Lancastrense,  and  as  is  fully  set  forth  in  Potts's 
Wondi-rful  Discovcrie  of  Witches  in  the  Conntie  of  Lan- 
caster (1613),  So  that,  whether  with  reference  to  the 
visible  landscape  or  the  superstitions  of  "  the  people," 
the  June  Eclogue  vividly  portrays  this  bit  oi  North-East 
Lancashire. 

{c[)  I  have  now  to  reproduce  the  just-recovered 
confirmation  of  all  this  in  a  letter  from  Gabriel  Harvey 
to  Spenser  as  "  Immerito."  He  is  bantering  his  friend 
for  having  printed  (if  not  published)  without  his  privity 
certain  of  his  Verse  and  Prose,  and  he  thus  objur- 
gatively  closes — "  To  be  shorte,  I  woulde  to  God  that 
all  the  ill-favorid  copyes  of  my  nowe  prostituted  devises 
were  buried  a  greate  deale  deeper  in  the  centre  of  the 
erthe  then  the  height  and  altitude  of  the  middle  region 
of  the  verye  English  Alpes  amountes  unto  in  your 
shier"  (p.   63,  as   before).*      It  will    be  observed    that 

*  By  one  of  those  irritating  oversights  or  mishaps  into  which 
the  most  conscientious  editor  may  at  any  moment  lapse,  or  be 
the  victim  of— and  few  editors  have  done  their  work  more  pains- 
takingly than  Mr.  Scott — In  the  Introduction  (p.  .\i)  the  passage 
is  made  to  run  "in  the  aier."  1  for  one  am  thankful  that  the 
grotesque  mistake  did  not  occur  in  the  text  (p.  63) ;  for  else  the 
most  precious  bit  of  modem-found  evidence  as  to  Spenser's  origin 
mi;:ht  have  been  missed. 


Ivi  J  III-:  ANCESTRY  AXn 

''youi'  shier"  exactly  rc-cchocs  "///;'  soyP'  of  the  Eclon-ue. 
Then  everybody  knows  that  the  I'endle  Hill  and  neii,^h- 
bourin^f  ranj^cs  were  exactly  thus  exaggerated  at  that 
period,  I  take  this  "Note"  from  my  edition  of  James's 
f/cr  Lancastrcnse — 

Penitent,  l^endlc  hill,  Irigleborou,orh, 

Tliree  slu:1i  hills  be  not  all  England  thorough. 

This  is  an  old  local  proverb,  or  sort  of  proverbial 
rhyme,  and  may  be  found  in  Grose's  Provincial 
Glossary,  amongst  the  Yorkshire  Proverbs,  p.  94,  ed. 
1841,  4to.      Ray  gives  it  thus  : — 

Ingk'borough,  Pendle,  and  Pcnigent, 

Arc  the  highest  hills  between  Scotland  and  Trent. 

This  distich  had  its  origin  at  a  time  when  the  people 
knew  little  of  English  geography  beyond  their  own 
district,  and  in  hilly  districts  considered  their  own 
principal  hills  the  "  highest  and  grandest  in  the 
country"  {Poems  of  Richard  James,  B.D.,  1880,  pp. 
62-3).  Whitaker,  s.i/.,  in  his  History  of  WJialley, 
designates  these  "  hilles "  as  "the  English  Apen- 
nines "  ;  and  as  to  Harvey's  phrase,  "  middle  region," 
the)'  have  long  been  proverbially  termed  the  "  backbone 
of  ICngland."  There  can  be  no  question  once  more 
that  Harvey  had  Pendle  and  the  Spenser  district  in  his 
eye,  and  it  must  be  noted  and  re-noted  he  writes  of  it 
as  the  Poet's  own  shire  ("your  shier"). 

L(j(jking  in  another  direition,  under  the  dialect-word 
"  Iherc;  "  \Vilkins(;n  furnishes  another  and  unexpected 
example  of  .Spenser's  local  realism  and  colouring. 

"  It  is  significant,  as  to  locality,"  he  observes,  "that  the 
Poet  sh.ould  select  this  shrub  ('  Brier')  to  hold  converse 


FAMILY  OF  SPFySFR.  Ivii 

with  the  oak.  The  reason  may  probably  be  that  he 
was  then  residing  at  Murstwood,  and  the  township  of 
Extwistlc-cum-BriercHffe,  as  they  are  now  spelt,  were 
not  far  distant.  Extwnstle  has  been  defined  by  Dr. 
Whitaker  as  'the  boundary  of  oaks';  and  Briercliffe 
as  '  a  steep  overgrown  with  briats'  ;  for  both  the  oak 
and  the  briar  were  most  abundant  in  the  district  when 
Spenser  wrote.  The  Parker  family  then  resided  at 
Extwistlc  Hall,  and  the  whole  country  abounded  with 
timber.  The  'oak'  and  the  'briar'  would  therefore 
naturally  suggest  themselv^es,  and  hence,  probably,  the 
selection."      (Pp.  93-4,  as  before.) 

The  scenes  thus  introduced  into  the  SlicphcrcVs 
Calendar,  and  in  sunny  memories  elsewhere,  remain 
very  much  to-day  as  they  were  when  the  poet  "  wan- 
dered" love-smit  and  his  eye  "in  a  fine  frenzy  rolling" 
among  them.  Nature  is  inviolate.  The  "  Brun"  still 
runs  glitteringly  where 

the  undeveloped  ferns 
Rear  up  their  crozier  heads  of  silvery  white 
Or  powdred  with  a  bloom  of  frosted  .^-old 
Amongst  their  delicate  scroll-works.* 

The  "daffadillies"  and  " gilliflowers,"  the  "yellow 
primrose"  and  azure  "forget-me-not,"  and  fragrant 
"  violets,"  are  still  the  flowers  of  the  district,  whether  in 
humble  rustic  garden  or  by  green  lane.  The  "  Night- 
raven"  and  "Owl"  still  haunt  hollowed  boles  and 
shattered  ruins.  The  "  Larks  "^ — seraphim  of  our  lower 
earthly  skies — still  soar  and  sing,  as  "  Hobbinol" 
thought    of  when    he    would    pay    highest    tribute    to 

•  Hamerton's  A  Dream  of  Nature.  In  large-paper  copies 
two  exquisite  woodcut  views  of  respectively  the  "Brun"  and 
"A  Winter  Scene  on  the  Brun"  are  furnished  for  this  chai>ler. 


1  vi  i  i  THE  A  NCR  SIR  Y  A  ND 

"  Colin's"  verse.  I  met  a  "  Lettice"  bearing  her  milk- 
pail,  and  two  Cuddies  (Cuthberts)  at  the  plough.  Even 
man's  handiwork  abides.  Manor-house  and  freehold 
tenement  and  sequestered  hamlet  are  scarcely  touched 
in  their  quaintness.  Elizabethan  times  are  easily 
actualized  in  this  old-world  district.  I  found  the 
"sacred  acres"  to  be  indeed  "the  unchanging  East," 
but  even  in  England  and  Scotland  and  Ireland  in  this 
nineteenth  century  there  are  nooks  and  crannies  and 
heath-purpled  "morelands"  and  hill-lands  that  know 
scarce  a  change.  The  student-reader  of  the  Shepherd's 
Calendar  will  find  this  out  if  he  betake  him  with  it  to 
Hurstwood  and  Pendle,  Worsthorn  and  Filley  Close, 
and  the  Land  of  Spenser. 

Subsidiary  to  these  cumulative  proofs  of  the  Spenser 
North-East  localization  are  one  poetic  and  one  biographic 
fact,  which  severally  advance  us  to  the  same  conclusion. 

It  is  remarkable  how  many  allusions  to  actual 
historical  and  real  persons  and  events  are  interwoven 
in  the  Poetry  of  Spenser.  Apart  from  the  Statesmen 
and  other  men  of  rank  and  genius  of  the  great  time 
who  inevitably  traverse  the  vast  stage  of  his  Epic,  there 
are  hidden  yet  easily-seen  introductions  of  more  private 
individuals  and  very  slight  personal  circumstances. 
This  will  be  found  critically  brought  out  in  the  Glossary 
and  related  Notes  and  Illustrations  (in  Vol.  X.).  I  take 
a  single  example  as  typical  of  others,  whereby  it  is 
seen  that  even  where  on  the  surface  it  seems  otherwise, 
Spenser  painted  from  the  life  in  North-East  Lancashire. 
VViikinson  once  more  must  speak  for  me.  He  thus 
secingly  writes  : — 

"  All  the  allusions   to   changes   in   Reli'aon,  with  the 


FAMIfA'  OF  SPEXSKR.  lix 

opinions  of  the  shepherds  on  such  matters,  vcr)-  closely 
agree  with  what  was  transpiring  at  the  time  ///  this  locality; 
and  even  the  decorating  of  the  '  Kirk  '  accords  well  with 
the  annual  Rush-bearings  and  May-day  festivities  as 
formerly  practised  at  Burnley.  In  the  third  Eclogue 
the  name  '  Lettice  '  is  introduced  as  that  of  '  some 
countr}'  lass  '  ;  and  it  is  worthy  of  remark  that  this  is  a 
common  Christian  name  in  the  district  at  the  present  time. 
"There  is  also  a  very  significant  passage  in  the  fifth 
Eclogue,  which,  I  think,  modern  editors  have  failed 
sufficiently  to  annotate.  '  Algrind  '  has  been  identified 
with  Archbishop  Grindal  ;  and  '  Morell  '  with  Aylmer, 
sometime  Bishop  of  London  ;  but  with  regard  to  the 
expression  '  Sir  John,' nothing  better  has  been  advanced 
than  that  it  is  '  the  common  name  for  a  Romish  priest.' 
Most  of  the  characters  introduced  into  the  Calendar 
are  undoubtedly  sketched  from  life  ;  and  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  '  Sir  John,'  in  the  following  passage,  is 
no  exception  : — 

Now  I  pray  thee,  let  me  thy  tale  borrow 

For  our  Sir  John,  to  say  to  morrow. 

At  the  Kirke,  when  it  is  holiday  : 

For  wel  he  meanes,  but  little  can  say  (II.  319-22). 

"'E.  K.,'  in  his  annotations,  has  pointed  out  that  in 
this  Eclogue,  *  under  the  persons  of  the  two  shepherds, 
Piers  and  Palinode,  be  represented  two  forms  of  Pastors 
or  Ministers,  or  the  Protestant  and  the  Catholic  ; '  and 
hence  the  '  Sir  John  '  may  be  presumed  to  point  to 
some  clerg}'man  well  known  to  Spenser  in  his  youth. 
On  referring  to  the  list  of  Incumbents  of  Burnley,  I 
find  that  Sir  John  Aspdcnewas  chantry  priest  and  also 
the  first  Protestant   curate,  that   he  had   £^,    '6s.    i  id. 


Ix  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

allowed  him  as  stipend,  2  Edward  VI.,  A.D.  1548,  and 
that  he  died  A.D.  1567.  He  had  lived  in  troublous 
times,  so  far  as  regards  Church  matters  ;  but  had 
managed  to  retain  his  preferment  throughout  all 
changes  (as  before,  pp.  101-2)."  Judging  by  Edmund 
Spenser  of  Hurstwood's  preamble  to  his  Will,  his 
arm-chair  talk  would  be  not  infrequent  of  the  Church, 
with  many  stories  (perchance  scandals)  reaching  back 
to  "  bluff  Hal."  We  may  be  sure  Master  Edmund 
Spenser  would  listen  a-gog. 

The  biographic  fact  is  yet  more  interesting  and 
suggestive.  Turning  to  the  Shepherd's  Cale7idar  in  the 
first  priceless  quarto  of  1579,  this  is  the  imprint  at 
bottom  of  its  title-page  : — 

AT  LONDON. 

Printed  by  Hugh  Singleton,  dwelling  in 

Creede  Lane,   neere  vnto  Ludgate  at  the 

signe  of  the  gylden  Tunne,  and 

are  there  to  be  solde, 

1579- 

It  is  surely  of  the  deepest  interest  to  know  that  this 
"  Hugh  Singleton  "  was  a  Lancashire  man.  Yet  such  is 
the  case,  as  I  have  now  to  show.  He  was  a  member  of 
a  family  which  derived  its  surname  from  the  Lancashire 
townships  of  Great  and  Little  Singleton  in  the  Fylde, 
near  Preston.  There  were  several  branches  of  the 
Singletons  in  the  sixteenth  century.  One  of  these  was 
the  Singletons  of  Staining — a  hamlet  in  the  parish  of 
Poulton-in-the-Fylde.  In  the  Guild  Roll  of  Preston  for 
the  Guild  Merchant — a  well-known  local  celebration — 
of  ^542,  amongst  the  burgesses  appear  "George  Syngle- 
ton,  gent.,"  "  William  Syngleton,  his  son,"  and  "  Hugh 
Synglcton,  his   [William's]  brother."       Hugh   Singleton 


FAMILY  OF  SPEKSER.  Ixi 

was  the  second  son  of  George  Singleton,  gent,  of 
Staining,  and  was  only  a  youth  in  1542  ;  for  he  had 
younger  brothers — Richard  and  Lawrence — born  after 
that  date.  His  elder  brother,  William  Singleton,  who 
succeeded  his  father  George  Singleton  in  1552,  died 
when  a  young  man,  in  1556,  leaving  four  sons  and  two 
daughters.  At  the  Preston  Guild  Merchant  of  1562 
Hugh  Singleton  has  disappeared  from  the  Roll  of 
Burgesses,  though  his  two  surviving  brothers  and  his 
four  nephews,  sons  of  William  deceased,  were  then 
enrolled.  This  disappearance  of  Hugh  Singleton  is 
explained  by  the  fact  that  he  had  left  Lancashire 
and  'settled'  in  London.  He  speedily  made  his  way. 
We  find  him  established  in  the  city  of  London  as  a 
"Stationer"  by  1557,  where,  in  the  Register  of  the 
Stationers'  Company,  it  is  recorded  that  "  Hugh  Syngle- 
ton  standeth  bounde  with  William  Seres  in  XX  nobiles 
for  payment  of  iij''  x^"  Hugh  Singleton  paid  the  fee 
for  the  license  of  his  first  book  in  1562  : — "  Recevyd 
of  Heugh  Shyngleton  for  his  lycense  for  prjntinge  of  a 
book  intituled  An  Instruction  full  of  Heavenly  Consola- 
tion!' Six  other  licenses  were  obtained  by  him  for 
printing  small  books  or  tractates — now  readily  fetching 
their  weight  in  gold  ten  times  over  and  more — in  the 
same  year.  In  1563  we  find  him  betraying  his  fervid 
and  outspoken  Lancashire  temperament  —  to  wit, 
paying  a  fine  of  4^.  "  for  speakinge  unseemly  wordes 
before  the  Masters  "  of  his  Company.  Entries  occur  of 
several  apprentices  taken  by  him,  the  first  "  John  Scotte, 
Sonne  of  Edwarde  Scotte  of  London  armorer,"  on 
2nd  February  1564-5.  One  of  his  apprentices  who 
was    taken    in    the    same  year   (a.d.     1579)   in   which 


l.vii  THE  ANCESTRY  AND 

"  Jluc^^h  Sinc;lcton "  printed  the  Shephei'd's  Calendar, 
was  characteristically  a  lad  from  Preston,  in  Lancashire, 
his  own  "calf-country"  (in  Northern  phrase)  :  "  1579, 
25  June.  Thomas  Dason  [Dawson],  sonne  of  Evan 
Dason,  of  Preston,  in  the  county  of  Lancaster,  grocer, 
hathe  putt  him  selfe  apprentice  to  Hugh  Singleton  for 
7  yeares  from  the  date  hereof."  In  other  entries  Hugh 
Singleton  is  described  as  "  Cityzen  and  Stationer  of 
London."  In  the  year  1567-8  the  Company  "  lente 
to  Hcugh  Shyngleton,  upon  a  lease  of  his  house,  xp-"  ; 
and  in  1570  we  read,  "  Payd  to  Shyngleton  for  taken 
up  of  bokes  at  the  Watersyde  ij^"  All  this  being  so, 
it  is  easily  to  be  inferred  that  as  in  common  Lancashire 
men  the  paternal  Spenser  and  Hugh  Singleton  grew 
acquainted.  In  Elizabethan  times,  in  then  compara- 
tively small  London,  there  could  not  fail  to  be  that 
clannish  feeling  by  which  even  to-day  in  vast  London 
"  brother  Scots  "  and  Northern  Englishmen  find  them- 
selves thrown  across  each  other's  paths  and  brought 
into  '  fellowship '  with  each  other. 

Still  another  subsidiary  confirmation  of  the  Lanca- 
shire origin  of  the  Spensers  presents  itself  in  the  fact 
that  Sarah  Spenser,  sister  of  Edmund  Spenser,  married 
a  Travers  of  Lancashire,  who  migrated  to  Ireland, 
and  whose  representative  in  1842  informed  Mr.  F.  C. 
Spenser  that  their  ancestress  "  Sarah  Spenser,"  as  well  as 
her  husband,  were  "  of  Lancashire."  Full  genealogical 
details  are  given  in  The  Patrician  (vol.  v.,  p.  54)  ;  but 
as  those  relative  to  the  Traverses  are  not  accurate,  it 
seems  right  to  review  them.* 

'  S'c  AppciKlix  C,  after  the  Essays  in  this  volume,  for  such 
review. 


FAMILY  OF  SPEXSFR.  Ixiii 

Thus,  then,  starting  with  the  incidentally  furnished 
but  absolute  FACT  that  his  bosom-friend  Gabriel  Harvey 
expressly  designates  Pendle  and  Hurstwood  in  Lan- 
cashire "  in  your  shier "  when  writing  to  Spenser  as 
"  Immerito,"  we  have  found  the  Spensers  of  this 
limited  district  to  have  been  to  the  letter  "  a  House  of 
auncient  fame,"  and  specifically,  the  family  of  Edmund 
Spenser  of  Hurstwood  and  branches  thence  to  yield 
Lawrences  and  Edmunds  and  John  Spensers  in  almost 
endless  recurrence,  and  all  fulfilling  the  requirement  that 
the  "  relatives  "  visited  by  the  Poet  were  "  in  the  North" 
of  England  ;  and  that  it  is  all  but  certain  that  John 
Spenser,  "  free  jorneyman "  of  Merchant  Taylors'  in 
1566,  and  "gent."  in  1571,  was  younger  brother  or 
other  near  kinsman  of  Edmund  Spenser  of  Hurstwood 
and  FATHER  of  the  Poet.  Further — We  have  found 
that  in  accord  with  his  Lancashire  origin  and  long  visits 
the  Shepherd's  Calendar  and  other  poems,  through- 
out, have  interworked  into  them  a  large  number  of 
North-East  Lancashire  words  and  phrases  and  allusions, 
only  explainable  by  one  "  to  the  manner  born  "  using 
his  home-speech.  Collaterally — We  have  found  that 
the  scenes  of  the  ShepJurds  Calendar,  in  so  far  as  they 
are  personal,  are  only  to  be  understood  as  localized 
in  and  around  Pendle.  Then  subsidiarily — We  have 
found  that  Sarah  Spenser,  sister  of  the  Poet,  married  a 
Travers  of  Lancashire,  and  that  the  Traverses'  present- 
day  genealogy  points  back  in  like  manner  to  their 
ancestor  "  Sarah  Spenser  "  having  come  from  the  very 
district  which  we  have  ascertained  to  have  been  that  of 
Edmund  Spenser  ;  and  further,  that  the  first  publisher 
of  the    Shephetds  Calendar    was    a    Lancashire   man 


Ixiv         A  NCESTR  V  A  ND  FA  AIIL  Y  OF  SPENSER. 

"  Hugh  Singleton."  Finally — We  have  incidentally  to 
remark  that  the  Spensers  of  Althorp  had  in  all  proba- 
bility a  common  origin  with  the  North-East  Lancashire 
Spensers,  and  were  in  no  way  "  superior "  irl  blood 
to    the   "  freeholders  "   of  Hurstwood. 

The  Writer  will  be  amply  recompensed  for  the 
toil  of  this  long  inquiry,  if  it  be  conceded  that  irre- 
versibly it  has  been  made  out,  that  North-East  Lan- 
cashire has  the  proud  distinction  of  entering  on  its 
records  that  thence  sprang  Edmund  Spenser,  so 
establishing  his  own  words — 

At  length  they  all  to  merry  London  came, 

To  merry  London,  my  most  kindly  nurse, 

That  to  me  gave  this  life's  first  native  source, 

llioughfrom  another  place  I  take  my  naine, 

A  house  of  auncient  fame.  {I^rothalamwn.) 

This  express  reference  to  his  origin  and  family,  even 
if  it  stood  alone — which  w^e  have  abundantly  seen  it 
does  not — would  disprove  the  Westminster  Review 
writer  when  he  asks — "  But  why  does  Spenser,  who 
not  only  repeatedly  mentions  his  relationship  to  Sir 
John  Spenser,  but  even  dedicates  a  separate  poem  to 
three  of  his  six  daughters,  never  hint  at  his  relations 
in  Lancashire  ?  Was  he  ashamed  of  them  }  Had  he 
quarrelled  with  them  t  Or  was  he  ignorant  of  them  ? 
Most  likely  the  branch  of  the  family  in  London  to 
which  the  poet  belonged  had  been  separated  so  long 
from  the  branch  in  Lancashire,  the  relationship  was 
forgotten."  All  idlest  misstatement.  Surely  the  writer 
might  have  recalled,  in  addition  to  the  Prothalamion 
allusion,  his  proud  ranging  of  his  '  mother,'  P^lizabeth, 
with  his  Oueen  and  wife  ! 


II.  HiRTii  AND  Birthplace  and  Boyhood. 

•'  The  buy  i>  father  of  the  man." — Wordsworth. 

Edmund  Spenskr — first  of  all  Spensers — was  most 
probably — a  probability  next  door  to  certainty  in  the 
light  of  genealogical  Facts  already  given  (in  Intro- 
duction :  Ancestrj  and  Family) — eldest  son  of  John 
Spenser,  who  is  described  as  "  free  jorneyman  "  of  Mer- 
chant Taylors'  Company  in  1566,  and  "gent."  in  1571, 
by  Elizabeth  (unknown)  his  wife.  As  also  shown,  the 
Spensers  were  of  North-East  Lancashire.  Edmund  was 
born  ''about  1552."  It  is  impossible  to  fix  the  birth- 
date  exactly.  Incidentally  in  one  of  his  Sonnets  of 
the  Amorciti,  the  Poet  has  given  a  kind  of  clue  by 
which  his  Biographers  have  been  guided  to  the  year 
named.     It  thus  runs  : — 

.  since  the  winged  God  hi.s  planet  cleare, 
began  in  me  to  move,  one  ycare  is  spent : 
the  which  doth  longer  unto  me  appeare, 
then  all  those  fourty  which  my  life  outwent. 
Then  by  that  count,  which  lovers  books  invent, 
the  spheare  of  Cupid  fourty  yeares  containes  : 
which  I  have  wasted  in  long  languishment, 
that  -seemd  the  longer  for  my  greater  paines. 

(Sonnet  Ix.,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  107.) 

There  are  several  disturbing  elements  that  prevent  our 
reaching  anything  like  (absolute)  certainty  from  these 
seeming-definite,   but   really    indefinite    datings  of   his 
I.  I 


2      BIRTH  AND  BIRTHPLA  CE  AND  BOYHOOD. 

love's  '  languishment.'  It  has  been  usually  assumed 
that  the  Amoretti  was  written  in  1593  or  1594* 
With  reference  to  the  larger  number,  and  this  Sonnet 
in  particular,  such  date  (1593-4)  may  be  conceded, 
albeit — as  the  sequel  will  prove — some  of  the  Sonnets 
belong  to  "  Rosalind,"  not  "  Elizabeth,"  and  hence  date 
very  much  earlier.  But  having  regard  to  the  Amoretti 
broadly,  and  the  Ixth  Sonnet  specifically,  and  reckoning 
backward,  the  "  one  yeare  "  and  the  "  fourty  "  preceding 
taken  from  1593-4  yields  1552-3  {id  est,  forty-one  de- 
ducted). It  is,  however,  to  be  noted,  what  the  mutilated 
quotation  of  the  Sonnet  hitherto  has  hidden,  that 
whereas  in  one  line  of  it  he  defines  the  "  fourty  yeares  " 
as  his  LIFE  ("  my  life  outwent "),  in  another  line, 
ep-exegetical  of  the  other,  he  characterizes  the  "  fourty 
yeares  "  as  having  been  "  wasted  in  long  languishment" 
of  love  and  loving.  If  we  are  to  attach  precision  to 
the  former,  equal  precision  must  be  attached  to  the 
latter  ;  and  this  being  so,  it  seems  needful  to  allow  some 
limited  term  of  years  to  have  gone  before  "  the  fourty." 
He  could  hardly  have  begun  to  "  languish "  until  he 
had  passed  into  his  early  teens  at  soonest.  Yet  if 
"  fourty  yeares  "  are  to  be  taken  strictly,  we  have  him 
inaugurating  his  "  languishment  "  while  still — 

Muling-  and  puking  in  the  nurse's  arms. 
Other  things   being  equal,  we  should   at  earliest  have 
thought  of  Shakespeare's  second  stage — 

.  .  .  the  whining  school-boy,  with  his  satchel 
And  shining  morning  face,  creeping  like  snail 
T'nwillingly  to  school. 

*  So  Professor  Hales  (Life  in  Globe  Spenser,  p.  16)  and  Dean 
Church  in  his  monograph  on  Spenser  in  Morlcy's  English  Men 
of  Letters,  pp.  3-4. 


BIRTH  A  ND  BIR  THPLA  CE  A  XD  B O  YIIO OD.      3 

In  such  case  we  should  readily  accept — 

And  THEN  the  lover, 
Sighiner  like  furnace,  with  a  woful  ballad 
Made  to  his  mistress'  eyebrow.* 

It  would  thus  appear  that  unless  the  Poet  meant  his 
"  life," — as  he  first  puts  it, — the  "  languishment "  in  the 
Sonnet  must  be  extended  imaginatively  and  far  ante- 
dated. In  my  judgment,  he  meant  his  "life,"  and 
simply  suffused  the  whole  "  fourty  yeares "  with  the 
"  purple  light  "  of  his  love  (as  we  shall  see)  for 
Rosalind.  And  so  1552-3  may  stand,  but  with  a 
query. 

Another  line  of  approximation  is  found  in  the  title- 
page  of  the  original  edition  of  the  Amoretti  (1595)  in 
these  words,  "  Written  not  long  since."  This  falls  to 
be  interpreted — though  I  am  not  aware  that  it  has 
been — by  other  two  dates.  First,  there  is  the  entry  of 
the  Amoretti  in  the  Stationers'  Register,  as  follows  : — 

xix°  die  Novembris  [1594] 

William  Ponfonhy.  Entred  for  his  Copie  vnder  the  handes  of 
the  Wardens,  A  booke  entituled-<4/«<?r^/// 
and  Epithalamion  written  not  longe  since 
by  Edmund  Spencer vjd.t 

Second — there  is  the  actual  marriage  to  Elizabeth  of  the 
Sonnet  d.x\AAmorettiox\  i  ith  June,  i  594  (as  will  be  found 
in  its  place).  Both  of  these  within  a  year,  less  or  more, 
once  more  take  us  back  to  1552-3.  Hence  ''about 
1552"  must  be  near  the  truth.  It  is  possible  that  the 
"  fourty  yeares  "  was  a  round  number  for  forty  and  odd  ; 
so  that  "  about  1552"  may  be  made  to  cover  i  550  or 
•  As  You  Like  It,  ii.  7  (all  three),     t  Arber,  as  before,  ii.  665. 


4     BIRTH  AND  BIRTHPLACE  AND  BOYHOOD, 

1 55 1.*  "The  cycles  of  Mars  and  Cupid,"  says  an 
able  writer,  "seem  surprisingly  round,  and  perhaps  little 
violence  would  be  done  to  the  lover's  dates  by  stretch- 
ing '  fourty '  to  forty-three  or  four,"t 

The  Birthplace  was  East  Smithfield,  London. 
London  is  pleasantly  named  by  our  Poet  himself  as 
his  birthplace.  I  say  '  pleasantly,'  because  the  epithet 
"  merry "  sets  the  line  in  which  it  occurs  to  the  music 
of  "  merry  England  "  and  the  "  merry  greenwood  "  of 
many  an  old  ballad.  In  the  ProtJialainion  the  birth- 
place is  thus  given  : — 

At  length  they  all  to  mcry  Londoji  came, 
To  mery  London,  my  most  kyndly  Nurse, 
That  to  me  gave,  this  Lifes  first  native  sourse. 

(St.  8,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  2o6.) 

In  agreement  with  this,  is  Camden,  who  amongst  the 
"  Reges,  Reginae,  Nobiles,  et  alij  in  Ecclesia  Collegiata 
B.  Petri  Westmonasterli  sepulti  usque  ad  annum  i6o6," 
enrolls  Spenser  as  "  Edmundus  Spencer  Loiidinensis." 
Similarly,  in  his  Annales  veruui  Anglicarum  et  Hiberni- 
canim  regnante  Elizabethd  (1628),  we  read — "Ed. 
Spenserus,  patria  Londinensisy  So  all.  The  autho- 
rity for  the  locality  ("  East  Smithfield  ")  of  his  birth 
has  hitherto  been  limited  to  William  Oldys,  the  famous 
— and  justly  famous — bibliographic-biographic  anti- 
quary, who  in  one  of  his  overflowing  MS.  notes,  which 
Isaac  Reed  copied  from  the  Antiquary's  copy  of  Win- 
stanley's  Lives  of  the  most  famous  English  Poets,  writes 

*  Mr.  Thomas  Kcightlcy  in  his  brilliant  paper  "  On  the  Life  of 
Edmund  Spenser"  {Trascr's  Magazine,  vol.  Ix.,  pp.  410-22),  is 
strangely  dogmatic  in  his  (so-called)  "settling"  of  1551  as  the 
birth-year.     Facts  are  scarcely  to  be  "  settled  "  by  intuition. 

+  Westminster  Review,  vol.  xxxi.,  N.  Series,  1867,  p.  138. 
So  also  on  p.  i. 


L.' 


niR TH  A  ND  BIR  THPLA  CE  A  ND  D O  \ ^110 OD.      5 

over  against  the  date  "in  East  Smithficld."  Oldys  was 
so  painstaking  and  chary  in  writing  down  his  notes, 
that  the  thing  might  well  have  been  accepted  on  his 
(trustworthy)  authority.  But  another  is  forthcoming — 
to  wit,  George  V'ertue,  the  Engraver  and  Antiquary,  in 
whose  considerable  "  Notes  "  on  the  Life  and  Poevis  oj 
Speitser,  among  the  Additional  MSS.  in  the  British 
Museum,  it  is  stated  that  in  a  Map,  or  rather  perspective 
view,  of  London,  engraved  by  Hollar  in  1647,  there 
was  placed  "  at  the  bottom  "  a  memorandum  to  the 
effect  that  the  "  famous  poet  Spenser  "  was  born  in 
"  East  Smithfield,"  near  to  the  Tower.  Both  01d)'s 
and  Vertue  were  early  enough  to  have  learned  such  a 
fact  from  those  whose  grandfathers  or  even  fathers  might 
have  ascertained  it*  By  a  side-light  confirming  this 
birthplace  is  Gabriel  Harvey's  serio-comic  "  obligation" 
entry — of  which  more  in  its  place — as  follows  : 
"  E[dmund]  S[penser]  de  London  in  comitatu  Middle- 
sex!'^     East  Smithfield  is  in  Middlesex. 

It  was  a  covetable  birthplace.     "  Near  the  Tower  " 

*  The  following-  is  the  exact  note  : — "  East  Smithfield  near  the 
Tower :  the  birth-place  of  Edmund  Spenser  that  Famous  Poet 
and  our  Second  Chaucer.  This  printed  in  Latin  and  English  at 
the  bottom  of  a  Large  Map  of  London  graved  by  Hollar,  pub- 
lished 1647  •  o''  rather,  Perspective  View  of  London."  (Addl.  MSS., 
2^,089,  p.  134,  dated  1731.)  On  turning  up  a  copy  of  Hollar's 
Perspective  VieTv  of  1647,  in  the  British  Museum,  I  certainly 
f«)imd  no  "  printed"  or  "engraved  "  memorandum  to  the  above 
Lftftt,  either  "  at  bottom  "  or  anywhere  else.  Nor  was  such  an 
exceptional  inscription  to  be  looked  for.  I  understand  of  course 
that  the  "  printing  "  or  "  engraving"  was  a  slip  of  memory,  and 
that  the  words  were  in  MS.,  by  some  one  who  knew.  Oldys  gives 
no  authority,  but  as  he  does  not  adduce  Vertue,  it  may  be  assumed 
that  each  antiquary  got  at  the  fact  independently.  Vertue  born 
1684  ;  ti'^d  1756  :  Oldys  bom  1687  ;  died  1761. 

t  Letter-Book,  as  before. 


6      BIRTH  AND  BIRTHPLA  CE  AND  BOYHOOD. 

there  was  a  pleasant  open  space,  and  "  East  Smith- 
field  "  altogether  then  looked  to  the  towers  of  St. 
Katherine's  and  across  the  fair,  broad,  bright  river  to 
the  Kent  and  Surrey  hills.  It  was  ringed  round,  too, 
— like  Damascus  of  even  to-day, — with  spacious  "green" 
fields  and  sunny  gardens  and  fragrant  lanes,  edged 
here  with  May  and  there  with  elms,  to  the  east  and 
north.  Only  on  the  west  rose  the  picturesque  old 
city,  with  its  stately  buildings  standing  in  ample  spaces, 
and  not  without  tower  and  spire  against  the  sky-line, 
or  tree-lined  close.  Beside  East  Smithfield  were  the 
green  slopes  of  Tower-hill  and  of  the  tower — palace 
and  stronghold  in  one,  like  those  others  Byron  has 
immortalized  of  Venice — with  the  huge  Tudor  standard 
on  the  loftiest  keep,  flinging  abroad  its  proud  blazonry 
of  rose  and  portcullis  and  lion  of  England  and  lilies 
of  France,  supported  by  the  dragon  of  Cadwallader  ; 
and  from  whence  at  nightfall  might  be  heard  the  blare 
of  the  trumpets  and  the  roll  of  the  kettledrums  and 
the  tread  of  the  "  watch  and  ward  "  as  the  mighty  port- 
cullis clanged  down,  and  all  access  to  the  stern  fortress 
was  forbidden  until  dawn.  The  breath  of  the  country 
air  was  then  over  all  East  Smithfield.* 

It  is  satisfying  to  thus  find  "  East  Smithfield  "  the 

*  For  many  of  the  details  worked  into  the  text  I  am  indebted 
to  a  very  valuable  paper  in  the  British  Qttarterly  Review,  vol. 
xxii.,  pp.  368-412 — by  far  the  most  matterful  and  critically-careful 
examination  of  the  Life  and  Writin.q-s  of  Spenser  known  to  me  ; 
also  to  Henry  Machyn's  Diary — "  Citizen  and  Merchant  Taylor  of 
London  j 550-63"  (Camden  Society),  by  J.  G.  Nichols,  Esq.,  1848  ; 
and  Str3'pe  and  other  historical  authorities.  I  must  also  name  a 
noticeable  paper  entitled  "  England  in  the  Age  of  Spenser,"  by 
Alexander  Kerr,  in  The  Western,  published  at  St.  Louis,  U.S.A., 
vol.  v.,  pp.  535-41. 


BIR TH  A  XD  BIR  THPLA  CE  A  XD  BO  YHOOD.      7 

birthplace  of  our  Poet,  seeing  that  it  accords  with  his 
family's  ''  gnitle  blood."  Being  beyond  the  city-walls, 
those  who  dwelt  there  were  held  (or  held  themselves; 
far  higher  than  the  "  tradesmen "  of  the  city,  the 
manifold  handicraftsmen  of  the  numerous  guilds.  East 
Smithfield  was  the  place  of  elect  residence  of  "  the 
gentlemen  "  of  England.  I  have  an  idea  (be  it  mere 
"  Pleasure  of  Imagination  ")  that  mayhap  John  Spenser 
migrated  to  London  from  North-East  Lancashire  as  a 
'  retainer  '  of  one  or  other  of  the  Lancashire  families — 
e.g.,  of  the  Nowells — who  spent  "  the  season  "  in  the 
metropolis.  Certcs  it  is  a  coincidence  to  be  noted,  that 
the  time  of  the  "  flight "  of  Dean  Nowell  (and  many 
others)  to  the  Continent,  dovetails  in  with  such  loss 
of  place  and  position  as  would  have  enforced  John 
Spenser,  "  gent." — but  a  younger  son  and  brother — to 
give  himself  to  some  handicraft  such  as  that  of  "  free 
jorneyman  "  to  Merchant  Taylors'  Company. 

It  was  a  singularly  '  fitting '  time — if  the  word  may 
be  allowed — at  which  Spenser  was  born.  In  the  light 
of  his  supreme  poem,  the  Faery  Queen,  we  can  discern 
how  there  went  into  the  times  from  his  birth  to  its 
composition,  those  ver}'  elements  that  were  demanded 
to  enrich  and  shape  and  colour  his  peculiar  poetic 
genius.  If  ever  there  has  been  Poet  of  England 
whose  whole  make  was  permeated  by  imagination 
and  transfigured  by  ethical-spiritual  sentiment,  it  was 
Edmund  Spenser.  And  when  we  come  to  study  "  the 
form  and  pressure  "  of  his  age,  we  are  struck  with  the 
fecundity  and  variety  of  nutriment  provided  for  such  a 
nature  and  temperament,  in  the  life  around  him.  The 
man  was  made  for  the  time  and  the  time  was  ripe  for 


8      BIRTH  AND  BIR'IHPLACE  AND  BOYHOOD. 

the  man.  As  1  understand  the  classical  words  in  the 
ProtJialamion,  they  tell  us  that  he  was  not  only  London 
born  but  London  bred,  and  that  to  him  the  mighty 
mother  had  been  "  a  kyndly  nurse  "  *  ("  mery  London, 
my  most  kyndly  nurse").  So  that  it  is  of  vital  import- 
ance in  seeking  to  master  the  up-building  of  Spenser's 
character  and  genius,  to  have  as  distinct  an  impression 
as  may  be  of  his  surroundings  and  circumstances. 

Let  us  try  to  vivify  and  actualize  these,  even  under 
our  dim  lights.  When  the  Poet  was  born — if  in  i  552-3 
— poor  Edward  VI.  was  sinking  fast  (he  died  July  6th, 
1553),  and  contemporaneously  the  astute  and  self- 
aggrandizing  Northumberland,  flushed  by  his  triumph 
over  Somerset,  was  completing  the  triple  alliance 
w  hich  was  to  place  for  "  fifteen  days  "  a  crown  on 
the  head  of  the  Lady  Jane  Grey — most  pathetic  of  our 
historical  figures.  As  the  summer  drew  on  men's  minds 
were  perplexed  and  disturbed.  There  were  portents 
in  the  heavens.  There  were  rumours  i'  the  air.  There 
were  wild  prophecies  born  of  wilder  hopes.  There 
were  "  threatenings  "  that  did  not  suit  Northumberland. 
Stocks  and  pillory  and  gallows  were  put  under  levy. 
But  force,  then  as  to-day,  was  found  to  be  no  remedy 

*  Professor  Hales  (as before)  writes  :  "Perhaps  the  lines  already 
extracted  from  the  Protha/amion  tend  to  show  that,  though 
London  born,  Spenser  was  not  London  bred  "  (p.  xviii).  I  must 
reject  this.  My  friend  forgets,  in  his  anxiety  to  locate  Spenser 
early  in  North-East  Lancashire,  two  things  :  (i)  That  "nurse"  has 
its  ordinary  meaning,  and  (2)  That  Lancashire  words  and  phrases 
and  ways  would  of  necessity  be  the  "daily  speech  "  of  his  North- 
East  Lancashire  father  and  mother  and  their  habitual  associates 
and  visitors.  By  the  way,  Harvey's  phrase  ''your  shier"  goes 
to  show-that  the  paternal  Spenser  was  the  migrant,  and  so  that 
the  connection  with  North-East  Lancashire  was  immediate,  not 
remote. 


BIRTH  AXD  BIRTHPLACE  AND  BOYHOOD.     9 

for  such  oppositions.  Visions  were  multiplied.  Pro- 
phecies were  multiplied.  Even  the  Thames  contributed 
to  the  half-superstition,  half-terror,  for  "  dyvers  gretc 
fyshe  " — sure  sign  of  evil  to  London — not  only  ap- 
proached below  the  bridge,  but  one  was  actually  seen 
over-against  Paris  Garden.  No  wonder  that  when  it 
could  be  no  longer  concealed  that  the  King  was  dead, 
Henry  Machyn  wrote  in  his  Diary — "  And  that  he 
was  poysoned  everie  bodie  says."  Then,  swift  as  the 
change  of  scene  in  a  play,  followed  '  proclamation  '  of 
Queen  Jane,  "  and  all  maner  of  ordnance  carried  to  the 
Tower,"  and  THEN  the  triumphant  entry  of  Mary,  and 
the  fell  attainders  and  beheadings  of  the  opening 
months  of  her  "  bloody  "  reign.  As  a  child  Master 
Edmund  could  not  fail  to  hear  of  these,  from  Northum- 
berland (August  22,  1553)  downward.  Nor  could  he 
fail  to  hear  of  the  "  stately  procession  "  of  Queen  Mary 
in  her  chariot  of  cloth  of  gold,  followed  by  her  sister 
Elizabeth  in  her  chariot  of  cloth  of  silver,  which  issued 
from  "  the  Tower  "  on  the  coronation-day. 

The  next  five  years  were  dismal  and  dread.  Through 
it — even  reckoning  from  15 50-1 — little  Edmund  was 
merely  a  child.  So  that  possibly  he  saw,  without 
seeing  more  than  the  spectacular  of  them,  the  proces- 
sions of  the  Host  with  tapers  a-flame  in  the  sunshine, 
and  incense  fuming  into  the  air,  and  long  lines  of 
shaven  and  cowled  and  sandalled  priests  and  "  holy 
wemen  "  in  white  ;  while  he  must  have  learned  later 
the  meaning  of  ghastl)-  rows  of  squalid  prisoners  led 
by  javelin-men  to  the  stake  at  Smithfield.  His  own 
home — judging  from  his  ancestry  and  family — would 
not   be   without  the   muttered    curse   of   Spaniard    and 


10     BIRTH  AND  BIRTITPJ.ACR  AND  BOYHOOD. 

hate  oi  Popery  with  which  we  know  in  his  manhood  he 
sympathized.* 

At  length  17th  November,  i  5  58,  arrived,  when  all 
tlic  bells  of  London  and  all  (again)  "  mertj  England  " 
rang  out,  and  the  streets  blazed  perilously  with  bon- 
fires, and  gladness  filled  the  whole  cit)-  and  land,  for 
"  men  <^y(^  ete  and  drynke,  and  made  merrie  for  the 
new  (luene  Elizabeth."  Two  months  after,  Elizabeth 
re-entered  "  the  Tower "  which  three  years  before  she 
had  quitted  as  a  prisoner  on  leave,  but  now  a  beloved 
and  mighty  Queen. 

"  Is  it  too  great  a  stretch  of  Fancy,"  asks  a  master- 
student  of  Spenser,  "  that  on  the  proud  day  when  the 
fair  3-oung  queen — for  Elizabeth  at  twent3'-five  was  fair 
— rode  forth  from  the  Tower  to  her  coronation,  preceded 
by  knights  and  nobles  and  heralds  in  splendid  array,  and 
followed  by  a  bevy  of  '  goodly  and  beautiful  ladies  '  on 
milk-white  prdfreys,  with  foot-cloths  of  crimson  velvet 
sweeping  the  ground,  and  took  her  way  through  the 
tapestried  and  pageant-decked  streets,  one  bright-eyed 
boy  stood  gazing  at  the  gorgeous  procession,  which  was 
to  him  a  vision  of  Fairy  Land  ;  that  among  those 
cr(Mvds  which  lined  the  three  miles  of  that  triumphant 

•  'riiomas  Arnold,  M.A.,  in  a  paper  (of  which  more  hereafter) 
in  the  Diil>lin  Ri-vie'cV,  bohlly  says--"  Spenser  was  born  a  Cathohc, 
like  Southwell."  He  adduces  and  could  adduce  no  authority  for 
this.  Me  waters  it  down  to--" Nothing-  is  known  of  his  parents, 
but  since  no  tendency  to  Calvinistic  or  Lutheran  doctrine  is  found 
in  Spenser  himself,  //  /s  reasonable  to  sitpJ)OSc  that,  till  the  acces- 
sion of  Hlizabeth,  id  est  till  he  was  five  or  six  years  old,  he  was 
brotit^ht  up  in  the  old  Catholic  ways,  to  which,  under  Mary,  the 
mass  of  the  people  had  eas:;-erly  returned  "  (p.  329).  Utterly 
wrong-.  The  Spensers  were  all  Protestant,  and  our  Poet  w-as  the 
protege,  not  of  the  neitjhbouring  Roman  Catholic  Townleys,  but 
of  the  Protestant  Noweils. 


U 


BIRTH  AND  DIRTHPLA  CE  AND  BOYHOOD.     1 1 

way,  there  lie  stood,  who  thirty  )-cars  after  was  to  make 
the  same  Glonaua  famous  to  all  ages  ?  " 

"  There  was  much,"  continues  this  writer,  "  that  was 
suggestive  to  the  mind  of  the  boy-poet  in  the  pageants 
of  that  high  festival — '  the  seat  of  worthy  governance' 
— with  pure  Rehgion  treading  upon  Superstition  and 
Ignorance,  and  Wisdom  trampHng  F"olly  and  Vain- 
glory under  foot  ;  and  the  eight  Beatitudes,  each  with 
appropriate  emblems  and  appropriate  verse  ;  and  that 
most  elaborate  erection  at  the  little  Conduit  in  Cheap- 
side,  where  a  craggy  stony  mountain,  with  a  withered 
tree  and  a  squalid  figure  in  'rude  apparel,'  represented 
jiiinosa  respublica,  while  close  beside,  a  hill,  filled  with 
flowers,  and  a  fair  spreading  tree  with  bright  foliage, 
and  one  '  fresh  personage  well  apparelled,'  showed  forth 
the  prosperous  state  of  the  rcspublica  bene  iiistituta  ; 
and  more  emphatic  still.  Time  emerging  from  a  cave 
beneath,  with  his  daughter  Truth  bearing  a  copy  of  the 
English  Bible,  which,  unlike  the  other  gifts,  was  placed 
in  the  Queen's  own  hand."* 

It  is  worth  while  to  take  a  glance  of  these  quaint 
pageants,  revealing  as  they  do  how  Allegory,  leaving 
the  palaces  and  other  "  stately  homes "  of  England, 
and  "  Inns  of  Court,"  and  the  "  Masques  "  of  "  great 
ones,"  came  out  to  the  streets  and  stooped  to  entertain 
the  '  commonalty.' 

Nor  was  this  all.  The  Lord  Mayor's  'show,'  wherein 
"  salvage  men  "  with  "  clubbes  "  in  strange  guises  of 
green  serge  and  ivy  leaves,  made  way  for  the  far 
procession  ;   and  others  wherein   the  "  Giants  "  and  the 

*  British  Qitarterly  Review  (as  before),  pp.  371-2. 


12     BIRTH  AND  BIRTHPLA  CE  AND  BOYHOOD. 

"Seven  Champions  of  Christendom"  and  "King  Arthur 
and  his  Knights,"  severally  incarnating  the  ballads  of 
the  people — were  introduced  ;  and  at  Christmas  the 
"  Lord  of  Misrule  "  rode  in  jocund  state  with  drums 
and  banners,  and  "  a  great  company "  on  horseback 
and  a-foot.  Then  there  was  the  Morris  Dance, 
"  daunsynge  with  a  taket,  and  my  lorde  with  gowne 
of  golde  furred  with  fur  of  the  goodliest,  and  halfe- 
an-hundred  in  red  and  whyte,  tall  men  of  his  garde," 
and  made  proclamation  of  Christmas  at  the  fair  crosse 
at  Cheap,  and  staved  in  the  head  of  a  hogshead  of  wine 
and  broached  full  many  a  barrel  of  nut-brown  ale  and 
scattered  with  open  hand  of  largess  silver  pennies. 

Nor  must  we  forget  May-day,  and  the  tall  pole  set 
up  in  "  Leade  hall  street,"  and  the  green  and  white  in 
Fenchurch  Street,  and  the  Queen  of  the  May  riding 
through  the  city  accompanied  by  tJie  elephant  with  a 
castle  on  his  back.  Then  came  Midsummer  Eve,  when 
the  Midsummer  Watch,  with  pageantry  and  blazing 
cressets,  passed  from  Aldgate  to  Paul's  gate,  and 
onward  the  "stately  gatherings"  when  "Arthur's  show" 
moved  in  glittering  array  to  witness  the  shooting  with 
the  long-bow  at  Mile-end. 

There  was  thus  everywhere  much  to  quicken  Imagina- 
tion. Then — perhaps  deeper  still — while  the  gorgeous 
and  'awful'  ceremonial  of  the  old  Church  was  for  ever 
dead,  there  nevertheless  lingered  many  of  the  pleasant 
and  bright  usages  of  the  mediaeval  times.  A  marriage, 
even  am.ong  the  'simple,'  was  not  infrequently  an 
open  festival.  We  read  in  comparatively  humble  ranks 
of  a  "goodly  banquet  of  spice-bread,  cherries  and 
strawberries,"  and  all  comers  welcome. 


BIRTH  AND  BIRTHPLA  CE  A  XD  BO  \  TIOOD.     13 

The  '  Exchange  *  and  places  of  news  had,  for 
"  common  talk,"  tidings  of  far  lands — arctic  and  ant- 
arctic— with  many  a  strange  storj'-  of  daring-do  and 
discover}'.  So  that  Edmund  Spenser  was  '  born  '  into 
the  very  world — half-real,  half-unreal — that  he  was 
destined  to  pass,  like  light  sifting  through  the  clouds, 
through  his  creative  Imagination.  True,  myriads  saw 
and  heard  all  he  saw  and  heard,  and  went  unmoved 
so  far  as  Literature  knoAvs.  But  none  the  less  does  it 
remain  a  Fact  that  our  Poet  had  but  to  look  around 
him  to  find  materials  for  his  "  lofty  song,"  and  a  public 
taste  and  a  public  sentiment  ripe-ready  to  welcome 
just  such  a  great  allegorical  poem  as  it  was  his  life- 
work  to  give  England.  Camden  (1551)  and  Ralegh 
(1552)  and  Sidney  (1554)  and  Richard  Hooker  (1553?) 
and  Andrewes  (1555)  were  contemporary.  Bacon 
(I  561)  and  Shakespeare  (1564)  and  Marlowe  (i  564) 
and  Samuel  Daniel  (1562)  and  Michael  Drayton 
(i  563)  came  later. 

We  get  our  first  positive  glimpse  of  "Master 
Spenser  "  through  the  Spending  of  the  Monj  of  Robert 
NoicelL'"  This  acquaints  us  with  a  long  unknown 
landmark  in  his  life — his  School,  viz.,  Merchant  Taylons' 
School,  London.  In  a  crowd  of  unnoticeable  names  of 
"  poor  relations  "  and  dependants,  and  "  strangers  "  as 
well,  who  shared  the  money-alms  of  Nowell — somewhat 
thriftily  administered — there  appears  among  the  many 
"  poore  scholers  "  of  the  "  schoUs  aboute  London,"  in 
"  numb'    xxxj'** "    who    were    assisted,    the    name    of 

*  See  pp.  28-9  and  160-1  :  in  larg-e-paper  copies  of  the 
Spending,  is  prefixed  fac-simile  of  the  Spenser  entries  in  this 
MS. 


1 1     niRTII  A  ND  BIRTHPLA  CE  A  ND  BOYHOOD. 

"  Kdmundc  Spenser,"  along  with  those  of  Richard 
Hooker,  Launcelot  Andrewes  and  Richard  Hackluyt — 
to  specify  no  more.  As  the  entry  is  simply  "  Edmunde 
Spenser,"  with  not  another  word  added,  it  had  been 
impossible  by  this  first  entry  to  have  identified  this 
*' poore  scholler  "  as  our  Spenser.  But  fortunately  the 
first  record  is  succeeded  by  another  onward,  wherein — • 
as  will  appear — in  going  to  the  University  ("  Pembroke 
Hall  ")  of  Cambridge,  he  is  described  not  only  as 
"  gowinge  [going]  to  penbrocke  hall  in  chambridge," 
but  as  "  scholler  of  the  m'chante  tayler  scholl."  The 
first  entry  belongs  to  I  568,  the  latter  to  28th  April, 
1569.  Curiously  enough,  the  Merchant  Taylors* 
Company's  own  records  have  nothing  concerning  these 
their  most  illustrious  names.  Their  latest  historian 
(Rev.  C.  J.  Robinson,  M.A.)  is  indebted  to  the  Spend- 
ing for  all  the  early  names  of  the  School.*  But  it  is 
to  be  inferred  that  Spenser  was  one  of  the  first  boys 
received  into  the  Foundation.  The  great  School  was 
commenced  in  1560,  under  a  man  of  mark — Dr. 
Mulcaster — and  it  may,  we  think,  be  assumed,  that 
Master  Edmund  "entered"  in  that  year  or  1 560-1. 
He  was  then  (probably) — reckoning  from  1552 — in 
his  8th  or  9th  year.  So  that  he  left  when  he  was  in 
his  17th  or  I  8th  year  (1569).  His  school-mates  were 
in  no  way  distinguished. 

It  may  be  taken  for  granted  that  with  such  a  head- 
master as  Mulca.stcr,  and  such  a  Visitor  as  Grindal 
(afterwards  Archbishop  of  Canterbury),  Spenser  would 
be  well  furnished  at  this  School.    The  "Schole-bokes"  of 

Register  of  the  Scholars  admitted  at  Merchant  Taylors' 
School  from  1562  to  1874  :  vol.  i.,  1882. 


[y 


JEAX   VAX  DER  XOODT.  15 

the  time  look  meagre  and  '  hard  '  enough  ;  but  scliolars 
ripe  and  good  were  built  up  on  them.  Aubrey  informs 
us  that  Bp.  Andrewes  "  went  to  schoole  at  Merchant 
Taylors'  School,"  and  that  "Mr.  Mulcaster  was  his 
schoolemaster,  tvhosc  picture  he  hung  in  his  studie " 
(as  before,  p.  205).  Mayhap  Master  Spenser  held  him 
in  the  same  honour. 


III.  Jean  Van  Der  Noodt  and  Blank-verse  and 
Rhvmed  Sonnets  in  "The  Theatre  of  World- 
lings," 1569. 

"  Where  more  is  meant  than  meets  the  ear." — //  Penseroso. 

Biographers  of  Spenser — early  and  latest — have 
passed  him  from  his  School  (only  recently  known) 
to  the  University.  This  must  no  longer  be  done  ;  for 
in  a  literary  point  of  view,  in  the  last  year  of  his  attend- 
ance at  Merchant  Taylors'  School,  he  had  so  profited 
by  the  teaching  of  Dr.  Mulcaster — more  than  likely  had 
so  distinguished  himself  as  his  top  pupil — that  he  was 
called  upon  to  take  a  (temporarily)  silent  or  anonymous 
but  prominent  part  in  a  translated  book  published 
in  1569,  and  which  was  "in  the  press"  when  he  left 
for  "  Pembroke  Hall."  As  it  thus  preceded  his  academic 
course  at  Cambridge,  it  demands  statement  and  critical 
examination  here — that  is,  before  entering  on  his 
University  period. 

The  facts  are  few  and  simple,  and  still  a  shadow  of 
uncertainty  must  remain  over  them  in  the  absence  of 
positive  authentication.  I  feci  that  before  submitting 
my  own  conclusions  I  cannot  do  better  than  allow  the 


:6  ^JKAA'    VAN  DER  NOODT. 

later  of  my  two  most  capable   and  authoritative  pre- 
decessors to  put  the  thing— viz.,  Dean  Church. 

"  And  in  this  year,  apparently  in  the  transition  time 
between  school  and   college,  Spenser's  literary  ventures 
began.     The  evidence  is  curious,  but  it  seems   to   be 
clelir.       In    1569,    a   refugee    Flemish    physician   from 
Antwerp,  who  had   lied  to  England   from  'the  abomi- 
nations of  the  Roman  Antichrist '  and  the  persecutions 
of  the  Duke  of  Alva,  John  Vander  Noodt,  published 
one  of  those  odd  miscellanies,  fashionable  at  the  time, 
half  moral  and   poetical,  half  fiercely  polemical,  which 
he  called   a   '  Theatre,  wherein  he  represented   as  well 
the  Miseries  and  Calamities  that  follow  the  Voluptuous 
Worldlings,    as    also     the    great    Joyes    and    Plesures 
which    the    Faithful  do    enjoy.      An    Argument   both 
Profitable    and    Delectable    to   all    that   sincerely  love 
the     Word    of    God.'       This     'little    treatise'    was    a 
mixture  of  verse  and  prose,  setting  forth   in  general, 
the  vanity   of  tlie    world,    and,    in    particular,  predic- 
tion,   of  the  ruin   of    Rome  and   Antichrist  ;     and    it 
enforced  its  lessons  by  illustrative  woodcuts.      In  this 
strange  jumble  are  preserved,  we   can   scarcely  doubt, 
the    first   compositions  which   we   know   of    Spenser's. 
Among  the  pieces  arc  some  Sonnets  of  Petrarch,  and 
some   Visions  of  the  French   poet  Joachim  du   Bellay, 
wliosc  poems  were   published   in   I  568.      In  the  collec- 
tion   itself,    these    pieces   arc   said  by   the  compiler   to 
have    been  translated   by   him   '  out    of  the    Brabants 
speech,'  and   '  out  of  Dutch  into  English.'  *      But  in  a 
volume  of  Poems  of  the  World's   Vanity,  and  published 

♦  One  asks  what  is  the  difference  bt'tween  "  Brabants  speech" 
and  "  1  )ulch  "  ?     ll  has  a  look  of  mystification. 


U' 


JEAN   VAN  DER  NOODT.  17 

years  afterwards  (in  1591)  ascribed  to  Spenser,  and  put 
together,  apparently  with  his  consent,  by  his  publisher, 
arc  found  these  very  pieces  from  Petrarch  and  Du 
Bellay.  The  translations  from  Petrarch  are  almost 
literally  the  same,  and  are  said  to  have  been  '  formerly 
translated.'  In  the  Visions  of  Dtc  Bellay  there  is  this 
difference — that  the  earlier  translations  are  in  blank 
verse,  and  the  later  ones  are  rhymed  as  sonnets;  but 
the  change  does  not  destroy  the  manifest  identity  of 
the  two  translations.  So  that  unless  Spenser's  pub- 
lisher, to  whom  the  poet  had  certainly  given  some  of 
his  genuine  pieces  for  the  volume,  is  not  to  be  trusted, 
— which,  of  course,  is  possible,  but  not  probable  ;  or 
unless — what  is  in  the  last  degree  inconceivable — 
Spenser  had  afterwards  been  willing  to  take  the  trouble 
of  turning  the  blank  verse  of  Du  Bellay's  unknown 
translator  into  rhyme,  the  Dutchman  who  dates  his 
Theatre  of  Worldlings  on  the  25  th  May,  1569,  must 
have  employed  the  promising  and  fluent  schoolboy  to 
furnish  him  with  an  English  versified  form,  of  which 
he  himself  took  the  credit,  for  compositions  which  he 
professes  to  have  known  only  in  the  Brabants  or  Dutch 
translations.  The  sonnets  from  Petrarch  arc  translated 
with  much  command  of  language  ;  there  occurs  in 
them,  what  was  afterwards  a  favourite  thought  of 
Spenser's  : — 

The  Nymphs, 
That  sweetly  in  accord  did  tune  their  voice 
To  the  soft  sounding  of  the  ivatcrs''  fall.* 

It    is   scarcely    credible    that    the   translator    of  the 

^  Cf.  Shep.  Cal.,  April,  1.  36,  June,  I.  8 ;  A  Q.  VI.  x.  7. 
I.  2 


1 8  JEAN   VAN  DER  NOODT. 

sonnets  could  have  caught  so  much  as  he  has  done  of 
the  spirit  of  Petrarch  without  having  been  able  to  read 
the  Italian  original  ;  and  if  Spenser  was  the  translator, 
it  is  a  curious  illustration  of  the  fashionableness  of 
Italian  literature  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth,  that  a  school- 
boy just  leaving  Merchant  Taylors'  should  have  been  so 
much  interested  in  it.  Dr.  Mulcaster,  his  master,  is 
said  by  Warton  to  have  given  special  attention  to  the 
teaching  of  the  English  language."  * 

Such  are  the  main  outward  facts  ;  but  besides  these, 
there  arc  a  number  of  lesser  things  that  go  to  strengthen 
the  Spenser  authorship  of  both  the  "  blank  verse  "  and 
the  rh\med  Sonnets  of  the  Thealre,  which  it  is  expe- 
dient to  present. 

{a)  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  assertions  of  Vander 
Noodt,  "  I  have  out  of  the  Brabants  speech  turned 
them  into  the  English  tongue,"  and  "  I  have  translated 
them  out  of  Dutch  into  English,"  reach  us  through  the 
translation  of  the  prose  part  of  the  Theatre  into 
English  by  Roest,  not  directly  from  Vander  Noodt. 

(/;)  It  seems  most  improbable  that  Vander  Noodt 
should  have  commanded  English  enough  to  translate 
Bella)-  into  "blank  verse"— and  such  blank  verse  as 
we  shall  see  it  to  be— antl  have  allowed  or  employed 
Roest  to  translate  the  prose.  I  must  express  further 
my  doubts  of  the  long  epistle-dedicatory  to  Elizabeth 
in  English  being  Vander  Noodt's.  It  appears  (sub- 
stantially; in  the  Ercnch  of  1568,  and  the  English 
most  probably  equally  belongs  to  Roest  as  the  body 
of  the  book.     I  am  the  more  confirmed  in  this  by  a 

*  "Spenser,"  Morlcy's  English  Men  of  Letters,  pp.  12,  13. 


JEAX  VAiV  DER  AXIODT.  19 

peculiarity  in  the  title-page  of  another  work  by  Vandcr 
Noodt  xyhich  was  published  in  English  in  the  same 
year  with  the  Theatre  (1569) — viz.,  "Governance  and 
preservation  of  them  that  feare  the  Plage.  Set  forth 
by  John  V^andemoote,  Physician  and  Surgion,  admitted 
by  the  Kynge  his  highnesse.  Now  newly  set  forth  at 
the  request  of  William  Barnard,  of  London,  Draper, 
1569.  Imprinted  at  London,  by  Willyam  How  for 
Abraham  Vcale  in  Paules  churchyard  at  the  Signe  of 
the  Lambe,"  "Set  forth"  cannot  be  taken  for  'trans- 
lated '  or  '  composed  in  English,'  seeing  it  is  repeated 
below  as  =  published.  So  that  there  really  is  no 
evidence  whatever  to  show  that  Vander  Noodt  com- 
manded enough  of  English  to  write  it  idiomatically, 
besides,  even  were  there  proof — which  there  is  not — 
that  he  had  himself  written  the  epistle-dedicatory  of 
the  Tlieatrc  in  English,  and  himself  translated  or 
composed  in  English  the  Governance,  to  write  Eng- 
lish prose  is  one  thing  and  English  '  blank '  and 
rhymed  verse  another.  And  not  only  so,  but  for  a 
foreigner  to  so  translate  into  '  blank  verse  '  superior 
to  Surrey's  blank  verse  rendering  of  the  second  and 
third  books  of  the  ,7fw/V/ (i  557),  and  to  Gascoigne's 
Steele  (J/asse  (1575),  would  have  been  a  literary 
phenomenon  without  precedent  known  to  me.* 

{c)  It  has  not  been  observed,  or  at  least  accentuated, 
that  the  Petrarch  Visions  of  i  569  are  already  in  rhyme, 
and  substantially  the  same  as  those  published   in  i  591. 

*  A  copy  of  the  Governance  is  in  the  British  Museum 
Library.  The  English  is  much  Uke  that  of  Roest's  tran.slation 
of  the  Theatre.  Professor  Craik  first  noticed  the  Governance 
in  his  Spetiser  and  his  Poetry,  i.  18-19. 


20  JEAN   VAN  DER  NOODT. 

Yet  both  (Vol.  III.,  p.  231)  arc  equally  claimed  by 
Vandcr  Noodt.  Any  argument,  therefore,  that  rests 
upon  Vandcr  Noodt'.s  'claim'  must  make  him  the  author 
of  the  rhymed  scries  as  well. 

{({)  Looking  closely  into  the  Petrarch  series,  it  will 
be  felt  that  their  style  is  decisively  that  of  Spenser  in 
his  early  manner.  I  open  ad  apcrtiirani  libri,  and  read 
this  : — 

Thun  all  astonied  with  this  mighty  ghoast, 

An  hideous  hodie  big  and  strong  I  sawe, 
With  side  long  beard,  and  locks  down  hanging  loast, 

Sterne  face,  and  front  full  of  Saturnlikc  awe  ; 
Who  leaning  on  the  belly  of  a  pot, 

Powrd  foorth  a  water,  whose  out  gushing  flood 
R.m  bathingr  all  the  creakie  shore  allot, 

Whereon  the  Troyan  prince  spilt  Turnus  blood ; 
And  at  his  feete  a  bitch  wolfe  suck  did  yeeld 

To  two  young  babes  :  his  left  the  Palme  tree  stout, 
liis  right  hand  did  the  peacefull  Olive  wield. 

And  head  with  T.awrell  garnisht  was  about. 
Sudden  both  Palme  and  Olive  fell  away, 
Axud  faire  greene  Lawrell  branch  did  quite  decay 

(Vol.  111.,  pp.  2 10- 1 1.) 

Character  and  cadence  arc  pre-eminently  Spenserian 
here  and  throughout.  That  a  Fleming,  who  employed 
a  translator  for  his  prose,  could  have  written  this 
Sonnet,  or  one  line  of  any  of  them,  is  such  a 
stretch  of  fantastic  criticism  as  may  take  rank  with 
Tubingen  (ir  IJerlin  or  Taris  in  l>iblical  or  Homeric 
regions. 

{c)  While  aware  that  we  have  no  evidence  that 
S[)enser  authenticated  Ponsonby's  volume,  it  would 
siu-cl)-  be  a  great  rashness  to  suppose  that  he  admitted 
into  the  Complaints  a  series  written  by  Vander 
Noodt.    licsidcs,  the  other  immortal  poems  of  the  1591 


JEAN   VAN  DER  NOODT.  21 

volume — the  Spcnscr-authorship  of  which  nobody  has 
ever  impugned — have  no  more  authentication  than 
the  Sonnets  of  1569  transferred  to  it;  whilst  there 
is  this  further  consideration,  that  not  only  arc  there 
epistles-dedicatory  furnished  for  the  several  pieces — 
among  the  most  precious  of  these — but  the  whole 
series  of  sonnets — independent  of  the  rhyme  in  what 
previously  were  'blank  \-crse' — reveal  an  author's 
revision. 

(/)  The  Spenserian  authorship  is  by  far  the  most 
natural  solution  of  the  problem.  The  blank  verse, 
as  well  as  the  rh)-med  scries  of  1569,  with  all  their 
notableness  and  promise,  bear  traces  of  youth  and 
inexperience.  They  arc  what  a  precocious  and  fluent 
bo}'  might  fling  off,  especially  when  one  considers  how 
-soon  Spenser  must  have  begun  to  compose  in  order  to 
produce  the  long  series  of  poems  lost  and  published, 
produced  by  1579.  Further:  that  he  should  turn  his 
own  blank  verse  into  rhyme — no  doubt  soon  after 
1569-71 — is  a  more  natural  thing  than  that  he  should 
do  so  with  another's  blank  verse,  even  had  Vander 
Noodt  by  some  miracle  been  able  to  write  blank  verse 
transmutable  into  Spenserian  rhyme  with  such  singular 
economy  of  alteration,  and  with  the  result  that  no  one 
could  {itico  judicio)  ever  discover  that  the  whole  texture 
of  the  rhymed  form  was  not  by  the  author  of  the 
Visions  of  the  World's  Vanitie  published  with  them. 

{g)  Hence  also  the  words  "  formerly  translated," 
before  the  Petrarch  scries,  as.sume  their  natural  sense — 
which  I  did  not  perceive  before  (in  Vol.  III.,  p.  229). 
These  Sonnets  were  republished  from  the  book  of  i  569, 
the  15ellay  set  were  not.     It  was  inevitable  that  Spenser 


22  JEAN   VAN  DER  NOODT. 

any  time  after  1569  should  feel — what  we  to-day  feel 
— that  his  blank  verse  was  rather  monotonous  and 
crude  ;  and  this  being  so,  neither  he  nor  Ponsonby 
would  hardly  care  to  draw  attention — other  than  in 
this  slight  rc-claiming  way — to  the  primary  form,  when 
presenting  these  Visions  with  whatever  attraction  rhyme 
could  confer.  Let  it  also  be  kept  in  firm  recollection 
that  the  1591  volume  not  only  went  bodily  into  the 
collected  Works  of  Spenser — probably  superv  ised  by 
his  friend  Gabr'el  Harvey — but  that  the  same  publisher 
published  Colin  Clont  in  1595,  the  Anwrctti  and 
JipiiJinlauiuvi  in  1595,  the  Fourc  Hy nines  in  1596, 
rmd  the  Prothalaniion  in  1596;  and  yet  with  this 
fourfold  opportunity  of  disavowing  the  "  Sonnets,"  there 
was  not  the  slightest  hint  of  such  disavowal.  This  is 
decisive  to  me  as  to  the  authenticit}'  of  the  entire 
volume  of  1591. 

(//)  It  is  surely  allowable  to  give  Vandcr  Noodt  the 
benefit  of  meaning  by  •'  I  have  turned  "  ,nnd  "  I  have 
translated  "  no  more  than  that  he  had  got  translations 
made,  or  at  most  that  lie  had  prepared  translations  into 
I'.nglish  prose  of  the  liellay  and  Petrarch  pieces,  to  be 
dealt  with  by  an  PInglishman,  and  which  were  dealt 
with  by  lulmund  Spenser.*  This  ])cing  so,  I  must  liold 
the  Westminster  Reviewer  (vol.  xxxi.,  New  Series, 
1.S69,  pp.  133-50)  as  needlessly  harsh  in  his  verdict 
when  he  writes — "  p^ew  would  infer  from  this  title 
that  the  best  part   of  the  book — the  translations  from 

■-  It  may  bo  noted  lierc  that  for  tlie  words  itt  siip'ci  the  French 
Lc  'J'Inuitrc  of  1568  thus  runs—"  Or  los  autres  dix  visions 
(■nsii)'uans,  sont  deseritez  par  Joacliin  du  Bellay,  Gentilhomme 
l-'ran^ois,  lesquelles  faisant  a  nostre  jiropos  i'ay  icy  inserc  ..." 
(SiKii  E.  viij). 


JEAN  VAN  DER  NOODT.  23 

Petrarch  and  Bellay — consists  of  the  unacknowledged 
production  of  another  author  ;  and  that  this  unknown 
pharisee,  whilst  preaching  the  most  austere  piety,  was 
practising  the  basest  literary  dishonesty.  There  can, 
however,  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that  such  was  the 
case"  (p.  139). 

Before  passing  to  another  and  wholly  new  aspect 
of  the  John  Vander  Noodt  problem,  it  may  interest 
Spenscrians  to  have  these  details  in  the  Tlicatrc  and 
other  books  of  the  somewhat  eminent  Fleming.* 

First,  no  "  Brabant  "  or  "  Dutch  "  translation  of 
Petrarch  or  Bellay  is  known  to  have  existed  in  1569, 
and  the  earliest  of  the  77^^rt'/;r  containing  these  Sonnets 
i.s  Cologne  1572.  So  that  Roest  Vander  Noodt's 
statement  is  misleading.  If  it  did  exist,  it  must  have 
been  singularly  faithful  to  allow  Vander  Noodt  (in 
such  case)  to  reproduce  the  Canzone  with  so  much 
fidelity  to  the  Italian.! 

The  first  French  translation  of  the  Theatre  now 
extant  is  the  following,  which  appears  to  have  been 
Roest's  text — "  Le  Theatre  avquel  sont  exposes  & 
monstres  les  inconveniens  &  misercs  qui  suiuent  les 
mondains  &  vicieux  ....  par  ....  Jean  Vander 
Noodt."  At  end — "  Imprimc  en  la  ville  de  Londres 
chez  Jean  Day  1568."  The  Epistle-dedicatory  to 
Queen  Elizabeth  is  dated  from  "  Londres,  Ic  28 
d'Octobre,  I'An  1568.  De  V.  M.  Tres-humble  serf 
Jean  Vander  Noot."  Comparing  the  French  with  the 
English  translation,  it  is  found  that  there  arc  a  number 

•  See   Appendix   D  to  this  Life  for  more  on   Vander  Noodt 
from  various  sources,  foreign  and  home, 
t  1  take  the  opportunity  of  preseninif  here  a  Spanish  version 


24  JEAN   VAN  DER  NOODT. 

of  singular  interpolations  in  the  English  against  the 
Papists,  as  well  as  Sonnets  and  other  slighter  bits  of 
the  original  left  untranslated. 

The  following  books  are  also  by  Vander  Noodt — 
ia)  "  Cort  Begryp  der  XII.  Boeken  Olympiados 
beschreven  devr  J.  Jan  Vander  Noot,  Patritivs  van 
Antvcri)cn.  Abrcgc  des  dooze  livres  Olympiades  com- 
pose/. [)ar  le  S.  Jehan  Vander  Noot,  Patrice  d'Anvers, 
ICn  Anvcrs,  Giles  Vanden  Rade,  1579  (4to)" — in 
Mcmish  and  French.  Sonnets  prefixed  celebrate  the 
author  as  "  C)  diuin  Vander  Noot,  de  ta  Dame  tant 
chere."  (^/j)  "  Hymne  de  Braband,  1580  "  (folio — with 
his  portrait  in  wood),  (c)  "Divers  ceuvres  poetiques " 
1  581  (folio — with  portrait  in  wood),  (d)  "Verscheyden 
I'oetische  Werkcn  Van  J.  Jan  Vander  Noot,  Patri. 
Van  Antvverpen.  Diucrs  ttAivres  poetiques  du  S''.  J. 
Vander    Noot,    patricc    d'Anvers.      En    Anvers,   Giles 

oi"  .Sonnet  3  of  y//c  R  nines  of  Rome,  by  Bellay,  made  by  Quevcdo, 
and  wliicli  runs  very  clcjsel}',  in  parts,  witli  Spen,ser's  : — 

A  Roma  Sepiill.ida  en  siii  Rninas. 
l^)uscas  en  Roma  a  Roma,  o  pcregrino, 
Y.  en  Roma  misma  a  Roma  no  las  trallas  : 
Cadaver  son  las  que  ostento  murallas, 
Y.  tumba  de  si  propio  el  Aventino. 

Yace  dond(;  reinaba  el  Palatino  ; 
Y  limadas  del  tiempo  las  medallas, 
Mas  se  muestran  destrozo  a  las  batallas 
De  las  edades,  que  blason  latino. 

Solo  el  Tiber  qucdo,  euya  corriente, 
Si  eiudad  la  re£^6,  ya  sepullura 
La  llora  con  funesto  son  doliente. 

()  Roma  !  en  tu  o-randoza  en  tu  hermosura 
liii\('i  Id  (|ii(,'  era  lirme,  y  solamente 
1.0  liiL'.ilivo  |iermaneee  y  dura. 

(I'oesias  l{scoiL;idas  de  O.  Francisco  de  Quevedo 
y  de  J).  Luis  de  Gongora.     Madrid,  182 1.) 


JEAN   VAN  DRR  NOODT.  25 

vandcn    Radc,     15S1"   [altered    in    Bodleian   copy   to 

1583]. 

I  will  now  take  it  for  granted  that  to  Edmund  Spenser 
and  not  to  Vander  Noodt  or  Theodore  Roest  belong 
the  "  blank  verse  "  afterwards  rhymed  and  the  rhymed- 
revised  Sonnets  of  1569  and  1591.  But  this  is  more 
than  a  "  Curiosity  of  Literature."  It  is  a  central  fact 
in  the  story  of  our  national  Literature,  and  specifically 
in  the  story  of  the  origin  and  progress  of  that 
"  blank  verse  "  which  was  predestined  soon  to  grow  so 
mighty  and  marvellous  an  instrument  in  the  hands  of 
Christopher  Marlowe  and  Shakespeare,  and  onward  of 
Milton,  Cowper,  and  Wordsworth.  By  the  achieve- 
ment of  these  "  blank  verse  "  Sonnets  and  the  rhymed 
Petrarch  Sonnets,  young  Spenser  gave  promise  of  that 
supremacy  which  he  ultimately  asserted  over  Surrey 
and  other  early  Singers. 

Is  it  conceivable  that  thus  quickened  and  fired  by 
John  Vander  Noodt,  there  should  be  no  note  of  their 
'acquaintance'  or  friendship  in  later  writings  of  Spenser.? 
I  trow  not.  The  mystery  to  myself  is  that  none  should 
ever  have  sought  for  such  '  note,'  or  so  much  as  ap- 
proached the  discovery  of  it.  When  I  was  passing  the 
SJiepJiercVs  Calendar  through  the  press  (Vol.  II.) — 
necessarily  studying  every  line  and  word  critically  and 
vigilantly — it  struck  me  that  surely  Biographers  and 
Editors  and  Commentators  had  missed  a  very  manifest 
thing — viz.,  that  in  the  Eclogue  for  "  September  "  we 
have  John  Vander  Noodt  introduced  as  one  of  the 
interlocutors,  "  Diggon  Davie"  (with  "Hobbinor'or 
Gabriel  Harvey).  To  begin  with,  this  Eclogue — like 
"  May  " — is    more    archaic   than    the    others.      This   I 


26  JEAN   VAN  DER  NOODT. 

believe  was  not  by  mere  reminiscence  of  the  Vision 
of  Williniii  conci'vning  Piers  tJie  Ploughman,  though 
Spenser's  a\'o\ved  love  for  Langland  here  and  elsewhere 
has  led  him  to  use  some  of  his  words  ;  but  the  very 
palpable  provincialism  of  the  speaker  must  be  set  down 
as  intended  to  represent  Vandcr  Noodt's  broken  or 
imperfect  or  book-learned  English.  Let  Kirke's  "Glosse" 
on  this  be  pondered  :  "  The  Dialect  and  phrase  of 
speech  in  this  Dialogue  seemeth  somewhat  to  differ 
from  the  common.  The  cause  whereof  is  supposed  to 
be,  b}'  occasion  of  the  partie  herein  ment,  who  beeing 
veric  friend  to  the  Authour  hereof,  had  beene  long  in 
forrain  countreys,  and  there  scene  many  disorders, 
which  he  here  recounteth  to  Hobbinol"  (Vol.  II.,  p.  220). 
lidvvard  Kirke  in  this,  as  in  other  instances,  was  only 
half-informed  ;  but  the  phrase  "  the  partie  herein  ment, 
w  ho  beeing  verie  friend  to  the  Authour  hereof,  Jiad  bcenc 
long  in  forrain  countreys^'  most  aptly  describes  John 
Vander  Noodt,  who,  in  his  Preface  to  his  Governance 
boasts  that  he  had  "  bene  in  Italy,  Lombardy, 
Poelles  [Apulia]  and  Low  Countries  by  the  space  of 
many  years."  It  is  important  to  adduce  his  account  of 
himself  here — "To  the  honour  of  Almighty  God,  and 
profit  of  all  Christen  people,  and  to  maintain  health  in 
the  hole  bodies,  and  to  remedy  them  that  are  corrupt 
and  infest  with  the  infection  of  the  pestilence,  I  John 
Vandernote,  I'hisician  and  Surgin,  admitted  by  the 
King  Jiis  Highness,  and  sworn  unto  my  Lord  of  Suffolk 
his  Grace,  now  abiding  at  the  late  Grey  Friars  in 
London,  do  think  it  meet  to  wright  certain  things 
concerning  the  pestilence,  as  well  drawn  out  of  divers 
autentic    doctors    and   experimentes  as   of   mine    own 


JEAN  VAN  DER  NOODT.  2y 

experience,  being  conversant  and  a  minister  (under 
God)  in  the  said  infection  in  Rome,  Italy,  Lombardy, 
Poelles  [Apulia],  and  Low  Countries,  by  the  space  of 
many  years."  Then,  more  important  still,  what 
is  his  Theatre  of  Worldlings  but  a  detailed  account 
of  just  such  "  many  disorders  "  as  are  verse-described 
by  him  in  this  Eclogue?  the  burden  of  which,  as  set 
fortii  in  the  "  Argument,"  is  to  tell  of  a  "  faire 
country  "  whence  "  Diggon  Davie  "  had  returned,  and 
"  the  abuses  whereof,  and  loose  living  of  popish 
prelates,  by  occasion  of  Hobbinol's  demaund,  he 
discouercth  at  large."  The  critical  student  will  turn 
and  read  and  rc-rcad  the  entire  Eclogue  ;  but  one 
quotation  will  here  suffice  : — 

DiGGON. 
In  forrcine  costes,  men  said,  was  plcntie  : 
And  so  there  is,  but  all  of  miserie. 
I  dempt  there  much  to  have  eeked  my  store, 
But  such  eekin^  hath  made  my  heart  sore. 
In  tho  countries,  where  I  have  bene, 
No  beeing-  for  those,  that  truely  mene, 
But  for  such,  as  of  guile  maken  .jLraine, 
No  such  countrey,  as  there  to  remaine. 
They  setten  to  sale  their  shops  of  shame, 
And  maken  a  Mart  of  their  good  name. 
The  shcpheardes  there  robben  one  another, 
And  layen  baytcs  to  beguile  her  brother. 
Or  they  will  buye  his  sheepe  forth  of  the  cote, 
Or  they  will  caruen  the  sheapheards  throte. 
The  shepheards  swaine  you  cannot  well  ken, 
But  it  be  by  his  pride,  from  other  men  : 
They  looken  biggc  as  Bullos,  that  bene  bate. 
And  bearen  the  cragge  so  stiffc  and  so  state, 
As  Cocke  on  his  dunghill,  crowing  cranck. 

So  throughout,  the  whole  is  a  passionate  indictment 
of  Popery,  exactly  reflecting  the  Theatre.      Sure!)-  all 


28  A7   THE    UNIVERSITY. 

this  goes  still  more  to  confirm  the  Spenserian  author- 
ship of  the  1569  "Sonnets"?*  It  need  hardly  be 
notified  that  "  Diggon  Davie "  is  described  as  a 
"shepherd"  in  common  with  all  in  the  Calendar,  and 
that,  as  invariably,  there  are  disguising  touches.  But 
in  my  judgment  the  "verie  friend"  was  unquestionably 
Vander  Noodt.  One  thinks  all  the  more  of  Spenser 
that  he  thus  warmly  celebrated  his  early  patron-friend. 
It  must  be  added,  finally,  that  the  Flemish  biographers 
of  Vander  Noodt  all  state  that  he  formed  an  intimate 
friendship  with  Spenser.  (See  Biografisch  JVoorden- 
boeck,  door  Huberts  et  Elberts,  p.  384.) 

IV.  At  the  University,  1569 — 1576. 

"  The  aims  and  ends  of  burnwg  youth.'' — Measure  for  Measure  i.  4. 

The  Theatre  of  Worldlings  has  its  preface  or  epistle- 
dedicatory  dated  "23rd  May,"  15C9  ;  but  it  must  have 
passed  slowly  through  the  press  of  Henry  Bynneman, 
for  it  was  not  *  entered  '  at  Stationers'  Hall  until  fully 
a  couple  of  months  later,  as  thus  : — 

22''  July  1569 
Rece3rvd  of  henry  bynnyman  for  Iiis  lyccnse  for  pryntinge  of 
^\ioVcm\^\iv\c^^theatrie  or  mirror  .         .         .        .     vj''t 

An  entry  in  the  Spending  of  the   Money  of  Robert 

Noivcll  (as  before)  thus  runs  (p.  1 60) : — 

28  Aprill  [1569]  To  Edmond  spcnsore  scholler  of  the  m'chante 
tayler  school  at  his  /^'owinge  to  penbrocke  hall  in  cham- 
bridge    .         .         .      ' x' 

In  agreement  with  this  he  is  found  to  have  '  matri- 

*  "  Roffy  "  of  this  Eclogue  has  been  as  strangely  misunder- 
stood.    This  I  shall  show  onward. 
t  Arber,  as  before,  i.  398. 


A  7    THE   UNIVERSITY.  29 

culatcd'  as  "sizar"  at  Pembroke  Hall  on  20th  May, 
1569. 

En  passant,  ?X\.c\-\\\ow  to  these  dates  of  leaviiiLj  School 
and  entering  Pembroke  Hall  will  convince  that  it  is 
quite  impossible  that  our  Poet  could  be  either  of  the 
two  contemporary  Spencers  named  in  these  two  places. 

(rt)  In  the  books  of  the  treasurer  of  the  Queen's 
chamber — "  Payde  upon  a  bill  signed  by  Mr.  Secre- 
tarye,  dated  at  Wyndsor  xviij"  Octobris  1569,  to 
Edmondc  Spencer  that  brought  Ires  to  the  Oueenes 
Ma''""  from  Sir  Henrye  Norrys,  knighte,  her  Mat' 
Embassador  in  Fraunce,  being  then  at  Towars  in  the 
sayd  Realme,  for  his  charges,  the  some  of  vj''  xiij^  iiij'* 
over  and  besides  ix"'  prcs'ted  to  hym  by  Sir  Henrye 
Norrys." 

{b)  In  verse-lcttcrs  or  addresses  by  George  Turbcr- 
ville  from  Russia  "about  the  same  period"  to  "Mr. 
Spencer."  These  plainly  imply  that  the  recipient  was 
in  some  way  or  other  engaged  in  merchandise  and 
interested  in  business-news  from  the  land  of  the  Czar. 
With  so  many  Spencers  then  living — literally  scores 
on  scores  in  London  alone — it  is  absurd  to  fix  these 
rubbishy  rhymes  as  addressed  to  our  Spenser.* 

George  Vertue  (as  before)  writes  after  "Sizar" — 
— "  Ouadrantarius,"  meaning  thereby  (I  suppose)  that 
this  class  of  undergraduate  had  very  little  coin.  The 
biography  of  England — both   Athcntes,  of  Anthony  d- 

*  In  the  Calendar  of  State  Papers  various  Spencers  appear 
engaged  in  the  public  service  :  e.g.,  from  1560  to  1577  one  "Mr. 
Spencer"  is  found  coming  and  going  along  tlie  coasts,  and  to 
and  from  France.  His  name  turns  out  to  be  "  Richard,"  and  a 
"James  Spencer"  was  Master  of  the  Ordance.  .\  John  and 
William  followed,  up  to  1591. 


30  AT  THE   UNIVERSITY. 

Wood  and  the  Coopers — give  abundant  evidence  that 
the  foremost  University  names  were  enrolled  as  "sizars." 
Richard  Hooker,  Launcelot  Andrewes,  Thomas  Cart- 
wright,  Richard  Sibbes,  Jeremy  Taylor,  meet  my  eye 
in  a  hasty  glance.  It  simply  meant  that  this  class  of 
student  was  without  "  patrimony."  In  not  a  few  cases 
they  were  younger  sons  and  brothers  with  as  "  gentle 
blood"  as  their  elders.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
Spenser  was  "  poor/'  and  that  the  often-recurring  word 
in  the  Nowell  MS.  was  literally  true.  For  so  early 
as  7th  November,  1570,  we  have  this  pathetic  entry 
(p.  172):— 

To  Richard  Laugher  and  Edmond  Spenser  towe  poor  scholars 
of  Pembrock  haule  vj^  a  peace,  in  the  whole  xij%  by  the 
handes  of  Mr.  Thomas  Newce  felow  of  the  same  howse  .  xij« 

In  retrospect  of  our  argumentative  evidence  for  the 
Spenserian  authorship  of  the  Sonnets  in  the  Theatre 
of  Worldlings,  it  is  clear  that,  however  humble  his 
circumstances,  Master  Edmund  went  to  Camxbridge  as 
no  common  youth.  "  He  must  have  gone,"  observes 
Dean  Church,  "  with  a  faculty  of  verse,  which  for  his 
time  may  be  compared  to  that  with  which  winners  of 
prize  poems  go  to  the  universities  now.  But  there  was 
this  difference,  that  the  schoolboy  versifiers  of  our  days 
are  rich  with  the  accumulated  experience  and  practice 
of  the  most  varied  and  magnificent  poetical  literature 
in  the  world  ;  while  Spenser  had  but  one  really  great 
English  model  behind  him  ;  and  Chaucer,  honoured 
as  he  was,  had  become  in  Elizabeth's  time,  if  not 
obsolete,  yet  in  his  diction  very  far  removed  from  the 
living  language  of  the  day.  Even  Milton,  in  his  boyish 
compositions,   wrote    after    Spenser    and    Shakespeare, 


AT  THE   UNIVERSITY.  31 

with  their  contemporaries,  had  created  modern  Knglish 
poetry.  Whatever  there  was  in  Spenser's  early  verses  of 
grace  and  music  was  of  his  own  finding :  no  one  of  his 
own  time,  except  in  occasional  and  fitful  snatches,  like 
stanzas  of  Sackville's,  had  shown  him  the  way"  (p.  14). 
We  may  be  sure  that  when,  a  few  months  after  his 
'matriculation,'  the  Tluatic  of  Worldlings  was  pub- 
lished, Henry  Bynneman  or  John  Vander  Noodt  saw 
to  a  gift-copy  being  sent  to  Pembroke  Hall  for  the 
young  verse  '  Translator  '  ;  and  equally  that  the  choice 
spirits  of  his  college  and  of  other  colleges  would  partake 
of  his  bookish  enjoyment,  not  without  relish  of  the  quaint 
woodcuts  by  which  the  '  Sonnets'  were  illustrated,  or 
which  the  'Sonnets'  interpreted.  John  Vander  Noodt 
and  Theodore  Roest  were  then  in  London,  and  one 
sighs  in  vain  for  "  letters  commendatory." 

It  was  a  curious  world  into  which,  half-way  on  in 
1569  ("in  the  merry  month  of  May"),  Edmund  Spenser 
was  introduced.  By  no  means  a  world  on  whose  stage 
moved  "  great  men"'  such  as  earlier  and  later  the 
University  of  Cambridge  had.  The  Athaue  Cantabrigi- 
enscs  has  no  outstanding  names  of  the  period.  Some 
of  the  martyr-bishops  were  still  living  and  lustrous 
memories.  '  Pembroke,'  in  particular,  remembered 
proudly  as  of  her  sons  John  Bradford  and  Edmund 
Grindal  (Archbishop  of  Canterbur>'),  jAMES  PlLKING- 
TON  (Bishop  of  Durham),  and  Nicholas  Ridley 
(Bishop  of  London),  and  JOHN  ROGERS  {alias  Thomas 
Matthews)  ;  and  a  few — very  few — other  still  quick 
names  of  other  colleges  were  traditions.  But  regarded 
broadly,  there  were  no  dominant  intellects,  no  sovran 
spirits,  no  pre-eminent   scholars,  no  "  golden  tongues." 


32  AT  THE   UNIVERSTTY. 

One  statcsmanly  man — venerable  in  this  nineteenth 
century  as  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth — TlloMAS 
Cartwrigiit — the  largest  and  most  strenuous  soul, 
and  most  learned  of  his  time — elected  "  Lady  Margaret 
Professor  "  contemporaneous  with  Spenser's  '  matricula- 
tion,' was  insanely  "deprived"  and  sent  a  fugitive  to 
Geneva,  albeit  he  returned  ere  very  long,  as  Whitgift 
found  to  his  cost.  One  instinctively  pauses  over  a 
name  so  august  and  a  manhood  so  colossal  and  a  life 
so  uncompromising  and  consecrate.  He  stands  "for  all 
time"  tJic  representative  of  Puritanism  at  its  grandest 
and  purest.  The  University  seethed  with  theological- 
ecclesiastical  controversies,  as  the  Nation  outside  with 
political.  Elizabeth  and  her  ministers  were  disturbed, 
if  we  may  not  say  '  perplexed,'  by  the  thick-coming 
rumours  of  audacious  speaking  by  the  "  younger  men  " 
on  points  that  were  forbidden  and  striking  at  the 
powers  that  were  of  God  (so  the  phrasing  ran). 
Whitgift — afterwards  Archbishop — Master  first  of 
"Pembroke"  and  then  of  "Trinity,"  was  Vice- 
Cli.mcellor  of  the  University  ;  but  he  had  no  governing 
faculty.  Timorous  and  obsequious,  he  generalized  all 
slightest  claim  of  'reform'  into  'innovation.'  Prac- 
tically he  was  at  one  with  Cartwright  in  opinion  and 
sentiment;  but  he  dared  not  side  with  "Calvinists"  and 
Turitans.  He  in  his  heart  hated  Rome  as  he  hated 
vSpain,  but  he  became  a  Mr.  I^^acing  Bothways,  until  he 
lost  caste,  even  common  respect — as  in  History  still. 

Thus  the  "  newe  poete "  was  born  into  a  heated 
atmosphere.  But  judging  from  his  associates — GABRIEL 
Harvt'Y  and  Edward  Kirkk,  Richard  Langherne 
(not  Laugher, as  mis-spelled  in  Nowell  MS.)  and  TiiOMAS 


1/ 


A  7'  TlfE   UXIVERSITY.  33 

Dkant,  John  Still,  TnoMiUulitiKSTON,  and  John 
Vander  Noodt, — and  from  his  after-utterances, 
Edmund  Spenser  was  not  so  much  rcsthetic  or 
Platonic  or  dreamy  as  to  be  unconcerned  about  the 
duel  that  was  being  fought  out  between  Puritanism  and 
Anglo-Popery.  He  was  a  "beautiful  spirit,"  naturally 
tranquil,  meditative,  contemplative,  but  after  the  type 
of  St.  John  intensely  human,  and  liable  to  tempestuous 
self-assertion  when  principle  or  friend  was  at  hazard. 
He  has  been  styled  an  adherent  of  "  conforming 
Puritanism  in  the  Church,  as  opposed  to  the  extreme 
and  thorough-going  puritanism  of  Cartwright."*  I  can 
find  no  sign  of  this  anywhere,  in  either  his  Verse  or  Prose. 
Contrariwise,  wherever  he  pronounces  on  matters  that 
divided  Conformist  and  Nonconformist,  he  is  sharp 
and  vehement  against  Popery  and  against  mere  official 
Churchism:  e.g.,  no  one  has  spoken  more  drastically  of 
the  "Church  Established"  in  Ireland,  as  no  portraits  of 
'  prelates '  and  other  dignitaries  arc  less  flattering  than 
those  taken  by  him  and  woven  into  the  imperishable 
tapestry  of  his  poetry.  I  grant  that,  as  with  many 
contemporaries,  it  was  mainly  practical  abuses — 
church-laziness,  church-torpor,  church-deadness,  church- 
earthlymindedness — that  .stung  him,  as  it  was  church- 
fidelity,  church-integrity,  church-laboriousness,  church 
"  beauty  of  holiness"  that  won  his  heart.  Again  it  has 
been  said,  "  For  the  stern  austerities  of  Calvinism,  its 
fierce  and  eager  scholasticism,  its  isolation  from  human 
history,  human  enjoyment,  and  all  the  manifold  play 
and  variety  of  human  character,  there  could  not  he 
much  sympathy  in  a  man   like  Spenser,  with  his  easy 

*  Dean  Church  (as  before),  p.  15. 

I-  3 


34  AT  THE   UNIVERSITY. 

and  flexible  nature,  keenly  alive  to  all  beauty,  an 
admirer  even  when  he  was  not  a  lover  of  the  alluring 
pleasures  of  which  the  world  is  full,  with  a  perpetual 
struggle  going  on  in  him,  between  his  strong 
instincts  of  purity  and  right,  and  his  passionate 
appreciation  of  every  charm  and  grace;"  ..."  and  from 
their  narrow  view  of  life,  and  the  contempt,  dislike,  and 
fear,  with  which  they  regarded  the  whole  field  of  human 
interest,  he  certainly  was  parted  by  the  widest  gulf."* 
liut  all  this  is  the  familiar  bogey-portrait  of  Calvinism 
— not  the  Calvinism  of  John  Calvin  or  of  the  great 
Puritans.  Anything  may  be  spun  out  of  a  "  could  not 
be"  The  simple  matter-of-fact  is,  that  by  origin  and 
kinsliip  Spenser  was  born  and  nurtured  a  Puritan  of 
the  grave  and  '  sober,'  an'  you  will,  '  solemn '  sort  ; 
but  tin's  type  of  Puritan  was  "  keenly  alive  to  all 
beauty,"  only  preferring  a  tincture  of  holiness  in  all, 
and  held  the  Lord's  Day  as  no  bondage  but  "  perfect 
freedom,"  and  could  laugh  right  well-,  and  bandy  "quip 
and  crank,"  and  jest  pleasantly.  Even  John  Calvin 
and  John  Knox  played  a  game  of  bowls  of  a  Sunday 
afternoon.  These  misconceptions  of  Puritanism  as  it 
Vv-as  lived  out  on  such  freeholds  as  Hurstwood  and 
"  The  Spenscrs,"  and  by  some  of  the  supremest  of 
Englishmen  and  Englishwomen,  are  mere  caricatures — 
false  historically,  false  ethically,  false  humanly.  The 
sunniest,  blithest,  hcavenliest  homes  of  England  were  the 
homes  of  the  godly  Puritans.  Historically,  England's 
and  the  world's  strongest,  truest,  bravest  souls  have 
been  Calvin ists  and  Puritans.  I  find  your  (so-called) 
broad  views  of  the  narrowest,  and  so-called  narrow 
■   Dtan  Church,  as^efore,  pp.  i6 — 17. 


AT  THE    UXIVERSITY. 


35 


views  wide  as  God's  love  and  God's  Bible  and  universal 
man's  need.  When  such  an  one  as  Dean  Church  so 
misjudges  and  misestimates  the  Puritanism  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  one  feels  bound  to  protest — with 
reasons  given — though  abating  no  "jot  or  tittle"  of 
regard  for  a  Churchman  otherwise  so  catholic  and 
open-eyed  and  lovable.  Ben  Jonson's  absurd  gossip- 
statement  that  by  the  "Blatant  Beast"  Spenser  meant 
Puritanism,  is  not  for  a  moment  to  be  credited.  Every- 
where it  is  seen  to  be  the  "  Beast"  of  the  Apocalypse, 
or  Popery  ;  and  that  Roman  Catholics  have  discerned 
wrathfully  down  to  our  own  day.  Moreover  his  semi- 
neutral  attitude  in  "  Maye,"  "Julye,"  and  "September," 
while  characteristic  of  his  naturally  Erasmian  rather 
than  Lutheran  temperament,  must  be  looked  at  in  the 
light  and  warmth  of  the  "Glosses,"  which  he  indubitably 
sanctioned.*  I  am  the  more  importunate  on  this 
because  I  hold  that  it  is  fundamentally  to  misunder- 
stand Edmund  Spenser  not  to  discern  that  beneath 
all  his  equability  or  serenity  there  beat  a  singularly 
passionate  heart,  a  nature  bristling  as  a  porcupine  with 
sharpest  quills  for  any  who  dared  to  attack  or  neglect 
or  misunderstand  him.  There  are  manifold  proofs  that 
he  could  love  intensely  and  permanently  and  tenderly. 
There  are  as  manifold  proofs  that  he  was  a  good  hater 
as  well.      More  of  this  hereafter. 

The  Master  of  Pembroke  Hall,  whilst  Spenser  was 
in  residence,  was  John  Young,  afterwards  Bishop  of 
Rochester — "  and  thereby  hangs  a  tale  " — as  will  be 
seen   onward,  with  new  details.      Master  Spenser  pro- 

Cf.  Mr.  Pali,'Tave'6  Essay  in  Vol.  IV.,  p.  .xlviii,  etc. ;  though, 
as  above,  I  respectfully  differ. 


36  A  7^  THK   UNIVERSTTY. 

cccdcd  ]5.A.  1572-3,  and  commenced  M.A.  1576. 
He  gained  no  Fellowship,  and  there  is  no  shred  of 
memorial  to  show  how  he  occupied  himself  academi- 
call}-.  I  fear  lie  was  valetudinarian.  I  am  favoured 
with  the  following  hitherto  overlooked  entries  in  the 
Bof)ks  of  Pembroke  College  in  the  years  of  Spenser's 
residence.  They  arc  all  of  "  allowances  to  the  men 
when  ill."  I  give  them  in  cxtcnso,  as  they  reveal  to 
us  his  (undistinguished)  fellow-students.* 


F.ll. 


//.   I.(uii:,licnic  c' •  Spiiiscy  p.  iv.  sept,  vi-  viii'^       } 

It.  „  „      p.  iv.  sept,  ill"  «■<;''  ) 

Spenser  ill  fur  4  weeks,  6s.  Sd. ;  2  iveeks,  t,s.  ^d. 
Ncwcs  Newell 

fiotcr  ylndrc-wcs  [Wise-     l^"]^  Harvey 

Simpson  veral  times]  Newell 

Frciik  Wylford  (pupil)  '    Downc  (pupil) 

Tyd quarter:  It.  Spenser  crgrotanti p.  vii.  sept.  y^.v*'. 
Browne  1573  Osburnc 


370  jiu-kson 

157 1   J.ani^hernc  1               1574  Nevil 

IVndail  1  Ivn- 

Spen-^er           pupils           Karr 

dalcl 

Amhrives     1                         Andreives 

//.  Spenser  ai^rot.  . 

ii  sept,  cj-  (li.  ii"  viK  \  =  per  Spenser  ill  for  2.',  -weeks, 

2s.bcl.\                                                      '       ^ 

uw  Ihiivey 

Hales       1                             Dove 

( 'sl'iirne 

Nevil           fellows               Bousfield 

llnnll 

1572  Tendall    )                                 (Plague  year) 

Newell 

Harvie 

Tendall 

Crane          \ 
Robinson    \  pupils 
Alexander  ) 

1576 

Farr 

Hales 

Flower 

Pratt 

Clievallicr  Fellows 

Jackson 

Hardy 

Lanj^liernc 

Tendall 

Lomax 

Lindley 

Flower 

Lawhern  |  =  Lang- 

SmiUi 

Locking,  or  jj, 
I.avernig  (   '    ' 

hcrnc:  ?| 

Hoult 

Halle 

Niiee 

Bearham 

yl'jnarter:   It. 

D. 

Spen. 

•ier  pro  vi  sept,  v^  [I)  = 

=  Doiniints  or  B.A.~\ 

Browne 

Far 

*  I  owe  hearty  thanks  to  the  present  Master  of  Pembroke  and 
tf.  Mr.  R.  A.  Neil,  M.A.,  for  their  kindness  in  this  and  other 
related  matters. 


L, 


A  7'  THE   UNIVERSITY.  ^-j 

The  allowances  average  about  'x'*'  per  week,  and 
Spenser  was  thus  several  times  '  aegrot.'  for  a  number 
of  weeks  at  a  time. 

It  will  be  seen  that  GABRIEL  Harvey  and  Andrewes 
and  his  associate  at  Merchant-Taylors' — Richard 
Langherne* — were  among  those  who  shared  the 
"allowances"  in  sickness  with  Spenser. 

From  the  Letter-Book  of  Gabriel  Harvey,  a.d.  1573 — 
15S0  (Camden  Society,  1884)  we  get  glimpses  into  a 
singular  and  discreditable  '  warfare'  that  was  waged  in 
Pembroke  Hall  whilst  Spenser  was  there  and  subse- 
quently. Gabriel  Harvey  was  dead-set  against  when 
he  sought  to  'commence'  ALA.  In  extraordinarily 
voluble  and  minatory  Letters — addressed  to  the 
Master  (Dr.  John  Young)  this  oddest  personality  of 
his  University — immortally  and  inexorably  gibbeted 
by  Thomas  Nashe  spite  of  his  friendship  with  Sidney 
and  Spenser — recounts  such  ingenuity  and  perversity 
and  malignancy  of  opposition  as  were  incredible  if  the 
evidence  were  not  irresistible.  I  do  not  know  that  it 
would  profit  anybody  to  reopen  the  musty  controversy 
in  this  place.  Suffice  it  that  Gabriel  Harx'cy  won 
against   his   opponents,   and    thenceforward   dated    his 

•  I  take  the  following  from  my  note  in  the  Spetidtng  of  the 
Money  of  Robert  Nowell  on  this  name— "  Rychard  Laugher, 
vicar  of  Edmunton"  :  "This  name  is  mis-written,  even  by  Dean 
Newell.  As  is  proved  by  his  Will  (preserved  in  the  Consistory 
Court  of  the  Bishop  of  London),  his  name  was  Richard  Langherne 
(spelled  by  Newcourt,  '  Langhorne').  His  Will  is  dated  loth 
August,  1570,  and  proved  7tii  October  in  the  same  year.  He 
calls  himself  vicar  of  Edmonton.  He  left  sons,  Thomas,  Richard, 
'^d  John  ;  and  a  daughter  Katherine,  wife  of  William  Hayward. 
His  wife  Edith  was  his  executrix.  He  directed  that  he  was  to  be 
buried  in  the  Chancel  of  Edmonton  Church.  His  son  '  Richard' 
IS  the  Richard  of  our  MS."  (p.  9s). 


38  AT  THE    UNIVERSITY. 

letters  from  his  "  victorie."  It  is  to  be  suspected 
that  the  same  'set'  of  Harvey's  opponents  were  in 
antagonism  to  Spenser,  and  that  he  withdrew  in  half- 
chagrin,  half-disgust  from  the  University  and  the 
ignoble  strife.  This,  and  not  a  legendary  failure  in 
competition  with  (afterwards)  Bishop  Lancelot  Andrewes 
— whose  competitor  was  Dove,  afterwards  Bishop  of 
Peterborough — explains  the  non-fellowship  and  with- 
drawal.* 

Besides  the  side-light  thrown  on  Spenser's  academic 
experience,  the  Letter-Book  yields  other  facts  for 
subsequent  use.  Then,  in  Harvey's  Letter  of  the 
"Earthquake"  (1580)  there  is  such  a  vivid  picture  of 
the  occupations  and  oppositions — multiplied  tempests 
in  smallest  of  teapots  —  as  sheds  back  light  on  the 
University-life  of  Spenser,  and  explains  how  there 
would  be  no  great  reluctance  to  snap  the  ties  that 
bound  him  to  Cambridge,  even  supposing  he  could  have 
continued.  I  do  not  know  that  I  can  more  memorably 
than  by  quoting  this  Letter,  set  the  academic  'life'  of  the 
University,  before  present-day  Readers ;  the  more  readily 
becau.se  while  snippets  have  been  taken  from  Harvey's 
Letters  by  Biographers,  they  have  been  strangely  over- 
looked substantively.  They  are  by  no  means  '  beauti- 
ful '  letters  ;  but  one  is  bound  to  receive  them  as  they 
are,  and  certes  from  no  other  source  is  such  a  shaft  of 
light  opened  on  the  every-day  ongoings  and  occupa- 
tions of  the  University  of  the  period.  With  a  kind  of 
half-reluctance  to  reproduce  such  a  long  and  ungainly 
and  repellent  quotation,  yet  feeling  that  I  have  no 
choice,  it  follows  here.  Addressing  Spenser  as  "  Im- 
*  See  Harvey's  Letter-Book^  as  before,  pp.  i — 54. 


A7    THE   UNIVERSITY.  39 

merito,"  after  recounting  his  own  literarj'  studies  and 
intentions,  he  thus  breaks  forth  : — 

"  But  I  beseech  you  what  newcs  al  this  while  at  Cambridge  ? 
That  was  wont  to  be  ever  one  great  Question.  What  ?  Dot 
mihi,  etc.  .  .  .  May  Alma  Mater  herself  grant  to  me  the  kind 
favour  that  it  may  be  lawful  to  me  to  reveal  some  of  her  secrets 
to  some  one  person,  a  most  dutiful  son  from  her  own  lap  ;  and 
thus  have  it  in  a  few  words.  For  elsewhere  perhaps  I  might  put 
it  in  more  words.  Now  it  does  not  please  me,  there  is  no  time, 
it  would  be  troublesome.  .  .  .  Tully  and  Demosthenes  nothing 
so  much  studyed,  as  they  were  wonte  :  Livie  and  Salust  possiblye 
rather  more  than  lesse  :  Lucian  never  so  much  :  Aristotle  muche 
named,  but  little  read :  Xenophon  and  Plato,  reckned  amongst 
Discoursers,  and  conceited  Superficial!  fellowes  :  much  verball 
and  sophistical!  iangling  :  little  subtile  and  eflfectuall  disputing  : 
noble  and  royall  Eloquence,  the  best  and  persuasiblest  Eloquence : 
No  such  Orators  againe,  as  red-headded  Angelles:  An  exceeding 
greate  difference,  betweene  the  countenaunces,  and  portes  of  those, 
that  are  brave  and  gallaunt,  and  of  those,  that  are  basely,  or 
meanly  apparelled:  betwene  the  learned  and  unlearned,  Tully, 
and  Tom  Tooly,  in  effect  none  at  all. 

"  Matchiavell  a  great  man  :  Castillo  of  no  small  reputation  : 
Petrarch,  and  Boccace  in  every  mans  mouth  :  Galateo  and 
Guazzo  never  so  happy :  over  many  acquainted  with  Unico 
Aretino  :  The  French  and  Italian  when  so  highly  regarded  of 
SchoUers?  The  Latine  and  Greeke,  when  so  lightly?  The 
Queene  Mother  at  the  beginnj^g,  or  ende  of  ever>'e  conference  : 
many  bargaines  of  Mounsieur  :  Shymeirs  a  noble  gallant  fellowe  : 
all  inquisitive  after  Newes,  newe  Bookes,  newe  Fashions,  newe 
Lawes,  newe  Officers,  and  some  after  newe  Elementes,  and  some 
after  newe  Heavens,  and  Helles  to.  Turkishe  affaires  familiarly 
knowen  :  Castels  buried  in  the  Ayre  :  muche  adoe,  and  little 
helpe  :  lacke  would  fain  be  a  Gentlemanne  :  in  no  age  so  little  so 
muche  made  of,  every  one  highly  in  his  owne  favour,  thinking 
no  mans  penny  so  good  silver  as  his  own  :  Something  made 
of  Nothing,  in  spite  of  Nature  :  Numbers  made  of  Ciphars,  in 
spite  of  Arte :  Geometricall  Proportion  seldome,  or  never 
used,  Arithmeticall  overmuch  abused:  Oxen  and  Asses  (not- 
withstanding the  absurditie  it  seemed  to  Plautus)  draw  both 
togither  in  one,  and  the  same  Yoke  :  Conclusio,  fefe  sequitur 
deteriorem  partem.  The  Gospell  taughte,  not  learned  :  Charitie 
key  colde  :  nothing  good,  but  by  Imputation  :  the  Ceremoniall 
Lawe,  in  worde  abrogated  :  the  ludiciall  in  eflfecte  disannulled  : 
the  Morall  indeede  abandoned  :  the  Lighte,  the  Lighte  in  every 


40  AT  THE   UNIVERSITY. 

mans  Lippes,  but  marke  mc  their  eyes,  and  tell  me,  if  they  looke 
not  liker  Howlcts,  or  Battes,  than  Egles  :  as  of  olde  Bookes,  so 
of  auntient  Vertue,  Honestie,  Fidelitie,  Equitie,  newe  Abridge- 
nientes:  every  day  freshe,  span  newe  Opinions:  Heresie  in 
Divinitie,  in  Philosophic,  in  Humanitie,  in  Manners,  grounded 
nuiche  upon  heresay :  Doctors  contemned  :  the  Text  knowen  of 
inoste,  understood  of  fewe  :  magnified  of  all,  practised  of  none  : 
tiie  Divell  not  so  hated,  as  the  Pope:  many  Invectives,  small 
amendment :  Skill  they  Say  controlled  of  Will  :  and  Goodnesse 
mastered  of  Goods  :  but  Agent,  and  Patient  muche  alike,  neither 
]'arrell  greatly  better  Herring:  No  more  adoe  aboute  Cappes 
and  Surplesses :  Maister  Cartwright  nighe  forgotten:  The  man 
you  wot  of,  conformable,  with  his  square  Cappe  on  his  rounde 
hoade :  and  Non  resident  at  pleasure  :  and  yet  Non-residents 
n;ver  better  bayted,  but  not  one  the  fewer,  either  I  beleeve  in 
Acte,  or  1  beleeve  in  Pui-pose.  A  nfiber  of  our  Preachers  sibbe 
to  French  Souldiors :  at  the  first,  more  than  Men,  in  the  end 
Icsse  than  Women.  Some  of  our  pregnantest  and  soonest  ripe 
^^'its,  of  Hermogenes  mettall  for  al  the  world  :  Olde  men  and 
C'ounsailours  amongst  Children  :  Children  amongst  Counsailours, 
and  olde  men  :  Not  a  fewe  dubble  sacred  Tani,  and  chaungeable 
Camelions  :  over-manye  Claw-backes  and  Pickethanks  :  Reedes 
shaken  of  everie  Wind :  lackes  of  bothe  sides  :  Aspen  leaves  : 
painted  Sheathes,  and  Sepulchres  :  Asses  in  Lions  skins  : 
Dunglecockes  :  slipperye  Eles  :  Dormise :  I  blush  to  thinke  of 
some,  that  weene  themselves  as  fledge  as  the  restt;,  being  God 
v.'ot,  as  kallovve  as  the  rest :  every  yonker  to  speake  of  as  politique, 
and  as  great  a  Commonwealths  man  as  Bishoppe  Gardner,  or 
Doctor  \V\itton  at  the  least  :  as  if  everie  man  nowe  adayes 
having  the  framing  of  his  own  Horoscope,  were  borne  in  dea'mo 
cuTi  doniicilio,  and  had  al  the  Wit,  Wisedome,  and  Worshippe 
in  the  world  at  commaundement.  Sed  hens  in  atcrem  :  Memi- 
tiisti  (/z/od  ait  Va7'ro?  Ovines  videmur  nobis  esse  belli,  f est ivi 
saperdce,  ctim  sumus  Canopi :  Dauid,  Ulisses,  and  Solon,  fayned 
themselves  fooles  and  madmen  :  our  fooles  and  madmen  faine 
thes(;lves  Davids,  Ulisses,  and  Solons :  and  would  goe  nigh 
to  deceive  tht?  cunningest,  and  best  experienced  Metaposcopus 
in  a  country  :  It  is  pity  faire  weather  should  ever  do  hurt,  but  I 
know  what  jjeace  and  quietnes  hath  done  with  some  melancholy 
pickstrawcs  in  the  world  :    as  good  unspoken  as  unameded." 

In  1576  our  Poet  finally  left  his  University.  He 
"  turns  aside "  in  the  Faery  Queen  to  laud  it,  though 
no  tribute  is  paid  to  iiis   College  anywhere.      Singing 


AT  THE   UNIVERSITY.  41 

of  the  "  plenteous  Ouse,"  he  tells  how  "  by  Huntingdon 
and  Cambridge"  it  "doth  flit"  ;  and  then  we  have  this 
wistful  recollection  : — 

My  mother  Cambridg-e,  whom  as  with  a  crowne 
He  doth  adorne,  and  is  adom'd  of  it 
With  many  a  ^'^entle  Muse  and  many  a  learned  Wit. 

(B.  IV.  c.  xi.,  St.  26,  34,  35.) 

Most  noticeable  is  it  that  Spenser  and  Milton  were 
alike  in  their  general  admiration  for  their  University 
united  with  specific  grudge  against  their  College.  Dr. 
Perne,  Vice-Chancellor  of  the  University,  in  the  case 
of  Spenser  was  the  'adversary.'  Gabriel  Harvey  writes 
as  follows  of  him,  with  characteristic  vituperativeness, 
and  perhaps  colouring  his  tirade  with  his  own  personal 
grievances,  at  the  close  of  his  Short  but  Sharpe  and 
Lear  tied  Judgment  of  Earthquakes — addressed  to  Spenser 
as  "Immerito" — on  7th  April,  1580  — 

"And  wil  you  needes  have  my  Testimoniall  of  your  olde 
Controllers  new  behavior  ?  A  busy  and  dizzy  heade,  a  brazen 
forehead :  a  ledden  braine :  a  wooden  wit :  a  copper  face  :  a 
stony  breast :  a  factious  and  elvish  heart :  a  founder  of  novelties : 
a  confounder  of  his  owne,  and  his  friends  good  gifts  :  a  morning 
booke-wonn,  an  aftor-none  malt  worm  :  a  right  luggler,  as  Ful  of 
his  sleights,  wyles,  fetches,  casts  of  Legerdemaine,  toyes  to  mocke 
Apes  withal,  odde  shiftes,  and  knavish  practizes,  as  his  skin  can 
holde.  He  often  telleth  me,  he  looveth  me  as  himselfe  ;  but  out 
lyar  out,  thou  lyest  abhominably  in  thy  throate." 

The  term  '  Controller '  suggests  some  violation  of 
University  rules  by  Spenser  and  consequent  '  disci- 
pline,' which  he  resented  ;  or  perhaps  it  came  of  over- 
stringency  in  dictating  adherence  to  a  given  line  of  study. 
I  suspect  the  latter  from  Harvey's  further  allusions  in 
the  same  Letter.  He  disguises  his  'gossip'  or  'news'  in 
Latin  ;   but  here  is  the  English  of  it,  revealing  a  sorry 


42  AT  THE    UNIVERSITY. 

condition    of  the    University   only  a  short   time   after 
Spenser's  departure.     He  thus  writes  first  in  English : — 

"  lesu,  I  had  nigh  hand  forgotten  one  thing  that  ywis,  somtime 
I  think  often  enough  upon  :  Many  Pupils,  Jacke-mates  and  Hayle 
Fellowes  wel  met,  with  their  Tutors,  and  by  your  leave,  some  too, 
because  forsooth  they  be  Gentlemen,  or  great  heires,  or  a  little 
neater  or  gayer  than  their  fellowes  (shall  I  say  it  for  shame  ? 
beleeve  me  tis  too  true)  their  very  Tutors." 

Then  he  passes  into  Latin — "  Ah  mala  Licentia,  ab 
initio,"  etc.*  Referring  elsewhere  for  the  Latin,  it  thus 
runs,  with  a  few  words  intercalated  : — 

"Ah  evil  license  !  from  the  beginning  it  was  not  so.  Foolish 
is  all  yonkerly  learning,  without  a  certain  manly  discipline.  As 
if  indeed  for  the  poor  boys  ov\y;  [Spenser  was  a  'poor  boy,'  a 
sizar— and  now  Hai-vey  and  he  were  men]  and  not  much  more  for 
well-born  and  noble  3'outh,  were  suited  f/ie  strictness  of  that  old 
system  of  teaching  and.  traini7ig,  both  ingenuous  and  wise  and 
learned  and  thoroughly  fitted  as  well  to  the  person  of  the  Tutor 
as  to  the  pupil  also  himself.  Always  all  things  it  behoves  us  to 
understand ;  this  will  be  the  sharpest  weapon  :  Other  things 
[are]  mostly  as  of  old.  War  uninterrupted  bet:vce?z  the  Heads 
and  the  members.  An  appearance  of  wisdom  defended  in  the 
public  Schools,  established  in  private  Colleges  [Houses],  exhi- 
bited in  all  places.  To  know  your  own  is  nothing  unless  another 
knows  that  you  know  it.  Everywhere  money  becomes  of  very 
great  importance.  Modesty  is  of  little  weight.  Letters  are 
nothing  accounted  of.  Believe  me,  it  is  to  be  believed  by  no 
one.  O  friend,  friend  have  I  none.  You  will  say — What  do  you 
do  meanwhile  ?  how  do  you  bear  yourself  ?  How  ?  The  best  thing 
is  to  enjoy  the  folly  of  other  people.  I  see.  I  hold  my  tongue. 
I  laugh.  I  have  spoken.  And  yet  I  will  add  what  the  .Satirist 
says — You  must  live  correctly  as  well  for  very  many  reasons  as 
chiefly  for  these  causes,  that  you  may  despise  the  tongues  of 
slaves."  ' 

•  See  Harvey's  Works  in  HuiH  LiP.RAKV,for  the  complete  text 
of  all  the  Letters.  Lowell,  in  his  fine  paper  on  Spenser,  supposes 
that  it  was  his  own  wrongs  only  Harvey  had  in  mind,  and  that 
in  his  self-absorption  he  associated  the  poet  with  himself  in  all 
his  grudges  (A^  A?n.  Rev.,  April  1875,  p.  348):  but  'your  olde 
Controller'  (p.  41)  cannot  be  thus  explained  away. 


IN  NORTH-EAST  LANCASHIRE.  43 

V.  In  North-East  Lancashire,  and  "  Rosalind." 
1576-7- 

"  ...  the  Itmatic,  the  lover,  and  the  poet."— Midsummer  Nigltt's  Dream  v.  i. 

Our  localization  of  the  Spensers  whence  Edmund  Spenser 

sprang  (in  the  Introduction),  gives  the  key  to  his  place  of 

retirement  on  leaving  the  University.      In  his  "  Glosse" 

on  the  sixth  Eclogue  ("June"),  Edward  Kirke  on  Hob- 

binol's  {i.e.  Gabriel  Harvey's)  summons  to  "  forsake  the 

soyle"  (or  as  in  his  Letter  he  put  it  ''your  shier,"  as  we 

saw)  unmistakably  annotates  :  * — 

"Forsake  the  soylc.  This  is  no  Poeticall  fiction,  but  unfeynedly 
spoken  of  the  Poet  selfe,  who  for  speciall  occasion  of  private 
atfaires  (as  I  have  beene  partly  of  himselfe  informed)  and  for  his 
more  preferment,  removing  out  of  the  N'orth  partes,  came  into 
the  South,  as  Hobbinoll  indeed  advised  him  privately"  (Vol.  II., 
pp.  158-9). 

There  were  many  Spensers  of  his  House  in  North- 
East  Lancashire.  There  were  large  households,  a  fecund 
supply  of  growing  lads  and  girls,  and  abundant  oppor- 
tunity for  the  scholarly  student  from  Cambridge  to  act 
as  tutor  and  otherwise  make  himself  of  use.  Nor  was 
his  going  North  in  i  576  a  first  visit  among  his  relations. 
His  vivid  word-picture  of  his  youth-time  in  the  country 
— reminding  of  Wordsworth  in  his  Prelude — to  my 
eye  and  ear  preserves  reminiscences  of  'escapes'  thither 
in  vacation-time  at  Merchant  Taylors'  and  at  Pembroke 
Hall.      Let  us  read  : — 

Whilom  in  youth,  when  Howrd  my  ioyfull  spring. 
Like  swallow  swift,  I  wandred  here  and  there  : 
For  heate  of  heedelesse  lust  me  so  did  sting, 
That  I  of  doubted  daunger  had  no  feare. 

I  went  the  wastfull  woods  and  forrest  wide, 
Withouten  dread  of  Woolves  to  b6ne  espide. 

*  Introduction,  p.  .xii,  and  Appendix  B. 


44  J^y  NORTH-EAST  LANCASHIRE. 

1  woont  to  raun,i,'-c  amid  the  mazie  thicket, 
And  1,^11  her  nuts  to  make  me  Christmas  game  : 
And  ioyed  oft  to  chase  the  trembling  Pricket, 
Or  hunt  the  heartlesse  hare  till  she  were  tame. 
What  wreaked  1  of  wintrie  ages  wast, 
Though  deemed  I,  my  spring  would  ever  last. 

How  often  have  I  scaled  the  craggie  Oke, 
All  to  dislodge  the  Raven  of  her  nest  ? 
How  hav(!  I  wearied  with  manie  a  stroke 
'I'he  statelie  Walnut  tree,  the  while  the  rest 

Under  the  tree  fell  all  for  nuttes  at  strife  ? 

For  ylike  to  me,  was  libertie  and  life. 

(Vol.  II.,  pp.  274-5.) 

Even  a  present-day  Visitor  in  the  district  identifies 
at  once  the  landscape.  At  Hurstwood  and  "  The 
Spenscrs  "  and  around  are  still  to  be  seen  "  the  ivastftd 
woods"-  -no  epithet  more  clectl3M-calistic — and  beyond 
the  "Forrest  wide"  (Pendle  forest),  even  later  haunted 
of  "  Woolvcs  "  and  made  a  *'  place  of  dread  "  by  many 
a  Ict^end  of  encounter  with  that  "  fell  beaste  "  ;  whilst 
the  "  craggie  oke "  lodgini,^  "  the  raven's  nest,"  and 
specially  the  "  stately  walnuts,"  were  (and  largely  are) 
the  trees  of  the  country  side.  Equally  true  to  the  facts 
is  the  "hunting"  of  the  "heartlesse  hare"  and  the 
buck  ("  pricket  ")  ;  which  again  were  t//e  sports  of  the 
gentry  of  North-East  Lancashire.  Whatever  there  is 
of  conventionality  (noticed  by  Mr.  Palgrave,  as  before, 
p.  lix)  is  derived  from  Marot  ;  and  that  only  the  more 
accentuates  the  distinct  local  touches  in  the  Eclogue. 

It  could  not  fail  to  be  a  contenting  change  to  the 
(pn^bably)  somewhat  ailing  and  over-worn  Student,  to 
return  to  the.se  scenes  of  his  boyhood  in  his  young- 
manhood  (in   I  576  he  was  in  his  twenty-fourth  year). 

We  cannot  err  in  assigning  to  this  North-East 
Lancashire    '  abiding,'    much    of    his    lost    as    well    as 


IN  NOR TH-KA  ST  LA NCA  SHIRE.  45 

after-published  Poctn-.  More  than  h'kcly  he  had  re- 
worked on  the  Sonnets  of  the  Theatre  of  \Vorldli)igs 
at  the  University,  and  on  others  that  were  '  finished  ' 
in  1579.  Hut  the  substance  of  the  SlieplienVs  Calendar 
and  the  preparation-flij^hts  for  the  Faery  Queen  ("Masque 
of  Cupid  ")  belonf;  unquestionably  to  these  sequestered 
summer  months  in  the  "North  partes." 

The  primitive  simplicities  and  sanctities  of  faith  and 
practice,  the  unique  '  characters '  for  analytic  study  of 
"  gentle  and  simple,"  the  long-lingering  old-world 
manners  and  customs  ("  superstitions,"  too),  the  deli- 
cious (juietude,  and  the  racy-healthful  air  and  ever 
open  access  to  nature  in  greenwood  and  mountain, 
scarred  by  '  glens,'  by  river-side  and  along  fragrant 
lanes,  on  heather-coloured  "  moorland,"  and  in  sunny 
gardens  behind  ancient  manors  and  granges,  united 
to  educate,  discipline  and  nurture  such  a  temperament 
as  our  Poet's.  The  out-of-door  pre-occupation  (by 
God's  grace)  I  doubt  not  prolonged  a  fragile  life  beyond 
what  had  else  been  its  still  more  "  immature  "  term. 

Though  thus  secluded  in  the  "  North  partes,"  there 
is  evidence  that  neither  did  he  cut  himself  off  from 
academic  friends  nor  cease  to  be  remembered  of  them. 
His  most-honoured  and  beloved  Gabriel  Harvey  must 
have  kept  up  a  regular  correspondence ;  for  those 
Letters  that  have  survived — and  wJn"ch  in  the  near 
sequel  will  be  drawn  upon — self-evidently  form  only 
fragments  of  a  large  whole.  I  think,  too,  that  he  must 
have  been  visited  by  Harvey,  if  not  also  by  Edward 
Kirke. 

But  the  "  old,  old  story  "  came  in  to  give  shape  and 
colour  to  this  residence  in  the  "  North  partes."      It  was 


46  IN  NORTH-EA  ST  LA  NCA  SHIRE. 

here  and   now  he  met  and  was  taken  captive  by  his 
"  Rosalind." 

It  is  needful  to  look  at  this  potential  episode  more 
closely  than  has  yet  been  done.  Fortunately  the  same 
twelfth  Eclogue,  from  which  we  have  fetched  his  remi- 
niscences of  his  boy  visits  to  these  scenes,  is  once 
more  our  guide.  He  tells  us  there — to  begin  with — 
that  after  those  sunny  days  he  gave  himself  up  to  Poetry 
— exactly  as  we  have  found  he  did.  With  mingled 
modesty  and  self-consciousness  he  thus  skilfully  pre- 
pares us  for  the  disturbance  that  came  upon  him — like 
"  levin  "  from  a  blue  sky.  I  ask  the  student-Reader 
who  would  grasp  the  whole  Facts  to  turn  and  read  in 
Vol.  II.,  pp.  275-6,  "And  for"  ...  .  to  "Colin 
ran."*  Into  all  this  rapture  and  sense  of  '  grow- 
ing '  faculty  of  the  poet-seer,  there  broke  the  passion 
("  evil  passion ")  of  Love.  He  thus  describes  the 
small-staged  tragedy,  not  without  gleam  of  white 
tears  : — 


But  ah  such  pride  at  leng^th  was  ill  repaide, 
The  shepheards  God  (perdie  God  was  he  none) 
My  hurtlesse  pleasaunce  did  me  ill  upbraide, 
My  freedorne  lorne,  my  life  he  left  to  mone. 

Love  they  him  called,  that  gave  me  checkmate, 
But  better  mought  they  have  behote  him  Hate. 


*  On  "Wrenock,"  see  Note  s.n.  in  Glossarial  Index.  Mean- 
while one  queries  :  -Could  it  be  a  personification  of  his  college 
"Pembroke,"  spelled  "  Penbrock,"  which  compared  with  the 
greater  colleges  was  ' '  Wrenock,''  =  a  little  wren  .^  At ' '  Pembroke ' ' 
he  cultured  his  poetical  powers,  following  up  the  Sonnets  of  the 
Theatre  of  Worldlings ;  and  so  in  a  sense  his  College,  in  the 
personification  of  a  shepherd  named  Wrenock,  may  be  credited 
as  in  these  lines,  and  especially  1.  6 — "Made  me  by  art  more 
cunning  in  the  same." 


IN  NORTH-EAST  LANCASHIRE.  47 

Tho  gan  my  lovely  spring  bid  me  farewell, 

And  summer  season  sped  him  to  display 

{Vox  love  then  in  the  Lyons  house  did  dwell) 

The  raj^^ing  fire,  that  kindled  at  his  ray. 
A  comet  stird  vp  that  unkindly  heate, 
That  raigned  (as  men  said)  in  Venus  seate. 

Forth  was  I  led,  not  as  I  wont  afore, 
WTien  choise  I  had  to  choose  my  wandring  way : 
But  whither  lucke  and  loves  unbridled  lore 
Would  lead  me  forth  on  Fancies  bit  to  play. 

The  bush  my  bed,  the  bramble  was  my  bowre, 
The  Woods  can  witnes  manie  a  wofull  stoure. 

I  intercalate — That  again  here  are  local  touches.  Once 
more,  to-day  "  the  Woods"  and  "the  bramble"  abound 
in  these  parts.  The  last  Summer  I  sat  as  "  in  a  bower  " 
beneath  a  bramble  that  in  these  very  woods  had  so  clomb 
up  an  oak  and  festooned  trunk  and  branches,  as  to  form 
a  delightful  shelter  from  the  almost  tropical  heat  of  July. 
He  proceeds : — 

Where  I  was  wont  to  seeke  the  hony  Bee, 
Working  her  formall  rowmes  in  We.xen  frame  : 
The  grieslie  Todestoole  growne  there  mought  I  see. 
And  loathing  Paddockes  lording  on  the  same. 

And  where  the  chaunting  birds  luld  me  a  sleepe. 
The  gastly  Owle  her  greevous  ynne  doth  keepe. 

These  are  common  to  almost  every  district  of  England, 
no  doubt  ;  but  as  simple  matter-of-fact  the  whole  region 
around  Hurstwood  and  the  Pendlc  district  is  a  bee- 
country — rows  of  hives  showing  in  lowliest  peasant 
gardens — and  the  "  grieslie  Todestoole,"  and  the  "loath- 
ing Paddockes,"  and  the  "  chaunting  birds,"  and  the 
"  gastly  Owle,"  are  still  everywhere  to  be  observed,  save 
that  the  "Owle"  is  more  rare  than  once.  Now,  exactly 
fitting  in  with  the  chronology  he  continues  : — 


^8  IN  NORTH-EAST  LANCASHIRE. 

Then  as  the  spring:  i::ives  place  to  elder  time, 

And  brint^eth  forth  the  fruit  of  summers  pride  : 

Also  my  age  now  passed  youthly  prime, 

To  thiuL^s  of  riper  reason  selfe  applide. 

And  leamed  of  lighter  timber,  cotes  to  frame, 
Such  as  might  save  my  sheepe  and  me  fro  shame. 

To  make  fine  cages  for  the  Nightingale, 

And  Baskets  of  laulrushes  was  my  wont : 

Who  to  entrap  the  fish  in  winding  sale. 

Was  better  scene,  or  hurtfull  beastes  to  hont  ? 
!  learned  als  the  signcs  of  heaven  to  ken, 
How  Plicvbc  failes,  where  Vc)U(s  sits,  and  when. 

And  tried  time  yet  taught  me  greater  things, 
The  sodaine  rising  of  the  raging  seas  : 
The  soothe  of  byrds  by  beating  of  their  wings. 
The  powre  of  hearbes,  both  which  can  hurt  and  ease  : 
And  which  be  wont  t'enrage  the  restlesse  sheepe, 
And  which  be  wont  to  worke  eternall  sleepe. 

I  fear  that  the  steam-whistle  has  frightened  away  the 
"  Nightingale  "  from  these  "  North  partes,"*  if  she  were 
not  a  poetical  invention  ;  but  disciples  of  Isaac  Walton 
can  pursue  their  craft  by  many  trout-streams  and  pools, 
and  my  own  lads  joined  a  bevy  of  village  children  in 
"  weaving  "  just  such  "  baskets"  of  "  bulrushes."  Faith 
in  "  licarbcs  "  ("  yarbs  "  pronounced)  is  still  the  creed  of 
to-day,  and  not  for  "  restlesse  sheepe  "  alone.  By  the 
way,  I  suspect  Gabriel  Harvey's  appeal  not  only  that 
"  Colin  "  should  leave  "  the  soyle,"  but  that  it  had 
"  bewitched  "  him,  was  literally  true.  It  is  curious — as 
our  Glossarial  Index  show.s — how  frequently  Spenser 
expresses  a  semi-faith  in  the  '  power '  of  these  very 
"  hearbes  "  and  "  spells "  and  usages  and  superstitions 
that  prevailed  in  his  family-district.  Now  comes  the 
full  love-story  and  its  effects  : — 

*  The  nightingale  was  very  recently  heard  in  Ribblesdale,  not 
far  from  Blackburn. 


AV  NORTH-EAST  LANCASHIRE.  40 

But  ah  unwise  and  witlesse  Colin  Clout, 
That  kydst  the  hidden  kindes  of  many  a  weede  : 
Yet  kydst  not  one  to  cure  thy  sore  heart  root, 
Whose  ranckling  wound  as  yet  does  rifely  bleede. 

W^hy  livest  thou  stil,  and  yet  hast  thy  deaths  woud  ? 

Why  dicbt  thou  still,  and  yet  alive  art  found  ? 

Thus  is  my  summer  wome  away  and  wasted  : 

Thus  is  my  harvest  hastened  all  to  rathe  : 

The  eare  that  budded  faire,  is  burnt  and  blasted, 

And  all  my  hoped  i^aine  is  turned  to  scathe. 

Of  all  the  seede,  that  in  my  youth  was  sowne, 

Was  nought  but  brakes  and  brambles  to  be  mowne. 

My  boughs  with  blossoms  that  crowned  were  at  first. 

And  promised  of  timely  fruit  such  store  : 

Are  left  both  bare  and  barrein  now  at  erst, 

The  flattering  fruit  is  fallen  to  .ground  before. 
And  rotted,  ere  they  were  halfe  mellow  ripe : 
My  harvest  wast,  my  hope  away  did  wipe. 

The  fragrant  flowers,  that  in  my  garden  grew, 
Bene  withered  as  they  had  bene  gathered  long  : 
Their  rootes  beene  dried  vp  for  lacke  of  dewe. 
Yet  dewed  with  teares  they  han  be  ever  among. 

Ah,  who  has  wrought  my  Rosalinde  this  spight. 
To  spill  the  flowres,  that  should  her  girlond  dight } 

And  I ,  that  whilome  woont  to  frame  my  pipe, 
Unto  the  shifting  of  the  shepheards  foote  ; 
Sike  follies  now  have  gathered  as  too  ripe, 
And  cast  hem  out,  as  rotten  and  unsoote. 

The  loser  Lasse,  I  cast  to  please  no  more, 

One  if  I  please,  enough  is  me  therefore. 

And  thus  of  all  my  harvest  hope  I  have 

Nought  reaped  but  a  weedie  crop  of  care  ; 

WTiich,  when  I  thought  have  thresht  in  swelling  sheave. 

Cockle  for  come,  and  chaffe  for  barly  bare. 

Soone  as  the  chaffe  should  in  the  fan  be  finde. 
All  was  blowne  away  of  the  wavering  winde. 

By  "  loser  Lasse  "  I  understand  his  "  Muse,"  his 
Poetry,  which  henceforward,  he  thinks  in  his  misery  and 
desolatcness,  he  will  "  cast  to  please  no  more."      More 

I.  4 


50  IN  NORTH-EAST  LANCASHIRE. 

pathetic,  more  passionate — subdued  and  "  held  in," 
yet  humanly  real — is  the  close  of  this  priceless  auto- 
biographic Eclogue  (Vol.  II.,  pp.  280-1,  11.  127-44). 

Onward  I  meet  possible  objections  to  the  truthfulness 
of  the  Eclogue,  from  these  "old  age"  traits  worked  into 
the  portrait.  Meanwhile  I  pursue  our  reading.  The 
final  stanza  seeks  that  "  Hobbinol  "  (Gabriel  Harvey) 
will  communicate  the  rejected  Lover's  "  farewell "  ; 
and  this  absence  of  "  Rosalind "  from  Lancashire 
harmonizes  exactly  with  Michael  Drayton's  incidental 
celebration  of  her  as  "  among  the  Cotswold  hills  " 
near  Harvey,  with  other  'beauties' — as  elsewhere 
shown  ;  * — 

Adieu  delights,  that  lulled  me  asleepe, 
Adieu  my  dcare,  whose  loue  I  bought  so  deare  ; 
Adieu  my  little  lambes  and  loued  sheepe, 
Adieu  ye  woods,  that  oft  my  witnessc  were  : 
Adieu  good  Hobbmoll,  that  was  so  true, 
Tell  Rosalinde,  her  Colin  bids  her  adieu. 

Colins  Embleme. 
Vivitur  inge7iio :  ccetcra  mortis  erunf. 

In  my  Essay  "Who  were  Rosalinde  and  Menalcas  V 
(Vol.  HI.,  pp.  Ixxii — cvii)  I  have  brought  together  all 
the  references  to  "  Rosalinde  "  in  the  minor  Poems — 
excluding  as  uncertain  the  Faery  Queen  portraiture  of 
"  Melissa  " — and  I  have  nothing  to  add  to  my  identi- 
fication of  cither,  except  this  :  that  the  more  I  have 
studied  the  problem,  the  more  I  am  satisfied  that  in  a 
yet  untraced  Rose  or  Elisa  or  Alice  Dineley  or  Dynley  or 
Dinlei,  and  an  A.spinall  of  these  "North  partes,"  we  shall 
find — if  ever  we  get  nearer — the  "  parties,"  as  E.  K. 
calls  them —  of  this  love-story.     To  my  Essay  (as  above) 

*  Vol.  III.,  pp.  cii-iii. 


AV  NORTH-EA  ST  LA XCA  SHIRE.  5 1 

I  must  respectfully  refer  the  student- Reader  :  and  here 
would  now  fulfil  my  promise  of  furnishing  entries  of 
Aspinalls,  and  specifically  one  spelled  "  Asmenall," 
from  the  Whalley  Registers.  Had  the  Downham 
Parish  Registers  similarly  existed  (alas!  they  are  of 
the  late  Commonwealth  only),  it  is  morally  certain  a 
Rose  and  other  Dyneleys  would  have  been  entered  : — 

Names  of  persons  baptized,  married,  or  buried  at  Whalley 
Church,  from  A.D.  1538  to  A.D.  1600,  bearing  the  surname  of 
ASPINALL — variously  spelled  Aspinalle,  Aspmall  (contraction 
over  m=  Aspmenall)  Asmenall,  Aspmoughe. 

A.D.  Baptisms. 

1540  Jacobus  Aspmall  filius  Xpofferi  [Christopher]  Aspmall  i  die 

August!. 
1545  Lyonellius  Aspinalle  5  die  Martij. 
1387  Alice  Aspinalle  2  die  Octobris. 

Marriages  \ 

i53q  C'rofferus  [Christopher]  Aspmanyle  et  Elizabetha  Braddyll 

14  die  Sept. 
1576  Xpoffcrus   [Christopher]   Asiesmall   et    Margreta  Dugdall 

21  die  Junij. 
1578  Toh'es  Asmenall  et  Elizabetha  Pollard  5  die  Novembris. 
1590  Mylo  Aspmall  et  Jeneta  Wilkinyson  i  die  Junij. 
1590  Ric'us  Estwood  et  Margreta  Aspmall  23  die  Octobris. 

Burials. 
1540  Agnes  u.\'  Rici  Aspmall  ig  die  Maij. 

1540  Tacobus  filius Xpofi;ri  [Christopher]  Aspmall  29  die  Octobris. 
155 1    Elena  Aspmall  29  die  Julij. 
1557   Edmundus  Asprfiall  14  die  Junij. 
1569  Ri'cus  Aspmall  21  die  Octobris. 
1572  Elizabetha  ux'  Xpofcri  [Christopher]  Aspmall  30 die  Martij, 

1586  Mauda  Aspmall  ux'  Johis  Aspmall  2  die  Octobris. 

1587  Ri'cus  Aspmall  10  die  Maij. 

1590  Lyuellus  Aspmall  14  die  Augusti. 

1591  Willmus  Aspmall  21  die  Augusri. 


The  entry  of  a  Dyneley. 
Baptism  1568  Hcnricus  Dyneley  filius  Henr'  28  die  Decembris 


52  IN  NOR TH-EA  ST  LA  NCA  SHIRE. 

SJ>cnsers  at  Whallcy. 
Haptism  1594  Thninas   Spenser  filius  Nicoli  [Nicholas]  22    die 

Sc-'ptembris. 
Burial      1386  Jancta  Spencer  filia  Thome  Spencer  21  die  Martij. 

But  whilst  I  do  not  return  upon  the  identification  of 
"  Rosalinde,"  it  seems  due  to  Spenser  to  vindicate  the 
reality  and  sincerity  of  his  passion  for  her.  I  perceive 
a  recent  tendency  to  hold  a  theory  that  Poets'  '  love ' 
must  in  nearly  every  case  be  put  down  very  much  to 
"  fancy,"  and  any  wounds  in  the  charming  encounter  as 
only  skin-deep  and  nearly  bloodless.  It  is  astonishing 
how  this  natty  little  theory  has  been  made  to  do  duty 
in  explaining  away  manifest  FACTS  of  the  most  tragic 
sort,  l-riina  facie  it  strikes  one  that  Edmund  Spenser 
was  so  utlcrly  human,  and  so  impressionable  and  sensi- 
tive of  temperament,  as  to  have  been  the  very  type  of 
man  to  love  "  at  first  sight,"  and  to  love  with  his  whole 
being,  from  e)es  and  burning  lips  to  innermost  aspira- 
tions. There  was  solidity  in  his  make,  but  of  the 
fluent  sea,  not  of  the  immobile  "  stony  mountain."  So 
that  he  was  exposed  to  sudden  and  fathomless  passion. 

Congruous  with  this  is  his  transparent  truthfulness  of 
statement.  He  must  be  a  stone-eyed  Reader  who  does 
not  see.  under  all  pastoral  guises  and  disguises  and 
framework,  that  the  very  truth  of  fact,  in  thought  and 
emotion  and  circumstance,  is  communicated,  and  that 
with  nicest  adherence  to  the  reality.  WHioso  can  read 
the  twelfth  Eclogue  and  be  unconvinced  of  this,  I  for  one 
would  not  spend  another  minute  on  him.  Granted  that 
describing,  as  this  Eclogue  does,  a  whole  life  trom  boy- 
hood to  wrinkles  and  old  age,  it  is  impossible,  by  the 
fact  that  the  Poet-lover  was  only  in  his  twenty-fourth 


IN  NORTH- E A  ST  LA  NCA  SHIRE.  53 

or  twenty-fifth  >-ear,  that  the  look  beyond  these  years 
could  be  (strictly)  autobiographical.  But  it  was  auto- 
biographical to  inward  feeling  if  not  to  outward  fact. 
He  had  that  sense  of  life-weariness  and  premature 
ageing  that  steals  over  a  passionate  nature  thwarted 
and  disappointed  in  its  pursuit  of  a  given  object.  (How 
old-manish  was  later  Thomas  Chattcrton's  estimate  of 
human  life  and  of  his  own  life! — and  there  are  abundant 
parallels.)  Besides,  there  is  discernible  a  touch  of  grim 
humour — a  decided  element  in  Spenser,  if  we  look 
closely — in  his  self-portraiture  as  a  prematurely-aged 
man  tlirough  his  blighted  affection.  And  such  humour 
is  perfectly  consistent  with  genuine  feeling.  The  fount 
of  tears  lies  near  to  the  fount  of  laughter,  as  does  the 
honey-bag  to  the  sting.  I  dismiss,  therefore,  as  inept, 
all  objections  to  the  realism  of  this  Eclogue  from  mere 
reckoning  of  years  and  dates.  The  life  touched  of  love 
knows  nothing  of  chronolog>'. 

Then  if  it  be  objected  that  a  "  real  lover  "  would 
scarcely  have  published  his  woes  and  disappointments, 
as  in  the  ShcphenVs  Calendar,  I  answer  : — (i)  That 
this  is  to  import  nineteenth-century  sentiment  into  the 
sixteenth.  Granted  that  we  should  not  do  so,  it  is  yet 
historical  fact  that  Surrey  for  his  "  Geraldine,"  Sidney 
for  his  "  Stella,"  Daniel  for  his  "  Delia,"  Drayton  for  his 
"  Idea,"  and  many  others  did  it,  until  their  personal 
miseries  and  joys,  hopes  and  fears,  were  the  common 
talk.  (2)  That  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  was  published 
ANONYMOUSLY;  and  that  even  after  several  editions  had 
been  issued,  the  authorship  was  so  little  known — except 
in  the  inner  circle  of  friends — that  Dove,  who  translated 
it  into  Latin   (in  a  MS.  now   in   Caius  College,  Cam- 


5  4  IN  NOR  TH-EA  ST  LA  NCA  SHIRE. 

bridi^e),  did  it  as  by  "  an  unknown  author."  To  one  so 
hunj^ering-  after  '  fame,'  it  cost  something  to  suppress 
his  name  and  take  "  Immerito."  (3)  That  his  friends 
knew  that  it  was  on  this  account  alone  the  Poet  thus 
hid  himself  in  "Immerito"  :  r.  <,>-.,  in  Wa.rve.ys  Letter-book, 
where  he  quotes  a  well-known  passage  from  one  of 
Spenser's  letters — of  which  more  anon — he  thus  pre- 
faces it  :  "  And  heare  will  I  take  occasion  to  shewe 
you  a  pcece  of  a  letter  that  I  lately  receyved  from  the 
Courtc  written  by  a  frcnde  of  mine,  that  since  rt:  certayne 
chaiiHcc  lu'fa/lni  uuto  Iiivi,  a  seen/t  not  to  be  revealid, 
calleth  himself  Immerito"  (p.  101).  (4)  That  lean 
readily  conceive  that  the  Poet  had  a  forlorn  hope  that 
after  all  what  his  speech  in  '  wooing  '  and  letters  had 
failed  to  do,  his  volume  as  the  "  newe  poet "  might 
peradventure  do — id  est,  persuade  "  Rosalinde  "  to  look 
more  favourably  on  him  and  less  favourably  on  that 
"  Aspinall  "  who  had  filched  her  from  him — in  combi- 
nation with  his  prospects  "  at  Court." 

When  we  come  to  read  sympathetically  the  successive 
'  laments'  and  "Rosalinde"  references,  a  note  of  manly 
sincerity  is  caught  by  the  flattest  ear.  He  looks  across 
from  Ilurstwood  to  the  "  Castell "  of  Clitheroe,  the 
"  neighbour  towne  "  and  market  of  the  Downham  dis- 
trict, where  "Rosalinde"  (a  "Dynelcy")  resided,  and 
there  is  written  down  faithful  as  any  photograph  : — 

A  thousand  sithes  1  curse  that  carefull  houre,  (=  tunes) 
Wherein  I  longd  tJie  7ieighhonr  towtic  to  see  : 

and  it  is  a  cr}-,  not  a  phrase,  that  darts  out  of  this  very 
first  Eclogue  ("  lanuarie  ")  : — 

Ah  God,  that  love  should  breed  both  ioy  and  paine. 


IN  NORTH- E A  ST  LA  NCA  SHIRE.  55 

Nor  is  it  .1  mere  Poet's,  but  a  Lover's,  sense  of  injury 
that  breaks  out  on  the  despite  shown  his  "  rurall 
musickc  "  : — 

[Shcc]  .  .   of  my  rurall  musicke  holdeth  scornc. 

Shephcards  devise  she  hateth  as  the  snake  : 

And  laughcs  the  songs  that  Colin  Clout  doth  make. 

Of  these  despised  Songs,  I  think  we  have  some  at 
least  in  the  A  morel ti  ;  for  they  were  not  all  inspired  by 
"  Eh'zabcth."  Again,  in  "  Aprill,"  one  cannot  question 
for  a  moment  that  "  Hobbinoll"  [Harvey]  had  com- 
plained of  his  "  friend,"  now  turned  "  fren,"  surceasing 
his  "melody,"  and  that  characteristically,  Spenser  worked 
these  complaints  into  the  Eclogue  : — 

He  pluni^cd  in  paine,  his  tressed  lockes  doth  teare, 
Shepheards  delights  he  doth  them  all  forsweare. 
His  pleasant  pipe,  which  made  us  meriment, 
He  wilfully  hath  broke,  and  doth  forbeare 
His  woonted  songs,  wherein  he  all  outwent. 

Nor  arc  "  pinching  paine,"  "  deadly  dart,"  "  madding 
mind,"  simple  word-turns,  but  once  more  the  truth  of 
fact  as  he  "wooed  the  widdowes  daughter  of  t\\Q  glen  fie'' 
— under  one's  eyes  to-day  at  Downham.  Once  more 
in  "  lune"  the  call  of  "  Hobbinoll  "  that  his  dejected 
"  friend  "  would  "  forsake  "  his  "  soyle  "  ("  t/iy  soyle  "), 
was  recognition  of  an  actual  need  of  change  of  scene 
and  circumstance.  A  "  spell  "  had  been  "  laid  "  upon 
him.  He  was  "  bewitcht."  He  must  leave  "  those 
hilles  where  harbrough  nis  to  see."  Unless  there  had 
been  genuine  and  real  "  trouble  "  and  heart-sorrow,  this 
strain  would  have  been  impossible.  But  the  "  North 
partes  "had  still  attractions  that  made  it  hard  to  lift 
his    anchor    and    sail    away    elsewhere.      "  Hobbinoll " 


56  IN  NORTH-EA  ST  LA  NCA  SHIRE. 

expatiates  on  the  "Graces  and  lightfoote  Nymphs"  and 
the  "  peerlesse  pleasures "  of  the  South,  where  the 
"  sisters  nyne  which  dwel  on  Parnasse  hight"  do  "make 
musick  "  :  but  "  Colin  "  had  more  than  all  he  boasted 
of  in  the  home-woods  and  mountains.  It  is  poetry  of 
the  finest,  but  a  page  too  out  of  the  red-leaved  book 
of  a  human  heart,  which  answers  thus  :  — 

And  I,  whilst  youth,  and  course  of  carelesse  yeeres, 
Did  let  me  walke  withouten  lincks  of  love, 
In  such  delights  did  ioy  amongst  my  peeres  : 
But  ryper  age  such  pleasures  doth  reproove 
]\Iy  fansie  eke  from  fomier  follies  moove 
To  stayed  steps,  for  time  in  passing  weares 
(As  garments  doen,  which  wexen  old  above) 
And  draweth  new  delights  with  hoarie  haires. 

Tho  couth  I  sing  of  love,  and  tune  my  pype 
Unto  my  plaintive  pleas  in  verses  made  : 
Tho  would  I  seeke  for  Queene  apples  unrype, 
To  give  my  Rosal/ndc,  and  in  Sommer  shade 
Dight  gaudie  Girlonds,  was  my  common  trade, 
To  orowne  her  golden  locks  :  but  yeeres  more  rype, 
A7id  losse  of  her,  -whose  love  as  life  Izvayde, 
Those  weary  wanton  toyes  away  did  wype. 

(P.  153,  11.  37-52.) 

Surely  in  that  "would  I  seeke  for  Queene  apples 
7iinypc"  wc  have  one  of  those  unstudied  touches  that 
nothing  but  its  reality  would  have  suggested.  It  points 
to  me  the  eager  premature  searching  in  the  Hurstwood 
orchard  for  a  "  brave  apple,"  and  snatching  at  one  that 
betrayed  slightest  bloom  of  ruddy  or  golden-ruddy, 
that  she  might  have  it.  How  quiet,  how  unclamorous, 
how  restrained,  the  italicized  line  "And  losse  of  her, 
whose  love  as  life  I  wayde  "  !  If  that  is  not  again  a 
true  note,  how  could  a  true  love  speak  true } 

The  ring  is  equally  genuine  when  he  proceeds  to 
denounce  the  "trecherie"  of  "  Menalcas."     None   but 


U 


IN  NORTH-EAST  LANCASHIRE.  57 

one  conscious  of  "  faultlcssc  faith"  could  so  have 
protested  "  faultlesse  faith."  S'-lf-authcnticating  by  its 
very  simpleness  is  the  message  that  he  would  have  the 
"  gentle  shepheards "  bear  to  her — with  something  of 
the  pathos  of  the  old  ballads  : — 

That  she  the  truest  shepheards  heart  made  bleede, 
That  lives  on  earth,  and  luzrd  her  must  decre. 

In  the  "August"  Eclogue  there  is  the  light  lilt  of 
the  early  Makers,  which  Nicholas  Breton  wrought  to 
perfection  ;  but  the  more  noticeable  because  of  this  is 
the  sudden  interjection  of  heart-ache  and  sorrow.  His 
"  Rosalinde"  has  given  him  one  "  glaunce,"  and  here  is 
the  issue  : — 

The  glaunce  into  my  heart  did  glide, 

hey  ho  the  glyder : 
Therewith  my  soule  was  sharply  gride, 

svch  n'oundes  soone  zvexen  wider. 
Hasting  to  raunch  the  arrow  out, 

hey  ho  Perigot, 
I  left  the  head  in  my  heart  root : 

it  was  a  desperate  shot. 
There  it  rancleth  aye  more  and  more, 

hey  ho  the  arrow, 
Ne  can  I  finde  salue  for  my  sore  : 

LOVE  IS  A  CURELESSE  SORROW. 

A  deeper  vein  of  melancholy  runs  through  the 
"  Hymne  in  Honour  of  Love."  He  would  fain  sing 
worthily  of  "  Love,"  and  it  is  not  merely  the  Poet  but 
the  "suffering"  Lover,  ay,  ///t' human  heart  in  its  anguish 
asserting  itself  plaintively  and  low,  that  thus  plains  :  — 

Onely  I  feare  my  \snts  enfeebled  late, 

Through  the  sharpe  sorrowes,  which  thou  hast  me  bred, 

Should  faint. 

It  was  self-portraiture,  nof'fancie,"  that  dictated  this:  — 


58  IN  NORTH-EA  ST  LA NCA  SHIRE 

So  hast  thou  often  done  (ay  mc  the  more) 
To  mo  thy  vassall,  rvJiose yet  blccdi'm^  hart 
With  thousand  wounds  thou  mangled  hast  so  sore 
That  whole  remaines  scarse  any  little  part, 
Yet  to  auj^ment  the  an.^-uish  of  my  smart, 
I'lioit  Iiast  e?ifroscii  her  liisdainefiill  hrcsi, 
That  no  one  drop  of  pitie  there  doth  rest. 

Why  tlien  do  I  this  honor  unto  thee, 
'fhus  to  ennoble  thy  victorious  name, 
Since  thou  doest  shew  no  favour  unto  mee, 
Ne  once  move  ruth  in  that  rebellious  Dame, 
Somewhat  to  slarke  the  rigour  of  my  flame  ? 
Certes  small  glory  doest  thou  winne  hereby. 
To  let  her  live  thus  free,  and  me  to  dy. 

(P.  154,  11.  145-57.) 

Tlic  last  line  has  been  grotesquely  misinterpreted.  It 
is  not  that  because  he  is  to  "dy"  he  would  have  the 
lad}'  "slain";  but  what  he  complains  is  tiiat  she  is 
allowed  to  "  live  thus  free,"  meaning  thereby  that  whilst 
he  was  "  bound"  in  "the  lincks  of  love,"  she  was  "  free" 
in  so  far  as  "  love"  to  him  was  concerned — "  free,"  not 
"freed"  by  him.  This  dates  the  Hymn  as  prior  to 
"Rosalind's"  marriage  to  "  Menalcas."  Equally  pas- 
sionate as  equally  real  is  the  "  Ilymne  in  Honour  of 
Beautie,"  with  its  glowing  homage  to  her  "  conquering 
beautic,"  and  his  heart's  "  breaking  and  longing  and 
panting,"  like  the  hart  for  the  water-brooks,  for  "  one 
drop  of  grace."  Then  there  is  tlie  ultimate  'defence' 
of  his  "  Rosalind,"  even  when  the  skies  were  purpling 
overhead  with  hopes  of  his  "  ]*^li/,abeth"  being  won  for 
wife,  than  which  there  is  not  in  the  language  a  nobler 
testimony  to  the  permanence  of  Spenser's  love  for  her 
to  whom  so  long  before  in  his  golden  prime  he  had 
surrendered  himself  body  and  soul.  In  Colin  Clout's 
Conic  Home  Again   (1595)  "Rosalind"  is  blamed,  but 


/A'  NORTH-EAST  LANCASHIRE.  59 

"Colin"  will  not  have  her  blamed.  With  finest, 
subtlest,  purest  allegiance  he  vindicates  her  against  all 
accusers.  W'c  must  read,  and  shall  do  well  to  re-read, 
this  great  declaration  : — 


Indeed  (said  Lucid)  I  have  often  heard 

Faire  Rosalind  of  divers  fowly  blamed  : 

For  beini;  to  that  swaine  too  cruell  hard, 

That  her  brii^'ht  ^lorie  else  hath  much  defamed. 

But  who  can  tell  Tvhat  cause  had  that  faire  Mayd 

To  use  him  so  that  used  her  so  well  : 

Or  who  with  blame  can  iustly  her  vpbrayd, 

For  loving  not  ?  for  who  can  love  compell. 

And  sooth  to  say,   //  is  fool  hard ie  thing. 

Rashly  to  wyten  creatures  so  divine 

Beware  therefore,  ye  groomes,  I  read  betimes, 
How  rashly  blame  of  Rosalind  yc  raise. 

Ah  shepheards  (then  said  Colin)  ye  ne  weet 
How  great  a  guilt  upon  your  heads  ye  draw  : 
To  make  so  bold  a  doome  with  words  unmeet, 
Of  thing  celestial  I  zuhich  ye  never  saw. 
For  SHK  is  not  like  as  the  other  crew 
Of  shepheards  daughters  which  emongst  you  bee, 
But  of  divine  regard  and  heavenly  hew, 
Excelling  all  that  ez'cr  ye  did  see. 
Not  then  to  her  that  scorned  thing  so  base, 
But  to  7ny  selfe  the  blame  that  lookt  so  hie  : 
So  hie  her  thoughts  as  she  her  selfe  haue  place, 
And  loath  each  lowly  thing  with  loftie  eie. 
Yet  so  much  grace  let  her  vouchsafe  to  grant 
To  simple  swaine,  sith  her  I  may  not  lave  : 
Yet  that  I  may  her  honour  paravant, 
And  praise  her  worth,  though  far  my  wit  above, 
Such  grace  shall  be  some  guerdon  for  the  grief e, 
A  nd  long  affliction  which  I  have  endured  : 
Such  grace  sometimes  shall  giz'e  me  some  relief e. 
And  case  of  pa  inc.,  which  cannot  be  recured. 
And  ye  my  follow  shepheards  which  do  see 
And  hear  the  languours  of  my  too  long  dying, 
Unto  the  world  for  ever  witnessc  bee, 
Thai  hers  I  die,  nought  to  the  world  denying, 
This  simple  trophic  of  her  great  conquest. 

(Vol.  IV.,  pp.  65-7,11.  897-953.) 


6o  N  NORTH- E A  ST  LA  NCA  SHIRE. 

In  the  face  of  such  multiph'ed  testimonies  it  is  the 
sihcerest  fnutastigne  of  criticism  to  argue  that  "Rosalind" 
was  only  his  "  Muse,"  a  bodiless  creation  of  fancy,  and 
never  had  a  personality  :  and  yet  Thomas  Keightley 
gravely  argues  for  this.*  The  man  must  have  a  kind 
of  colour-blindness  affecting  something  deeper  and 
more  inner  than  the  eyes,  who  denies  the  reality  and 
the  permanence  of  Edmund  Spenser's  love  for  "  Rose 
Dineley,"  "  Rosalind." 

One  is  thankful  that  over-and-above  such  internal 
evidence  as  has  thus  been  adduced,  Gabriel  Harvey 
incidentally  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  "Rosalind"  as  cultured 
(in  Italian),  and  quite  aware  of  her  lover's  great  qualities. 
He  thus  writes  : — 

")m.iq-in  mc  to  come  into  a  goodlj'  Kentish  Gnrdcji  [Pens- 
hurst — doubtless]  of  your  old  Lords,  or  some  other  Noble  man, 
and  spyin<^  a  tiorishing  Bay  Tree  there,  to  demaunde  ex  tonpore. 
as  followeth  : — Thinke  uppon  Petrarches 

Arbor  vittoriosa,  tironfale, 
Onor  d'  Imperadori,  e  di  Poete  : 
and  perhappes  it  will  advaunce  the  wyng-es  of  your  Imagination 
a  degree  higher;  at  the  least  if  any  thing  can  be  added  to  the 
loftincsso  of  his  conceite,  wh5  gentle  Mistresse  Rosalinde,  once 
reported  to  haue  all  the  Intelligences  at  commaundement,  and 
an  other  time,  Christened  her  Segnior  Pegaso  "  {^Letters  ofEartJi- 
({iiakc,  etc.,  as  before). 

I  will  concede,  whilst  I  hold  to  the  reality  and 
the  permanence  of  Spenser's  love  for  "  Rosalind,"  that 
beside  Sidney's  for  "  Stella,"  his  passion  is  not  com- 
prfrable  \\\\\\  that  which  throbs  and  burns  and  makes 
molten  the  great  Astroplicl  and  Stella  Sonnets.  I 
distinguish  between  a  first  love  (apparently  at  first 
sight)  such  as  "  Colin  Clout's  "  for  "  Rosalind,"  and  the 
*  Eraser's  Magazine,  as  before,  pp.  410-22. 


L. 


IN  THE  SOUTH— HOW   OCCUPHiD.  6i 

tragedy  of  passion  that  had  in  its  development  an 
insurmountable  barrier  placed  between  it  and  its  object. 
There  were  no  such  awful  elements  in  Spenser's 
wooing  and  hopes.  Besides,  no  one  can  doubt  of 
the  sincerity  of  his  after-love  for  his  Elizabeth  ;  and 
yet  equally  must  the  Amoretti  Sonnets  be  sundered 
from  the  Astrophcl  and  Stella  Sonnets.*  The  men 
were  separated  wide  as  the  poles  in  character  and  in 
circumstances  alike.  But  I  must  hold  that  the  pure 
white  light  of  Spenser's  love  for  "  Rosalind"  can  stand 
being  placed  against  the  smoke-streaked  flames  of 
Sidney. 

VI.  In  the  South — now  occupied. — Letters  of 
Spenser  and  Harvey  (1577-8 — 1580). 

"...  Foi  tmie  play  upon  Ihy  prosperous  helm.'" — All's  Weli,  iii.  3. 

By  the  Facts  of  Spenser's  departure  from  Cambridge 
in  1576  and  retirement  to  North-Ea.st  Lancashire  in 
1576  we  are  brought  to  1577  as  the  probable  year  of 
his  acceptance  of  the  invitation  of  "  Hobbinol"  (Gabriel 
Harvey)  to  "forsake"  his  "shier"  ("thy  soil")  and  come 
South.  But  neither  the  exact  chronology,  nor  the 
new  residence,  has  been  accurately  determined.  It  has 
been  over-hastily  assumed  that  he  proceeded  direct  to 
London,  and  was  at  once  introduced  to  Leicester  and 
Sidney  and  other  courtly-friends  by  Harvey — who 
certainly  had  access  to  the   innermost  circles.      I  think 

•  Onward  will  be  found  detailed  notices  of  the  -.4  W6';r///Sonnets. 
In  the  Glossarial  Judex  also  will  be  found  recorded  and  anno- 
tated, the  Faery  Queen  allusions  dis.L,^uised  and  seini-avowtd  to 
Rosalind  and  Elizabeth. 


62  IN  THE  SOUTH—HOW  OCCUPIED. 

that  I  shall  establish  a  little  onward  that  Spenser  was 
much  sooner  known  by  Leicester  and  Sidney  than  has 
been  hitherto  supposed.  But  preceding  his  appearance 
in  the  metropolis,  it  seems  clear  that  he  tarried  on  the 
way  with  another  University  friend.  An  examination 
of  one  of  the  Eclogues  that  has  already  yielded 
us  new  light  on  the  Poet's  circumstances — viz.,  "  Sep- 
tember"— will  confirm  this.  Turning  to  it  we  thus 
read  : — 

DiGGON. 

But  shall  I  tell  thee  what  my  selfe  knowe, 
Chaunced  to  Roffin  not  long  ygo. 

HOBBINOL. 
Say  it  Diggon,  what  ever  it  light, 
For  not  but  well  mought  him  betight. 
He  is  so  meeke,  wise  and  merciable, 
And  with  his  word  his  work  is  convenable. 
Colin  Clout  1  weene  be  his  selfe  boy, 
(Ah  for  Colin  he  whilome  my  ioy) 
Shepherds  sich,  God  mought  us  many  send, 
That  doen  so  carefully  their  flocks  tend. 

(Vol.  II.,  p.  215.) 

On  this  Edward  Kirke,  in  his  "  Glosse,"  annotates  on 
'Roffin' — "  Rofify,  the  name  of  a  shepherd  in  Marot 
his  Aeglogue  of  Robin  and  the  King,  Whom  he  here 
commendcth  for  great  care  and  wise  governance  of  his 
flocke."  This  does  not  enlighten  us  as  to  who  "  Roffin" 
was.  In  limine,  I  note  that  "  Roffin"  is  not  the  same 
as  "  Roffy,"  so  that  E.  K.'s  "  glosse"  reference  to  Marot 
is  beside  the  mark.  I  observe  next  that  plainly  in 
this  instance  "  Roffin"  represents  an  actual  "pastor"  in 
England  as  over-against  the  unworthy  "prelates"  sar- 
castically portrayed  by  Diggon  in  the  earlier  portion  of 
the  Eclogue.  This  being  so,  I  take  "  Roffin"  in  its  direct 


AV  THE  SOUTH—HOW  OCCUPIED.  63 

sense  as  the  usual  abridged -form  for  the  Bishop  of 
RocJicstcr.  And  when  we  inquire,  we  discover  that 
the  Bishop  of  Rochester — newly  appointed  at  this  very 
time  (1577-8) — was  John  Youngs,  D.D.,  Master  of 
Pembroke  Hall  while  Spenser  was  of  the  College, 
and  the  certain  friend  of  Gabriel  Harvey.  So  that 
coinciding  as  does  the  date  of  the  Poet's  return  South 
with  this  appointment  of  Dr.  Young  to  the  see  of 
Rochester,  I  understand  by  "  Hobbinol's "  (Harvey's) 
words,  "  Colin  Clout,  I  weene  be  his  selfe  boy,"  that 
the  past  Master  of  his  College  continued  his  friendship 
toward  Spenser,  and  in  some  temporary  way  utilized 
his  services. 

By  the  records  of  the  Diocese,  it  must  be  added — 
that  reflecting  the  language  of  the  September  eclogue, 
the  good  Bishop  (Young)  must  have  been  '  worried ' 
by  his  chancellor.  In  1578  he  was  Hugh  Lloyd 
(who  became  a  prebendary  of  St.  Paul's  in  1584). 
This  name  Lloyd  might  well  be  nicknamed  '  Lowder'  ; 
and  '  Lowder'  was  then,  as  to-day,  a  common  name 
for  a  shepherd's  dog  in  the  Pendle  district.  Bishop 
Young  held  two  parishes  (benefices),  and  two  prebends 
in  commcndam  with  his  See.  Envious  persons  caused 
him  much  trouble  by  their  complaints  to  Queen 
Klizabeth's  ministers  of  State  respecting  his  (alleged) 
niggardly  administration  of  their  cures.  Such  persons, 
desiring  to  rob  ('  deprive')  him  of  one  or  both  of  these 
flocks  of  which  he  v/as  pastor  or  shepherd  in  com- 
mendam,  might  possibly  be  denounced  as  "  wolves." 
It  seems  pretty  certain  that  the  chancellor  Lloyd  (the 
strongly  distinctive  'd'  being  a  convenient  handle)  had 
made  himself  obnoxious  to  his  bishop  by  taking  sides 


64  IN  THE  SOUTH— HOW  OCCUPIED. 

with  the 'wolves'  or  complainants.      The  reference  is 
too  realistic  not  to  have  had  a  basis  of  fact* 

In  the  Letter-Book  of  Gabriel  Harvey  nearly  all  his 
Letters  are  addressed  to  Dr.  Young,  and  it  is  thereby- 
shown  how  warm-heartedly  and  with  what  strenuous 
personal  interest  the  ex-Master  took  the  part  of  Harvey 
under  the  insulting-  wrong  of  the  denial  of  his  grace 
for  his  M.A.  Only  to  one  known  by  the  Writer  to 
be  generously  favourable  to  him  could  any  man  have 
adventured  such  enormous  and  eke  to  say  preposterous 
Letters — the  first  filling  twenty  closely-printed  quarto 
pages  !  Nor  did  the  '  Master  '  on  his  departure  cease 
to  advocate  his  protege's  cause.  On  the  contrary,  he 
commended  it  to  and  secured  the  support  of  his  suc- 
cessor— Dr.  William  Fulke  (p.  "^^^  Letter-Book).  So 
that  there  were  ties  all  round  by  which  to  attract 
Spenser  to  the  new  Bishop  of  Rochester  and  to  attract 
the  new  Bishop  of  Rochester  to  Spenser.  Most  cha- 
racteristic of  the  'newe  poet'  is  this  aside-opportunity 
created  for  paying  homage  to  a  genuine  bishop,  meet 
follower  of  Him, 

The  first  true  Gentleman  that  ever  breathed.     (Dekker.) 

It  is  surely  extremely  interesting  thus  to  find  Spenser 

*  I  am  indebted  to  Canon  W.  A.  Scott-Robertson,  per  Canon 
Burrows  of  Rochester,  for  above  curiously  confirmatory  informa- 
tion. A  few  days  ago,  at  Hurstwood,  a  "shepherd's  dog  having 
come  into  the  parlour  of  'Spenser's  hoiise'  there,  whilst  1  was 
seated  at  the  table  by  the  poet's  wide  fireside,  I  asked  its  name. 
It  was  'Snap'  ;  but  on  asking  the  fine  old  'body,'  who  is  the 
present  tenant,  the  common  names  of  such  dogs,  she  enumerated 
several,  and  one  of  these  was  '  Lowder.'  She  and  her  'forbears' 
back  to  great-grandfathers  have  been  resident  in  Hurstwood. 
It  is  satisfying  everywhere  to  find  how  close  to  his  scenes  and 
circumstances  is  Spenser's  use  of  things,  names,  etc.,  etc. 


IX  THE  SOUTH— HOW  OCCUPIED.  65 

the  honoured  and  honouring  guest — and  something 
more — of  so  eminent,  so  learned,  so  good  a  man  as 
the  Puritan-bishop  of  Rochester.*  Nota  bene — I  have 
somewhere  seen  the  line  in  April  Eclogue — "  Colin 
thou  kenst,  the  Southerne  Shepheard's  boy,"  and  related 
Glossc,  connected  with  the  preceding  tribute  to  "  Roffin," 
and  hence  Roffin  made  out  to  be  Sir  Philip  Sidney. 
But  it  is  very  manifest  that  the  description  of  the 
"  shepheard  "  in  "  September"  is  of  a  "  pastor,"  and  has 
nothing  answerable  in  Sidney. 

Our  lights  are  again  far-off  and  dim,  but  if  the 
"  forsaking"  of  North-East  Lancashire — "  the  North 
partes" — took  place,  as  is  probable,  in  1577,  the  visit 
to  "  Roffin"  must  have  been  in  the  same  year.  Pro- 
bably it  was  a  visit  rather  than  a  prolonged  '  stay.' 
Indeed,  a  Fact  which  I  am  about  to  introduce  makes  it 
plain  that  he  must  have  been  in  London  and  introduced 
to  the  Sidneys  in  1577.  The  fact  is  this — that  in  his 
Veitc  of  Ireland  he  distinctly  tells  us  that  he  himself 
was  witness  of  a  famous  (or  infamous)  historical  incident 
in  Ireland.      Here  is  the  narrative  : — 

"The  Gaules  used  to  drincke  their  enymyes  blood,  and  to 
paynte  themselves  therewith  ;  soe  alsoe  they  wright,  that  the 
ould  Irish  were  wonte,  and  soe  have  I  senc  some  of  the  Irish 
doe,  but  not  their  enymes  but  frendes  bloode.  As  namely  at  the 
execution  of  a  notable  traytor  at  Lymbricke  [Limerick],  called 
Murrough  Obrien,  I  .s.\w  an  ould  woman,  which  was  his  foster 
mother,  tooke  up  his  heade,  whilst  he  was  quartered,  and  sucked 
up  all  the  blood  running  thereout,  saying  that  the  earth  was  not 
worthy  to  drincke  it,  and  therewith  also  steeped  her  face  and 

•  For  a  full  memoir  of  Dr.  John  Young,  see  Athence  Canta- 
brigicnscs,  vol.  ii.,  p.  405.  He  was  elected  Master  of  Pembroke 
Hall  on  i2th  July,  1567,  resigned  in  1578,  having  been  in  1577 
made  Bishop  of  Rochester.  He  died  at  Bromley  lotli  April, 
1605. 

I.  5 


66  IN  THE  SOUTH— HOW  OCCUPIED. 

brest,  and  tare  her  heare,  crying  and  shriking  out  most  terribly" 
(Vol.  IX.,  p.  loi). 

Now  this  "  execution "  took  place  at  the  close  of 
I  577,  as  is  thus  proved.  Sir  William  Drury,  President 
of  Munster,  writing  to  Leicester  on  8th  July,  1577, 
states  : — 

"  The  first  daj'  of  this  month  I  adjourned  the  Sessions  for  this 
county  of  Limerick  until  a  new  warning,  and  caused  one  Murrough 
O'Brj-an,  a  second  pillar  of  James  Fitz  Moruch's  late  rebellion, 
and  a  practiser  of  this  new  combination,  a  man  of  no  lesse  fame 
than  James  himself,  being  orderly  indicted,  arraigned,  condemned, 
and  judged  for  late  offences  within  these  four  months  (because  I 
would  not  seem  to  unrip  old  matters)  to  be  there  executed  .  .  .  ." 
{Carew  Papers,  vol.  ii.,  p.  104). 

How  is  Spenser's  presence  to  be  explained  }  Phillips, 
s.n.,  in  his  Theatrum  Poetarinn  Anglicanoriim,  expressly 
states  that  through  Sir  Philip  Sidney — "  whose  noblest 
attribute,"  he  says,  "  consisted  in  his  being  the  common 
rendezvous  of  worth  in  his  time" — Spenser  procured 
the  appointment  of  secretary  to  his  father,  then  Lord- 
Deputy  in  Ireland.  On  the  first  blush  of  it,  it  looks 
as  though  Phillips  had  confused  the  later  secretaryship 
to  Lord  Grey  ;  but  it  is  certainly  singular  that  such 
earlier  appointment  dovetails  with  our  Poet's  personal 
references  to  persons  and  places  and  things  which  he 
himself  "saw"  years  prior  to  his  secretaryship  under 
Lord  Grey. 

This  first  Irish  residence  and  office — assuming  the 
witness  of  the  beheading  of"  Murrough  O'Brien"  to  have 
come  about  by  his  official  position — must  have  been 
brief.  Sir  Henry  Sidney — spite  of  his  splendid  and 
impartial  governing  of  Ireland — was,  like  Lord  Grey, 
recalled.       He  returned  to  England  in  1578;  and  in 


/lARVEV'S  LETTERS   TO   SPE.VSER.  67 

1579  Spenser  is  found   at   Leicester  House  {u'.   under 
the  roof  of  Sidney's  brother-in-law^. 

And  now  havinjj  reached  1578-9  (especially  1579), 
our  materials, — and  most  of  them  virgin  to  the 
Biography  of  Spenser, — for  illustration  of  this  period, 
are  ample.  I  shall  by-and-by  examine  critically  the 
'  friendship'  between  Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  Spenser. 
Here  and  now  I  have  to  present  a  succession  of  per- 
sonal glimpses  of  Spenser.  There  is  his  letter  of 
"5th  October,  1579,"  from  "  Leycester  House,"  ad- 
dressed "  To  the  WorshipfuU  his  very  singular  good 
friend,  Maister  G[  ibriel]  H[arvey]."  It  is  reproduced 
///  extenso  with  his  prose  (Vol.  IX.,  pp.  261-71).  Thither 
I  refer  the  Reader.  In  common  with  all  their  corre- 
spondence it  testifies  to  the  warmth  of  regard  cherished 
by  the  Poet  toward  his  "  Hobbinoll."  It  further  reveals 
how  much  the  "  newe  Poet"  relied  on  his  friend's  counsel, 
and  how  much  we  owe  to  that  friend's  persuasive 
influence.  It  is  soon  made  clear  that  Harvey  had 
been  urging  "Colin"  to  publish  his  poetry.  The 
modest  reply  was — "  I  was  minded  for  a  while  to  have 
intermitted  the  uttering  of  my  writings ;  leaste  by 
overmuch  cloying  their  noble  eares,  I  should  gather 
a  contempt  of  myself,  or  else  seeme  rather  for  gaine 
and  commoditic  to  doe  it,  for  some  sweetnes.se  that  I 
have  already  tasted."  I  gather  from  the  next  "doubt" 
that  the  centre  of  interest  of  the  SlicplienVs  Calendar 
being  "Rosalinde,"  was  another  "let"  (in  antique  phrasej. 
"  Then  also,  meseemeth,  the  work  too  base  for  his 
excellent  Lordship,  being  made  in  honour  of  a  private 
Personage  nnknoione,  which  of  some  yll-willers  might 
be  upbraided  not  to  be  so  worthie,  as  yon  knowe  she  is, 


68  HARVEY'S  LETTERS  TO   SPENSER. 

or  the  matter  not  so  weightie,  that  it  should  be  offred 
to  so  wcightic  a  I'ersonagc."  "  Lordship"  may  have 
been  applied  to  Sidney,  to  whom  the  ShcphenVs 
Calendar  was  dedicated  ;  but  it  may  also  have  meant 
Leicester,  as  having  been  originally  intended  to  receive 
the  dedication. 

One  sentence  is  somewhat  enigmatical — "  Your 
desire  to  hcare  of  my  late  being  with  her  Majestic 
muste  d}e  in  it  selfe."  This  at  least  informs  us  that 
Spenser  had  been  introduced  to  Elizabeth  long  before 
Sir  Walter  Ralegh  took  him  to  Court.  Literary  gossip 
that  follows  is  pleasant  reading.  Hardly  so  much 
so  that  (;n  Harvey  and  Sidney's  craze  of  "  Englishe 
Versifying  " — fully  illustrated  in  Harvey's  extraordinary 
letters  to  Spenser  as  "  Immerito."  *  Peculiarly  notice- 
able is  his  classing  ot  "  Maister  Preston,"  author  of  that 
Canibysis  that  gave  a  quip  to  Shakespeare  "of  Cambyses 
vein"  {llcnry  / 1\,  II.  iv.,  1.  425)  and  *' Maister  Still," 
author  of  GaiiiDicv  Gnrtoiis  Needle,  as  "  verie  entire 
friendes."  Perhaps  the  less  said  the  better  on  his 
lanibieinn  'rrivietrum.  Nothing  but  Thomas  Nashe's 
profound  reverence  for  Spenser  saved  this  "  Unhappie 
Verse  "  from  his  castigation.  15ut  nriost  important  of  all 
he  announces  that  he  was  about  to  travel  for  "  my  lord  " 
(Leicester)  ;  and  for  the  first  time  his  verse-letter  "  Ad 
oinatissimum  verum,  multis  jam  diu  nominibus  claris- 
simuni  G.  H,  Immerito  sui,  mox  in  Gallias  navigaturi 
i-vivy^Qiv  "  must  here  be  made  to  "  speak  English  " — 
done  by  the  "  sweet  Singer  "  of  Wood  Notes  and  CJ{ureh 
Bells,    the     Rev.    Richard    Wilton,    M.A.,   of   Londes- 

*  See  Gabriel  llaiTcy's  Works  in  HUTII  LlUKARY,  where  the 
entire  correspondence  appears. 


HARVEY'S  LETTERS  TO  SPEiVSER.  69 

borough  Rectory.  It  is  too  long  for  giving  here  ;  but 
the  true  Spenserian  student  will  not  fail  to  turn  to  it 
in  its  place* 

Harvey  in  acknowledging  this  Letter  bluntly  told 
Spenser  that  he  did  not  credit  his  announced  "jour- 
neying," and  whilst  the  interval  between  his  next 
appearance  makes  it  not  actually  impossible  that  he 
might  at  least  have  crossed  the  Channel,  it  would  rather 
seem  that  the  intended  "  travel  "  was  somehow  stayed. 
Very  amusing  is  "  Hobbinoll's  "  response,  as  thus  : — 

"  As  for  your  speedy  and  hasty  travail,  methinks  I  dare  still 
wag'er  al  the  Books  and  writings  in  my  study,  which  you  know  I 
esteeme  of  greater  value  than  al  the  golde  and  silver  in  my  purse 
or  chest,  that  you  wil  not  (and  yet  I  muste  take  heede  how  I 
make  my  bargaine  with  so  subtile  and  intricate  a  Sophister)  that 

•  See  Appendix  E,  after  the  Essays,  in  this  volume.  With 
reference  to  this  very  felicitous  translation,  it  may  be  as  well  to 
note  here  certain  errors  in  all  the  texts  of  the  original  Latin — all 
of  which  have  been  attended  to  by  the  Translator. 

1.  176.  '  Diffessa'  should  be  '  diffissa.' 

1.  193.  Put  full-stop  after  '  idem.' 

1.  204.  After  'nummos'  place  ,  instead  of  . 

1.  213.  After  '  plena'  place  .  for  ,     '  Quod  '  should  be  '  quos.' 

1.  220.  '  Ipsa'  should  be  '  ipse.' 

1.  225.  For  '  quod  '  read  '  quos.' 

1.  231.  For  .  after  'aurum  '  place  , 

1.  232.  For  'ablatum'  read  'oblatum.' 

1.  239.  '  Altra  '  =  altera — final  '  a  '  elided  before  *  E  '  in  ne.\t 
line — hence  printed  '  alter'a.' 

1.  244.  '  iEquivalia  '  should  be  '  aequalia.' 

1.  249.  For  ,  after  '  turpem  '  place  : 

1.250.  'Quaisitum  '  should  be 'quxsitam.'  '  Invenerimus' — a 
false  quantity,  c  being  short,  whereas  the  position 
requires  it  to  be  long. 

I.  254.  For  '  qui'  read  'cui' — agreeing  with  'quaerenti.' 

1.  257.  '  Non  nimis,'  etc. — query  corrupt  ? 

!.  261.  'Clivosas'  misprinted  'Clibosas.' 

Collier,  Dr.  Morris  and  all  of  us  have  left  these  hitherto  un- 
corrected. 


70  HARVEY'S  LETTERS   TO   SPENSER. 

you  shall  not,  1  sayc,  bee  gone  over  sea  tor  all  your  saying,  neither 
the  nexte,  nor  the  nexte  weeke.  And  then  peradventure  I  may 
personally  performe  your  request,  and  bestowe  the  sweetest  Fare- 
well upon  your  sweet-mouthed  Ma'shippe." 

Most  characteristic,  too,  was  Harvey's  "Reply"  to 
Spenser's  letter  of  5th,  on  23rd  October,  1579.  It 
shows  us  the  "double  double  toil  and  trouble"  of  the 
Harvey-Sidney  "English  Versifying,"  and  throughout 
luniinous  points  interpretative  of  Spenser's  position, 
and  others.  This  is  taken  from  the  "  Two  other  very 
commendable  Letters  of  the  same  Mens  Writing:  both 
teaching  the  foresaid  Artificial!  Versifying,  and  certain 
other  Particulars— more  lately  deliuered  unto  the 
Printers"  (1580).* 

A  second  Letter  of  Spenser  to  Harvey  (Vol.  IX,, 
pp.  271-5),  of  14th  April.  1580,  is  still  full  of  the 
"Hexameter"  foil}',  but  bewrays  Spenser's  sense 
of  its  grcjtesqueric,  and  ripjjles  of  humour.  Except 
N'ashe's  classic  words  on  "  Hexameter,"  nothing  could 
be  rarer  than  this  : — 

"  I  he  only  or  chiefest  hnrdnesse,  whych  seemeth,  is  in  the 
Aecenle  :  whyche  sometime  gapeth,  and  as  it  were  yawneth 
ilfavouredly,  comming  shorte  of  that  it  should,  and  sometime 
exceeding   the  measure   of  the   Number,  as  in    Cm-penter,  the 

*  In  a  sense  the  "  Hnglisli  Versifying"  or  Hexameter  and 
classical  quantities  for  heroic  and  other  Knglish  verse,  marks 
a  chapter  in  the  story  of  our  Literature.  An  experiment,  strenu- 
ously persisted  in  not  by  the  "  learned  h'ool  "  Jlarvey  merely,  but 
by  Sidney  and  Dyer,  could  not  be  othci^wise  than  potential.  But 
it  seems  to  me,  lit  supra,  (i)  that  Spenser  only  played  with  it, 
(2)  that  he  never  would  have  perfected  the  Hexameter  verse. 
More  execrable  "  stuff"  than  his  specimens  is  scarcely  conceiv- 
able. I  do  not  therefore  make  space  for  any  critical  notice  of  the 
"  luiglisli  V'ersitying"  mal-interlude.  I  refer  the  Reader  to  the 
complete  letters  in  the  collection  of  Harvey's  works  in  the  HUTH 
LiiiRARY,  as  before. 


HARTEV'S  LETTERS  TO   SPENSER.  71 

middle  billable  being  used  shortc  in  speache,  when  it  shall  be 
read  long  in  \'erse,  secmeth  ii7:c  a  lame  Gosling  f/ial  drazvcfh 
one  legge  after  her :  and  Heaven  being  used  shorte  as  one 
sillable,  when  it  is  in  verse  stretched  out  with  a  Diastole,  is  like 
a  lame  dogge  that  holdes  up  one  legged 

He  sovranly  adds — 

"  But  it  is  to  be  wonne  with  Custome,  and  rough  words  must 
be  subdued  with  Use.  For,  why  a  God's  name,  may  not  we,  or 
else  the  Greekes,  have  the  kingdome  of  our  owne  Language,  and 
measure  our  Accentes  by  the  sounde,  reserving  the  Quantitie  to 
the  Verse  ? " 

In  this  Letter  he  announces  his  EpitJialainiuni 
T/iamcsis,  and  that  his  Dreames  and  Dying  Pellicane 
were  "  fully  finished,"  and  that  he  was  "  forthwith  "  to 
be  "  in  hande "  with  his  Faerie  Queene.  He  has  like 
delectable  "  news  "  of  his  Dreames  to  come  forth  with 
a  "  Glosse  " — "  running  continually  in  maner  of  a 
Paraphrase,  full  as  great  "  as  on  the  Calendar  bj-  the 
same  E.  K.,  and  so  of  his  Stenimaia  Dudleiana.  In 
Harvey's  "Rcpl)'"  again  it  emerges  that  Spenser's  Nine 
Comedies  were  also  "  ready." 

In  the  interval  between  these  two  Letters  the 
Shepherd's  Calendar  was  "  at  press  "  ;  for  we  find  it 
"entered  "  at  Stationers'  Hall  on  5th  December,  1579 
(Vol.  II.,  p.  6). 

But  1579-80  brings  Spenser  before  us  at  a  new  and 

unexpected  task — to  wit,  semi-surreptitiously    printing 

certain  MSS.  of  Gabriell   Harvey  that  had  come  into 

his  possession.      Here  is  the  semi-title,  semi-dedication 

of  the  volume  : — 

To  the  right  worshipful!  gentleman 

And  famous  courtier 

Master  Edwarde  Diar, 

In  a  manner  oure  onlye  Inglishe  poett. 

In  honour  of  his  rare  qualityes 

And  noble  vertues, 


;2  HARVEY'S  LETTERS  TO   SPENSER. 

Benevolu 

Commendith  the 

Edition  of  his  frendes 

Verlayes,  together  with  certayne  other 

Of  his  poetical!  devises  ; 

And,  in  steade  of  a  Dedicatorye  Epistle, 

Presenteth  himself,  and  the  uttennost 

Of  his  habilitye  and  value, 

To  his  good  worshippes 

Curtuous  and  favorable  likinge, 

This  first  of  August,  1580. 

I  2, 

The  Verlayes.  The  Millers  Letter. 

3-  4- 

The  Dialogue.  My  Epistle  to  Imerito. 

The  Verla5'es  ; 
My  Letter  to  Benevolo  ; 
The  SchoUers  Loove  ; 
The  Millers  Letter ; 
The  I^ialogue.     (p.  89.) 

From  a  serio-c'omic  Letter  to  "  Benevolo "  (that  and 
"  Immerito  "  being  the  "new  Poet's"  names  in  this 
Correspondence),  sent  by  Harvey  on  receiving  a  copy 
of  the  book,  it  most  certainly  was  'printed.'  But  every 
copy  seems  to  have  irrecoverably  perished.  No  Biblio- 
grapher has  ever  set  eye  on  a  solitary  exemplar.  There 
might  have  been  weightier  losses  to  our  national  litera- 
ture, even  had  more  of  the  same  Writer's  productions 
gone  the  same  road  ;  but  the  new  fact  is  noteworth)-. 
And  now  ]M-esenting,  as  the  Letter  and  related  papers 
do,  lulmund  Spenser  at  full  length,  bearded  and  mous- 
tachcd  and  c[uite  "  a  courtier,"  I  am  advantaged  over 
my  predecessors  again  in  being  able  to  reproduce  these. 
They  are  taken  from  the  Camden  Society  Lettei'-Book 
of   Gabrici    Ilavvcy.      I   call  attention    to    certain   bio- 


HARVEY'S  LETTERS  TO   SPENSER.  u 

graphic  bits  by  italiciziiiij^.  In  themselves  these  papers 
are  pedantic  and  (in  a  way)  absurd,  yet  are  they 
acceptable  windows  through  which  to  behold  these 
two  celebrities  in  undress.  As  matter  of  course  the 
indignation  is  simulated,  and  the  offence  horseplay.* 

The  last  Letter  of  Harvey  is  of  rare  biographic  value, 
as  it  reveals  Spenser's  attitude  toward  the  "unintelligible 
world."  Self-evidently  he  was  not  at  ease  in  the 
"  great  times  of  Elizabeth,"  and  reverted  to  the  Golden 
Age  of  the  vanished  Past,  of  chivalry  and  romance. 
With  all  his  strength  he  had  this  weakness.  I  cannot 
withhold  one  passage  : — 

"As  many  and  as  fewe  salutations  as  you  liste.  Will  you 
beleeve  me  ?  Your  lastweekes  letter,  or  rather  bill  of  complaynte 
was  deliverid  me  at  myne  hostisses  by  the  fyersyde,  beinge  faste- 
heggid  in  rownde  abowte  on  every  side  with  a  company  of  honest 
good  fellowes,  and  at  that  tyme  reasnable  honeste  quatfers.  I 
first  runned  it  over  cursorilye  to  my  selfe,  and  spyinge  the  argu- 
ment so  generall  (savinge  in  on  pointe  onlye,  where  1  layed  a 
strawe),  and  withall  so  fittinge  the  humor  of  that  crewe,  after  a 
shorte  preface  to  make  attention,  began  to  pronounce  it  openly 
in  the  audience  of  the  whole  assemblye  in  sutch  sorte  as  the 
brave  orator  Aeschines  is  reportid  on  a  tyme  to  have  redd  owte 
with  a  wonderfull  greate  grace  (in  the  hearinge  of  f  Rodians, 
amongst  whome  he  then  soiornid,)  that  noble  oration  of  Demos- 
thenes in  defence  of  Ctesiphon. 

"  Shall  I  be  playne  with  you  ?  It  was  solemely  agreeid  uppon, 
that  the  letter  for  the  manner  of  the  enditinge  was  very  hanssomly 
penid  and  full  of  many  proper  conceiptes,  but  -f  argumentes 
whereuppon  y  libell  of  complaynte  studd,  were  definitively  con- 
demnid,  as  unsufBcient.  To  be  shorte,  ower  finall  resolution  was, 
that  an  answer  should  incontinentlye  be  contrived  amongst  us  all, 
savinge  that  on  was  to  be  dispensid  withall,  to  playe  the  secre- 
tarye.  The  matter  most  specially  concerninge  me,  1  toulde  them 
I  was  contente  to  beare  twoe  partes,  and  to  playe  bothe  a  quarter 
answerer  and  whole  secretar)'e.  My  service  being  accepted  of, 
>'*  first  began,  as  followith  : — 

"  Sir,  yower  newe  complaynte  of  y  newe  worlde  is  nye  as  owlde 

•  See  Appendix  F  for  these  Letters  of  Harvey. 


74  HARVEY'S  LETTERS   TO   SPENSER. 

as  Adam  and  Fa'c,  and  full  as  stale  as  y'  stalist  fasshion  that  hath 
bene  in  fasshion  since  Noes  fludd.  You  crie  owte  of  a  false  and 
trecherous  worlde,  and  therein  ar  passinge  eloquent  and  patheti- 
call  in  a  degree  above  the  highest.  Nowe  1  beseeche  you,  Syr, 
did  not  Abell  live  in  a  false  and  trecherous  worlde,  that  was  so 
villanouslye  and  cruelly  murtherid  of  his  owne  very  brother  ?  Na, 
did  not  ould  Grandsier  hiniselfe  live  in  a  false  and  trecherous 
worlde,  that  was  so  suttellye  and  fraudulentlye  putt  beside  so 
incomparablely    ritche    and    goodlye   possession     as     Paradise 


Again  : — 

"  You  make  a  wonderfull  greate  matter  of  it,  that  reason,  con- 
traryt!  to  all  reason  and  y  custom  of  former  ages  is  forcibely 
constraynid  to  yeelde  her  obedience,  and  to  be  in  a  manner  vassal 
unto  appetite.  See,  I  beseech  you,  howe  you  overshoote  your- 
selfe  and  mistake  the  matter,  in  beinge  over  credulous  to  beleeve 
whatsoever  is  unadvisedly  committid  to  writinge.  Here  is  righte 
a  newe  comedye  for  him  that  were  delightid  with  overthwarte  and 
contrary  Supposes.  You  suppose  the  first  age  was  the  goulde 
age.  It  is  nothinge  soe.  Bodin  defendith  the  g'oulde  age  to 
Hourishe  nowe,  and  owr  first  grandfathers  to  have  rubbid 
thorovvghe  in  the  iron  and  brasen  age  at  the  beginninge  when 
all  thingcs  were  rude  and  unperfitt  in  comparison  of  the  exquisite 
finesse  and  dclicacye,  that  we  ar  growen  unto  at  these  dayes. 
You  suppose  it  a  foolish  madd  worlde,  wherein  all  thinges  ar 
overrulid  by  fansye.  What  greater  error  ?  All  thinges  else  ar 
but  troble  of  minde  and  ve.xation  of  spiritt.  Untill  a  mans  fansye 
be  satisfied,  he  wantith  his  most  soveraigne  contentement,  and 
cannot  never  be  at  quiet  in  himselfe.  You  suppose  most  of  these 
bodily  and  sensual  pleasures  ar  to  be  abandonid  as  unlawfuU  and 
the  inwarde  contemplative  delightes  of  the  minde  more  zelously 
to  be  imbracid  as  most  commendable.  Good  Lord,  you  a  gentle- 
man, a  courtier,  an  yuthe,  and  go  aboute  to  revive  so  owlde  and 
stale  a  bookishe  opinion,  deade  and  buried  many  hundrid  yeares 
before  you  or  I  knewe  whether  there  were  any  worlde  or  noe  ! 
You  are  suer  (he  scMisible  and  ticklinge  pleasures  of  the  tastinge, 
feelinge,  smellinge,  seinge,  and  hcaringe  ar  very  recreative  and 
delectable  indeede.  Your  other  delightes  proceedinge  of  sum 
strange  mellancholy  conceites  and  speculative  imaginations  dis- 
coursid  at  large  in  your  fansye  and  brayne  ar  but  imaginarj'e 
and  fantasticall  delightes,  and  but  for  names  sake  might  as  well 
and  more  trulye  be  callid  the  extremist  labours  and  miserabeliste 
torments  under  the  sunne.  You  suppose  us  students  happye, 
and  thinke  the  aire  piccferrid  that  breathithe  on  thes  same  greate 


^ 


nARVEV'S  LETTERS   TO   SPENSER.  75 

lemid  philosophers  and  profondc  clarkcs.  Would  to  God  you 
were  on  of  there  men  but  a  sennii^-htc.  I  dowbte  not  but  you 
would  sweare  ere  Sundaye  nexte,  that  there  were  not  the  like 
wofuU  and  miserable  ereaturs  to  be  fownde  within  y''  cumpas  of 
the  whole  worlde  agayne.  None  so  injurious  to  themselves,  so 
tyranous  to  there  serwantes,  so  nigj^^ardlye  to  ther  kinsfolkes,  soe 
rigorrous  to  ther  acquayntance,  soe  unprofitable  to  all,  so  unto- 
warde  for  the  common  welthe,  and  so  unfitt  for  the  worlde,  meere 
bookeworms  and  verye  idolles,  the  most  intolerable  creatures 
to  cum  in  any  good  sociable  cumpanye  that  ever  God  creatid. 
I.ooke  them  in  the  face  :  you  will  straytewayes  affirme  they  are 
the  dr)'est,  leanist,  ill-favoriddist,  abicctist,  base-minddist  carrions 
and  wrelciieckes  that  ever  you  sett  your  eie  on.  To  be  shorte, 
and  to  kutt  otT  a  number  of  sutch  bye  supposes,  your  greatist  and 
most  crronious  suppose  is  that  Reason  should  be  mistrisse  and 
Appetite  attend  on  her  ladiships  person  as  a  pore  servante  and 
handniayden  of  hers.  Nowe  that  had  bene  a  probable  defence 
and  plausible  speache  a  thousande  yeares  since.  There  is  a 
variable  course  and  revolution  of  all  thinges.  Summer  gettith 
the  upperhande  of  wynter,  and  wynter  agayne  of  summer.  Nature 
herselfe  is  changeable,  and  most  of  all  delightid  with  vanitye  ; 
and  arte,  after  a  sorte  her  ape,  conformith  herselfe  to  the  like 
mutabilitye.  The  moone  waxith  and  wanithe  ;  the  sea  ebbith 
and  tlowith  ;  and  as  flowers  so  ceremonyes,  lavves,  fasshions, 
customs,  trades  of  livinge,  sciences,  devises,  and  all  things  else 
in  a  manner  floorishe  there  tyme  and  then  fade  to  nothinge. 
Nothing  to  speake  of  ether  so  restorative  and  comfortable  for 
delighte  or  beneficiall  and  profitable  for  use,  but  beinge  longe 
togither  enioyed  and  continued  at  laste  ingenderith  a  certayne 
satietj'e,  and  then  it  soone  becumcth  odious  and  lothsum.  So  it 
standith  with  mens  opinions  and  iudgmentes  in  matters  of  doc- 
trine and  religion.  On  fortye  yeares  the  knowledge  in  the  tunges 
and  eloquence  karrieth  the  creddite  and  flauntith  it  owte  in  her 
sattin  dobletts  and  velvet  hoses.  Then  exspirith  the  date  of  her 
bravery,  and  everj-e  man  havinge  enoughe  of  her,  philosophy  and 
knowledge  in  divers  naturall  morall  matters,  must  give  her  the 
Camisade  and  beare  y'  swaye  an  other  while.  Every  man  seith 
what  she  can  doc.  At  last  cumith  bravcrye  and  iointith  them 
bothe. 

"  Anemographia.  Not  the  greatist  clarke  and  profondist  philo- 
sopher that  ever  was  in  the  worlde  can  tell  the  certayne  cawse  of 
the  windes  'f  What  can  they  be  but  huge  legions  and  millions  of 
in'isible  tumultuous  and  tempestuous  spirittes  ?  What  cause 
can  there  be  in  the  erthe  of  such  blowinge  and  blusteringe  in 
everye  place,  be  the  qualityes  and  dispositions  otherwise  never 


76  HARVEY^ S  LETTERS  TO   SPENSER. 

so  repugnant  and  contrarye  ?    What  matter  so  everlastinge  and 

"""-^Me^lancholye  sprites  ingender  melancholye  passions  in  men 
affections  colerick  coleri?ke  passions,  etc.  Mens  bodyes  ar 
dSosed  and  qualified  accordi^nge  to  the  -f}\^fj^^'^^^^:, 
predominant  regiment  over  them,  '"^"d  all  phi  osophyesaith  that 
(he  temperature  and  disposition  [and]  '.f  ^^^^^lon  of  the  mmdes 
followythe  the  temperature  and  composition  of  the  bodye. 

Having  thus,  at  length,  utilized  materials  unknown 
to  or  inexplicably  neglected  by  previous  Biographers 
of  Spenser,  compunctious  visitings  of  conscience  that, 
whether  from  my  wicked  relish  of  that  free  lance 
Thomas  Nashe,  or  from  direct  prejudice,  I  am  haroly 
one  to  do  justice  to  Gabriel  Harvey,  prompt  me  to 
compound  my  contempt  for  him  by  counselhng  the 
Reader  to  turn  to  Dean  Church's  well-balanced  estimate 
and  verdict  on  the  man  and  his  "  Hexameter  "  heresy 
(pp  1 8—2  1).  Who  will  have  more— and  still  more 
favourable— let  him  turn  to  Professor  Henry  Morley's 
chivalrous  vindication  entitled  "  Hobbmol,"  ^in  the 
Fortnightly  Review  (vol.  v.,  1869,  pp.  274-83.) 

*  Whilst  appreciating  my  good  friend's  ;;.././  ^J^^^ acquiescing 
in  a  good  deal  of  his  statement  and  argument,  I  J"^J^«^"f^^^ 
protest  against  his  minimizing  of  Harvey  s  almost  insane 
vanity  in  publishing  sonnets  and  verse-tributes  that  he  had 
received. 


EARLY  AND  ''LOST"   POEMS. 


VII.  Early  and  "Losr"  Poems,  and  Publication 

OF    THE    "SHEPHEARD'S    CALENDAR."       1579- 

"  The  friends,  Kiike  and  Hamey,  were  not  wrong  in  their  estimate  of  the 
importance  of  Spenser's  work.  The  '  new  poet,'  as  he  came  to  be  cus- 
tomarily called,  had  really  made  one  of  those  distinct  steps  in  his  art, 
which  answer  to  discoveries  and  inventions  in  other  spheres  of  human 
interest — steps  which  make  all  behind  them  seem  obsolete  and  mistaken. 
There  was  much  in  the  new  poetry  which  zvas  immature  and  imperfect, 
not  a  little  that  was  fantastic  and  affected.  But  it  was  the  first  adequate 
effort  of  reviving  English  poetry"  (/>.  39).  .  .  .  "Spenser's  force,  and 
sustained  poetical  power,  and  singularly  musical  ear,  are  conspicuous 
in  this  first  essay  of  his  genius.  In  the  poets  before  him  of  this  century, 
fragments  and  stanzas,  and  perhaps  single  pieces,  might  be  found 
ivhich  might  be  compared  with  his  work.  .  .  .  But  in  the  '  Shepherd's 
Calendar '  ive  have  for  the  first  time  in  the  century,  the  swing,  the  com- 
mand, the  varied  resources  of  the  real  poet,  who  is  not  driven  by  failing 
language  or  thought  into  frigid  or  tumid  absurdities.  Spenser  is 
master  over  himself  and  his  instrument,  even  ivhen  he  uses  it  in  a  way 
which  offends  our  taste.  There  are  passages  in  the  '  Shepherd's  Calendar' 
of  poetical  eloquence,  of  refined  vigour,  and  of  musical  and  imaginative 
sweetness,  such  as  the  English  language  had  never  attained  to  since  the 
days  of  him  who  was  to  the  age  of  Spenser  what  Shakespeare  and 
Milton  are  to  ours,  the  pattern  and  fount  of  poetry,  Chaucer.  Dryden 
is  not  afraid  to  class  Spenser  with  Theocritus  and  Virgil,  and  to  write 
titat  the  '  Shepherd's  Calendar  '  is  not  to  be  matched  in  any  language. 
And  this  was  at  once  recognized"  (/>.  46). — Dean  Church. 

When  Spenser  was  persuaded  by  "  Hobbinol  "  (as  wc 
have  seen  in  Chap.  VI,,  p.  6y)  to  publish  the  Sheplierd's 
Calendar,  it  was  as  a  selection  out  of  what  must  have 
been  a  considerable  amount  of  Verse  that  had  occupied 
him  while  at  the  University  and  in  his  "  shier  "  in  the 
"  North  partes."  So  that  before  dealinj^  with  the  epoch- 
markinjT  event  of  the  publication  of  the  Calendar,  it  is 
incumbent  upon  us  to  examine — so  far  as  we  may — 
this  earlier  and  in  part  contemporary  body  of  Poetry. 

I  take  first  those  that  we  fortunately  possess,  and 
which,  though  published  long  after  the  SJiepJierd's 
Calendar,  reveal  themselves  as  composed  (substantially) 


78  EA  RL  Y  .  i  XD   ' '  L  OSr '    POEAIS. 

long  before  its  publication.  I  say  '  substantially  ' 
because  in  revision  lines  here  and  there,  and  even  new 
sections,  must  have  been  worked  in  later. 

On  the  threshold  we  arc  met  by  the  T%uo  Hyinnes_ 
in  Honour  of  Love  and  Bcautic.  These  were  not  pub- 
lished until  I  591.  They  formed  one  moiety  of  the 
Foure  Hynincs.  But  in  the  epistle-dedicatory  of  these 
Foiire  Hynincs  to  the  "  Ladle  Margaret  Countesse 
of  Cumberland  and  the  Ladie  Marie  Countesse  of 
Warwicke,"  the  Poet  distinctly  assigns  the  two  of  Love 
and  Beauty  to  "  the  greener  times  "  of  his  "  youth  " — 
which  true  of  1576-7  would  be  positively  untrue  of 
1582  (thirtieth  year).  Then  the  celebration  of 
"Rosalind"  dates  it  equally  in  1576-7,  or  wliile  he 
was  in  his  Lancashire  home.  Nor  must  one  omit  to 
note  that  whilst  the  inspiration  of  his  love  has  given  to 
the  Two  Hyvines  a  higher  note  than  anything  in  the 
SliepJicnVs  Calendar,  and  whilst  the  workmanship  is 
more  finished,  there  is  nevertheless  callow  imitativeness. 
I  would  accentuate  the  last  observation.  These 
"Mymncs"  are  of  special  literary  interest,  echoing  as 
they  do  throughout,  with  the  young  Singers  recollec- 
tions, if  we  may  not  call  them  imitations,  of  his  "  dere 
maistcr,  Tityrus,"  id  est,  Chaucer.  The  Compleynt  to 
Pitc  must  have  been  carried  from  Cambridge  to  Hurst- 
wood  and  the  Pendle  district,  or  mayhap  was  found  in 
one  or  other  of  the  cultured  Spenser  households  there. 
The  "  Compleynt  "  is  "  of  Love,"  and  it  was  inevitable 
that  one  who  sought  to  write  a  "Hymne  of  Love" 
should  turn  to  or  return  on  so  perfect,  so  melodious 
verse.  Like  Chaucer's,  the  metre  of  the  new"Hymnes" 
is  rhyme-royal.     It  may  be  suggestive  to  the  Reader  to 


EARLY  AND   '^  LOST"    POEMS.  79 

note  certain  distinct  things  reflective  of  the  elder  poet 
in  both  the  "  Hymnes  "  now  before  us  :  c.^.,  "  J^eautie  " 

G-  257)— 

Doe  seemo  like  twinckling  starres  in  frostie  night. 
So  in  the  "  Prologue  "  (1.  269) — 

His  eyghen  twinkled  in  his  hede  aright 
As  don  the  sterres  in  the  frostie  night. 

But  it  is  not  mere  verbal  resemblances  that  we  find. 
The  thought  and  emotion  run  in  the  same  channels. 
Love  is  addressed  as — 

Love,  that  long  since  hast  to  thy  mighty  po\vre 
Perforce  subdude  my  poore  captiued  hart, 

and  charged  accusingly  of  his  lady-love — 

Thou  hast  enfrosen  her  disdainefull  brest 
That  no  one  drop  of  pitie  there  doth  rest ; 

and  so  in  "  Beautie  "  again  of  her — 

whose  faire  immortall  beame 

Hath  darted  fy-re  into  my  feeble  ghost ; 

and  then  follows  this  appeal  to  Love  that  he  will  so 
influence  the  "  faire  ladye  " — 

that  she  at  length  will  streame 

Some  deaw  of  grace  into  my  withered  hart 
After  long  sorrow  and  consuming  smart. 

Once  more  at  close  of"  Beautie,"  similarly — 

.   .   .  she  whose  conquering  beautie  doth  captive 
My  trembling  hart  in  her  etemail  chaine. 
One  drop  of  grace  at  length  will  to  me  give, 
That  I  her  bounden  thrall  by  her  may  live  .  .  . 


Finally- 


Deigne  to  let  fall  one  drop  of  dew  reliefe 
That  may  recure  my  hart's  long  pyning  griefe. 


8o  EA  RLY  A  ND   ' '  Z  OST ' '    POEMS 

Place  beside  these,  others  from  the  Complcynt  to  Pite — 
Love,  that  for  my  troutli  doth  me  to  dye. 
I  fonde  hir  dede  and  buried  in  an  herte. 

Have  mercy  on  me,  thow  hevenes  Quene, 
That  you  haue  sought  so  tenderly  and  yore. 
Let  some  streme  of  lyght  on  me  be  sene, 
That  love  and  drede  you  ever  lenger  the  more 

Pite,  that  I  have  soght  so  long  agoo 
With  herte  soore,  and  ful  of  besy  peyne. 

A  still  more  obvious  imitation  is  this — 

And  yet  not  best,  for  to  be  lov'd  alone, 
For  Love  cannot  endure  a  Paragone. 

Cf.  Chaucer — 

But  cither  (algates)  would  be  Lord  alone, 
For  Love  and'  Lordship  bide  no  Paragone. 

It  were  easy  to  multiply  proofs  of  the  truth  of  Spenser's 
own  grateful  acknowledgment  in  Colin  Clout — 

The  shepheard's  boy  (best  knowen  by  that  name) 
.      That  after  Tityrus  first  sung  his  lay. 

=  in  imitation  of,  or  as  disciple  of  Chaucer,  much 
as  we  use  the  phrase  of  a  painter  "  after  Raphael." 
There  seems  little  doubt  that  these  Tivo  Hymncs  of 
Love  and  of  Beaiitie  were  among  the  earliest  of  the 
"  newe  poet's  "  verse-attempts,  though,  delayed  as  they 
were  in  publication,  they  were  doubtless  worked  on 
tenderly  by  him,  and  given  their  ultimate  perfected 
form  by  later  touches.  In  my  judgment,  even  more 
positively  and  unmistakably  than  in  the  Shepherd's 
Calendar  would  the  publication  of  these  "  Hymnes " 
have  proclaimed   the  advent   of  Chaucer's  lineal  heir. 


JtA RL  Y  AND   "  Z OST  ' '    POEMS.  8 1 

There  is  a  brilliance,  a  charm,  an  exquisiteness  of 
phrasing,  a  delicacy  and  daintiness  of  wording,  and  a 
per\'ading  melodiousness  in  them,  that  simply  render 
meagre  anything  of  their  kind  between  the  Compkynt 
to  Pitc  and  them.  I  attribute  no  little  of  this — as 
already  indicated — to  the  fusing  and  inspiring  force  of 
his  love  for  "  Rosalind."  Besides,  the  Tivo  Hy nines  were 
doubtless  written  in  large  measure  contemporarily  with 
much  of  the  Calendar.  Higher  moods,  not  later  date, 
explain  the  higher  quality  of  the  Tivo  Hymnes.  That 
the  allusions  in  these  "  Hymnes"  arc  to  "Rosalind"  I 
must  hold  to  be  self-demonstrated.  Very  different  are 
these  allusions  from  the  later  and  paler  in  Colin  Clout, 
They  throb  with  a  first  love's  passion. 

No  one  will  surely  be  so  uncritical  as  to  find  in  this 
writing  "  after  Tityrus "  ground  for  doubting  of  the 
reality  or  sincerity  of  his  love  and  despair  toward  his 
"  Rosalind."  In  my  thinking  the  very  imitativeness 
attests  the  depth  and  ardour  of  his  passion  and  of  his 
desire  to  celebrate  it  in  such  way  as  should  be  im- 
mortal. Love  is  by  the  necessities  of  it  inarticulate  at 
its  highest  as  at  its  deepest.  Emotion,  much  more  than 
Wordsworth's  "thoughts,"  often  and  often  "lies  too 
deep"  for  either  "tears  "  or  words.  It  is  declarative  of 
Lover's  resolve  to  be  at  his  best  while  he  strove  to 
utter  out  his  "  wooing,"  and  "  losing,"  that  he  spurred 
himself  to  lofty  achievement  by  mating  himself  with 
Dan  Chaucer.  I  suspect  these  "Hymnes"  were  of 
the  love-songs  that  his  "  Rosalind  "  spurned  or  at  least 
under\'alued.  Their  personal  element,  exactly  as  in 
the  SliepJiercTs  Calendar — and  which  delayed  its  publi- 
cation, as  noticed  before — doubtless  explains  the  long 

I.  6 


82  EARLY  A ND  ' '  L  OST' '   POEMS. 

delay  of  giving  these  immortal  "Hymnes"  to  the  world. 
Chronologically  they  should  follow  the  Sonnets  of  the 
TJieaire  of  John  Vander  Noodt.  I  think  Shakespeare's 
Sonnets  show  that  he  had  seen  and  read  and  admired 
these  Tivo  Hyvincs.  He  might  easily  have  done  so, 
for  as  the  Author  himself  tells  us,  "many  copies  thereof 
were  formerly  scattered  abroad."  The  student  of 
Spenser  will  be  also  rewarded  by  comparing  the 
"  Complaint  "  of  "  Erato "  (in  Tcarcs  of  tlic  Muses) 
with  the  "  Hymn  to  Love." 

We  shall  not,  probably,  err  if  we  rank  next  to  these 
Two  Hymnes,  and  at  only  a  short  interval,  Prosopopoia, 
or  Mother  Hubberd's  Talc  (heroic  couplets).  I  do  not 
think  it  can  be  placed  later  than  1578-9,  and  maybe 
in  1578,  if  Spenser  in  1577  was  in  the  service  of 
the  State  in  Ireland.  For,  judging  by  the  vehemence 
of  the  references  to  Burleigh — here  and  elsewhere  — 
it  would  appear  that  the  great  Secretary,  as  was  his 
mode,  opposed  young  Spenser  as  being  one  of  the 
"  forward  "  if  "  able  "  youths,  that  he  sought  to  "  keep 
down "  (his  conduct  toward  Bacon  the  most  con- 
spicuous example). 

It  is  to  be  noted,  chronologically,  that  in  the  epistle- 
dedicatory  of  Mother  Hubbcrd's  Tale  he  describes  it, 
very  much  as  he  did  the  7\uo  Hymnes,  as  "  a  simple 
present "  of  his  "  idle  labours  "  which  "  long  sithens 
composed  in  the  raw  conceipt  of  my  youth,  I  lately 
amongst  other  papers  lighted  upon."  There  is  also  in 
Mother  Hubberd's  Tale  the  same  writing  "after  Tityrus," 
the  same  imitativeness  of  Chaucer,  with  traces  of  Pievs 
Ploughman,  that  belonged  to  his  first  period.  Then  one 
striking  allusion   to  Leicester  leads  us  still  to    1578; 


£ARLY  AXD   "LOST"    POEMS.  83 

for  such  an  allusion  must  have  offered  itself  on  its 
occurrence.  It  thus  runs,  in  answer  to  the  Ape's  question, 
"  Who  now  in  Court  doth  beare  the  greatest  sway  ? " — 

Marie  (said  he)  the  highest  now  in  grace, 

Be  the  wilde  beasts,  thai  swiftest  are  in  chase ; 

For  in  their  speedie  course  and  nimble  flight 

The  I.yon  now  doth  take  the  most  delight : 

But  chieflie,  ioyes  on  foote  them  to  beholde, 

Enchaste  with  chaine  and  circulet  of  golde  : 

So  wilde  a  beast  so  tame  ytaught  to  bee, 

And  buxomc  to  his  bands,  is  ioy  to  see. 

So  well  his  golden  Circlet  him  beseemeth  : 

But  his  late  chayne  his  Liege  unmeete  esteemeth  ; 

For  bravest  beasts  she  loveth  best  to  see. 

In  the  wilde  forest  raunging  fresh  and  free. 

(Vol.  III.,  pp.  120-1,  11.  619-30.) 

The  "  Lyon  "  being  the  Dudley  arms,  would  naturally 
suggest  Leicester,  albeit  the  present  "  Lyon  "  must  not 
be  confounded  with  the  "Lyon  King"  in  the  concluding 
episode.  But  the  italicized  line,  '*  But  his  late  chayne 
his  Liege  unmeete  esteemeth,"  settles  the  reference, 
seeing  that  it  self-evidencingly  points  to  his  marriage 
in  I  578  to  Lettice  Knollys,  widow  of  the  Earl  of  Essex 
(Walter  Devereux),  which  drew  down  upon  him  the 
tempestuous  wrath  of  Elizabeth.  Camden  informs  us 
in  his  Annals  {s.n)  that  when  the  Duke  of  Anjou 
pressed  the  match  between  himself  and  the  C^ueen,  his 
agent,  believing  Lord  Leicester  to  be  the  greatest 
obstacle  to  the  Duke,  informed  Elizabeth  of  his 
marriage  with  the  Lady  Essex,  and  as  he  counted 
on,  thereby  stung  the  Queen  into  rage.  He  further 
tells  us  that  her  Majesty  commanded  Leicester  not  to 
stir  from  the  castle-palace  at  Greenwich,  and  that  she 
would  have  sent  him  to  the  Tower  had  not  the  Earl  of 


84  £A RL Y  A ND  "LOST'   POEMS. 

Sussex  dissuaded  her.     This  was — be  it  accentuated — 
in  1578. 

Whether  composed  in  Ireland  (while  with  Sir  Henry 
Sidney),  or  in  London  on  his  return  with  that  illustrious 
recalled  Lord-Deputy,  or  in  North-East  Lancashire  on 
another  visit  thither — and  all  the  likelihoods  are  that  he 
came  and  went  repeatedly — Mother  HiibbercVs  Tale  must 
have  been  dashed  off  in  a  white  heat  of  rage.  Conscious 
of  what  he  was  and  could  do — given  the  opportunity — 
Master  Spenser  inevitably  chafed  against  barriers  put 
in  the  way  of  his  ascent  toward  the  service  of  the 
State.  Burleigh  was  thus  as  inevitably  the  object  of 
his  exacerbated  feeling.  Few  men  who  have  risen  to 
so  lofty  a  position  presented  so  broad  a  surface  for 
attack.  Primarily  of  no  intellectual  strength,  and 
never  possessed  of  learning  or  culture,  he  throughout 
dreaded,  or  shall  I  say  held  for  suspect }  the  brained 
and  scholarly  men  of  the  time.  Without  living  con- 
victions or  principles,  he  was  himself  a  mere  chameleon, 
ready  with  swiftest  dexterity  to  adapt  himself  to  the 
requirements  of  the  hour,  and  sceptical  of  any  other 
having  "  the  courage  of  their  opinions "  or  not  to  be 
bought.  Throughout  rapacious,  self-seeking,  a  shame- 
less plunderer,  he  began  as  an  impoverished  and 
struggling  country  squire — if  squire  be  not  too  large — 
and  he  died  possessed  of  "three  hundred  distinct  estates." 
It  is  historically  certain  that  through  church-lands  and 
church-exactions,  as  on  the  appointments  of  bishops  and 
other  ecclesiastical  dignitaries,  he  kept  "  the  treasury  " 
of  the  Queen  "  full,"  and  so  won  the  confidence,  the 
over-confidence  of  Elizabeth,  whilst  he  so  manipulated 
the  revenues  as  to  aggrandize  and  enrich  himself  after 


EARLY  AND   ^' LOST''   POEMS.  85 

such  sort  as  it  was  difficult  to  be  detected.  One  who 
held  himself  "  loyal  "  to  "  bloody  Mary"  and  conformed 
abjectly  to  his  royal  mistress's  Roman  Catholicism  — 
without,  as  Macaulay  has  shown  scathingly,  the  plea  of 
being  an  Adiaphorist,  and  as  readily  and  as  abjectly 
conformed  to  the  Protestantism  of  Elizabeth,  is  a 
despicable  man,  a  merely  titularly  "  great  man  " — 
especially  in  the  lurid  light  of  his  multiplied,  prolonged 
and  ingeniously  cruel  persecution  of  the  Catholics.  His 
was  not  statesmanship, but  hand-to-mouth  shrewd  dealing 
with  persons  and  circumstances  as  they  arose.  He  was 
a  mere  political  Jesuit — without  the  Jesuit's  religious 
motif.  It  is  a  libel  on  government  to  exalt  his  prying, 
spying  vigilance  to  statesmanship.  He  had  his  venal 
instruments  everywhere,  but  by  his  own  small  eyes  saw 
nothing,  much  less  fore-saw  anything.  Oxenstiern's 
memorable  saying  never  has  been  more  amazingly  illus- 
trated than  in  the  long  rule  of  this  poorest-natured  and 
largest-advantaged  Minister  of  the  Elizabethan  age. 
He  is  not  to  be  thought  of  blamably  for  his  crooked 
and  ugly  person  ;  but  the  meagre  and  creeping  body 
was  emblematic  of  the  more  crooked  and  creeping  soul 
that  animated  it.  I  for  one  cannot  hold  it  either  in 
Ralegh  or  Essex  or  Bacon  or  Spenser  for  malignancy 
that  they  called  a  spade  a  spade  in  their  conflicts  with 
and  allusions  to  this  Burleigh.  Neither  can  I  divide 
the  condemnation  of  Burleigh  with  Walsingham,  much 
less  with  Elizabeth.  He  was  the  controlling  force  by 
one  of  those  accidents  that  sometimes  in  actual  life 
give  a  relatively  inferior  and  small  man  extraordinary 
influence. 

Phillips  in    his    Theatruvi   Poctanon    Anglicanonim 


80  EARLY  AND   <' LOST''    POEMS. 

only  caught  up  the  long  tradition  when  he  stated  that 
Cecil  owed  Spenser  "  a  grudge  for  some  reflections  in 
Mother  Htibbera's  Tale."  These  "  reflections  "  are  not 
far  to  seek,  either  in  Mother  Hubberd's  Tale  or  else- 
where :  e.g.,  II.  487 — 520  : — 

First  therefore,  when  ye  have  in  handsome  wise 

Your  selfe  attyred,  as  you  can  devise, 

Then  to  some  Noble  man  your  selfe  applye, 

Or  other  great  one  in  the  worldes  eye, 

That  hath  a  zealous  disposition 

To  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  Saint  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  lacke  or  long. 

But  if  thee  list  unto  the  Court  to  throng. 

And  there  to  hunt  after  the  hoped  pray, 

Then  must  thou  thee  dispose  another  way  : 

For  there  thou  needs  must  Icarne,  to  laugh,  to  lie, 

To  face,  to  forge,  to  scoffe,  to  companie, 

To  crouche  to  please,  to  be  a  beetle  stock 

Of  thy  great  Masters  will,  to  scorne,  or  mock  : 

So  maist  thou  chaunce  mock  out  a  Benefice, 

Unlesse  thou  canst  one  coniure  by  device, 

Or  cast  a  figure  for  a  Bishoprick  : 

And  if  one  could,  it  were  but  a  schoole  trick. 

These  be  the  wayes,  by  which  without  reward 

Livings  in  Court  be  g-otten,  though  full  hard. 

For  nothing  there  is  done  without  a  fee  : 

The  Courtier  needes  must  recompenced  bee 

With  a  Benevolence,  or  have  in  gage 

The  Priin^'fio'  of  your  Parsonage  : 

Scarse  can  a  Bishoprick  forpas  them  by. 

But  that  it  must  be  gelt  in  privitie. 

Two  observations  confirmatory  of  the  Burleigh  refer- 
ences here  must  at  this  point  be  made,     {a)  The  corre- 


EARLY  AND   "LOST''   POEMS  87 

spondoncc  of  Bishop  Barnes  (Bishop  of  Durham),  father 
of  Barnab)'  Barnes,  the  sweet-singer  of  PartJienophil 
and  Part/icnop/ie,  shows  with  what  audacious  insistence 
Cecil  claimed  "  grants  "  and  "  fines  " — sheer  extortions 
— from  an  incoming  "  bishop,"  * — and  it  were  easy  to 
multiply  examples,  {b)  Camden  wrote  —  Cecil  "suc- 
ceeded in  raising  a  vast  estate,  great  part  of  it,  as  was 
too  usual  with  the  later  Tudors,  wrung  by  wa}'  of 
inequitable  exchange  from  the  Church''  {Aufials,^.  336). 
Spenser's  recently-made  bishop  friend,  Dr.  John  Young, 
Bishop  of  Rochester,  would  assuredly  have  the  same 
pressure  put  on  him,  and  '  talk  '  of  it  when  "  Colin  Clout  " 
was  on  his  (probable)  visit  to  "  Rofify  "  (in  1577). 

Burleigh  would  be  the  more  '  vexed '  by  his  por- 
traiture being  made  a  foil  for  the  magnificent  delineation 
of  the  "  rightful  courtier," — a  delineation  the  more  signi- 
ficant and  the  more  precious  that  Sidney  was  then  alive 
by  our  dating  of  the  composition  of  Mother  Hubberd's 
Tale'  (see  11.  711 — 792).  One  admires  the  deftness 
with  which  touches  are  worked  into  this  great  verse- 
portrait  so  as  to  smite  the  "  great  Minister"  ;  and  so 
onward,  e.g.  : — 

And  whenso  love  of  letters  did  inspire 
Their  gentle  wits,  and  kindly  wise  desire, 
That  chieflie  doth  each  noble  minde  adome, 
Then  he  would  scoffe  at  leamint;^,  and  eke  scome 
The  Sectaries  thereof,  as  people  base 
And  simple  men,  which  nei'er  came  in  place 
0/  world' s  affaires,  but  in  darke  comers  mewd, 
Muttred  of  matters.  .  .   .  (11.  829—836). 

And  so  of  his  "cleanly  knaverie."  Let  the  Reader 
study  also  II.   877 — 914: — 

*  See    Memoir  of    Bishop   Barnes    in    Stephen's     National 
Biography,  s.n.,  by  the  present  Writer. 


88  EARLY  AND   ''LOST''    POEMS. 

Besides  all  this,  he  us'd  oft  to  beguile 
Poore  suters,  that  in  Court  did  haunt  some  while  : 
For  he  would  learne  their  busines  secretly, 
And  then  informe  his  Master  hastely, 
That  he  by  meanes  might  cast  them  to  prevent, 
And  beg  the  sute,  the  which  the  other  ment. 
Or  otherwise  false  Rej'nold  would  abuse 
The  simple  Suter,  and  wish  him  to  chuse 
His  Master,  being  one  of  great  regard 
In  Court,  to  compas  anie  sute  not  hard, 
In  case  his  paines  were  recompenst  with  reason  : 
So  would  he  worke  the  silly  man  by  treason 
To  buy  his  Masters  frivolous  good  will, 
'I'liat  had  noe  power  to  doo  him  good  or  ill. 
So  pitifuU  a  thing  is  Suters  state. 
Most  miserable  man,  whom  wicked  fate 
Hath  brought  to  C'ourt,  to  sue  for  had  ywist, 
Tliat  few  have  foimd,  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  fued  on  hope,  to  pine  with  feare  and  sorrow ; 
To  have  thy  Prince's  grace,  yet  want  her  Peere's  ; 
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  desastrous  end. 
That  doth  his  life  in  so  long  tendance  spend  ! 

Who  ever  leaves  sweetc  home,  where  meane  estate 
In  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,  himselfc  will  one  daie  crie  : 
That  curse  God  send  unto  mine  euemie. 

Thu.s  the  "  ])iliful  case  "  of  "poore  Suitors"  reflects 
passionately  on  l^iu'lcigh.  One  line  throbs  with  per- 
sonal indii^mation — ■ 

'I'd  havi'  thy  Prince's  grace,  yet  want  her  Peere's  (1.  901). 


^ 


EARLY  AND  ''LOST''   POEMS.  89 

Rut  there  are  strokes  bitten  iu  to  this  c^rcat  word 
portrait — beside  which  Tope's  k-ecncst  satires  arc  child's 
play — that  came  later  when  publication  was  resolved  on. 
To  be  placed  side  by  side  with  this  is  the  scarcely  less 
recognizable  and  characteristic  hitting-off  of  Burleigh's 
diplomacies  of  self-assertion  and  self-aggrandizement : — 

He  chaffred  Chayrcs  in  which  Churchmen  were  set, 

And  breach  of  lawcs  to  privie  forme  did  let ; 

No  statute  so  established  might  bee, 

Nor  ordinaunce  so  needful!,  but  that  hee 

Would  violate,  though  not  with  violence. 

Yet  under  colour  of  the  confidence 

The  which  the  Ape  repos'd  in  him  alone, 

A  nd  rcckned  him  the  kijigdomc's  corner  sto7ic. 

And  ever  when  he  ought  would  bring  to  pas 

His  long  experience  the  platforme  was  : 

And  when  he  ought  not  pleasing  would  put  by. 

The  cloke  was  care  of  thrift,  and  husbandry, 

For  to  encrease  the  common  treasure's  store, 

But  his  o:vne  treasure  he  encr eased  more. 

And  lifted  vp  his  loftie  towres  thereby. 

That  they  began  to  threat  the  neighbour  sky.  (11.  1159-74.) 

And   so    onward    with    superb     strength,    culminating 
thus  : — 

For  men  of  learning  little  he  esteemed  ; 

His  wisdome  he  above  their  learning  deemed.   .  .  . 

So  did  he  good  to  none,  to  manie  ill, 

So  did  he  all  the  kingdome  rob  and  pill. 

Yet  none  durst  speake,  no  none  durst  of  him  plaine ; 

So  great  he  was  in  grace,  and  rich  through  gaine. 

Ne  would  he  anie  let  to  have  accesse 

Unto  the  Prince,  but  by  his  owne  addresse  : 

For  all  that  els  did  come,  were  sure  to  faile. 

(11.  1191-2,  1 197—1204.) 

Looking  now  into  the  Tcares  of  the  Muses,  the  same 
well-grounded  historically  truthful  censure  of  Burleigh 
is  found.     Thus  in  "  Clio  "  (st.  vii.)  we  read — 

And  onely  boast  of  Armes  and  Ancestrie  (1.  94). 


90  EARLY  AND  "•  LOST'   POEMS. 

This    must   have   been    felt   as  a  specially  hard   hit  at 

the  Cecils,  whose  ancestry  was  b)^  "  many  that  are  not 

well-affected  our  house"  doubted.      Burleigh,  according 

to  Sandford  {Great  Families,  s.//.),  "  was  ^reat/y  {distressed 

because,  believing  himself  to  be   a  gentleman   in   the 

English    sense,    he    could    not    quite    prove    it.       His 

enemies   would  have  it  that  his  grandfather  '  kept  the 

best  inn   in  Stamford  ' ;  and   this  being  so — and  it  has 

been  established — the  touch  in  st.  vii.  is  peculiarly  neat 

and  keen  : 

....  which  did  those  Armes  first  give, 
To  their  Grandsyres,  they  care  not  to  atchieve"  (11.  95-6). 

The  first  Earl  of  Salisbury  was  taunted  by  his  peers  as 
grandson  of  a  sieve-maker  ;  but  the  Cecils  themselves 
are  doubtful.  Cecil's  grandfather  wrote  his  name  Syssell, 
which  he  connected  with  the  Welsh  Sitsell  (or  Sitsylt) 
family.  But,  says  Sandford  again,  "  the  connection  is 
entirely  hypothetical." 

The  'mighty'  Secretary  claimed  to  be  a  scholar. 
Could  a  scholar  have  entered  in  his  Diary  this — 
"Anno  1 541,  Aug.  viii.  iiupsi  Mariae  Cheke,  Canta- 
bridgiae  "  .''  More  correctly  in  a  MS.  book  among  the 
Lansdowne  MSS.  he  writes  "duxi  in  uxorem  Mariae 
Cheke"  (Sandford,  ii.  66). 

Cecil  was  raised  to  the  Peerage  as  Baron  de 
Burghley  in  Feb.  1571;  made  K.G.  1572  (June); 
Lord  High  Treasurer  in  1572  (September). 

At  his  death  he  left  ^^4,000  a  year  in  land,  £\  1,000 
in  money,  and  in  valuable  effects  about  i!^  14,000 
(Sandford).  These  represent  a  million  sterling  at  least 
to-day. 

Finally — There  can  be  no  doubt  that  though  Burleigh 


[/ 


£A RL  Y  AND  ''LOST"   POEMS.  g i 

is  by  no  means  the  only  ncglcctcr  of  Icarnini^  referred 
to  in  these  poems  of  Spenser,  he  most  unquestionably 
must  be  regarded  as  the  central  figure.  Let  us  further 
compare  st.  iv.  of  Tcarcs  of  the  Muses — 

The  Sectaries  of  my  celestial  skill, 

That  wont  to  be  the  world's  chief  ornament,  etc. 

(Vol.  III.,  p.  46.) 

The  Reader  will  go  on  to  close  of  st.  viii.,  and  recall 
Mother  Hubbents  Tale — 

Then  he  would  scoff  at  Learning,  and  eke  scome 
The  Sectaries  thereof,  as  people  base. 

That  the  "  newe  poete"  was  deeply  hurt  by  Bur- 
leigh's obstructiveness  is  constantly  flashing  out — e.g., 

The  foes  of  learning  and  each  gentle  thought ; 

They  not  contented  us  themselves  to  scorne 

Doo  seeke  to  make  us  of  the  world  forlome  (11.  65-6) ; 

and — 

The  noble  hearts  to  pleasures  they  allure, 

And  tell  their  Prince  that  learning  is  but  vaine  (11.  331-2) ; 

and  again — 

Their  great  revenues  all  in  sumptuous  pride 

They  spend,  that  nought  to  learning  they  may  spare 

(11.  469-70). 

All  this  reminds  us  that  Edmund  Spenser  in  far 
deeper  and  truer  .sense  than  cither  were  Bishop  Hall 
or  Dean  Donne,  was — a  Satirist. 

But  by  far  the  most  interesting  (extrinsic)  thing 
about  the  Teares  of  the  Muses  is  Shakespeare's  reference 
to  it  in  A  Midsummer  A^ight's  Dream  (V.  i.).  Theseus 
reads — 

The  thrice  three  Muses  mourning  for  the  death 
Uf  Learning,  late  deceas'd  in  beggary. 


92  EARLY  AND  ''  LOST''   POEMS. 

By  the  'thrice  three  Muses  mournhig'  it  seems  pretty 
clear  the  Teares  of  the  Muses  ('thrice  three')  was 
intended  to  be  designated.  For  only  in  the  Teares  of 
tJie  Muses  is  there  that  combination  of  'mourning'  with 
satire,  that  leads  to  the  commentary  on  the  proposal 
to  hav^e  such  a  'device'  for  entertainment  of  the  joyous 
marriage-company — 

That  is  some  satire,  keen  and  critical, 
Not  sorting  with  a  nuptial  ceremony. 

But  a  peculiarity  of  this  Shakespearean  reference  is  that 
within  the  thought  of  the  Teares  of  the  Muses  is  a  sub- 
thought  of  application  of  his  own  suggested  mourning- 
satirical  poem  on  Spenser  himself  as  "  Learning,  late 
deceas'd  in  beggary."  By  '  beggar)^ '  here  is  to  be 
understood  the  inevitable  impoverishment  through  the 
Poet's  sudden  deprivation  of  Kilcolman  by  the  rebels, 
but  not  more  than  Camden's  "  inops  "  (as  we  shall  see 
onward).  Mr.  J.  P.  Collier  {Spenser,  Life,  vol.  i.,  p.  xi.) 
applied  the  lines  to  Spenser,  and  annotated — 

"  Spenser  had  died  only  the  year  before  Midsummer  Night ' s 
Dream  was  printed,  though  it  had  been  acted  several  seasons 
earlier.  We  are  fully  persuaded  that  the  couplet  in  Act  V.  sc.  i. 
had  reference  to  the  death  of  Spenser,  in  grief  and  poverty,  in  the 
January  preceding.  On  the  revival  of  plays,  it  was  very  common 
to  make  insertions  of  new  matter,  especially  adapted  to  the  time  ; 
and  this,  we  apprehend,  was  one  of  the  additions  made  by 
Shakespeare  shortly  before  his  drama  was  published  in  1600." 

Elze  follows  suit  {Essays,  p.  59).  But  neither  Collier 
nor  Elze  saw  beyond  the  phrase  "  the  thrice  three 
Muses"  as  the  identification.  By  itself  it  might  only 
have  designated  the  nine  Mu.ses.  '  Learned '  was 
frequently  applied  to   Spenser  contemporarily.* 

*  My  friend,  Mr.  Harrold  Littledale,  of  Baroda,  holds  to  the 


EAJ^LY  A  ND  ' '  L  OST ' '   POEMS.  93 

One  wishes  the  sugi^ested  '  device '  of  showing;  the 
"  thrice  three  Muses  mourning  for  the  death  of  Learning 
late  deceas'd  in  beggar}'  "  had  approved  itself  to  Theseus 
as  it  had  to  Philostrate.  For  then,  instead  of  the 
fooling  of  Pyramus  and  Thisbe  that  was  accepted  and 
carried  out,  we  might  have  had  William  Shakespeare's 
estimate  of  Edmund  Spenser.  A  thousand  times  must 
the  preference  be  grudged  and  lamented. 

It  has  not  been  adequately  realized  how  marked 
and  absolute  was  the  advent  of  the  "  newe  poete,"  who 
could  write  and  "  put  by  "  carelessly  for  more  than  a 
decade  of  years,  verse  of  the  masterful  type  of  Mother 
HubbcrcTs  Tale,  as  similarly  the  dulcet  music  and,  as 
Mr.  Palgrave  phrases  it,  "  the  magnificently  sustained 
power  and  perfection  in  style"  (Vol.  IV.,  p.  xcvii)  of  the 
Two  Hyvines  of  Love  and  Beauty.  I  am  far  from 
underrating  the  ShcpheriVs  Calendar,  but  it  is  as  hodden 
gray  to  imperial  purple,  or  water  to  wine,  beside  the 
Two  Hyytines  and  MotJier  Hubberd's  Tale.  A  measure 
of  the  breadth  of  distinction  between  Spenser's  genius 
and  Dryden's  and  Pope's  is  this, — that  in  Motlier 
Hubbcrds  Tale  the  Poet  is  never  sunk  in  the  Satirist. 
He  wields  a  rod  weightier  than  even  "glorious  John's," 
and  as  stinging  as  Pope's  ;  but  it  buds  and  blossoms, 
and  bears  better  than  almond  fruit,  of  the  Maker's 
imaginativeness.* 

Virgits  Gnat  comes  next  to,  if  it  did   not  precede, 

reference  to  the  Teares  of  the  Muses,  but  does  not  admit  the 
reference  to  Spenser's  death.  But  the  two  must  stand  or  fall 
together.  It  is  like  Shakespeare's  penetrativeness  to  see  the 
satire  underlying  the  Teares  0/  the  Muses. 

•  See  G  in  Appendix  for  a  book  read  by  Spenser  and  used  in 
Mother  Hubberd's  Tale. 


94  EARLY  AND  "LOST"   POEMS. 

Mother  Hubbcrd's  Talc.  It  was  intended  to  be  dedi- 
cated, and  actually  was  dedicated,  "  to  the  Earl  of 
Leicester,  late  deceased"  (1588).  In  the  dedication 
(verse)  the  Poet  addresses  him  as  "  causer  of  my  care," 
as  though  Spenser  had  been  the  "  gnat,"  and  Dudley  the 
"  heedless  shepherd,"  of  the  incident  made  immortal  in 
this  transfusion  of  the  pseudo-Virgil's  Ciilex.  It  is 
idle  at  this  late  day  to  conjecture  the  occasion  of  this 
poem.  Spenser  may  have  given  Leicester  some  useful 
hint,  and  have  got  himself  into  trouble  through  it.  It 
must  have  been  serious  '  trouble,'  for  it  is  to  be  re- 
called that  "care"  and  "careful"  had  a  much  stronger 
meaning  then  than  now  they  have.  '  I  may  not  speak 
of  this  matter  openly,'  the  poet  says  in  effect  ;  but 

Whatso  by  my  selfc  may  not  be  showen, 
May  by  this  gnatt's  complaint  be  easily  knowen. 

One  thing  is  very  plain, — that  if  Spenser  was  the 
"  gnat,"  and  Leicester  the  "  shepherd,"  Burleigh  was 
the  "  snake." 

We  have  now  to  look  at  the  '  lost '  and  semi-lost 
poems  that  belong  to  the  first  period  of  his  poetic 
inspiration  and  achievement,  and  the  existence  of  all 
of  which  contemporaneous  with  the  publication  of  the 
SJiepJier'tV s  Caleiuiay  is  attested  by  Spenser's  own 
letters  to  "Hobbinol,"  and  "Hobbinol's"  to  Spenser  as 
"  Immcrito."  These  summarily  were — the  Dreames,  and 
Sloniber,  and  Nine  Comedies,  and  Dudlciana  Stemviata, 
and  minor  things. 

With  respect  to  the  Dreames,  Professor  Hales  thinks 
that  the  Dreames  and  the  Slombcr  were  probably  one 
and  the  same,  and  perhaps  identical  with  the  Visions 
published  in  1591,  which  were  revised   from  the  earlier 


EARLY  AND  ''LOST"   POEMS.  95 

version  in  the  Tlwatrc  of  Voluptuous  Worldlings  (Life 
in  Globe  Spenser,  p.  xvii).  I  cannot  accept  this.  The 
hypothesis  breaks  down  when  we  read  Spenser's  post- 
script to  his  second  Letter  to  Harvey — "  I  take  best  my 
Dreamcs  should  come  forth  alone,  being  growen  by 
meanes  of  the  Glosse  (running  continually  in  manner  of 
a  paraphrase)  full  as  great  as  my  Calendar''  (Vol.  IX., 
p.  275). 

There  is  nothing  in  the  Visions  requiring  so  elabo- 
rate a  paraphrase  ;  nor  may  Spenser  reasonably  be 
supposed  to  have  gone  to  the  trouble  ("pains")  of 
expounding  a  translation  at  such  length.  Besides,  the 
size  of  the  new  intended  book  must  have  been  far 
greater  than  the  Visions  would  have  made,  even  with 
a  "  Glosse"  equal  to  that  in  the  Shepherd's  Calendar. 

Dean  Church  (as  before,  p.  52),  on  the  other 
hand,  and  at  an  opposite  pole,  and  as  mistakenly  as 
Professor  Hales,  says  that  of  the  Dreames  "  not  a  trace 
can  be  found."  Let  the  student-Reader  study  the 
Ruines  of  Time,  and  methinks  he  will  find  that  into 
it  the  Dreames  has  been  if  not  wholly  yet  largely 
incorporated. 

I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Harrold  Littledale  for  a 
confirmation  of  this.  He  thus  specifically  puts  it : 
— "  E.  K.,  in  his  Glosse  to  the  Sluplierd's  Calendar, 
November  (Vol.  H.,  p.  270),  may  give  some  clue  to 
the  point.  He  says,  '  Nectar  and  Ambrosia  bee  fained 
to  be  the  drinke  and  foode  of  the  gods  ;  ambrosia  they 
liken  to  Manna  in  Scripture,  and  nectar  to  be  white 
like  creame,  whereof  is  a  proper  tale  of  Hebe,  that 
spilt  a  cup  of  it,  and  stayned  the  heavens,  as  yet 
appeareth.     But  I  have  already  discoursed  that  at  large 


96  EARLY  AND   ''LOST'   POEMS. 

in  my  commentary  upon  the  drcamcs  of  the  same  author. 

This  passage  alone  would  dispose  of  Professor  Hales's 

conjecture,  as  not  a  word  of  Hebe,  galaxy,  nectar,  or 

ambrosia  is  to  be  found  in  the  Visions  of  Bcllay,  etc.,  etc., 

so  E.  K.  could  not  have  'discoursed  at  large'  on  those 

topics  in  a  commentary  on   those  poems.      But  if  we 

suppose  the  Dremnes  to  have  been  incorporated  in   the 

(hastily  put  together)   Ruincs  of  Time,  we  do  get  the 

necessary  texts  for  E.  K.  to  '  discourse  upon  at  large.' 

In  the  Ruincs  of  Time,  st.  Iv.,  we  have  Hebe  mentioned 

— 'all  happinesse  in  Hebe's  silver  bower,'  and  in  st.  Ivii. 

we  have  this  : 

But  with  the  gods,  for  former  virtues  meede 
On  Nectar  and  Ambrosia  do  feede. 

It  is  true  that  these  lines  do  not  occur  in   the  'Vision' 

part  of  the  Ruiiies  of  Time,  but  that  would  not  matter, 

as  seemingly  Spenser  has  only  adapted    parts  of  the 

Dreames  to  the  needs  of  the  Ruincs.     This  suggestion 

seems  to  receive   further  confirmation   from  the    SJiep- 

herd's  Calendar  in   E.  K.'s  Glo.sse  in  October  (Vol.  II., 

p.  246),  '■as  soote  as  sivanne.    The  comparison  seemeth 

to  be  straunge  :   for  the  swan  hath  ever  woonne  small 

commendation     for    her    sweete    singing :     but     it    is 

said  of  the  learned  that  the  swanne  a  litle  before  her 

death,  singeth    most   pleasantly,   as    prophccying  by   a 

secrete  instinct  her  neere  destinie,  as  well  saith  the  poet 

elsewhere  in  one  of  his  Sonnets  : 

The  silver  swan  doth  sing  before  her  dying  day, 

As  she  that  fceles  the  deepe  dehght  tlial  is  in  death,'  etc. 

These  lines  arc  not  to  be  found  in  any  extant  poem, 
but  they  may  be  traced  possibly  in  the  Ruincs  of  Time, 
11.  589— 600  (Vol.  III.,  p.  ilY 


^ 


EARLY  A XD  -LOST"    POEMS.  .;; 

It  is  probable  that  the  original  Dnaiiics  was  of  the 
same  ty{)e  as  the  Visions,  and  this  probability  is 
strengthened  by  the  fact  that  in  the  Rniiies  of  Time 
may  be  noted  some  imitations  of  the  early  translated 
Visions,  which  Spenser  would  hardly  have  been  guilty 
of  in  I  590-1  if  he  wrote  the  R nines  of  Time  without 
reference  to  some  earlier  works  of  his.  Cf.  for  instance 
the  Rnines  of  Tune,  1.  411  (Vol.  III.,  p.  25),  "the 
mettall  most  desired,"  with  the  Visions  of  Bellay,  1.  34, 
"the  mettall  which  we  most  do  honour"  (Vol.  III., 
p.  204).  ,  And  compare  closely  the  Raines  of  Time, 
11.  659-72  (Vol.  III.,  p.  36),  with  the  Visions  of  Bcllay, 
II.  29—56  (Vol.  III.,  p.  204). 

Lastly,  note  that  the  Rnines  of  Time  is  a  "  Vision  " 
of  Verlame,  and  that  (11.  489-90) — 

Before  mine  eies  strange  sights  presented  were, 
Like  tragike  Pageants  seeming  to  appear. 

Hence  if  any  trace  of  the  Dreames  exists,  it  is  to  be 
found  in  the  Rnines  of  Time. 

The  Slnmber,zi\\&^  in  the  Printer's  preface  (Vol.  III., 
p.  7)  A  Senighfs  Slnmber,  has  apparently  perished 
along  with  the  Ni)ie  Comedies. 

With  respect  again  to  the  Stanmata  Dndlciana, 
an  overlooked  couplet  in  the  Teares  of  the  Muses 
("  Erato,"  ii.) — 

Now  change  your  praises  inlu  piteous  cries, 
And  Eulogies  turn  into  Elegies — 

seems  just  a  description  of  his  transformation  of  his 
Stcmmata,  which  is  also  incorporated  in  the  Rnines 
of  Time.  This,  as  Professor  Hales  (p.  xvii.,  Life  in 
Globe  Spenser,  and  Dean  Church,  p.  52  as  before) 
I.  7 


98  EARLY  AND   ''LOST"   POEMS. 

note,  relieves  us  of  one  pang  over  the  long-supposed 
utter  loss  of  the  Steinmata  Diidleiaiia.  Spenser  wrote 
self-admiringly  of  it — "  Of  my  Steniviata  Dndleiana, 
and  especiallie  of  the  sundrie  Apostrophes  therein, 
addressed  to  you  know  whom,  must  some  advisement 
be  had,  than  so  lightly  to  send  them  abroade  ;  howbeit 
trust  me  (though  I  doe  never  very  well)  yet,  in  my 
owne  fancie,  I  never  did  better"  (Vol.  IX.,  p.  275). 
This  was  written  in  1579  to  Harvey.  In  1590  the 
great  house  of  Dudley  had  nearly  passed  away.  Its 
glorification  in  the  original  Stemmata  (=  pedigrees) 
would  have  been  a  too  too  cruel  exemplification  of  the 
epicure's  Vanitas  Vanitatiim.  And  so  the  Poet  having 
been  asked  to  write  an  Elegy  (see  epistle-dedicatory) 
took  the  original  Steimnata  and  part  of  the  Dreames 
(as  we  have  seen),  and  recast  them  into  the  form  of 
the  Riiines  of  Time.  Instead  of  'glorification,'  the 
saddened  Singer  has  to  lament  the  'ruins'  which  in  a 
brief  ten  years  Time  had  wrought.  Like  the  original 
Stemmata,  the  Ri lines  of  Time  reveals  itself  as  "  specially 
intended  to  the  renowning  of  that  noble  race  [the 
Dudleys]  from  which  both  you  [Lady  Mary  Sidney] 
and  he  ['that  most  brave  knight,  } our  noble  brother 
deceased,'  Sir  Philip  Sidney]  sprang,  and  to  the  eter- 
nizing of  some  of  the  chiefe  of  them  lately  deceased  " 
[i.e.  Robert  Dudley,  d.  i  588  ;  Ambrose  Dudley,  d.  i  589  ; 
Mary  Dudley,  d.  i  586  ;  Sidney,  d.  i  586  ;  Francis,  Earl 
of  Bedford,  d.  1585]. 

In  connection  with  Spenser's  remarks  to  Harvey 
quoted,  about  "  the  sundrie  Apostrophes,"  let  the 
Reader  note  the  "  Apostrophe "  in  xxxv.-xl.  of  the 
Ruincs  of   Time  to   the    widow   of   Ambrose    Dudley, 


EARLY  AND   "  LOSJ''   POEMS.  99 

"  O  dearest  Dame  " — i.e.  .Anne,  third  wife  of  Ambrose 
Dudley,  and  daughter  of  Francis,  Earl  of  Bedford 
(d.  1855). 

I  shall  necessarily  revert  to  the  Ruines  0/  Tune 
hereafter — and  to  Spenser's  relations  to  the  Dudleys. 
There  arc  other  '  lost '  Writings  of  Spenser — as  the 
Nine  Comedies  and  the  Dying  Pelican  and  Legends ^ 
and  versification  of  Ecclesiastes,  Cantiaim  Canticormn 
and  certain  Psalmcs,  and  The  hell  of  Loiters  and  "  his 
Purgatorie "  and  The  hewers  of  the  Lord  and  The 
Saa-ifice  of  a  Sinner  and  The  Englishe  Poet.  The  first 
two,  the  fourth  and  fifth,  and  seventh  to  tenth,  appear 
inexplicably  to  have  perished,  or  all  too  successfully  to 
have  been  hidden  away  from  the  time  of  Ponsonbie's 
appeal  for  those  "  Pamphlets  loosely  scattered  abroad." 
("To  the  Reader"  before  Ruines  of  Time,  Vol.  III., 
pp.  7,  8).  The  Legends  I  conceive  were  portions  of  the 
Faery  Queen,  as  also  was  certainly  the  Court  of  Cupid 
glorified  into  the  "  Masque  of  Cupid."  As  to  the 
Psalmes,  I  should  not  at  all  wonder  if  it  emerge  some 
day  that  they  were  given  to  Mary,  Countess  of 
Pembroke,  as  a  contribution  to  her  own  and  Sir  Philip 
Sidney's  versification.  It  is  to  be  remembered  she 
did  not  herself  publish  the  Psalmes.  Similarly,  if  not 
bodily,  }-et  largely,  I  like  to  think  that  we  have  Tlie 
Englishe  Poet  utilized  at  least  in  Sidney's  Apology  or 
Defence  of  Poetry.  It  is  also  to  be  remembered  it  was 
posthumously  published. 

These  observations  on  the  body  of  Poetry  from 
which  Spenser — urged  by  Harvey — selected  for  publi- 
cation the  Shepherd's  Calendar  have  (I  trust)  prepared 
the  way  for  our  critical  examination   of  certain  aspects 


1 00  THE  ' '  SHErilERn  S  CA  L  END  A  R." 

and  details  of  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  in  its  publication 
and  in  itself* 

In  the  beginning  of  the  present  chapter  we  saw  how 
Spenser  hesitated  to  publish  the  Shepherd's  Calendar, 
and  why  it  was  that  it  was  published  anonymously — 
not  as  by  Edmund  Spenser,  or  even  "  Ed.  Sp.  "  (as 
in  later  volumes),  but  simply  as  by  "  Immerito."  The 
"Immcrito"  had  a  twofold  reference — primarily  to 
his  iinsuccess  or  un worthiness  with  his  "  Rosalind," 
and  secondarily  as  a  modest  intimation  of  his  humble 
estimate  of  th.e  Poem  (a  little  insincerity  here  perhaps). 

The  '  advizcmcnt  '  of  Gabriel  Harvey  to  publish 
was  not  long  of  being  operative.  Spenser's  Letter  of 
I  6th  October,  i  579,  was  followed  up  by  assigning  the 
"  bolcc  "  to  his  Lancashire  neighbour,  now  in  London, 
Hugh  Singleton  (as  in  Introduction) ;  and  the  '  entry '  by 
him  at  Stationers'  Hall  on  5th  December,  1579.  The 
original  title-page  is  dated  1579;  but  it  is  probable 
that  the  dainty  little  quarto,  with  its  quaint  woodcuts 
after  the  type  of  Vander  Noodt's  Theatre  of  Volup- 
tuous Worldlings  (1569),  did  not  appear  until  1580. 
l^ibliographically  full  details  will  be  found  in  the  place 
(Vol.  II.,  pp.  6 — 8)  of  the  five  editions  of  the  Calendar 
^fi579.  iS'^^iS'*^^.  i59i>^i'itl  '597 — with  fac-simile 
of  the  last.  Thither  I  refer  the  Reader.  Critically 
and  for  insight  into  the  characteristics  or  notes  of  the 
successive  poems  coml>incd  in  the  Calendar,  I  similarly 
refer    the   Reader   to   Mr.    Palgrave's   Essay   (Vol.   IV.) 

1  lu.'  Reader  will,  of  course,  turn  to,  and  I  trust  return  on, 
Mr.  I'nls^rave'.s  Essay  in  Vol.  IV.,  and  Mr.  Gossc's,  with  my 
"  Rider"  on  it,  in  Vol.  III.  These  Essays  (which  it  is  not  for 
me  to  characterize)  do  not  release  me  from  a  Biographer's  duty 
of  considering  each  fact  and  word. 


THE  ^' SIIEPHERiy S   CALENDAR r  loi 

and  Mr.  Gossc's  Essay  (Vol.  III.)  along  with  my  own 
"  Rider "  to  the  latter.  Nor,  if  he  is  wise,  will  he 
fail  to  ponder  Dean  Church's  eloquent  if  discursive 
and  somewhat  irrelevant  dissertation  on  The  Neic 
Poet — the  SliephenVs  Calendar. 

In  limine,  the  dissertation  of  Dean  Church  suggests 
my  first  criticism — broadly — of  the  Slie/>/ienl's  Calendar. 
I  do  not  know  that  personally  I  should  erase  a  single 
word  ;  but  it  strikes  me  that  the  sweep  is  much  too 
wide  as  an  introduction  to  the  Shepheras  Calendar.  As 
we  have  found,  far  higher  and  qua  poetry,  far  subtler, 
finer,  more  imperishable  poems  were  composed  by 
Spenser  previous  to  his  composition  of  the  Calendar. 
So  that  unless  we  are  to  substitute  the  mere  accidental 
chronology  of  publication  for  the  chronology  of  fact, 
the  "  ncwe  Poetc "  had  arrived  and  in  private  and 
within  a  certain  circle  announced  his  advent  with 
greater  sanction  than  ever  the  Shepherd's  Calendar 
showed.  Then  intrinsically  with  all  its  noticeable — 
most  noticeable  merits  and  enduring  value — it  had 
no  such  potentiality,  at  the  time  or  subsequently,  to 
entitle  it  to  such  a  supreme  place  in  declaring  its 
writer  to  be  the  "  newc  poetc."  To  look  on  such  a 
relatively  lowly  set  of  poems — regarded  as  a  whole 
— as  the  Calendar  with  "  the  tendencies  of  the  time  " 
and  with  the  events  of  the  preceding  half-century, 
"  with  the  convulsions  which  accompanied  them,  their 
uprootings  and  terrors  "  and  the  "  shock  of  transition  " 
and  the  "  great  break  up,"  is  unquestionably  eloquent, 
but  it  is  eulogy,  not  criticism.  One  might  as  reasonably 
have  connoted  the  daisies  that  grew  in  the  meadows 
or  the   nightingales  that  sang   in  the  bosky  greenwood 


102  THE  "SHEPHERD'S   CALENDAR." 

contemporaneously  with  the  Armada.  Or  to  put  it  in 
another  way,  more  could  scarcely  have  been  said  of  the 
Faoy  Queen,  or  the  EpitJmlamiii-m,  or  of  Hamlet^  Lear, 
Othello,  Macbeth,  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream.  Hence 
my  unwilling  impertinence  of  '  irrelevant'  But  very 
thorough  and  admirable  is  the  dissertatory  criticism 
that  follows  the  blare  of  trumpets  (pp.  38 — 50).* 

But  passing  from  the  Poem  generally,  I  have  now 
to  invite  attention  to  prevalent  criticism  of  the  Shep- 
herd's Calendar  that  in  my  judgment  is  misdirected  ' 
and  even  perverse.  To  begin  with,  Campbell's  (in  his 
Specimens), — which  provokingly  meets  one  everywhere 
in  criticisms  (so-called)  of  Spenser, — is  strangely 
inept,  as  thus — "  Pope,  Dryden,  and  Warton  have 
extolled  these  eclogues,  and  Sir  William  Jones  has 
placed  Spenser  and  Gay  as  the  only  genuine  descend- 
ants of  Theocritus  and  Vergil  in  pastoral  poetry.  This 
decision  may  be  questioned.  Favourable  as  are  the 
circumstances  of  England's  genius  in  all  the  higher 
walks  of  poetry,  they  have  not  been  propitious  to  the 
humbler  pastoral  m.use.  Her  trades  and  manufactures, 
the  very  blessings  of  her  wealth  and  industry,  threw 
the  indolent  shepherd's  life  to  a  distance  from  her 
cities  and  capital,  where  poets,  with  all  their  love  of 
the  country,  are  generally  found  ;  and  impressed  on 
the  face  of  the  country,  and  on  its  rustic  manners, 
a  gladsome  but  not  romantic  appearance."  He  then 
gives  deserved  praise  to  Allan  Ramsay's  Gentle  Shepherd, 
and  continues — "  The  shepherds  of  Spenser's  Calendar 
are  parsons  in  disguise,  who  converse  about  heathen 
divinities  and  points  of  Christian  theology.  Palinode 
*  See  Appendix  H  for  correction  of  a  slight  mistake. 


THE  "SHEPHERD'S  CALEXDARr  103 

defends  the  luxuries  of  the  Cathoh'c  clergy,  and  Piers 
extols  the  purity  of  Archbishop  Grindal,  concluding 
with  the  stor>'  of  a  fox  who  came  to  the  house  of  a 
goat,  in  the  character  of  a  pedlar,  and  obtained  ad- 
mittance by  pretending  to  be  a  sheep.  This  may 
be  burlesquing  /Esop,  but  certainly  is  not  imitating 
Theocritus.  There  are  fine  thoughts  and  images  in 
the  Calendar,  but  on  the  whole  the  obscurity  of  these 
pastorals  is  rather  the  covering  than  their  principal 
defect." 

The  criticism  of  Campbell  in  his  Specimens  is 
generally  so  admirable,  and  his  final  estimate  of  Spenser 
so  great  and  adequate,  that  it  is  with  a  sense  of  semi- 
ingratitude,  semi-irreverence,  I  take  it  upon  me  to 
traverse  this  verdict  on  the  Shephenrs  Calendar.  It  is 
vitiated  by  a  twofold  ignorance — ignorance  of  shepherd- 
life  and  ignorance  of  contemporary  life.  To  those  who 
have  the  slightest  knowledge  of  a  shepherd's  life  — 
whether  in  the  downs  and  dales  of  the  South  or  on 
the  mountains  of  the  North,  the  characterization  of  it  as 
"  the  indolent  shepherd's  life  "  is  about  the  most  untrue 
to  the  actual  facts  imaginable.  For  ceaseless,  anxious, 
vigilant,  intensely  active  toil,  there  is  no  occupation 
that  less  admits  of  being  "  indolent  "  than  that  of  the 
shepherd.  His  task  begins  with  the  break  of  day,  and 
does  not  end  with  sunset,  but  in  the  season  is  pro- 
longed far  into  the  night,  whilst  sudden  storms  of  rain 
and  snow,  sudden  floods,  sudden  epidemics,  sudden 
dangers,  demand  that  the  "  faithful  shepherd  "  shall  be 
ever  on  the  alert,  and  be  (so-to-say)  all  ear  and  all 
eye.  It  is  all  very  well  to  conjure  up  a  fancy-picture  of 
a  shepherd  like  Sidney's  bo>'  with  his  oaten  pipes  piping 


104  'J^HE  "  SHEPHERD' S   CALENDAR:' 

as  he  would  never  grow  old.  Wwi  that  is  in  Arcadia, 
not  in  this  real  earth  of  ours.  The  shepherd's  life 
everywhere — and  scarcely  with  an  interval — is  laborious 
and  responsible  in  the  extreme.  Not  less  is  the  ignor- 
ance shown  of  contemporary  life.  It  is  forgotten  that 
"  The  Reformation  "  was  then  a  recent  thing.  It  is  for- 
gotten that  the  relapse  to  Popery  of  the  most  superstitious 
and  mechanical  type  under  Mary,  had  left  blood-red 
memories  over  all  England.  It  is  forgotten  that  the 
re-enthronement  of  Protestantism  by  Elizabeth, — com- 
bined with  patriotic  hatred  of  Spain  and  detestation  of 
the  monk  who  called  himself  "the  Pope," — stirred  the 
nation  to  its  depths.  It  is  forgotten  that  in  the  lack  of 
newspapers  men  '  talked  '  by  their  roaring  fires  in  the 
"great  Halls  "  of  the  "  stately  homes  of  England,"  and 
in  the  servants' -halls,  and  in  "huts  where  poor  men 
lie,"  and  at  markets  and  fairs  and  everywhere.  It  is 
forgotten  that  by  the  necessities  of  the  time  wherein  the 
political  was  the  ecclesiastical  and  the  ecclesiastical 
was  the  political,  the  '  burden  '  of  men's  thought  and 
feeling  was  preponderatingly  '  theological.'  It  is  for- 
gotten that  the  '  simple  '  and  the  '  gentle  '  were  not  so 
divided  from  each  other  in  daily  intercourse  as  later, 
travelling  being  limited  and  contact  "  at  home  "  neces- 
sitated. Fundamentally,  therefore,  the  'commonalty' 
did  in  actual  life  so  "  chatten  "  of  "  points  of  Christian 
theology,"  and  had  for  their  ordinary  reading — as  the 
books  of  the  period  prove  incontestably — romances  and 
translated  foli(xs  that  familiarised  them  with  "  heathen 
divinities."  I  question  if  to-day  the  "  heathen  divinities  " 
are  so  well  known  as  in  Spenser's  time  by  the  ordinary 
run    of  ordinary   folks,    and    I   do    not    question    that 


W 


THE  '^  SHEPHERD'S  CALENDAR."  105 

"  points  of  Christian  theology  "  formed  the  staple  of  their 
conversation  then,  as  indecJ  it  docs  even  now.  The 
more  the  'talk'  of  the  SJiepheriVs  Calendar  \s  studied, 
the  more  will  it  be  realized  how  close  to  the  realities 
of  North-East  Lancashire  life — rural  and  urban — it 
all    is. 

The  words  and  the  '  talk '  of  the  Calendar  were 
the  "  common  speech "  of  the  time.  They  were  the 
"common  speech"  of  Spenser's  time.  They  are  the 
"common  speech"  of  this  year  of  our  Lord  1884. 
Their  occurrences  in  the  Townley  Mysteries  (see  in 
Appendix  H),  precisely  as  in  the  Sheplierd's  Calendar, 
are  in  keeping  with  those  in  whose  mouths  they  are  put. 
And  in  the  Shepherd's  Calendar,  except  accidentally, 
when  the  covert  meaning  asserts  itself — as  the  "dolphin's 
back "  rises  and  gleams  above  the  element  it  moves 
in — and  when  the  shepherds  are  avowedly  =  pastors, 
there  is  no  warrant  for  Campbell's  "  parsons  in  dis- 
guise." Specifically  it  is  simply  untrue  that  Palinode 
"defends  the  luxuries  of  the  Catholic  clergy."* 

But  still  further — Campbell  questions  the  soundness 
of  Pope  and  Dryden  and  Sir  William  Jones's  ranking 
of  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  with  Theocritus  and  Vergil  ; 
and  not  only  so,  but  he  so  far  dissents  as  to  put 
comparison  with  Theocritus  and  Vergil  out  of  court. 
All  this — and  others  have  followed  suit — betrays 
slender  acquaintance  with  Theocritus  and  X^ergil.  For 
apart  from  positive  translations  or  transfusions  and 
imitations   of  both   in    the   Shepherd's  Calendar,  when 

•  See  in  Appendix  B,  proof  of  how  keen  was  the  '  talk '  of  North- 
East  Lancashire  contemporarily  with  the  Shepherd' s  Calendar 
on  just  such  '  points  of  theology'  as  Campbell  objects  to. 


:o6  THE  ■'  SHEPHERiy  S  CALENDARS 

the  Eclogues  of  Vergil  and  the  Idylls  of  Theocritus 
are  nearly  looked  into,  it  is  discovered  that  neither 
are  the  mere  bucolic  or  rural  word-photographs  that 
this  bastard  criticism  chooses  to  set  up  for  Pastoral. 
Take  Vergil's  ten  "  Eclogues  " — for  the  Georgics 
are  distinct  from  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  as  is  the 
Aineid, — turning  to  the  first,  it  tells  the  story  of  an 
event  in  the  Poet's  own  life,  precisely  as  the  first  of  the 
Calciuhir  (Januar)')  docs  in  Si)cnscr's.  In  the  one  is 
"Tityrus,"  in  the  other  "Colin  Clout,"  and  "Amaryllis" 
over-against  "  Rosalind."  In  each  case  the  thing  was 
real,  and  the  Mantuan's  gratitude  for  his  farm  'con- 
tinued' to  him  by  the  influence  ofOctavianus  [=  Augus- 
tus] is  true  as  the  young  Englishman's  love-anguish  for 
his  failure  with  "  Rosalind."  It  is  sheer  folly  to  argue 
for  'conventionalism'  and  'artificiality'  as  appertaining 
to  either.  The  second  and  third  Eclogues  of  Vergil 
are  written  "  after  Theocritus,"  but  with  the  note  of  the 
Latin  poet  throughout  ;  and  once  more  Corydon's  hope- 
less love  and  warnings  of  Alexis  not  to  presume  over- 
much on  his  beauty,  and  the  quarrelling  conversation  of 
the  two  shepherds — Menalcas  and  Damoetas — and  the 
challenge  to  a  singing-match,  are  genuine  and  to  the 
life,  not  '  conventional  '  nor  '  artificial'  And  this 
holds  of  Spenser's  second  and  third,  February  and 
March.  The  whole  four  arc  transcripts  from  Nature 
and  the  cvery-day  life  that  were  beneath  the  eyes  of 
the  two  Poets.  The  fourth  Eclogue  is  unique,  and  one 
gladly  accepts  the  idea  that  Vergil  had  read  Isaiah  in 
the  Septuagint.  Spenser's  fourth  Eclogue,  for  Octa- 
vianus,  lately  married  to  Scribonia,  and  whose  child 
was  destined  to  be  the  world's  wonder,  exalts  Elizabeth. 


THE  "  S/lFPriERD'S  CALENDARS  107 

I  am  at  a  loss  to  know  on  what  ground  the  glorincation 
of  even  Augustus  is  to  be  deemed  congruous  and  that 
of  Elizabeth  incongruous.  They  who  so  think,  over- 
exalt  the  Roman  and  miss  the  hold  that  the  great 
Queen  had  on  the  nation  at  its  greatest — a  hold  that 
made  it  (historically)  true  to  put  the  highest  laudation 
of  Elizabeth  into  the  lips  of  Hobbinol  and  Thenot  as 
shepherds,  and  peculiarly  fitting  that  Hobbinol  should 
sing  the  "  laye "  which  Colin  Clout  had  made  of 
"  fay  re  Eliza."  Courthope  {T/ie  Genius  of  Spenser,  i  868, 
pp.  29,  30)  says  of  it,  "  The  song  indeed  is  so  graceful 
that  we  almost  forget  the  absurdity  of  the  associa- 
tions." The  "  absurdity  of  the  associations  "  is  in  the 
critic's  imagination.  How  was  it  '  absurd  '  that  one  of 
her  shepherd-subjects  (supposed),  having  got  possession 
of  this  admittedly  '"  graceful  song,"  should  have  "  sung  " 
it  to  his  first  listener  }  From  earliest  ages  the  Shepherd 
has  been  the  Singer.  The  fifth  Eclogue  is  the  apotheosis 
of  Julius  Cajsar  ;  and  whilst  for  exquisiteness  of  rhythm 
and  pervading  melody  and  subtlety  of  workmanship 
there  is  nothing  in  all  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  for  one 
moment  to  be  put  in  comparison,  the  fact  that  it  is  an 
, apotheosis  of  Julius  Caesar  warrants  the  "  newe  Poete  " 
in  his  high  praise  of  his  heroes  and  heroines,  and 
traverses  the  objection  of  unsuitability  to  "  pastoral 
poetry."  The  sixth  Eclogue, — in  so  far  as  it  could 
be  in  celebrating  Varus, — is  theological  or  theological- 
philosophical,  and  again  gives  sanction  to  Spenser's  sixth 
Eclogue  ("  June  ").  I  must  reiterate  that  "  points  in 
Christian  theology"  were  ///t' points  then  of  the  common 
talk  of  "  gentle  and  simple,"  and  that  not  neutrall)'  or 
lukewarmly,   but    vehemently.      It   was    therefore   once 


io8  THE  '^SHEPHERD'S   CALENDAR:' 

more  in  keeping  to  make  Piers  and  Palinode  converse 
as  representatives  of  Protestant  and  Catholic  ;  and  so 
again  in  July  and  September.  No  one  in  sympathy  with 
the  '  Reformation,'  no  one  in  sympathy  with  freedom 
as  against  bondage  and  conscience  as  against  unintelli- 
gent and  grovelling  superstition,  will  be  '  weary '  of 
these  Eclogues,  or  fail  to  love  Spenser  for  his  balanced 
attitude  (not  '  coldness  ')  toward  the  old  religion,  spite 
of  his  own  strenuous  revolt  from  it.  I  am  not  here  to 
justify  the  Paganish  intermixtures  of  "Pan"  and  others; 
but  I  remember  Lycidas,  and  am  silent.  Nay  more,  I 
am  taken  captive  by  the  magnificence  of  the  conception 
that  adumbrates  "  great  god  Pan  "  in  God  manifest  in 
the  flesh,  Jesus  Christ.  The  seventh  Eclogue  corre- 
sponds to  the  third,  as  the  Calendar  song-matching 
Eclogues  speak  back  and  forward  one  to  another.  The 
eighth  Eclogue  once  more  has  Theocritus  in  reminis- 
cence, as  Spenser  had  Marot  and  Sanazzaro,  and  Damon 
and  Alphesibceus  sanction  the  Calendars  love-stratagems 
and  'bewitched'  opinions.  The  ninth  Eclogue  is  again 
personal,  as  the  first  ;  and  so  the  personal  elements  of 
Spenser's  "Rosalind"  and  other  disappointment  Eclogues 
are  justified  and  natural.  The  tenth  Eclogue  is  in  honour 
of  Vergil's  friend  Cornelius  Gallus — after  Theocritus' 
first  Idyll — and  the  Shepherd's  Calendar's  celebration 
of  Grindal  and  Aylmer  answer  exactly.  We  thus  per- 
ceive that  if  the  Eclogues  of  Vergil  are  to  be  accepted 
as  the  model  of  "  Pastoral  Poetry,"  then  the  Eclogues 
of  Spenser  violate  none  of  the  laws  of  the  great 
Mantuan's  Eclogues.  I  am  aware  that  'conventional' 
and  "  artificial "  are  bandied  by  the  critics  against 
Vergil  as  a  pastoral  poet  ;  but  it  is  all  mere  assertion. 


THE  "  SHEPHERD'S  CALENDARr  109 

Equally  is  it  mere  assertion — bating  bits — of  the 
Slieplurd's  CaUndixr. 

A  similar  examination  of  the  Idylls  of  Theocritus 
would  yield  the  same  results.  No  more  than  the 
Eclogues  of  Vergil  are  these  purely  rustic  "  pastoral " 
after,  e.g.,  the  type  of  John  Clare's  Slieplicrd's  Calendar, 
or  the  poetry  of  Charles  Kent,  and  too  much  of  Dante 
G.  Rossctti.  In  these  you  have  words  taking  the  place 
of  colours,  the  brush  of  the  pen.  You  have  delicate 
and  nice  observation  and  fixing  of  the  look  of  Nature 
in  the  cunningest  way  :  but  it  is  not  poetry.  But  in 
Theocritus  as  in  Vergil,  and  in  Spenser  as  in  both,  we 
have  the  humanities  and  the  mysteries  of  this  "  un- 
intelligible world."  Emphatically  in  .Spenser  we  have 
Wordsworth's  great  "Evening  Ode"  couplet  fulfilled, — 

An  intermingling  of  Heaven's  pomp  is  spread 
On  ground  which  British  shepherds  tread. 

Theocritus  is  par  excellence  the  pastoral  poet  of  all 
literature.  Nowhere  are  to  be  found  such  vivid  pictures, 
such  child-like  naturalnesses,  such  child-like  breaks  of 
humour  (as  in  the  description  of  Galatea's  dog),  such 
child-like  pure-white  tears.  I  do  not  dream  of  mating 
the  Shepherd's  Calendar  with  the  Idjlls.  But  as  to  their 
congruity  and  the  Calendar's  incongruity,  as  to  their 
being  "  in  keeping,"  and  Spenser's  Eclogues  not,  I  must 
deny  it  all.  No  more  than  as  compared  with  Vergil 
does  the  ShepJurd's  Calendar  violate  the  law  of  the 
Pastoral.  If  Spenser  is  himself  "  Colin  Clout,"  equally 
is  Theocritus  '  Simichidas,'  and  if  the  English  poet 
works  in  his  own  experiences,  in  shine  and  shadow, 
the    Greek   does   the   same.      Still    more  in   agreement 


no  THE  -SIIEPHERirS   CALENDAR:' 

with    Spenser,  if  he  has   introduced   his  own  personal 
friends  and  contemporary  events,  so  does  the  Syracusan. 
One  needs  but  to  name  Nicias  of  Miletus  and  his  wife 
Theugenis,  Aratus  the  astronomer-poet,  the  Jews  under 
Ptolemy  Philadelphus,  King  Hiero  the  Second,  and  the 
repartees  of  the  Lydiasta.  and  Bucolist.^.      These  soar 
far  beyond  the  simple  '  pastoral.'      Then,  as  in  Spenser, 
the  Idylls  classify  themselves  as  bucolic  (ist  to  i  ith— 
2nd    only    partially,   as    14th,    15th,   and    21st),  erotic 
(I  2th,  18th,  19th,  20th,  23rd,  27th  and  29th),  laudatory 
(1 6th  and    17th),  epical  (22nd,   24th,  25th  and  26th), 
epistolary  (28th),  and  bacchic  (30th).     The  tempestuous 
passion    of    Sim^tha    (2nd    Idyll)    ranges    itself    with 
"Colin    Clout's"    for    "Rosalind,"    and    after-eclogues 
with  the  hopeless  love  of  the   Cyclops  in  the  Song  of 
Dama^tas.      I  must  therefore  pronounce  it  misdirected 
criticism  that  finds  fault  with  the  Shephcrcrs  Calendar's 
pastoral  because  of  the  introduction  into  its   Eclogues 
of  the  "  higher  strain."      Spenser  but  walked  in  the  foot- 
prints of  his  Mantuan  and   Syracusan  predecessors,  and 
what  is  stronger,  gathered  into  his  Calendar  the  persons 
and  places,  the  talk  and  experiences  of  the  period,      it 
cannot  be  necessary  at  this  time  of  day  to  argue  that 
not  only  did   Spenser  follow  the  classical    law  of  the 
Pastoral  in  introducing  "  points  of  Christian  theology 
and    personal    experiences,    but    that    he  has    poetized 
them       I  affirm  he  has  dene  so  beyond  Theocritus  and 
Vergil  whose  extra-pastoral  bits  do  not  show  them  at 
their    best.     The  final  words   of  Campbell   on    "  our- 
lesquing  ^sop  "  is  unadulterated  nonsense.     Just  such 
fable-tales  or  tale-fables-as  in  Doni  s  Moral  Phdosophy 
(1570)— were  the  chosen  medium  by  which  to  convey 


THE  "SHEPHERD'S  CALENDAR:'  m 

moral  and  religious  truths  and  apoloijies.*  Besides,  he 
mij^^ht  have  remembered  the  New  Testament  repre- 
sentation of  the  "wolves  in  sheep's  clothing,"  who  sought 
to  destroy  the  Good  Shepherd's  flock. 

Looking  in  another  direction — It  has  been  asserted 
that  the  S/wp/icrd's  Calendar  is  without  rural  framework 
or  local  colouring — by  'local  colouring'  not  meaning 
distinction  of  a  particular  place  or  district  (except  in 
certain  touches),  but  that  the  '  country'  is  not  depicted  in 
the  light  and  shadow  of  the  several  months.  That  is  to 
say,  that  the  successive  months  are  filled  in  without  rela- 
tion to  the  particular  month.  But  such  criticism  is  at 
once  blind  and  deaf.  I  will  not  claim  for  the  S/iepherd's 
Calendar  any  such  delicacies  of  Watteau-like  picturings 
of  pastoral  scenery  and  movement  as  in  the  Hylas  of 
Theocritus  (13th  Idyll),  or  such  charm  of  vivid 
painting  as  in  the  7th  Idyll  (at  close),  or  in  the  25  th 
(11-  34—50)-  The  description  of  the  capture  of  the 
youth  by  the  love-thrilled  Naiads  is  incomparable.  And 
so  with  his   Gossips,  and  Honey-thief,  and  Fisherman. 

*  Campbell  was  lazy  and  second-hand  in  his  readin>^.  In 
all  likelihood  he  simply  appropriated  a  stupid  criticism  in  the 
Retrospective  Rcz'tezv,  vol.  xii.,  pp.  142—165,  on  "Spenser's 
Minor  Poems."  Elsewhere  I  quote  a  superb' specimen  of  this 
Critic's  valuation  of  the  Amuretti.  'lakt>  this  of  the  Shepherd's 
Calendar—"  The  Poet's  object  being  to  approximate  his  pastorals 
to  what  might  be  considered  the  language  and  station  of  the 
interlocutors,  it  is  strange  that  he  should  have  so  departed  from 
nature  and  common  sense,  as  to  introduce  them  discussing  ques- 
tions of  theology,  and  reasoning  upon  the  relative  merits  of  the 
Catholic  and  Protestant  faiths.  Such  disquisitions  are  totally 
out  of  character,  they  are  alien  from  the  simplicity  of  pastoral 
life ;  they  presuppose  a  state  of  civilization  wholly'  inconsistent 
with  the  ignorance  of  '  shi-pherd  swains'"  (p.  143).  All  mere 
ignorance— as  superabundantly  proved  in  the  text  and  our 
Appendix  B. 


112  IHE   ^'SHEPHERD'S   CALENDARS 

I  will  not  even  assert  for  Spenser  the  nature-depiction 
in  the  Shepherd's  Calendar,  of  Chaucer,  in  such  delicious 
bursts  as  these — 

There  sprang  the  violete  alle  newe 
And  freshe  periwinke  riche  of  hewc 
And  flowres  yelowe,  white  and  rede  ; 
Sic  plenty  grewe  there  never  in  mede. 
Ful  gay  was  alle  the  ground,  and  queynt 
And'powdred,  as  men  had  it  peynt 
With  many  a  fresh  and  sondry  flour 
That  casten  up  ful  good  savour. 

The  grounde  was  greene  ypowdred  with  daisie 

And  the  river  that  1  sat  upon 
It  made  such  a  noise  as  it  ron 
Accordant  with  the  birdes  harmony  ; 
Methought  it  was  the  best  melody 
That  might  been  yherd  of  any  man. 

And  deeper  still,  in  asserting  love  of  Nature  in  a  man's 
heart  as  a  protection  from  'evil  desires' — 

And  those  that  wore  chaplets  on  their  heads 
Of  fresh  woodbine,  be  such  as  never  -were 
To  love  untrue,  in  word,  thought  or  deed. 

Nor  may  I  claim  for  him  the  unexpectednesses  of 
George  Withcr's  Shepherd's  Hunting,  with  its  glorious 
enthusiasm  within  prison-walls  in  asserting  inspiration — 

By  the  murmur  of  a  spring 
Or  the  least  bough's  rustling  ; 
Pjy  a  daisy,  whose  leaves  spread, 
Shut  when  Titan  goes  to  bed 
Or  a  shady  bush  or  tree. 

Much  less  can  I  mate  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  with 
the  dainty  realism  of  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  of  John 
Clare.  But  if  we  read  sympathetically,  the  Shep/ierd's 
Calendar   proves    itself  to  be    true  to  itself  within   its 


U 


THK  '^SHEPHERD'S  CALENDAR. 


13 


limits.  There  is  not  the  Landscape  as  a  Landscape- 
painter  puts  it  on  his  canvas  ;  but  there  is  the  back- 
ground of  greenwood  and  sky  and  sea  of  the  supreme 
portrait-painters,  earlier  and  later.  I  take  the  Eclogues 
in  order.  "  January  "  is  appropriately  and  suggestively 
heralded  by  note  of  "  Winter's  wastful  spight,"  and  one 
of  those  "  sunneshine  days  "  on  its  departure,  and  the 
"flock  "that  had  "bene  long  ypent "  is  'Med  forth"; 
and  how  life-like  is  their  condition  ! — 

So  faynt  they  woxe,  and  feeble  in  the  folde, 
That  now  unethes  their  feete  could  them  uphold. 

Be  it  remembered,  too,  that  contemporary  with  Spenser 
the  whole  of  this  wide  '  North-East  Lancashire'  district 
was  a  sheep-farming,  wool-growing,  and  wool-manufac- 
turing centre.  The  Spending  of  Robert  Nowell  certifies 
to  hundreds  of  gifts  of  "woollen  doth"— all  home- 
made. Hence  shepherds  and  shepherd-life  were  beneath 
the  'newe  poet's'  eyes  every  day.  The  whole  is  shut 
up  "by  the  frosty  Night"  flinging  her  "mantle  black" 
over  the  dim  shadowy  sky.  "February"  is  too  near 
to  "January"  to  be  differentiated;  but  with  finest 
insight  it  is  allied  to  "  Januar>'."  It  is  still  a-cold, 
and  spite  of  the  chance  "  sunneshine  day  "  Cuddie  has 
to  ask  : — 

Ah  for  pittie,  such  rancke  Winter's  rage 
These  bitter  blastes  never  ginne  t'asswage  } 

and  one's  teeth  chatter  as  we  read  on  : — 

The  kene  cold  blowes  throut^h  my  beaten  hyde. 

What    a     new    thing    in     English    poetry    was    an 
imaginative-fanciful  metajihor  like  this  : — 


I. 


8 


114  THE  '^SHEPHERD'S   CALENDARS 

..  [the]  faded  Oake 

' ' '  Whose  bodie  is  sere,  whose  branches  broke, 

■    '  ■  "  Whose  naked  armes  stretch  tmto  the  fire. 


"  March  "  is  near  to  "  February "  as  "  February  "  to 
"  January,"  but  "  Willie,"  addressing  Thomalin,  tells 
us  that  it  is  unseasonable  to  be  "  sytten  "  so  "  overwent 
with  woe  " 

.   .  .   Upon  so  fayre  a  morrow, 
wliich  prophesies  by  its  fairness  and  shining  that — 

The  joyous  time  nowe  nighes  fast 
That  shall  alegge  this  bitter  blast 
And  slake  the  Winter's  sorrowe. 

And  what  a  sweet  March  picture  is  this ! — 

The  grasse  nowe  ginnes  to  be  refresht, 
The  swallow  peepes  out  of  her  nest, 

and  the  hawthorn  "  begins  to  budde,"  and  Flora  calls 
'  eche  flower  "  to  make  ready  for  May.  Beneath  the 
great  protecting  shelter  of  Pendle  Spenser  doubtless 
drew  all  these  from  what  he  saw.  Only  this  "  merry 
month  of  May"  it  has  been  my  delight  to  foot  it  along 
(literally)  miles  of  'hawthorn,'  and  to  find  the  air 
fragrant  with  '  briar '  (woodbine),  in  this  very  district— 
from  Ilurstwood  to  Worsthorn,  and  round  by  '  Spenser's 
farm.'      "  April "    is    an    encomium    of    Elizabeth,    and 

she not  the   scene    in    which   Thenot   and    Hobbinol 

converse— is  the  main  end  of  this  Eclogue  ;  but  even 
here  "  the  gasping  furious  thirst "  for  "  rayne "  and 
the  "  April  shoure "  are  used  to  tell  of  the  sorrow  of 
Hobbinol,  while  the  "  twincling  starres "  take  them 
"homeward."     "  Maye"   is  so  pre-eminently  Chaucer's 


TF{E  '^  ^HEPHERD\^  CALEXDARr  115 

month  that  "  Colin  Clout  "  could  not  dare  to  rival  him— 
as  how  could  he  ?     Witness  this 

Hard  is  his  hert  that  loveth  nought 
In  May,  when  al  this  mirth  is  wrought; 
When  he  may  on  these  branches  hear  ' 
The  smale  birddes  syngen  clere, 
Her  blessful  sweete  song  pitous 
And  in  this  season  delytous 
When  Love  appeareth,  .  .  . 

"  May  "  did  indeed  make  our  grand  old  Singer 

....  pipe  so  merrily  as  never  none. 
But  this  Eclogue  starts  with  the  old   refrain   of  "the 
merry    moneth    of    May,"    when    "all    is    yclad    with 
pleasaunce."      Let    the    reader    frame    in   his    memory 
this  single  picture : 


...  .  the  ground  with  grasse,  the  woods 
\Vith  greene  leaves,  the  bushes  with  bloosming  buds 
Youghthes  folk  now  Hocken  in  every  where 
To  gather  May  buskets  and  smelling  brere  • 
And  home  they  hasten  the  postes  to  di^^^ht    ' 
And  all  the  Kirke  pillours  eare  dav  light  ' 
A  'i    H^^^'^^'ome  buds,  and  sweete  Eglantine 
And  girlonds  of  roses,  and  Sopps  in  wine. 

"June"  is  sunnier  than  "  Maye, "  and  Hobbinol 
and  Cohn  Clout  are  couched  in  a  "  pleasaunt  syte " 
removed  from  "other  shades  "—the  word  "shades" 
suggesting  the  glow  of  heat  peculiar  to  the  month— 
and  then  comes  this  delicious  and  realistic  descrip- 
tion : —  ' 

Tell  me,  what  wants  me  here  to  worke  delyte  ? 
Ihe  simple  ayre,  the  gentle  warbling  wynde 

So  calm,  so  coole 

The  grassye  grounde  with  daintye  Daysies  diifht 
The  Bramble  bush,  where  Byrds  of  every  kynde  ' 
lo  the  waters  fall  their  tunes  attemper  right 


ii6  THE  '^  SHEPHERJy  S  CALENDAR:' 

This  is  a  bit  from  Hurstwood  in  its  secluded  loveliness. 
The  incontaminate  '  ayre,'  the  'gentle  warbling  wynde' 
through  the  '  greenwood,'  the  calmness,  the  coolness 
even  with  roads  adust  outside,  the  'grassye  grounde 
with  daintye  daysies  diglit,'  the  '  bramble  bush  '  in  every 
nook  and  corner,  and  the  '  byrds  '  attempering  right 
their  'tunes'  to  the  never  absent  'waters'  fall'  for  miles 
on  miles,  the  visitor  of  to-day  sees.  It  z>  the  '  waters' 
fair — no  level,  languid,  canal-like  Southern  stream,  but 
our  Northern,  rock-bedded,  rushing,  tinkling,  musical 
'  waters.'  No  one  who  has  eyes  and  ears  open  in  the 
Lancashire  'Land  of  Spenser'  but  must  be  struck  with 
the  universality  of  the  '  waters'  fall,'  and  the  Poet's 
inevitable  introduction  of  it,  from  the  Sonnets  of  the 
1' heat  re  of  Worldlings  to  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  and 
Faery  Queen,  and  everywhere. 

"Jul)e"  is  again  an  encomium  of  'pastors'  by 
'  shepherds,'  and  the  figures,  not  the  landscape,  are 
prominent,  ]5ut  "  yonder  bancke "  holds  the  "  gote- 
herdc,"  who  has  allowed  his  "  goats  and  kids  " 
themselves  "  to  shrowd  among  the  bushes  rancke," 
and  by  a  touch  here  and  there,  "  hyll  "  and  "  dale  " 
are   etched  for    us,   and    above  in   the  molten   sky 

The  Sonne  hath  reared  up 
His  fyrie-footed  teeme. 

A  peculiarity  of  Hurstwood  and  the  Pendle  district  is 
also  here  to  be  noted — to  wit,  that  the  '  banckes'  are 
'  tvinding  witches'  accommodating  themselves  to  the 
'winding'  of  the  streams,  and  having  a  character  quite 
distinct  from  the  straight-lined  'banckes'  ordinarily. 
Just  below   the   house    of  'Edmund    Spenser'   in    the 


THK  "SHRPHERiyS  CALENDARS  117 

villaf^c,  there  is  to-day  a  long  '  winding  witch  '  of  the 
ver>'  type  the  Poet  missed  in  the  *  moorland.' 

"  August  "  reflects  Theocritus  and  Vergil,  and  the 
"  delectable  controversie "  even  verbally  resembles 
Idyll  and  Eclogue  ;  but  even  in  "  August  "  the 
"  prizes  "  are  drawn  from  things  belonging  to  the 
month,  as  "  yonder  spotted  lamb "  and  "  swcete 
violets,"  while  "  l^onibell "  is  suitably  dressed  "  in  a 
frocke  of  gray  "  and  in  "  a  kirtle  of  greene  saye,"  and 
the   Nightingale   is  heard — 

That  blessed  byrd,  that  spends  her  time  of  sleope, 
In  songs  and  plaintive  pleas. 

"  September  "  —  as  seen  earlier  —  is  in  broken 
English,  to  represent  Jean  Vander  Noodt  ;  and  it 
is  in  keeping  that  "  Diggon  Davie  "  should  pay  small 
heed  to  scenery.  But  Summer  is  past  and  "  dirkc 
night  doth  hast,"  and  the  "  foule  wagmoires  "  are 
getting  rain-swollen.  "  October  "  is  only  "  Septem- 
ber "  elongated  ;  but  it  has  been  milder  than  wont. 
And  so  the  '  peacocks '  are  seen  unfolding  their 
"  spotted  trane  "  full  of  "  Argus'  eyes,"  such  as  the 
Poet  might  well  have  seen  at  Hurstwood  or  Worsthorn 
Hall.  Naturally  "  October  "  is  sung  of  within-doors. 
"  November"  is  elegiac,  and  is  a  heart-song  in  honour 
of  a  patron-friend's  "little  daughter,"  and  it,  too,  is  sung 
within-doors.  But  within  doors  is  reminiscence  of 
the  "  time  of  Merimake,"  under  "  the  cocked  hay,"  as 
foil  to  "  sadde  Winter  "  that  "  welked  hath  the  day." 
Finally,  "  December  "  brings  before  us  "  Colin,"  taking 
advantage  of  a  "  sunne.shinc  day,"  as  in  "  Januarie," 
to     seclude     himself    in     the     Pendle     Forest,    whose 


ii8  THE  "SHEPHERD'S  CALENDARS 

perpetual  greenery  would  early  furnish  "  a  secrette 
shade  "  for  his  "  piteous  mone  "  over  "  Rosalind."  But 
he  speedily  retreats  home  :  for 

Winter  is  come  that  blowes  the  bitter  blaste. 
It  is  thus  seen  that  each  month  has  its  own 
characteristics,  and  that  those  who  write  otherwise 
have  simply  not  read  the  poems  they  find  fault 
with.  Throughout,  Spenser  is  faithful  in  his  local 
colouring  in  parallelism  v;ith  his  fidelity  to  the 
subjects  that  he  makes  his  '  shepherds  '  talk  of  It 
was  not  at  random  he  said — 
Thus  chatten  the  people  in  theyr  steads  ("September,"  1. 132). 

The  Shepherd's  Calendar,  as  everybody  knows, 
was  accompanied  by  a  "  Glosse  "  about  as  large  as  the 
Poems  themselves.  This — as  well  as  the  epistle- dedi- 
catory to  Harvey  and  the  general  preface — was  furnished 
by  the  Poet's  fellow-student  at  Pembroke,  Edward 
Kirke.  I  have  elsewhere  said  all  needful  or  all  I  know 
of  him  (Vol.  III.,  pp.  cviii-cxiv.)  But  it  is  necessary 
to  take  notice  of  the  relation  of  Spenser  to  the 
"  Glosse  "  and  other  apparatus  of  the  volume.  There 
cannot  be  a  question,  surely,  that  the  Poet  entrusted 
his  Calendar  to  Edward  Kirke,  with  the  express 
understanding  that  he  was  to  prepare  such  "  Glosse." 
Nor  can  there  be  any  more  doubt  of  Kirke's  having 
received  direct  help  from  Spenser  himself,  as  far  as  he 
thought  well  to  do  so.  In  some  of  the  notes  on  the 
"  Glosse  "  there  are  blunders  of  etymology  (classical), 
and  even  in  English,  that  we  cannot  imagine  Spenser 
would  have  let  pass  :  e.g.,  the  meaning  of  Aeclogue,  the 
origin  of  elfs,  goblins  (as  words),  and  the  like.     There 


THE  '^  SHEPHERD'S  CALEXDAR."  119 

are  others  in  which  Kirke  avows  candidly  that  he 
does  not  know  the  references,  and  can  only  guess, 
and  guesses  wrongly.  There  are  still  others  that  he 
plainly  blunders  over.  For  example,  in  annotating 
"  the  widowc's  daughter  of  the  glenn,"  he  explains 
that  by  "  glen  "  is  meant  "  a  country*  hamlet  or  borough," 
which  it  never  did  or  could  mean.  Spenser  uses  it 
again  {F.  Q.,  B.  III.,  c.  vii.,  st.  6),  where  Florimell  finds 
the  witch's  cottage  in  a  "  gloomy  glen,"  certainly  not 
(as  Professor  Dowden  has  well  said  in  his  "  Heroines 
of  Spenser")  in  "  a  country  hamlet  or  borough."*  Never- 
theless, Spenser's  sanction  to  the  "  Glosse "  must 
have  been  definite,  and  if  not  so  direct  as  Johnson's 
to  Boswell,  sufficient  to  give  weight  to  all  personal 
explanations.  Gabriel  Harvey,  in  one  of  the  many 
overlooked  passages  in  his  Letters  to  Spenser  (as 
"Immerito"),  writing  of  a  versifier  encouraged  by 
him,  says  :  "  His  afternoon's  Theame  was  borrowed 
out  of  him,  who  one  in  your  Coate,  they  say  is  as  much 
beholding  unto,  as  any  Planet  or  Starre  in  Heaven  is 
unto  the  Sunne  :  and  is  quoted  as  your  self  best 
remember  in  the  Glosse  of  your  October  : — 

Giunto  Alessandro  ala  famosa  tomba 

Del  fero  Achille,  sospirando  disio, 

O  foriunato  che  si  chiara  tromba 

Trouvasti  .  .  .  ."  [Vol.  II.,  p.  244] 
I 
•  Cornhill,  as  before.  Of  course  V..  K.  may  either  not  have 
known  accuratelywhereRo.salindlived, or  mayhavewishedtothrow 
an  indefiniteness  over  the  locale.  It  does  seem  scarcely  possible 
he  could  think  '  tjlen  't=  hamlet.  But  in  any  case  it  goes  to  prove 
that,  though  largt-ly  informed  by  Spenser,  he  was  kept  in  the 
dark  on  certain  points.  Dr.  A.  H.  Murray  has  been  good  enough 
to  favour  me  with  e.xamples  of  the  use  of  '  glen '  before  and  con- 
temporary with  Spenser.     See  Glossary,  s.v.  (Vol.  X.). 


120  THE  ''  SHEPHERD'S  CALENDARS 

{Gallant  Letter  ...  as  before).  This  is  inten- 
tionally mystified,  but  the  least  it  can  mean  is  that 
E.  K.  wore  the  "  coate "  or  livery  of  Spenser,  and 
wrote  his  "  Glosse "  as  the  Poet's  "  servitor."  This 
gives  the  highest  sanction  to  the  "  Glosse."  It  is  to 
be  recalled  also  that  Kirke  himself  puts  it  modestly 
yet  unmistakably  —  "I  thought  good  to  take  the 
paines  upon  me,  the  rather  that  by  meanes  of  some 
familiar  acquaintaunce  I  was  made  privie  to  his 
counsell  and  secret  meaning  in  them,  as  also  in  sundry 
other  works  of  his."  Among  the  "  sundry  other 
works "  was  the  Dreames  ;  and  unless  as  a  whole 
Spenser  had  been  satisfied  with  E.  K.'s  "  Glosse " 
in  the  Calendar  he  never  would  have  confided  the 
Dreames  to  him  for  like  commenting  ;  or  if  the 
Dreames  preceded — as  is  possible — he  must  have 
been  satisfied  with  its  "  Glosse,"  or  he  would  not  have 
similarly  given  him  the  Calendar. 

The  "  newe  poete,"  notwithstanding  the  anonymity 
of  the  Shepherd's  Calendar,  became  famous  at  a 
bound.  Long  before  the  Faery  Queen  placed  him 
at  the  head  of  English  poetry,  without  rival,  the 
most  edged  tongues  were  mute,  or  if  they  spoke,  like 
Nashe,  it  was  with  "  bated  breath "  and  profoundest 
homage.  It  was  something  for  a  young  man,  in  his 
twenty-sixth  year,  thus  to  awake  famous  of  a  morning, 
and  that  fame  never  to  pale  of  its  lustre — a  sunrise 
without  sunset.  When  he  passed  from  Rochester  to 
London — as  we  have  seen  was  most  probably  his 
course — he  bore  his  passports  with  him.  As  he  was 
in  Ireland  in  1577,  he  had  before  entered  the  highest 
circles,  of  the  Lcicesters  and    Sidneys.     And   it  now 


LOVE-EXPERIEXCES— SHINE  AXD  SHADOW.  121 

falls  to  us  to  examine  the  most  illustrious  of  all  these 
friendships  (unless  Ralegh's  is  to  be  excepted,  or  at 
least  paralleled) — viz.,  with  Sir  Philip  Sidney.* 

VIII.  Love-Experiences — Shine  and  Shadow. 

///  peace.  Love  tunes  the  shepherd's  reed  ; 
In  war,  he  mounts  the  warrior's  steed ; 
In  hails,  in  gay  attire  is  seen  ; 
In  hamlets,  dances  on  the  green  ; 
Love  rules  the  court,  the  camp,  the  grove, 
And  men  below,  and  saints  above ; 
For  love  is  heaven,  and  heaven  is  love. 

Sir  Walter  Scott. 

When  some  years  ago  it  was  my  good  fortune  to 
reveal  for  the  first  time  in  their  several  '  Lives,'  that 
in  the  case  of  Phineas  Fletcher — poet  of  the  Locusts 
and  Purple  Island, — John  Donne — subtle  Singer  and 
great  Preacher, — and  John  Howe — most  illustrious 
of  Nonconformist  Divines, — a  strenuous  conflict  of 
"  flesh  and  spirit "  preceded  their  ultimately  beautiful, 
meek  and  holy  lives,  it  came  as  a  surprise  upon  most. 
For  the  ideal  of  them  all  was  of  flawless  un-passioned 
men.  It  ought  not  to  have  been  a  surprise.  One 
finds  that  with  large  and  sensitive  natures  the  tran- 
quillity and  "  beauty  of  holiness  "  of  the  regenerate  life 
are  rarely  if  ever  attained  without  strivings,  stumblings, 
fallings.  Nor  is  this  other  than  we  might  wish.  It 
humanizes  the  "  great  ones  "  to  thus  discover  that  they 
were  of  "like  passions"  with  ourselves,  and  no  'perfect 
monsters'  or  monsters  of  perfection.    St.  John,  the  apostle 

•  As  this,  though  of  profoundest  importance,  is  in  a  sense 
ancillary,  its  statement  and  discussion  I  transfer  to  Appendi.x  I. 
The  genuine  Spenserian  will  not  fail  to  turn  to  this,  of  his  grace 


122   LO  VE-EXPERIENCEi,—SHlNE  A ND  SHADO TV. 

of  Love,  is  none  the  less  but  all  the  more  near  and  dear 
to  us  that  by  the  inflexible  integrity  of  Holy  Scripture 
we  ascertain  how  fiery,  fierce,  rash-spoken,  ambitious 
he  was  originally  ;  so  that  only  the  conquering  grace 
and  strength  of  the  God  of  grace  mastered,  subdued, 
"  changed,"  sanctified  him.  That  high-placed  lake  in 
the  "  far  East "  land,  which  fills  the  crater  of  an  extinct 
volcano  thus  becomes  the  very  symbol  of  St.  John  as 
he  was  primarily,  and  as  he  grew  to  be  under  the 
supreme  touch.  For  the  same  reason,  it  is  a  relief  to 
discover  the  seeming-perfect  Daniel  making  penitent 
confession  of  his  sins  in  common  with  his  people. 

The  accepted  ideal  of  Edmund  Spenser  is  of  one 
pure  to  stainlessness.  The  inviolate  sanctity  of  his 
song — for  only  a  morbid  and  unwholesome  and  arti- 
ficial morale  sniffs  out  dirty  passages  to  bring  him 
in  scabrenx  in  the  Faery  Queen  *  — has  been  trans- 
ferred to  the  Singer.  He  himself  gives  hints  of 
"envies"  and  "jealousies"  and  "ylwillcrs"  among  con- 
temporaries ;  but  of  the  scarcely  numerable  notices 
of  him  from  1578-9  onward — and  I  have  gleaned 
many  in  all  manner  of  places — none  has  .sprung 
to  the  light  with  "evil  word"  or  "evil  deed"  against 
him — apart  from  political  differences,  as  in  Ireland. 
Even  the  irrepressible  Thomas  Nashe  draws  in  his 
scorpion  tongue,  and  never  names  the  "  new  poete  " 
without  hu.sh  of  reverence.  He  flouts  and  jests  with 
Gabriel  Harvey  about  his  boa.sted  friendship  with 
Spenser,  but  only  to  set-off  his  homage  to  Spenser. 
Bishop  Hall,  in  his  Satires,  for  a  moment  has  his 
laugh  at  the  Ages  of  Faith  and  their  imaginary  knights 
*  Sec  Appendix  J.  '-   ''' 


LOVE-EXPERIEXCES— SHINE  AXD  SHADOW.    123 

pricking  over  the  plain  to  rescue  imaginary-distressed 
damsels  ;  but  he  abruptly  arrests  himself  with  an  awful 
sense  of  his  temerity.  Samuel  Daniel,  not  without 
quiet  quip  and  crank  of  "odious  comparison,"  refuses  to 
use  antique  words,  but  equally  with  Hall  affirms  his 
profoundest  regard  for  Spenser.  If  I  cannot  (with 
Professor  Hales — p,  xlvi,  as  before)  accept  alleged 
Shakespearean  allusion,  in  Spenser,  it  is  the  deepest 
satisfaction  to  a  Spenserian  to  recognise  the  influence 
of  Spenser  in  the  SONNETS  of  Shakespeare,  and  else- 
where. But  withal,  when  one  gets  near  enough,  it 
turns  out  that  our  "  sage  and  serious  Spenser  "  had  a 
good  deal  of  human  nature  in  him, — more  especially  it 
turns  out  that  his  Love-experiences  in  brightness  and 
gloom  were  not  limited  to  "Rosalind"  and  "Elizabeth." 
In  other  words,  it  is  historically  certain  that  he  was 
predisposed  to  passionate  captivities  to  woman,  and  was 
peculiarly  impressionable  and  intense  in  pursuit.  I  by 
no  means  seek  to  aggravate  the  evidence,  but  I  cannot 
consent  to  ignore  or  slur  over  the  evidence.  That 
evidence,  and  co-related  evidence  along  other  lines, 
demands  that  it  should  be  accentuated  that  the  sum- 
ming-up observation  "  he  never  threw  himself  frankly 
on  human  life  ;  he  always  viewed  it  through  a  veil  of 
mist,  which  greatly  altered  its  true  colours  and  often 
distorted  its  proportions "  (p.  36),  while  true  (in  a 
modified  sense)  of  the  "  human  life  "  in  the  imaginative 
world  of  the  h'aery  Queen,  does  not  hold  at  all  of 
Spenser's  actual  daily  life,  to  which  indeed  Dean 
Church  did  not  perhaps  point.  As  a  man  in  office 
and  employment  of  the  State,  every  memorial  of  that 
service   shows  him  as  practical,  sagacious,  businesslike, 


124  LOVE-EXPERIENCES— SHINE  AND  SHADOW. 

thorough,  strong,  and  in  energetic  contact  with,  and 
clear-eyed  in  the  presence  of  the  seething  "human  life" 
before  him.  As  a  Courtier  he  did  more  than  wear 
court- clothes.  He  entered  into  "the  ways  of  the 
Court."  He  liked  high-born  society.  He  is  at  his 
best  when  he  is  addressing  "  fair  women  and  brave 
men."  Fair  women- — as  to  him  beauty  incarnate — 
were  moons  to  his  billowy  heart.  Fair  women — saucy 
as  fair — were  to  him  an  attraction  and  a  snare.  I 
cannot  say  he  was  ensnared.  I  cannot  say  he  was 
not.  He  relished  breaking  away  o'  times  from  his 
heritage  of  staid  Puritanism — or  shall  I  say  t  he 
showed  that  '  gentle  '  Puritanism  was  not  the  gruff 
and  grim  thing  of  the  pseudo-historic  portraiture,  but 
that  it  could  smile  as  well  as  scowl,  enjoy  as  well 
as  denounce,  take  as  well  as  refuse  the  good  of  this 
present  life.  All  his  portraits  present  him  richly 
dressed.  All  his  associations  bring  him  before  us  as 
moving  among  the  highest.  All  his  incidentally  out- 
gleaming  habits  place  him  in  accord  with  the  gaieties 
of  the  time.  "  Divine  tobacco  "  is  his  epithet  for  his 
friend  Ralegh's  famous  "  weed  "  ;  and  we  may  be  sure 
he  smoked  a  pipe  by  Mulla  and  at  Youghall.  He  toys 
with  and  returns  on  the  gorgeous  and  splendid.  He 
thrills  and  throbs  under  the  spell  of  "the  Passions" 
(realistic,  not  the  thin  abstractions  of  Collins).  Every- 
where he  is  a  human  being,  and  no  Platonic  dreamer 
or  misanthropic  ascetic. 

Is  it  asked  whence  I  fetch  my  warrant  for  these 
conclusions  on  Spenser's  love-experiences  }  My  answer 
is  that,  shrouded  hitherto  in  his  ungainly  Latin,  Gabriel 
Harvey  in   certain   Letters  warns  and  counsels — being 


LOVE-EXPERIENCES—SHINE  AND  SHADOW.   125 

his  elder — liis  gaj'  yoiuiL^  pleasure-seeking  friend  in  such 
sort  as  leaves  no  doubt  on  the  matter.  It  had  been 
reported  to  him  not  unfriendlily,  or  unfriendlily  repeated, 
that  his  "  Immerito"  (Spenser)  was  sporting  a  great 
beard  and  moustachios  in  hazardous  associations  and 
in  a  still  more  hazardous  temperament.  The  reader 
will  perhaps  turn  to  the  vivid  picture  (Appendix  F). 
These  Latin  'secrets'  must  now  }'ield  themselves  to  the 
light  of  da\' — not  to  gratify  love  of  gossip,  not  as  being 
in  any  way  kin  with  suppressed  passages  in  Pepys  or 
Clarendon,  not  certainly  with  the  thought  of  lessening 
our  reverence  for  Spenser,  but  because  they  enable  us 
to  see  the  actual  man  as  distinguished  from  the  idealized, 
and  so  the  truth  as  against  fiction. 

Turning  then  to  "  A  Gallant  familiar  Letter  con- 
taining an  Answere  to  that  of  Immerito"  (as  before 
frequenter  J,  we  have  first  of  all  this  "  Postscript"  : 

"  God  helpe  us,  you  and  I  are  wisely  employed  (are  wee  not  ?) 
w'.ien  our  Pen  and  Inke  and  Time  and  Wit  and  all  runneth  away 
in  this  ^^oodly  yonkerly  veine,  as  if  the  world  had  nothing  else  for 
Nihilagfents  of  the  world.  Cuiusmodi  tu  nuc^-is,  atq.  ma;nis,  nisi 
una  mecum  (qui  solemni  quidam  cur  eiurando,  atq.  voto  obstringor, 
relicto  isto  amoris  Poculo,  iuris  Poculum  primo  quoq.  tempore 
e.xhaurire)  iam  tandem  aliquando  valedicas  (quod  tamen,  vnum 
tibi  credo  rmv  aSwarwi/  videbitur)  nihil  dicam  amplius.  Valeas. 
E  meo  municipio.     Nono  Calendas  Maias." 

The  close  thus  speaks  in  English  : 

"And  now  I  pray  at  length  may  you  bid  farewell  to  trifles  and 
idle  songs  of  this  sort,  e.xcept  along  with  me  (who  am  bound 
by  a  certain  solemn  oath  and  vow.  having  abandoned  that  cup  of 
Love  to  drain  the  cup  of  Law  at  the  first  opportunity) — do  you  (I 
say  at  long-last  bid  farewell  to  such  things) ;  and  yet  this  will 
appear  to  you,  I  fancy,  one  of  the  impossibles  \ahvvaTutv\. 
Nothing  more  will  I  say.  Farewell.  From  my  lodging.  The 
9th  day  before  the  calends  of  May." 


126  LOVE-EXPERIENCES— SHINE  AND  SHADOW. 

That  is  general,  though  quite  unmistakable,  of  his 
"  yonkerly  veine" — a  frequent  phrase  in  these  and  other 
letters  of  Harvey.  The  next  is  specific.  After  criticisms 
on  his  hexameters  and  discursive  observations  on  the 
"  artificial  rules  and  precepts"  of  the  new  Versifying, 
he  suddenly  concludes  with  this,  "  And  this  forsooth  is 

all you  are  like  to  borrowe  of  one  man  at  this 

time."  But  he  turns  the  page  and  breaks  forth,  as  will 
appear  immediately,  alarmed — the  word  is  not  too 
strong — by  Spenser's  own  Latin  postscript  to  his  letter 
to  Harvey  of  13th  April,  1580: 

"  Sed,  arnabo  te,  meum  Corculum  tibi  se  ex  animo  commendat 
plurimum  :  jamdiu  mirata,  te  nihil  ad  literas  suas  responsi 
dedisse.  Vide  quaiso,  ne  id  tibi  Capitale  sit :  Mihi  certe  quide- 
merit,  neque  tibi  hercle  impune,  ut  opinor,  Iterum  vale,  et  quam 
voles  saepe"  (Vol.  IX.,  p.  275). 

"Sed  amabo  te,  ad  Corculi  tui  delicatissimas  Literas,  prope 
diem  qui  Potero,  accuratissime  :  tot  interim  illam  exquisitissimis 
salutibus,  atq.  salutationibus  impertiens,  quot  habet  in  Capitulo, 
capillos  seminureos.  semiargenteos,  semigemmeos.  Quid  quaeris  ? 
Per  tuam  Venerem  altera  Rosalindula  est :  eamq.  non  alter,  sed 
item  ille  (tua,  ut  ante,  bona  cum  gratia),  copiose  amat  Hobbinolus. 
O  mea  Domina  Immerito,  mea  bellissima  Collina  Clouta,  multo 
plus  plurimum  salve  atq.  vale." 

The  latter  again  thus  speaks  in  English  : — 

"  But  bless  you !  I  will  answer  your  sweetheart's  charming 
letters  at  as  early  a  day  as  I  can,  with  the  greatest  care; 
in  the  meanwhile  handing  her  over  to  as  many  most  exquisite 
healths  and  salutations  as  she  has  hairs  half-golden,  half-silvern, 
half-gemmy  on  her  little  head.  What  do  you  ask  ?  By  your 
own  Venus  she  is  another  Rosalind,  and  her,  not  another,  but 
that  same  Hobbinol  (with  thy  good  leave. as  before)  loves  abun- 
dantly. O  my  Lady  Immerito,  my  most  lovely  Mistress  Colin 
Clout,  a  thousand  salutations  to  you,  and  so  farewell." 

This  other  Rosalind,  thus  chance-happed  on,  does 
indeed  make  "  sunshine"  in  the  "  shady  place"  of  these 


LOVE-EXPERIKXCES— SHINE  AND  SHADOW.  127 

dry,  dull  old  letters.  It  is  a  radiant  vision  that  is 
evoked  of  that  head  with  hair  "  half-golden,  half-silvern, 
half-gemmy"  (excusing  the  three  "semi's"  as  we  do 
"the  larger  and  lesser  half").  It  would  seem  that 
Spenser  was  fortuned  to  light  on  such  splendour  of 
hair.  The  quaint  "  Domina  Immerito,  mea  bellissima" 
recalls  to  mind  another  who  was  called  "  the  lady  "  of 
his  college — John  Milton  in  his  comely  young  man- 
hood. It  is  manifest  that  whatever  came  of  it,  Spenser 
was  "  in  love"  with  (a  now  unknown)  some  one.  It 
was  no  deposition  of  his  "  Rosalind."  She  ("  Rose 
Dyncley")  had  given  herself  to  her  Menalcas  (Aspinall) 
and  was  beyond  reach,  and  his  "  Elizabeth"  was  yet  to 
be  found  across  the  Irish  Channel. 

His  susceptibilities  and  proneness  to  this  "  yonkerly 
veine"  of  love,  is  further  glanced  at  onward,  with — 
unless  I  err  not — more  incisive  and  earnest  fear  of  his 
entanglement : — 

'  •  But  to  let  Titles  and  Tittles  passe,  and  come  to  the  verj'  pointe 
indeed,  which  so  neare  toucheth  my  lusty  Travayler  to  the  quicke, 
and  is  one  of  the  predominant  humors  y'  raigne  in  our  corhon 
Youths:  Heus  mi  tu.  bone  proce.  magne  niulicrcularum  amator, 
egregie  Pamphile.  cum  aliquando  tandem,  qui  te  manet,  qui 
mulierosos  omnes,  qui  universum  Fceministarum  sectam,  Respice 
finem.  And  I  shal  then  be  content  to  appcale  to  your  own 
learned  experience,  whether  it  be,  or  be  not,  too  true  :  quod 
dici  solet  ame  sa;pe :  ate  ipso  nonunq.  ab  expertis  omnibus 
quotidie  :  Amare  amarum  .  Nee  deus,  ut  perhibent,  Amor  est, 
sed  amaror  et  error  et  quicquid  in  eandcm  solet  sententiam 
Empiricus  aggregari.  Ac  scite  mihi  quide  Agrippa  Ovideanam 
illam,  de  Arte  Amandi,  €7r»-y/ia0^  videtur  correxisse,  meritoq., 
de  Arte  Meritricandi,  inscripsisse.  Nee  vero  inepte,  alius, 
Amatores  AUhumistis  comparavit,  aureos,  argenteosq.  monies, 
atq.  fiintes  lepide  somniantibus.  sed  interim  misere  suflfocatis : 
priEterq.  celebratum  ilium  Adami  Paradisum,  alium  esse  quend.im 
praedicavit,  stultorum  quoq.  Amaturumq.  mirabilem  Paradisum  : 
ilium   vere,    hune    phantastice,    fanaticeq.   beatorum.     Sed   haec 


128  LOVE-EXPERIENCES— SHINE  AND  SHADOW. 

alias,  fortassis  ubcrius.  Credite  mc  I  will  never  linne  [=  cease] 
baityng  at  you,  til  I  have  rid  you  quite  of  this  yonkerly  and 
womanly  humor." 

These  words  speak  in  English  thus  : 

"  Ah  me,  thou  good  suitor,  thou  great  lover  of  girls,  thou  noble 
Pamphilus  [=  all-lover],  consider  the  end  at  some  time  at  length 
which  awaits  thee  and  all  who  are  fond  of  women,  and  the  whole 
set  of  the  women-followers  [effeminate].  What  is  wont  to  be 
said  by  me  often  ;  by  thee  thyself  sometimes  ;  by  all  experienced 
persons  daily — To  love  is  a  bitter  thing.  Nor  is  love  as  good  as 
they  say,  but  bitterness  and  folly,  and  whatever  can  be  piled  up 
empirically  to  that  same  interest.  And  be  it  known  to  you  (let 
me  tell  you)  Agrippa  appears  to  have  corrected  that  Ovidian  title 
(eTTtypu^tu  =f7r(ypa^iji^)  'Concerning  the  Art  of  Loving,'  and 
deservedly  to  have  inscribed  it  '  Concerning  the  Art  of  Playing 
Harlot.'  Nor  has  some  one  else  inaptly  compared  lovers  to 
alchemists,  dreaming  pleasantly  of  golden  and  silvern  mountains 
and  fountains,  but  in  the  meanwhile  almost  blinded  and  even 
choked  with  the  enormous  fumes  of  coals ;  and  besides  that 
famous  Paradise  of  Adam,  he  declared  that  there  was  a  certain 
other  one  [Paradise],  a  wonderful  Paradise  also  of  Fools  and 
Lovers ;  the  former  of  these  who  were  truly  happy,  the  latter  of 
those  who  were  phantastically  and  fanatically  so.  But  of  these 
things  elsewhere  perchance  more  fully." 

I  give  the  conclusion  of  the  letter  (23rd  Oct.,  1579) 
without  the  Latin  : 

"  Concerning  which  very  things  and  all  other  accompaniments 
of  the  gentleman  on  his  travels,  and  especially  that  Homeric  and 
divine  herbe  (the  gods  call  it  Moly)  with  which  Mercury  fortified 
beforehand  his  own  Ulysses  against  Circitan  cups  and  charms 
and  poison-potions  and  all  diseases  (I  shall  speak)  both  publicly 
as  I  hope  shortly  ;  and  far  more  fully  as  J  am  wont ;  and  per- 
chance also  as  well  a  little  more  exactly  than  1  am  wont  as  also 
more  in  accordance  with  the  requirements  of  the  state  and  public 
business.      In  the  meanwhile  you   will   be   content   with   three 

syllables,  and  fare-thee-well." 

There  is  nothing  in  all  these  Harveian  semi- 
remonstrances  and  grandfatherly  counsels  to  stain  the 


cy 


LOVR.RXPERIENCES-SmXE  AND  SHADOW.   129 

white  name  of  Spenser.  But  in  their  hght  it  is  no 
longer  possible  to  think  of  him  ideally  or  Platonically 
as — 

A  creature  all  too  bri.j^ht  and  good 
For  human  nature's  daily  food. 

So  far  from  that,  he  was  a  man  most  certainly  im- 
pressionable, impulsive,  sensuous  (not  sensual),  and  apt 
as  ever  was  Robert  Burns  to  fall  in  love  with  ever)- 
beautiful  face.  The  whole  tone  and  phrasing  of  Harvey's 
letters  and  allusions  leave  the  impression  that  Spenser 
was  extremely  susceptible  to  woman.  Even  his  halting 
lambicum  Trivutnim  pulsates  with  "  raging  love"  (his 
own  words).  Dean  Church  thus  glances  at  this  aspect 
of  the  "  newe  poete"  : 

"As  regards  Spenser  himself,  it  is  clear  from  the  Letters  that 
Harvey  was  not  without  uneasiness  lest  his  friend,  from  his  eav 
cK-T  P't^s"re-lovmg  nature  and  the  temptations  round  him 
should  be  earned  asvay  mto  the  vices  of  an  age,  which  though 
very  bnlliant  and  h.gh-tempered,  was  also  a  very  dissolute  one 
He  couches  his  counsels  mainly  in  Latin  ;  but  they  point  to  real 
danger"  (p.  26).  ^  ^ 

Sooth  to  say,  Edmund  Spenser  the  Poet  is  more  to 
one  a  man,  and  none  the  less  poetical,  that  he  is  found 
walking  in  our  earth's  miry  or  dusty  ways,  not  wingin^^ 
overhead,  ^^ 


J30  IN  LONDON. 


IX  In  London,  and  Appointment  to  Ireland. 
—Capture  of  Fort-del-Ore.— Vindication  of 
Lord  Grey  and  Spenser. 

^^  Fire-branded  foxes  to  seanip  and  singe 

Our  gold  and  yipc-ear\i  Z/^/^.*-."— Keats  Endynnon. 
"  Done  to  death  I'y  slanderous  tongues:' -Mueh  Ado,  v.  3. 

From   the  thin-s  suffered  to    pass  "the    pikes  of  the 
nress"   in  the  '<  Glosse  "  of  the  ShephcnVs  Calendar,  it 
is  to  be  inferred  that  the  "  newe  poete  "  did  not  himself 
superintend    its   printing.       It    may    hence   be    further 
inferred    that   Spenser   was   not   in    the    metropohs    at 
the  close  of   i579-      i"  i577   we  have  found  him  in 
Ireland   associated   with   Sir   Henry    Sidney,  the  great 
Lord    Deputy.      In    i5  7«    we   have   found    Sir    Henry 
recalled      We  can   scarcely  be  wrong  in  assuming  that 
Spenser  returned  witii  him.      In  i579  lie  writes  from 
"  Leycester  House  this   5  of  October."      This  was  not 
far  off    "  merry   Christmas,"    and    what    more    natural 
than    that    he    should    accompany    the    Leicesters     to 
Penshurst   "  in    Kcnte"  }     The   "  boke  "    (as    we    saw) 
was  "lycenccd"    at   Stationers'    Hall  "5    December. 
Whether  carried  out  or  no.  he   in  the  same  "  5th  ot 
October"   letter,  bids   Harvey  farewell,  as  being  about 
"to   travell"   in    my   "lord's   service."       So  that    thus 
bound  up  with  Leicester  and  in  "familiar  acquaintance 
with   Master    Philip    Sidney,  we  are   free   to   think  ol 
him   as  coming  and    going  between    Leicester    House 
and     Penshurst.       P.y    gossipy     John     Aubrey,     he    is 
also   reported  as  being  a  visitor   in   the   neighbourhood 
of    Sidney's     own    Wilton    residence     and     properties. 
Unfortunately  no  date  is  given.      He  thus  writes  in  his 


IN  LONDON.  j^j 

notice  of  Spenser  in  Lives  of  Eminent  Men  (i8iz-~ 
from  Ashmolean  Museum)-"  Mr.  Samuel  Woodford 
the  poet  who  paraphrased  the  Psalmes)  hVes  in 
Hampshire,  near  Alton,  and  he  told  me  that  Mr 
Spenser  lived  sometime  in  those  parts.  In  this  delicate 
sueet  ayre.  he  enjoyed  his  muse,  and   vvritt  <.ood  part 

of  Sidney  and  h.s  sister  Mary.  Countess  of  Pembroke 
one  proof  of  which  is  that  the  best  MS.  of  thei; 
metrical  I  salmes'  is  in  his  holograph  (Fuller  Worthies' 
-brary  edition  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  Poems,  s.n.) 

n    Aprd    15S0   Spenser   wrote    another    Letter    to 

n.'^^''     J  !V^''  ^^  ^^^^'  ^'■^"^  Westminster;  and 
mterpre     'Westminster'    as    the     official    residence 

BrhT-^'  n^'/r"^  '■"  ''''  ^-^P^^y-^^nt  of  the  S "te 
Thl  l/"i  ;'  r";'^"^''^^^  '""^  °"  performance. 
Clls  1  f  'r  ,  1'"^  '^^  '^^"  'published.'  He 
cal  s  t  n;j.  Calendar."  Its  success  was  great  and 
mstantaneous.      And   so  he  informs  Harvey T- 

Countrc.y  that  he  passeth  thfrT'l^'  ^".^  °,'^'P'"'"^''  ^"^  ^^^  ^he 

till  they  fall  info  the  Sea.""'^  ^"^  ^°'^'^'"-?  '^"^^'  •-^•'  ^h'^i'"  Course-. 

O  Titc,  siquid,  ego, 
Ecquid  erit  pretij. 
But  of  that  more  hereafter"  (Vol.  IX.,  p.  274). 


IN  LONDON. 
132 

Nor  was  this  "  Booke  "  all.      He  continues  :-- 

(as  I  partclye  signified  m  my  las^^^^^^^^^^  ^^  P^,,y   Queene, 

imprinted,    I   wil  i^/jJ^f'^nVe  with  al  expedition  ;  and  your 
whiche  ipraye  you  hardy  send  n^^^  ^^^^_  ^hyche 

[Sl\^'eXrte  bu?  IrSl^pS^tes  s4che,  as  you  ordinarily  use 
and  I  extraordinarily  desire. 

;s/r;ir^LJ;a:L«coL  forth  a>on^.. 

T    .<  rio^^e  "  as  "  <-reat  "  as  his  Calendar,  by  E.  K., 
Td  with     Picu.:  purtrayed  as  if  MU,.a.l  An,e,o  we.e 
thpre"  he  goes  on  : — 
Apostrophes  therennac^^^lressd  3  ou  know^^  ^^^^^  ^  ^^^^,. 

fancie,  I  never  dyd  better      {Ibid.,  p.  2,5)- 

Besides  all  these  there  were  his  Nine  Comedies.     But 
these  schemes  were  for  the  time  swept  astae      Alas 
1st  as  it  proved-savein  incorporations  arjd  adapt.- 
1";  as   shown    in    Chap.  Vll.-permanently.     Dean 
Church  well  describes  his  circumstances  :— 

.<  But  no  one  in  these  days  could  live  by  poetry     Eve-chojars, 
in   spite  of  university  endo,™^nts,did^^^^^^ 

scholarship;  ^"^  ^^^^  P^^.^o^^  o^^he  -^^^^^^  °P^"  '^  ^'"^ 

work,  by  '^"vacting  the  favour  ot. he  .^      expecting  to 

the  door  of  advancement^    Spens^^^^^  patronage 

push  his  ff  ""^,^.Xi7^^orkes  as  SiLey  and  his  uncle  Leicester 
oftwosuchpomnfulfavonU,s  ^y^  ^^^^  ^^.^^^^         ^^   1^^ 

Spenser's  heart  was  se^  on  p        y  ,^^^  ^.^  Ufe  might  take,     lo 
have  for  it  would  dcpena  0"J-  ^jth  him   as   his 

l^eta'rTfo  tTe  SSo^^v^been  emplof  ed  at  home  or  abroad 
*  See  Harvey's  Answer,  Vol.  IX.,  pp.  276-8.      Of  his  '  judg- 
ment'on  the  Faery  Queen  onward  in  its  place. 


APPOINTMENT  TO  IRELAND.  133 

in  Leicester's  intrigijes,  to  iiave  stayed  in  London  filling  by 
Leicester's  favour  some  government  office,  to  have  had  his  habits 
moulded  and  his  thoughts  aflfected  by  the  brilliant  and  unscru- 
pulous society  of  the  court,  or  by  the  powerful  and  daring  minds 
which  were  fast  thronging  the  political  and  literary  scene — any 
of  these  contingencies  might  have  given  his  poetical  faculty  a 
different  direction  ;  nay,  might  have  even  abridged  its  exercise 
or  suppressed  ii.  [I  intercalate,  thus  was  it  with  Thomas  Sack- 
ville,  Earl  of  Dorset,  whose  "  Induction  "  was  declarative  of  almost 
any  height  of  poetic  attainment  he  chose.]  But  his  life  was 
otherwise  ordered.  A  new  opening  presented  itself.  He  had, 
and  he  accepted,  the  chance  of  making  his  fortune  another  way. 
And  to  his  new  manner  of  life,  with  its  peculiar  conditions,  may 
be  ascribed,  not  indeed  the  original  idea  of  that  which  was  to  be 
his  great  work,  but  tlie  circumstances  under  which  the  work  was 
carried  out,  and  which  not  merely  coloured  it,  but  gave  it  some 
of  its  special  and  characteristic  feaftures  "  (pp.  52-3). 

The  "  new  opening  "  was  an  invitation  to  accompany 
Arthur,  Lord  Grey,  newly  appointed  Lord-Deputy  of 
Ireland,  as  his  '  secretary,'  and  as  such  a  Secretary 
of  State.  Essex  and  Sir  Henry  Sidney — like  many 
before  and  since — had  found  the  "  green  isle  "  a  pro- 
digious charge.  Turbulent,  poor,  terribly  ignorant  and 
almost  heathenishly  superstitious  in  their  Catholicism, 
the  Irish  of  the  time  were  hardly  administrable.  There 
were  wild  rumours  of  '  invasion  '  by  the  Spaniards  and 
Italians  under  warrant  of  the  Pope.  A  man,  every 
inch  of  him,  was  needed  for  the  crisis.  Leicester  and 
Elizabeth  turned  to  Arth'.ir,  Lord  Grey  of  Wilton.  He 
was  a  man  of  the  most  unsullied  character.  He  was  a 
soldier  of  distinction.  He  was  naturally  "  gentle,"  but 
of  "  iron  will."  He  was  emphatically  a  man  of  resource. 
The  invitation  was  not  at  first  accepted.  He  was 
dissatisfied  with  the  policy  of  the  Government  in 
England.  His  dissatisfaction  had  impelled  him  so  far 
that,  Protestant  though  he  were,  he  "  held  intercourse  " 
with  Norfolk  and  the  partizans  of  Mary  of  Scotland. 


134  APPOINTMENT  TO  IRELAND. 

His  was  one  of  the  fort)'  names  of  Englishmen  on 
whom  the  Scottish  Queen  counted  (Froude,  x.  158). 
Eh/.abeth  had  a  sleepless  memory.  He  was  not  sent 
to  the  Tower,  but  he  was  distrusted.  The  distrust 
showed  itself  in  non-employment.  1  know  not  that  he 
sought  employment  ;  we  do  know  he  was  not  employed 
for  a  decade  of  years  at  least.  It  must  have  been  gall 
and  wormwood  to  Elizabeth  to  need  to  stoop  to  ask 
him.  lUit  no  sovereign  ever  was  so  wise  in  stooping 
while  she  might  without  compulsion.  The  Tudor  pride 
was  wary.  Elizabeth  ruled  herself  as  sovereignly  as  she 
did  England.  The  necessity  and  capability  made  good 
to  her  piercing  intellect  and  patriotic  heart,  she  autho- 
rised the  appointment  of  Eord  Grey.  "  At  length," 
sa}s  Dean  Church,  "in  the  summer  of  1580,  he  was 
appointed  to  fill  that  great  place  w'hich  had  wrecked 
the  rcjiutation  and  broken  the  hearts  of  a  succession  of 
able  and  high-spirited  servants  of  the  English  Crown, 
the  place  of  Lord-Deputy  in  Ireland"  (p.  54).  The 
new  Lord-Deputy,  who  had  before  befriended  poor 
GE()R(;e  G-VSCoIGNE,  selected  Edmund  Spenser  as  the 
friend  of  Philip  Sidney  for  '  Secretary.'  They  landed 
in  Dublin  on  12th  August,  1580 — superseding  Sir 
William  Pelham  and  his  Secretary.  It  was  a  day  of 
bewilderment  and  peril,  demanding  cool  heads  and 
courage.  In  July  1579  Sir  William  Drury  had  written 
to  Huiicigli  to  stand  firmly  to  the  helm,  for  "that  a 
great  storm  was  at  hand."  The  storm  had  filled  the 
air  with  portents.  On  the  very  day  of  Lord  Deputy 
Grey's  arrival  he  w^as  greeted  by  tidings  which  he 
communicated  to  the  Queen  in  a  letter,  dated  the  day 
of    his    arrival,    12th    August,    1580    (Cotton    MSS., 


-  i  PPOIXTMENI  TO  IRELA  XD.  135 

Tit.  xiii.  305).    Fortunately  the  State  Papers  of  Ireland 

furnish   ample   materials   for    this    period,    and    in   the 

sequel   I   shall  avail   myself  of  them.*      The  following 

is  the  first  Letter  : — 

"  The  rebels  in  Munster  hold  out  still,  yet  this  day,  on  landing, 
I  found  it  advertised  hither,  that  James  of  Desmond,  with 
Sanders,  their  honest  Apostle,  making-  into  these  parts  to  have 
joined  with  the  rebels  here,  were  encountered  by  one  Sir  Cormoc 
Mac  Teige,  Lord  of  Muskerrie,  in  the  county  of  Cork  ;  the  said 
James  was  taken  and  a  man  of  Saunders  hys,  the  master  escaping- 
ver>'  hardly,  unhappily.  An  exploit  surely  of  great  avayle,  and 
worthilie  to  be  considered  ;  it  may  therefore  please  your  Majestic 
to  bestowe  some  thanks  on  the  gentleman,  with  some  reward." 

The  Lord  Deputy  was  not  more  than  a  month  in 
Ireland  when  the  '  aid '  so  vehemently  invoked  from 
Spain  by  Dr.  Sanders  arrived.  The  Earl  of  Clancarre 
communicated  the  fact  in  a  brief  letter  dated  from 
Kilorglcn,  September  17th,  1580,  in  which  he  enclosed 
the  following  : — 

"  Dingle,  y*  12th  of  September,  1580. 
"  Right  Honourable.and  my  singular  good  Lord, — It  mayplease 
your  Honour  to  understand  that  there  came  a  Sunday  last  past 
over,  foure  shippes  of  the  Pope's  army,  in  which  the  Pope's 
nuncio  is.  There  was  in  their  company  other  foure  shippes  and 
a  galley,  which  they  suppose  will  be  with  them  or  it  be  long  ; 
therefore  I  thought  good  to  advertise  your  Honour,  so  that  your 
Lordship  may  provide  and  act  as  it  shall  seem  best  to  your 
Honour.  No  more  unto  your  Honour  at  this  present,  but 
beseeching  God  to  send  your  Honour  long  life,  with  prosperous 
helthe,  this  Thursday,  1580. 

"Your  SI.  loving  friende, 

"  Gakrat  Trant£. 
"  To  the  Right  Honourable,  and  my  singular 
good  Lord,  Donyl  Erie  of  Clancarre,  goe  these 
with  increase  of  commoditie." 

See  Preface  for  my  abundant  indebtedness  to  the  Kerry 
Magazine  for  most  important  documents  before  unutilized. 
Frequently  I  have  not  hesitated  to  adopt  the  connecting  narra- 
tive and  commentary  of  these  valuable  papers  where  it  had  been 
vain  to  try  to  better  it.     (Appendix  K  and  L.) 


136  CAPTURE   OF  FORT-DEL-ORE. 

On  this  letter  the  Earl  of  Clancarre  wrote  the 
following  note  : — 

"This  Garret  Trante  ysa  inerchante  of  the  town  of  Dyngell,  and 
one  that  is  of  the  best  reckonin,y  among  them,  and  hath  always 
used  him  to  the  Admiral  very  dutifullie." 

A  similar  commimication  was  made  by  "  Andrew 
Marten,  the  Constable  of  Castle-Mayne,"  to  the  Lord 
President  of  Minister  thus  : — 

"  Captain  Andrew  Marten  to  Sir  Warham  St.  Leger. 
"Right  Worshipful, — My  dutie  premised,  pleaseyour  Worship 
to  be  advertised  that  I  have  received  intelligence  this  day  from 
the  Kmght  of  ICi'rrie  that  there  are  four  sail  of  Spaniards  landed 
at  Smervvick,  also  that  a  grete  fleete  is  to  descende  on  the  weste, 
which  newes  I  am  bold  to  write  to  your  Worship,  hoping  that  the 
Admiral  [Sir  William  Wynter]  is  with  your  Worship,  whereupon 
tile  intelligence  will  shortlie,  with  the  grace  of  God,  disappoint 
them.  Tliis  in  haste  for  amount  of  pay  as  it  requireth,  I  have 
to  trouble  you  with  the  messenger. 

"  h'rom  Castle-Mayne,  the  13th  of  September,  1580. 

"Andr.  Marten." 

\Vc  are  thus  plunged  in  uicdias  res  on  the  instant. 
The  '  foreigners  '  were  actually  in  Ireland,  and  so 
on  English  territory.  There  followed  the  siege  and 
"  taking  "  of  Smerwicke  or  the  Fort-del-Ore,  and  the 
"  putting  to  the  sword  "  of  its  garrison  and  inhabitants. 
In  itself  of  no  great  military  or  historical  importance, 
certain  fictitious  specialties  about  it  have  given  the 
capture  of  this  little  fortifietl  neck  of  land  in  an  obscure 
corner  of  Kerry,  a  pre-eminent  place  in  the  History  of 
the  Time. 

As  the  Biographer  of  Spenser, — who  was  present 
and  out-and-out  stood  by  Lord  Grey  in  all  he  did, 
and  bore  pathetic  testimony  to  the  cost  to  the  Lord 
Deputy's  gentle   nature  of  his  stern    and    terrible  yet 


W 


CAPTURE   OF  FORT-DEL-ORE.  i;,; 

righteous  decision, —  I  feel  called  upon  to  vindicate 
the  good  name  alike  of  Lord  Deputy  and  Secretary 
and  England,  against  impudent  mendacities.  Sir  John 
Pope  Henness)-,  in  his  Raleigh  in  Ireland  (1883).  and 
Irishmen  generally,  have  turned  this  incident  on  the 
very  threshold  of  Lord  Grey's  government  of  Ireland 
to  shameless  account  against  the  Lord  Deputy  and 
Spenser,  in  their  passionate  resolve  to  defame  our 
England. 

Various  elements  have  contributed  to  all  this.  It 
was,  to  begin  with,  the  "  only  actual  landing  ever  made 
on  English  territory  "  in  virtue  of  and  as  executing  the 
I'apal  Bull  "  depriving  Elizabeth  of  England  of  all 
dominion,  dignity,  and  privilege  whatsoever."  The 
Armada  of  1588  came  subsequently;  but  even  the 
shattering  of  the  "  Invincible  "  array  of  Spain  did  not 
diminish  either  the  importance  or  the  significance  of 
the  taking  of  Fort-del-Ore,  or  its  consequences.  But, 
as  one  must  iterate,  that  which  has  given  the  siege  and 
'  capture  '  of  this  small  Fort  its  miserable  notoriety  is 
the  admitted  fact  that  almost  the  entire  garrison  was 
put  to  the  sword  after  its  being  taken  possession  of. 
Sir  John  Pope  Hennessy  has  exerted  his  utmost  ability 
and  dexterity  to  aggrandize  and  aggravate  this  not 
at  all  uncommon  military  necessit)'.  It  has  been  called 
a  '  massacre.'  O'Sullivan  preceded  Hennessy  in 
representing  the  act  as  done  in  breach  of  promised 
"  conditions "  of  mercy,  as  done  with  exacerbations  of 
cruelty,  as  making  Graia  fides  (the  faith  of  Gre>)  a 
phrase  for  the  superlative  of  treachery  and  cruelty, 
throughout  Europe.  Others,  earlier  and  later,  have 
described    it     as    "  done    without    orders,"    as    having 


I J  S  VINDICA  TION  OF 

happened  lhrouf;h  the  plundering"  soldiers  and  reckless 
sailors  meeting  together  in  the  Fort  from  opposite 
sides,  and  then  breaking  into  that  frightful  license 
which  all  Wars  have  shown. 

Edmund  Spenser  deliberately,  and  on  permanent 
record  in  his  Veue  of  Ireland,  told  the  TRUTH  ;  and  it 
is  more  than  time  tliat  the  Vindication  were  "  stab- 
lished,  strengthened,  settled."  I  would  now  proceed  to 
do  this  on  a  historical  basis  -  /.t'.,  on  State  Documents 
that  arc  open  to  all,  and  not  to  be  challenged.  Before 
these  the  sentimental  perversions  and  artful  pathos  of 
Sir  John  Pope  Hennes.sy  will  be  seen  in  their  true 
light,  and  this  other  "Irish  grievance"  be  disproved, 
like  so  many.  We  have  simply  to  get  at  the  FACTS 
to  achieve  this. 

Chronology  is  of  vital  moment  in  an  inquiry  of  this 
kind.  Be  it  noted,  therefore,  that  the  capture  of  Fort- 
del-Ore  did  not  take  place  until  eighteen  months  after 
the  first  landing  of  James  Fitz-Morris  (Geraldyn)  with 
Sanders  the  Papal  Nuncio.  Within  this  period  James 
Geraldyn  had  been  slain  by  the  Bourkes,  John  and 
James  of  Desmond  had  both  perished,  and  a  second 
force  of  Spaniards  and  Italians  despatched  in  support 
of  the  first,  had  arrived  at  Fort-del-Orc,  and  unitedly 
formed  the  force  which  made  the  garrison  there,  and 
which  was  ultinialel)'  taken.  So  that  if  ever  lives  were 
forfeited,  these  were.  And  it  is  historical  fact  that 
Lord  Grey  retused  absolutel}"  "conditions  of  mercy." 
1  trust  every  lover  of  Spenser,  and  every  lover  of 
England  in  lier  great  names,  will  "  read,  mark,  learn, 
and  inwardly  digest"  the  evidence  upon  evidence  now- 
Let  this   be  done,  and   I  have  no 


U 


LORD  GRE Y  A ND  SPENSER .  130 

fear  of  the  verdict  either  on  the  Lord   Deputy  or  his 
Secretary — Edmund  Spenser.* 

It  belongs  to  History  (when  we  get  a  true  History 
of  Ireland),  not  to  a  biography  of  Spenser,  to  tell  the 
great  story — great  though  sad — of  Lord  Grey's  firm- 
handed  grappling  with  the  Rebellion  in  Ireland.  The 
Veiic  of  Ireland  yields  numerous  personal  narratives 
and  experiences.  Almost  every  leading  incident  of 
the  campaigns  and  administration  will  be  found  in 
this  masterly  book.  I  shall  limit  myself  to  one  other 
central  thing,  in  which,  as  with  Fort-del-Ore,  the 
reputation  of  Grey  and  his  Secretary  and  of  England 
are  equally  bound  up.  I  mean  the  Forfeitures  of  the 
Lands  of  the  Rebels  as  represented  by  the  Earl  of 
Desmond.  Unless  these  forfeitures  can  be  demon- 
strated to  have  been  righteous  and  necessary,  the  entire 
government  of  Ireland  by  Lord  Grey,  and  the  character 
of  Edmund  Spenser  along  with  him — for  he  gave  his 
sanction  to  all  the  Lord  Deputy  did,  and  himself 
'  partook '  of  the  forfeitures — stand  lowered  and  even 
attainted.  But  equally  with  the  vindication  of  the 
procedure  at  Fort-del-Ore  is  the  vindication  of  the 
Forfeitures  absolute.-f- 

•  See  Appendix  K,  after  the  Essays  in  the  present  volume,  for 
the  whole  of  these  State-papers  and  connecting  narrative.  No 
one  who  does  not  master  these  can  appreciate  the  arduous  and 
delicate  responsibilities  of  equally  Grey  and  Spenser  ;  whilst  the 
charges  against  them  are  so  heinous  and,  undisproved,  so  damn- 
ing all  round,  that  it  is  imperative  to  meet  them,  as  is  now  done 
conclusively. 

t  See  Appendix  L  for  similar  State-papers  and  authentic 
documents  as  over-against  partizan  and  fictitious  statements  and 
rhetoric  ;  and  so  a  complete  vindication  of  Spenser's  acquisition 
of  Kilcolman.  etc. 


THE  LAMD  BF  SPEPJSER 
IN 


X.  In  Ireland — Dublin  and  Kilcolman. 
1580 — 1590. 

Thus  involved — as  we  have  seen — in  "  wars  and 
rumours  of  war"  on  the  instant  of  arrival  in  Ireland, 
Spenser  by  his  Secretaryship  was  at  once  occupied 
along  with  the  Lord  Deputy  in  most  responsible  duties. 
Lord  Grey  was  a  man  not  only  of  conspicuous  ability 
and  scholarly  culture  and  bookish  likings,  but  of  un- 
flagging application.  He  wrote  good  strong  nervous 
English  in  his  communications  with  the  Queen  and 
Burleigh  and  VValsingham  and  others.  But  much 
must  have  beenleft   to  the    Secretary  to  be  put  into 


IN  IRELAND.  141 

shape  for  record  or  transmission.  Beyond  this,  there 
was  a  prodigious  correspondence  with  all  manner  of 
persons,  on  all  manner  of  conflicting  subjects,  and  as 
mediating  between  all  manner  of  interests.  The  Veue 
of  Ireland  (in  Vol.  IX.)  remains  to  attest  Spenser's 
personal  presence  in  all  the  prominent  scenes  of  strife. 
He  is  constantly  recalling  what  he  himself  '  saw  '  and 
observed.  A  more  penetrative  pair  of  eyes  have  never 
probably  so  '  observed '  ongoings  in  Ireland.  From 
the  most  delicate  negotiation  and  most  diplomatic 
interview  down  to  the  ballad  that  he  had  picked  up,  or 
the  quaint  folk-lore  and  folk-speech  studiously  noted 
down  among  the  mountains,  he  was  interested  in  all. 
Mis  post  wasno  sinecure. 

It  were  scarcely  in  place  here  to  follow  the  crossing 
and  intercrossing  movements  of  the  Lord  Deputy  and 
his  Secretary,  or  to  unfold  and  estimate  the  perpetu- 
ally shifting  currents  of  event  and  circumstance,  or  to 
chronicle  the  ebbing  and  flowing  of  rebellion  and 
conquest,  failure  and  success.  It  is  a  weary,  a  pathetic, 
a  tragical,  a  bewildering  story.  If  ever  good  men  and 
true  meant  well  for  Ireland,  they  were  the  Lord 
Deputy  and  Edmund  Spenser.  It  is  an  outrage  on 
historic  truth  and  an  offence  to  literary  decency  to 
have  Prcndergast  in  his  Cromtvellian  Settlement  of 
Irelaud  (iSGs)  writing:  "In  Queen  Elizabeth's  reign 
there  was  no  more  deadly  enemy  to  Ireland  than 
Edmund  Spenser  "  (pp.  94-5). 

The  capture  of  Smerwick  or  Fort-del-Ore  deepened 
into  the  Rebellion  of  Desmond.  Hut  the  Lord  Deputy 
and  Secretary  are  found  in  1580  in  Dublin.  There 
were   frequent    departures   to   Munster   and   elsewhere  ; 


142  IN  IRELAND. 

for  there  were  almost  ceaseless  occasions  for  personal 
interviews  and  negotiations,  collecting  and  sifting  of 
evidences,  and  pronouncing  swift  decisions.  But  these 
absences  were  relatively  brief;  and  the  Irish  capital 
was  equally  the  '  home  '  of  Lord  Grey  and  of  Spenser. 
In  I  581,  upon  the  Memoranda  Roll  of  the  21  to  24 
Elizabeth  (memb.  108)  is  an  enrolment  which  thus 
begins — "  Memorandum  quod  Edmondus  Spencer  gene- 
rosus,  serviens  prenobilis  viri  Arthuri  Greie  domini 
baronis  de  Wiltonia  praeclari  ordinis  garterii  militis  et 
domini  deputati  generalis  regni  Hibernie,  venit  coram 
barones  hujus  scaccarij  vj'°  die  Mail  hoc  termino  \i.e. 
Trinity  Term  23"  Eliz.]  in  propria  persona  litteras 
patentes  sub  magno  sigillo  Anglie,"  etc.  This  record 
shows  that  the  Poet  described  as  "  Edmond  Spencer, 
gentleman,  a  servant  of  Arthur  Lord  Grey  of  Wilton 
the  Lord  Deputy,"  appeared  in  propria  persona  in  the 
Court  of  Exchequer  at  Dublin  on  the  6th  of  May, 
1581. 

Though  in  Dublin  there  was  not  the  society  of 
London  or  England  —  except  now  and  again  when 
great  visitors  came  over — the  "  newe  poete  "  would 
not  be  without  sympathetic  minds  there.  His  after- 
friend  LODOWICK  Bryskett — the  "  Thestylis  "  of  the 
Lament  for  Sidney — was  already  in  office,  and  was  to 
play  an  important  part  in  the  employments  of  Spenser. 
Barnaby  Googe's  name  also  emerges.  Then  there 
was  George  Fenton  (later  Sir  George),  the  translator 
of  Tragical  Tales,  and  Guevara  and  Guicciardini — 
albeit  he  proved  traitor  to  Grey.  More  '  inwardly,' 
later,  there  were  the  illustrious  Archbishop  USSHER — of 
whom  it  is  pleasantly  told   by  Aubrey   (from  Sir  John 


DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN.  143 

Dcnhain)  that  when  Sir  William  Davcnant's  Gondibcrt 
came  forth,  Sir  John  asked  him  if  he  had  seen  it,  when 
the  Lord  Primate  answered  tartly — "  Out  upon  him, 
with  his  vauntini;-  preface  ;  he  speakes  against  my  old 
friend  Edmund  Spenser  "  (as  before,  pp.  541-3) — the 
reference  being  to  his  faulting  of  the  "  old  words  "  ; 
and  Sir  Robert  Dillon,  Knight,  Lord  Chief  Justice  of 
the  Common  Pleas,  and  M.  Dormer,  the  Queen's 
Solicitor,  and  Captains  Christopher  Carleil — son-in-law 
of  Walsingham,  and  a  famous  sea-king  of  the  type  of 
Drake — and  Thomas  Norreys  (later  Sir  Thomas), 
Vice-President  of  Munster,  and  Captains  Warham  St. 
Lcgcr  (later  Sir  Warham) — who  fell  in  the  Desmond 
Rebellion — and  Nicholas  Dawtrey — Seneschal  of 
Clandeboy  and  a  'brave  captain'  in  Hampshire  in 
1588 — and  Thomas  Smith,  apothecary — all  men  of 
genuine  literary  tastes  and  scholars — as  will  appear 
hereafter.  So  that  while  indubitably  the  change  from 
"  merry  England  "  to  doleful  Ireland  was  a  great  one, 
behind  the  turbulence  and  savagery,  the  lawlessness  and 
vulgarities,  the  race-hatreds  and  Pope-nurtured  irrecon- 
ciliations,  the  blood-feuds  and  treacherous  rivalries  and 
insurrections  ("  informers  "  against  their  own  flesh  and 
blood  being  then,  as  still,  no  rarity),  the  despairs  and 
antagonisms — the  last  not  least  from  E^nglishmcn  more 
Irish  than  the  Irish — there  were  breathing-places  and 
breathing-times.  Just  as  one  is  struck  in  reading  the 
Correspondence  of  even  so  signal  a  year  as  1588,  with 
the  commoni)lace  and  ordinary  and  quite  unremarkable 
occupations  of  the  great  body  of  the  Nation,  so  when 
one  gets  close  to  the  Correspondence  from  Ireland,  it 
is   made  clear  that  the   disturbance  and   airitation  were 


144  DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN. 

local  and  narrow,  though  subject  to  spurts  and  spasms 
of  outbreak  all  over  the  island. 

We  have,  therefore,  to  think  of  Edmund  Spenser  not 
as  always  in  the  shadow  of  danger,  or  always  in  the 
whirl  of  conflict,  or  always  crushed  by  the  pressure  of 
official  responsibilities.  Ordinarily  he  must  have  had 
"  large  leisure "  for  his  poetical  and  other  literar}' 
employments.  The  administration  of  Lord  Grey 
was  short-lived.  As  the  burning  words  of  the  Vene 
have  shown  us,  '  enemies '  and  players  on  Elizabeth's 
first  dislike  of  him,  obtained  tb.e  recall  of  the  brave, 
chivalrous,  "  gentle,"  yet  iron-willed  Lord  Deputy. 
Burleigh  acted  with  characteristic  baseness  and  un- 
scrupulousness.  Needed  '  Severity, '  forsooth,  was 
pronounced  blood-guiltiness — a  mere  pretence.  Self- 
sacrificing  '  expenditure '  was  written  of  as  "  waste." 
Backbiters  and  partizans  who  dcfth'  put  on  the  mask 
of  loyalty  were  listened  to,  and  the  noble  accused 
left  even  uninformed.  Burleigh  encouraged  '  .secret  ' 
reports  and  correspondence  again.st  him:  'spied' on  him, 
as  he  did  on  everybody  who  stood  in  his  way.  It  was 
slanderously  and  eagerly  circulated  that  "my  lord  Grey  " 
was  lavishing  the  "forfeited  estates"  upon  his  favourites. 
The  self-aggrandizing  Secretary  could  see  no  nobleness 
in  the  fact,  or  seeing  it  held  it  only  for  accusation  of 
himself,  that  of  all  the  vast  "  forfeitures  "  Lord  Grey 
never  appropriated  or  sought  one  inch  for  himself  or 
his  own.  But  Edmund  Spenser  knew  the  man  ;  and 
whilst  the  English  tongue  endures  the  Puritan  Lord 
Deputy  will  live  as  "  Arthegal,"  the  great  Knight  of 
Ju.stice,  met  on  his  return  home  from  his  triumphs  by 
the  hags   Envy  and   Detraction,  and   the  blare   of  the 


1/ 


IHJBl.IN  AND   KILCOLMAN.  i.|5 

hundred  tongues  of  the  Blatant  Beast.  I  set  over-against 
the  mahgnant  as  false  accusations  of  long-forgotten 
ignobilities  the  heart-homage  and  life-long  love  of 
the  Poet  of  the  Faery  Queen.  All  the  foul-mouthed 
vituperation  and  impotent  wrathfulness  of  partizans  do 
not  touch  the  fact  that  by  the  witness  of  a  foremost 
agent  of  his  administration, — our  "sage  and  serious 
Spenser," — he  wais  like  Sidney — 

the  President 
Of  noblesse  and  of  chevalrie 

— a  great  Englishman  called  upon  to  do  bloody  yet 
righteous  work,  and  doing  it  strongly,  unswervingly, 
single-heartedly.  One  cannot  marvel  that  in  the  retro- 
spect of  the  achievement  and  the  ingrate  recompense, 
the  Secretary  should  have  written  with  indignation 
when  he  recalled  how  "  most  untruly  and  maliciously 
doe  theis  evill  tongues  backbite  and  slander  the  sacred 
ashes  of  that  most  just  and  honourable  personage, 
whose  leastc  vertue,  of  many  most  excellent,  which 
abounded  in  his  heroicke  spirit,  they  were  ncrc  able 
to  aspire  unto"  (Vol.  IX.,  p.  i6S).* 

Lord  Grey  left  Ireland  in  August  1582,  but  Spenser 

»  it  may  be  allowed  me  to  refer  the  reader  to  Dean  Church's 
vigorous  and  eloquent  chapter,  Spenser  in  /re/and  {y)\).^i-~^o)\ 
also  to  Froude's  English  in  Ireland.  Both  are  to  be  read  cum 
grano  salis,  but  both  are  powerful  in  statement  and  arg^ument. 
One  lacks  a  little  more  of  human  sympathy  with  Englishmen 
placed  in  such  trying  and  responsible  posts.  This  is  not  the 
place  to  enter  on  detailed  criticisms.  The  capable  reader  will 
readily  draw  a  line  of  distinction  between  fact  and  inference,  and 
note  how  semi-unconsciously  now  disproved  allegations  colour  and 
give  edge  to  verdicts  on  actions  and  actings  of  this  tremendous 
period.  More  credibility  to  Spenser  and  less  to  partizans  against 
the  English  at  all  hazards,  would  have  mitigated  not  a  few  vaguely- 
denunciatory  passages  in  Dean  Church  and  in  Froudc. 

L  10 


146  DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN. 

did  not  return  with  him  to  England.  He  had  entered 
the  public  service  over  and  above  being  Secretary  to 
the  Lord  Deputy,  and  he  was  content  with  the  modest 
competence  he  had  attained  and  had  in  prospect.  On 
March  22nd,  1581,  he  had  been  appointed  "Clerk  of 
the  Court  of  Chancery  or  Registrar  of  Chancery  for 
the  Faculties."  This  he  '  purchased '  from  Lodowick 
Bryskett,  who  had  resigned  it  in  order  to  "  withdraw 
to  the  quietness  of  study." 

This  office  is  said  by  Thomas  Fuller  to  have  been  a 
"  lucrative  one "  ;  but  lucrative  is  a  relative  and  un- 
certain term.  In  the  same  year  [1581]  he  received  a 
Lease  of  "  the  Abbey  and  Castle  and  Manor  of  Ennis- 
corthy,"  in  the  county  of  Wexford.  He  probably  never 
saw  it.  He  sold  it  to  one  Richard  Synot,  who  later  dis- 
posed of  it  to  the  Treasurer,  Sir  Henry  Wallop  {Cal.  of 
the  Patent  Rolls,  Ireland,  vol.  ccxiv.,  p.  3  19).*  This  put 
"  some  money  in  his  purse,"  which  he  speedily  invested 
by  purchasing  another  "Abbey"  in  New  Ross.  This 
also  he  parted  with  ere  very  long.  Early  in  January 
1582,  in  the  list  of  persons  furnished  by  Lord  Grey 
showing  his  distribution    of  certain    of  the    "  forfeited 

*  It  has  been  erroneously  stated  that  Synot  made  the  purchase 
as  the  mere  agent  of  Wallop.  But  this  was  not  the  case.  The 
re-sale  was  not  made  until  2nd  September,  1592.  This  is  certified 
by  a  book  which  contains  a  list  of  the  "  revenues  of  the  Queen's 
lands  and  possessions,"  etc.,  in  the  Exchequer  Record  Office, 
Dublin.  This  book  was  prepared  by  Nicliolas  Kenney,  Esq.,  as 
the  deputy  of  Christopher  Peyton,  Esq.,  auditor-general;  and  in 
this  MS.  occurs  the  following  entry — ■"■  From  Sir  Henry  Wallop, 
Knt.  (assignee  of  Richard  Synot,  gent.,  assignee  of  Edmond 
Spencer,  gent.),  now  farmer  of  all  the  lands  to  the  late  manor 
of  Enniscorthie,  per  annum  .  .  .  11/.  13^.  4^."  {Gentlema7i' s 
Magazine,  vol.  xliv.,  1855,  p.  t)Q(yscq.\  also  same  for  other  entries 
xci  suj)ra). 


^ 


DUBLIN  AND   KILCOLMAN.  i^7 

estates"  sent  to  meet  the  behind -back  mendacities  of 
Wallop  and  Fenton,  we  come  upon  these  two  entries 
— "  the  lease  of  a  house  in  Dublin  belonging  to 
[Viscount]  Baltinglas  for  six  yeares  to  come  unto 
Edmund  Spenser,  one  of  the  Lord-Deputy's  Secre- 
taries, valued  at  5/.,"  and  "  of  a  custodiam  of  John 
Eustace's  [of  the  Baltinglases]  land  of  the  Newland 
to  Edmund  Spenser,  one  of  the  Lord  Deputy's  Secre- 
taries." Again — By  an  Exchequer  Inquisition  it  appears 
that  on  the  24th  of  August  (anno  24  Eliz.)  1582, 
letters  patent  were  passed  to  "Edmond  Spencer,  gentle- 
man, of  the  dissolved  House  of  Friars  Minors  of  the 
New  Abbey,  in  the  county  of  Kildare,  with  its  posses- 
sions, for  a  term  of  twenty-one  years,  at  a  rent  of  60s. 
a  year  ;  but  such  rent  not  having  been  paid  for  seven 
years  and  a-half,  the  lease  became  forfeited,  and  was 
annulled.  In  the  Book  of  Concordat  urns  of  15  82  there  is 
an  entr\'  o{  £\62  {=£1,600  to-day  at  least)  assigned 
to  Spenser  for  '  rewards '  paid  by  him  as  Secretary. 
With  their  usual  inflamed  animus  Irish  historians  call 
this  "  blood-money  "  !  *  The  State-Papers  also  reveal 
how  part  of  his  work  was  to  transcribe  and  collate  con- 
fidential correspondence:  e.g.,  in  1581,  March  iith,  is 
a  long  Latin  letter  of  the  Abp.  of  Cashcl  to  Sir  Lucas 
Dillon  concerning  the  rebels.  It  is  wholly  in  the  hand- 
writing   of    Spenser,   and    has   his    certification    below, 

•  There  is  an  entry  in  the  Computus  Roll  for  Hilary  Term 
1579-80  of  a  delivery  of  stationery  to  "  Maister  Spenser."  It 
consisted  of  three  quires  of  paper,  •"  one  pottel  of  ynke,"  and  two 
canvas  bagges.  This  may  have  been  our  Spenser,  while  in 
employment  under  Leicester ;  but  more  likely  it  was  one  of  several 
Spensers  contemporaneously  employed.  In  1580  we  have  seen 
he  was  certainly  in  Ireland. 


148  DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN. 

"Vera  copia,  Edm.  Speser."*  Another  of  March  i8th, 
1581,  is  similarly  certified  by  Spenser.  A  third 
of  April  29th,  1 581,  at  Cork,  is  a  copy  under  the 
hand  of  Spenser,  together  with  a  Petition  similarly 
certified  relative  to  the  Countess  of  Desmond.  A  fifth 
is  a  letter  from  a  Thomas  Meagh,  certified  by  Spenser 
on  June  29th,  1582.  A  sixth  is  a  "certificate"  in 
favour  of  one  "John  Bird,"  August  29th,  1582,  signed 
by  Spenser  as  "  Copia  vera."  So  a  decade  of  years 
later  (viz.,  29th  August,  1592,  "Ex''.  Ed.  Spenser")  is 
another  document  {Calendar  of  Irish  Papers,  vols. 
Ixxxi.  ad  Ixxxviii.  et  alibi). 

But  by  far  the  most  interesting  glimpse  of  Spenser 
that  we  get  belongs  to  this  period — viz.,  between  i  5  8 1  -2 
and  1584 — in  a  now  well-known  book.  Biographers 
of  Spenser  have  hitherto  spoken  vaguely  and  uncertainly 
of  the  date  of  these  conversations,  varyingly  assigning 
them  to  1584  and  even  onward  to  1589.  Two  clue- 
facts  determine  the  date  :  [a]  That  Bryskett  expressly 
informs  us  that  the  'occasion'  was  immediately  following 
on    his    erection    of   his    'little    cottage'    near    Dublin 

*  This  very  fine  specimen  of  Spenser's  handwriting  enables  us 
to  give  (in  our  large-paper  copies)  a  facsimile  of  it,  together  with 
his  autograph.  This  is  the  more  precious  because  the  solitary 
(supposed)  exemplar  of  his  writing  in  the  British  Museum  is  not 
only  faint  and  poor ;  but  on  comparison  with  the  certain  hand- 
writing and  signatures  of  Spenser  in  H.  M.  Public  Record  Office, 
proves  /loito  be  the  genuine  handwriting  of  Spenser.  See  Mr.  J. 
Payne  Collier's  suspiciously  detailed  account  of  it  in  his  Spenser 
(Life,  vol.  i.,  pp.  ciii-iv).  All  the  likelihoods  are  that  this  MS. 
was  one  of  Collier's  own  forgeries.  Certes  externally  and  in- 
trinsically it  has  no  sign  of  genuineness,  and  ought  to  be  with- 
drawn from  the  British  Museum  as  an  exemplar  of  Spenser's 
handwriting.  I  have  to  thank  Sir  William  Hardy,  Deputy  Keeper, 
for  allowing  the  loan  of  the  MS.  for  facsimile  by  Mr.  C.  Prsetorius, 
of  South  Kensington. 


DUBLIK  AXD   KILCOLMAN.  149 

(' newely  built'  is  his  own  phrase).  But  this  was  on 
his  retirement,  and  his  retirement  was  in  1 581-2.  A 
'  little  cottage'  would  not  take  long  to  build,  and  hence 
1582-3  at  farthest,  {b)  One  of  the  interlocutors  was 
Captain  Warham  St.  Leger  (afterwards  Sir  Warham). 
But  he  was  absent  from  Dublin  during  the  whole  of 
the  Desmond  Rebellion,  on  active  service.  So  that 
again  we  are  led  to  1582-3  at  latest — most  probably 
1582  (in  'the  spring  of  the  year,'  as  he  incidentally 
says).  Besides,  after  1583  the  various  '  interlocutors' 
had  far  different  concerns  to  occupy  themselves  about 
than  any  "  Discourse  of  Civill  Life."* 

It  is  manifest  from  the  invaluable  picture  of  "  three 
days"  in  Spenser's  Irish  life,  in  this  priceless  book,  that 
he  was  held  in  the  highest  estimation  for  his  learning  and 
genius.  His  announced  working  on  the  Faery  Queen 
comes  like  a  ray  of  golden  light  into  a  thunder-cloud, 
and  the  entire  narrative  and  interlocution  confirms  our 
conception  of  his  circumstances  in  Dublin,  spite  of  the 
surging  of  the  rebellion  beyond. 

In  1586  we  come  to  know  that  he  was  still  in  fast 
friendship  with  his  ancient  friend  Dr.  Gabriel  Harvey. 
His  Sonnet  "  To  the  right  worshipfull  my  singular 
good  frend  M.  Gabriell  Har\'ey,  Doctor  of  the  Lawes,"f 
is  such  tribute  as  any  man  might  well  have  been  proud 
of,  whilst  it  is  a  firm-wrought  piece  of  literary  work- 
manship.     (\^ol.  IV.,  p.  253.) 

!n  this  year  i  586  the  first  of  two  great  sorrows  fell 

*  See  Appendix  Note  M  for  full  quotations  from  this  memorable 
book. 

t  Not  published  until  1592,  in  Foure  Letters  and  Certaine 
Sonnets  ....   1592  (4to),  by  Harvey. 


150  DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN. 

upon  him.  In  this  year  Sir  I'hih'p  Sidney  was  wounded 
at  Zutphen  (d.  Oct.  1 7th).  In  1588  the  Earl  of  Leicester 
died  (4th  Sept.).  In  1587  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  was 
beheaded.  In  1588  came  the  'scattering'  of  the 
Armada.  In  all  likelihood  Spenser  was  resident  in 
Dublin  throughout  these  years — i.e.y  from  1580  to 
1588.  He  resigned  on  22nd  June,  1588,  his  office  of 
"  Clerk  of  Decrees  and  Recognizances,  or  Registership  " 
{Liber  HibeniicE),  and  it  is  to  be  noted  that,  reckoning 
from  1582,  his  lease  of  his  house  in  Dublin  "for  sixe 
years  "  would  expire  at  this  time.  Both  may  date  for 
us  his  removal  to  Kilcolman.  There  is  some  uncertainty 
in  the  chronology  of  his  '  getting '  of  Kilcolman,  as 
of  his  going  thither  to  reside.  Birch  (in  his  Life  of 
Spenser)  states  that  the  'grant'  was  given  on  27th 
June,  1586.  Investigation  proves  that  this  'grant' 
was  to  '  one  Reade '  (from  whom  Spenser  bought  his 
'  title  ')  ;  but  ce^ies  in  the  "  Articles  "  for  the  "  Under- 
takers," which  received  the  royal  assent  on  27th  June, 
1586,  Spenser  is  set  down  for  3028  acres.  Not  until 
I  589  is  it  certain  that  our  Poet  was  at  Kilcolman.  We 
know  from  two  sources  that  he  had  then  'possession.' 
First,  in  that  he  reported  that  at  that  date  he  had  so 
far  fulfilled  the  conditions  of  colonizing,  that  there  were 
"  sixe  householders  "  (English)  '  settled  '  under  him  to 
cultivate  the  land.  These  '  conditions  '  were  rigid,  and 
rigidly  exacted, — so  much  so  that  whereas  Kilcolman 
originally  extended  to  4000  acres,  they  were  on  partial 
non-fulfilment  diminished  to  3028.  Second,  Colin 
Cloiifs  Come  Home  Againe  tells  us  that  in  1589 
Sir  Walter  Ralegh  visited  him  at  his  Castle  "  by 
Mulla."      The  visit  is  idealized  and  poetized  so  as  to 


^ 


DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN.  151 

make  it  look  as  though  this  were  their  first  meeting, 
whereas  at  Smerwick  or  Fort-del-Ore  "  Captain 
Ralegh  "  was  a  foremost  executor  of  Lord  Grey's 
decision  to  "  put  to  the  sword "  these  "  forrain  in- 
vaders," mongrel  Spaniards  and  Italians,  and  creatures 
of  the  "  shaveling  Pope."  We  are  thus  brought  to 
a  central  event  in  Spenser's  life — his  settlement  at 
Kilcolman.  The  final  '  patent '  was  not  passed  until 
26th  October,  1591  ;  but  from  1588-9  he  was  assuredly- 
removed  from  Dublin  and  resident  in  "  my  castcl  of 
Kilcolman."  But  he  was  no  mere  '  undertaker '  or 
'  colonizer  '  ;  for  on  the  resignation  of  his  "  Register- 
ship"  at  Dublin,  he  obtained  by  'purchase'  from 
Bryskett  (as  before)  the  succession  to  the  office  of 
Clerk  of  the  Government  Council  of  Munster.*  This 
post  modifies  our  sense  of  exile  at  Kilcolman.  We 
are  free  to  think  of  him  as  riding  over  to  the  fair  city 
of  Cork  and  mingling  with  its  "  fair  women  and  brave 
men." 

The  '  grant  ' — with  rental  of  ;^8  i  ^s.  gd.  for  the  first 
three  years,  and  from  Michaelmas  1594,  £17  js.  6d.\ 
chief  rents,  33^.  ^d.  {Carcw  Papers,  iii.  61) — of  Kil- 
colman, was  equitably  obtained,  as  were  the  vaster 
obtained  by  Sir  Walter  Ralegh  and  other  Englishmen. 
The  Desmonds  and  their  associates  had  incvitabl\- 
'  forfeited  '  their  '  estates,'  and  it  was  statesmanship  of 
a  prescient  order  to  thus  devise  English  colonisation. 
Had  it  only  been  carried  out,  the  South  of  Ireland  by 

*  The  '  patent '  of  this  office  Bryskett  held  after  Spenser's 
death,  when  it  was  re-boLi>,dit  from  him.  Haifa  century  later  it 
was  sold  for  ;^I500,  and  its  income  declared  to  be  ;^400  a  year. 
{Local  Records  at  Cork.) 


152  DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN. 

the  Englisli  "  Undertakers"  would  have  anticipated  the 
Ulster  of  the  North  of  James  I.  And  what  a  different 
Ireland  to-day  we  should  have  had  all  round — physi- 
cally, intellectually,  morall\-,  religiously !  A  Roman 
Catholicism  as  ignorant  and  blind  as  is  that  of  Spain 
never  would  or  could  have  grown  up,  and  the  native 
capacity  and  alertness  of  the  Irish  intellect  would  have 
devised  channels  of  cmplcn'ment  that  must  have  over- 
come their  serene  acc]uiescence  in  mere  keeping  of"  flocks 
and  herds"  and  pasturages  and  crops.  With  English 
'  colonies '  so  placed  and  sustained  in  Ireland,  the 
central  government  would  have  had  no  motif  io  hamper 
and  suspect  the  national  development.  I  grant  that  it 
had  been  a  blessing  if  Ireland  had  had  her  Bannock- 
burn  ;  but  even  without  it,  had'  only  the  Under- 
takers been  given  time  and  quiet  to  carry  out  the 
splendidly-conceived  scheme,  Ireland  might  have  been 
as  England.  That  Scheme  needs  only  to  be  studied 
to  commend  itself.  The  lands  were  divided  into 
what  were  called  "  seigniories,"  and  were  granted  to 
English  "  knights,"  "  esquires,"  and  "gentlemen,"  who 
were  designated  "Undertakers."  Nor  v/as  the  'under- 
taking '  formal.  They  were  obliged  under  penalties, 
and  even  deprivation,  to  perform  certain  conditions 
agreeably  to  the  Queen's  '  Articles '  for  the  Planta- 
tion of  the  Province.  "  All  forfeited  lands,"  says  the 
MS.  of  Lismore,  "  v/ere  divided  into  manors  and 
seigniories  containing  i  2  and  8  and.  6ooo  or  4000  acres, 
according  to  a  plan  laid  down,  with  freedom  from  taxes," 
and  the  Queen  bound  herself  "  to  protect  and  defend  the 
seigniories."  There  was  to  be  "  cultivation  "  and  "plant- 
ing," and  gradual  winning  of  the  moorland  and  bog. 


DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN.  15.^ 

Kilcolman  Castle — now  an  ivied  ruin — stands  about 
three  English  miles  from  Doneraile.  Sooth  to  say, 
Smith's  description  that  it  "  commanded  a  view  of 
above  half  the  breadth  of  Ireland  "  *  is  such  a  gro- 
tesque exaggeration  as  to  show  that  he  never  ascended 
it.  To-day  the  '  fields  '  and  hills  are  commonplace  and 
unpicturesque.  The  '  Mulla '  is  five  miles  distant  (at 
Buttevaut).  The  '  rushy  Lake '  has  degenerated  into 
a  marsh.  The  '  woods  '  are  all  stripped.  We  must 
reclothe  plain  and  mountain,  and  be  willing  to  look 
on  aldered  Mulla  and  its  neighbour  rivers  under  the 
glamour  of  his  poetr)'  to  get  an  idea  of  the  '  home ' 
of  Edmund  Spenser.t  But  with  all  aids  and  imagina- 
tive light  we  cannot  avoid  a  suspicion  that  it  was  a 
semi-banishment,  comparable  with  Tennyson  to-day 
being  given  an  estate  in  Manitoba,  conditioned  on 
removal  thither.  I  have  seen  it  somewhere  stated 
that  Sarah  Spenser,  sister  of  the  poet,  "  kept  house  "  for 
him  at  Kilcolman.  One  is  glad  to  believe  this.  The 
date  of  her  marriage  with  John  Travers  of  Lanca- 
shire, who  had  settled  in  Ireland,  is  unknown. 

Many  allusions  in  the  minor  poems  and  in  the 
Faery  Queen  bear  witness  that  neither  political  cares 
and  responsibilities  nor  perfunctory  drudgeries  were 
allowed  to  over-bear  the  exercise  of  his  poetical  genius. 
Such  poetical  genius  was  indeed  irrepressible.     More- 

•  The  Ancient  and  Present  State  of  the  County  and  City  of 

Cork By  Charles  Smith.  M.D.  ;  2nd  ed.,  1774;   2  vols. 

See  i.,  pp.  51-2,  291-2,  333-4,  335  et alibi.    Cf.  Researches  in  the 

South  of  Ireland,  illustrative  of  the  Scenery By  T. 

Crofton  Croker;    1824,  a^X.o,  freqjienter. 

t  By  the  kindness  of  the  Rev.  James  Graves,  M.A.,  views  of 
Kilcolman  showing  Spenserian  relics  are  given  in  large-paper 
copies  of  Vol.  X.  See  in  Glossarial  Inde.x  (Vol.  X.)  for  full  details. 


154  DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN. 

over,  from  his  University  days  he  had  a  "  high  purpose" 
of  immortal  song  before  him,  an  unpaling  vision  of 
the  Ages  of  Faith,  and  a  conception  of  the  poem  that 
was  to  mate  with  Ariosto  and  justify  his  self-enrolment 
next  to  Chaucer — like  Dante's  ranging  of  himself 
next  to  Virgil,  overleaping  the  long  interval — that 
nothing  could  subordinate.  Except  John  Milton, 
fallen  on  still  more  "  evil  days,"  and  his  Paradise 
Lost,  wc  have  nothing  like  the  allegiance  of  the 
"  newe  poete  "  to  a  great  achievement.  His  Letters 
to  Harvey  have  revealed  how  in  1579-80  a  goodly 
portion  of  the  Manuscript  was  in  his  hands  and 
eagerly  re-called.  That  it  was  returned  by  "  Hob- 
binol  "  with  a  'judgment'  that  obtusely  saw  "nothing 
in  it "  as  compared  with  the  Author's  English 
Versifying,  is  of  the  "  Curiosities  of  Literature,"  if 
it  also  warrants  a  very  liumblc  estimate  of  the 
"Doctor  of  Laws' "  literary  insight.  Semi-legendary 
anecdotes  involve  that  the  "  Cave  of  Despair "  was 
sculptured  and  submitted  to  Sir  Philip  Sidney — to  his 
ecstasy.  The  "  Three  Days  "  in  the  cottage  of  Lodowick 
Bryskett — it  will  be  remembered — show  us  Spenser 
pleading  that  his  having  "  Vvell  entered  into"  the  Faery 
Queen,  must  excuse  his  undertaking  that  other  poetic- 
philosophic  task  that  was  sought  to  be  imposed  upon 
him.  Thus  we  are  safe  in  assuming  that  once  fairly 
'  settled  '  at  Kilcolman,  the  Faery  Qneeu  was  taken  in 
hand.  Its  "  scattered  leaves  "  from  "  many  hands  " 
were  then  brought  together,  and  the  whole  '  perfected.' 
This  having  been  done,  it  is  just  possible  that  the 
Singer — as  he  had  earlier — might  have  been  content 
to  "  put  aside  "  his  great  poem  and  wait  more  auspicious 


DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN.  155 

times  and  circumstances.  But  it  was  destined  to  be 
otherwise.  Sir  Walter  Ralegh,  leaving  the  worries 
behind  him  of  his  immense  '  grants  •  at  Youghal 
and  around,  came  to  Kilcolman.  Inevitably  the  Poem 
was  spoken  of  and  read,  and  ample  compensation  for 
the  frigid  pedantry  of  Dr.  Gabriel  Harvey,  came  the 
instant  and  passionate  admiration  of  this  illustrious 
Englishman ;  than  whom  none  then  living  (and  I  do  not 
forget  Shakespeare  was  then  living)  was  so  swiftly  sure 
to  be  glowingly  sympathetic,  as  a  listener  to  a  Poem  of 
the  kind  and  quality  of  the  Faery  Queen.  We  have 
the  visit  and  its  memorables  of  result  made  immortal 
in  Colin  Cloufs  Come  Home  Again.  It  needeth  not 
that  we  quote  one  of  the  classic  passages  of  our 
supremest  literature.  It  has  "  for  all  time  "  ranged 
itself  in  the  world's  memor>'  (may  I  not  say  the 
universal  heart  i*)  with  the  picture-incidents  whereof 
our  Immortals  are  the  centre — as  Dante's  first  sight  of 
Beatrice  ;  Petrarch  among  the  olives  at  Vaucluse  ; 
Shakespeare  in  his  deer-pranks  at  Charlccote ;  Ben 
Jonson  and  the  Wits  at  the  "  Mermaid  "  ;  George 
Herbert  in  the  church  at  Bemerton  on  the  eve 
of  his  ordination  ;  Milton  dictating  to  his  daughter  ; 
Dryden  in  his  arm-chair  at  Wills ;  Addison  giving 
his  "  little  senate  laws  "  ;  Robert  Bums  gazing  at  the 
Evening  Star  at  EUisland  ;  Scott  and  the  "  one  book  " 
in  the  dying-chamber  at  Abbotsford, 

How  profoundly  the  Faery  Queen  moved  and  lifted 
up  Ralegh,  his  great  Sonnet  A  Vision  upon  this 
Co?iceipt  of  the  Faery  Qneene  reveals — perhaps  the 
greatest  of  tributes  ever  paid  by  one  great  man  to 
another  great   man.      Whoso  reads  it  finds    a    hush  of 


156  DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN. 

awe  as  in  a  cathedral  come  over  him.  It  needs  no 
setting  of  it  to  music.  It  sets  itself  to  stateliest, 
divinest,  most  searching  music. 

With  characteristic  strength  Ralegh  persuaded 
Spenser  to  go  to  London,  and  to  Court.  Elizabeth 
must  hear  of  the  immortal  poem.  The  immortal  poem 
must  be  given  to  the  world.  The  two  friends  proceeded 
together.    This  journey  must  have  been  taken  in  1589. 

Besides  the  impulse  by  Ralegh's  admiration  and 
(doubtless)  stimulating  hopes,  private  affairs  that  must 
have  been  of  a  troublesome  nature — to  wit,  a  dispute 
with  Lord  Roche  about  "certain  lands" — rendered  it 
expedient  that  Spenser  should  make  a  personal  appear- 
ance in  the  Law-courts  in  London.  Lord  Roche  had 
alleged  '  encroachment '  on  his  property  by  parties 
supported  by  Spenser.  Spenser  had  obtained  a 
"special  order"  against  this  English-born  or  Anglo- 
Irish  Viscount — Maurice,  Viscount  Roche  of  Fermoy — 
who  to  say  the  least  had  played  at  treason  by  secretly 
manufacturing  gunpowder  and  holding  suspicious 
intercourse  with  avowed  rebels  ;  and  threatened  v/ith 
attainder  and  the  ruin  he  richly  deserved,  the  Viscount 
resolved  to  "  appeal  against  the  Rule,"  and  hurried  to 
London  to  lay  his  case  before  the  Queen.  In  a  Petition 
which  is  dated  12th  October,  1589,  he  designates 
Spen.ser  "  one  Edmonde  Spenser,  Clearke  of  the  Counsell 
in  Mounster,"  and  goes  on  to  declare  that  the  afore- 
said Spenser  had  "  by  colour  of  his  office  and  by 
making  of  corrupt  bargains  with  certain  persons  pre- 
tending falselie  title  to  parcels  of  the  Lord  Roche's 
lands,  dispossessed  the  said  lord  of  certain  castles  and 
16    ploughlands."      The   'plaintiff'   adds — "so   violent 


DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN.  157 

and  unlawful  is  the  course  taken  to  dispossess  me  of 
my  ancient  inheritance,  and  so  tedious,  uncertain,  and 
chargeable  arc  the  ways  and  means  thought  available 
to  help  me,  as  doubtless  despair  of  redress  had  almost 
attached  my  senses  and  driven  me  to  confusion."  This 
was  only  a  development  of  an  earlier  grudge  and  self- 
interested  opposition.  He  had  frantically  set  himself 
to  hinder  the  progress  of  the  new  settlements  by  the 
English  Undertakers — himself,  be  it  remembered,  a 
metamorphosed  Englishman,  and  the  worst,  perhaps, 
of  a  base  type.  He  had  carried  his  wild  opposition 
and  hatred  so  far  as  to  have  made  *  proclamation  '  that 
"  none  of  his  people  should  have  any  tfade  or  con- 
ference with  Mr.  Spenser  or  Mr.  Piers,  or  any  of  their 
tenants,  being  English  " — the  last  being  characteristic 
of  the  un-English  partizans.  He  used  all  manner  of 
kindred  devices  to  give  force  to  his  hostility  to  the 
"  Settlers."  One  astounding  evidence  of  his  personal 
ill-will  to  Spenser  is  on  record  :  to  wit,  he  obtained  the 
"  fineing  "  of  one  of  his  tenants,  by  name  Teige  O'Lyne, 
"  for  that  he  received  Mr.  Spenser  in  his  house  one  night 
as  he  came  from  the  Session  at  Limerick."  In  doing 
and  achieving  this  "  heavy  fine,"  Lord  Roche  availed 
himself  of  a  recent  statute  against  "free  quarters,"  though 
it  never  contemplated  such  a  misapplication  of  it.  The 
impolicy  of  this  law  is  complained  of  in  the  Vene  of 
Ireland.  "  Who  among  us,"  asks  a  present-day  writer 
in  reference  to  this,  "  would  not  willingly  have  been 
mulcted  for  the  honour  of  receiving  Edmund  Spenser  ?"* 

•British  Museum,  Addl.  MSS.  4790,  f.  146;  Arch<eologia, 
voi.  xxi.;  Dublin  University  Magazine,  August  11^61,  vol.  iviii., 
pp.  129-44. 


158  DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN. 

This  Dispute  —  which  it  were  mistaken  pains  to 
trace  out — even  Hardiman,  who  has  few  good  words 
for  Spenser,  or  any  EngHshman,  thus  summarily  pro- 
nounces on  :  "  But  as  it  appears  from  Lord  Roche's 
petition  that  Spenser  was  in  these  matters  a  supporter 
and  maintainer  of  one  Joan  McCallaghan,  an  opponent 
of  his  lordship,  it  seems  not  unlikely  that  in  reality  lie 
had  out  of  generosity  espoused  the  cause  of  a  poor  Irish- 
woman, WHOM  Lord  Roche   was  trying  to  rob 

OF    HER    land"  (p.  421). 

Thus  doubly  drawn  to  London  by  the  spell  of 
Ralegh's  confidence  in  the  success  of  the  Faery  Queen 
when  published,  and  by  "  private  affairs,"  we  have 
to  think  of  these  two  brilliant  men  as  fellow-travellers 
across  the  "  narrow  seas  "  wherein  King  was  '  drowned  ' 
to  live  for  ever  in  Lycidas.  Colin  Clout's  Come  Home 
Again — as  we  shall  see — gives  us  glimpses  of  their  con- 
verse at  Kilcolman  and  on  the  way.  Most  important 
of  all,  this  poem  makes  it  certain  that  Ralegh  took 
Spenser  to  Court,  obtained  audience  for  him  with  Eliza- 
beth, and  won  her  "  favorable  ear  "  for  the  first  three 
books  of  the  great  poem.  That  Poem  so  filled  the  entire 
horizon  of  his  vision  and  hopes  that  he  tells  us — 

Nought  took  I  with  me  but  mine  oaten  quill — 

that  is,  the  MS.  of  the  Faery  Queen  (Books  1.  to  IIL). 
It  would  have  been  a  terrible  disappointment  had 
he  not  gained  the  patronage  of  "  Gloriana,"  or,  as  his 
friend  first  called  her,  "  Cynthia."  But  there  is  no 
shadow  of  doubt  on  this.      We  thus  read  : — 

Foorth  on  our  voyage  we  by  land  did  passe, 
(Quoth  he)  as  that  same  shepheard  still  us  guyded, 


DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN.  159 

Untill  that  we  to  Cynthiae's  presence  came  : 
Whose  i^lorie  greater  then  my  simple  thought, 
I  found  much  greater  then  the  former  fame  ; 
Such  greatnes  I  cannot  compare  to  ought : 
But  if  I  her  like  ought  on  earth  might  read, 
I  would  her  lyken  to  a  crowne  of  lillies, 
Upon  a  virgin  bryde's  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  Phebe's  garlond  shining  new. 
In  which  all  pure  perfection  one  may  see. 
But  vaine  it  is  to  thinke,  by  paragone 
Of  earthly  things,  to  judge  of  things  divine  : 
Her  power,  her  mercy,  her  wisedome,  none 
Can  deeme,  but  who  the  Godhead  can  define. 
WTiy  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. 

With  that  Ale.xis  broke  his  tale  asunder, 
Saying  :   By  wondring  at  thy  Cynthiae's  praise, 
Colin,  thy  selfe  thou  mak'st  us  more  to  wonder. 
And  her  upraising,  doest  thy  selfe  upraise. 
But  let  us  heare  what  grace  she  shewed  thee, 
And  how  that  shepheard  strange  thy  cause  advanced  ? 

The  Shepheard  of  the  Ocean  (quoth  he) 
Unto  that  Goddcsse  grace  me  first  enhanced, 
And   10   MINE   OATEN   PIPE   ENCLIN'I)   hek   eare, 
TH.Vr  SHE  THENCEFORTH  therein  GAN  TARE  DELIGHT, 

And  it  desir'u  at  timely  houres  to  heare. 
All  were  ray  notes  but  rude  and  roughly  dight ; 
For  not  by  measure  of  her  owne  great  mynd. 
And  wondrous  worth,  she  mott  my  simple  song, 
But  joyd  that  country  shepheard  ought  could  fynd 
Worth  barkening  to,  emongst  the  learned  throng. 

(Vol.  IV.,  pp.  47-8.) 

We  must  return  on  and  vindicate  the  "grateful  praise  " 
of  Elizabeth  here  and  elsewhere.  But  at  this  point 
it  is  to  be  specifically  recalled  that  Spenser  found  a 
willing  listener  in  his  Queen,  and  so  gained  the  main 
end   of  his    "  voyage."       There    were   other    subsidiary 


i6o  DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN. 

ends  ;  for  the  "  Shepheard  of  the  Ocean"  had  lamented 
the  "  new  poete's  "  exile.      He 

...  gan  to  cast  great  lyking  to  my  lore, 
And  great  dislyking  to  my  lucklesse  lot, 
That  banisht  had  my  selfe,  like  wight  for  lore, 
Into  that  waste,  where  \  was  quite  forgot. 

Very  characteristic  of  the  unresting,  scheming,  mag- 
nificently-forecasting Ralegh  was  this.  Self-poised, 
self-reliant,  conscious  of  resource,  he  doubtless  felt 
confident — as  well  he  might — that  Spenser  had  only 
to  appear  "  with  him,"  to  be  assured  of  far  worthier 
recognition  and  wider  scope  for  his  powers,  as  well 
as  more  adequate  reward  for  his  deserts.  We  are 
left  to  think  of  him  over-seeing  his  Faery  Queen, 
so  far  as  it  then  went,  through  the  press.  The 
following  entry  informs  us  that  he  must  have 
speedily  after  arrival  '  entered  '  it  at  Stationers' 
Hall :— 

Primo  Die  Decembris  [1589] 

Master  Ponsonbye     Entered  for  his  Copye,  a  book  intituled  the 

fayre  Queene  dysposed  into  xij  bookes.  etc. 

Aucthorysed  vnder  thandes  of  the  Archbishop 

of  Canterbery  and  bothe  the  wardens  .  .  .  yj"^ 

[Arber  ii.  536.] 

It  is  to  be  noted  how,  by  his  title-page  of  the  "  First 
Three  Books "  he  gives  hostage  to  Fortune  that  the 
other  "Nine"  should  follow.  And  so  when  the  next 
"  Three  "  books  were  given  it  was  still  to  be  "  dysposed 
into  xij  bookes."  Than  this  splendid  audacity  I  know 
nothing  comparable,  unless  it  be  Lord  Macaulay's 
opening  of  his  History  of  England,  wherein — without 
any  saving  clause,  as  Thomas  Fuller  would  have  said 
^of  "if  the  Lord   will" — he   pledges   himself   to  write 


^ 


DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN.  i6i 

his  great    Story  down   to    'memories'    of    men    "still 
living."  * 

As  was  the  mode  of  Poets  and  others,  when  the  dainty 
beautifully-printed  quarto  of  1590  was  published  by 
'  Master  Ponsonby,'  it  was  furnished  with  an  apparatus 
of  "  Laudator}-  Sonnets"  to  Spenser  and  with  the  great 
series  of  Sonnets  by  Spenser  addressed  to  the  foremost 
names  of  the  time.  I  suppose  that  gift-copies  of  the 
volume  would  be  sent  to  these  noblemen  and  gentlemen 
and  "  faire  ladies,"  with  perchance  the  several  sonnets 
marked,  or  even  re-written,  on  the  fly-  leaf.  Eheu  !  eheu ! 
no  letters  of  thanks,  no  interchanges  of  opinion,  have 
come  down  to  us.  We  can  only  indulge  the  '  Pleasures 
of  Imagination  '  as  we  recognise  "  Hobynoll  "  [Harvey] 
— at  his  very  best  in  his  gracious  recantation — and 
"  R.  S."  (one  asks  could  it  possibly  have  been  Robert 
Southwell })  and  W.  L.  and  Ignoto  following  Ralegh's 
pair  of  Sonnets  among  the  "  Verses  addressed  to  the 
Author,"  and  as  we  pass  from  Hatton  and  the  "  most 
honourable  and  excellent  Lord  the  Earle  of  Essex  " 
to  Oxford,  Northumberland,  Ormond  and  Ossorj', 
Lord  Charles  Howard,  Lord  Grey  of  Wilton,  Ralegh, 
Burleigh,  Cumberland,  Hunsdon,  Buckhurst,  Walsing- 
ham,  Sir  John  Norn's,  the  Countess  of  Pembroke,  the 
Lady  Carew,  on  and  on  to  "  all  the  gratious  and  beau- 
tifull  Ladies  in  the  Court." 

I  do  not  forget  that  John  Davies  of  Hereford 
and  Henry  Lok  have  long  sets  of  Sonnets  after  the 
same  fashion.     But  there  is  this  differentiation  between 

♦  Opening-  of  the  History,  pp.  1-2.  See  N  in  Appendix  after 
Essays  in  rhis  volume,  for  a  critical  notice  of  Mr.  Sebastian  Evans' 
theory  of  a  '  Lost  Poem  '  by  Spenser. 

I.  II 


i62  DUBLIN  AND   KILCOLMAN. 

tlicir.s  and  Spenser's — viz.,  that  avowedly  they  were 
'  strangers  '  to  the  most,  whereas  in  these  Sonnets 
appended  to  the  *'  first  three  books," — and  increased  in 
the  two  vohnncs  of  1596 — there  are  found  in  almost 
every  separate  Sonnet  touches  declarative  of  some 
personal  intercourse,  or  as  the  phrase  ran,  "  familiar 
intimacy."  Supreme  above  all  was  the  grandly-simple 
Dedication  to  Elizabeth  : — 

"TO  THE   MOST  MIGH- 

TIE  AND  MAGNIFI- 
CENT EMPRESSE   ELI- 
ZABETH ;    BY  THE 
GRACE   OF  GOD  QUEENE 
OF   ENGLAND,    FRANCE, 
AND    IRELAND, 
DEFENDER   OF  THE   FAITH, 
&C. 

Her  most  humble 

Servant : 
Ed,  Spenser."* 

It  will  have  been  observed  that  among  the  Sonnets 
was  one  to  "  the  right  honourable  the  Lord  Burleigh, 
L(ird  High  Threasurer  of  England."  That  Spenser 
tlius  included  Burleigh  was  surely  creditable  to  him. 
More  creditable  that  it  is  self-respecting,  restrained, 
and  only  in  one  epithet  ("  inightic  shoulders  ")  praiseful. 

*  Dean  Church  inadvertently  j^-ives  tlie  second  and  enlarged 
dedication  to  Elizabeth  as  belonging  to  that  of  1590.  He  pro- 
nounces it  (in  this  second  form)  "  one  of  the  boldest  dedications 
perhaps  ever  penned,"  the  reference  being  to  the  words  "To 
live  with  the  eternitie  of  her  fame,"  but  adds — "  the  claim  was  a 
proud  one,  but  it  has  proved  a  prophecy  "  (p.  101).  It  may  be 
as  well  to  rectify  another  little  inadvertence  of  the  same  writer — 
viz.,  that  it  is  incorrect  to  state  that  Sidney  "  had  published  his 
Defence  of  Foes ie''  (p.  104).  It  was  posthumous,  and  did  not 
appear  until  1595,  so  not  "between  the  appearance  of  the 
Shepherd" s  Ceileiidar  and  the  Faery  Queen  of  1590." 


DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN.  i6,^ 

I  ma)'  be  wrong,  but  the  ''Perhaps  not  vainc  they  may 
appeare  to  you  "  has  the  pathos  of  "  hope  deferred  "  in 
it,  poignant  recollection  of  earlier  un-sympathy.  This 
most  significant  Sonnet  must  here  find  place,  if  it  were 
only  to  disprove  Sir  Walter  Scott's  strange  charge 
against  it  as  "  distinguished  by  the  most  flattering  strain 
of  adulation  "  {Edin.  Revieiu,  vii.  207-8). 

To  you  rig-ht  noble  Lord,  whose  careful!  brest 
To  mcnaj^'-e  of  most  grave  affaires  is  bent, 
And  on  whose  mightie  shoulders  most  doth  rest 
The  burdein  of  this  kingedomes  i^overnement, 

As  the  wide  compasse  of  the  firmament. 
On  Atlas  mighty  shoulders  is  upstayd  ; 
Unfitly  I  these  ydle  rimes  present, 
The  labor  of  lost  time,  and  wit  unstayd  ; 

Yet  if  their  deeper  sence  be  inly  wayd, 

And  the  dim  vele,  with  which  from  comune  vew 
Their  fairer  partes  are  hid,  aside  be  layd. 
Perhaps  not  vaine  they  may  appeare  to  you. 

Such  as  they  be,  vouchsafe  them  to  receave. 
And  wipe  their  faults  out  of  your  censure  grave. 
E.  S. 

liy  this  Sonnet,  or  rather  the  occasion  of  it,  "  hangs  a 
tale."  In  Manningham's  Z^/rt;^  (Camden  Society,  1868J 
one  Touse  or  Towse — on  whose  authority  a  number  of 
the  gossipy  anecdotes  of  this  singular  Manuscript  are 
given — tells  us  this  : — 

"When  her  Majestic  had  given  order  that  Spenser  should 
have  a  reward  for  his  poems,  but  Spenser  could  have  nothing,  hu 
presented  her  with  these  verses  : — 

It  pleased  your  Grace  upon  a  tyme 

To  graunt  me  reason  for  my  rj'me, 

But  from  that  tyme  without  this  reason 

I  heard  of  neither  r>'me  nor  reason  "  (p.  43). 

Poor  enough  Epigram  certainly,  though  on  a  par  with 
lines  ascribed  to  Shakespeare  in   the  same  "  Diary  "  ; 


i64  DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN. 

but  probably  holding  in  them  a  seed  of  fact.*  Her 
Majesty — so  the  tradition  runs — '  ordered  '  a  goodly 
sum  to  be  awarded  the  "  newe  poete."  The  penurious 
Lord  Treasurer — wherever  others  and  not  himself  or 
kin  were  concerned — demurred,  dropping  sotto  voce  the 
question,  "What?  all  this  for  a  song?"  Elizabeth 
■ — tainted  o'  times  by  her  chief  Adviser's  usuriousness 
—  gave  way,  and  said,  "Well,  let  him  have  what  is 
reasonr  Ultimately — as  the  State-patent  proves — a 
pension  of  ;^50  was  granted,  far  beyond  the  living 
Laureate's  now  of  ;^ioo — in  February  1591.  But 
Burleigh's  tardiness  must  have  taken  the  whole  grace 
out  of  the  kindness.  Few — and  least  of  all  natures  so 
hard  and  grasping  as  Burleigh's — realize  how  much 
"/(j'wV/'^-kindness  "  or  kindness  in  manner  and  look 
and  promptitude,  adds  to  it,  and  how  much  un- 
gracious, dilatory,  reluctant  bestowment  takes  from  a 
kindness. 

The  after-account  in  Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Again 
goes  to  demonstrate,  along  with  other  allusions,  that 
whilst  the  publication  of  the  Faery  Queen  brought 
the  Poet  renown,  and  prophesied  immortality  among 
"  gentle  and  simple "  and  the  pension  and  virtual 
laureateship,  any  rainbow  of  hope  of  high  State 
Employment  vanished  into  greyest,  most  drizzling  rain. 
He  had  left  Ireland  on  the  spur  of  Ralegh — with  the 
subsidiary  "  Dispute  "  rendering  the  visit  to  London 
expedient  as  well — heart-sore  in  his  exile  in  a  country 

With  brutish  barbarism  overspread. 

*  Mr.  J.  Payne  ColHer,  in  his  History  of  Dra?natic  Poetry, 
s.n.,  quotes  an  authority  which  ascribes  the  lines  to  Churchyard, 
but  this  is  not  at  all  likely. 


DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN.  ihs 

To   him  it  was  a  "  salvage  soil."      He  had  contrasted 
his  own  native  England  with  it  : — 

No  waylioi?  there  nor  wretchednesse  is  heard, 

No  bloodie  issues  nor  no  leprosies, 

No  grisly  famine,  nor  no  raginj^  sweard. 

No  nightly  bordrags,  nor  no  hue  and  cries  : 

The  shepheards  there  abroad  may  safelie  lie. 

On  hills  and  dosvnes.  withouten  dread  or  daungor  ; 

No  ravenous  wolves  the  good  man's  hope  destroy, 

Nor  outlawes  fell  aflEray  the  forest  raunger. 

(Vol.  IV.,  p.  47. 
and  again — 

There  learned  arts  do  flourish  in  great  honor 

And  poets'  wits  are  had  in  peerlesse  price,     {md.) 

But  the  ideal  was  in  harsh  contrast  with  the  real.      \Vc 

have  a  touching  record  of  this   in   these  most  notable 

lines — 

I  whom  suUein  care 
Through  discontent  of  my  long  fruitlesse  stay 
In  Prince's  Court,  and  expectation  vayne 
Of  idle  hopes,  which  still  doe  fly  away. 
Like  empty  shaddowes,  did  afflict  my  brayne, 
Walkt  forth  to  ease  my  payne 
Along  the  shoare  of  silver-streaming  Themmes. 

(Vol.  IV.,  p.  199.) 

Later  came  these  memorial- words  from  Ireland — 

Who  ever  leaves  sweete  home,  where  meane  estate 
In  safe  assurance,  without  strife  or  hate, 
Findes  all  things  needfuU  for  contentment  meeke. 
And  will  to  Court,  for  shadowes  vaine  to  seeke, 
Or  hope  to  gaine,  himselfe  will  one  dale  crie  : 
That  curse  God  send  unto  mine  cnemie. 

(Vol.  III.,  p.  130.) 

The  immortal  wrath  of  the  '  hell  '  of  Court  suitors' 
delay,  belongs  to  this  period.  That  "  purple  patch  " 
was  added  to  Mother  HiibbenVs  Talc  now  unquestion- 
ably. And  so  early  in  1591  he  once  more  turned  his 
back    on    England    and    returned    to    Kilcolman    and 


1 60  DUBLIN  Ai\n  KILCULMAN. 

Ii  eland.  I  say  early  in  1591.  For  the  last  memorial 
of  his  presence  in  London  is  the  dating  of  his 
Daplmaida — "  London  this  first  day  of  Januarie  1591." 
This  zvas  iSQi,  not  1592,  according  to  our  new  style, 
as  is  shown  {ci)  By  the  death-date  of  the  subject  of 
this  poem,  viz.,  late  in  1590.  She  was  Lady  Douglas 
Howard,  wife  of  Arthur  Gorges,  She  is  not  to  be 
confounded  with  Douglas  Howard,  countess  of  Sheffield, 
the  supposed  second  wife  of  Leicester  (Camden's  y-i/^/zcz/j", 
P-  3  57)-  En  passa)U  the  name  Douglas  possibly  came 
into  the  Howard  family  through  the  marriage  of  Lord 
Thomas  Howard  (younger  brother  of  Lord  William 
Howard  of  Effingham)  to  Lady  Margaret  Douglas, 
daughter  of  King  Henry  VHI.'s  eldest  sister  Margaret, 
Queen  of  Scotland,  by  her  marriage  with  the  Earl  of 
Angus  (Sandford  ii.  323).  (Jj)  By  the  already-seen  dating 
of  Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Again  from  Kilcolman 
at  the  close  of  the  same  year,  "  27  December  1591." 
He  could  hardly  have  been  at  Kilcolman  on  27th 
December  1591,  and  in  London  on  ist  January  1592, 
.v.,  reckoning  1st  January  1591  as  =  1592.  He 
thus  began  the  year  in  London  with  Daphnaida,  and 
closed  with  the  Complaints.  Daplmaida  was  probably 
privately  printed  for  the  family.  It  was  not  'entered  ' 
at  Stationers'  Hall — unlik-e  the  Complaints — and  its 
original  title-page  (indeed,  both  title-pages  of  1591 
and  1596)  bear  simp!)'  to  bo  'Printed'  f(;r  William 
i'onsonby.  Daphnaida  is  dedicated  t*'  11  clcn,i,  Mar- 
(]iiesse  of  Northampton.  By  the  cpi.~.tlc  \vc  learn  that 
the  I'oet  had  not  [)ersonally  known  the  deceased  Lady 
(jorges.  11  is  Laiuent  was  out  f)l  " 'j,oo'l  will"  to  her 
widowed    husband,   a   "  lover    of    learning  and   vertuc." 


i/ 


DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN.  167 

Daplinaida  is  what  few  elegies  are — simple,  direct,  and 
unaffected.  There  is  no  forced  or  strained  sentiment 
in  it.  The  grief  is  sincere,  for  (through  the  Poet) 
it  is  the  grief  of  a  bereaved  husband  that  is  ex- 
pressed, not  the  woe  of  a  fictitious  shepherd.  Our 
iVnthologies  ought  to  appropriate  this  minor  but 
memorable  poem. 

Spenser  gained  his  cause  against  Viscount  Roche 
(it  is  believed)  ;  so  that  dispute  on  his  returning 
was  out  of  the  way.  And  he  left  with  better  than 
crown  of  gold  clasping  his  forehead.  He  could 
not  but  be  conscious  of  his  illustrious  succession 
as  Dan  Chaucer's  recognised  heir.  Dean  Church  has 
with  fine  sympathy  and  concinnity  summed  up  his 
position  by  the  pubhcation  of  the  volume  of  1590, 
as  follows: — 

"The  publication  of  the  Faery  Queen  placed  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,  excjpt  in  the  stories  about  Burghley's  dislike  of  him,  as 
an  idle  rhymer,  and  perhaps  as  a  friend  of  his  opponent's.  But  his 
brother  poets,  men  like  Lodge  and  Drayton,  paid  honour,  though 
irf  quaint  phrases,  to  the  learned  Colin,  the  reverend  Colin,  the 
excellent  and  cunning  Colin.  .  .  .  Even  the  fierce  pamphleteer, 
Thomas  Nash,  the  scourge  and  torment  of  poor  Gabriel  Harvey, 
addresses  Har\ey's  friend  as  heavenly  Spenser,  and  extols  'the 
Faery  Queen's  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 


1 68  DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN. 

music,  and  in  the  strangeness,  in  our  eyes,  of  the  excuse  made 
for  the  poet"  (pp.  102-3).* 

With  one's  pulses  stirred  by  these  admirable 
words — and  there  are  many  others  akin — it  is  anything 
but  a  pleasant  duty  to  find  fault.  But  the  duty  is 
inexorable  to  return  at  this  point  (as  promised)  on 
Spenser's  homage  to  Queen  Elizabeth.  The  Dean 
pronounces  his  celebrations  of  Elizabeth  to  be  part 
and  parcel  of  "  the  gross,  shameless,  lying  flattery 
paid  to  the  Queen"  (p.  137).  Following  this  up, 
he  specifically  applies  it  to  our  Poet.  Here  is  his 
portraiture  and  its  application  : 

"  It  was  no  worship  of  a  secluded  and  distant  object  of  loyalty  : 
the  men  who  thus  flattered  knew  perfectly  well,  often  from  pain- 
ful experience,  what  Elizabeth  was  :  able,  indeed,  high-spirited, 
successful,  but  ungrateful  to  her  servants,  capricious,  vain,  ill- 
tempered,  unjust,  and  in  her  old  age  ugly.  And  yet  the 
'  Gloriana '  of  the  Faery  Queen,  the  empress  of  all  nobleness, 
— Belphoebe,  the  princess  of  all  sweetness  and  beauty,— Brito- 
mart,  the  armed  votaress  of  all  purity, — -Mercilla,  the  lady  of  all 
compassion  and  grace, — were  but  the  reflections  of  the  language 
in  which  it  was  then  agreed  upon  by  some  of  the  greatest  of 
Englishmen  to  speak,  and  to  be  supposed  to  think,  of  the  Queen  " 
(p.  138). 

Recognition  and  pondering  of  the  closing  words 
might  have  modified  this  passionate  indictment  of 
"  the  greatest  of  Englishmen."  Like  recognition 
of  the  fact  that  Elizabeth  in  her  golden  prime 
was  a  splendid  woman,  and  only  in  her  harassed 
and  troubled  old  age  "  ugly,"  might  have  also 
suppressed    the  harsh   recollection   of  only    what  was 

*  Sec  Vol.  IV.,  pp.  17 — 18,  11.  225 — 245.  I  have  not  quoted 
Richard  Barnfield's  sonnet  reprinted  in  the  Passionate  Pilgrim 
of  1599,  because  nobody  now  assigns  it  to  Shakespeare.  See  my 
edition  oi  Barnfield's  Com;plete  Poems  ior  the  Roxburghe  Club,  j-.c. 


DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN.  169 

"  frailty  "  in  the  j^reat  Queen.  Recognition  and 
pondering  of  Spenser's  standpoint  and  sentiment, 
above  all,  might  have  spared  us  so  wooden  a  missing 
of  his  and  his  fellows'  sincerity  of  laudation.  I  would 
accentuate  the  last.  To  Edmund  Spenser  and  the 
supremest  Englishmen  contemporary  —  from  Sidney 
and  Ralegh  to  Shakespeare  and  Daniel  and  Drayton, 
the  deliverance  from  "bloody  Mary"  (irreversible  epi- 
thet) was  a  divine  gift  and  ordering  of  God.  To  them 
Elizabeth  was  England  incarnate.  Beyond  that,  she 
was  the  ideal  of  sovereignty.  Never  had  these  islands 
had  a  ruler  of  the  brain,  of  the  statesmanly  prescience, 
of  the  high-hearted  patriotism,  of  the  magnificent 
courage — a  Tudor  heritage — or  of  the  swift  respon- 
siveness to  the  people's  declared  will.  With  every 
abatement,  she  was  a  great  woman — one  to  be  looked 
up  to,  and,  as  matter-of-fact,  who  was  looked  up 
to  by  the  greatest  every  way,  even  by  foreigners. 
Granted  that  the  '  scandals '  of  the  Court  do  not 
bear  close  investigation.  Admitted  that  she  was  over- 
intimate  with  Seymour,  with  Leicester,  with  Essex, 
with  many,  an'  it  please  you.  Accept  what  have  been 
called  her  "  manly  indelicacies,"  through  that  streak  of 
coarseness  drawn  from  "  bluff  Hal."  Even  against  the 
witness  of  the  lock  of  her  hair  gleaming  like  sheen 
of  gold  or  golden  sunshine  at  Wilton,  insist  that  it 
was  carroty  red.  Grope  in  the  gutters  of  literature 
after  gossip  of  her  "  terrible  swearing "  and  "  black 
teeth  "  and  "  foul  breath  "  (the  latter  in  her  "  old  age  "). 
Deny,  while  looking  at  unquestioned  genuine  portraits 
showing  a  grand  face — breadth  of  brow,  piercing 
eyes,  commanding  nose,  mobile  lips,  sovran  presence — 


lyo  DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN. 

that  she  ever  was  beautiful  or  noble.      Find  only  the 

poor  selection  of  "  capricious,"  "  vain,"  "  ill-tempered,' 

"  unjust,"  "  ugly,"   to  sum    up   her  personality.     After 

all  has  been  said,  and   said    as    bitterly  as  you  will, 

Elizabeth  remains  an  exceptionally  great  Woman  and 

Sovereign.     Says  judicially  an  able  Writer  : — 

"  If  she  was  not  so  well  fitted  for  a  convent  as  her  sister,  or  for 
a  ball-room  as  her  cousin  [Mary  of  Scotland],  she  was  infinitely 
better  fitted  than  either  for  a  throne.  Her  intellect  was  mascu- 
line and  statesmanlike— strong  and  comprehensive,  inquisitive 
and  suspicious.  Her  ministers  were  not  narrow-minded  and 
infuriated  priests,  but  able,  active,  and  moderate  laymen.  Seldom 
or  never  has  a  government  been  beset  with  so  zealous,  relentless, 
and  unscrupulous  enemies.  Never  have  such  enemies  been  more 
dexterously  and  completely  baffled.  And  vv^hile  the  hostile  and 
disaffected  were  over-matched,  the  skilful  and  enterprising  were 
encouraged.  For  the  first  time  the  Mongol  fishermen  on  the 
island  of  Fuego  were  startled  by  the  skill  and  daring  of  English 
seamen.  For  the  first  time  the  British  traders  might  be  seen 
simultaneously  at  Gambia  and  at  Bengal,  at  Moscow  and  at 
Bagdad"  (  Westminster  Review,  vol.  xxxi.,  N.S.,  1867, p.  136). 

The  seizing  on  the  infirmities  and  physical  decays 
of  her  "  old  age  "  revolts  me  by  its  indecency  as  by  its 
thanklessness.  Her  scars  and  wrinkles  came  as  Time's 
exactions  for  her  life-long  devotion  to  "  this  England," 
and  call  for  veneration,  not  slander,  for  pitifulness,  not 
rhetorical  malignancy.  The  great  Englishmen  of  her 
lime  did  not  wish  to  think  of  her  as  growing  old. 
They  willingly  forgot  dates  and  facts,  for  after 
mu.st  come  James  VI.  One  admires  most  of  all, 
perhaps,  that  Spenser's  recognition  of  the  divineness 
of  Monarchy  and  the  divineness  of  Elizabeth's  inherit- 
ance should  be  an  offence  to  those  whom  they  offend. 
"  Shameless,  lying  flattery "  is  a  marvellous  accu- 
sation in  historic  retrospect  of  the  actual  homage 
paid    to   "  our    most    religious    kings "   as    exemplified 


DUBLIN  AND  KILCOLMAN.  171 

in     Charles    I.     the    false,     Charles     II.    the     bestial 

James     I.    "  learned     fool,"     4th     George   . 

There  was  that  in  Elizabeth  one  could  bend  the 
knee  to  with  self-respect.  Even  in  her  "  old  age  " 
the  very  largeness  of  the  ruin  was  declarative  of 
the  primary-  grandeur.  In  those — it  is  to  worship 
the  man,  however  base,  as  it  is  to  caricature  "  the 
divinity  that  doth  hedge  a  king,"  to  hold  the  senti- 
ment noble  when  cherished  toward  them  and  the  like, 
and  blasphemy  when  held  towards  Elizabeth,  Oliver 
Cromwell,  William  III. — the  more  that  the  solitary 
excuse  for  the  Stuarts  is  the  incense  of  adulation 
that  bishops  and  ministers  of  State  ceaselessly  offered 
them.  I  protest  with  all  my  soul  against  any  charge 
of  "  shameless,  lying  flattery "  as  applied  to  the 
heart-felt  homage  and  reverence  and  pride  in  a 
great  woman  and  queen  of  Edmund  Spenser  and  his 
associates. 


HULiE,    VOLGHAL. 


l^2  "HOME  AGAIN"    IN  ICELAND. 


XI.  "  Home  Again  "  in  Ireland. 

"Bound  sadly   home  for  Naples." — Tempest   i.    2. 

Once  more  returned  to  Kilcolman  Castle,  it  is  pleasant 
to-day  to  think  that  spite  of  disappointments  and 
sickness  of  heart  through  "  hope  long  deferred  "  and 
even  quenched,  Spenser  felt  in  his  heart  that  he  could 
call  his  residence  in  Ireland  "  Home,"  By  Coliii  Cloufs 
Come  Home  Again  is  to  be  understood  {ineo  jiidicio) 
not  '  home '  in  the  sense  in  which  Englishmen  in 
India  and  Australia  and  New  Zealand  and  the  colonies 
generally  think  and  speak  of  England  :  but  rather  that 
he  was  again  by  his  beloved  Mulla,  and  under  the 
shadow  of  the  wooded  Galtee  mountains.  This  is  made 
certain  by  the  epistle-dedicatory  of  this  charming  poem. 
For  addressing  Ralegh,  who  in  his  ever  restless  activities 
— whether  at  home  or  abroad, — had  told  Spenser  plainly 
that  his  was  an  *'  idle  life,"  the  Poet  replies  : — 

"  That  you  may  see  that  I  am  not  alwaies  ydle  as  yee  thinke, 
though  not  greatly  well  occupied:  [a  reminiscence  again  of  his 
Lancashire  '  gradely  well '],  nor  altogether  undutiful,  though  not 
precisely  officious,  I  make  you  present  of  this  simple  pastorall  " 
(Vol.  IV.,  p.  35). 

This  is  dated  "  From  my  house  of  Kilcolman,  the 
27  of  December  1591,"  and  though  this  date  has 
been  debated,  another  reference  in  the  epistle-dedica- 
tory proves  its  accuracy,  while  still  more  importantly 
it  assures  us  that  whatever  of  unsuccess  in  State 
employment  there  had  been  in  London,  Spenser  was 
satisfied  it  had  not  been  from  any  lack  of  effort  on 
his  great  friend's  part,  and  that  he  still   relied  on  his 


'*  HOME  AGAIN''    IN  IRELAND.  173 

influence  to  shield  him  from  the  parasites  of  Burleigh. 
The  epistle  thus  continues  : — 

"  The  which  I  humbly  beseech  you  to  accept  in  part  of  paiment 
of  the  infinite  debt  in  which  I  acknowledge  my  selfe  bounden 
unto  you,  for  your  singular  favours  and  sundrie  good  tumes 
showed  to  me  at  my  late  being  in  England,  and  with  your  good 
countenance  protect  against  the  malice  of  evill  mouthes,  which 
are  alwaies  wide  open  to  carpe  at  and  misconstrue  my  simple 
meaning"  (pp.  35-6). 

Those  who  {e.g.,  Todd,  Craik,  and  their  successors) 
would  substitute  1594  or  1594-5  for  "  1591  "  overlook 
these  words  "  at  my  late  being  in  England"  and  "  thy 
late  voyage  "  of  the  poem.  It  is  no  objection  to  i  591 
that  the  Earl  of  Derby  is  lamented  as  "  dead  "  who 
did  not  die  until  1594,  because  {a)  Colin  Clout's  Come 
Home  Again,  though  thus  composed  in  1591,  was 
not  published  until  1594,  and  there  are  abundant 
proofs  that  the  Poet  was  wont  to  work  in  new 
lines,  and  more,  when  he  drew  out  from  his  MSS. 
and  revised  for  the  press ;  and  because  {b)  It  must 
be  an  open  question  whether  Lord  Derby  were  in- 
tended by  "  Amyntas  " — probably,  yet  not  absolutely 
sure.  Mr.  Palgrave  is  inclined  to  hope  it  signalised 
Thomas  Watson  (Vol.  IV.,  p.  Ixxxii).  Full  of  his 
"  late  being  in  England,"  it  would  appear  that  the 
"  new  poete,"  indulging  the  Pleasures  and  Pains  of 
Memory,  was  speedily  at  work  on  this  verse-diary 
of  his  visit  to  London.  But  contemporaneously  he 
must  have  been  occupied  in  bringing  together  other 
of  his  unpublished  Manuscripts.  What  has  apparently 
been  overlooked  by  Biographers  is  this  fact  :  that 
before  re-crossing  to  Ireland  Spenser  was  under 
engagement    to    furnish    the    publisher    of    the   Faery 


174  "HOME  AGAIN''   IN  IRELAND. 

Queen    with   a    new  volume   of  verse,    as    witness  this 

entry  : — 

29  Decembris  [1590] 

William  Pon-     Entred  for  his  Coppie  vnder  the  handes  of  Doctor 

sonbye.  Staller  and  bothe  the  wardens,  A  booke  en- 
tytled  Complaintes  conteyninge  sondrye  smalle 
Poemcs  of  the  vvorldes  vanity vj**.* 

In  various  ways  this  is  an  extremely  noticeable 
biographic  point  ;  for  it  informs  us  that  in  the  close 
of  the  year  1590  the  glowing  hopes  of  the  "coming" 
over  to  England  had  been  chilled,  and  that  a  distinct 
purpose  had  shaped  itself  of  "  Complaintes,"  Apart, 
therefore,  from  its  priceless  poetical  value,  the  Com- 
plaints opens  a  shaft  of  light  on  the  Poet's  mood.  I 
hold  the  Epistle  of  "  The  Printer  to  the  Gentle 
Reader"  as  really  Spenser  himself  speaking,  with  that 
kind  of  blind  or  mystification  found  later  in  Pope  and 
Swift.  Only  the  Author  himself  could  have  supplied 
this  information  concerning  those  "  smale  Poemes  of 
the  same  Author's  "  that  "  disperst  abroade  in  sundrie 
hands,"  had  proved  '*  not  easie  to  bee  come  by,  by 
himselfe"  and  "  some  of  them  bene  diverslie  imbeziled 
and  purloyncd  from  him,  since  his  departure  over 
Sea  "  (Vol.  III.,  p.  7).  By  "  over  Sea  "  could  only  be 
meant  his  return  to  Ireland.  There  had  evidently 
been  a  tacit  understanding  between  Poet  and  Publisher 
that  certain  known  scattered  pieces  were  by  hook  or 
crook  to  be  recovered.  The  volume  of  Complaints 
did  not  appear  until  1591,  but  the  title-page  oi  Muio- 
potmos  in  it  has  "  1590,"  as  though  printed  and  issued 
separately,  as  it  is  still  met  with,  and  as  indeed  are 
several  of  the  "  smale  poemes." 

*  Arber  ii.  570. 


• '  HOME  A  GA  IN ' '    IN  IRELA  ND.  1 75 

These  Complaints  will  reward  the  closest  study, 
alike  as  autobiography  and  as  poetry.  As  was  his 
wont,  he  has  in  these  plain-spoken  poems  "  flung 
himself  frankly  on  human  life  "  and  placed  in  naked, 
not  coloured  or  misted  light,  his  innermost  thought 
and  emotion.  One  has  to  keep  a  vigilant  eye  on 
ingeniously  contrived  touches  that  will  mislead  the 
unwatchful,  but  only  the  more  verify  to  the  vigilant  the 
Facts  and  Sentiments  being"married  to  immortal  verse."* 

There  is  a  somewhat  perplexing  mixture  of  earlier 
and  later  work  and  workmanship  in  the  volume  of 
Complaints,  as  though  they  had  been  put  to  press 
fragmentarily  as  they  were  recovered  or  transmitted. 
We  shall  take  them  in  their  approximative  chrono- 
logical order.  Having  already  so-far  '  intermeddled  ' 
with  the  Riiines  of  Time  in  demonstrating  that  therein 
is  incorporated  more  or  less  of  the  (supposed)  lost 
Dreames,  and  also  examined  Mother  Hiibberd's  Tale 
and  others  as  belonging  to  the  period  of  his  "  raw  and 
greene  youthe,"  it  is  only  passingly  that  we  require  to 
recur  to  them.f  The  same  holds  of  the  Visions  of 
Bellay  and  of  Petrarch.  Our  examination  of  the  young 
Poet's  relations  to  John  Vander  Noodt  (Chap.  III.)  has 
discounted  criticism  of  them  at  any  length.  Neverthe- 
less some  things  remain  to  be  put  concerning  all  of  these. 

Chronologically  the  Visions  of  Bellay  and  of 
Petrarch  come  necessarily  first.  And  here  it  is  to 
be  re-noted  that  the  entry  of  the  Complaints  at 
Stationers'   Hall    while  Spenser    was    still    in    London 

•  See  Mr.  Palgrave's  "  Essays  on  the  Minor  Poems  of  Spenser," 
Vol.  IV.,  pp.  Ix— Ixxvi. 

t  See  Chapter  VII.,  pp.  82  et  scq. 


176  ^^  HOME  AGAIN''    IN  IRELAND. 

authenticates  from  another  h"nc  of  approach  the  blank 
verse  and  rhymed  Sonnets  of  the  Theatre  of  Worldlings, 
as  pubh'shed  in  it  and  now  re-published  and  (in  part) 
re- written  in  the  new  volume  of  1591.  In  the  Com- 
plaints there  are  changes  that  further  confirm  our 
Author's  supervision — e.g.,  four  of  the  1569  Visions — 
"  out  of  the  Revelations  of  St.  John  "  are  dropped,  and 
another  four  are  substituted,  viz.,  6,  8,  13,  15.  Of 
these  the  6th  has  power  united  with  finish  not  found  in 
any  of  1  569.  Second,  if  second  to  it,  is  the  12th  ;  but 
it  was  in  the  Theatre.  As  we  shall  see  immediately, 
the  withdrawal  of  the  four  Sonnets  of  1569  is  not  to 
be  taken  as  absolutely  declarative  of  non-Spenserian 
authorship,  though  they  are  doubtfully  Spenserian. 
The  Visions  of  Petrarch  follows  suit  with  the  Visiotis 
of  Bellay.  Had  these  come  later,  the  exquisiteness 
of  the  original  had  been  finclier,  subtlier  emulated. 
But  even  as  they  arc,  the  verdict  is  a  just  and  not 
merely  a  generous  one — "  yet  this  is,  on  the  whole,  an 
exquisite  work  for  so  young  a  writer."*  But  another 
clement  of  interest  and  of  authentication  must  now  be 
glanced  at, — the  presence  of  his  North-East  Lancashire 
words  and  pronunciations  in  these  Visions  in  accord 
with  his  origin  there  and  home-speech  in  East  Smith- 
field.  Were  there  no  more  than  one  instance  this 
should  be  decisive,  so  striking  is  it.  This  occurs  in 
Sonnet  9  of  the  Visions  of  Bellay,  as  printed  in  the 
Complaints.     It  thus  opens  : — 

Then  all  astonied  with  this  mighty  ghoast, 
An  hideous  bodie  big  and  strong  I  sawe, 

With  side  long  beard,  and  locks  down  hanging  least, 
Sterne  face,  and  front  full  of  Saturn-like  awe. 

•  Mr.  Palgrave,  as  before,  p.  Ixxvi. 


' '  HOME  A  GA IN ' '    /A'  //i/iL AND.  177 

As  then,  so  to-day,  if  you  go  to  the  I'endle  district 
you  will  never  hear  "  ghost  "  pronounced  "  gost,"  but 
"gho-ast";  and  never  "loosed"  pronounced  "loosd,"  but 
"  lo-ast."  This  is  the  still  quick  North-ICast  and  indeed 
general  Lancashire  pronunciation.  In  this  same  Sonnet 
there  are  other  idiomatic-dialectal  terms  and  words,  as 
"  belly  of  a  pot,"  and  '' pourd foorth"  not  "  poured  forth," 
and  "  creakic  shore."  As  eye  and  ear  are  directed  to 
the  whole  of  these  Visions,  like  certifications  of  a 
native  using  local  and  familiar  words  and  idioms  come 
to  any  Lancashire  man  or  student  acquainted  with  the 
dialect  and  the  people.  This  is  sometimes  scarcely  com- 
municable to  another,  but  is  none  the  less  convincing. 
I  would  simply  notify  a  few  typical  examples,  as  these 
are  annotated  in  the  Glossarial  Index  (Vol.  X.).  We 
have  in  the  very  first  Sonnet  of  Visions  of  tlie 
World's  Vanitie  (Vol.  III.,  p.  193)  not  only  "  geason," 
but  rhyming  with  "  season,"  pronounced  "  seeson." 
Then  we  have  "  Brize,"  "  a  scorned  little  creature," 
"  cleepe "  =  name,  "  forkhed,"  not  "  forked,"  and 
"  peare,"  pronounced  "  pee-are,"  to  rhyme  with  "  speare," 
still  dialectally  pronounced  "  spee-are,"  and  so  "  neare  " 
pronounced  invariably  not  as  "  neer,"  but  "  nee-are,"  and 
"  brust,"  not  "  burst,"  which  I  heard  only  the  other  day 
near  Pendle  Hill.  Next,  in  the  Visions  of  Beilay 
we  have  similarly  these — "  reare  my  lookes  to  heaven," 
"  vanitee  "  rhyming  with  "  hee,"  "  huiidrcth  "  for 
"  hundred,"  "  bearc,"  pronounced  "  bee-are,"  and  rhym- 
ing with  "  wcare,"  pronounced  "  wee-are,"  "  warkc,"  not 
"  work,"  which  is  never  heard  of  in  Lancashire  pro- 
nunciation, and  rhyming  with  "  arke,"  "  fone  "  .=  foolish 
ones,  "  raught  "  ^  reached,  "  coure  "  —  cover,  "  mazdc  " 
I.  12 


1 7S  "  HOME  A  GAIX  ' '    iX  IRELA  ND. 

=  ustonishcd,  in  evcr\--day  use,  "  stie  "^  fl}-,  ascend, 
"yeallow"  for  "yellow,"  pronounced  "  yallow."  So 
too  in  the  Jlsio/is  of  Petrarch — "mote"  spelled 
"  mought,"  in  1569  ^=  might,  "tumbled  up  the  sea," 
"  brast ''  =^  burst,  and  as  here  used,  "  out  brast,"  quite 
connnon  still,  "rumbling  down"  in  1569  dialectally 
pronounced  "  rombl)-ng."  In  connection  with  this  I 
would  note  that  in  the  four  Sonnets  "  out  of  the 
Revelations  of  St.  John  "  there  is  not  a  solitary  North- 
East  Lancashire  word  or  pronunciation  ;  and  not  only 
so  but  the  North-East  Lancashire  pronunciation  of 
"  beare,"  as  "  bee-are,"  is  here  found  "  beare,"  rhyming 
with  "  fairc."  Be  it  conceded  that  some  of  these  words 
occur  in  Yorkshire  and  Derbyshire  and  otherwhere. 
This  does  not  touch  the  fact  that  they  were  all  the 
current  speech  of  North-East  Lancashire,  as  they  are 
at  this  hour. 

The  Ruincs  of  Rome,  after  the  French  of  Du  Bellay, 
is  interesting,  as  showing  that  whilst  working  on  the 
Visions  the  }Oung  Poet  had  practised — before  or  simul- 
taneousl}- — in  other  translations. 

Chvono\og\c^.\\y  Prosopopoia  or  Mot  Iter  Hubbenfs  Tale 
and  l^irgifs  Gnat  come  next,  and  class  themselves 
together.  The  former — as  Gabriel  Harvey's  Letters 
reveal — must  have  "  got  out "  in  MS.  circulation  ;  for 
it  was  in  some  way  "called  in  "  or  prohibited.  All  the 
more  significant  of  Spenser's  attitude  toward  Burleigh 
is  its  inclusion  in  the  volume  of  Lo)npIaints.  Though 
without  doubt,  as  he  tells  us,  it  had  been  "  long  sithens 
composed  in  the  raw  conceipt  "  of  his  youth — viz., 
when  in  London  in  1577,  seeking — and  as  v/e  have 
seen    finding  —  State  employment,    through    Leicester 


I 


' '  HOME  A  GA  IN ' '   IN  IRE  LA  ND.  1 79 

and  Sidney  (in  Ireland),  and  manifestly  even  so  early 
'  opposed  '  by  the  Lord  Treasurer,  there  can  be  as 
little  doubt  that  when  in  1591  he  made  up  his  mind 
to  publish  it,  he  re-worked  cunnin^^dy  upon  it,  and 
specifically  superadded  the  trenchant  satire  on  Court 
delays  and  obstructions. 

Alike  in  narrative  swiftness  and  colour  and  passion 
of  invective  this  Mother  Hiibberd's  Talc  would  alone 
have  ranged  the  "  new  poete  "  with  Chaucer,  and  con- 
stituted him  the  inspirer  of  Dryden  and  Pope.  The 
marvel  is  that  if — as  seems  certain — Burleigh  read  the 
great  Satire  in  manuscript,  he  did  not  bear  himself 
differently  toward  Spenser.  That  though  angry,  he 
only  "  nursed  his  wrath,"  and  took  no  step  to  win  to 
his  side  tongue  and  pen  so  formidable,  is  another 
attestation  of  how  intellectually  obtuse  and  unprescient 
this  contemptibly-great  man  was.  Pope's  sending  of 
Atticus  to  Addison  was  a  mere  nothing  to  a  por- 
traiture bitten  in  as  that  of  the  '■'■  great  peer"  to  whom 
"  learning  was  nought "  and  "  wit "  of  poetry  "  ydle- 
ness."  It  is  impossible  to  think  otherwise  than  that 
the  publication  of  Motlier  Hiibberd's  Tale — with  its 
remarkable  epistle-dedicatory  to  his  early  lady-friend 
"  Ladie  Compton  and  Mounteagle"  {jice  SpencerJ  under 
the  general  caption  of  Coniplaiiits,  was  a  flinging  down 
of  the  gage.  It  marks  the  fibre  of  Edmund  Spenser  so 
to  have  done  this.  Never  was  the  Lord  Treasurer 
more  firmly-seated  or  more  powerful.  So  be  it,  none 
the  less  was  he  a  "  poor  creature,"  and  the  Poet  did  not 
hesitate  to  proclaim  it.  Blame  him  for  this  who  may, 
his  Biographer  cannot.  Nor  can  it  for  one  instant  be 
accepted  that  the  solution  of  his  inflexible  pronounce- 


1 8o  "  HOME  A  GA  IN ' '   IN  IRELA  ND.  ■ 

ment  is  to  be  found  in  the  alleged  "  baleful  friendship  " 
of  Leicester.  Proof  of  '  balefulncss  '  is  lacking.  Equally 
is  proof  lacking — unless  one  suffer  oneself  to  be  gulled 
and  hoodwinked  by  the  earlier  libels  of  Leicester's 
Commonwealth,  and  the  brilliant  misconceptions  of  Scott 
in  Kenilworth — that  Dudley  was  not  the  equal  of  Bur- 
leigh in  all  but  '  craft/  and  otherwise  a  "  better  man." 
When  I  take  up  the  Ruines  of  Time,  and  with  dimmed 
eyes  brood  over  the  Poet's  lament  for  Leicester  (11.  2 1 6- 
17,  441-54)  I  cannot  take  less  out  of  the  lament  than 
strong  personal  sorrow  for  a  man  he  knew  and  honoured  ; 
and  a  man  known  and  honoured  and  cherished,  when 
dead,  by  Spenser,  is  not  readily  to  be  thought  of  as 
some  would  have  us  do  ;  not  to  recall,  or  only  to  recall, 
that  Sir  Philip  Sidney  stood  by  his  uncle  against  all 
comers.  It  must  likewise  be  remembered  to  the  honour 
of  Spenser,  that  whereas  Sir  Walter  Ralegh  acted  in 
opposition  to  Leicester, — and  if  the  '  Epitaph  '  be  his, 
wrote  villainously  of  him, — he  abated  not  by  an  epithet 
of  his  praise  or  gratitude.  We  have  in  this  a  noble 
feature  of  our  Poet.  He  similarly  held  by  Arch- 
bishop Grindal,  when  if  he  had  wished  to  'curry  favour' 
he  would  at  least  have  been  silent ;  and  when  Lord  Grey 
of  Wilton  was  no  more,  he  vindicated  and  immortalized 
him  in  the  teeth  of  the  ]>urleighs  as  of  '  Empresse  * 
Elizabeth  herself.  He  was  a  true  man  who  so  acted. 
He  is  a  man  to  be  held  in  reverence  and  not  maligned, 
who  thus  gave  his  judgment  on  the  smallest  of  men 
elevated  to  the  loftiest  place.  Such  '  rashness '  is  the 
fine  daring  of  your  leader  of  a  forlorn  hope.  It  was 
characteristic  of  Dr.  Gabriel  Harvey's  meaner  nature 
and  more  supple  temperament  that  he  wrote,  "  Mother 


''HOME  AGAIN''    IN  IRELAND.  i8i 

Hubberd  in  the  heat  of  choler  .  .  .  wilfully  overshot  her 
malcontentcd  selfe"  (Collier's  Life  of  Spenser,  p.  Ixxxii). 
Of  kindred  integrity  is  the  attitude  of  Spenser  in 
Motlier  HubbertVs  Tale  toward  '  both  sides.'  He  acts 
on  the  axiom — too  often  admired  as  an  axiom  but 
neglected  as  a  rule — that  "  the  truth,  the  whole  truth, 
and  nothin^^  but  the  truth"  is  to  be  spoken.  Hence  his 
keen  satire  of  the  begging  impostors, — against  whom 
there  were  so  many  legal  enactments  in  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth, — is  not  toned  down  whea  he  exposes  the 
lazy,  ignorant,  and  dissipated  among  the  '  reformed ' 
clergy.  The  latter  was  inevitable  in  a  disciple  of 
Grindal  ("  Algrind  "  of  the  Shepherd's  Calendar).  It  is 
only,  therefore,  homogeneous  to  find  the  same  moral 
indignation  pulsating  through  his  pictures  of  the 
trickiness  and  disappointments  and  "  greed  in  high 
places "  of  the  Court  and  State.  Nor  is  it  to  be 
wondered  at  that  another  element  of  Spenser's  rich 
nature — his  humour — breaks  out  in  sly  hits  at  certain 
"  great  ones,"  and  jets  of  raillery,  anon  deepening  into 
wrath  —  like  light  concentrating  into  the  spear  of 
lightning.  Lowell  has  piercingly  said — "In  his  Colin 
Clout,  written  just  after  his  return  to  Ireland,  he 
speaks  of  the  Court  in  a  tone  of  contemptuous  bitter- 
ness, in  which,  as  it  seems  to  me,  there  is  more  of 
the  sorrow  of  disillusion  than  of  the  gall  of  personal  dis- 
appointment" {N.Avi.  Review,  vol.  cxx.,  1875,  p.  350). 

It  is  not  possible  to  determine  priority  as  between  the 
three  remaining  poems  of  the  Complaints.  The  Ruines 
of  Time,  and  Muiopotmos  or  Fate  of  tJie  Bntterflie,  and 
Teares  of  the  Muses,  bear  traces  of  after-revision. 

Taking  the  Ruines  of  Time,  its  incorporation  of  the 


1 82  "HOME  AGAIN''   IN  IRELAND. 

Dreamcs — as  seen  in  Chap.  VII. — is  not  only  hardly 
so  artistically  done  as  one  might  have  looked  for, 
but  involves  that  much  of  it  was  in  existence  prior 
to  1578-9,  when  the  Stemmata  Ditdleiana  and  Dreames 
were  ready  for  publication.  The  joinings  of  the 
marble  are  somewhat  plain.  The  veining  does  not 
run  on.  And  yet  it  is  indeed,  taken  all  in  all,  "  a 
lovely  piece  of  melody  in  his  most  pregnant  and 
finished  manner."*  Its  glory  is  that  it  gives  an 
earthly  immortality  to  Sidney  and  Leicester.  I  discern 
all  through  the  aching  of  a  peculiarly  loving  and  sen- 
sitive nature  over  these  two  illustrious  frjends.  The 
sorrow,  the  sense  of  loss,  were  too  real  not  to  make 
subordinate  the  mere  art  of  the  Poet.  It  must  also 
be  kept  in  recollection  that  the  form  which  the 
Ruincs  of  Time  (or,  as  he  names  it,  The  World's 
Ruines)  took,  was  given  it  whilst  he  was  in  the  stir  of 
London.  His  words  to  Sidney's  sister  are  unmistakable 
— "  sithens  my  late  curnming  into  England,"  though 
palpably  he  had  taken  it  over  again  with  him  to  Ireland. 
It  is  of  profound  interest  to  trace  Shakespeare  as 
a  reader  of  Spenser.  Let  us,  therefore,  look  at  these 
memorabilia : — 

Provide  therefore  (ye  Princes)  whilst  ye  live 

That  of  the  Muses  ye  may  friended  bee, 
Which  unto  men  eternitie  do  give. 

"(Vol.  III.,  p.  24.) 


and  of 


Thy  Lord  shall  never  die,  the  whiles  this  verse 
Shall  live,  and  surely  it  shall  live  forever: 

For  ever  it  shall  live,  and  shall  rehearse 
His  worthie  praise,  and  virtues  dying  never. 
{lb.,  p.  20.) 

*  Mr.  Palgrave,  as  before,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  61. 


HOME  AGAIN''   IN  IRELAND.  183 


and  auain- 


For  deeds  doe  die,  how  ever  noblie  donne, 

And  thou.ifhts  of  men  doe  as  themselves  decay  ; 
But  wise  wordes,  taug^ht  in  numbers  for  to  runne, 

Recorded  by  the  Muses,  live  fur  ay  : 
Ne  may  with  storming  showers  be  washt  away, 
Ne  bitter-breathing  windes  with  harmfull  blast ; 
Nor  age.  nor  envie,  shall  them  ever  wast. 

»  *  ♦  *  # 

.     .     .    Fame  with  golden  wings  aloft  doth  flie, 

Above  the  reach  of  ruinous  decay, 
And  with  brave  plumes  doth  beate  the  azure  skie, 

Admir'd  of  base-borne  men  from  farre  away  : 
Then  who  so  will  with  vertuous  deeds  assay 
To  mount  to  heaven,  on  Pegasus  must  ride, 
And  with  sweet  Poet's  verse  be  glorifide. 

(Vol.  III.,  pp.  25,  26.) 

The    reader    who    is    in     sympathy    will    compare 

with  these  Shakespeare's   i8th,    55th,   63rd,  and   8ist 

Sonnets.      O-ther   reminiscences  will    occur    to    others. 

Only    one    other    thing   calls  for    notice   here    in   the 

Ruines  of  Time, — viz.,  the   changes  made  in    161  i    in 

the  vehement  reprobation   of  Burleigh.     As  noted   in 

the  place  (Vol.  III.,  p.  27)  they  are  as  follows.      For 

11.   446-7    of  the   original  of   1591  — 

For  he  that  now  welds  all  things  at  his  will 
Scorns  th'  one  and  th'  other  in  his  deeper  skill, 

it  reads — 

For  such  as  now  have  most  the  world  at  will. 

Again,  in    1.    451,  for  "Of  him,  that  first  was   raisdc  " 

it   reads   "such   as."      In   11.  454-5    for  the  Juvcnalian 

power  of — 

O  let  the  man,  of  whom  the  Muse  is  scorned, 
Nor  alive,  nor  dead,  be  of  the  Muse  adorned, 

it  reads  "  O  let  not  those,"  and 

Alive  nor  dead  be  of  the  Muse  adorned. 


1 84  "  HOME  A  GA  IN ' '    A V  IRELA  ND. 

There  is  not  an  atom  of  sanction  for  these  miserable 
*  improvements,'  as  there  is  none  for  the  modernizations 
and  tinkerings  of  the  entire  text  of  i6i  i.  If  the  vague 
tradition  be  true  that  Dr.  Gabriel  Harvey  was  the 
editor  of  this  folio,  it  is  in  keeping  with  him  so  to 
modify  the  Poet's  scornful  rage.  Robert  Cecil,  son 
of  llic  Cecil,  was  in  power,  and  to  be  placated  ;  and 
the  astute  Gabriel  was  just  the  man  to  compromise. 
l;ut  it  wouUl  be  unjust  to  saddle  him  with  the 
responsibility.  It  might  simply  be  the  Publisher. 
Whoever  did  the  thing,  it  was  cowardly  and  yet 
audacious.  No  one  at  least  will  accept  the  1611 
text  as  against  Spenser's  own,  without  actual  proof 
of  his  sanction. 

Muiopotnios  (ottava  rima)  is  goldenly  written  of 
elsewhere.*  I  pause  to  reaccentuate  the  exquisite- 
ness  of  the  miniature  description  in  this  delicatest- 
wrought  of  all  Spenser's  minor  poems.  It  seems 
from  the  outset  to  have  '  taken '  with  Poets.  We 
have  Shakcsjjcare  misled  by  its  "  Hyperion "  into 
"  Jlyperion  to  a  Satyr  "  and  "  Hyperion's  curls"  in 
Hcwilct  (i.  2,  iii.  4) — and  elsewhere.  So,  too,  Keats 
in  his  Hyperion.  Classically,  of  course,  Hyperion. 
Then  we  have  V/ordsworth  interweaving  "  weeds  of 
glorious  feature."  Lowell  misdates,  but  otherwise 
finely  characterizes  Mniopotmos — "  He  first  shows  his 
mature  hand  in  the  Muiopotvios,  the  most  airily 
fanciful  of  his  poems,  a  marvel  for  delicate  conception 
and  treatment,  whose  breezy  verse  seems  to  float 
between  a  blue  sk)-  and  golden  earth  in  imperishable 
sunshine.  No  other  English  poet  has  found  the 
*  Mr.  Palt;rave's  Kssay,  as  before,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  Ixx-lxxii. 


' •  HOME  A  GAIN''   IN  IRELA ND.  1 85 

variety  and  compass  which  enlivened  the  octave  stanza 
under  his  sensitive  touch."    (As  before,  p.  365.) 

The  Teares  of  tlic  Muses  (six-Hne  heroics)  is  in  my 
estimate  the  most  consummately  precious  poem  of  the 
Complaints,  thoui^h  relatively  poorl)'  done  and  work'cd 
in  saddest  colours,  and  only  evanescently  transfigured. 
We  get  nearer  to  Edmund  Spenser  in  his  strength  and 
weakness,  to  the  man  just  as  he  was,  by  these  "Teares" 
than  by  any  other.  Harvey's  Letters  satisfy  us  that 
there  was  a  life-long  vein  of  melancholy  in  the  "  newe 
poete "  ;  that  he  looked  back,  not  forward,  for  the 
"Golden  Age";  that  he  took  a  dark  and  almost  tragical 
view  of  his  age  ;  that  like  Carlyle  of  our  own  genera- 
tion he  did  not  reckon  men  high,  whatever  he  did  man 
as  represented  by  himself  and  Sidney  and  Grey  and 
Essex  and  Ralegh  ;  that  the  grand  Elizabethan  times 
of  our  retrospect  and  pride  wore  small  grandeur  to 
him  as  they  were  being  lived  through  ;  and  that  his 
exile  in  Ireland  cut  him  off  from  personal  observation 
of  the  '  mighties  '  led  by  Marlowe  and  Shakespeare ; 
who  were  the  "  coming  men  "  destined  to  bear  forward 
and  upward  the  "  English  tongue  "  that  he  had  so 
revived  after  Chaucer.  It  is  centrally  vital  never  to  lose 
a  grasp  of  the  Irish  exile,  of  the  practical  placing  of 
Edmund  Spenser  outside  of  the  "  charmed  circle."  It 
is  fundamentally  to  misread  him,  as  it  is  to  deal 
uncritically  and  unphilosophically  with  the  "Teares" 
of  this  infinitely  pathetic  poem,  to  either  regard  it  as 
phantasmal,  i.e.  conventional  or  stone-eyed  to  men  and 
things  that  are  before  us,  but  were  not  (emphatically 
be  it  said)  before  him.  Then  it  must  be  further  kept 
in  recollection  that,  as  with  all  the  poems  of  the  Com- 


186  ^^  HOME  AGAIN''    IN  IRELAND. 

plaints,  the  Teares  of  the  Muses  is  a  youthful  poem 
worked  on  after  the  Poet's  manner.  I  think  a  close 
student  of  this  poem  will  discern  very  youthful  things 
in  the  Teares,  things  going  back  to  1578-9  or  i  579-80  ; 
and  this  being  so,  the  '  complaint  '  so  dated — 

I  nothing  noble  have  to  sing, 

is  historically  vindicated.  The  great  deeds  of  the 
heroes  were  then  mostly  unachieved,  and  Marlowe  and 
Shakespeare  were  then  only  rising  into  their  teens — 
the  former  born  "  about  i  564,"  the  latter  "23rd  April, 
1564."  John  Lvllv  was  tJie  one  radiant  name  at 
the  time,  and  to  Spenser's  enraptured  memories  of  the 
advent  of  Ejiphues,  the  Anatomy  of  Wit  (1580),  and 
Eupluies  and  his  England  ( i  5  8 1 ),  is  to  be  attributed 
that  exaggerated  tribute  to  "Willy"  (anagram  for  Lilly) — 

.  .  .  the  man  whom  Nature  selfe  had  made 
To  mocke  her  selfe,  and  Truth  to  imitate, 

which  has  led  some  Shakespcareans  to  find  the  one 
"  Willy  "  who  truly  answers  to  the  portrait — an  utter 
impossibility  chronologically  and  bibliographically.  Of 
course  this  bit  on  *'  Willy "  (=  Lilly)  was  one  of  the 
"  purple  patches  "  interwoven  later — but  not  so  late  as 
I  590-1,  seeing  that  it  was  half  a  decade  of  years  or 
thereby  earlier  that  Lilly  was  sequestered  in  "  silent 
Cell "  ;  and  which  again  leads  us  a  good  deal  back 
from  I  5 90- 1. 

It  harmonizes  with  the  early  date  which  I  feel 
constrained  to  assign  to  the  Teares  of  the  Muses  that 
even  in  this  title  he  copies  from  Gabriel  Harvey's 
1578  volume  "  Gabrielis  Harveii  Valdinatis,  Smithus  ; 
vel  Musarum  Lachrymce  .  .  ,  .   " 


^^  HOME  AGAIN''   IN  IRELAND.  187 

Further — When  we  read  thoughtfully,  there  are 
things  in  these  Teares  of  the  Muses  that  suggest 
contemporaneous  working  on  the  ShepJicrd's  Calendar: 
e.g.,  ad  apcrturam  lihri  we  find  this  : — 

The  joyous  N)nnphes  and  lightfoote  Faeries 
\\Tiich  hither  came  to  hear  their  musick  sweet, 
And  to  the  measure  of  their  melodies 
Did  leame  to  move  their  nimble-shifting  feete. 

(Vol.  III.,  p.  44)- 

Cf.  the  Shepherd's  Caleiidar  in  June  : — 

.  .  .  friendly  Faeries,  met  with  many  Graces, 
And  lightfoote  Nymphs  can  chase  the  lingring  night 
With  Heydeguyes,  and  trimly  trodden  traces, 
Whilst  sisters  njiie,  which  dwel  on  Parjiasse  hight. 
Do  make  them  musick  for  their  more  delight. 

(Vol.  II.,  p.  152). 

So  repeatedly  ;  and  similar  echoes    of  the    Ruines    of 

Tinie   are    audible* — all  pointing  not  to    1591,  when 

the   '  booke  '    was   published,  but  substantially  —  as   I 

have  stated — to  1579-80. 

I    must    ask    that    not    only    shall    the   "  Muse    of 

History"  ("  Clio  ")  be  read  in  her  "  Teares  "  in  the  light 

of  this  chronological  correction,    but    that    the    whole 

be  thus  read.      It    is    a    paradox    else,    ix.,    to    have 

"  Melpomene "  lamenting  the  low   state  of   the    stage 

if  you  date  her   lament    in    1 590-1  ;    for    Tainburlaiie 

had  been  'acted'  in  1587,  and  some  of  Shakespeare's 

earlier  workmanship  may  have  been  "  on  the  stage " 

shortly  after  that.      But  the  paradox  lies  in  assuming 

that  Spenser,  writing  in    1579-S0,  could  foresee  these. 

Thus  too  with  "  Thalia  "  contemporaneously,  you  have 

•  E.g.,  in  "  Erato  "  we  read  : — 

Ye  gentle  spirits,  breathing  from  above  (1.  362) ; 
and  so  in  "  Ruines  "  of  Sidney  : — 

Most  gentle  spirite,  breathed  from  above  (1.  281). 


1 88  "  HOME  A  GA  IN ' '    IN  IRELA  ND. 

Webbe  and  Puttcnham,  Stephen  Gosson  and  Sidney 
lamenting  in  identically  the  same  strain  the  abject 
condition  of  literature  in  England.  As  matter-of-fact, 
it  has  been  thus  historically, — despair  over  the  pro- 
spects of  literature  preceding  an  epoch  of  noblest 
expansion. 

"  Calliope  "  and  "  Urania  "  arc  perchance  over-lugu- 
brious ;  yet  when  one  asks  oneself  what  of  lyric  melody 
or  exquisiteness  of  verse-work  these  Muses  had  to 
show,  one  has  little  to  answer.  The  delightful  collec- 
tions of  Lyrics  came  years  later.  As  for  the  decay 
of  "  Pastoral  Poetry,"  it  is  mere  antiquarianism  to 
plead  for  anything  of  quickness  prior  to  the  Shepherd's 
Calendar  and  between  Chaucer  and  it. 

"  Terpsichore  "  is  of  special  literary  interest,  for  in 
the  opening  stanza  — 

Whoso  hath  in  the  lap  of  soft  delight 

Beene  long-  time  Uild,  and  fed  with  pleasures  sweet, 

Feareles  through  his  own  fault  or  Fortunes  spight 

To  tumble  into  sorrow  and  regreet, 

Yf  chaunce  him  fall  into  calamitie, 

Findes  greater  burden  of  his  miserie, 

we  have  a  reminiscence  of  Dante  outside  of  the  Faery 
Queen  {Inferno  v.,  st.  121),-— 

Nessum  maggior  dolore 
Che  recordarsi  del  tempo  felice 
Nelia  miseria. 

For  of  Fortune's  sharpe  adversitye 

The  worst  kind  of  infortune  is  this, 
A  man  that  has  been  in  prosperitie 

And  it  remembers,  when  it  passed  is 

(Chauckr,  Troil.  iii.  1625). 

We  recall  inevitably  Wordsworth  {Misc.  Sonnets,  Ft.  II., 
s.  xxvii.),  "  Captivity  "  :   Mary  Queen  of  Scots  : — 


''HOAfE  AGALV"    IN  IRELAND.  i8o 

So  joys,  remembered  without  wish  or  will, 
Sharpen  the  keenest  edge  of  present  ill — 
On  the  crushed  heart  a  heavier  burden  lay ; 

and  Tennyson  in  Lock  sky  Hall — 

a  sorrow's  crown  of  sorrow  is  remembering  happier  things. 
"Terpsichore"  is  also  biographically  valuable  from  its 
distinctive  sympathy  with  Puritanism.  "  Polyhymnia  " 
praises  Queen  Eli/.abeth's  poetry.  It  were  ver>' easy  to 
multiply  parallels.  It  is  mere  stupidity  or  prejudice  to 
deny  her  accomplishments  and  culture.  It  were  well  if  a 
collection  were  made  of  her  fugitive  Verses  and  Speeches 
and  Letters,  The  "newe  Poete,"  writing  at  far  distance 
from  Court,  naturally  beHeved  the  "  common  bruit,"  and 
willingly  endowed  the  sovereign  of  all  hearts  with  every 
virtue  and  grace. 

The  opening  of  EpitJialaniium  refers  to  Tcares  of  tJie 
Muses  specifically  and  the  Complaints  in  aggregate,  e.g.: 

.   .   .  when  ye  list  your  owne  mishap  to  moume, 
Which  death,  or  love,  or  fortunes  wrack  did  rayse, 
Your  string  could  soone  to  sadder  tenor  tume, 
And  teach  the  woods  and  waters  to  lament 
Your  dolefull  dreriment : 
Nor  lay  those  sorrowfull  Complaints  aside. 

Our  examination  of  the  Complaints  has  brought 
Spenser  before  us  in  pensive  aspect, — the  shadow  of 
disappointment  "  at  Court  "  through  Burleigh  and  his 
semi-enforced  return  to  Ireland  :  for  who  can  doubt 
that  if  opening  had  been  made  for  him  he  would 
eagerly  have  embraced  it,  had  it  been  only  to  enable 
him  to  remain  in  "  this  England."  But  it  was  not  all 
loss  either  to  himself  or  our  literature  that  he  "  fore- 
went "  political  service  under  such  conditions  as  service 
under   the   Lord   Treasurer  meant.      Neither  must  we 


igo  WOOING  AND  MARRIAGE. 

think  of  the  Complaints  as  representing  a  permanent 
element  in  the  Poet.  The  putting  into  these  melodious 
words  his  sorrows  and  indignation  combined  (like  the 
lightnings  that  sheathe  themselves  in  the  dissolving 
cloud)  would  relieve  the  tension  of  emotion  ;  whilst  the 
Poet's  love  of  his  art  and  perception  of  the  fineness  of 
his  workmanship  could  scarcely  fail  to  brighten  darkest 
hours.  Then  in  near  perspective  there  was  the  "  going 
forward  "  with  at  least  other  three  books  of  the  Faery 
Queen. 

More  prosaically,  as  an  "Undertaker"  of  3028  acres, 
and  as  Clerk  of  the  Council  of  Munster,  he  would  have 
other  things  to  occupy  him  than  "  tears,  idle  tears," 
There  would  be  radiance  in  the  face  when  William 
Ponsonbie  sent  across  to  Kilcolman  gift-copies  of  the 
nattily-printed  volume  of  1591. 


XII.  Wooing  and  Marriage — Wife's  Name   for 
THE  First  Time  Disclosed. 

'■  The  course  of  true  love  never  did  run  smooth." — Anon. 

Spenser  continued  to  discharge  the  duties  of  his  office 
of  Clerk  to  the  Council  of  the  Province  of  Munster,  It 
would  be  a  pleasant  '  escape  '  (as  Cowley  or  Cowper 
would  have  called  it)  from  the  worries  and  monotonies 
of  overseeing  the  cultivation  of  the  "salvage  soil  "  and 
dealing  with  the  still  more  "  salvage  "  natives — albeit 
from  chance-occurring  names  it  is  certified  that  the 
Master  of  Kilcolman  employed  Irish,  and  not  merely 
English.  This  was  contrary  to  the  conditions  of  the 
"  Undertakers' "  patents  ;  but  failing,  if  failing  it  were, 


WOOING  AXD  MARRIAGE.  191 

"that  leaned  to  virtue's  side."  His  '  Dispute'  through 
an  Irish  widow  (O'Callaghan)  with  the  notorious  Lord 
Roche  must  not  be  suffered  to  bulk  too  largely.  There 
is  no  tittle  of  evidence  that  the  Poet's  relations  with 
the  natives  were  other  than  neighbourly  and  kindly. 
Your  pseudo-patriotic  Irishmen  who  malign  his  lustrous 
name  fetch  their  mendacities  from  their  vivid  imagina- 
tions and  their  permanent-traditionary  brief  against  all 
Englishmen.  If  on  the  one  hand  it  be  to  exaggerate  to 
accept  fully  Sir  Walter  Scott's  description  of  Spenser's 
Irish  residence  at  Kilcolman  as  "  a  tranquil  retreat  and 
halcyon  days  "  {Edin.  Rev.,  vol.  vii.,  and  Prose  Works, 
s.  u.),  on  the  other  hand  it  is  equally  to  exaggerate,  to 
conceive  of  him  as  eating  his  own  heart  in  gloom 
and  sadness.  The  Poet  was  self-evidencingly  a  man -of 
moods,  and  given  to  swift  change  and  impassioned 
utterance  of  the  most  changeful  mood.  But  on  the 
whole  he  was  probably  as  happy  at  Kilcolman  as  he 
would  have  been  anywhere.  With  Sidney  dead — 
Leicester  dead — Ralegh  far  away — Essex  "at  Cales" 
— and  the  all-potent  Burleigh  at  the  helm  of  affairs, 
there  would  and  could  have  been  nothing  for  so  proud 
and  sensitive  and  eke  exacting  a  temperament  but 
provocation  and  offence.  Excellent  man  of  business — 
methodical,  diligent,  laborious,  as  his  State- Papers  attest 
— he  was  scarcely  the  man  to  shoulder  it  with  rivals 
whom  he  despised,  or  to  fall  in  with  the  small  talk  and 
empoisoned  gossip  of  courtiers.  I  fear — though  the 
'  crooked '  and  unwholesome  personality  of  Burleigh 
makes  one  pause — he  had  not  the  brilliant  presence  of 
a  Ralegh  or  an  Essex  to  lay  a  spell  on  Elizabeth. 
John  Aubrey  was  told  by  one  who  knew  him  ("Mr. 


192  WOOING  AND  MARRIAGE. 

Christopher  Keeston  ")  that  lie  was  "  a  Httle  man,  who 
wore  short  haire,  little  band  and  little  cuffes"  (as 
before,  s.  n)  Better,  therefore,  with  all  its  elements 
of  irk  and  depression,  was  Kilcolman  for  the  "  newe 
poete  "  than  Westminster.  He  himself  came  to  recog- 
nize this.  His  friends  (as  they  imagined  themselves) 
marvelled  at  his  returning  unto 

This  barren  soyle, 
Where  cold  and  care  and  penury  do  dwell 
Here  to  kecpe  sheepe  with  hunger  and  with  toyle. 

The  '  hunger '  and  '  toyle '  were  as  metaphorical  as 
the  being  a  '  shepherd  '  was  metaphorical.  But  he 
made  answer — 

Whose  former  dayes 
Had  in  rude  fields  been  altogether  spent, 
Durst  not  adventure  such  unknowen  wayes, 
Nor  trust  the  guile  of  Fortune's  blandishment; 
Rut  rather  chose  back  to  my  sheepe  to  tourne, 
Whose  utmost  hardnesse  I  before  had  tr}'de, 
Then  having  learnd  repentance  late  to  mourne 
Amongst  those  wretches  which  I  then  descryde. 

Susceptible,  impulsive,  with  a  young  heart  to  the 
last,  it  does  not  surprise  us  that  the  next  outstanding 
Fact  in  Spenser's  life  is  his  falling  passionately  in  love 
with  a  "  fair  face."  At  the  close  of  Colin  Clouts  Come 
Home  Again  it  is  to  be  recalled  he  had  paid  a  last 
splendid  as  pathetic  tribute  to  his  "  Rosalind  "  of  the 
(relatively)  far-off  sunny  days  in  North-East  Lancashire 
and  perchance  beneath  the  classic  Cotswold  Hills  (re- 
meeting  her  there  as  celebrated  by  Drayton).  The 
vision  of  her  loveliness  had  never  paled  of  its  lustre,  and 
as  with  Sidney  for  "  Stella,"  she  was  probably  his  ideal 
of  woman  to  the  close,  though  unlike  Sidney  her 
marriage    to   her    Menalcas  {=^-   Aspinall)    arrested    his 


^ 


WOOING   AND  MARRIAGE. 


'93 


love-homage.  To  m\'  ear  there  comes  a  sigh,  ahnost  a 
sob,  out  of  these  most  touching  farewell  words  to  those 
who  had  dared  to  blame  his  "  Rosalind  " — 

Ah  shephcards  ^then  said  Colin)  ye  ne  weet 

How  ^eat  a  ffuilt  upon  your  heads  ye  draw  : 

To  make  so  bold  a  doome  with  words  unmeet, 

Of  thing  celestial  I  icliicli  yc  fiez'er  saw. 

For  she  is  not  like  as  the  other  crew 

Of  shepheards  daughters  which  eniongst  you  bee, 

But  of  divine  regard  and  heavenly  hew, 

Excelling  all  that  ever  ye  did  see. 

Not  then  to  her  that  scorned  thing  so  base, 

But  to  7>iy  selje  the  blame  that  luokt  so  hie  : 

•  •  •  •  * 

Yet  so  much  grace  let  her  vouchsafe  to  grant 
To  simple  swaine,  sith  her  I  may  fiat  lox'e : 
Yet  that  I  may  her  honour  jxiravant, 
And  praise  her  worth,  though  far  my  wit  above. 

(Vol.  IV.,  pp.  66-7.) 

What  Ikatrice  was  to  Dante  even  when  he  had  married 
his  Gemma  Donati — and  such  a  marriage  !  and  even 
wooed  and  sung  of  the  beautiful  Luchese  Gentucca  ; 
or  "Stella"  to  Sidney  when  he  too  had  married  the 
widow  of  Essex  ;  or  what  'Highland  Mary  '  was  to 
Burns,  though  Jean  Armour  was  his  loving  and 
beloved  wife,  "Rosalind"  until  he  died,  was  to  Edmund 
Spenser.  A  "first  love"  (often  at  first  sight)  is  in- 
eradicable, and  when  unattained  becomes  transfigured 
and  holy  without  despite  done  to  another  who  has 
been  wooed  and  won.  How  exquisitely  is  this  put  by 
"  the  sad  Florentine  "  when  he  describes  the  fore-feeling 
of  the  approaching  Beatrice  in  her  name-chariot — 

At  whose  touch 
The  power  of  ancient  love  was  strong  within  him.* 

•  It  may  be  noted  that  Aubrey  (as  above)  informs  us  as  follows 
of  Rosalind — "Spenser  was  an   acquaintance  of  Sir   Erasmus 

I.  I? 


194 


WOOING   AND  MARRIAGE. 


I  ventured  to  pronounce  the  Teares  of  the  Muses 
the  most  precious  of  all  the  Complaints,  and  of  all 
his  minor  poems,  from  the  near  view  it  gives  us  of  the 
Poet  in  his  attitude  toward  contemporaneous  persons 
and  circumstances.  Of  kindred  values  are  the  Amo- 
retti  and  Epithahwiium  for  the  light  and  shadow,  the 
hopes  and  fears,  the  yearnings  and  aspirations,  the 
passion  of  sadness  and  gladness  alternated,  and  finally 
the  triumph  and  its  inestimable  apotheosis.  Mr. 
Palo-rave  (Vol.  IV.,  pp.  Ixxxvii-xcii)  has  pronounced 
on  and  illustrated  the  literary  quality  of  the  Sonnets 
of  the  Auwrciti,  and  his  full)'-justified  verdict  is  in 
noticeable  contrast  with  i)ric)r  criticisms  and  estimates— 
e.g.,  in  the  Retrospective    Review   (vol.  xii.,  pp.  142-65), 

Drevdcn  His  mistress  Rosalind  was  a  kinswoman  of  Sir 
Erasmus's  Lady.  The  chamber  there  at  Sir  Erasmus's  is  still 
caSed  Mr!  Spencer' s  chamber. ' '  Eheu  !  the  present  baronet  has 
so  c^ht  n  viin  to  verify  these  statements.  Finally-m  relation 
to  'Rosalind,'  it  is  a  curious  circumstance  that  during  Spenser  s 
own  hSime'he  was  introduced  on  the  stage  by  George  Pede 
in  his  Aravi.r7!i>ie>/t  of  Pans,  A  Pas  for  all  .  .  •  (i5«4).  ^^^ 
sdolon>us  '  dying '"  and  even  'death'  of  his  laments  for 
Rosalind  r  the\s7:;.///.vv/'.  Calendar,  poked  fun  at,  to  the 
.v^Sn  of  Venus  P.-u-is  and  a  company  of  shepherds  jommg  in 
bewailinl  ''Coin's  corpse."  love-'slain  by  "  Hard  heart,  iair 
face  traucht  with  disdain."  Peele,  whist  usmg  Spenser  s 
own'  name'  of  'Colin,'  substitutes  Thestis  or  Thestyhs  for 
Ro  al  ndT  but  the  references-first  pointed  out  by  Malone 
iSharesi^eare  by  Boswell,  ii.  248  5^^  )-seem  unmistakable 
)e  n,{,'  •«  p/rlp  i87d  PP  riV4,  S^i-^.)  Spenser  took  it 
^::^}^r:4^t.&iU^^^  tf-s   couplet   in  Colin 

lOloNt— 

'  There  eke  is  Palin,  worthic  of  great  praise, 
Albe  he  envie  at  my  rustick  quill.' 

'Palin'  (like  '  Lowder '=  Lloyd)  catches  up  the  name  'Peele,' 
and  besides  '  Palin  '  and  '  Palinode '  are  interlocutors  in  Peele  s 
Pastoral  and  Eclogue  Gratulatorie. 


W 


JVOOLVG  A. YD  MARRIAGE.  ,^- 

wc  have  this  enormity,  paralleled  only  b)-  Isaac  Reed's 
immortal  judgment  of  Shakespeare's  Sonnets  : 

"A  bad  sonnet  is   one  of  the  dullest  things  in  creation   and 
fAZllV     '^r  ,^b-'"tely    intolerable.     Those    in    Question 
ilti^J'J  ^\^  ^n'  "?'  r''  P^'^  ""''^'  passionless  and  conceited 
indeed,  we  actually  feel  it  a  task  to  get  through  them  "  (p.  158) 

In  this  instance  the  "we"  might  well  have  been  changed 
into  "  I  "  and  that  "  I  "  writing  himself  down  ass 
Our  present  concern  is  mainly  with  their  biographic 
characteristics.  And  in  the  words  of  a  Charles  Lamb- 
like paper  in  77^  Penn  Monthly  (October  1875  pp 
739-48)  yclept  "An   Elizabethan   Courtship":— 

"From  these  Sonnets  we  gather  what  few  facts  survive  to  tell 
of  h.s  outward  l.fe.  and  m  these  same  sonnets  we  have  what  makes 
he  outward  life  of  comparatively  the  slightest  interest -a  Die 
ture.  to  wit,  of  his  inner  life,  a  true  limning  of  the  deep  feelS,^; 
of  a  noble  man  of  perhaps  the  noblest  of  ages  "  (p.  74^).*      ^ 

In  limine, ~mox<t  especially  in  the  light  of  their  after- 
publication  by  Spenser  himself.— wc  are  met  with  the 
suspicion  that  the  Amoretti  is  fiction  and  not  reality  was 
the  e.vcrcise  of  the  Maker's  art  and  even  artifice  not  the 
expression  of  his  heart's  emotion.  I  cannot  but  regard 
criticism  of  this  type  as  bewraying  ignorance  of  "two 
things  of  which  to  be  ignorant  is  to  be  proved  incom- 
petent, {a)  Ignorance  of  how  through  all  time  Poetry 
has  been  the  subtlest  and  most  searchingly  exhaustive 
utterance  of  human  feeling.  On  this  Mr.s.  Jameson 
has    said     penetratively — 

"  Jhe  most  real  and  most  fervent  passion  that  ever  fell  under 
my  knowledge  was  revealed  in  verse,  and  very  e.vquisUe  verso 
too,  and  has  inspired  many  an  eifusion  full  of  beauty,  fancy  and 

♦  This  Paper  in  a   provincial    American  periodical  is   hv  r. 
th«most  thoughtful  study  of  the  ^;.;^r.//;kLwn  to  me.       ^ 


196  WOOING  AND  MARRIAGE. 

poetry  ;  but  it  has  not  therefore  been  counted  less  sincere  ;  and 
Heaven  forbid  it  should  prove  less  lasting  than  if  it  had  been 
told  us  in  the  homelier  prose,  and  had  never  inspired  one  beauti- 
ful idea  or  one  rapturous  verse  ' '  {Loves  of  the  Poets — Petrarch 
and  Laura). 

{h)  Ignorance  of  the  mode  of  the  Elizabethan  times,  when 
men  far  more  than  now  "  wore  their  hearts  upon  their 
sleeves  " — the  reference  being,  I  suppose,  to  their  lady- 
loves' favours  or  colours  being  exposed  to  all — and  when, 
'a  God's  truth,'  daws  did  peck  at  them.  Professor  John 
Wilson  {Blackwootfs  Mag.,  vol,  xxxiv.,  pp.  824-54)  has 
forcefully  decided  this  in  relation  to  the  Epithalamium, 
and  it  holds  equally  of  the  Amoretti: — 

"  No  poet  of  our  refined — our  delicate  age — could  write  his 
own  marriage-hymn  of  thanksgiving.  He  could  be  more  easil)^ 
pardoned  for  his  epitaph  or  his  epicedia.  But  Spenser  lived  in  a 
strong  age.  And  had  he  been  silent,  he  would  have  felt  that 
he  wronged  Hymen  as  well  as  the  Muses"  (p.  849). 

No  less  frivolous  is  the  suspicion  of  unreality  because 

of  evidences  here  and  there  of  Sonnets  in  the  Amoretti 

having  been  (in   a  sense)  modelled  after    Petrarch  and 

Sanazzaro  and  others.      It   was  inevitable  that  a  Poet 

so    habitually    in    emulation    with    the   highest    of  all 

accessible  literatures,  would  turn   to  the  highest  or  the 

most  "  musical,  most  melancholy,"  that  he  might  come 

up  to  them,  and  so  the  readier  win   the  admiration  of 

his  lettered  and  cultured   lady-love.     We  have  had  this 

objection  before  in   respect  of  the  SliepJm'd's  Calendar 

and  other  love-verse   for   Rosalind,  because  forsooth  of 

echoes  of  Chaucer's  Pite.     All  such  criticisms  are  to  be 

dismissed,  and  the  Amoretti  and  EpitJialamiitm  believed 

in  as   substantially   a   Love-Diary  to  be  placed   beside 

Coliii  Cloiifs  Come  Home  Again.     Analysis  shows  this.* 

*  See  Appendix  O  for  a  critical  examination  of  the  whole  series. 


WOOING  AND  MARRIAGE.  igy 

But  now  a  question  is  started — Who  was  the  Eliza- 
beth of  the  Amoretti  and  Epithalaniiuin}  Only  one 
attempt  has  been  made  to  answer  the  question. 
Halpine,  who  so  ingeniously  but  mistakenly  identified 
Rosalind  with  a  non-existent  Rose  Daniel — sister 
imagined  of  Samuel  Daniel  and  wife-imagined  of  John 
Florio — Daniel  having  no  sister  '  Rose '  and  Florio's 
wife  having  been  a  Rose  Spicer — in  the  other  moiety 
of  his  paper,  brings  together  the  various  passages  in 
Spenser  wherein  he  speaks  of  his  love  as  an  '  Angel,' 
and  from  thence  argues  that  she  was  an  Elizabeth 
Nagle  or  Nangle — a  well-known  Irish  family  still  re- 
presented.* It  is  not  to  be  gainsaid  that  the  Poet's 
use  of  *  Angel '  is  peculiar  and  in  a  way  enigmatical, 
and  actcris  paribus  might  have  suggested  double 
meanings  or  anagram,  as  with  '  Rosalind  ' — e.g.,  in  the 
A  inoretti — 

When  ye  behold  that  Angel's  blessed  looke  (Sonnet  i), 
The  glorious  pourtraict  of  that  Angel's  face  (Sonnet  17), 
And  of  the  brood  of  Angels  hevenly  borne  (Sonnet  61), 
each  printed  with   a  capital   A,   not  'angels.'      But   it 
is  all  a  "  Love's  Labour  Lost."     A  son  of  the  Poet  and 
descendants  married   Nagles  or  Nangles  ;  but  there   is 
not   a   particle  of  evidence  that  the  Poet  himself  had 
an    P21izabeth    Nagle  or  Nangle   for  wife.      Besides,  in 
Petrarch    of    his    Laura,   you    have    "  La   bella    bocca 
angelica,"     and    repeated    a    thousand     times     in    the 
love-poetry  of  Italy.      One  little  unexpected  entry  in 
a    provincial   Irish    town's    Records,   gives   us   fact    for 

•  See  Procecditigs  of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy  {iS<\y--:,o), 
and  the  Atla7itic  Monthly  for  November  1858,  and  our  Vol.  III., 
pp.  Ixx.wi-cii. 


198  WOOING  AND  MARRIAGE. 

conjecture  and  speculation.  Strange  to  say,  not  only 
has  this  for  all  these  long  generations  existed,  but  an 
erudite  Irish  scholar — Dr.  Richard  Caulfield,  Librarian 
of  Queen's  College,  Cork,  published  in  1878  "The 
Council  Book  of  the  Corporation  of  Youghal  :  Guild- 
ford, Surrey,"  and  duly  (though  not  very  accurately) 
printed  the  '  instrument '  about  to  be  given,  without, 
however,  seeing  anything  of  interest  in  it,  much  less 
the  priceless  secret  it  held.  Another  Irish  antiquary 
and  scholar  of  mark,  in  casually  transmitting  the  '  in- 
strument '  to  me,  did  so  because  once  in  reading  it,  he 
had  at  first  made  out  the  surname  to  be  '  Nagle,'  and 
the  place  '  Kilcolman,'  but  had  to  confess  that  they 
were  '  Boyle '  and  '  Kilcoran,'  to  his  sad  disappoint- 
ment— not  perceiving  that  either  would  have  vitiated 
the  relationship.  Turning,  then,  to  the  Corporate 
Records  of  Youghal,  under  3rd  May,  1606,  we  find 
this  : — 

"SECKERSTONE. 

"This  Indenture,  made  iij  May  1606,  betweene  Sir  Richard 
Boyle,  ffermore  [fanner],  of  the  New  Colledge  of  Our  Ladie  of 
Yoghull  on  th'one  parte  and  Elizabeth  Boyle  als  Seckerstone 
of  Kilcoran,  in  the  countie  of  Corcke,  widow,  on  th'other  parte, 
Witnesseth  that  y  saide  Sir  Richard  Boyle  hath  sett  to  y  saide 
Elizabeth  Boyle,  als  Seckerstone,  from  the  ffeast  of  Sainct 
Michell  next  ensueing,  for  Ixj  yeares,  the  capitall  messuage,  etc., 
of  Kilcoran.  Yieldinge  and  payinge  for  the  same  to  y'"  said  Sir 
Richard  Boyle,  in  the  hall  of  the  New  Colledge,  &c.,  of  Yoghull, 
the  sum  of  ij'.  6''.  yearlie. 

"  In  witness,  &c.,  Richard  Boyle. 

"  Present,  Robert  Calvert. 

"  Recordatur  ad  instautmm  Heiirici  Tynte  arm.  ci  Ricardi 
Smith  a7'm.     6  Maij  1648." 

["Council  Book  of  Corporation  of  Youghal  " — Liber  A,  p.  600.] 

Now  with  reference  to  this  'Indenture,'  in  its  place — 
onward — it  will  be  found  that  Spenser's  widow  married 


WOOING  AXD  MARRIAGE.  199 

in  1603  a  Rof^er  Seckerstonc.  So  that  it  seems  certain 
that  in  this  Elizabeth  Hoylc  alias  Seckerstonc,  again  a 
widow  (in  1606),  we  have  to  recognize  the  wife  of  the 
Poet.  That  there  should  be  two  Elizabeth  Seckcr- 
stones  and  both  widows,  and  both  in  the  same  narrow 
district,  and  both  resident  under  conditions  and  dates 
dovetailing  with  the  chronology  of  Spenser's  life  and 
death,  is  most  improbable.  Not  only  so ;  but  the 
student  of  Spenser  will  at  once  perceive  that  'Kilcoran' 
being  thus  shown  to  have  been  the  residence  of 
Elizabeth  Seckerstone  (;//t'  Boyle)  explains  hitherto 
unexplained  references  in  the  great  Epithalainimn  :  e.g., 
the  Poet  sings  of  "the  sea  that  neighbours  to  her 
neare."  This  is  a  perfect  description  of  a  dwelling  at 
Kilcoran,  which  overlooks  the  bay  of  Youghal.  Again 
— in  the  Auioretti  (Sonnet  75)  we  read  : — 

One  day  I  wrote  her  name  upon  the  strand.   .  .  . 

Everj-body  knows  that  Youghal  is  noted  for  its  '  strand,' 
which  stretciies  unbroken  for  about  three  miles.  Horse 
races  have  been  often  held  on  it  (see  '  Youghal  Guide,' 
1879,  P-  19)-  I^i<-  George  Macdonald,  though 
wrong  as  to  Kilcolman  being  so  near  to  the  sea  (even 
MuUa  itself  five  miles  off),  was  not  much  out  funda- 
mentall)'  in  his  fine  bit  in  Malcolm  (c,  xv.)  on  Spenser 
— one  of  many  illustrations  of  how  truly  still  he  is 
the  '  Poet  of  Poets.'  *  Finally — the  '  indenture  '  leasing 
'  Kilcoran  '  at  the  nominal  rent  of  2s.  6cL  per  annum — 
practically  a  gift — would  seem  to  warrant  the  con- 
clu.sion  that  through  friendship  and  family  affection 
Sir    Richard    Boyle    gave    the    second-time    a    widow 

*  See  Appendix  P  for  it. 


200  IVOOING  AND  MARRIAGE. 

possession  in  her  own  right  of  what  before  had  been 
her  '  home.'  Sir  Richard  Boyle  being  the  granter  of  the 
'  lease,'  also  explains  the  giving  of  her  maiden  name 
'  Boyle  '  and  her  widowed  name  '  Seckerstone,' — not 
choosing  or  caring  to  introduce  the  intermediate — 
glorious  as  it  was — title  of  viduity.  Hence  I  must 
pronounce  the  '  Elizabeth  '  of  the  Amoretti  and  Epi- 
t/ialanimiii  to  have  been  Elizabeth  Boyle,  kins- 
woman of  Sir  Richard  Boyle.  I  shall  hope  to  discover 
more  of  all  concerned.* 

The  Boyles — it  need  hardly  be  stated — were  of 
good  lineage  and  in  prosperous  circumstances.  This 
Sir  Richard  became  first  Earl  of  Cork.  So  that 
Elizabeth  Boyle  must  have  been  actually  all  that 
she  is  made  out  glorify ingly  in  the  Amoretti  and 
Epitlialamiiivi — '  gentle,'  cultured,  engaged  in  leisure- 
hours  on  lady's  work  ('  embroidery  '  and  the  like),  (in 
a  sense)  justifiably  '  proud  '  of  her  position  and  equally 
justified  in  not  too  eagerly  snapping  at  the  great  offer 
made  her  by  the  Poet.  The  "  country  lasse  "  of  the 
Faery  Queen  (B.  VI.)  is  of  the  pastoral  framework,  and 
meant  no  more  than  it  did  of  Rosalind — who  was  a 
gentlewoman — than  that  she  lived  in  the  'country.'  It  is 
singular  how  many  have  been  misled  to  think  of  her  as  of 
"  low  degree,"  a  nameless  humble  "  rural  beauty,"  in  the 
face  of  so  many  witnesses  to  the  contrary  in  the  Aviorctti 
and  the  Epithalaiiiium.  The  hastiest  reader  of  these 
ought  to  discern  that  the  haughty  beauty  was  no  common- 
place or  plebeian  maiden,  but  one  toward  whom  even 
Edmund  Spenser  felt  called  on  to  put  forth  his  utmost 
strength  and  graciousness  of  courtesy  in  '  wooing  '  her. 
*  See  Glossarial  Index,  under  'Elizabeth  Boyle.' 


WOOING  AND  MARRIAGE.  201 

The  Registers  of  Cork  of  the  period  have  all  perished 
— as  nearly  all  over  Ireland  is  the  case — and  thus  we 
have  no  'entry'  of  the  marriage  of  Edmund  Spenser 
and  Elizaheth  Bovle.  But  two  references  in  the 
Epit/uilainintn  give  us  its  date  and  scene.  Its  date  was 
I  ith  June  [i  594],  as  thus  . — 

This  day  the  sunne  is  in  his  chiefest  hight 
With  Bamaby  the  bright  (11.  265-6). 

The  scene  was  the  cathedral  of  Cork — and  (it  is 
believed)  Bishop  William  Lyon  was  the  chief  officiating 
clergyman  *  : — 

Open  the  temple  gates  unto  my  love, 

Open  them  wide  that  she  may  enter  in  .  .  . 

And  all  the  pillours  deck  with  girlands  trim  (11.  204-7). 

— with  after-mention  of  the  "  high  altar  "  and  "  roring 
organ  "  and  '  choristers.' 

The  splendour  of  the  ceremonial,  the  "  many  gazers," 
the  stir  and  concourse  of  the  gentlest  and  richest,  and 
the  whole  tone  of  the  Epithalamium,  harmonize  with 
the  bride  having  been  a  '  Lady,'  such  as  by  kinship 
at  least  Elizabeth  Boyle  doubtless  was.  The  question 
of  the  enraptured  bridegroom — 

Tell  mc  ye  merchants  daughters  did  ye  see 

So  fayre  a  creature  in  your  towne  before  ?  (11.  167-8) 

whilst  informing  us  that  they  were  of  the  crowding 
spectators,  does  not  involve  that  the  '  bride  '  was  a 
merchant's  daughter.  Such  a  marriage-procession  of 
minstrels  with  'pipe'  and  'tabor'  and  "trembling 
crowd,"  and  damzels  with  '  tymbrcls  '  and  dance  and 
running  page-boys,  and  herself  "  Clad  all  in  white," — 
•  He  was  bishop  of  Cork  from  1583  until  1617. 


202  WOOING  AND  MARRIAGE. 

Her  long-  loose  yellow  locks  lyke  golden  wyre 
Sprinckled  with  perle,  and  perling  flowres  a  tweene 
Doe  lykc  a  golden  mantle  her  attyre, 
And  being  crowned  with  a  girland  greene, 
Seem  lyke  some  mayden  Queene  (11.  154-8), 

once  more  render  preposterous  any  thought  of  such  a 
bride  having  been  a  peasant. 

Was  ever  marriage  so  "  married  to  immortal  verse  "  } 
Even  when  we  think  of  "  Comus  "  and  the  "Arcades" 
Dean  Church's  eloquent  verdict  is  unimpeachable  : — 

"  His  bride  was  immortalized  as  a  fourth  among  the  three 
Graces,  in  a  richly-painted  passage  in  the  last  book  of  the  Faery 
Queen.  But  the  most  magnificent  tribute  to  her  is  the  great 
Wedding  Ode,  the  J£J>ii/ialamh/m,  the  finest  composition  of  its 
kind,  probably,  in  any  language :  so  impetuous  and  unflagging, 
so  orderly  and  yet  so  rapid  in  the  onward  march  of  its  stately 
and  varied  stanzas  ;  so  passionate,  so  flashing  with  imaginative 
wealth,  yet  so  refined  and  self-restrained.  It  was  always  easy 
for  Spenser  to  open  the  'dood-gates  of  his  inexhaustible  fancy. 
With  him— 

The  numbers  flow  as  fast  as  spring  doth  rise. 

But  here  he  has  thrown  into  his  composition  all  his  power  of 
concentration,  of  ari'angement,  of  strong  and  harmonious  govern- 
ment over  thought  and  image,  over  language  and  measure  and 
rhythm  ;  and  the  result  is  uncjuestionably  one  of  the  grandest 
lyrics  in  English  poetry.  We  have  learned  to  think  the  subject 
unfit  for  such  free  poetical  treatment;  Spenser's  age  did  not" 
(pp.  168-9). 

Professor  John  Wilson  may  supplement  tin's  : — 

"  \Vc  are  not  unr(\'id  in  Catullus.  But  the  pride  of  Verona 
must  bow  his  head  in  humility  before  this  bounteous  and  lovelier 
lay.  Joy,  Love,  Desire,  Passion,  Gratitude,  Religion,  rejoice 
in  presence  of  Heaven,  to  take  possession  of  Affection,  Beauty, 
Innocence.  Faith  and  Hope  are  bridesmaids,  and  holiest  incense 
is  burning  on  the  altar"   [Bhu/czvuod' s  Mag.,  as  before,  p.  849). 


AFTER  MARRIAGE.  203 

XIII.  Aftkk  Marriage  at  Kilcol.man,*  and  again 

IN    L(1ND0N. 
"y4  deep  story  of  a  deeper  love." — Two  Getitletueti  of  Verona,  i.  I. 

I  MUST  hold  it  for  his  own  seal  and  testimony  that 
Elizabeth  Boyle  proved  all  that  the  Amorctti  and  the 
EpitiialiDniuiH  paint  her — and  our  Rubens  of  the  Poets 
— Campbell's  fine  designation — has  nowhere  used  such 
glowing  colours  —  tliat  there  was  no  dis-illusion  on 
either  side,  and  that  her  presence  in  Kilcolman  made 
"  sunshine  in  a  shady  place," — that  a  good  year  after 
their  marriage,  he  published  these  imperishable  poems. 
It  is  legitimate  to  infer  that  had  there  been  any  touch 
of  incompatibility  or  disappointment,  the  "  lofty  praise  " 
would  never  have  been  given  to  the  world.  And  so 
having  after  his  manner  fetched  out  early  Manuscripts 
and  re- worked  on  them,  and  composed  new — Colin 
Clouts  Come  Home  Again  had  doubtless  been  forwarded 
in  I  591  to  Ralegh — he  took  advantage  of  his  friend 
Sir  Robert  Needham,  Knt.,  going  over  to  England  to 
send  to  Ponsonby  his  MS.  oi  "  Amoretti  and  Epithala- 
minin.  Written  not  long  since  by  Edmunde  Spenser." 
In  recompense  for  the  little  service,  the  Publisher — 
instructed  most  likely  by  the  Author — dedicated  the 
pretty  little  volume  (i8mo)  to  the  Knight  in  dainty 
and  well  turned  phrasing  (Vol.  IV.,  pp.  73-4).  Prefixed 
are  two  laudatory  sonnets  by  G.  W.  senior  and  G. 
W.  I[unior] — whom  it  is  impossible  to  identify,  though 
George  Whetstone  has  been  conjectured  as  the  '  senior.' 
The  motto  on  the  title-page  is  suggestive  of  the  Poet's 
consciousness  of  sincerity  and  truthfulness  throughout 
♦  For  quotation  from  Dean  Church  see  Appendix  Q. 


204  AFTER  MARRIAGE. 

his  most  passionate  verse — "  Veritas  tua  et  usque  ad 
nubes."  "  So  the  winter  is  past,  the  rain  is  over  and 
gone  ;  the  flowers  appear  on  the  earth  ;  the  time  of 
the  singing  of  birds  is  come,  and  the  voice  of  the 
turtle  is  heard  in  our  land "  {Song  of  Solomon,  ii. 
11-12).     This  was  in  1595.* 

Mrs.  Spenser  actualized  the  '  blessings '  of  the 
old  Hebrew  psalm — "  Thy  wife  shall  be  as  a  fruitful 
vine  by  the  sides  of  thine  house :  thy  children  like 
olive  plants  round  about  thy  table  "  (Psalm  cxxviii.  3). 
Married — as  we  have  found — on  nth  June,  1594, 
between  this  and  1599  there  were  no  fewer  than  four 
children — viz.,  Sylvanus,  Lawrence,  Peregrine,  Catherine. 
(I  do  not  accept  a  fifth,  an  infant  who  is  alleged  to 
have  perished  in  the  firing  of  Kilcolman.)  This  gives 
a  birth  for  each  separate  year. 

We  probably  get  a  glimpse  of  the  Father's  feeling 
in  the  Christian  names  chosen  for  his  first-born  and 
his  second  and  third  sons.  '  Sylvanus,'  the  eldest,  having 
been  born  at  Kilcolman,  which  was  then  environed 
with  indigenous  forests,  made  it  poetically  as  well  as 
really,  descriptive.  '  Lawrence '  recalled  his  (most 
likely)  progenitor  in  North-East  Lancashire — Lawrence 
Spenser  of  Castell  parish  (Introduction,  p.  xxvi). 
'  Peregrine '  had  pathos  in  it,  signifying  as  it  did  "  a 
Stranger" — thus  reminding  of  Exodus  ii.  22,  "And 
Zipporah  bare  Moses  a  son,  and  he  called  his  name 
Gershom  [=  a  stranger  here]  ;  for  he  said,  I  have  been 
a  stranger  in  a  strange  land."  '  Catherine '  appears  to 
have  been  drawn  from  the  mother's  side  of  the  house. 

There  are  no  surviving  facts  to  illustrate  the  years 
.   *  For  renewal  of  Lord  Roche's  suit  in  1593  see  Appendix  R. 


AFTER  MARRTAGR.  205 

between  1594  and  159S — other  than  the  preparation 
and  publication  of  the  Amorctti  and  EpitJialaviiuni  in 
1595  (as  already  noted) — to  which  must  also  be  added 
his  collection  entitled  Astrop/ic/,  in  honour  of  Sidney, 
whose  imprint  is  "  Printed  by  T.  C.  for  William  Pon- 
sonbie,  1595."  Alas!  no  single  scrap  of  letter  or 
other  memorial  of  or  from  I^lizabeth  Spenser  {7u'e 
Bo}le)  ;  nothing  to  reveal  the  emotion  of  the  Poet 
over  his  first-born  or  as  a  father.  One  aches  for 
light  on  these.  How  we  should  have  rejoiced  over 
so  much  as  a  single  Sonnet  to  place  beside  John 
Milton's  of  his  "  sainted  wife  "  and  child  ! 

In  1595 — being  no  longer  Clerk  of  the  Council 
of  the  Province  of  Munster,  which  as  Lord  Roche's 
'plaint'  shows  he  had  resigned  in  1594 — he  is  once 
more  in  t^ngland.  The  fact — and  it  is  a  fact — that 
he  '  resigned '  this  office  to  that  Sir  Richard  Boyle 
who  onward  in  1606  leased  to  the  poet's  widow 
—  a  second  time  a  widow — the  lands  of  Kilcoran, 
may  have  been  a  family  arrangement  through  Mrs. 
Spenser.  He  had  again  secmingl}-  a  twofold  reason 
for  making  a  considerably  prolonged  stay  in  his  own 
native  Land.  P^oremost  was  his  decision  now  to  pub- 
lish a  second  volume  containing  other  three  books  of 
his  supreme  work  of  the  Faery  Quccu.  The  Amorctti 
(Sonnet  80)  showed  that  the  three  new  books  were 
completed  in  1593-4.  The  precious  MS.  (unlike  the 
slighter  Amorctti  and  EpitJialnviium)  he  could  entrust 
to  no  one.  He  must  himself  carry  it.  He  mu.st  have 
left  Ireland  toward  the  clo.se  of  1595  ;  for  the  new 
'  bokc '  was  entered  at  Stationers'  Hall  in  the  first 
month  of  1596  (January),  thus  : — 


2o6  AFTER  MARRIAGE. 

20"  die  Januarij  [1596]. 
Master  Ponsonby.    Entred  for  his  copie  vnder  the  handes  of  the 
Wardens,    The  second   parte   of   the    ffaery 
Quene  conteining  the  4.  5.  and  6.  bookes  .  .  vj'' 
(Arber  iii.  57).* 

This  "second  parte"  appeared  in  1596.  But  there 
was  also  a  more  private  reason  for  the  Poet's  presence 
in  England.  His  two  lady  friends,  "  the  two  Honor- 
able and  vertuous  Ladies,  the  Ladie  Elizabeth  and 
the  Ladie  Katherine  Somerset,  daughters  to  the  Right 
Honourable  the  Earle  of  Worcester,"  were  in  this 
Spring  "  espoused  \i.c.  married]  to  the  two  worthie 
Gentlemen,  M.  Henry  Gilford  and  M.  William  Peter 
Esquyers."  And  their  poet-friend  having  been 
evidently  invited  to  the  double  wedding,  had  pre- 
pared a  Prothalainiflii,  or  a  Spousal  Verse.  It, 
too,  was  "  printed  for  William  Ponsonby,"  but  as  it 
was  not  entered  at  Stationers'  Hall,  was  not  im- 
probably simply  printed  for  the  noble  families.  This, 
too,  was  in  1596.  He  had  still  further  brought  over 
with  him  Foiire  Hymnes — viz.,  "  An  Hymne  in  Honour 
of  Love,"  "  An  Hymne  in  lionour  of  Beautie,"  "  An 
Hymne  of  Heavenly  Love,"  and  "  An  Hymne  of  Hea- 
venly Beautie."  The  former  two — as  we  gather  from 
the  epistle-dedicatory  to  the  Ladies  Margaret,  Countess 
of  Cumberland,  and  Mary,  Countess  of  Warwick — 
Althorp  Spen.sers  —  had  for  many  years  been  in 
circulation.  As  we  also  saw  (Chap.  VH.,  pp.  78,  80), 
they  were  of  his  earliest  poetical  efforts  ("composed  .   .  . 

*  Professor  Hales  [Memoir  171  Globe  edition  of  Spenser,  p.  li.) 
inadvertently  but  unfortunately  dates  this  1595,  and  mis-states 
that  the  volume  was  published  in  1595.  It  was  not  published 
until  1596. 


AFTER  MARRIAGE.  207 

in  the  greener  times  of  my  youth  "  is   his  own   phrase). 

The  latter  two  were  added  for  a  reason   that  has  been 

oddly  misconstrued.       It   is  thus  put  : — 

"  Finding-  that  the  same  [the  two  l;iymns  of  Love  and  Beauty] 
too  much  pleased  those  of  like  age  and  dispositio,  which  being 
too  vehemently  carried  with  that  kind  of  affection  do  rather  sucke 
out  poyson  to  their  strong  passion,  then  hony  to  their  honest 
delight,  I  was  moved  by  the  one  of  you  two  most  excellent  Ladies, 
to  call  in  the  same.  But  being  unable  so  to  doe,  by  reason  that 
many  copfes  thereof  were  formerly  scattered  abroad,  I  resolved 
at  least  to  amend,  and  by  way  of  retractation  to  reforme  them, 
making  in  stead  of  those  two  Hymnes  of  earthly  or  naturall  love 
and  beautie,  two  others  of  heavenly  and  celestiall "  (Vol.  IV., 
p.  147). 

On  this  iMr.  Palgrave  writes  : — 

"  I  hold  it  as,  for  the  most  part,  a  poetical  device,  a  trick  of 
fine  art,  by  which  Spenser  in  the  prefator\'  letter  to  his  fair  and 
noble  friends,  sets  forth  these  two  latter  Hymns  as  a  sort  of  re- 
tractation ur  palinode  in  regard  of  the  two  earlier"  (Vol.  IV., 
pp.  xcix-c). 

And  again — 

"  This  Ode  [on  Heavenly  Beautie]  however,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
although  written  also,  in  general,  with  Spenser's  full  mastery,  falls 
below  its  predecessor,  which  in  truth,  so  far  from  being  any  way 
tainted  with  the  grossness  of  the  lower  nature,  or  the  corruptness 
of  the  Renaissance,  anticipates  all  that  is  heavenly  in  the  beauty 
of  earth  "  {Ibid.,-^.  c). 

But  as  I  read  Spenser's  words  there  is  a  double  state- 
ment— one  that  he  had  "  resolved  at  least  to  amend, 
and  by  way  of  retractation  to  reforme  them,"  and  the 
other,  to  accompany  them  with  "  two  others  of  heavenly 
and  celestiall  love."  To  my  mind  the  former  is  quite 
distinct  from  the  latter,  and  by  his  '  amending '  and 
'  reforming '  of  the  "  Two  Hymnes  of  Love  and 
Beautie,"  I  understand  that  he  had  removed  the  over- 
warmth  of  the  original  MS.-circulated  Hymns.  The 
ladies  were   English   gentlewomen,  not  prudes,  and   it 


2o8  AFTER  MARRIAGE. 

is  simply  impossible  that  they  could  have  objected 
to  or  sought  the  suppression  of  these  two  Hymns  as 
we  now  have  them.  The  explanation  of  the  Poet's 
apologetic  phrasing  is  that  he  had  called  down  on 
him  a  rebuke  or  rebuff  from  one  of  the  fair  ladies — 
probably  the  Countess  of  Warwick,  who  was  specially 
Puritan,  and  did  much  for  the  '  oppressed  '  .clergy — 
vvhilst  his  plea  of  inability  to  "  call  in  "  the  MS.  copies 
was  set  off  by  his  printing  the  "  Two  Hymncs  "  as  he 
now  wished  them  to  be  read.  They  might  or  might 
not  in  their  corrected  ("reformed")  text  be  substituted 
for  the  MSS. ;  but  at  least  he  would  be  blame-free.  Then, 
further  to  attest  his  sincerity  to  his  lady-friends,  there 
were  the  two  new  Hymns,  of  "  Heavenly  "  Love  and 
"  Heavenly  "  Beauty.  There  was  no  reason  for  adding 
these  from  anything  erotic  in  the  "  Two  Hymnes,"  but 
there  v/as  commanding  reason  that  he  should  glorify 
his  penitence  and  be  shriven  of  his  lady-friend.  We 
may  be  thankful  that,  with  or  without  reason,  we  have 
gained  the  two  later  Hymns,  if  we  cannot  regret  that 
the  MS.  copies  of  the  earlier  two  have  utterly  perished. 

He  thus  comes  before  us  as  a  visitor  in  Monmouth- 
shire, Wilts  and  Northamptonshire  ;  but  the  epistle- 
dedicatory  of  the  Foivrc  Hymnes  informs  us  that  his 
residence  was  Greenwich — "  Greenwich  this  first  of 
September  1596."  Elizabeth  had  a  palace  and  held 
courts  here.  Could  it  be  that  her  'Laureate'  was  housed 
near  Her  Majesty  }  I  hope  it  is  not  assuming  too 
much  to  conclude  that  Mrs,  Spenser  and  the  children 
were  with  the  Poet. 

We  must  return  upon  the  successive  '  bokes  '  of  i  596.* 
*  For  other  literature  of  the  same  year  see  Appendix  S. 


AFTER  MARRIAGE.  209 

First  in  order  comes  AstropJicl,  and  I  must  here  con- 
tent myself  with  referring  the  Reader  to  Mr.  Palgrave's 
Essays  (Vol.  IV.,  pp.  ci-v),  and  our  own  discussion 
(Appendix  I)  on  the  Friendship  with  Sidney,  for  a  two- 
fold judgment  on  this  collection.  Certain  points  must, 
however,  be  touched  on  passingly.  One  circumstance 
especially  demands  notice  :  the  poem  is  dedicated  to 
the  Countess  of  Essex,  i.e.  Sidney's  widow,  yet  it 
is  full  of  praise  of  Stella,  i.e.  the  Lady  Penelope  Rich. 
Granted  that  as  her  sister  (in  law)  such  '  praise  '  was 
not  as  of  a  stranger,  nevertheless  it  startles.  What 
is  the  key  .^  Not,  ceyfes,  that  Edmund  Spenser  meant 
to  insult  Sidney's  widow  by  dedicating  to  her  this 
poem  in  which  he  represents  '  Stella '  attending  on  his 
death-bed — the  fact  being  that  Sidney's  wife  her- 
self nursed  him  most  tenderly  at  Arnheim,  while  the 
actual  Stella  was  in  England.  This  I  venture  to  think 
is  the  key — The  poem  is  so  out-and-out  put  in  the 
guise  and  disguise  of  classic  fable  and  pastoral  fancy, 
that  it  may  be  taken  for  granted  Spenser  did 
not  mean  Lady  Penelope  Rich,  but  assumed  Stella 
to  be  a  fictitious  personage  like  the  rest  =  the  ideal 
woman  beloved  by  Sidney.  To  Sidney's  widow  this 
could  scarcely  fail  to  be  regarded  as  a  delicate  and 
dexterous  compliment  ;  for  it  is  virtually  affirmed 
of  her, — who  cver^-body  knew  really  had  nursed  the 
Nation's  hero, — that  she  embodied  all  that  Stella  was 
as  immortalized  by  the  dead  Sir  Philip.  The  ambi- 
guity as  to  the  "loved  lass"  (1.  147)  is  skilfully  con- 
trived. Spenser  leaves  it  quite  open  to  say  whether 
he    is   referring    to    the   wife   or  to   the    real    Stella.* 

*  For  most  of  above  I  am  indebted  again  to  my  friend   Mr. 

I.  14 


2IO  AFTER  MARRIAGE. 

We  come  upon  words  and  phrases  in  AstropJiel 
that  remind  us  that  Milton  and  Tennyson  read  this 
collection.  Early  (1.  i,  "  A  gentle  Shepheard  borne 
in  Arcady")  the  romance  of  Arcadia,  which  in  1590 
was  first  published  as  the  "  Countess  of  Pembroke's 
Arcadia,"  is  recalled,  and  two  lines  on  (1.  3)  "  the  grassie 
bancks  oi  Hcemony''  (=Thessaly)  is  worked  into  Comiis. 
Onward,  surely  comparable  with  Matthew  Roydon's, 
is  the  picture  of  the  young  Sidney  (11.  1 3 — 24), 
against  whom  '  Spight '  herself  could  not  find  aught 
*'  that  she  could  say  was  ill  "  .?  Nor  could  anything  be 
brighter  than  the  succeeding  portraiture  (11.  25 — 48). 
We  have  scholarly  touches  in  I.  39,  "  rimes  .... 
makes  for  them "  {=  iroielv,  TroLTJcri^),  and  again,  in 
1.  46,  "  charmes "  {=canni}ia).  In  1.  36,  "Thrice 
happie  she,  whom  he  to  praise  did  chose,"  caught  up 
unconsciously  in  the  Talking  Oak's  "  Thrice  happy 
he  who  may  caress  "  .-'  For  the  twentieth  time  re- 
reading AstropJiel,  it  commends  itself  the  more  each 
time.  Its  subdued,  simple,  pathetic,  remote  tone  is  to 
me  most  congruous  with  the  "  late  day  "  of  publishing 
the  collection.  Besides,  Spenser  knew  right  well  that 
elsewhere  he  had  given  immortality  to  his  illustrious 
friend. 

It  ncedeth  not  that  I  recur  to  the  Amoretti  and 
Epithalamijim.  They  have  been  already  adequately 
examined  (Appendix  O).  I  like  to  think  of  Mrs. 
Spenser   receiving  a  daintily-bound    copy   of  the  little 

Harrold  Littledale,  of  Baroda— to  whom  also  I  owe  the  following 
— Philisides  might  =: 

Phil.  (Philip)  Sid(ney) 

Phil,  (loving)  Sid(us). 

(See  Todd's  Preface,  p.  xli.) 


A  FTER  MA  RRIA  GE.  211 

'  boke '  from  her  poet-husband,  and  many  "  sunny 
memories "  being  brought  back  as  they  mutually 
talked  of  their  Wooing  and  Marriage. 

The  ProtJialamion  is  worthy  to  be  placed  side  by 
side  with  the  Epitkalamuim.  Indeed,  of  the  '  Song 
before  Marriage,'  Mr.  Palgrave  has  said,  and  none 
will  disagree, — "  The  stanza  is,  to  my  ear,  even  more 
exquisitely  constructed,  the  structure  more  completely 
symmetrical,  the  cadences  more  amorously  melodious  " 
(Vol.  IV.,  p.  ci).* 

The  interest  of  this  delicious  love-Ode  is  twofold 
— first  biographically,  second  in  its  potentiality  with 
other  poets.  Biographically,  it  tells  us  of  his  birth- 
place (London),  of  his  descent  from  "an  house  of 
auncient  fame,"  of  his  earlier  intercourse  with  Leicester 
and  Essex,  and  of  his  vain  suits  at  Court.  The  last 
meets  us  on  the  threshold,  as  pointed  out  earlier 
(Chap.  X.,  p.  165)  : — 

I  whom  sullein  care 

Through  discontent  of  my  long  fruitlesse  stay 

In  Princes  Court,  and  expectation  vayne  , 

Of  idle  hopes,  which  still  doe  Hy  away, 

Like  empty  shaddowes,  did  ailict  my  brayne, 

Walkt  forth  to  ease  my  payne 

Along  the  shoare  of  silver  streaming  Themtnes, 

Whose  rutty  Bancke,  the  which  his  River  hemmes 

Was  paynted  all  with  variable  flowers, 

And  all  the  meades  adornd  with  daintie  gemmes 

(11.  5--I4). 
Even  to-day  the  Thames  beside  Greenwich  is  beautiful. 
"  Rutty  bancke,"    I   suppose   is   -^    rooty.      Vivid   and 
affectionate,  and   to    be   weighed  against   the   infamies 
of  unproved  accusation-gossip  concerning  Leicester,  is 

*  See  annotations  on  Prothalainioii  in  Professor  Hales'  Longer 
English  Poems. 


212  A  FTER  MA  RRTA  GE. 

the  word-painting  of  Lcycester   House   and  its   noble 

occupant : — 

.     .     .  Whereas  [=  whereat]  those  bricky  towres 

The  which  on  Themmes  brode  aged  backe  doe  ryde, 

Where  now  the  studious  Lawyers  have  their  bowers 

That  whylome  wont  the  Temple  Knights  to  byde, 

Till  they  decayd  through  pride. 

Next  whereunto  there  standes  a  stately  place, 

Where  oft  I  gayned  giftes  and  goodly  grace 

Of  that  great  Lord,  which  therein  wont  to  dwell, 

Whose  want  too  well,  now  feeles  my  freendles  case  (st.  8). 

Fit  companion-picture  is  this  of  Essex  ;  and  be 
it  recalled  how  Spenser  again  gives  proof  of  his  man- 
hood. To  laud  the  dead  Leicester  was  to  challenge 
the  living  Burleigh  ;  to  laud  Essex  was  equally  to  do 
so,  and  perchance  to  affront  Ralegh.  But  come  what 
might,  throughout,  the  Poet  is  as  true  as  the  man  was 
unembarrassed  : — 

Yet  therein  now  doth  lodge  a  noble  Peer, 

Great  England's  glory  and  the  World's  wide  wonder, 

Whose  dreadfull  name,  late  through  all  Spaine  did  thunder. 

And  He7'ciiles  two  pillors  standing  neere, 

Did  make  to  quake  and  feare  : 

Faire  branch  of  Honor,  flower  of  Chevalrie, 

That  fillest  England  with  thy  triumphes  fame, 

Jo}'  have  thou  of  thy  noble  victorie  (st.  9). 

\Vc  have  incidentally  called  attention  to  Spenser's 
humoin-.  Iwcn  in  the  Protlialaiuion  he  puns.  Must  it  be 
conceded  that  they  are  on  a  level  with  Shakespeare's  } 
—e.g.,  St.  4,  "  Yet  were  thc}'  bred  of  Sovicrs-Jicat  they 
say  "  [=  Somerset]  ;  st.  9,  "  And  endlesse  happinesse 
of  thine  owne  name"  [i.e.,  Dcvereux  shall  become 
(Dev-enir  .?)  ereux  =  heureux].*^ 

But  priceless  as  are  all  these  minor  poems,  almost 

*  The  latter  is  noted  as  a  "ghastly  pun"  by  Mr.  Harrold 
Littledale  of  Baroda. 


A  FTER  MA  RRIA  GE.  2 13 

any  one  of  which,  "  even  more  than  the  Calendar, 
must  have  impressed  every  reader  of  intelHgence  with 
the  conviction  that  a  Poet,  much  beyond  any  of  that 
age  in  sustained  beauty  of  style  and  imagery,  had 
arisen  above  our  horizon  ;  that  England  could  now 
challenge  France,  Spain,  and  Germany  with  confidence, 
and  surpass  all  that  the  poets  of  Italy — one  sad 
captive  in  Ferrara  alone  excepted — were  now  capable 
of  offering,"*  the  year  1596  was  most  of  all  distin- 
guished by  the  second  volume  of  the  Faery  Queen, 
together  with  a  reproduction  of  the  former  volume. 
Elsewhere — in  the  Essays  of  Mr,  Aubrey  de  Vere, 
Professor  Dowden,  Rev.  William  B.  Philpot,  M.A., 
and  Rev.  William  Hubbard  t — will  be  found  such 
Studies  of  the  great  poem  as  will  not  readily  be 
equalled,  much  less  surpassed.  It  were  superfluous 
pains,  as  of  "  gilding  refined  gold,"  to  prc-occupy  my 
waning  space  with  either  analysis  or  comparison  or 
estimate  of  the  later  three  as  over-against  the  earlier 
three  books.  Summarily — The  vast  flood  of  melodious 
song  has  indubitably  ebbed  in  the  (as  it  proved)  final 
"  three  books."  There  are — to  carry  on  the  metaphor 
— breadths  of  arid  sand  if  not  slime-spaces,  as  in  the 
receded  sea.  But  ever  and  anon  the  ear  that  is  attent 
catches  the  old  thundrous  roll  and  roar  of  the  returning 
tide-flow,  and  the  eye  catches  celestial  hues  as  of 
sunrise  and  sunset  intermingled.  There  are  "  brave 
translunary  things  "  in  every  canto.  There  are  bursts 
and  breaks  of  verse-music,  and  colour-like  painting  of 
scene  and  incident,  and  exquisitely  wrought  jewel.work 

•  Mr.  Palgrave,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  xci.x. 
t  In  the  present  volume,  pp.  257  to  400. 


of  phrase  and  epithet,  and  "  sage  and  serious  "  apoph- 
thegms, and  divinest  insistence  on  a  lofty  ideal, 
that  constitute  the  Faery  Queen  first  and  last  a 
great  religious  poem.  Without  Wordsworth's  pseudo- 
Miltonic  invocation  —  may  a  devout  Wordsworthian 
venture  the  criticism  ? — and  slenderest  recollection  of 
it  in  the  poem  itself  {^Tlie  Excursion),  contrariwise 
degenerating  into  a  mere  panegyric,  on  the  narrowest 
lines,  of  the  Church  of  England,  with  no  shadow  of  the 
presence  of  '  The  Christ,'  no  soaring  beyond  cathedral 
or  parish-church  roofs  to  the  Church  Universal,  no 
grasp  of  the  catholicity  and  humanness  of  Christianity — 
the  Faery  Queen  at  briefest  intervals  gives  forth  the 
unimprisonable  light  that  comes  from  Him  of  whom 
it  was  written — "  That  was  the  true  Light,  which 
lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world  " 
{St.  John  i.  9)  ;  and  again — "  God  who  commanded 
the  light  to  shine  out  of  darkness,  hath  shined  in 
our  hearts,  to  give  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ"  (2  Cor. 
iv.  6). 

There  are  not  lacking  pathetic  evidences  that  in  his 
Irish  exile  the  Poet  himself  felt  that  tediousness  which 
from  David  Hume  to  Macaulay  has  been  recognised  as 
tJie  defect  of  the  Faery  Queen.  Intermingled  with  the 
Various  Readings  placed  beneath  our  text  of  the 
great  Poem,  many  unrhymed  lines,  many  syllables  and 
more,  left  out,  many,  or  if  not  many,  numbers  of  ragged 
and  unrhythmical  stanzas  and  lines,  are  noted.  They 
are  mere  motes  in  the  glorious  dazzle  of  the  sunshine, 
or  mere  chance-jarrings  of  a  slackened  string  (as  it 
were)  of  a  cunning-souled  instrument ;  yet  must  they 


AFTER  MARRIAGE.  215 

be  taken  into  account  as  explaining  how  the  other  six 
books  were  never  written,  and  how  the  announced 
purpose  must  have  become  a  ren^orseful  memory.  But 
when  all  has  been  said,  the  Faery  Queen  was  such  a 
dower  to  our  English  language  and  literature  as  stands 
second  only  to  the  gift  of  the  (so-called)  '  Authorised 
Version'  of  Holy  Scripture  (regard  had  to  its  English 
alone). 

The  republication  of  the  former  "  three  books"  {id est, 
of  the  Faoy  Queen)  produced  one  odd  result.  Elizabeth 
was  in  angry  correspondence  with  James  VI.  of  Scot- 
land because  of  Buccleuch  ("  Kijunont  Willie")  having 
broken  into  her  castle  of  Carlisle,  and  the  astute 
Northern  monarch — for  he  was  shrewd  in  his  narrow 
fashion — returned  Her  Majesty  an  Oliver  for  her  Roland 
in  that  one  of  her  subjects — Edmund  Spenser — had 
given  him  deadliest  offence  and  insult  by  "  publishing 
in  print  in  the  second  part  of  the  Faery  Queen,  chap.  9, 
some  dishonourable  effects  (as  the  King  deemeth) 
against  himself  and  his  mother  deceased."  Bowes — 
England's  ambassador — had  striven  to  satisfy  "  the 
King,  about  the  privilege  under  which  the  book  was 
published  ;  yet  he  [the  King]  still  dcsireth  that  Edmund 
Spenser  for  this  fault,  may  be  duly  tried  and  punished." 
This  was  putting  "  the  cap  on  "  with  a  vengeance  ;  for 
it  was  a  proclamation  that  the  "  false  Duessa"  was  Mary 
Queen  of  Scots  (B.  V.,  c.  9). 

The  ProtJialauiion  opening  prophesied  virtually 
that  the  'friend'  of  Leicester,  Essex  and  Ralegh  hap 
nothing  to  look  for  from  the  self-aggrandizing  Burleigh 
— then  sucking  leech-like  the  very  vitals  of  England  to 
enrich  himself,  and  vainly  vindicating  his  'integrity'  in 


2 1 6  A  FTER  MA  RRIA  GE. 

tliat  JitirleigJi  Corrcspoiidcihc  wliicli  is  his  monumental 
opprobrium.  When  Gabriel  Harvey  had  invited  him 
from  the  "North-east  partes"  lu  the  South  in  157S-9, 
Edward  Kirke  cjlosscd  that  it  was  "  for  his  more 
preferment"  (Vol.  11.,  p.  159).  Was  'more'  accidental 
or  significant }  Did  it  i;iance  back  on  that  (apparently) 
brief  'preferment'  in  Irehuul  in  1577  notified  by  us 
(Chap.  VI.,  p.  65)?  and  did  it  hint  at  "MORE  preferment" 
of  a  like  kind  }  We  cannot  speak  certainly  ;  but  certain 
it  is  that  unless  Edmund  Spenser  stood  prepared  to 
cast  overboard  Lord  Grey  of  Wilton  and  Essex  and 
Ralegh,  and  the  host  who  were  opposed  to  Burleigh, 
any  'preferment'  through  him  was  indeed  an  "idle 
hope,"  whatever  Judas-words  and  kisses  the  wary  and 
diplomatic  Lord  Treasurer  might  use.  There  was 
nothing  for  it,  therefore,  but  to  return  finally  to  Kil- 
colman.      This  he  probably  did  late  in   1596. 

One  important  achievement  of  this  visit  to  London 
remains  to  be  emphasized.  As  the  Lambeth  MS.  re- 
vealed, his  Vciic  of  Ireland  was  composed  in  this  year 
("1596").  He  had  probably  outlined  it  in  Ireland,  but 
the  interlocutors  again  and  again  make  it  plain  that  they 
are  'speaking'  in  England,  not  Ireland.  Besides,  the 
great  work  thus  opens  :  "  But  if  that  country  of  Ireland, 
whence  yoH  lately  came,  be  so  goodly  and  commodious." 
This  Vene  of  Ireland  is  a  treatise  that,  had  Spenser 
left  no  other  evidence  behind  him  of  statesmanship,  of 
governing  facult}',  of  master)^  of  a  com[)lex  problem,  of 
the  courage  of  his  opinions,  and  it  must  be  added  of 
his  'thoroughness'  of  resolve  to  reduce  Ireland  into 
allegiance  to  England,  this  should  have  established  all 
these.     The  style  of  his  prose  is   inartificial,  not  at  all 


BACK  AGAIN  AT  KIL  COLMA  X.  2 1 7 

laboured.  It  rises  and  falls  with  its  passing  subject. 
It  has  ima^native  gleams.  It  is  occasionally  per- 
fervid.  Ever>-  page  witnesses  to  profound  research, 
wide  personal  observation  and  inquirj-,  and  sagacious 
sifting  of  e\'idence.  It  is  pleasing  to  find  him  with  a 
ready  ear  for  any  old  ballad  or  legend  or  local  folk- 
lore or  folk-speech.  Let  Irish  patriotism  bray  as  it 
may,  the  Vetu  of  Irelatid  is  a  noble  book  by  a  **  Wel- 
Willer  '  in  the  deepest  sense  to  Ireland. 


XIV^    B.\CK  AG-AIN    AT    KlLCOL>L\N — REBELLION'    OF 

Tyron  e — State-Papers — D  eath. 

"  Last  scene  of  all. 
That  ends  tkts  strofige  esetuftd  history  ~ 

As  You  Like  It,  iL  7. 

When  late  in  1596,  or  at  furthest  early  in  1597, 
Spenser,  and  most  probably  his  wife  and  brood  of 
three  little  children — the  eldest  in  third  year  at  most 
—once  more  recrossed  the  "  narrow  seas,"  Ireland 
was  in  an  e.xplosive  and  dangerous  condition.  Sir 
John  Perrot — as  in  the  Veiu  of  Ireland  \s  bitterly 
and  passionately  complained — had  practically  reversed 
the  policy  of  Lord  Grey  and  other  firm-willed  Lord 
Deputies,  and  sought  rather  to  please  than  to  govern. 
Lord  Burleigh  secretly  supported  him,  but  did  nothing 
to  neutralize  the  complaint  of  Elizabeth  and  of  all 
England  that  Ireland  vs-as  "  a  gulph  of  consuming 
treasure."  Present-day  Irish  patriots  laud  Perrot  at 
the  cost  of  Gre>-  and  his  Secretar\'.  It  is  called  "  the 
strong  and  just  government  of  Sir  John  Perrot,"  and 
we    are    audaciously    told    that    "  he    endeavoured    to 


2 1 8  BACK  AGAIN  AT  KIL  COLMA  N. 

govern   not  for  a  faction,  but  for  the  nation  at  large," 

and  then  comes  this  : — 

"  And  though  the  Armada  threatened  England,  the  Irish  gave 
him  their  affectionate  allegiance,  and  remained  so  tranquil  that, 
humanly  speaking,  his  recall  and  the  abandonment  of  his  just 
government  must  be  classed  amongst  those  acts  of  mercy  to  the 
[Roman]  Catholic  Church  which  removed  temptation  from  her 
children  to  join  the  Anglican  sect.  Just  government  would  have 
been  a  more  dangerous  antagonist  to  the  [Roman]  Catholic  faith 
at  that  period  than  the  furies  and  massacres  of  the  Drurys  and 
Greys."* 

There  is  grain  of  fact  and  so  of  truth  in  this  and 
kindred  statement  and  inference.  But  the  Calendars  of 
State-Papers  have,  since  these  misleading  words  were 
published,  revealed  how  seething  and  recalcitrant  was 
the  pervading  spirit  and  sentiment  and  action  of  the 
period,  and  demonstrates  what  '  dragons'  teeth '  the 
slack-handed  government  of  the  pliant  and  feeble  Sir 
John  Perrot  sowed  for  his  successors.  Any  tranquillity 
there  was — and  it  is  to  be  conceded  that  the  backbone 
of  the  "  Great  Rebellion  "  having  been  broken  by  Lord 
Grey  of  Wilton,  its  body  was  for  long  limp  and  flaccid 
— came  of  exhaustion  on  the  one  hand  and  venality 
on  the  other.  The  "noble  Irish" — who  impotently  de- 
nounced England  and  Englishmen — had  ever  stealthily- 
outreached  but  most  greed}'  and  clutching  hands  for 
'  English  gold.'  The  humiliation  is  that  the  English- 
Irish —  like  the  Irish-Americans  of  our  time — were  the 
worst,  being  all  but  universally  self  seeking,  grasping, 
hypocritical,  treasonous.  Spen.ser  had  designated  Essex 
for  Lord-Deputy  ;  for  he  most  certainly  intended  him 
as  the  one  person   "  on  whom   the  c)-c  of  England  is 

*  The  Dublin  Review,  xvii.,  pp.  41.S-47  (1844)— a  shamelessly 
partizan  and  anti-Protcstant  paper,  and  ill-informed  as  venomous. 


BA  <JK  A  GA IN  A  2'  KIL  COLMA  N.  219 

fixed  and  our  last  hopes  now  rest."  Those  who  have 
studied  most  profoundly  the  brilliant  Essex's  career  in 
Ireland  will  agree  with  his  poet-friend  that  had  this 
great  and  patriotic  man  been  given  the  responsible 
post  in  succession  to  Lord  Grey  of  Wilton,  and  been 
left  untrammelled,  he  might  have  risen  to  the  height 
of  opportunity.  With  all  his  ebulliency  there  were 
solid  statesmanly  '  ruling '  qualities  in  this  illustrious 
Devereux.  He  had  in  him  that  fascination  of  personal 
influence  that  goes  so  far  with  a  race  like  the  Irish 
and  Anglo-Irish.  Lord  Grey  of  Wilton  did  not  care 
to  please,  but  to  discharge  duty  "  beneath  the  great 
Taskmaster's  eye."  One  thinks  of  how  conqueringly 
Essex  bore  himself  at  '  Cales,'  and  how  strong  and 
generous  he  was  when  full  responsibility'  was  placed  on 
him.  But  it  is  idle  to  speculate  on  the  "  might  have 
been."  His  brief  opportunity  after  Spenser's  death  was 
no  test.  The  hard,  stern,  inexorable  fact  is  that  Ireland 
was  then  as  now  England's  difficulty  ;  helpless  against 
her  might,  yet  mischievous ;  miserable  with  piteous 
monotony,  nevertheless  untameable  ;  as  mechanically 
Papal  as  Spain,  and  based  on  like  crass  ignorance  ; 
and  while  in  individual  cases  grateful,  in  the  aggregate 
as  foul-mouthed  toward  benefactors  as  the  beggar  in 
his  rags  squatted  by  his  cabin,  who  while  snapping  the 
alms  yells  out  curses  on  '  the  Saxon.'  It  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at  that  the  "  weary  giant "  in  the  sixteenth 
century  felt  as  though  it  had  been  well  "  that  all  that 
land  were  a  sea-poolc  "  (Vol.  IX.,  p.  14),  and  that  in  the 
nineteenth,  living  statesmen  should  be  thankful  if  the 
problem  could  be  solved  by  uprooting  the  island  and 
mooring  it  a  thousand  miles  away.     May  the  magnani 


220  BA CK  AGAIN  AT  KIL COLMA iV. 

mous  patience,  the  single-hearted  desire  to  do  justice,  the 
generous  expenditure,  the  multiplication  of  educational 
resources,  the  righteous  new  legislation  and  repeal  of 
bad,  and  the  splendid  courage  and  trustfulness  of  the 
statesmanship  of  to-day,  achieve  the  success  merited  ! 
One  is  saddened  to  read  the  opening  of  the  Veiie  of 
Ireland,  and  to  recognise  how  unchanged  the  problem 
is  : — 

''Eudoxus.  But  if  that  country  of  Ireland  whence  you  lately 
came,  be  so  goodly  and  commodious  a  soyle  as  you  report,  I 
wounder  that  no  course  is  taken  for  the  tourning  thereof  to  good 
uses,  and  reducing  that  salvage  nation  to  better  government  and 
civility. 

''Ir cuius.  Mary,  so  ther  have  bin  divers  good  plotts  devised, 
and  wise  counsells  cast  alredy  about  reformation  of  that  realme  ; 
but  they  say  it  is  the  fatall  destiny  of  that  land,  that  no  purposes, 
whatsoever  are  ment  for  her  good,  wil  prosper  and  take  good 
effect :  which,  whether  it  proceede  from  the  very  genius  of  the 
soyle,  or  influence  of  the  Starrs,  or  that  Almighty  God  hath  not 
yet  appoynted  the  time  of  her  reformacion,  or  that  he  reserveth 
her  in  this  unquiet  state  still,  for  some  secret  scourge,  which 
shall  by  her  come  unto  England,  it  is  hard  to  be  knowne,  but  yet 
much  to  be  feared"  (Vol.  IX.,  pp.  13,  14). 

Spite  of  Spenser's  pleading  to  the  contrary,  a  Roman 
Catholic  population — and  such  grovelling  Roman 
Catholicism — under  a  Protestant  government,  and  so 
closely  neighbouring  the  seat  of  government,  is  the 
hugcst  of  "  white  elephants  "  any  proud  and  generous 
nation  such  as  England  could  have  received.  Neither 
the  "  unsoundncsse  of  the  counsel!,  and  plotts  .... 
oftentimes  layd  for  her  reformacon,"  nor  "  fayntnesse  in 
following  and  effecting  the  same"  [ibid.,  p.  14)  yields 
the  secret  of  the  long  unsuccess. 

The  return  of  the  Poet  to  Kilcolman  was  specifically 
a  return  to  the  centre  of  peril.*      Notwithstanding  the 
*  See  Appendix  T  for  description  by  Dean  Church. 


BA  CK  A  GA  TX  A  T  KIL  COLMA  N.  2  2  t 

certainty  of  this,  Edmund  Spenser  was  a  strong- 
souled  Englishman,  and  I  suspect  with  no  little 
contempt  for  the  vapouring  '  Rebels.'  So  that  it  is 
to  be  doubted  whether  he  either  realized  or  dreaded 
the  insecurity  of  his  surroundings.  His  "  Two  can- 
toes  "  of  Mutabilit}'  and  the  pathetic  last  stanzas, 
go  to  show  that  not  only  had  he  given  himself  afresh 
to  the  mighty  task  of  another  "sixe  books"  so  as 
to  round  the  Faery  Qiieeti  into  "  twelve  books,"  and 
thus  complete  his  design  of  "  Fashioning  XII.  Morall 
vertues "  (Vol.  V.,  p.  2)  ;  but  that  he  had  mastered 
more  and  still  more  of  the  legendary  history  of  Ireland 
as  represented  by  IMunster.  'Mutability'  has  for  scene 
and  substance  the  many-coloured  story  of  '  Arlo,'  its 
myths  and  superstitions,  its  ballad-lore  and  traditions, 
its  haunting  memories  and  transfiguring  names.  A 
tone  of  kindliness,  and  more,  sanctifies  all  the  Poet's 
celebrations  of  the  old  lore  of  Ireland.  There  is  a 
marked  distinction  between  his  mythical-historical 
treatment  of  similar  legends  in  Wales,  and  even  in  his 
own  England,  and  the  lingering  affectionateness  and 
inviolate  touch  of  his  attitude  toward  those  of  Munster. 
Nor  must  we  forget  that  in  the  "  sixe  bookes  "  of  the 
Faery  Queen  there  are  manifold  evidences  of  his  glad 
obligation  to  the  histor}-  of  Ireland  in  the  shadowy 
Past,  and  of  his  own  personal  and  keen-eyed  observa- 
tion as  Secretar>'  to  the  Lord  Deputy  and  Clerk  of 
the  Council  of  Munster. 

Ably  and  with  his  usual  forceful  eloquence  does  Dean 
Church  place  before  us  Spenser's  indebtedness  as  a 
Poet  to  Ireland  (see  Appendix  U,  as  before  noted)  ; 
but   there    are   other    two   sides    that    demand    recog- 


222  BA CK  AGAIN  AT  KILCOLMAN. 

nition — the  one  maleficent,  the  other  gracious.  First 
of  all,  it  must  be  affirmed  that  the  tempestuousness 
and  anarchic  violence  that  surrounded  the  Poet  whilst 
he  was  working  his  scattered  portions  of  the  great 
Poem  into  a  whole  and  devising  new  cantoes,  indubit- 
ably vivified  his  descriptions  (as  Dean  Church  has  put 
it)  as  well  as  sanctioned  them ;  but  they  equally  pro- 
vincialized (so-to-say)  the  representation  of  men  and 
events  and  circumstances.  This  world  of  ours  is  the 
"  unintelligible  world "  of  Wordsworth,  and  the  actual 
human  lives  of  succeeding  generations  have  been 
strenuously  strong  against  not  "  flesh  and  blood"  merely, 
but  in  apostolic  words  "  against  principalities  and 
against  powers,  against  the  rulers  of  the  darkness 
of  this  world,  against  spiritual  wickedness  in  high 
places."  Mystery  and  danger  have  always  en  ringed 
the  individual  and  aggregate  life.  But  England  and 
the  sixteenth  century  were  no  mere  enlarged  Ireland. 
There  is  lack  of  proportion  and  perspective  in  so 
broadening  out  the  tragical  evils  and  wrongs  of  Ireland 
as  to  make  Ireland  stand  for  man's  universe.  The 
spectre  of  the  Jura  mountains  has  for  source  the  man 
who  is  on  their  side  ;  but  it  is  the  setting  sun  or  rising 
sun  that  plays  such  fantastic  trick  as  transmutes  an 
innocent  foot-farer  into  a  fiend  and  a  terror.  Similarly 
the  'knights'  and  the  objects  of  their  attack  in  the 
Faery  Queen  were  real  and  actual  ;  but  it  was  doing 
wrong  to  civilization,  wrong  to  Elizabethan  England, 
so  to  thinly  lengthen  out  their  shadows  as  to  present 
tlie  wide  earth  as  chaotic  and  "  only  evil  continually." 
Along  these  lines  the  influence  of  the  Civil  War  and 
political   strifes   of  Ireland  damaged  the  humanness  of 


BA  CK  A  GA  LV  A  T  KIL  COL  MA  .V.  2  23 

the  great  pjcm.  But  if  there  were  this  loss  from  his 
many-yeared  residence  in  Ireland,  there  was  also,  second, 
supremest  gain.  A  meditative  study  of  the  Fm/y  Queen 
in  Munster  and  elsewhere  brings  out  verse-pictures 
and  epithetic  felicities  of  phrasing  and  allusiveness  of 
the  most  precious  qualitj'  derived  from  the  land  and 
people  of  his  adoption.  But  perhaps  the  ultimate 
obligation  of  Spenser  to  Ireland  is  that  it  was  from 
her  he  got  his  *  Una.'  Wordsworth's  immortal  line 
has  gathered  into  it  that  which  is  t/ie  imperishable 
portraiture  of  the  Faery  Queen.  To  nine  hundred 
and  ninety-nine  of  a  thousand  the  Faery  Queen  lives 
in  their  hearts  through 

Una  with  her  milk-white  lamb. 
We  admire  Amoret  and  Florimel,  Belphoebe  and 
Britomart  and  Pastorella  ;  but  we  love  '  Una,'  more 
humanly  than  we  ever  do  Miranda  or  Perdita.  It  is 
therefore  imperative  as  it  is  satisfying  to  establish 
that  this  sweetest  and  most  heart-captivating  of  all  the 
"  Heroines  of  Spenser"*  was  fetched  from  the  folk-lore 
of  the  neighbourhood  of  Kilcolman. 

Asked  '  Whence  did  Spenser  obtain  the  name  of 
Una.^'  the  Commentators  unanimously  answer — 'Ob- 
viously from  the  Latin,  as  signifying  his  heroine's 
flawless  character.'  But  let  us  see  whether  our 
"learned  seigniors"  have  not  travelled  far  to  find  the 
nearest,  or  searched  the  heavens  to  discover  the  daisy 
at  their  foot.  Irish  mythology  gives  us  Una — pro- 
nounced Oonagh — the   first  vowel  German  ice,  full  and 

*  Professor  Dowden  has  a  delightful  paper  under  this  caption 
in  Cor nhill  Magazine,  vol.  .xxxi.x.,  No.  254  ;  but  Irishman  as  mv 
friend  is,  he  has  missed  the  Irish  source  of  '  Una.' 


224  ^'^  CK  A  GAIN  A  T  KIL  COLMAN. 

soft — and  the  meaning  in  Erin  is  a  '  Faery  Queen.' 
There  are  many  such  queens  belonging  to  localities 
(like  the  gods  of  heathendom,  and  perhaps  for  like 
reasons,  i.e.  as  having  been  deified  mortals  of  illustrious 
character) — such  as  Mcadhbh,  a  renowned  'queen'  of 
Connauglit  in  the  first  century  of  the  Christian  era,  the . 
original  of  Shakespeare's  71/,'?/',  and  a  "  faerie  queene" 
in  that  region.  Then,  in  the  district  now  known 
as  Lower  Ormond,  count)-  of  Tippcrar}-,  and  over- 
hanging l^irr  (or  Parsonstown)  is  a  ver)-  beautiful 
mountain  called  Knockshecgowna — in  Irish  CNOC  ("the 
hill"),  SITIIK  pronounced  ".shee"  ("  of  the  Fairy"),  UNA 
("  Una")  ;  and  of  this  hill  as  the  abode  of  Queen  Una, 
numberless  legends  are  yet  narrated.  En  pnssajit,  it  is 
noticeable — as  in  all  fairy  talcs  in  Ireland — that  these 
spiritual  beings  are  said  to  dwell  ///,  not  on,  the  hills 
consecrated  to  them.  Were  the  oriental  tribes  that  first 
colonized  Ireland  iroi^iodytcs  ? 

This  Knockshecgowna  is  e/i  route  from  Dublin  to 
Cork  and  vice  versa.  Spenser  was  a  frequent  and 
leisurely  journeyer  and  sojourner  along  these  districts. 
He  must  over  and  over  have  passed  this  eminence. 
He  was  too  vigilant  to  pass  it  without  inquiry  ;  and  I 
for  one  am  willing  to  believe  that  on  finding  Knock- 
shecgowna meant  the  "Fairy  Una's  hill"  it  registered 
itself  in  his  memory  and  took  its  immortal  place  in  the 
Faery  Queen.  There  was  this  other  element  of  attrac- 
tion in  the  name  '  Una.'  Beautiful  in  itself,  its  Latin 
meaning  would  serve  for  those  who  knew  not  its  Keltic 
origin.  And  beautiful  and  significant  as  it  was  it  would 
scarcely  have  done  to  have  made  it  displace  '  Gloriana.' 
It  might  have  displeased  a  sovereign  who  never  wished 


BA  r/T  A  GA  /A'  A  T  KIL COLMA K.  225 

to  be  thouj:]^ht  an  "old  maid"  or  isolated.  And  thus 
he  elected  it  for  his  own  ideal  lady  who  made  "  a 
sunshine  in  a  shady  place." 

It  must  be  added  that  '  Una'  as  a  name  is  still  in 
constant  use  among  the  women  of  Ireland  ;  but  that 
when  speaking  English  they  invariably  anglicize  it  to 
Winifred  or  Winny.*  Accordingly  it  is  still  in  use 
by  the  Poets :  e.g..  Sir  Samuel  Ferguson  (author  of 
The  Forging  of  the  Anchor)  entitles  a  fine  poem  Una 
PJulimy.\  It  is  quite  within  probability  that  .some 
nurse  or  other  woman-servant  may  have  borne  the 
name  at  Kilcolman,  and  may  have  made  it  a  "  house- 
hold word"  with  Spenser.  It  is  to  be  recalled  at  this 
point  that  the  Poet  was  in  the  service  of  the  State  in 
Ireland  in  1577,  or  years  before  a  line  of  the  Faery 
Queen  was  written  ;  the  first  mention  of  the  Faery 
Queen  being  in  Harvey's  letter  of  April  1580. 

It  is  in  accord  with  this  derivation  of  '  Una  '  from 
Irish  mythology  that  in  the  fragments  of  the  further 
".sixe  bookes  " — as  we  have  seen — other  Irish  names 
and  legends  are  celebrated.  And  it  is  surely  warrant- 
able to  conclude  that  on  the  return  of  the  Family  to 
Kilcolman  there  were  no  dread.s  or  suspicions  or  omens 
of  danger. 

Two  biographic-historic  facts  attest  that  in  1 598 
Spenser  had  no  thought  of  successful  rebellion,  and 
no  desire  to  .shrink  from  letting  Ireland  and  the  world 
know  his  opinions  of  how  to  '  govern  '   Ireland.      He 

For  the  most  of  above  I  owe  hearty  thanks  to  my  friend  the 
Rev.  Prebendary  Haj-mafi.  of  Douglas  Rector)-,  Cork— as  for 
much  more. 

t  Dublin   University  Mag.  vii.   66  :  cf.   also  vol.   .x.wii.   698 
(prose),  and  vol.  xx.  681,  .xx.xui.  738  (verse),  for  '  Una.' 

I-  15 


226  BA  CK  A  GA IX  A  T  TkTL  COLMA  N. 

was  appointed  Sheriff  of  Cork  on  30th  September, 
1598,  by  Queen  Elizabeth's  ro)-al  letters  (Harleian 
MS.  286),  uliich  described  him  as  "a  gentleman 
dwelling  in  the  County  of  Cork,  who  is  so  well  known 
unto  you  all  for  his  good  and  commendable  parts, 
being  a  man  endowed  with  good  knowledge  in 
learning,  and  not  unskilful  or  without  experience  in 
the  wars."  He  accepted  the  office  and  stood  ready  to 
discharge  its  onerous  duties.  Prior  to  this — and  still 
more  declarative  of  his  sense  of  truthfulness  and 
righteousness — he  'entered'  his  ]^cuc  of  Ireland  for 
publication,  thus — 

xiij'"  Aprilis  [1598]. 

Mathewe     Entree!  for  his  Copie  under  th'hand  of  master  Warden 

Lownes      man  a  booke  intituled  A  viewe  of  the  -present  state  of 

Irc/af/d.     Discoursed  by  waye  of  a  Dialogue  betivene 

Eldoxus  and  Irenius.     Vppon  Condicion  that  hee 

gett  further  aucthoritie  before  yt  be  prynted  .   .  .  vj'' 

(Arber  iii.  in). 

It  would  seem  that  the  "  further  aucthoritie  "  was  not 
obtained,  seeing  that  the  ]^cuc  was  not  now  published, 
and  ultimately  delayed  until  Sir  James  Ware  first 
published  it.  But  this  does  not  touch  the  fact  that 
its  Author  meant  to  have  it  published.  Had  he  had 
an)'  forethought  of  corning  disaster  he  would  scarcely 
have  riui  the  hazard.  y\ll  honour  to  him  that  whilst 
Burleigh  was  still  alive  and  to  lie  placated  by  all 
who  would  have  preferment,  Edmimd  Spenser  dared 
to  proclaim  his  allegiance  to  tlie  dishonoured  Lord 
Deput)'  (Lord  Grc}-  of  Wilton)  and  to  aggrandize  the 
"  name  and  fame  "  of  Essex.  No  time-server,  no 
craven,  no  court-tool  that  ! 


REBELLION  OF  TYROXE.  227 

Historically  the  new  '  Rebellion  '  broke  forth  as  did 
the  Mutiny  in  India.  Underground  movements  and 
the  boom  of  furtive  plottings,  if  known — and  they 
may  have  been  less  or  more — went  unheeded.  There 
was  ineradicable  '  contempt '  for  the  Irish  Chiefs,  and 
foolhardy  mis-estimate  of  their  resources  in  "  the 
people "  at  their  heels  and  the  Jesuit-led  conspirators 
under  the  mask  of  care  for  "  the  souls  "  of  their  flocks 
only.  Desmond's  head  had  long  dropped  in  decay 
from  its  spike  on  London  Bridge  or  wherever  it  was 
'  displayed.'  Tyrone  declared  himself  the  heir  of 
Desmond  in  '  rebellion.'  He  was  a  man  of  undoubted 
intellect  and  intrepidity.  But  a  falser,  more  treacherous, 
more  selfish,  never  has  existed,  unless  in  Desmond. 
With  Englishmen  "  in  authority"  he  professed  to  be 
the  most  humble  subject  of  his  "dread  sovereign" 
Elizabeth.  He  created  a  "  Fool's  Paradise  "  for  the 
Norrejses  and  other  of  the  Irish  government.  '  Sus- 
pected,' he  nevertheless  cajoled  into  confidence  his 
suspecters.  '  Discovered'  by  letters  seized,  he  baffled 
their  seizers.  Aiming  alone  at  the  enrichment  of  him- 
self and  his  own  house,  he  persuaded  his  demented 
followers  that  he  was  a  patriotic  Irishman.  Secretly 
corresponding  with  "the  Spaniard,"  to  gain  time  he 
was  diplomatic,  and  prolonged  negotiations  never  meant 
to  end  in  anything  but  treason.  The  chase  he  led 
the  English  forces  through  wild  mountain  and  glen  and 
bog  is  like  a  nmiance.  The  audacit}-  of  his  approach 
with  mere  handfuls  of  half-naked  and  half-starved 
kerns  to  the  English  posts,  beggars  description.  From 
I  594  to  I  598  '•  the  Rebellion  "  had  been  sl6wl\-  gaining. 
It   honeycombed    the   land    from    Northern    Ulster    to 


228  REBELLTON  OF  TYRONE. 

Connauc^ht,  and  crept — like  a  creeping  shallow  froth- 
fringed  oozy  tide — from  Connaught  to  Leinster,  and 
percolated  up  to  the  Q.(\gQ  of  Munster.  But  Munster, 
with  its  English  '  Undertakers '  afid  residents,  was 
(superficially)  tranquil.  The  State-Paper  '  reports  ' 
of  the  close  of  1597  of  the  Council  of  Dublin  to  the 
Government  in  London  represented  Munster  as  "the 
best  tempered  of  all  the  rest  at  this  present  time  ; 
for  that  though  not  long  since  sundry  loose  persons  " 
[among  them  the  base  sons  of  Lord  Roche,  Spenser's 
land-suit  enemy]  "  became  Robin  Hoods  and  slew  some 
of  the  undertakers,  dwelling  scattered  in  thatched 
houses  and  remote  ]:)laces  near  to  woods  and  fastnesses, 
yet  now  thc)-  arc  cut  off,  and  no  known  disturbers 
left  who  are  like  to  make  an)-  dangerous  alteration 
on  the  sudden."  lUit  this  \Qxy  '  Report '  continues — 
that  "they  have  intelligence  that  many  are  practised 
withal  from  the  North,  to  be  of  combination  with  the 
rest,  and  stir  coals  in  Munster,  whereby  the  whole 
realm  might  be  in  a  general  uproar,"  and  finally  they 
forewarn  that  the  Government  must  be  prepared  for 
"a  universal  Irish  war,  intended  to  shake  off  all 
English  government." 

Iwents  thickened.  In  April  'r)rone  received  at  his 
own  abjectly-phrased  petition  'a  Wi:\\  ])ardon.'  Within 
less  than  fou.r  months  of  it  he  'surprised'  an  English 
force  near  Armagh,  and  defeated  it — shatteringly. 
Then  the  full  tempest  broke.  T)'rone,  elated  beyond 
measure,  sent  his  '  army  '  into  the  heart  of  Munster. 
Munster  rose  at  its  touch.  It  has  been  said  that  it 
was  the  rising  "  of  the  dispossessed  i)roprietors  and 
of   the    whole   native   population    against    the   English 


L/ 


REBELLION  OF  TYRONE.  229 

Undertakers,"  *  and  Pkhndekgast  (in  his  Croinzvellian 
Settlement  of  Ireland,  as  before)  is  frantic  in  his  narra- 
tive of  the  rising  by  which  "  the  robber  was  thus 
robbed,  and  the  spoiler  spoiled," — his  specific  reference 
being  to  Spenser  in  Kilcolman  ;  and  than  which  no 
more  malignant  falsehood  has  ever  passed  itself  off 
for  history  (pp.  94-5).  For  as  to  the  '  rising '  of 
"  dispossessed  proprietors,"  they  are  mere  creations  of 
imagination  ;  and  even  had  they  existed,  the  "  vast 
estates"  of  the  Desmonds  had  been  righteously 
forfeited  a  hundred  times  over  as  surely  as  they  had 
been  unrighteously  acquired  by  the  Desmonds  and 
enlarged  by  oppression  and  fraud  by  them.  Then  as 
to  Kilcolman  having  been  '  robbed  '  and  '  spoiled,'  it 
is  idlest  of  rhetoric.  The  3028  acres  of  the  Spenser 
*  settlement '  were  as  legally  and  honestly  obtained  as 
any  possession  in  Ireland.  But  the  Poet  of  the  Faery 
Queen  was  only  an  Englishman  to  the  myrmidons  of 
Tyrone.  He  was  no  Alexander  to  spare  Pindar's 
house.  In  October — a  month  after  his  appointment 
to  the  Sheriffdom  —  all  Munster  was  'held'  by  the 
insurgents.  Fire  was  set  to  Kilcolman  Castle.  Spenser 
and  his  household  had  to  escape  for  their  lives  in  such 
haste  that,  according  to  Ben  Jonson's  conversation 
with  Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  an  infant  was 
"  left  behind  "  and  perished  in  the  flames  —  though 
this  is  mythical.  He  proceeded  to  Cork,  whither 
the  President,  Sir  Thomas  Norreys,  had  also  gone. 
On  December  9th,  1598,  Sir  Thomas  Norreys  wrote 
a  remarkable  '  Dispatch,'  giving  a  calm  and  yet 
rousing  account  of  the  '  Rising.'  This,  we  learn  from 
*  Dean  Church,  ab  before,  p.  176. 


^30  REBELLION  OF  TYRONE. 

another  of  2ist  of  the  same  month,  was  taken  over  by 
Spenser  to  England,  as  thus  : — "  Since  my  last  of  the 
ixth  of  this  moneth,  and  sent  by  Mr.  Spenser,  wherein  I 
manifested  the  misery  of  this  Countrey  .  .  .  ."  So  that 
between  the  9th  and  24th  of  December,  1598,  Spenser 
and  his  wife  and  family  arrived  in  London.  That  he 
so  arrived  in  no  panic-terror  or  as  having  lost  his  head, 
is  proved  by  a  State-Paper  addressed  by  him  to  the 
Queen  direct,  and  not  one  line  of  which  ever  has  been 
printed.  It  was  prepared — as  th,e  commencement 
shows — in  Cork,  after  the  '  escape  '  from  Kilcolman. 
That  alone  witnesses  to  solidity  and  courage.  It  was 
delivered  doubtless  by  Spenser  himself  in  London  to. 
the  Secretary  of  State,  along  with  the  '  Dispatch '  of 
Norreys  of  9th  December.  This  all-important  Paper, 
and  the  others  accompanying,  are  in  the  well-known 
handwriting  of  SiR  Dudley  Carleton,  and  all  are 
carefully  noted  by  him  as  written  by  Spenser  (spelled 
'Spencer').  There  comes  first  "A  briefe  note  of  Ire- 
land " — most  noticeable  for  its  very  commonplace  of 
topographical  information.  The  pulse  of  the  man  who 
wrote  it  was  not  fevered.  Next  a  Letter  or  rather 
State-Paper  "  To  the  Queene."  Finally,  "  Certaine 
Pointes  to  be  considered  of  in  the  recovery  of  the 
Realme  of  Ireland."  '  Recovery '  be  it  noted  and  re- 
noted — the  very  Avord  of  Canning  and  his  brave  English- 
men when  the  Sepoys  rose  up  against  their  benefactors 
— no  thought  of  succumbing.  The  "  Certaine  Pointes  " 
are  very  much  a  condensation  of  the  Vene  of  Ireland, 
and  tell  us  that  whatever  of  sorrow  and  disappointment 
had  come  upon  its  writer,  he  was  lion-hearted  still,  and 
.bated  no  jot  of  hope  or  resolution. 


^ 


REBELLION  OF  TYRONE.  231 

I  trust  and  expect  every  Spenserian  of  capacity  and 

sympathy    will    ponder     these    great    State-Papers  in 

their  places  (as  below*).      Here   I  can  find  room  only 

for  the  opening  of  the  direct  address   to   the    Queen. 

It   is   pathetic   and    sad,   but   I    can    find    no  trace   of 

that    panic  '  (light '  of    my  predecessors  in  the   Poet's 

biography.      He  represents  others  as  well  as  himself  in 

his  appeal  to  the  Sovereign  : — 

"Out  of  the  ashes  of  disolacon  and  wastnes  of  this  your 
wretched  Realme  of  Ireland,  vouchsafe  moste  mightie  Empresse 
o'  Dred  soveraigne,  to  receive  the  voices  of  a  fewe  moste  unhappie 
Ghostes  ;  of  whome  is  nothinge  but  the  ghost  nowe  left,,\v^"'  lig 
buried  in  the  bottome  of  oblivio,  farr  from  the  light  of  yo"^ 
gracious  sunshine,  w^''  spredeth  it  selfe  ov'  Countries  moste 
remote,  to  the  releeving  of  their  destitute  Calamities  and  to  the 
etemall  advancement  of  yo'  renowne  and  glorie  ;  yet  upon  this 
miserable  land,  being  yo""  owne  iuste  and  heritable  dominio, 
letteth  no  one  little  beame  of  yo''  large  mercie  to  be  shed:  either 
for  unworthinesse  of  us  wretches  w  ''  no  way  discerve  so  great 
grace,  or  for  that  the  miserie  of  o'  estate  is  not  made  knowen 

•  See  Appendix  V  for  the  whole  in  the  order  of  the  original  in 
integrity.  Dean  Church  writes  of  the  Dispatch  of  Norreys  having 
been  '  sent '  "by  Spenser  : — "  I  am  indebted  for  this  reference  to 
Mr.  Hans  Claude  Hamilton.  See  also  his  Preface  to  Calendar 
of  Irish  Papers,  1574-85,  p.  Ix.wi."  (p.  177).  He  adds  :  "  This  is 
the  last  original  document  which  remains  about  Spenser"  {ibid.). 
The  Dean  was  evidently  unaware  that  in  a  masterly  Paper  on 
Spenser  published  in  the  Dublin  University  Magazine  so  far 
back  as  August  1861  (vol.  viii.,  pp.  129-44),  the  fact  about  the 
Dispatch  was  given  and  commented  on.  ^e  was  also  equally 
unaware  of  Spenser's  own  State-Papers— far  more  important  than 
the  Dispatch  of  Norreys.  These  also  were  designated,  but  left 
wholly  unutilized  in  the  same  article.  Honour  to  whom  honour 
is  due.  Mr.  Hamilton  has  done  right  noble  scr\ice  by  his 
Calendars,  and  none  is  more  helpful  and  oblig^ing ;  but  the 
Dublin  University  Magazine  writer  (unfortunately  anonymous) 
long  anticipated  him.  It  is  incomprehensible  that  neither 
Collier,  nor  Professor  Hales,  nor  Dean  Church,  nor  any  one, 
should  have  taken  the  pains  to  get  at  these  vital  Spenser  docu- 
ments. All  the  more  rare  is  my  good  fortune  to  be  the  first  to 
print  and  use  them. 


2^:,2  REBELLION  OF  TYRONE. 

unto  you  but  rather  kept  from  yC  knowledge  by  such  as  by 
concealement  thereof  think  to  have  their  blames  concealed. 
Pardon  therefore  moste  gracious  soveraigne  unto  miserable 
wreches,  w'^''  without  yo''  knowledge  and  moste  against  yo'  will 
are  plunged  in  this  sea  of  sorrowes,  to  make  there  eveft  case 
knowne  unto  you  and  to  caii  for  tymelie  redresse  unto  you,  if 
yet  at  least  any  tyme  be  left  ;  w*"  that  yo""  ma"''  in  yo''  excellent 
wisdome  may  the  better  knowe  how  to  redresse,  may  the  same 
vouchsafe  to  consider  from  what  beginning  the  same  first  sprunge 
and  by  what  late  evill  meanes  it  is  brought  to  this  miserable 
condicon  w*^''  wee  nowe  Complaine  of." 

There  succeed  these  '  points  '  : — "  The  first  cause  of 
the  rebellion  " — "  The  Erie  of  Tyreones  entrance  into 
treason  and  the  causes  thereof " — "  Devision  betwene 
S""  Wittm.  Russell  and  S"  John  Norris  " — "  S"^  John 
Norris  thought  to  get  the  government  to  him  selfe  " — 
"  Lo.  Burrowes " — "  The  originall  cause  of  all  this 
mischeefe  happened  in  Mounster  " — "  Irish  hate  the 
English  for  twoe  causes,  (i)  because  they  have  ev""  bene 
brought  vpp  licenciouslie  [  -=  lawlessly]  and  to  live  as 
eche  one  listeth,  w'^''  they  esteeme  halfe  happines, 
(2)  because  they  haturallie  hate  the  English,  so  that 
theire  fashons  they  allso  hate.  The  cause  of  this 
originall  hate  is  for  that  they  were  Conquered  of  the 
English." 

This  enumeration  of  (mostly)  the  margin-notes,  gives 
only  a  meagre  idea  of  the  fulness  and  fearlessness  of 
statement,  the  firmness  and  vigour  of  argument,  or  the 
fluent  and  nervous  though  quaint  English  of  this  most 
noticeable  State-Paper. 

This  direct  Address  to  the  Queen  and  its  accom- 
panying elucidative  Statement  headed  "Certaine  pointes 
to  be  considered  of  in  the  recovery  of  the  Realme," 
practically  adumbrates  that  Vetie  of  Ireland  which  only 
eight  months  before  he  had  '  entered  '  for  publication. 


REBELLION  OF  TYRONE.  233 

How  thoroui;h  and  how  in  exact  agreement  with  the 
Veiie  of  Ireland  is  this  second  State-Paper  may  here  be 
suggestively  indicated  by  a  similar  but  fuller  noting  of 
the  several  '  pointes  '  that  are  presented  and  discussed 
— "  Question — The  question  is  whether  be  better  and 
easier  for  hir  Ma'''=  to  subdue  Ireland  throughly  and 
bring  it  all  under  or  to  reforme  it  and  to  repaire  hir 
decayed  ptcs.  Of  these  twoe  that  must  ncedes  be 
better  and  also  easier  which  may  be  done  with  less 
charge,  perill,  tyme.  Reason  —  The  assumpt[ion] 
then  is  that  it  will  be  lesse  charge,  lesse  p'ill,  and 
lesse  spending  of  tyme  to  subdewe  it  alltogether  then 
to  go  about  to  reforme  it."  There  follows  "  Proofe  of 
the  reason  " — strong,  drastic,  absolute.  Next  comes 
"  Resolucon  "  as  =  Solution  of  the  problem.  Very 
definite  and  unmistakable  is  such  '  Resolucon  ' — em- 
phatically "  Recovery "  by  conquest.  One  caveat  is 
put  in  in  anticipation  of  the  (seeming)  '  cruelty  '  of  the 
plan,  and  it  will  be  seen  that  it  is  only  a  re-vindication 
on  re-statement  of  the  plan  announced  in  the  Vene  of 
Ireland : — 

"  If  it  shall  seeme  that  the  resolucon  to  subdue  Ireland  wholly 
w"*  stronge  force  is  too  blouddie  and  crewell,  the  same  is  thus  to 
be  mittigated.  That  before  the  great  force  goe  forthe  gen'all 
proclamacon  be  made  that  all  w"*"  will  come  in  and  submit 
themselves  absolutelie  w'^'in  ten  or  twelve  daies  (the  principall 
excepted)  shall  have  p'don  of  life,  onelie  upon  condicon  that 
theire  bodies,  theire  landes,  and  theire  goods  shalbe  at  the 
disposiaon  of  hir  Ma"%  w*^"  if  they  refuse,  what  reason  but 
afterwards  rigor  should  be  extended  to  them  that  will  not  receive 
m'cie,  and  have  utterlie  renownced  theire  obedience  to  hir 
Ma««." 

There  was  nothing  for  it  but  that,  if  England  were 
not  to   obliterate  herself  by  yielding   to    the   Ty rones 


234  REBELLION  OF  TYRONE. 

and  their  fellow  self- aggrandizers.  It  is  the  merest 
delusion  to  argue  for  patriotism  as  the  impulse  of  this 
or  any  of  the  Rebellions  of  the  Elizabethan  age.  The 
'  leaders'  sought  only  repossession  of  justly  'attainted' 
and  '  forfeited '  lands,  and  in  the  case  of  Tyrone's 
'  rising  '  to  grasp  "  broad  acres  "  to  which  he  had  not 
the  shadow  of  title.  As  for  the  '  people,'  they  were 
as  "  dumb  driven  cattle,"  pitifully  subservient  to  their 
chiefs  on  one  side,  and  to  the  Pope's  infamous  priest- 
agents  on  the  other.  The  '  Sepoy  Revolt '  was  thus  " 
put  down.  The  Civil  War  of  the  Southern  States  was 
thus  put  down  by  the  free  North.  It  is  sentimentalism, 
not  sentiment  ;  it  is  to  read  backward  England's 
'  rights '  of  conquest  and  possession  ;  it  is  to  canonize 
a  crew  of  the  falsest,  basest,  most  treacherous  of 
men  ;  it  is  to  misdirect  symj^athy  ;  for  one  moment 
to  concede  that  Elizabeth  and  her  statesmen  had 
any  choice  but  to  '  subdue  Ireland.'  One  even  at 
this  late  day  is  touched  by  the  allegiance  of  the 
'  common  people '  to  their  '  chiefs,'  by  their  un- 
bought  service  in  face  of  all  hazards,  by  their  ignorant 
yet  consistent  adherence  to  '  the  old  religion,'  by 
their  love  for  their  homesteads  and  hearths  ;  but 
none  the  less  must  the  historic  verdict  be  that  to 
'  subdue  '  Ireland  was  a  necessity  for  England  and  the 
best  thing  for  Ireland. 

I  am  free  to  confess  that  after  the  pathos  and 
desolateness  of  the  opening  of  the  great  State-Paper 
addressed  to  the  Queen,  it  is  profoundly  satisfying  to 
have  the  high  note  of  the  "  Certaine  pointes  to  be 
considered  of  in  the  recovery  of  the  Realme," 

Its    date   is   to   be  specially  remembered.      It  could 


SPA\VS£/?'  S  DEA  TH.  235 

not  have  been  later  than  the  first  week  of  December 
1598;  for  Spenser  left  Cork  for  London  on  9th 
December.  By  a  minute  of  the  Dispatch  of  9th 
December,  1598,  it  is  certified  that  it  reached  White- 
hall on  the  24th  December,  This  it  will  be  observed 
brings  us  close  to  '  the  end.'  For  JoilN  CHAMBER- 
LAIN, writing  on  January  17th,  i  599  (new  style),  to  SiR 
Dudley  Carletox — to  whom,  as  we  have  seen,  we 
owe  the  transcripts  of  these  memorable  Papers  now 
in  H.M.  Public  Record  Office — among  much  gossip  of 
marriages  and  other  "  newes,"  incidentally  adds — 
"  Lady  Cope  is  dead,  and  Spenser  the  Poet,  who  lately 

CAME   FROM   IREL.\ND,  DIED  AT  WESTMINSTER,    LAST   SATUR- 
DAY." 

Writing  on  Sunday  (as  a  calculation  shows),  by  "  last 
Saturday"  was  meant  "  i6th  Januar}',  1599" — the 
phrase  instead  of  '  yesterday  '  being  explained  by  the 
knowledge  of  the  W^riter  that  though  he  was  writing 
on  a  Sunday,  his  letter  would  not  be  received  for  some 
days  at  least.  Thus,  on  i6th  Januar>',  1599,  Edmund 
Spenser  died.  An  '  inn  '  in  King  Street,  Westminster, 
has  been  named  as  his  residence  at  the  time  ;  but 
no  authority  has  been  produced.  For  unhappily  Mr. 
J.  Payne  Collier's  '  find  '  of  an  alleged  copy  of 
the  second  edition  of  the  Faery  Queen,  formerly 
possessed  by  Henry  Capell  and  afterwards  by  Brand 
the  antiquary,  bears  the  same  stigma  with  his  in- 
numerable pseudo-entries  and  proved  forgeries.*      As  a 

♦  I  find  a  corner  for  it  here  and  the  context — "  Camden's  anno 
sat  lifts  1598  is  of  course  to  be  taken  as  1599  according,'  to  our 
present  reckoning,  and  the  precise  day — viz.,  the  i6th  of  January, 
as  well  as  the  place,  are  ascertained  from  the  subsequent  manu- 
script note  on  the  title-page  of  a  copy  of  the  second  edition  of 


236  SPENSER' S  DEA  TH. 

State-messenger  and  in  State-employment  the  proba- 
bilities are  that  lie  would  temporarily  at  least  be  housed 
in  official  apartments  near  the  great  State-chambers,  so 
as  to  be  '  at  call  '  for  consultation.  Thus  I  interpret 
'  Westminster.'  As  only  three  weeks  and  a  half  elapsed 
between  the  delivery  of  Sir  John  Norris's  dispatch  and 
his  death,  the  illness  must  have  been  short  and  sharp. 
It  is  allowable  to  conceive  that  the  responsibilities, 
anxieties,  and  fatigues  of  the  '  Rebellion  '  crisis,  acting 
on  a  naturally  valetudinarian  and  fragile  constitution, 
told  on  him.  liut  it  is  mere  idle  fiction  to  write  him  as 
dying  broken-hearted.  A  broken-hearted  man  never 
could  with  such  statesmanly  resolve  have  addressed 
his  Sovereign  as  we  have  found  him  doing.  Equally 
invented  is  the  representation  of  his  dying  in  beggary, 
even  starvation,  with  its  pseudo-anecdotes  of  Essex 
sending  him  alms  of  gold  that  he  refused.  Camden — 
his  friend — informs  us  indeed  that  he  died  "  inops " 
(" ///  Augliani  iiiops  ni'crstis").  With  Kilcolman  fired 
and  gone  temporarily,  this  might  well  be.  But  a 
schoolboy's  knowledge  would  prevent  '  inops  '  being 
widened  into  either  "  beggary  "  or  "  starvation  " 
("  lacke  of  bread").  He  had  his  Laureate-pension  of 
^,50  =  ^^400  at  least  to-day.  He  had  his  Sheriffdom 
and  its  considerable  income  accruing.  He  had  '  funds' 
available  in  various  investments.  Even  in  his  Letter 
to  the   Queen  he    names  '  all    tliat   I   have.'      He  had 

the  Faerie  Qiceeiic,  which  orio-inally  seems  to  have  belonged  to 
Henry  Capell,  and  afterwards  to  Brand  the  antiquary- — '  Qui  obiit 
apud  divcrsoriuDi  in  Platea  Regia  apud  Westmonasterium, 
juxta  London,  611  [.v/c]  die  Januarij  1598;  juxtaque  Geffereum 
Chaucer,  in  eadem  Kcclesia  supra  diet,  (honoratissimi  Comitis 
Essexia;  imjjensis)  sejielitur'  "  [Life  of  Speiiscr  i.,  cxlv).  This 
*' juxta  London"  as  descriptive  of  Westminster  is  suspicious. 


SPE.WSER'S  DEATff.  2,37 

Essex  and  Ralegh  near  at  hand.  "  Bcgc^ary "  and 
"  Starvation  "  are  preposterous  terms.  Neither  is  there 
one  scintilla  of  evidence  that  he  had  an  infant  'burned' 
in  Kilcolman.  His  own  State-paper  in  its  enumera- 
tion of  '  massacres'  and  other  enormities  gives  no  hint 
of  it.  Camden  gives  none.  No  contemporary  notice 
is  found  of  it.  The  Records  of  Ireland  by  Ulster 
King-at-Arms  of  all  Ireland  knew  it  not.  Besides, 
chronologically  there  is  no  room  for  a  fifth  child. 
Married  in  midsummer  of  1594,  and  driven  from 
Kilcolman  in  December  1598,  four  known  children 
amply  cover  the  four  years.  Ben  Jonson's  '  conversa- 
tion '  note  is  the  one  warrant  for  the  twofold  story  of 
the  '  starvation  '  and  the  perishing  of  the  infant  ;  and 
his  Conversations  ii.<ith  Drummond  of  Hazuthornden  is  a 
mass  of  unsifted  gossip  and  loose  talk.  Professor  John 
Wilson  ("  Christopher  North ")  has  thus  summed  up 
the  facts  and  conclusions  : — 

"  From  all  this  confusion  of  error  how  easy  to  separate  the 
truth  !  Camden  says  truly,  he  returned  to  England  '  hwps.'  He 
never  had  been  rich.  The  rebels  burnt  his  house  and  furniture, 
drove  away  his  live-stock,  if  there  were  any — and  then  he  was 
poor.  What  little  money  he  micfht  have  had  his  travel  and 
voyage  to  London  ate  up,  and  in  that  lod<,''in','--housL'  [?]  his  funds 
were  low.  But  not  one  man  in  a  million  dies  of  absolute  want 
of  bread  even  now — not  so  many  then— and  that  man  could  not 
have  been  Kdmund  Spenser.  Ben  Jonson  was  a  wide  talker 
over  his  cups,  and  part  of  his  story  to  Drummond  carries  false- 
hood on  its  face.  '  He  refused  twenty  pieces  sent  him  by  my 
lord  Essex,  and  said  he  was  sure  he  had  no  time  to  spend  them.' 
That  answer  was  not  in  Spenser's  style.  He  was  no  misanthrope. 
The  world  had  not  used  him  ill,  and  he  had  reasons  manifold 
to  be  in  love  with  life.  Had  he  been  starxing  '  from  absolute 
want  of  bread  '  he  would  have  accepted  the  bounty  of  his  noble 
friend,  who  with  all  his  faults,  knew  how  to  honour  genius — had 
said  'Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread,'  ate  it  and  given  God 
thanks.     If  he  knew  he  was  himself  dying,    his  Elizabeth   was 


238  SPENSER'S  D?:AT?I. 

by  his  bedside,  and  his  children.  Then  '  he  was  sure  he  had  no 
time  to  spend  tliem.'  Vulgar!  and  worse — impious  words  !  But 
his  was  the  finest  of  spirits,  and  most  religious."  {Blackwood' s 
Magazine,  vol.  .x.xxiv.,  p.  855.) 

In  the  light  of  these  new  FACTS,  it  may  be  permitted 
me  to  hope  that  Dean  Church  will  re-write  or  rather 
suppres.s  h.\s jcrctniad.  It  is  not  true  that  "We  KNOW 
.  .  .  .  that  the  first  of  English  poets  perished  miserably" 
(p.  178),  and  it  is  most  disputable  that  his  death  was 
"  one  of  the  many  heavy  sacrifices  which  the  evil  fortune 
of  Ireland  has  cost  to  England  ;  one  of  many  illustrious 
victims  to  the  madness,  the  evil  customs,  the  vengeance 
of  an  ill-trcatcd  and  ill-governed  people"  (p.  178), 
Let  Edmimd  Spenser's  great  State-paper  and  strong- 
hearted  adherence  to  his  primary  'Veue'  of  how 
Ireland  was  to  be  'governed,'  and  his  insistence  that 
the  Irish  were  not  either  "  ill-treated  or  ill-governed," 
be  placed  over  against  such  dolorous  opinions  as  these. 
In  a  sense  he  died  '  prematurely ' — for  he  was  only  in 
his  forty-eighth  year — but  his  death  was  natural  as  any 
other  of  the  Englishmen's  of  that  strenuous  time  who 
"  departed  soone."  The  author  of  the  Vcnc  of  Inland 
and  of  these  State-I'apcrs  composed  within  a  few 
weeks  of  his  death  was  of  sterner  stuff  than  to  be 
a  "  victim  "  ("  illustrious "  is  no  mitigation)  of  "  the 
madness,"  etc.,  etc.,  etc.* 

*  Perhaps  the  most  (iiilrc  occurrence  of  the  "  broken  heart  " 
myth  is  in  Pennant,  who  says — "  Jn  the  anguish  of  his  soul  he 
composed  the  '  Cave  of  Despair'  in  the  first  book  of  the  Faery 
Qiiccii  "  !  {Blackivoocr s  Magazine,  vol.  xxxiv.,  p.  855).  Mr.  J.  P. 
Collier  in  his  Life  of  Spenser  (i.,  cl-cli)  fetches  a  quotation 
from  a  rhymester  named  John  Lane  (Royall  MSS.,  17  13.  xv.)  in 
support  of  the  "  starvation  "  myth.  \\\x1  the  poem  is  dated  1620, 
and  it  simply  serves  to  show  that  Ben  Jonson  repeated  a 
current  falsehood.     We  would  need  to  know  much  more  of  John 


W 


SPEiXSER'  S  DEA  TH.  2,1 9 

A  tradition  i.s — That  at  his  own  request — and  one 
wiUingly  accepts  in  such  case  another  evidence  of 
tranquil  self-coUectedness  —  he  was  buried  "near 
Chaucer."  Camden  tells  us  of  the  Funeral  (at  the 
expense  of  Essex),  and  that  nobles  and  the  poets  of 
the  time  attended  it  ("  poetis  funus  ducentibus  "),  the 
latter  throwing  in  (as  was  the  mode)  "  elegies,  and  the 
pens  wherewith  they  had  been  written  "  into  the  grave. 
"  What  a  funeral  was  that  at  which,"  says  an  admi- 
rable modern  writer,  "  Beaumont,  Fletcher,  Jonson,  and 
in  all  probability  Shakespeare  attended  !  What  a  grave 
in  which  the  pen  of  Shakespeare  may  be  mouldering 
away!"  {Dublin  University  Magazine,  1861,  p.  58). 
What  became  of  the  '  Elegies  '  thus  cast  into  the  illus- 
trious grave  it  were  bootless  to  speculate.  Lovable 
Nicholas  Breton's  alone  has  come  down  to  us. 

Queen  Elizabeth  ordered  a  monument  to  her  great 
Poet  ;  but  the  order  was  '  intercepted '  b}'  the 
avarice  of  some  agent — not  this  time  Burleigh,  for 
he  had  also  departed  (died  4th  August,  1598).*  In 
1620  Anne  Clifford,  Countess  of  Dorset — later  re- 
nowned by  Wordsworth  —  and  afterwards  Countess 
of  Pembroke  and  Montgomery,  paid  Nicholas  Stone 
£\o  for  erecting  a  monument  of  Purbeck  stone  in 
Westminster  Abbey  {At heme  Cantabrigioises  ii.  261). 
It    is  interesting    to    know    in    connection    with    this 

r^ane  before  accepting  his  rhyming  of  "scant"  witli  'want." 
or  his  variation  on  the  poet's  alleged  message  to  Essex,  "The 
med'cine  comes  too  late  to  the  patient."  Equally  apocryphal 
rs  tlie  giving  to  one  Lodowick  Lloyd  the  credit  of  the  Poet's 
funeral  e.xpenses  having  been  discharged.  See  Appendix  W, 
on  the  Widow  and  Spenser's  descendants. 

•  Browne's  Britannia's  Pastorals,  B.  ii..  Song  i. 


240  SPENSER'S  DEATH. 

tribute  of  honour,  that  in  a  family-group  of  portraits 
of  the  Chffords  still  preserved  at  Skipton  Castle  in 
Craven,  under  the  portrait  of  Samuel  Daniel  in  it 
(introduced  as  the  Countess's  tutor)  is  a  volume 
inscribed  "Al  Edmund  Spencer's  Workes"  {Gcnilcmmi s 
Magazine,  vo\.  xviii.,    1842,  p.  143 — confirmed). 

This  monument  was  in  1778  'restored'  by  the 
exertions  of  Mason,  the  poet  and  friend  of  Gray. 
With  correction  of  its  mistaken  dates  (by  the  inad- 
vertence doubtless  of  the  mason,  who  for  1552  carved 
15  16  and  1596  for  1599)  this  is  the  Epitaph  as  it 
first  stood  : — 

IIeare  i.yes  (exi'FXting  the  second  comminge  of  our   Saviour 
Iksus)  the  liODY  OF  Kdmund  Si'enser,  the  Prince  of  Poets  in  his 

TVME,    WHOSE    divine    SPIRIT    NEEDS    NONE    OTHER    WITNESSE   THEN 
THE     WORKS     WHICH      HE     LEFT     BEHINDE     HIM.         HE     WAS     BORNE 

IN  London  in  the  yeare  1550  [1552],  and  died  in  the  year  1596 
[15991- 
Also  this  couplet  : — 

I  fie  f>ropc  Chanccriim  situs  est  Spenserus  illi 
rroximus  iiigcnio,  ;proximus  et  tiomilus  tumulo. 

There   are   a  number  of  earlier   and   later  allusions 

to  the   proximity  of  the  two   poets  in  burial  :  e.g.,  in 

William  l^asse's  great  poem-elegy  for  Shakespeare  : — 

Renowned  Spenser,  lie  a  thought  more  nigh 

To  learned  Chaucer ;  and  rare  Beaumont  lie 

A  little  nearer  Spenser,  to  make  room 

For  Shakespeare  in  your  threefold,  fourfold  tomb.* 

Jonson  caught  this  up  : — 

My  Shakespeare  rise  !  I  will  not  lodge  thee  by 
Chaucer  or  Spenser,  or  bid  Beaumont  lie 
A  little  farther  otf,  to  make  thee  room. 

*  This  Eleg)^  was  long  misassigned  to  Donne.  It  must  have 
circulated  in  MS.  long  before  its  appearance  in  the  folio  of  1637. 
See  Memoir  of  Basse  in  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen's  Av^/Zf/'/c?/  Biograp/jy, 
s.fi.,  by  the  present  Writer. 


SUMMARY.  241 

Even  jocund  "Tom  Brown"  (iii.  228)  has  his  memorial- 
word  : — 

"  The  great  Spenser  keeps  the  entry  of  the  Church  in  a  plain 
stone  tomb;  but  his  works  are  more  glorious  than  all  the  marble 
and  brass  monuments  within." 


And  now  having  re-told  the  Stor}-  of  the  Life  of 
Edmund  Spenser  under  new  lights  and  shadows,  as 
I  go  back  upon  it  I  am  surprised  at  the  amount  and 
qualit}'  of  our  knowledge  of  him.  Of  no  contemporary, 
of  no  kindred  man  of  genius  of  his  time,  do  we  know 
one  half  so  much,  authentically  and  unchallengeably.  So 
far  from  agreeing  with  those  who  plain  if  not  complain 
of  our  slight  knowledge  of  him, — e.g.,  COURTHOPE  in 
his  prize-essay  entitled  '  Genius  of  Spenser '  writes, — 
"  No  poet  ever  kept  a  mask  over  his  own  features 
so  long  and  so  closely  as  Spenser  ....  Except  the 
remarkable  lines  on  the  miseries  of  court  service  in 
MctJier  Hubberd's  Tale  (itself  a  Prosopopeia),  the 
Epitluilaminvi,  and  here  and  there  a  touch  of  feeling 
against  a  contemporary',  there  is  not  a  passage  in  his 
works  which  gives  us  a  glimpse  into  his  own  life.  We 
can  see  what  he  thought  and  had,  but  not  what  he 
felt  "  (p.  7), — by  the  guidance  of  Facts  it  seems  to 
me  that  any  one  who  will  take  the  pains  may  get  as 
near  to  Spenser  as  to  Samuel  Pepvs  or  Samuel 
JOHN.SON.  For  it  is  not  by  small  talk  of 'Diaries' 
or  of  Boswelliana  that  we  are  called  on  to  form  the 
living  acquaintance  of  the  Poet  of  the  Faery  Queen  ; 
but  by  all  manner  of  self-revelation  and  self-delineation, 

L  16 


242  SUMMARY. 

— and  emphatically  self-delineation  of  what  he  *  felt, — - 
and  contemporary  evidence. 

To  begin  with — Spite  of  the  testimony  of  "  rare 
Ben  "  and  the  bust  in  the  chancel  of  Stratford-on-Avon, 
we  do  not  feel  that  we  have  the  "  express  likeness " 
of  William  Shakespeare,  while  of  Marlowe  and  other 
'  mighties '  we  have  none.  But  of  Edmund  Spenser 
we  have  inestimable  portraits.  In  the  first  rank  must 
be  placed  the  miniature  now  in  the  inherited  possession 
of  Lord  Fitzhardinge.  It  was  a  gift  to  the  Lady 
Elizabeth  Carey  (Althorp  Spenser),  heiress  of  the 
Hunsdons,  to  whom  it  was  '  left  '  by  Queen  Elizabeth. 
It  thus  came  with  an  indisputable  lineage  through  the 
marriage  of  a  Berkeley  to  Lady  Elizabeth  Carey."^  It 
is  an  exquisitely  beautiful  face.  The  brow  is  ample, 
the  lips  thin  but  mobile,  the  eyes  a  greyish-blue,  the 
hair  and  beard  a  golden  red  (as  of  "  red  monie "  of 
the"  ballads)  or  goldenly-chesnut,  the  nose  with  semi- 
transparent  nostril  and  keen,  the  chin  firm-poised, 
the  expression  refined  and  delicate.  Altogether  just 
such  '  presentment '  of  the  Poet  of  Beauty  pm"  excel- 
lence as  one  would  have  imagined.  To  be  placed 
next  is  the  older  face  of  the  dowager  Countess  of 
Chesterfield.  It  is  identically  the  same  face.  But 
there  is  more  roundness  of  chin,  more  fulness  or 
ripening  of  the  lips  (especially  the  under),  more 
restfulncss.  There  is  not  the  *  fragile '  look  of  the 
Fitzhardinge  miniature.  Hair  and  eyes  agree  with 
the  miniature.  The  only  other,  with  a  pedigree  or 
sufficiently   authenticated — not  mere  '  copies  '  such  as 

*  See  it  engraved  (in  large-paper  copies)  of  Vol.  VII.  of  the 
present  edition  of  the  Works — for  the  first  time. 


SUMMARY.  243 

those  at  Pembroke  Collec^e — is  the  very  remarkable 
one  that  came  down  as  a  Devonshire  heirloom  to  the 
Rev.  S.  Baring-Gould,  M.A.  *  with  a  companion,  of  Sir 
Walter  Ralegh.  Both  have  been  in  the  family  beyond 
record.  This  shows  the  Poet  in  the  full  strength  of 
manhood.  It  is  a  kind  of  three-quarter  profile  ;  and 
as  one  studies  it  it  seems  to  vindicate  itself  as  "  our 
sage  and  serious  Spenser."  Again,  hair  and  eyes  agree 
with  the  others.  The  Spaniard's  haughty  face  for  long 
engraved  and  re-engraved,  ought  never  to  have  been 
engraved  as  Spenser.  There  is  not  a  jot  or  tittle  of 
evidence  in  its  favour.  It  is  an  absolutely  un-English 
— and  palpably  Spanish  face,  and  an  impossible  portrait 
of  our  Poet. 

With  three  such  Portraits  for  eye  and  heart  study, 
who  that  can  at  all  read  "  the  human  face  divine " 
can  hold  himself  uninformed  of  the  "  manner  of  man  " 
Edmund  Spenser  was  .-* 

Advancing — we  have  two  word-portraits  of  almost 
co-equal  value  with  those  from  the  Painters.  There  is 
that  of  his  University  time,  dashed  off  by  smooth- 
chinned,  beardless  Dr.  Gabriel  Harvey,  wherein  we 
seem  to  be  introduced,  face  to  face,  to  the  gay  young 
man  "  moustachoed  and  great  bearded,"  and  cutting  a 
dash  among  the  "  fair  ladies  "  and  gentlemen  of  the 
Court. 

Then  from  John  Aubrey,  through  Mr.  Christopher 
Beeston,  we  have  this  etching  of  him  as  in  his  la.st 
decade,  on  his  coming  over  from  his  Irish  exile,  with 
the  simplicity  and  gravity  and  chastening  of  absence 

•  Engraved  in  large-paper  copies  of  Vol.  II.  :  Ralegh  in  Vol.  IV. 
^both  for  first  time. 


244 


SUMMARY. 


from  affairs,  in  London — "  He  was  a  little  nian,  wore 
short  ^laire,  little  bands,  and  little  cuffes."  The  two 
togetlier  actualize  the  living  man  to  us  to-day. 

Still  more  acquaintance-giving  are  his  own  verse 
references.  Do  we  wish  to  '  see '  him  as  a  boy, 
bird-nesting,  hazel-nut  and  walnut  pulling,  trout- 
fishing,  mountain-climbing,  wood-exploring  }  We  have 
only  to  turn  to  the  ShepJienTs  Calendar  and  read 
Eclogue  XIL,  with  its  vivid  and  life-like  memories, — 

Whilom  in  youtli,  when  flowrcd  1113^  ioyfull  spring 
Like  swallow  swift,  I  wandred  here  and  there  : 
For  heate  of  heedlesse  lust  me  so  did  sting, 
That  I  of  doubted  daunger  had  no  feare. 

I  went  the  wastful  woods  and  forrest  wide 
Withouten  dread  of  wolves  to  bene  espide, — 

and  so  through  many  a  brilliant  autobiographic  stanza, 
than  which  nothing  in  Prebidc  or  Excursion  for 
Wordsworth  is  more  precious  for  Spenser.  Do  we  say 
or  feel  that  all  that  is  only  '  outward,'  and  that  we 
covet  more  '  inward  '  things  }  It  were  easy  to  traverse 
the  objection  and  show  how  the  '  outward  '  is  but  the 
hieroglyph  of  the  inward.  l^ut  leaving  that  to  be 
found  out  by  study  of  the  Eclogue  named  and  others, 
let  our  proof  of  the  reality  and  fervour  c^i  his  first 
young  passion  for  '  Rosalind  '  bear  witness  how  trans- 
parently true  is  his  unfolding  of  his  love  and  failure  ? 
What  would  we  not  give  for  a  like  '  Diary '  of  Master 
William  Shakespeare  in  his  wooing  of  Anne  Hathaway  1 
I  hold  it  demonstrated  that  this  first  love  for  Rose  or 
Alice  or  Eltsa  Dyneley  left  an  unhealed  wound  in 
Spenser's  heart  to  the  end.  The  placing  of  the  'cry'  and 
curse  of  the  86th  Sonnet  at  the  close  of  the  Amoretti — . 


SUMMARY  ^45 

accepting;  our  interpretation  hereof — would  alone  give 
poignancy  to  his  rejection  and  a  seal  of  undying  love. 
Do  we  seek  to  know  how  he  bore  himself  among  the 
"  fair  women  "  and  "  brave  men  "  of  Elizabethan  days  ? 
Turn  then  to  the  Epistles-dedicatory  to  Sidney  and 
Leicester  and  Ralegh,  to  the  "  Ladie  Marie,  countesse 
of  Pembrooke  "  {^llic  Rnincs  of  Time)  \  "the  Ladie 
Strange"  {Teares  of  the  Muses)  ;  "  the  Ladie  Compton 
and  Mountegle  "  (^Mother  Hubberd's  Tale)  ;  "  the  right 
worthy  and  vertuous  Ladie,  the  Ladie  Carey  "  (Muio- 
potmos)  ;  "  Lady  Helena  Marquesse  of  Northampton  " 
(^Daphnaida)  ;  "  Ladie  Margaret  Countesse  of  Cumber- 
land and  the  Ladie  Marie  Countesse  of  Warwicke ' 
{Fonre  Hymnes))  and  "the  most  bcautifull  and  vertuous 
Ladie,  the  Countesse  of  Essex "  {AstropJicl).  The 
stately  courtesy,  the  gracious  phrasing,  the  high-bred 
homage  of  every  one  of  these  Epistles,  gives  us  know- 
ledge and  warrant  of  "  the  gentleman  "  he  was.  Do 
we  bethink  us  of  the  Scholars  of  the  time,  and  how  our 
Poet  bore  himself  toward  them  and  they  toward  him  ? 
We  have  his  Letters  to  Dr.  Gabriel  Harvey — so 
spontaneous,  so  evidently  in  undress  frankness,  so  all 
over,  touched  of  personal  characteristics.  And  how 
would  men  of  all  ages  have  rejoiced  over  one  single 
letter  revealing  what  their  author  thought  of  Humlet 
or  Othello  or  Lear  or  Midsumimr  Night's  Dream,  as 
does  "  Immerito "  chat-write  of  his  poems,  planned 
or  completed  .'  These  Letters  pour  a  flood  of  light 
on  his  whole  literary  occupations  and  aspirations. 
Alongside  of  these  are  the  Letters  from  Dr.  Gabriel 
H.ARVEY.  Though  published  for  three  hundred  years, 
it  is  scarcely  credible  how   perfunctory  has   been  the 


246  SUMMARY. 

using  of  them  by  Biographers.  It  so  chances  that  the 
present  Life  is  the  first  enabled  to  turn  to  account  a 
new  set  of  Letters  from  Harvey  to  Spenser.  Taken 
together  they  give  such  vision  of  the  man,  the  student, 
the  poet,  the  thinker,  the  doubter  because  of  this 
"unintelHgible  world,"  as  is  not  to  be  found  elsewhere 
in  the  case  of  any  other  of  our  master-minds.  Do  we 
long  for  revelations  of  his  friendships  }  I  venture  to 
send  my  Reader  to  the  chapter  on  Sir  Philip  Sidney  (Ap- 
pendix I).  It  will  interpret  the  tenderness  yet  strength, 
the  homage  yet  freedom  of  their  '  familiarity,'  and 
with  "  Master  Dyer  "  and  others.  Do  we  think  of  the 
ongoings  in  the  political  world — of  Burleigh  and  his 
intense  self-seeking  and  obstructiveness  of  ascent  of  all 
save  himself — and  inquire  how  Spenser  fared  .-"  I  know 
not  the  contemporary  who  has  approached  him  in  the 
power  and  passion,  the  purged  strength  and  fidelity  of 
his  accusations,  or  in  the  pathos  of  his  disappointments 
of  opportunity  to  greatly  serve  his  Queen  and 
country.  My  Life  has  indeed  come  short  of  my  ideal 
if  it  has  not  made  luminous  the  Poet's  attitude  toward 
the  "  great  ones  "  of  the  period.  Do  we  search  for 
evidence  of  his  business-qualifications,  of  his  willing- 
hood  to  toil  in  duty  ?  The  records  of  his  discharge 
of  most  commonplace  and  ordinary  routine  work,  the 
correspondence  carried  on  from  day  to  day,  the 
transcripts  made  and  certified,  yield  abundant  proofs  of 
how  unpoetically  '  diligent '  he  was  when  the  functions 
of  his  successive  posts  demanded  it.  To  be  "ydle,"  to 
be  thought  of  as  "  ydling,"  was  a  pain  to  him,  as  he 
told  Ralegh.  Do  we  yearn  for  revelation  of  the  inner- 
most secrets  of  the  man   in   the  winning  of  that  'wife' 


U 


SUMMARY.  247 

to  whom  he  gave  the  immortality  of  the  Epithalamium  ? 
Let  the  Aviorctti  and  \h2i\.  Epithalainiuui  be  the  silver- 
lamp  of  twin-lights  to  guide  us.  I  would  gladly  have 
exchanged  '7/rt-  Sonnets  "  for  a  like  set  with  the  /Imorctti 
to  Anne  Hathaway.  It  sounds  to  mc  simply  obtuse  not 
to  find  in  these  Amontti,  and  in  nearly  all  his  autobio- 
graphic verse,  multiplied  insight  into  the  man  as  he  really 
was  in  this  breathing  world  of  ours.  Do  wc  desire  his 
opinions  on  the  questions  of  the  day,  political,  ecclesi- 
astical, ordinary  }  It  is  perhaps  a  defect  in  the  Faery 
Queen  that  he  has  imported  by  head  and  shoulders 
(so  to  say)  his  own  personal  likes  and  dislikes.  I  look 
in  vain  for  another  equal  intellect's  verdicts  on  the 
outstanding  personalities  and  events  of  his  time 
approaching  Spenser's.  You  do  not  find  the  like  in 
Shakespeare  or  Bacon — not  even  in  Milton,  except 
casually.  Do  we  recall  that  for  well-nigh  a  quarter  of 
a  century  Spenser  lived  in  Ireland,  and  interrogate  his 
Biographer  as  to  what  were  his  judgments  on  the 
government  of  that  unhappy  country  }  There  is  for 
answer  the  Veiie  of  Ireland.  It  is  packed-full  of  his 
own  observations  and  reasoned-out  conclusions  and 
'  plots  '  or  '  plans.'  Never  has  '  Secretary '  of  State 
spoken  out  what  was  in  him  as  he  has  done  in  this 
remarkable  book  ;  supplemented  now  by  the  closing 
State-paper  of  the  last  weeks  of  his  life !  Thus  is  it  all 
round — Wherever  I  turn  I  am  faced  by  something  that 
ACTUALIZES  Edmund  Spenser  to  me.  That  after  three 
centuries — and  such  a  three  centuries — we  should  have 
so  much  vitality  of  personal  knowledge  of  such  a  man, 
is  to  mc  cause  of  wonder  and  of  thankfulness. 

More     than    this  —  and     to     be     accentuated     and 


^48  SUMMARY. 

re-accentuated — the  nearer  we  get  to  him  the  truer 
and  the  finer  is  he  found.  Related  as  he  was  by 
pubHc  service,  or  social  intercourse,  or  literary  friend- 
ship with  the  foremost — and  these  sorrowfully  often 
in  bitter  and  mortal  antagonism — Spenser  bore  himself 
truly  to  all.  He  forsook  no  one  because  others  did, 
or  because  to  do  so  might  have  advantaged  him  '  at 
Court.'  He  lackeyed  none,  though  so  to  lackey  was 
the  mode.  He  loved  and  revered  that  Lord  Grey 
of  Wilton  whom  Ralegh  slighted  and  wrought  against, 
but  Ralegh  with  all  his  daring  challenged  not  the 
allegiance.  He  was  proud  of  the  friendship  and 
homage  of  Ralegh,  but  they  did  not  displace  his 
grateful  memories  of  Leicester  and  Sir  Philip  Sidney. 
He  self-evidently  all  but  idolized  Essex,  but  in  all 
the  large  Essex  correspondence  there  is  not  a  solitary 
letter  of  self-seeking  addressed  to  him.  And  so  in 
the  vast  correspondence  preserved  at  Hatfield,  no 
slightest  scrap  of  '  application  '  has  turned  up  in  the 
Burleigh  Papers  bearing  Spenser's  name.  To  one 
who  has  had  occasion  to  examine  and  search  critically 
these  two  national  Correspondences,  measureless  is  the 
contrast  of  this  self-respecting  silence  over-against 
the  multiplied  abject  appeals  of  contemporaries.  Nor 
less  suggestive  is  it  that  the  name  of  Spenser  comes 
up  among  the  State-Papers  (public  and  domestic 
alike)  of  England  and  of  Ireland  solely  as  discharging 
public  duty,  or  giving  patriotic  and  wise  advice.  Side 
by  side  with  his  transcripts  of  letters,  and  certified 
copies,  and  '  representations,'  are  sheafs  of  correspond- 
ence from  I^nglishmcn  eager  after  self-aggrandisement 
and    insistent    in    bringing    their    '  claims  '    before   the 


SUMMARY.  249 

Queen  and  her  ministers.  There  is  nol  a  shred  of 
this  kind  of  thing  from  Edmund  Spenser.  Nor  need 
any  one  fear  now  for  aught  springing  to  Hght  that 
will  stain  the  whiteness  of  his  memor)-.  It  is  some- 
thing to  be  able  to  state  this.  It  is  something  for 
England  to  pos.scss  such  a  name  and  memory,  some- 
thing to  be  justly  boastful  of,  that  in  all  her  immense 
State- Papers  there  is  no  slightest  line  to  accuse  or 
lower  her  three  supreme  Poets — EDMUND  SPENSER — 
William  Shakespeare — John  Milton.  The  first 
was  placed  in  circumstances  the  most  tempting  of  all 
toward  such  '  applications '  in  high  quarters,  as  her 
Majesty's  Public  Record  Office  reveals.  The  more 
praise  that  he  comes  out  independent  and  unsullied  as 
any  of  them.  Whether  as  man  or  poet,  no  shadow 
lies  on  his  illustrious   name. 

Summarily —the  Life  of  Edmund  Spenser  was 
surely  one  of  the  "  beautiful  lives  "  that  not  only 
elevate  the  human  ideal,  but  inspire  approximation  to 
that  ideal.  Of  a  temperament  that  laid  him  open  to  the 
sensitivenesses  and  sensibilities  of  influence,  he  comes 
before  us  as  a  man  and  no  monster  of  perfection — with 
our  common  infirmities  of  ambitions  and  (I  suppose) 
prejudices,  and  a  passionate  sense  of  self-claim  and 
mystery  of  wonder  that  others — the  highest — did  not 
recognize  and  act  on  such  claim.  But  nevertheless, 
in  presence  of  the  noble  and  good  (as  of  Sidney) 
humble  even  to  abasement,  and,  conscious  of  mightier 
possibilities  of  achievement,  pathetically  lowly  in 
writing  of  his  supremest  poetry  {e.g.,  the  Sonnets 
affixed  to  the  Faery  Queen  again  and  again  apply 
words   to   it   that    might  have    held    of   the   Shepherd's 


250  SUMMARY. 

Calendar,  but  which  in  the  light  of  glory  that  lies 
on  the  great  Poem  sound  bafflingly  deprecatory,  not 
to  say  depreciatory).  His  'wooing'  of  Rosalind 
presents  him  as  impulsive,  eager,  of  swift  moods,  of 
tremendous  forcefulness.  His  sense  of  loss  through 
'-  Menalcas  "  beats  to  our  touch  to-day.  His  conquering 
love  for  Elizabeth  Boyle — molten,  intense,  in  some 
elements  awful  in  its  yearning  —  reveals  patience  of 
trust  and  of  hope  infinitely  fine.  The  Epithalavtmin 
attests  how  strong  a  tide  of  affection  swayed  his  great 
heart.  His  intellect  manifests  itself  as  always  pos- 
sessed of  sanity  and  lucidity — crystal  clear,  albeit  like 
the  "  terrible  crystal,"  and  subject  to  intermeddling 
with  darkest  and  most  perilous  matters.  It  is  ques- 
tionable if  ever  there  has  been  human  imagination  so 
steeped  in  colour  or  so  capable  of  shaping  subtlest 
and  swiftest  thought.  Few  tongues  can  ever  have 
been  more  voluble,  as  scarcely  any  pen  more  fluent.  It 
was  nothing  to  him  to  pour  out  the  "  large  thought," 
the  glorious  metaphor,  the  singing  ringing  stanza,  the 
consummate  jewel  of  a  phrase  "  five  words  long " 
destined  to  sparkle  on  the  "  stretched  forefinger  of 
Time  "  immortally  Who  of  our  Poets  has  employed 
such  a  multitude  of  epithets  .-*  and  yet  where  is  there 
one  misplaced  or  superfluous  }  He  also  comes  before 
us  as  a  man  of  iron  will,  of  decision,  of  masterful 
resolution,  of  thoroughness  against  all  odds.  Shake- 
speare himself  was  not  prouder  of  "  this  England." 

As  a  Poet  how  may  we  generalize  or  analyze  1  As 
elsewhere  said,  his  Poetry  stands  second  only  to  the 
English  Bible  of  i6i  i,  in  enriching  our  (poetical)  lan- 
guage.     But  it  is  not  words  merely.      It  is  music.      It 


u 


SUMMARY.  251 

is  as  thou[:^h  England  had  had  for  the  first  time  a 
miUion  of  larks  let  loose  in  the  heaven  of  her  song. 
But  the  lark  is  only  symbol  of  one  element,  his 
sweetness.  There  is  in  his  music  a  mingling  of  the 
"  warbling  wind  "  and  the  "  water's  fall  " — all  voices  of 
day  and  night,  of  sea  and  shore,  of  earth  and  heaven, 
celestial  and  terrestrial.  And  who  may  appraise  the 
enriching  of  our  literature  by  his  colours  of  imagination 
and  fancy  ^  To  call  him,  as  Thomas  Campbell  well 
did,  "  the  Rubens  of  our  Poets,"  is  to  describe  only  the 
surface  of  his  Poetry — its  sensuousness.  Behind  that 
there  is  the  sublimity  and  the  tenderness,  the  purity  and 
the  sanctity  of  Raphael.  And  how  shall  one  recount 
the  splendid  gallery  of  his  'characters'  (though  the 
word  is  poor),  his  creations,  whether  masculine  or 
feminine  ^  Each  is  definite  as  any  of  Dan  Chaucer's 
Canterbury  Pilgrimage,  and  such  a  procession  as  only 
the  Plays  of  Shakespeare  can  match.  There  is  '  Una'  ; 
there  is  '  Belphcebe'  ;  there  is  '  Britomart '  ;  there  is 
'  Gloriana  '  of  gentlewomen.  There  is  '  Arthur,' 
'  Artegal,' and  all  the  knights  of  '  Eacry.'  CllAUCEK 
had  cried  out — 

To  fyghte  for  a  lady,  ah  benedicite, 

It  were  a  godely  sighte  for  to  see. 

We  see  it  in  the  Faery  Queen.  What  the  Faery 
Queen  has  done  in  shaping  and  determining  England's 
conceptions  of  '  maidenhood  '  and  '  gentlehood,'  of 
manhood,  truth,  purity,  courage,  faith,  siding  with  the 
weak,  accrediting  Him  who  "  on  the  bitter  tree  dyd  dye," 
it  is  impossible  to  estimate.  Granted  that  there  is 
inevitable  tedium — a  tedium  avowed  by  the  Poet  him- 
self— and  that  the  AllcL^ory  is  imperfectly  handled  and 


'^^  SUMMARY. 

.mpalpable  and  incommunicable  influ  nce^o  e  ha/t: 

to  think  quiet  V  to  ronlM-,;c  ^-     •   i  ^'  *-^"ti  nas   but 

a.s  Jol,n  Cl,ali.hm.  >x,  a,  •       c  p  c        'f'   ""^• 
the  Castle  „f  //„/„/,„,..  „f  T        ''"='■   ,  ^^'^  may  name 

-rsben^o^,  ,;i:^:;;,'i:y~a:-^;^^ 

6<r/.vr,Ay-  AV/./  of  Burns    the    Gni'l    V   „  ' 

Of  Campbe,,  .He  W    /....^'^rtL'lXhf 


most. 


bpcn.ser  has  penetrated   the  lUeraturc         k1,   '/      . 
i.^  a  living  influence  to-day  o^x'  „L    'f  ?••'"'' 

Then  beyond,  in  the  speech  ,     t  c   St  t    ''"'' ='^"-"^- 

flict    with    the   poverty   and    sufferin,.    ,i, 

I'oliutions  of   London  "^and   el     ^^re    ,  '  ^f'T'   '",' 

tiplied    .  Appeal.  ._n,    the    U..:T:C  IXTut 


SUMMARY.  251 

young  hearts'  most  passionate  devotion, — ^in  the 
Witness-bearing  to  imperilled  or  disgraced  truths  and 
principles, — in  the  master-  leaders  of  the  free  press  of 
England  and  America, —  in  the  treasury  of  our  common 
speech — men  and  women  of  the  best  and  noblest, 
wisest  and  truest,  find  themselves  instinctively  fetching 
"  Thoughts  that  breathe  in  words  tliat  burn  "  from  him. 
Granted  that  only  a  select  few  (relatively)  possess 
themselves  of  the  entire  Faery  Queen  and  Works  of 
Spenser,  and  that  it  demands  more  of  brain  and  heart 
than  for  most  poets,  to  be  in  sympathy  with  him,  it 
nevertheless  remains  incontrovertible  that  for  loveliness, 
for  charm,  for  melody,  for  richness  of  hue,  for  magnifi 
cence  of  imagination,  for  splendour  of  wording,  for 
exhaustless  resource,  for  something  for  every  one, 
Edmund  Spenser  stands  third  among  our  English 
Poets — Shakespeare  first,  John  Milton  second.  If 
this  does  not  mean  immortality,  then  where  or  how 
is  immortality  to  be  looked  for  ? 

Alexander  B.  Grosart. 


25> 


ESSAYS  ON  SPENSER. 


CHARACTERISTICS   OF   SPENSER'S    POETRY. 
Bv  Aubrey  de  Vere.  Esq. 

SPENSER,    THE    POET    AND    TEACHER. 
By  Professor  Edward  Dowden,  LL.D. 

CERTAIN  ASPECTS  OF  THE  FAERY  QUEEN,  AND  SOME 

OF  THE  OTHER  POETRY  OF  SPENSER. 

By  the  Rev.  W.  B.  Philpot,  M.A. 

THE  INTROSPECTION  AND  OUTLOOK  OF  SPENSER. 
Bv  THE  Rev.  Willia.m  IIiujiiARi),  Manchester. 


^^1 


I.  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  SPENSER'S  POETRY. 
By  Aubrey  De  Vere,  Esq. 

It  has  been  said  that  Spenser  is  a  poet  for  poets  ;  and 
there  is  truth  in  the  remark,  implying  as  it  does  that 
Ills  poetry  addresses  itself  to  something  above  the  range 
of  merely  human,  as  distinguished  from  imaginative 
sympathies ;  but  it  expresses  only  half  the  truth, 
and  the  other  half  is  commonly  ignored,  if  not  denied. 
Many  portions  of  his  poetry,  on  which  he  must  have 
set  most  value,  are  doubtless  beyond  the  appreciation 
of  readers  who  do  not  combine  an  unusual  thought- 
fulness  with  a  large  imagination.  It  is  also  true  that 
there  is  much  in  human  character  in  which  he  took 
little  of  that  special  interest  which  a  dramatist  takes  ; 
and  no  less  that  much  of  that  familiar  incident  which 
delighted  the  ballad-maker  of  old,  and  constitutes  the 
chief  ingredient  in  narrative  poetry,  was  foreign  to 
Spenser's  purpose.  But  so  far  from  being  true  that 
his  poetry  is  deficient  in  human  interest,  there  is  a 
sense  in  which  he  was  especially  a  poet  of  the 
humanities.  More  than  any  predecessor  he  was  the 
poet  of  beauty  ;  but  he  sought  that  beauty  in  the 
human  relations  even  more  than  in  that  world  of 
ideal  thought  which  was  his  native  land.  This  truth 
I.  17 


258      '  CJIARACTERISTICS  OF 

seems  little  recognised,  and  is  yet  momentous  if  we 
would  understand  Spenser.  Spenser  was  a  great 
thinker,  but  he  seldom  writes  in  a  speculative  vein  ; 
and  deep  and  sound  as  was  his  best  philosophy,  he 
knew  that  poetry  must  express  it  in  a  strain  "  simple, 
sensuous,  and  impassioned,"  or  not  at  all.  No  one 
was  more  familiar  with  forest  scenery,  or  with  the 
charm  of  mead  and  meadow  and  river-bank  ;  but  he 
left  it  for  poets  of  a  later  age  to  find  in  natural 
description  the  chief  sphere  for  the  exercise  of  their 
faculties.  He  lived  too  near  the  chivalrous  age  of 
action  and  passion  to  find  in  aught,  save  man,  the 
chief  subject  for  the  exercise  of  his  genius.  He 
stood  between  those  ages  in  which  knightly  deeds  had 
shared  with  spiritual  contemplation  the  reverence  of 
mankind,  and  that  later  age  in  which  activities  yet 
more  intense,  but  less  nobly  balanced,  addressed  them- 
selves to  political  ambitions,  to  polemical  controversies, 
to  the  discovery  and  the  ruthless  subjugation  of  races 
newly  found  and  discovered,  but  to  be  degraded.  In 
its  newly  awakened  energies  he  took  an  interest.  He 
had  given  instruction  to  statesmen,  and  he  had  listened 
to  Raleigh  when  the  "shepherd  of  the  ocean"  sat 
beside  him  at  Kilcolman  Castle,  and  narrated  his 
adventures  in  the  Western  Wonderland.  But  there 
were  enterprises  that  interested  him  more  than  these  ; 
and  in  them,  what  he  valued  most,  was  the  emblematic 
illustration  of  human  nature.  The  world  which,  as  it*^ 
receded,  kissed  hands  to  him  alone,  had  for  him  more 
charm  than  the  world  that  proffered  her  ungarnered 
sjx)ils  to  the  new  settlers.  The  clarion  voice  from  fields 
where  the  knights  of  old  had  sought  honour  only,  was 


SPENSER'S  POETRY.  259 

more  to  him  than  the  clamours  of  sectarian  dispute,  or 
the  clash  of  swords  directed  by  that  Macchiavcllian 
policy  which  in  nearly  all  countries  had  taken  the 
place  of  mediaeval  statesmanship.  And  thus  the  first 
poet  of  tlie  new  era  was  yet  more  emphatically  the 
last  poet  of  the  old — at  once  the  morning  star  of 
England's  later,  and  the  evening  star  of  her  earlier 
literature.  The  associate  of  Leicester  and  Burleigh 
and  Essex  sang  of  Paladins  in  whom  they  had  no 
belief,  and  of  embodied  Virtues  in  which  they  had  no 
part.  He  kept  his  higher  genius  for  the  celebration  of 
a  wonder-world  gone  by.  That  world,  too,  was  a  world 
of  men  and  women  ;  but  those  among  them  in  whom 
the  poet  intended  us  to  be  interested  were  by  necessity 
beings  over  whom  the  "Ages  of  Faith"  had  cast  a 
spiritual  gleam.  It  was  humanity  that  Spenser  sang 
in  the  main,  but  it  was  an  ideal  humanity.  By  some 
this  will  be  regarded  as  dispraise,  and  supposed  to 
imply  a  charge  of  unreality.  Spenser  might  have  re- 
torted that  charge.  He  saw  habitually  in  humanitj-, 
notwithstanding  the  Fall,  the  remains  of  its  "  original 
brightness "  ;  and  for  him  the  unreality  would  have 
consisted  in  hiding  what  he  saw.  He  saw,  resting  on 
the  whole  of  God's  creation,  a  remnant  of  the  Divine 
beauty,  impressed  upon  it  from  the  face  of  Him  who, 
when  it  came  from  his  hand,  had  pronounced  it  "  very 
good  "  ;  and  what  he  saw  as  a  man,  he  confessed  as  a 
poet.  He  "was  not  disobedient  to  the  heavenly  vision," 
though  he  sometimes  gazed  on  vulgar  prosperities  "  with 
a  dazzled  eye." 

There  are — and  we  are  bound  not  to  conceal  the  fact 
— serious  blots  upon   Spenser's  poetry,  but   these    are 


26o  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

obviously  unhappy  inconsistencies  when  compared  with 
its  immense  merits,  moral  as  well  as  imaginative ; 
nor  is  there  any  poet  in  whom  it  is  more  easy  to 
discriminate  between  the  evil  which  is  accidental, 
and  the  good  which  is  essential.  Where  Spenser  is 
himself,  the  greatness  of  his  ideal  hangs  around  his 
poetry  like  the  halo  round  the  head  of  a  saint.  His 
poetry  has  that  gift  without  which  all  others,  even 
that  of  imagination  itself,  leaves  it  but  a  maimed  and 
truncated  thing — a  torso  without  a  head.  It  has  a  soul. 
In  this  respect  Spenser  was  as  like  Tasso  as  he  was 
unlike  Ariosto,  whom  he  too  often  imitated,  but  from 
whom  he  derived  little  save  harm.  It  is  noteworthy 
that  Shelley,  who  admired  Spenser  almost  as  much  as 
Wordsworth  and  Southey  did,  expressed  himself  in 
disparaging  terms  of  Ariosto  ;  while  Byron,  who  was 
a  great  reader  of  Ariosto,  gave  back  the  volumes  of 
Spenser  which  Leigh  Hunt  had  urged  him  to  peruse, 
with  no  remark  except  "  I  can  make  nothing  of  him." 

The  magniiicent  ideal  design  on  which  Spenser 
founded  his  Faery  Queen,  and  with  which  we  are 
made  acquainted  by  his  letter  to  Sir  Walter  Raleigh, 
was  one  which  dedicated  itself  preeminently  to  the 
exaltation  of  humanity.  His  aim  was  "  to  strengthen 
man  by  his  own  mind "  ;  teaching  him  to  submit  that 
mind  and  its  labours  to  the  regimen  of  those  twelve 
great  Virtues  which,  according  to  the  teaching  of  an- 
tiquity, preside  like  tutelary  guardians  over  all  social 
politics.  Each  of  the  twelve  Books  was  intended  to 
celebrate  the  triumph  of  one  of  these  Virtues.  The 
Faery  Queen,  "  Gloriana,"  an  emblem  of  that  glory 
which  Spenser  accounted  Virtue's  earthly  reward,  held 


SPENSER' S  POETR  V.  26 1 

annually  her  feast  for  twelve  clays,  on  each  of  which 
she  sent  forth,  at  the  prayer  of  some  sufferer,  whether 
of  high  or  low  degree,  one  of  her  knights  to  redress 
the  wrong.  Thus  to  vanquish  all  evil  by  simply 
making  Virtue  meet  Wrong  face  to  face,  and  strike 
it  down, — the  great  idea  at  the  heart  of  chivalry, 
— was  a  noble  conception  ;  and  with  that  conception 
the  patriotic  poet  had  entwined  his  country's  great 
national  tradition,  that  of  Prince  Arthur,  who  had 
— while  still  a  youth — seen  the  Faery  Queen  in  a 
vision,  and  become  enamoured  of  her.  He  wanders 
over  Faery  Land  in  search  of  her,  and  coming  across 
the  path  of  her  twelve  knights  in  their  several  enter- 
prises, ministers  aid  to  each  in  turn. 

Such  a  poem  could  never  have  been  conceived  by 
one  who  had  been  rendered  indifferent  to  human 
interests  through  an  exclusive  devotion  to  ideal  Beauty 
or  abstract  Truth.  Embodied  Vices  are  but  abstrac- 
tions, and  do  not  constitute  human  characters,  because 
the  Vices  are  themselves  but  accidents  of  human 
nature  when  disnatured.  It  is  otherwise  with  the 
Virtues  :  they  belong  to  the  essence  of  human  nature  ; 
and  in  a  large  measure  they  create  by  the  predomi- 
nance now  of  this  virtue,  now  of  that,  the  different 
types  of  human  character,  each  type  drawing  to  itself 
by  a  gradual  accretion  the  subordinate  qualities  most 
in  harmony  with  that  fundamental  virtue.  A  true 
poets  knowledge  of  human  character  is  thus  in  a  large 
measure  the  result  of  a  moral  insight  which  sees  both  its 
intellectual  and  practical  development  enclosed  within 
their  moral  germ,  like  the  tree  within  the  seed  :  though 
it  is  by  a  very  diff"erent  faculty — viz.,  observation — that 


262  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

he  is  enabled  to  realize  his  knowledge  and  delineate  that 
character.  Where  the  conception  of  character  is  a  true 
one,  that  truthfulness  stands  attested  by  its  consistency, 
the  different  qualities  which  compose  that  character 
coalescing  into  a  perfect  whole,  alike  when  they  possess 
an  obvious  resemblance  to  each  other,  and  when, 
though  unlike,  they  are  supplemental  to  each  other. 
Let  us  illustrate  this  by  three  of  Spenser's  favourite 
characters.  Belphccbe  is  his  great  type  of  Purity,  as 
her  twin  sister  Amoret  is  of  Love.  Britomart  is  as 
eminently  a  type  of  Purity  as  Belphosbe,  but  notwith- 
standing, she  is  an  essentially  different  character  ;  and 
while  Belphcebe  glides  like  a  quivered  Dian  through  the 
forests,  and  sends  shaft  on  shaft  after  the  flying  deer, 
Britomart  cannot  be  contented  except  when  she  rides 
forth  on  heroic  enterprise.  Amoret,  Belphcebe's  sister, 
is  equally  unlike  both  :  she  can  love  only,  love  always, 
endure  all  things  for  love,  and  love  but  one.  The 
woodland  sport  and  the  war  field  are  alike  alien  to  her. 
Britomart,  who  unites  both  those  sister  types  of  char- 
acter, loves  as  ardently  as  Amoret,  but  she  cannot,  like 
her,  love  only  ;  her  life  must  be  a  life  of  arduous  action 
and  sustained  endeavour,  and  while  these  are  with  her 
she  is  contented  alike  in  the  presence  or  absence  of  her 
lover.  The  reason  of  this  heart-freedom  in  the  midst 
of  heart-thraldom  is  that  Britomart  is  predominantly  a 
being  of  Imagination.  She  falls  in  love  with  y\rtegall 
before  she  has  ever  met  him,  having  but  seen  a 
vision  of  him  in  Merlin's  magic  glass  (Book  II L, 
canto  ii.,  stanza  24).  In)r  a  time  she  pines  away, 
but  strength  and  gladness  return  to  her  in  the  midst 
of    heroic   achievement.      At    last  she  meets  Artegall 


u 


SPENSER' S  POETRY.  263 

jousting  amid  the  other  knights  :  she  does  not  re- 
cognize him,  but  engages  with  him  in  fight  and 
wins  the  victory  (Book  IV.,  canto  iv.).  Here  there  is 
a  clear  conception  of  character,  and  if  that  conception 
is  not  appreciated  the  fault  is  with  the  reader,  not 
the  poet.  He  had  himself  interpreted  Britomart,  and 
her  unintended  victory  : — 

Unlucky  mayd  to  seek  him  far  and  wide, 
Whom,  when  he  was  unto  herself  most  nie, 
She  through  his  late  disguisement  could  him  not  descrie  ! 

It  is  long  before  Belphoebe  can  be  brought  to  return 
her  lover's  affection.  Neither  her  heart  nor  her  Imagi- 
nation stands  in  need  of  love.  The  woodland  ways 
suffice  for  her  ;  and  when  she  loves,  her  love  is  but 
compassion.  This  is  true  to  human  nature :  such 
boundless  activities  as  Bclphajbe  rejoiced  in  are  the 
aptest  type  of  that  redundant  vitality,  both  moral  and 
material,  which  suffices  for  itself,  which  can  spend  its 
energies  for  ever  without  a  return,  and  which  needs  no 
other  support  than  its  own  inherent  strength  and  wave- 
like elasticity. 

This  triple  delineation  of  character  is  not  the  less 
lifelike  because  it  is  intended  to  imply  a  philosophic 
truth — viz.,  that  the  highest  purity  is  capable  of  en- 
gendering the  most  passionate  devotion  ;  and  that  an 
affection  at  once  the  most  devoted  and  the  most  ideal 
is  that  which  intensifies,  not  weakens,  the  active  powers. 

VVe  need  go  no  further  than  the  first  book  of 
the  Faety  Queen  for  a  proof  that  Spenser  could 
illustrate  human  nature  as  well  as  allegorise  the 
Passions  ;  for  its  heroine,  Una.  is  one  of  the  noblest 
contributions    which    poetry,    whether    of    ancient    or 


264  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

modern  times,  has  made  to  its  great  picture  gallery  of 
character.  As  long  as  Homer's  Andromache  and 
Nausicaa,  Chaucer's  Cecilia,  Griselda,  and  Constance, 
the  Imogen  of  Shakespeare,  or  the  Beatrice  of  Dante, 
are  remembered,  so  long  will  Una  hold  her  place 
among  them.  One  of  the  most  noteworthy  things  in 
this  character  is  the  circumstance  that  so  few  elements 
suffice  to  invest  it  with  an  entire  completeness.  What 
arc  those  elements }  Truth,  Reverence,  Tenderness, 
Humility.  It  is  that  conception  of  character,  at  once 
Christian  and  womanly,  which  belongs  to  the  earlier 
Italian  poetry  more  than  to  that  of  other  nations,  or 
of  later  times,  in  which  the  woman  is  so  often  lost 
in  the  Goddess  or  the  Syren.  Una's  life  is  spent 
in  the  discharge  of  one  great  duty — the  deliverance 
of  her  parents  from  thrall.  In  her  simplicity  she 
reposes  an  entire  trust  in  the  youthful  knight  who, 
at  Queen  Gloriana's  conmiand,  has  undertaken  the 
enterprise,  and  with  whom  she  tr^ivels  alone  through 
wood  and  wild,  gladly  repaying  his  love  with  hers,  but 
never  shaken  in  her  devotion  to  her  parents  far  away. 
He  forsakes  her,  persuaded  through  the  spells  of  the 
enchanter  Archimago  that  she  is  false.  She  wonders, 
and  she  mourns  ;  but  the  wound  of  an  insulted  love  is 
not  exasperated  by  self-love,  and  therefore  it  heals. 
She  is  too  humble  to  be  humiliated  ;  and  when  she 
learns  that  he  has  fallen  under  the  thraldom  of  the 
wicked  witch  Duessa,  she  roams  over  the  world  in 
the  hope  of  delivering  him  who  had  vowed  to  be  her 
deliverer.  The  milk-white  Iamb  which  she  "  led  in 
a  line "  as  she  rode,  and  the  lion  which  emerged 
from   the  woods    to   become  her   protector,  may  have 


U 


SPENSER'S  POETRY.  265 

suggested  the  lines  in  which  Wordsworth  illustrates  the 

chivalrous  age  : — 

The  lamb  is  couchant  at  the  lion's  side  ; 
And  near  the  flame-eyed  eagle  sits  the  dove. 

The    purity   of    Una,   unlike   that  of    Belphoebe  or 

Britomart,  has  culminated  in  sanctity,  and  is  symbolized 

by  that   veil,  on   the  rare  removal  of  which  her  face 

sends  forth  a  divine  radiance.      It  is  this  sanctity  which 

overawes  the  merry  wood-gods  ;  nor  can  it  be  regarded 

as   less  than   a  serious  blemish  in   the  poem  that  the 

same  high  spell  should  not  have  overawed  all  besides. 

They,  in  compassion  of  her  tender  youth, 
And  wonder  of  her  beautie  soverayne, 
Are  wonne  with  pitty  and  unwonted  ruth  ; 
And  all  prostrate  upon  the  lowly  playne, 
Doe  kiss  her  feete,  and  fawne  on  her  with  countenance  fayne. 

Their  harts  she  guesseth  by  their  humble  guise, 
And  yields  her  to  extremity  of  time  : 
So  from  the  ground  she  fearless  doth  arise, 
And  walketh  forth  without  suspect  of  crime  ; 
They  all  as  glad  as  birdes  of  joyous  pryme, 
Thence  lead  her  forth,  about  her  dancing  round, 
Shouting  and  singing  all  a  shepherds  ryme, 
And  with  green  branches  strewing  all  the  ground, 
Do  worship  her  as  queen  with  olive  garland  crowned. 

(Book  I.,  canto  vi.,  stanza  13.) 

Una  is  as  brave  as  she  is  meek  ;  and  it  is  her  timely 
courage  that  delivers  her  knight  after  his  restoration  to 
her.  When  he  is  on  the  point  of  yielding  to  the  spells 
of  Despair,  that  most  powerful  of  all  Spenser's  imper- 
sonations, at  the  moment  when 

his  hand  did  quake, 
And  tremble,  like  a  leaf  of  aspen  greene, 
And  troubled  blood  through  his  pale  face  was  seen 
To  come  and  go  with  tidings  from  the  heart, 
As  it  a  running  messenger  had  been, 


266  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

she  snatches  the  dagger  from  his  hand,  and  breaks  the 
enchantment.  Slie  leads  him  to  the  House  of  HoHness, 
where,  by  goodly  discipline,  as  well  as  a  fuller  initiation 
into  the  Faith,  the  knight  is  rendered  fit  for  his  great 
enterprise  ;  and  she  does  not  shrink  from  a  spiritual 
penance  greater  than  his  : — 

His  own  deere  Una  hearing'  evermore 
His  rueful  shriekes  and  gronings,  often  tore 
Her  guiltless  garments  and  her  golden  heare, 
For  pitty  of  his  payne  and  anguish  sore  ; 
Yet  all  with  patience  wisely  did  she  beare, 
For  well  she  wist  his  cryme  could  els  be  never  cleere. 

He  slays  the  dragon  ;  in  the  palace  of  Una's  rescued 
parents  the  wedding-feast  is  held  ;  and  when  she,  the 
emblem  of  Truth  in  its  sacred  unity, 

had  layd  her  mourneful  stole  aside, 
And  widow-like  sad  wimple  throwne  away. 
Wherewith  her  heavenly  bcautie  she  did  hide, 

the  radiance  then  revealed  is  such  that  even  the  Red 
Cross  Knight 

Did  wonder  niucli  at  her  celestial  sight; 
Oft  had  he  secne  her  faire,  but  never  so  faire  dight. 

If  this  be  ideal  poetry,  it  owes  notwithstanding  half 
its  pathos  to  its  reality.  To  claim  for  the  poet  of  Faery 
Land  the  title  of  a  poet  of  the  humanities  is  not,  of 
course,  to  make  that  claim  for  him  in  the  same  sense 
as  it  is  to  be  made  for  Chaucer,  who  had  a  more  vivid 
knowledge  of  character  as  character  is  learned  from  life, 
and  a  keener  relish  for  all  that  gives  animation  to 
life.  Still  less  can  such  a  comparison  be  made  between 
Spenser  and  Shakespeare,  that  "  myriad-minded  man  " 
to  whom  human  character,  with  all  its  varieties,  har- 
monies, and  contrasts,  presented  an  ever-changing  world 


SPENSER'S  POETRY.  267 

of  impassioned  interest,  irrespectively  of  its  moral 
significance,  and  one  on  which  his  mind  rested  as  the 
eye  of  a  great  painter  rests  on  the  passions  of  a  sky 
shaken  by  thunderstorm.  But  compared  with  any 
of  the  Italian  poets,  the  French,  or  the  English  of  the 
second  order,  the  fair  countenance  of  humanity  was 
that  on  which  his  genius  chiefly  fixed  its  gaze.  No 
doubt  that  humanity  was  not,  like  Homer's,  humanity 
as  it  came  from  the  hand  of  nature.  It  was  one  which, 
though  not  conventionalized  by  the  fashions  of  modern 
times,  yet  was  seen  through  the  coloured  mists  of  a 
chivalric  imagination.  Even  the  most  poetic  costume 
is  costume  still  ;  but  the  romances  of  chivalry  which 
Ariosto.  the  poet  of  a  land  in  which  chivalry  had  never 
flourished,  had  read  in  a  spirit  of  mockery,  were  realities 
to  the  great  northern  poet,  and  his  sympathy  with 
them  imparted  reality  to  that  poem  which  reproduced 
and  transfigured  them. 

It  may  be  well  to  advert  to  another  opinion  often 
put  forward  respecting  Spenser,  but  which  seems 
more  true  on  the  surface  than  in  the  depths,  and 
requires  for  its  correction  the  statement  of  a  converse 
truth,  and  one  more  important.  Spenser  has  been 
claimed  by  many  as  in  England  the  firstfruits  of  the 
"  Renais.sance."  An  important  distinction  is  here  to  be 
made.  He  was  a  man  of  the  Renaissance,  but  he  was 
in  the  main  a  poet  of  the  "  olden  time."  He  lived  in 
the  reign  of  Oucen  Elizabeth,  but  his  genius  lived,  even 
more  decisively  than  that  of  Chaucer,  in  the  days  of 
Oucen  rhilippa,  and  was  familiar  with  many  a  lonelier 
nook  in  the  woodlands  of  Woodstock  than  the  earlier 
poet,  who  .sat  amid   its  white-thorns  and  daisies,  had 


268  CHARACTERISTICS  01 

made  himself  familiar  with.      His  heart  was  not  with 
Raleigh  or  Leicester  when  he  sang  thus  : — 

O  goodly  usage  of  those  antique  tymes, 

In  whicli  the  sword  was  servaunt  unto  right ; 

When  not  for  malice  and  contentious  crymes, 

But  all  for  prayse,  and  proofe  of  manly  might, 

The  martiall  brood  accustomed  to  fight : 

Then  honour  was  the  meed  of  victory, 

And  yet  the  vanquished  had  no  dcspight. 

(Book  III.,  canto  i.,  stanza  13.) 

It  was  not  for  its  picturesque  aspects  only,  but  its 
moral  import,  that  Spenser  loved  chivalry  : — 

O  goodly  golden  chayne,  wherewith  yfere 
The  vertues  linked  ai'e  in  lovely  wise  ; 
And  noble  mindes  of  yore  allyed  were 
In  brave  poursuit  of  chevalrous  emprize. 
That  none  did  others  safety  despize, 
Nor  aid  envy  to  him  in  need  that  stands. 
But  friendly  each  did  others  praise  devise. 

(P.ook  I.,  canto  ix.,  stanza  i.) 

The   same    tribute    is   paid    in    Book    IV.,   canto  viii., 
stanza    ^O  el  seq.: — 

But  antique  age  yet  in  the  infancy 
Of  tyme  did  live  then  like  an  innocent. 
In  simple  truth  and  blameless  chastitie, 
Ne  then  of  guile  had  made  experiment ; 
But  voide  of  vile  and  treacherous  intent. 
Held  vertue  for  herself  in  soveraine  awe  : 
Then  loyall  love  had  royal  regiment. 

So  again  in  Book  V.,  canto  xi.,  stanza  56  : — 

Knights  ought  be  true  ;   and  truth  is  one  in  all ; 
Of  all  things  to  dissemble  fouly  may  befall. 

Absolutely  unlike  that  of  the  Renaissance  was 
Spenser's  idea  of  Woman.  In  it  Womanhood  was  not 
condemned  to  have  her  portion  cither  in  the  torrid  zone 
or  the  arctic  zone  of  human  character — amid  the  burninj? 


SPENSER'S  POETRY.  269 

sands  roamed  over  by  ravening  passions,  or  in  the 
flowerlcss  region  oi  u  frigid  scientific  intelligence.  It 
bloomed  in  the  temperate  region  of  serene  affections, 
lighted  by  the  sun  of  Christian  faith,  and  freshened  by 
the  airs  of  human  sympathy. 

Let  the  most  careless  reader  turn  to  that  passage — 
unsurpassed,  even  b>-  Spenser,  elsewhere — in  which  the 
Temple  of  Venus  is  described,  and  where  Amoret  sits 
in  the  lap  of  Womanhood.  On  the  steps  of  Woman- 
hood's throne  are  placed  "  goodly  Shamefastness,"  and 
*'  Cheerefulness," 

Whose  eyes,  like  twinklin.cf  stars  in  evening-  cleare, 
Were  decked  with  smiles  ; 

and  "  sober  Modestie,"  and  "  comely  Curtesie  "  ;  and 
not  far  off 

Soft  Silence  and  submiss  Obedience. 

Such  a  picture  does  not  remind  us  of  a  cinque  ccnio 
Milanese  Lady,  by  Leonardo,  with  her  syren  grace  and 
furtive  smile,  any  more  than  of  the  beauties  of  Count 
Gramont's  time,  or  the  "  fast  "  self-assertion  of  a  later 
age.  This  is  not  the  Renaissance  :  it  is  the  mcdia:val 
time.      Let  us  give  honour  where  honour  is  due. 

Such  were  the  characters  to  which  Spenser's  genius 
attached  itself — that  genius  to  which  wc  owe  all  that 
wc  love  and  remember  in  his  works.  He  wrote  compli- 
mentary verses  to  the  age,  and  its  favourites,  besides  ; 
but  it  is  not  by  such  that  he  is  to  be  estimated.  In 
such  he  takes  place  with  his  neighbours.  If,  in  com- 
paring man  with  man,  we  measure  their  heights  by 
their  ankles,  not  their  heads,  'there  is  little  to  choose 
between  them.    St.  Bernard  and  the  Crusaders  lived  on  in 


270  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

Spenser's  true  poetry.  He  himself  lived  much  with  men 
of  a  very  different  sort,  till  a  fortunate  exile  set  him  free  ; 
and  in  some  part  he  followed  their  ways.  For  example, 
Spenser  must  have  caught  the  adventurous  spirit  of 
his  age,  or  he  would  not  have  taken  up  his  abode  at 
Kilcolman,  one  of  the  "  Great  Desmond's  "  confiscated 
castles,  rather  than  amid  the  "  learned  bowers "  of 
Cambridge,  or  by  the  quiet  banks  of  the  Thames, 
"  where  whilome  wont  the  Templar  knights  to  bide," 
and  whose  wave  was  less  likely  to  be  stained  by  blood 
than  that  "  Mulla "  which  he  has  immortalized.  In 
his  political  views  he  must  have  imbibed  from  a  ruth- 
less time,  and  reckless  associates,  a  spirit  wholly  alien 
from  his  own  benign  and  sympathetic  nature,  or  in  his 
sagacious  but  pitiless  state-paper  on  Ireland  he  would 
not  have  recommended  courses  as  unrelenting  as  those 
which  later  drove  him  from  his  blazing  home.  It 
was,  doubtless,  also  from  a  time  in  which  controversial 
weapons  were  brandished  in  and  out  of  place,  that  he 
learned  to  sour  his  youthful  pastorals  by  declamations 
against  the  shepherds  on  the  margin  of  the  Tyber, 
though  at  a  maturer  age  he  admitted  that  the  English 
monasteries,  and  many  a  roofless  church,  had  suffered 
wrong  from  the  "  Blatant  Beast,"  Calumny  : — 

From  thence  into  the  sacred  church  he  broke, 

And  robbed  the  chancell,  and  the  deskcs  down  tlirew, 

And  altars  fouled,  and  blasphemy  spoke, 

And  the  images,  for  all  their  goodly  hew, 

Did  cast  to  ground,  whilest  none  was  them  to  rew. 

(Book  v.,  canto  x.,  st.  25.) 

Neither  did  he  wholly  escape  the  lowering  influences 
of  a  political  time  when  despotic  princes  and  their 
favourites  were  worshipped.      That   worship,    which   in 


SPENSER' S  POETR  V.  27 1 

m:^ny  proceeded  from  obsequious  self-interest,  was 
probably  in  Spenser  little  more  than  an  imaginative 
prodigality  of  the  lo}'al  instinct  bequeathed  by  past 
ages,  but  attaching  itself,  for  want  of  a  better  invest- 
ment, to  objects  they  would  not  have  revered.  Life, 
political  and  civil,  "  in  all  its  equipage,"  was  to  him  a 
splendid  pageant,  and  seeing  behind  all  things  the 
goodly  "  idea "  which  they  symbolized,  a  royal  court 
must  have  appeared  in  his  eyes  "  the  great  School- 
maistresse  of  all  Courtesy,"  and  as  such  to  be  venerated. 
He  was  not  one  to  waste  a  life  climbing  official  palace 
stairs  ;  but  he  spent  time  enough  on  such  dreary 
pastimes  to  have  produced  several  books  of  his  im- 
mortal poem  ;  and  the  memorial  of  that  time  remains 
in  the  well-known  lines — 

Full  little  know'st  thou  that  hast  not  tried, 
What  hell  it  is,  etc. 

In  one  respect,  however,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the 
Renaissance  had  assisted  Spenser:  it  had  imparted  to 
him  an  acquaintance  with  classical,  and  especially  with 
mythological  lore,  such  as  no  mediaeval  writer  possessed. 
His  own  profound  sense  of  beauty  made  him  fully 
appreciate  what  was  thus  presented  to  him  ;  and 
whereas  mediaeval  writers  had  often  dealt  with  antiquil)- 
as  media.'val  painters  had  done,  placing  the  head  of  a 
saint  upon  the  neck  of  a  Hebe  or  a  Mars,  he  entered 
into  its  spirit  in  an  ampler  manner  than  any  of  his 
predecessors,  or  than  any  southern  poet.  He  had 
learned  much  from  ancient  philosophy,  especially 
that  of  the  Academy,  to  which  his  poetry  was  in- 
debted for  the  great  Platonic  "  ideas,"  a  swan-flight 
of  which  is  always  floating  over  his  meads  and  vales. 


272  '  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

and  for  those  lofty  aspirations  which  are  the  hfe  and 
sustaining  spirit  of  his  poetry.  The  degree  in  which 
the  sixteenth  century  was  animated  by  new  discoveries, 
poHtical  changes,  and  intellectual  controversies,  must 
also  have  had  an  awakening  effect  on  his  genius.  But 
they  also,  and  in  a  lamentable  degree,  drew  that 
genius  aside  from  what  would  have  been  its  natural 
walk.  In  the  Diviiia  Commedia  the  middle  ages 
had  bequeathed  to  all  time,  not  an  epic,  as  it  has 
sometimes  been  called,  yet  a  mystical  poem,  incom- 
parably the  highest  flight  of  poetry  since  the  volume 
of  the  Hebrew  prophets  was  closed.  But  the  great 
romantic  poem  of  the  middle  ages  was  never  written, 
and  the  opportunity  is  lost.  Spenser  was  the  man  to 
have  written  it ;  but  even  if  the  Faery  Queen  had  been 
finished,  it  would  not  have  wholly  proved  that  work. 
It  contains  much  that  belongs  to  such  a  theme :  it 
includes  much  that  is  alien  to  it  :  and — a  matter  yet 
more  to  be  regretted — it  misses  much  that  is  essential 
to  it  Spenser  lived  near  enough  to  the  middle  ages 
to  have  understood  them  in  a  more  profoundly  sympa- 
thetic way  than  is  possible  to  us.  His  imagination  and 
his  affections  followed  the  mediaeval  type.  All  that 
he  saw  was  to  him  the  emblem  of  things  unseen  ;  the 
material  world  thus  became  the  sacrament  of  a  spiritual 
world,  and  the  earthly  life  a  betrothal  to  a  life  beyond 
the  grave.  Spenser's  moral  being  was  also  to  a  large 
extent  mediaeval  in  character,  notwithstanding  the 
Puritan  teaching  he  had  imbibed  in  youth,  and  the 
prejudices  which  he  shared  with  a  kindred  nature. 
Sir  Philip  Sydney,  in  whom  they  must  also  have  been 
accidental.     Had   Spenser  been    a  mediaeval  poet,  he 


SPENSER'S  POETRY.  273 

would  have  ^iven  us  on  a  large  scale,  and  fitly  combined, 
such  illustration  of  things  spiritual,  seen  from  the  poetic 
point  of  view,  as  Chaucer's  enchanting  "  Legend  of 
St.  Cecilia"  has  given  us  in  a  fragmentary  form.  In 
the  early  chronicles  he  would  also  have  found  large 
materials  ;  for  even  the  minuter  events  of  the  middle 
ages  must  have  then  retained  a  significance  lost  for 
us.  Still  more  full  of  meaning  must  the  chivalrous 
romances  have  then  been.  He  would  have  selected 
and  combined  their  treasures,  and  become  their  great 
poetic  representative,  as  Homer,  according  to  one  of  the 
Homeric  theories,  was  the  representative  of  number- 
less bards  whose  minstrelsies  had  delighted  the  youth 
of  Greece.  Spenser  would  thus,  too,  have  found  a 
far  ampler  field  for  that  unconscious  symbolism  which 
belongs  to  high  poetr)',  and  especially  to  his  ;  and  he 
would  not  have  been  driven  upon  those  artificial 
allegories  which  chill  many  a  page  of  his  verse. 
Symbols  and  allegories,  though  often  confounded,  are 
wholly  different  in  character.  Symbols  have  a  real, 
and  allegories  but  an  arbitrary  existence.  All  things 
beautiful  and  excellent  are  symbols  of  an  excellence 
analogous  to  them,  but  ranged  higher  in  Nature's  scale. 
Allegories  are  abstractions  of  the  understanding  and 
fancy  ;  and  it  is  the  especial  function  of  imagination 
and  pa.ssion,  not  by  any  means  to  pass  by  deep  thoughts, 
which  are  their  most  strengthening  nourishment,  but 
to  tak-e  them  out  of  the  region  of  the  abstract,  which  is 
that  of  science,  not  of  poetrj',  and  present  them  to  our 
sympathies  in  the  form  of  the  concrete,  investing  them 
with  life— its  breath,  its  blood,  and  its  motion. 

It  was  for  the  human  side  of  a  great  mediaeval  theme 
I.  18 


274  CHARA  CTERISTICS  OF 

that     Spenser's     especial    characteristics    would     have 
preeminently  qualified  him,  as  it  was  the  supernatural 
side    that     challenged     most     the     genius     of    Dante. 
He   had  a  special  gift  for  illustrating  the  offices  and 
relationships  of  human  life.    For  such  illustration  his  age 
was  unsuited.     The  world  was  passing  through  one  of 
those  transitional  periods,  so  irregular  in  their  nature, 
and  made  up  of  elements  so  imperfectly  combined,  that 
a  picture   of  national    life   and   the   civilization   of  an 
opoch,  attempted  while  the  confusion  lasts,  must  needs 
be  deficient  in  harmony.      The  world  has  other  periods 
in    which     society    has    adjusted    itself,    and    blended 
its  elements  into  a    consistent   whole  ;    in    which    the 
kaleidoscope     has     been     turned     round    until    it  has 
reached  that  point  at  which  its  contents  emerge  from 
disorder,  and  fling  themselves  into  a  pattern  ;    and  to 
such  a  period  we  may    even    now   be    on     our     way. 
One  of  these  periods  was  that  sung    by    Homer  :    in 
it  the  best  characters,  and  the  worst,  had  a  something 
in     common  ;    and    hence    the    admirable    consistency 
of   that    social    picture    presented    by    him.     Another 
such     period     was    exemplified    by   the    middle    ages, 
which,  abundant   as   they  were   in    extremes   of  good 
and    of   evil,    held    notwithstanding     certain    common 
characteristics  admitted  alike  by  those  who  designate 
them   "  the   ages  of  Faith,"  and    those   who    call  them 
"  the  dark  ages."      Spenser's  poem  would  doubtless  have 
illustrated  both  the  evil  and  the  good  in  them,  but  there 
would  have  been  more  light  than  gloom  in  his  picture. 
His  Faery  g//^^;/j- magnificent  aim — that  of  setting  forth 
those  great  Virtues  which  are  in   fact  so  many  great 
Truths    embodied    in   corresponding  affections — would 


SPENSER'S  POETRY.  275 

have  thus  been  harmoniously  rcahscd.  That  beauty, 
which  ever  haunted  Spenser's  mind,  would  in  such  a 
theme  have  shone  forth  as  a  thing  inherent  in  the 
conditions  of  all  true  social  existence  even  here  below. 
Whatever  is  majestic  in  age,  grave  in  authority,  joyous 
and  bright  in  boyhood  or  maidenhood,  devout  and 
lovely  in  childhood,  excellent  in  the  life  wedded  or 
unwcdded,  active  or  contemplative,  would  have  been 
found  by  him  amid  the  rich  variety  of  mediaeval  society 
amply  developed  and  harmonised,  though  not  without 
sad  contrasts  of  shortcoming  and  wrong.  Such  a 
picture  would  have  been  to  the  world  "  a  possession 
for  ever." 

The  age  in  which  Spenser  lived  was  one  full  of 
what  may  be  called  anachronisms,  so  inconsistently 
did  it  bring  together  what  it  had  inherited,  and  what 
it  had  produced  and  was  producing.  This  luckless 
incoherency  could  not  but  reflect  itself  in  his  poetry. 
Let  us  take  an  example.  In  the  "  Legend  of  Artegall 
or  Justice"  (Book  V.,  canto  ix.),  we  are  brought  to 
the  Palace  of  Mercilla.  It  is  magnificently  described 
as  the  Temple  of  Justice  :  we  make  our  way  to  the 
throne  on  which  Mercilla  sits,  described  so  nobly 
that  wc  cannot  doubt  that  she  is  herself  the  goddess 
who  holds  the  scales  of  justice  in  this  lower  world. 
Nothing  can  be  subtler  than  the  symbolism,  more 
splendid  than  the  imagery,  more  skilful  than  the 
m.ode  in  which  the  solemn  process  is  carried  on 
before  that  high  tribunal.  It  is  no  more  than  right 
that  the  warder  who  sits  at  the  gate  of  this  palace 
should  be  "  Awe," — 

To  keep  out  s^uyle,  and  malice,  and  despii,'^ht  ; 


2/6 


CHARACTERISTICS  OF 


that  the  great  marshal  in  the  central  hall  should  be 
"  Order  "  \  that  the  cloth  of  gold  which  hangs  "  like 
a  cloud  "  above  the  head  of  the  goddess,  and 

Whose  skirts  wen>  bordered  with  bright  sunny  beames, 
Glisterino-  like  -dd  amongst  the  plights  enrold, 
And  her  "and  there  shooting  forth  silver  streames, 

should  be  sustained   in  the  hands  of  angels  ;  and  that 
at  the  foot  of  the  throne  should  be  placed 
Tust  Dice,  wise  Kunomie,  myld  Eirenc ; 
And  sacred  Reverence  ybornc  of  heavenly  strene. 

The  -rcatcr  is  our  disappointment  when   it  turns  out 
that  though  the  days  described  arc  those  of  the  "  Round 
Table"  the  Goddess  of  Justice  is  the  daughter  of  Anne 
HolcN-n,  and  that  the  queenly  lady  ''of  great  countenance 
and  place  "  who  stands  at  her  bar  for  judgment,  and 
is   successively  convicted  of  immorality,  of  treason,  of 
transgressing    the   law  of  nations,  and    of    murder,    is 
Mary  Oucen   of  Scotland.     This   confusion  grievously 
detracts^  from  the  poetic  effect ;  yet  the  detail  is  worked 
out    with    much    skill,   and    Elizabeth's    reluctance    to 
pronounce  sentence  on  Mary   is  subtly  adumbrated - 
perhaps  also  k:ngland's  surviving  reverence  for  the  Holy 
See  (stanza  ^G).      The  next  canto  (x.)  is  also  full  of 
fine  poetry  ;   but    it  suffers  when  we  have  discovered 
that   it    is   a    covert    and    exaggerated    celebration    of 
the    recent    wars    in     the     Low    Countries,    in    which 
Prince    Arthir!  whom     we    are    more    used    to   asso- 
ciate with  l;^iagcl  and  Lyonnesse,  has  just  achieved 
victories  that    leave    Spain  a  mere  thing  of  the  past. 
This    sad   sacrifice  of  poetry,  however,  was  one  made, 
n.,t  to  interest,  but  mainly  to  a  perverted  enthusiasm, 
,.nd    the    spirit    of   the    age.     In   many  a    man  there 


1/ 


SPENSER' S  POETR  Y.  zy-j 

are  two  men  ;  and  in  the  two  there  is  not  half 
the  strength  there  would  have  been  in  one  only. 
Thus  in  that  great  and  good  man,  Walter  Scott,  we 
find  both  the  Highlander  and  the  Lowlander,  the 
one  delighting  in  the  clan-life,  the  other  toiling  at 
Edinburgh  ;  tlie  one  passionate  for  the  Stuarts,  the 
other  more  than  content  with  the  new  order  of  things. 
This  explains  Spenser  to  us.  In  him  we  find  at 
once  the  poet  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  the  man  of 
the  Renaissance.  If  Spenser  and  the  "  Wizard  of 
the  North  "  had  each  intrenched  himself  in  what  was 
greatest  within  him,  and  discarded  the  rest,  each  would 
have  left  behind  him  a  greater  and  more  homogeneous 
work.  Especially  I  cannot  but  believe  that  those  stains 
on  the  surface  of  Spenser's  poetry  which,  though  not 
snares  to  moral  principle,  are  yet  insults  to  moral  taste, 
and  need  to  be  stepped  over  like  bad  spots  on  a  road, came 
to  him  from  the  coarseness  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived, 
and  to  which  the  great  Elizabethan  drama,  excepting 
in  the  main  Shakespeare,  bears  so  deplorable  a  witness. 
It  is  true  that  in  Chaucer,  and  far  more  in  Boccaccio, 
both  of  them  men  of  the  middle  ages,  there  is  also 
much  to  be  regretted  ;  but  there  is  nothing  of  the  sort 
in  Petrarch  or  Dante  ;  and  in  his  noble  and  refined 
nature  it  is  with  these  Spenser  is  to  be  cla.ssed. 
Chaucer  was  the  early  spring  of  English  literature. 
But  for  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  and  he  barbarism 
bequeathed  by  the  usurpation  of  Henry  ,IV.,  its  later 
spring  also  must  have  had  its  great  poet.  That  poet 
would  have  been  Spenser  if  he  ^had  been  born  at  half 
the  interval,  near  two  centuriea,  between  Chaucer  and 
the  summer  glories  of  Shakespeare. 


278 


CHARACTERISTICS  OF 


It  is  no  detraction  from  the  genius  of  Spenser  to  say 
that  it  partook  the  evil  as  well  as  the  good  of  his  age. 
Most  great  poets  have  done  the  same,  and  sometimes  the 
greatest  the  most ;  for  in  the  largest  degree  they  have 
learned  their  art,  as  children  learn  to  speak— viz,  by 
sympathy  and  imitation,  and  thus  they  do  not  easily 
escape  the  bad  moral  dialects  and  depraved  idioms  of 
their  time.     If  Milton  had  not  lived  in  the  days 

When  pulpit,  drum  ecclesiastic, 
Was  beat  by  list  instead  of  a  stick, 

he  would  not  have  made  the  Almighty  speak  "  like  a 
school  divine,"  and  he  might  have  delineated  a  more 
Christian  and  less  Mahometan  ideal  of  woman  than  is 
suggested  by  the  line 

He  for  God  only  :    she  for  God  in  him. 

He  might   have   bequeathed    us   a   Paradise  Regained 

finer  even  than  his  immortal  Paradise  Lost ;    his  stern 

prophet  rod   might  have  blossomed   like  Aaron's,  and 

diffused   the   fragrance   of  many   a  poem   precious    as 

his  Lyeidas,  and  of  healing  breath  like  his  Comus  ;    nor 

would  his  record  of  the   Fall  have  included  a  passage 

the  irreverence  of  which,  considering  that  he  records  the 

parents  of  the  human  race,  is  not  to  be  excused  by  the 

desire  to  point  a  moral.      Chaucer  also  bears,  for  good 

and  evil   the  marks  of  his  time.     The  good  of  that  time 

is  reflected  in  the  "  christianized  humanity"  of  his  best 

and  least-known  legends,  one  of  which,  "The  Prioress's 

Tale"    has   been    modernised    by  Wordsworth   with   a 

devout  faithfulness  in  striking  contrast  with  Dryden's 

translations  from  the  father-bard.     But  his  age  was  also 


[/ 


SF^NS£Ji'S  POETRY.  279 

one  of  a  moral  latitudinarianism,  to  which  \vc  must  attri- 
bute the  licence  of  some  of  Chaucer's  poems,  bewailed  by 
him  on  his  death-bed.  No  doubt,  in  his  inmost  heart, 
he  loved  best  the  narrow  path  that  leads  to  the  heights; 
but  the  carelessness  of  a  disposition  less  lofty  than 
broad  made  him  indulgent  to  the  "broad-school"  in 
morals  ;  and  English  poetry  has  had  to  pay  tlie  forfeit. 
We  can  onl)  guess  how  many  a  noble  story  "  left 
untold"  might  have  been  ennobled  more  by  the  manly 
genius  that  left  to  us  the  CiDiterbury  Talcs,  but  left 
that  work  unfinished.  Few  of  the  great  poets,  excluding 
those  of  Spain,  seem  to  have  given  to  us  more  than 
fragments  of  what  they  might  have  given. 

Let  us  pass  to  the  pleasanter  part  of  our  subject — 
those  transcendent  merits  of  Spenser  which  admit  no 
dispute.  His  chief  characteristic  is  perhaps  his  sense  of 
beauty  ;  but  with  him  the  beautiful  means  the  Platonic 
"  Fair  and  Good."  The  one  was  not  the  ornament  merely 
of  the  other.  As  oxygen  and  hydrogen  not  only  blend 
in  the  composition  of  water,  but  so  unite  as  to  become 
a  single  substance  as  simple  as  either  gas,  so  in  his 
poetr)'  the  fair  and  the  good  co-exist  as  a  single 
element.  He  is  the  converse  of  ordinar)-  poets.  When 
his  theme  forces  on  him  the  sensational  in  place  of 
the  beautiful,  the  poet  gets  sleepy.  Some  of  his  battles 
admit  of  grand  incidents,  and  he  always  knows  how  to 
make  the  most  of  such  ;  but  where  fight  is  nothing 
more  than  fight,  it  is  to  him  but  a  business  that  has  to 
be  transacted.  Stanza  follows  stanza,  each  but  a  single 
sentence,  the  fifth  line  not  seldpm  an  echo  of  the 
fourth,  the  language  diffuse,  and  the  metre  monotonous, 
the  chief  pause  constantly  recurring  at  the  end  of  the 


28o  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

line.  But  this  is  not  Spenser.  When  he  has  killed 
off  his  man,  he  feels  relieved.  Something  brings 
back  the  beautiful  to  his  theme,  and  the  poet  wakens  : 
his  language  becomes  that  of  a  man  inspired;  every 
epithet  has  its  significance,  every  metrical  change  its 
meaning ;  the  frost  melts,  the  stream  of  melody  flows 
again  ;  and  the  bramble  close  by,  or  the  forest-roof 
far  off,  "  glistens  with  a  livelier  ray.'' 

Sometimes  the  beauty  is  minute,  as —  - 

Two  goodly  trees,  that  faire  did  spred 
Their  arms  abroad,  with  grey  moss  overcast ; 
And  their  greene  leaves  trembling  with  every  blast 
Made  a  calme  shadowe  far  in  compass  round. 

More  often  it  is  touched  with  a  vague  ideal,  as — 

And  low,  where  dawning  day  doth  never  pcepe 
His  dwelling  is  :    there  Tethys  his  wet  bed 
Doth  ever  wash,  and  Cynthia  still  doth  steepe 
In  silver  dew  his  ever-drooping  head  ; 
While  sad  night  over  him  her  mantle  black  doth  spred. 

Sometimes  the  truth  to  nature  seems  a  suggestion 
to  art  such  as  Salvator's  : — 

As  an  aged  tree 
High  growing  on  the  top  of  rocky  clift, 
Whose  heart-strings  with  keepe  Steele  nigh  hewen  be  ; 
The  mighty  trunck  half  rent  with  ragged  rift 
Doth  roll  adoune  the  rocks. 

It  is  singular  how  the  poet's  character  reflects 
itself  in  his  descriptions  of  scenery.  Spenser's  was 
gentle,  and  the  nature  which  he  sings  is  that  which  is 
least  troubled  with  storms,  and  smiles  on  its  admirer. 
He  likes  mountains" best  when  they  keep  their  distance; 
but  he  can  never  be  near  enough  to  the  reedy  river's 


SPEJVSER'  S  POETR  Y.  281 

brim,  or  familiar  enough  with  the  covvsh'ps  on  the  mead. 
Professor  Dowden  finely  remarks,  "  Spenser's  landscape 
possesses  a  portion,  as  it  were,  of  feminine  beaut)" 
("  Heroines  of  Spenser").*  It  is  noteworthy  that  the 
careless  descriptions  incidentally  introduced  into  his 
narratives  are  far  more  true  to  Nature  than  his  more 
elaborate  pictures  of  her,  such  as  "The  Garden  of  Sensual 
Delight,"  Book  II.,  canto  v.,  or  "The  Bower  of  Bliss," 
Book  II.,  canto  xii.  In  the  latter  class  Nature  is  general- 
ized :  we  have  catalogues  of  trees,  not  the  tree  itself ; 
and  the  intellectual  beauty  of  Nature  is  drowned  in  her 
Epicurean  appeal  to  the  sense.  The  passage  last  referred 
to  is  largely  taken  from  Tasso  ;  for  in  those  days  poets 
were  ready  alike  to  borrow  and  to  lend  ;  and  wholesale 
plagiarism  was  neither  concealed  nor  complained  of. 
But  Spenser  was  always  best  when  he  depended  most 
on  his  own  genius.  It  was  his  modesty,  not  his  need, 
that  made  him  borrow.  He  seems  to  have  regarded  it 
as  a  tribute  of  respect. 

Spenser's  exquisite  sense  of  the  beautiful  at  once 
shows  itself  when  he  describes  art  in  any  of  its  forms. 
Nothing  in  the  "  Bower  of  Bliss "  surpasses  the  de- 
scription of  its  ivory  gate  with  the  story  of  Jason, 
Medea,  and  the  Argo  graven  upon  it,  and  that  of 
the  fountain  carved  all  over  with  "  curious  imageree." 
Another  specimen  of  this  excellence  is  his  description 
of  the  Temple  of  Isis,  its  emblematic  sculpture,  and 
its  stately  ministrations  (Book  V.,  canto  vii.J.  In  this 
canto  occurs  a  passage  which  has  been  more  than  once 
imitated   in  modern  poetry.      Britomart  recounts  to  an 

*  The  Cornhill  Magazine,  June  1879. 


282  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

aged  priest  of  the  temple  a  vision  which  has  left  her 
stunned  and  amazed.     The  priest  listens  long — 

Like  to  a  wcake  faint-hearted  man  he  fared 
Throug-h  great  astonishment  of  that  strange  sight ; 
And  with  long  locks  up-standing  stiHy,  stared 
Like  one  adawed  with  some  dreadful  spright ; 
So  filled  with  heavenly  fuiy  thus  he  her  behight. 

He  prophesies  her  future  greatness.  The  reader  of 
Scott's  Lord  of  the  Isles,  and  of  Macaulay's  Prophecy 
of  Capys,  when  they  come  to  the  finest  passage  in  each, 
may  recognise  its  original  here.  The  most  remarkable 
instances,  perhaps,  of  the  mode  in  which  Spenser's 
sense  of  beauty  shows  itself  in  the  conception  of 
pictures  and  statues,  are  those  in  that  mystic  and  philo- 
sophical episode  "The  Garden  of  Adonis"  (Book  III., 
canto  vi.),  the  tapestried  chambers  in  the  "  House  of 
Busyrane  "  (Book  HI,,  canto  xi.),  and  the  "  Maske  of 
Cupid  "  (Book  HI.,  canto  xii.). 

The  gift  of  delineating  beauty  finds  perhaps  its  most 
arduous  triumph  when  exercised  on  the  description  of 
incident,  a  thing  that  passes  successively  from  change 
to  change,  and  not  on  permanent  objects,  which  less 
elude  the  artist's  eye  and  hand.  As  an  example  may 
be  cited  the  striving  of  the  rival  ladies  for  Florimel's 
girdle,  which  will  not  allow  itself  to  be  buckled  around 
the  waist  of  the  fairest  if  upon  her  life  there  rests  even 
the  slightest  stain  (Book  IV.,  canto  v.).  That  poetic 
touch  which  suggested  the  expression  "nihil  tctigit 
quod  non  ornavit,"  moves  over  this  episode  with  a 
light  and  bright  felicity  ;  but  it  partakes  no  less  of  a 
graver  charm,  and  often  blends  subtly  with  that  pathos 
in  which  the  Faery  Queen  so  richly  abounds.    A  touch- 


U 


SPENSER' S  POETR  Y.  283 

ing  example  of  this  is  the  story  of  the  gentle  squire 
who  loves  Bclphcebe.  He  saves  Amoret  ;  and  his 
compassion  for  the  victim  he  has  rescued  half-dead 
from  the  "  salvage  man  "  makes  him  for  a  moment 
seem  to  forget  that  love.  Amoret  lies  on  the  forest- 
Hoor  in  swoon,  when  Belphcebe  arrives  and  finds  him 

From  her  faire  eyes  wiping  the  deawy  wet 
Which  softly  still'd,  and  kissing  them  atweene. 

Bclphoebe  has  not  returned  the  gentle  squire's  devotion 
to  herself,  but  yet  she  regards  his  fidelity  as  her  due,  and 
with  no  words  except  "  Is  this  the  Faith  ?"  she  recoils 
into  the  woods.  He  sees  her  no  more.  He  throws  his 
weapons  away  ;  he  will  speak  to  none  ;  he  hides  himself 
in  the  forest's  gloomiest  nook  ;  his  fair  locks 

He  let  to  g^ow  and  gjiesly  to  concrew 
Uncompt,  uncurled,  and  carelessly  unsted  ; 
»  #  #  ♦  * 

That  like  a  pined  ghost  he  soon  appears. 

When  his  "  deare  lord  "  Prince  Arthur  finds  him,  he 
knows  him  not  ;  and  the  abandoned  one  will  answer 
nothing.  Prince  Arthur  notes  that  "  Belphcebc "  is 
graved  upon  every  tree  ;  but  knows  only  that  the 
forlorn  wretch  before  him  must  have  been  one  of 
gentle  birth.  Help  comes  from  a  tenderer  friend.  A 
turtledove  that  has  lost  her  mate  understands  him 
better,  and  laments  close  beside  him  in  a  strain 

So  sensibly  compyled  that  in  the  same 
Him  seemed  oft  he  heerd  his  ownc  right  name. 

Kach  day  he  shares  with  her  his  woodland  fare,  and  at 

last  binds  around  her  neck  a  jewel 

Shaped  like  a  heart  yet  bleeding  of  the  wound 


284  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

given  to  him  by  Belphcebe.  The  dove  flies  away, 
and  wafts  it  afar  to  the  spot  where  Belphcebe  sits. 
She  recognizes  and  tries  to  recover  it  ;  but  the 
dove,  swerving  ever  as  she  is  about  to  be  caught, 
insensibly  leads  her  through  the  forest  till  they  reach 
the  gentle  squire,  and  then  flies  into  his  hand.  He 
speaks  nothing  ;  it  is  long  before  Belphcebe  recognises 
him,  and  then  it  is  not  by  his  features,  but  by  his 
sorrow, 

That  her  in-bumini,'-  wrath  she  <,Mn  abate, 
And  him  received  againe  to  former  favour's  state. 

Spenser's  dove  may  have  suggested  to  Southey  the 
"green  bird"  which  served  as  guide  to  Thalaba. 

Not  less  subtly  is  beauty  blended  with  sorrow  of  a 
more  tragic  order  in  that  wonderful  scene  (Book  III., 
canto  xii.),  in  which  Amoret  endures  the  last  great 
trial  of  her  constancy  before  her  deliverance  by  the 
hand  of  Britomart.  Am.oret  is  the  bride  of  Scudamore, 
torn  from  him  on  her  wedding  day  by  an  enchanter. 

No  livinj^  wight  she  saw  in  all  that  roome, 
Save  that  same  woeful  lady,  both  whose  hands 
Were  bounden  fast,  that  did  her  ill  become, 
And  her  small  waste  girt  round  with  yron  bands 
Unto  a  brasen  pillour,  by  the  which  she  stands. 

And  lier  before  the  vile  Enchaunter  sate, 
Mguring  strange  characters  of  his  art ; 
With  living  blood  he  those  characters  wrate, 
iJreadfully  dropping  IVuni  her  dying  hart, 
Seeming  transfixed  with  a  cruell  dart, 
And  all  perforce  to  make  her  him  to  love. 

Many  such  passages  might  be  referred  to.  In  Spenser's 
poetry,  whether  it   be  grief  or  gladness  which  he   de- 


SPENSER' S  POETR  Y.  285 

scribes,  the  beauty  min<jlcd  with  each  is  stronger  than 
either.      From  him  Keats  might  have  taken  the  Une 

Sorrow  more  beautiful  than  Beauty's  self; 

and  Shelley  a  kindred  one — 

The  beauty  of  doiij,^ht  makes  lovers  glad. 

The  highest  beauty  in  Spenser's  poetry  is  that  beauty 
which  might  most  easily  have  eluded  the  vision  of 
Lord  Byron,  vigorously  as  he  delineated  that  which 
was  on  his  level  ;  for,  as  Professor  Dowden  has  re- 
marked, "  Beauty,  Spenser  maintained,  is  twofold. 
There  is  a  beaut)'  which  is  a  mere  pasture  to  the  eye  ; 
it  is  a  spoil  for  which  we  grow  greedy,  .  .  .  and  there 
is  the  higher  beauty  of  which  the  peculiar  quality  is  a 
penetrating  radiance  ;  it  illuminates  all  that  comes  into 
its  presence  ;  it  is  a  beam  from  the  divine  fount  of 
light."  *  Such  beauty,  while  it  is  actual,  is  ideal  first  ; 
and  Professor  Dowden  rightly  adds,  "  For  Spenser, 
behind  each  woman  made  to  worship  or  love  rises  a 
sacred  presence — Womanhood  itself."  This  is  such 
criticism  as  Spenser  would   have  welcomed. 

Nowhere  does  Spenser's  sense  of  beauty  more  fiml)- 
illustrate  itself,  in  the  form  of  incident,  than  in  the 
battle  between  Artegall  and  Britomart,  when  neither 
recognizes  the  other.  Her  helmet  is  cloven,  and  her 
golden  tresses  falling  down  reveal  the  maiden  warrior 
— a  maiden  whose  beauty  converts  severity  itself  into 
beauty.  He  kneels,  "  and  of  his  wonder  made  religion." 
She  does  not  desire  worship,  but  fair  fight,  and  again 

*  The  Cornhill  Magazine,  June  1879. 


286  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

lifts  her  sword,  but  cannot  strike.  As  she  bends  above 
him  she  recognizes  in  that  countenance, 

Temprcd  with  sterness  and  stout  maiestie, 

the  heroic  image  of  Man,  which  she  had  seen  in  Merlin's 
magic  glass,  and  loved  ever  since  with  a  love  which, 
while  imparting  strength,  not  weakness,  had  made 
all  meaner  love  an  impossibility  to  her.  The  meta- 
morphosis which  takes  place  gradually  in  her,  and 
suddenly  in  the  knight,  is  illustrated  in  stanzas  of 
which  it  is  impossible  to  say  whether  the  beauty 
expressed,  or  the  beauty  implied,  predominates.  It 
is  not  till  she  has  heard  the  name  on  which  her 
imagination  has  long  fed  that  that  metamorphosis 
is  complete.  Artegall  does  not  note  it.  He  sees  her 
face  still  as  he  saw  it  first,  "  so  goodly  grave  and 
full  of  princely  awe,"  that  he  cannot  declare  his 
love.  \{  she  was  swiftly  won  by  the  image  of  the 
warrior,  she  was  slowly  won  by  the  warrior  himself. 
We  are  subsecjuently  told  how,  after  no  easy  suit, 
at  last 

she  yielded  her  consent 
To  be  his  love,  and  take  him  for  her  lord. 

The  imagination  was  one  thing,  and  the  heart  another; 
and  in  the  virgin  the  gallery  leading  from  the  palace 
to  the  temple  was  a  long  one. 

Not  a  few  of  the  incidents  in  the  Faery  Qiiecn  are 
of  an  order  of  beauty  which  teaches  us  that  the  sublime, 
so  commonly  contrasted  with  the  beautiful,  is  itself  but 
beauty  in  its  highest  manifestation,  though  sometimes 
beauty  of  a  threatening  kind.  Such  is  the  catastrophe 
of  the  battle  between   Prince  Arthur  and   the  Souldan 


W 


SPENSER' S  POETR  V.  287 

(r>ook  v.,  canto  yiii).  I'he  Souldan,  in  disdain  of  a 
foe  whom  he  expects  to  trample  under  foot,  mounts,  in 
complete  armour, 

a  charret  high 
With  yron  whccles  and  hookes  armed  dreadfully, 
And  drawn  of  cruel  steedes  which  he  had  fed 
With  flesh  of  men. 

Again  and  again  he  dashes  at  his  foe.  The  Prince 
evades  the  onset,  but  never  can  get  near  enough  to 
the  enemy  to  strike  him.  He,  too,  wears  mail  ;  but 
it  is  mail  from  the  armoury  of  God,  that  armour 
described  by  St.  Paul  as  the  prc-requisite  of  the  Chris- 
tian's warfare — the  "  w/io/e  armour  of  righteousness." 
Many  have  sunk  beneath  Arthur's  sword  ;  but  none 
have  seen  his  shield,  which  is  covered  by  a  veil.  At 
last,  as  the  ciiariot  makes  its  terrible  way  to  him, 
the  Prince  withdraws  that  veil,  and  there  leaps  from 
the  shield  a  lightning  flash,  keen  as  his  sword  and 
brighter  than  the  sun.  The  horses  turn  and  fly.  It  is 
impossible  to  restrain  them.  In  their  madness  they 
rush  over  hill  and  dale,  dashing  the  chariot  to  pieces 
against  the  trees  and  rocks.  The  Souldan  at  last  is 
found  beneath  these  iron  wheels,  "  torn  all  to  rags,  and 
rent  with  many  a  wound."  On  another  occasion  the 
virtue  of  this  Divine  shield  gains  him  the  victory  in 
different  fashion.  The  Prince  fights  with  a  giant  of 
more  than  mortal  might.  As  he  is  sinking  beneath 
the  Titan's  club  the  veil  is  torn  from  his  shield.  Once 
more  the  giant  raises  his  weapon, — 

But  all  in  vain  ;   for  he  has  read  his  end 
In  that  bright  shield,  and  all  his  forces  spend 
Themselves  in  vain  ;   for  since  that  glancing  sight 
He  hath  no  powre  to  hurt,  nor  to  defend. 


288  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

This  may  have  been  in  Shelley's  mind  when,  promising 
to  Freedom  the  victory  over  her  enemies,  he  sang — 

Thy  shield  is  as  a  mirror 
To  make  their  blind  slaves  see,  and  with  fierce  gleam 
Turn  back  his  hungry  sword  against  the  wearer. 

{Ode  to  Naples. ^ 

Another  characteristic  of  Spenser's  poetry,  and  one 
eminently  ancillary  to  its  sense  of  beauty,  is  its  suggest- 
iveness.  If  he  is  often  diffuse,  his  most  significant 
passages  are  yet  marked  by  a  brevity  which  imparts 
to  them  a  proportionate  intensity.  Here  is  an  example. 
Guyon,  the  emblem-knight  of  Temperance  {Faery  Queen, 
l^ook  II.,  canto  i.)  is  led  through  scenes  meant  to 
teach  him  successively  the  baleful  effects  of  ungoverned 
passion.  He  hears  the  wail  of  a  woman,  Amavia, 
whose  husband  has  deserted  her,  mastered  by  his  fatal 
love  for  the  witch  Acrasia.  His  faithful  wife  had  rescued 
him  from  thrall  ;  but  ere  his  departure  from  her  castle 
the  witch  had  given  him  an  enchanted  cup :  he  had 
drained  it  and  died.  Guyon  finds  that  wife  beside  a 
fountain  bleeding  from  a  self-inflicted  wound  in  her 
heart,  and  with  a  late-born  babe  in  her  lap — a  babe 
blood-stained.  Beside  her  lies  the  murdered  husband, 
dead.  She  tells  Guyon  her  story,  and  dies,  but  not 
until  she  has  thus  adjured  her  babe  : 

Thy  little  hands  embrewed  in  bleeding  breast 
I.oe  I  for  pledges  leave.     So  give  me  leave  to  rest. 

The  good  knight  deems  that 

since  this  wretched  woman  overcome 
Of  anguish  rather  than  of  crime  hath  been, 

she  merits  the  last  offices  of  Christian   charity.      With 


SPENSER' S  POETR  Y.  289 

the  aid  of  a  hermit  he  dii^^s  a  i^ravc,  strews  it  with 
cypress  branches,  and  inters  the  husband  and  wife  ;  but 
first  cuts  off  with  the  dead  knight's  sword  a  tress  from 
the  head  of  each,  flings  it  into  the  grave,  and  vows  to 
revenge  them.     Lastly 

The  little  babe  up  in  his  armes  he  hent, 

Who  with  sweet  pleasaunce  and  bold  blandishment 

Gan  smyle  on  them,  that  rather  ought  to  weep. 

Guyon  bends  above  the  fountain  to  wash  the  mother's 
blood  from  the  hands  of  her  babe.  He  labours  in 
\ain  :  the  sanguine  stains  but  deepen,  and  can  never 
be  erased.  The  little  hands  must  keep  their  blood- 
stains, 

That  they  his  mother's  innocence  may  tell, 
As  she  bequeathed  in  her  last  testament ; 
That  as  a  sacred  symbole  it  may  dwell 
In  her  Sonne's  (lesh,  to  mind  reveng-emcnt. 

Here  is  a  memorable  symbol  of  the  passion  that  can 
never  sleep,  and  the  vengeance  bequeathed  from  age  to 
age.  Spenser  had  not  lived  in  vain  among  the  sur- 
vivors of  the  Desmond  clan.  The  beauty  of  this  tale 
is  even  greater  than  its  terror.  It  is  a  flower  that  wears 
blood-drops  for  its  ornament,  yet  is  a  flower  still.  But 
greatest  of  all  is  its  significance.  The  same  lesson  is 
taught  by  the  bleeding  spray  which  Guyon  breaks  from 
one  of  the  two  trees  into  which  two  lovers  had  been 
changed.  They  stand  side  by  side,  summer  after 
summer,  but  their  branches  can   never  meet. 

Not  less  characteristic  of  Spenser's  poetry  is  its 
wonderful  descriptive  power.  Everywhere  this  faculty 
is  illustrated,  but  nowhere  more  exquisitely  than  in 
that    passage    where   we   meet    Helphcebe  out   hunting 

I.  19 


290  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

(Book  II.,  canto  iii.).  The  poet's  picture,  like  Guido's 
Aurora,  has  the  freshness  of  the  morning  about  it  : 
youth  and  gladness  breathe  in  every  line,  beam  in  eveiy 
gesture,  and  wave  with  every  movement  of  that  raiment 
made,  in  this  rich  description,  almost  as  beauteous  as 
the  slender  limbs  and  buoyant  form  it  embraces,  yet 
laughingly  reveals.  It  is  plain  that  so  long  as  this 
youthful  Dian  may  but  race  with  those  winds  which 
add  a  richer  glow  to  her  cheek  and  more  vivid  splen- 
dour to  her  eye,  so  long  as  she  may  but  chase  the 
hart  and  hind  through  the  dewy  forest  lawns,  so  long 
must  all  love-ties  be  for  her  without  a  meaning. 
Dryden  has  imitated  this  passage,  after  his  fashion,  in 
his  Cyinon  and  Iphigenia,  missing  the  poetry  and  purity 
of  the  whole,  and  thus  imparting  a  touch  of  coarseness 
not  felt  in  the  original  to  what  he  retains — ^just  as,  in 
his  \ersion  of  Chaucer's  poems,  he  omits  each  finer 
touch,  and  makes  them  vulgar.  A  sculptor  might 
perhaps  remark  that  the  line 

Upon  her  eyelids  many  graces  sate 

would  be  more  in  place  if  a  Venus  were  described  rather 
than  this  handmaid  of  the  "  quivered  Queen  "  who,  like 
Apollo,  is  ever  represented  in  Greek  art  with  lifted  lids 
and  eyes  wide  open.  Dian  is  a  luminary,  like  her 
brother,  and  her  eye  flings  its  glances  far. 

The  allegory  of  "  Despair"  is  too  well  known  to  need 
comment ;  but  it  can  never  be  too  much  praised.  It 
proves  that  narrative  poetry  may,  in  the  hand  of  a  great 
master,  fully  reach  the  intensity  of  the  drama,  and  carry 
to  the  same  height  those  emotions  of  pity  and  terror 
through   which   to  purify   the  soul   was,  according    to 


SPENSER' S  POETR  Y.  291 

Aristotle,  the  main  function  of  traj^cdy.  Spenser  could 
at  will  brace  his  idyllic  strain  till  it  became  palpably 
the  prelude  of  that  fierce  and  fair  Elizabethan  drama 
destined  so  soon  to  follow  it. 

The  most  grateful  admirer  of  Spenser  will  perhaps 
be  the  most  willing  to  admit  that,  with  all  its  trans- 
cendent merits,  the  Faery  Queen,  like  all  long  poems, 
has  great  faults — and  can  afford  to  have  them.  It  is 
no  irreverence  to  acknowledge  them.  If  his  more 
important  allegories  are  at  once  deep  and  graphic,  others 
are  coarse  or  trivial.  To  the  nobler  class  belong  the 
allegor>'  of  "  Guile  " ;  of  Talus,  the  iron  man  with  the 
iron  flail,  who  represents  Judgment  only,  and  is  so 
happily  distinguished  from  Artegall,  who  represents 
Justice ;  and  to  it  also  the  fantastic  shapes  that  threaten 
Guyon  as  he  sails  along  the  sea  of  mortal  life.  To  a 
more  vulgar  order  must  be  remanded  such  allegories 
as  those  of  "  En\y,"  "  Detraction."  "  Scandal,"  the 
Vices  in  the  "  House  of  Pride,"  and  those  which,  in 
the  form  of  beasts,  assail  the  castle  of  "Temperance"  ; 
while  "  Furor,"  "  Strife,"  "  Diet,"  etc.,  are  frigid  and 
unpoetic.  The  battle  between  Una's  knight  and  the 
winged  dragon  half  a  mile  long,  if  serious,  admits  of 
no  defence,  and  if  the  contrar)',  only  reminds  us  that 
Spenser's  genius  was  the  serious  genius  of  the  north, 
and  could  not  afford  to  be  insincere.  Spenser  is  also 
often  prolix,  and  repeats  himself.  Except  in  his  highest 
moods,  he  seldom  braced  himself  up  to  do  his  best,  as 
Milton  constantly  did  with  a  proud  conscientiousness, 
and  Shakespeare  more  often  than  is  consistent  with 
the  fable  that  he  "  never  blotted  a  line."  Spenser  was 
probably  himself  an  "easy"  reader  as  well  as  writer; 


292  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

and  when  books  were  few  a  poet  might  expect  to  find 
students  docile  and  not  soon  tired.  He  was  large  in 
the  great  gift  of  admiration,  and  too  true  a  poet  to 
suspect  in  others  a  touch  of  that  essentially  unpoetical 
quality,  cynicism.  Like  the  mathematician,  the  poet 
of  romance  had  a  right  to  start  with  his  postulates  : 
such  as  that  the  gods  of  mythology  might  lawfully  be 
mixed  up  with  saints;  that  a  knight  might  receive 
any  number  of  wounds,  and  be  well  again  next  day  ; 
that  physical  strength  was  commonly  the  expression  of 
a  corresponding  moral  greatness  ;  and  that  the  most 
delicate  ladies  suffered  nothing  from  lack  of  food,  or 
exposure  to  the  elements.  It  was  less  safe  to  assume 
that  battles  would  always  have  the  inexhaustible 
interest  they  had  for  those  who  gathered  round  Homer 
Vv'hen  he  sang. 

But  the  most  serious  fault  in  the  Faery  Queen  was 
unquestionably  a  structural  one.  In  Chaucer,  whom 
Spenser  revered  so  loyally  and  acknowledged  as  his 
master,  the  stories  are  complete,  each  in  itself ;  the 
narrative  is  thus  easily  followed,  the  interest  undivided, 
and  the  catastrophe  conclusive.  But  in  the  Faery  Queen 
the  tales  are  interwoven  ;  the  same  knights  and  ladies 
reappear  successively  in  many  of  them ;  the  story  breaks 
off  where  the  interest  is  at  its  crisis  ;  and  the  reader  is 
invited  to  follow  again  the  fortunes  of  persons  he  has 
forgotten.  This  is  to  cheat  us  doubly.  A  short  poem 
may  have  the  bright  perfection  of  a  flower,  an  epic  the 
stately  mass  of  a  tree  that  combines  the  variety  of  its 
branches  with  the  unity  of  the  stem  ;  but  a  romance  of 
this  intricate  character  is  neither  the  flower  nor  the 
tree, — it  is  a  labyrinth  of  underwood  not  easily  pierced. 


SPENSER' S  POETR  V.  293 

Perseverance  may  vanquish  all  difficulties  ;  but  when 
this  has  been  effected  the  details  of  the  poem  are  more 
than  the  whole,  and  it  thus  loses  that  consummate  effect 
produced  by  "  il  piu  nell  uno."  Let  us  turn  to  the 
tale  of  the  sisters  Belphtebe  and  Amoret.  It  is  one  of 
the  loveliest,  deepest,  and  most  original  of  legends  ;  yet 
for  most  readers  its  beauty,  and  even  its  meaning,  are 
drowned  in  the  interruptions  that  perplex  it.  Tasso 
did  not  fall  into  this  error  ;  neither  did  Walter  Scott, 
though  he  wrote  poetic  romances,  not  epics.  It  was 
Ariosto  who  liked  to  show  his  ingenuity  in  thus 
alternately  tangling  his  skein  and  recovering  his  thread  ; 
and  his  readers,  who  wished  to  be  amused  and  excited, 
not  moved  or  raised,  missed  nothing.  But  Spenser's 
poem  was  stored  with  matter  more  precious  ;  and  to  it 
the  loss  produced  by  this  confusion  is  grievous.  Here, 
again,  an  inferior  model  was  his  evil  genius.  He  was 
always  greatest  when  he  leaned  least  on  others  ;  but 
he  had  the  modesty  which  belongs  to  noble  and  refined 
natures  ;  and  far  from  fully  asserting  his  own  greatness, 
he  did  not  know  it.  The  proem  of  his  great  work 
illustrates  this  defect.  Instinctively  he  had  chosen 
the  noblest  of  themes  ;  but  he  was  not  conscious  of 
its  greatness,. or  he  would  not  have  blended  with  his 
invocation  to  the  Muse  another  to  Venus,  Mars,  Cupid, 
and  Queen  Elizabeth. 

Let  us  return  to  the  merits  of  this  great  poet. 
It  is  not  by  an  analysis  of  Spenser's  special  qualities, 
taken  separately,  that  we  reach  an  adequate  estimate 
of  his  greatness.  It  was  especially  his  gift,  and  one 
proceeding  from  the  proportionateness  of  a  mind  over 
which  the  sense  of  beauty  ever  held  a  sceptre  of  gentle- 


294  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

ness,  that  his  faculties  worked  together  harmoniously, 
and  that  at  his  best  no  one  could  say  which  of  them 
predominated.  The  passages  characterised  in  the 
highest  degree  by  descriptive  power  are  characterised 
not  less  by  loveliness,  by  suggestiveness,  by  moral 
wisdom,  and  commonly  by  spiritual  aspiration.  These 
qualities  can,  in  such  passages,  no  more  be  separated 
than  the  colour  of  a  flower  can  be  separated  from  its 
form  and  fragrance.  His  mind  was  a  whole,  and  not 
merely  a  collection  of  faculties  or  "  parts,"  often,  in 
inferior  minds,  as  disproportioned  to  that  whole  as  the 
restless  limbs  of  an  octopus  are  to  the  body  in  which 
they  inhere,  but  of  which  they  seem  no  portion  ;  and 
it  is  this  characteristic,  more  than  others,  which  places 
him  among  the  world's  poets  of  the  first  class.  To 
understand  him  requires  a  knowledge  of  him  habitual, 
not  a  got  up  knowledge.  The  novice  must  read 
him  wisely  ;  and  in  our  "  fast "  days  he  commonly 
has  not  time  to  do  so,  even  if  he  has  the  docility 
of  good-will,  and  that  gift  of  tentative  faith  through 
which  the  young  often  reach  unconsciously  an  under- 
standing of  great  poetry.  To  appreciate  the  compass 
of  Spenser's  genius  we  should  bring  together  those 
narratives  which  illustrate  it  when  directed  with  equal 
energy  to  the  most  different  themes.  Thus  "  The 
House  of  Holiness"  may  be  usefully  read  after  "  The 
Cave  of  Mammon,"  and  compared  with  it.  These 
two  great  descriptions  of  the  best  and  the  worst  that 
we  know  of  here  below  may  be  regarded  as  the 
two  opposite  extremes  at  once  of  his  descriptive  and 
emblematic  art.  In  the  first  named  we  have,  if  not 
Spenser's    "  Paradiso,"    at    least   the    "  terrestrial    para- 


L^ 


SPENSER'S  POETRY.  295 

disc  "  of  his  "  Purgatorio  "  :  in  the  latter  \vc  have  his 
"  Inferno,"  and  the  poet  is  equally  at  his  ease  in  the 
delineation  of  each.  Mammon  means,  not  wealth  only, 
but  the  first  of  those  "  three  enemies"  against  which 
the  Christian  is  militant — viz.,  the  "World";  and  this 
"  world,"  emblemed  in  gold,  Spenser  represents  as  a 
world  under  our  world — a  dreadful  subterranean  world 
of  greatness  apostate  and  splendour  lost  in  gloom. 
Mammon  wears  a  mail,  though  not  a  knightly  mail  : 

His  iron  cote,  all  overgrown  with  rust. 
Was  underneath  enveloped  with  gold. 

Descending  with  this  grim  earth-god,  Guyon  finds 
himself  in  a  vast  plain  leading  to  Pluto's  "  griesly 
rayne."  The  way  is  bordered  by  dreadful  shapes — 
Pain,  Strife,  Revenge,  Despight,  Treason,  Hate  : 

But  gnawing  Gealosy,  out  of  their  sight 
Sitting  alone,  his  bitter  lips  did  bite; 
And  trembling  Feare  still  to  and  fro  did  fly. 
And  over  them  sad  Horror  with  grim  hew 
Uid  always  soar,  beating  his  yron  wings. 

They  advance  through  the  gate  of  the  golden  city  ; 
but  a  spectre  with  uplifted  hand  treads  ever  in  the 
dusk  behind  the  Christian  knight,  ready  to  close  upon 
him  the  first  moment  that  he  covets  aught  he  sees. 
Nothing  can  exceed  the  gloomy  grandeur  with  which 
is  described  the  palace  of  that  evil  power,  of  which 
gold  is  the  key — roof,  floors,  and  walls  all  of  gold  in 
decay,  and  half  hid  in  the  dusk,  while  over  the  pave- 
ments lie  scattered  dead  men's  bones.  Guyon  sees 
the  Stygian  furnaces  and  the  fiends  that  mould  the 
liquid  metal  into  ingots,  and  pour  the  golden  wave, 
■'  the   fountain   of  the  worlde's  good,"  into  chalice  and 


296  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

urn.  Next  he  enters  a  narrow  passage  guarded  by  a 
giant,  not  made  of  flesh  and  bone,  but  "  all  of  golden 
mould,"  although  he  lives  and  moves  and  lifts  his  iron 
club  (stanza  xl.).  This  winding  way  ends  in  a  limit- 
less temple  supported  by  pillars  innumerable  of  solid 
gold, — 

And  every  pillour  decked  was  full  deare 
With  crownes  and  diadems  and  titles  vaine 
Which  mortal  princes  wore  whiles  they  on  earth  did  rayne. 

Plainly  these  princes  were  vassals  of  one  suzerain — 
the  "  prince  of  this  world."  That  temple  is  thronged 
not  with  men,  but  with  nations  ;  and  on  a  dais  at  the 
upper  end  is  enthroned  a  queen,  whose  countenance 
casts  the  beam  of  its  baleful  beauty  athwart  the  multi- 
tudes that  blindly  press  up  towards  her  ; — and  yet  that 
beauty  is  but  a  counterfeit.  In  her  right  hand  she 
holds  a  golden  chain,  the  upper  part  of  which  is  lost 
in  heaven,  while  the  lower,  descends  to  hell.  That  chain 
is  ambition. 

And  every  linck  thereof  a  step  of  dignity. 

This  queen  is  "  Philotime,"  or  Worldly  Honour,  the 
daughter  of  Mammon.  All  round  this  subterraneous 
palace  lie  the  dusky  gardens,  the  trees  of  which  bend 
low,  but  with  the  fruits  of  sadness,  of  madness,  and  of 
death  :  and  in  the  midst  of  this  garden  stands  solitary 
the  Tree  of  Death.  It  rises  high  above  all  the  other 
trees,  and  embraces  the  dolorous  precinct  with  its 
branches, — 

Which  overhanging,  they  themselves  did  steepe 
In  a  blacke  flood  which  flowed  about  it  round  ; 
That  is  the  river  of  Cocytus  deepe 
In  which  full  many  soules  do  endless  wayle  and  weepe. 


U 


SPENSER'S  POETRY.  297 

Among  the  denizens  of  that  Hood  there  is  one  whose 
hands  but  bhicken  more  tlic  more  he  labours  10 
wash  them  clean.  It  is  Pilate.  Milton  confessed  that 
"  Spenser  was  his  original "  ;  nor  is  it  easy  to  see 
how  "  the  sublime "  could  be  carried  higher  than  it  is 
here  carried  by  the  "gentle  bard."  May  not  Shake- 
speare have  been  indebted  to  him,  when  he  conceived 
his  Lady  Macbeth  and  her  "Out,  damned  spot".'' 

The  moment  that  Guyon  breathes  again  the  upper 
air,  his  strength  fails,  and  for  days  he  lies  in  deadly 
swoon.  This  is  an  instance  of  Spenser's  suggestiveness. 
It  implies  at  once  the  "  burthen  "  of  that  vision  which 
he  had  beheld,  the  divine  support  through  which  he 
had  sustained  its  weight,  and  the  withdrawal  of  that 
support  when  needed  no  longer.  Spenser  was  one  of 
those  who  regarded  the  poet  as  a  "  Vates,"  or  prophet  ; 
and  on  this  occasion  no  one  could  have  said  of  the 
prophet,  "  non  obtinuit  visionem  a  Domino."  The 
"Cave  of  Mammon"  was  a  prophecy  not  inopportune. 
The  Renaissance,  whatever  its  merits,  was  a  time  of 
pride,  wealth-worship,  and  imperial  dreams.  The  World 
had  long  shared  the  throne  with  Religion  ;  but  she  was 
beginning  to  aspire  after  rule  unparticipatcd.  Spain, 
then  the  first  European  Power,  was  planting  slavery  in 
a  new  world,  and  burthening  the  seas  with  fleets  which 
brought  her  from  the  Indies  that  gold  destined  not 
only  to  enfeeble  but  to  impoverish  her  by  discounte- 
nancing honest  industry.  luigland  had  substituted,  for 
that  mediaeval  regimen  in  which  Liberty  was  maintained 
through  the  balanced  powers  of  a  king  "  primus  inter 
pares,"  of  the  nobility,  of  the  Church,  and  of  the 
popular  municipalities,  a    despotic    monarchy  destined 


298  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

to  vanish  with  the  last  Stuart.  France  was  on  her 
way  to  an  Absokitism,  through  which  she  was  to  pass 
to  her  Revolution.  It  was  time  that  a  warning  voice 
should  be  uttered,  whether  wittingly  or  unwittingly, 
by  him  who  was  certainly  "  high  priest  for  that  year " 
in  the  realm  of  song. 

It  is  the  same  poet  who  has  sung  another  greatness, 
and  another  kingdom — that  of  the  Prince  of  Peace — in 
Book  I.,  canto  x.  That  description  presents,  perhaps, 
the  most  perfect  account  of  Christianity  ever  given  in 
the  same  space  by  an  uninspired  author  ;  of  Christi- 
anity in  its  due  proportions,  and  also  in  its  great  main 
divisions,  doctrinal,  moral,  disciplinary  ;  as  a  spiritual 
dominion  of  Good,  set  up  at  once  in  the  intelligence, 
in  the  affections,  and  in  the  life  of  man  ;  a  dominion 
which,  while  militant  against  evil,  is  also  essentially 
contemplative,  because  it  is  the  service  of  Truth,  It 
would  need  a  volume  to  illustrate  this  poem,  which 
is  a  world  of  thought  sifted  and  compressed  ;  but 
whoever  has  read  it  must  remember  the  "  House  of 
Holiness " — the  porter  at  its  gate,  Humility,  its 
"  francklin  faire  and  free,"  Zeal  ;  its  gentle  squire. 

That  knew  his  good  to  all  of  each  degree, 
Hight  Reverence ; 

the  mistress  of  the  mansion,  "  Dame  Ccelia,"  with  her 
three  daughters,  Fidelia  and  Speranza,  "  though  spoused, 
yet  wanting  wedlock's  solemnize"  ;  and  Charissa  already 
wedded,  and  encompassed  by  "  many  pledges  dear." 
Neither  can  he  forget  the  faithful  "  groome,  meek 
Obedience,"  or  Coelia's 

sacred  Booke,  with  blood  ywritt, 
That  none  could  rcade  except  she  did  them  teach  ; 


Sr£.VS£J^\S  POETRY.  299 

or  Patience,  who  consoles  tlic  Red-Cross  Knii^ht,  now 
penitent  ;  or  I'enance,  who  drives  from  his  being  the 
venom  of  past  sin,  and  makes  him  fit  for  the  fair 
company  of  Charissa  ;  or  Mercy,  who  brings  him  into 
her  "  holy  hospital,"  and  makes  him  acquainted  with 
the  seven  reverent  and  benign  ministers  to  whom  the 
different  offices  of  mercy  are  consigned.  In  all  those 
ministrations  he  learns  to  take  a  part  ;  and  then  he  is 
deemed  worthy  to  learn  that  there  is  something  greater 
still  than  the  **  Second  Commandment  of  the  Law."  He 
climbs  laboriously  that  hill,  on  the  summit  of  which 
Contemplation  abides  in  his  "  sacred  chapell "  and 
"  little  hermitage," — 

that  .y'odly  aged  sire 
With  snowy  locks  adowne  his  shoulders  shed, 
As  hoarj'  frost  with  spangles  doth  attire 
The  mossy  branches  of  an  oke  halfe  ded. 

The  petition  of  Mercy  may  not  be  denied,  and  the 
seer  leads  the  knight,  after  a  season  of  fast  and  prayer, 
to  a  point  whence  he  sees  the  "  City  of  God  "  and  the 
angels  ascending  and  descending  between  it  and  the 
earth.  This,  he  is  told,  is  the  Heavenly  Jerusalem  ; 
and  that  which  resembles  it  most  on  earth  is  Cleopolis, 
the  city  of  True  Chivalry,  of  Honour,  and  of  Virtuous 
Fame.  From  the  lower  he  is  one  day  to  pass  to  the 
higher,  and  there  to  be  known  as 

•-laint  George  of  mery  England,  the  sign  of  Victory. 

This  canto  is  a  poem  so  complete  in  itself  that  no 
extracts  could  do  it  justice.  It  is  one  in  which  Plato, 
could  he  have  returned  to  earth,  would  have  found  the 
realization  of  his  loftiest  dreams  ;  in  which  St.  Thomas 


300  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

Aquinas  would  have  discovered  no  fault  ;  and  in  which 
St.  Augustine  would  have  rejoiced  as  though  he  had 
felt  once  more  that  evening  breeze  which  played  upon 
him  as  he  stood  at  the  window  on  the  seaside  at  Ostia, 
beside  his  mother  Monica,  but  a  few  days  before  her 
saintly  transit  from  this  "  vale  of  exile  "  to  that  sphere 
in  which  her  heart  had  ever  found  its  country  and  its 
home. 

But  the  infinite  variety  of  Spenser's  genius  is 
perhaps  most  forcibly  brought  home  to  us  when  we 
compare  a  canto  in  his  sixth  Book  with  the  "  Cave 
of  Mammon  "  and  the  "  House  of  Holiness."  It  is  as 
unlike  each  of  these  as  they  are  unlike  each  other  ; 
and  it  is  perhaps  more  representative  of  the  poet's 
habitual  mind.  It  too  has  its  mystical  meaning.  It 
is  not  either  the  life  unblest,  or  the  saintly  life, 
which  is  here  described  ;  it  is  the  life  of  the  Humani- 
ties, a  picture  of  humanity  as  it  may  be  conceived 
of  in  some  golden  age.  I  allude  to  the  vision  of 
Calidore  on  the  summit  of  Mount  Acidale  (Book  VI., 
canto  X.).  The  Knight  of  Courtesy  musing  on  his 
Pastorella,  the  original  perhaps  of  Shakespeare's  Per- 
dita,  ascends  from  a  river's  bank  to  the  summit  of  a 
fair  hill,  and  comes  to  an  open  space  begirt  by  "  trees 
of  honour  "  which  rise  higher  than  all  trees  besides,  and 
"  all  winter  as  in  summer,  bud."  Within  that  precinct 
dance  in  radiant  circle  a  hundred  nymphs,  arrayed  only 
in  the  light  of  their  own  unblemished  and  unashamed 
beauty.  In  the  centre  of  the  ring  three  of  their  num- 
ber, and  the  most  beautiful,  sing  as  well  as  dance  round 
a  maiden  of  earth,  who,  as  such,  wears  maiden  attire, 
and   who    is    more    beautiful    even    than    those   three. 


SPENSER'S  POETRY.  301 

While  the  others  engird  her,  like  Ariadne's  tiar,  and 
pell  her  with  flowers,  she  alone  stands  in  the  midst 
unastonished,  and  "  crowned  with  a  rosy  girland."  At 
last  Calidore  ventures  to  approach  from  the  skirt  of  the 
wood,  and  the  lovely  pageant  dissolves  into  air.  There 
remains  but  the  shepherd,  Colin  Clout  (the  name  by 
which  Spenser  had  designated  himself  in  his  early 
poems),  who  sits  on  the  hill  still  holding  that  pipe 
whose  music  had  evoked  those  nymphs,  and  to  which 
they  ever  danced.  This  human  maiden  is  his 
"  Elizabeth,"  that  maiden  hard  to  be  won,  but  who  at 
last  not  only  loved  the  poet,  but  fostered  his  song,  as 
we  may  infer  from  the  lines 

She  to  whom  the  shepherd  pjrped  alone  ; 
That  made  him  pype  so  merrily,  as  never  none. 

The  shepherd  explains  the  vision.  That  hill-top  had 
been  preferred  to  her  own  Cytheron  by  Venus,  in  the 
olden  time  when  she  was  still  fresh  from  the  sea-foam 
whence  she  sprang,  and  when  between  herself  and  Dian 
there  was  friendship,  not  war  ;  and  there  she  used  to 
dance  with  the  Graces.  Venus  loved  that  spot  no 
more  ;  but  the  three  Graces  and  the  hundred  lesser 
Graces  native  to  that  hill,  still  haunted  it  :  the  shep- 
herd's pipe  had  still  power  to  draw  them  from  their 
ambush,  and  among  them  there  was  still  that  one 
maiden  of  earth  whom  they  had  elected  as  their  sister, 
and  on  whom  they  showered  their  tribute. 

These  three  on  men  all  ifracious  gifts  bestow 
Which  decke  the  body  or  adome  the  mynde. 
To  make  them  lovely  or  well-favoured  show  ; 
As  comely  carriage,  entertainment  kynde, 
Sweet  semblaunt,  friendly  oflBces  that  bynde, 


302  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 

And  all  the  complements  of  curtesie, 
That  teach  us  how,  to  each  degree  and  kynde 
I  We  should  ourselves  demeane,  to  low,  to  hie. 

To  friends,  to  foes  ;  which  skill  men  call  Civility. 

Therefore  they  alwaies  smoothly  seem  to  smile, 
,  That  we  likewise  should  mylde  and  gentle  be  ; 
And  also  naked  are,  that  without  guile 
Or  false  dissemblaunce  all  them  plaine  may  see, 
Simple  and  true  from  covert  malice  free. 

Such  was  huinan  life,  as  Spenser  had  dreamed  it, 
perhaps  amid  the  groves  of  Penshurst,  or  on  that  walk 
at  Wilton,  a  region  not  less  classic,  on  which  Spenser's 
early  friend  had  paced  with  one  like  himself,  "  Sidney's 
sister,  Pembroke's  mother."  Such,  too,  is  the  one 
glimpse  we  have  of  Spenser's  life  with  his  "  beautifuUest 
Bride,"  the  best  sung  of  women  except  Beatrice,  though 
but  an  Irish  "  country  lasse  of  low  degree  ": — 

Ne,  lesse  in  vertue  that  beseemes  her  well 
Doth  she  exceed  the  rest  of  all  her  race  ; 
For  which  the  Graces  that  here  wont  to  dwell 
Have  for  more  honor  brought  her  to  this  place, 
And  graced  her  so  much  to  be  another  Grace. 

This  canto  is  the  complement  to  Spenser's  "  Song 
made  in  lieu  of  many  ornaments,"  that  Epithalainion 
which  was  Wordsworth's  delight.  I  have  heard  him 
rcmarlc,  more  than  once,  that  in  its  long  and  exquisitely 
balanced  stanzas  there  was  a  swan-like  movement,  and 
a  subtle  metrical  sweetness,  the  secret  of  which  he  could 
never  wholly  discover  ;  and  the  like  of  which  he  found 
nowhere  else  except  in  Milton's  Lycidas. 

I  am  aware  how  inadequate  these  remarks  are  to 
their  great  theme.  I  could  not,  without  passing  the 
limits  within  which  I  must  restrict  myself,  advert  here 


Sr£.VSB/^\S  POETRY. 


303 


to  several  matters  which  properly  bclonf^  to  it,  especially 
the  iar<^e  and  deep  philosophy  expressed  in,  or  latent 
under,  Spenser's  poetr}-.  He  is  the  philosophic  poet  of 
his  age,  as  Wordsworth  is  of  ours  ;  and  the  philosophy 
of  those  two  great  poets,  though  in  no  sense  at  vari- 
ance, was  as  different,  the  one  from  the  other,  as  the 
character  of  their  genius.  Spenser's  castle  by  the 
MuUa  stood,  and  a  fragment  of  it  still  stands,  about 
thirty  miles  to  the  south  of  the  house  in  which  I  write. 
That  house,  too,  like  Kilcolman,  was  the  house  of  a 
poet — one  who  from  his  boyhood  had  loved  Spenser 
well,  and  in  whom  a  discerning  critic  had  noted  a 
s)nipathctic  spirit— the  poet  of  Mary  Tudor.  The 
eyes  of  both  poets  must  have  rested  often  on  the  same 
exquisitely  drawn  mountain  range,  that  of  the  Galtces, 
though  they  saw  it  in  a  different  perspective.  Moun- 
tains, while  they  separate  neighbours,  create,  notwith- 
standing, a  neighbourly  tie  ;  and  though  the  barriers  of 
time  are  more  stubborn  things  than  those  of  space, 
when  I  look  from  our  eastern  windows  at  Galtymore, 
I  am  sometimes  reminded  of  the  lines  written  by 
Wordsworth  at  the  grave  of  Burns,  on  whose  verse 
the  later  poet  had  fed  in  youth  : — 

Huge  CrifFel's  hoary  top  ascends 

By  Skiddaw  seen, — 
Neighbours  we  were,  and  loving  friends 

We  might  have  been. 


II.    SPENSER,  THE  POET  AND  TEACHER. 

Bv  Professor  Edward  Dowden,  LL.D. 

In  Enc^land  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth  what  place  is  filled 
hy  the  poetry  of  Spenser  ?  What  blank  would  be 
made  by  its  disappearance  ?  In  what,  for  each  of  us 
who  love  that  poetry,  resides  its  special  virtue  .?  Shall 
we  say  in  answer  to  these  questions  that  Spenser  is  the 
weaver  of  spells,  the  creator  of  illusions,  the  enchanter 
of  the  Elizabethan  age  ;  and  that  his  name  is  to  us  a 
word  of  magic  by  which  we  conjure  away  the  pain  of 
actual  life,  and  obtain  entrance  into  a  world  of  faery  ? 
Was  Spenser,  as  a  poet  of  our  own  time  names  him.self, 
"  the  idle  singer"  of  his  day — that  day  not  indeed  "  an 
empty  day,"  but  one  filled  with  heroic  daring  and 
achievement  ?  While  Raleigh  was  exploring  strange 
streams  of  the  New  World,  while  Drake  was  chasing  the 
Spaniard,  while  Bacon  was  seeking  for  the  principles 
of  a  philosophy  which  should  enrich  man's  life,  while 
Hooker,  with  the  care  of  a  wise  master-builder,  was 
laying  the  foundation  of  polity  in  the  national  Church, 
where  was  Spenser  ?  Was  he  forgetful  of  England, 
forgetful  of  earth,  lulled  and  lying  in  some  bower  of 
fantasy,  or  moving  in  a  dream  among  imaginan/ 
champions  of  chivalry,  distressed  damsels,  giants  and 
dragons  and    satyrs  and  savage  men,  or  shepherds  who 


u 


SPENSER,  THE  POET  AND  TEACHER.         305 

pipe  and  shepherdesses  who  dance  for  ever  in  a  serene 
A  ready  ? 

Assuredly  it  was  not  thus  that  a  great  Englishman  of 
a  later  age  thought  of  Spenser.  When  Milton  entered 
upon  his  manhood,  he  entered  upon  a  warfare  ;  the 
peaceful  Horton  days,  days  of  happy  ingathering  of 
varied  culture,  days  of  sweet  repose  amid  rural  beauty, 
were  past  and  gone  ;  and  he  stood  with  loins  girt, 
prepared  for  battle  on  behalf  of  liberty.  And  then,  in 
London,  when  London  was  a  vast  arsenal  in  which 
weapons  were  forging  for  the  defence  of  truth  and 
freedom,  Milton  in  his  moment  of  highest  and  most 
masculine  ardour,  as  he  wrote  his  speech  on  behalf  of 
unlicensed  printing,  thought  of  Spenser.  It  was  not 
as  a  dreamer  that  Milton  thought  of  him.  Spenser  had 
been  a  power  with  himself  in  youth,  when  he,  "  the  lady 
of  his  college,"  but  such  a  lady  as  we  read  of  in  Coinus, 
grew  in  virginal  beauty  and  virginal  strength.  He  had 
listened  to  Spenser's  "  sage  and  solemn  tunes," 

Of  tumeys  and  of  trophies  hung  ; 
Of  forests  and  enchantments  drear, 
Where  more  is  meant  than  meets  the  ear. 

And  now,  in  his  manhood,  when  all  of  life  has  grown 
for  him  so  grave,  so  glorious  with  heroic  effort,  Milton 
looks  back  and  remembers  his  master,  and  he  remem- 
bers him  not  as  an  idle  singer,  not  as  a  dreamer  of 
dreams,  but  as  "  our  sage  and  serious  Spenser,  whom 
I  dare  to  name  a  better  teacher  than  Scotus  or 
Aquinas." 

A  teacher, — what  is  the  import  of  this  }  "  The  true 
use  of   Spenser,"  says  a  poet  (jf  our  oun  da>',  Mr.  J.  R. 

I.  20 


3o6  SPENSER, 

Lowell,  "  is  as  a  gallery  of  pictures  which  we  visit  as 
the  mood  takes  us,  and  where  we  spend  an  hour  or  two 
at  a  time,  long  enough  to  sweeten  our  perceptions,  not 
so  long  as  to  cloy  them."  And  again  :  "  Whenever 
in  the  Faety  Queen  you  come  suddenly  on  the  moral, 
it  gives  you  a  shock  of  unpleasant  surprise,  a  kind  of 
grit,  as  when  one's  teeth  close  on  a  bit  of  gravel  in 
a  dish  of  strawberries  and  cream."  This,  then,  is  the 
Faery  Queen — a  dish  of  strawberries  and  cream  mixed 
up  unfortunately  with  a  good  deal  of  grit.  And  as  for 
the  allegory,  we  may  "  fairly  leave  it  on  one  side  "  ;  * 
Spenser  employed  it  to  "convince  the  scorners  that 
poetry  might  be  seriously  useful,  and  show  Master  Bull 
his  new  way  of  making  fine  words  butter  parsnips,  in 
a  rhymed  moral  primer."  Shall  we  accept  this  view, 
or  that  of  Milton — "  a  better  teacher  than  Scotus  or 
Aquinas  "  ?  Was  Spenser  such  a  teacher  "  sage  and 
serious  "  to  his  own  age  ?  If  so,  does  he  remain  such 
a  teacher  for  this  age  of  ours  .? 

Let  us  put  the  question  in  another  way,  and  inquire. 
What  was  the  highest  function  which  an  English  poet 
in  the  second  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  could  fulfil  } 
The  death  of  the  mediaeval  world  and  the  birth  of  the 
modern  world  had  been  the  achievements  of  Italy.  In 
Italy  the  fire  of  intellectual  life  had  been  gathered  as  on 
a  hearth,  and  its  flame  leaped  highest ;  it  was  from  Italy 
that  the  light  and  warmth  diffused  themselves  to  other 
lands.      To  Italian  seamen  we  owe  the  discovery  of  the 

*  With  which  contrast  Coleridge's  words,  "No  one  can 
appreciate  Spenser  without  some  reflection  on  the  nature  ct 
allegorical  writing  "  ;  and  Mr.  Ruskin's  painstaking  attempt  in 
Stones  of  Venice  to  interpret  the  allegory  of  Book  1. 


THE  POET  A  ND  TEA  CHER.  307 

New  World  :  Columbus  was  a  Genoese,  John  Cabot 
was  a  Venetian.  To  Italian  students  we  owe  the  re- 
discovery of  the  Old  World  of  classical  art,  poetry, 
and  eloquence.  The  great  thinkers  of  Greece  were 
no  longer  denaturalised  in  the  interests  of  an  effete 
scholastic  system  ;  the  pillars  of  the  Parthenon  were 
not  employed  to  prop  the  crumbling  walls  of  a  chapter- 
house. Plato  became  at  least  an  equal  master  with 
Aristotle,  and  in  Plato  the  humanists  found  that  beauty 
and  enthusiasm  which  were  needed  to  arouse  and  satisfy 
the  imaginative  reason.  At  the  same  time  the  architec- 
ture of  Italy  passed  from  its  period  of  free  and  varied 
experiment — experiment  nobly  inventive — to  its  period 
of  fulfilled  attainment.  To  the  first  thirty  years  of  the 
sixteenth  century  belong  the  painters  who  represent  the 
culmination  of  the  great  art-movement  of  Italy.  Life 
in  that  southern  land  seemed  like  a  blossoming  plant 
with  petals  deep  of  dye  and  rich  in  floating  perfume  ; 
like  a  flame  swift,  delicate,  and  aspiring. 

l^ut  there  was  a  dark  side  to  the  Italian  Renaissance. 
The  Church  and  the  world  had  alike  too  much  for- 
gotten that  true  humanism  includes  a  noble  morality. 
In  Rome,  at  the  heart  of  Christendom,  were  fraud, 
avarice,  ambition,  violence,  foul  living,  effeminacy. 
And  the  Church  possessed  no  monopoly  of  vices.  A 
tendency  to  materialism  in  philosophy  coincided  in 
point  of  time  with  a  practical  cynicism  as  to  what  is 
most  spiritual  in  human  conduct  and  character.  Sen- 
suality was  elaborated  into  an  art.  "  The  immorality 
of  the  Italians,"  says  Mr.  Symonds,  making  a  just  dis- 
tinction, "  was  not  that  of  beasts  ;  it  rather  resembled 
that  of  devils." 


3o8  SPENSER, 

In  such  a  moral  environment  had  appeared  for  a 
short  time  a  man  possessed  by  the  old  prophetic  fire. 
Over  against  Lorenzo,  with  his  splendour  and  his  cul- 
ture, arose  the  face — a  brand  under  the  darkness  of  the 

cowl and  the  harsh  condemnatory  voice  of  Savonarola. 

It  was  no  part  of  Savonarola's  mission  to  assail,  like 
Luther,  the  dogma  of  the  Church  ;  he  was  a  reformer 
of  morals,  not  of  faith  ;  and  he  remained  a  monk.  He 
came  as  a  iirophet  to  announce  a  judgment.  When 
his  voice  rang  in  the  Duomo  "  the  walls  re-echoed  with 
sobs  and  wailings."  The  painter  could  no  longer  paint, 
the  man  of  culture  could  no  longer  trifle,  while  the 
awful  issues  of  life  and  death  were  pending.  Fra 
Bartolommeo  bore  his  studies  of  the  nude  to  the  pyre, 
and  flung  them  among  the  other  vanities  doomed  to 
destruction.  Pico  della  Mirandula,  the  young  scholar 
who  at  thirty  had  mastered  all  learning,  shuddered  as 
he  listened  to  the  voice  of  the  preacher  ;  he  forsook  the 
world,  and  wore  the  frock  and  hood  of  St.  Dominic. 
So  wrought  on  tender  and  beautiful  souls  the  truths  set 
forth  by'savonarola.  But  Savonarola  fell  ;  Christ  was 
no  longer  king  of  Florence,  and  Italy  went  its  way  to 
an  age  of  impotence  and  shame. 

Now  the  question  arose,  "How  is  this  revival  of 
learning,  this  new  enthusiasm  about  beauty,  this  new 
and  strong  delight  in  man  and  in  the  life  of  man,  to 
fare  with  the  nations  of  the  North  V  Will  those  nations 
side  with  Lorenzo  and  the  humanists,  or  with  Savonarola 
and  his  Puritans  ?  Or  is  it  possible  to  reconcile  these 
two  contending  forces?  At  first  in  England  the 
humanism  which  had  travelled  from  the  South  con- 
nected itself  with  religion.     The  "new  learning"  was  a 


THE  POET  AND  TEACHER. 


309 


learning  in  the  service  of  God.  It  marked  an  epoch 
in  the  spiritual  history  of  our  country  when  John  Colct 
lectured  at  Oxford  on  the  epistles  of  St.  Paul,  dwelling 
in  his  criticism  on  the  human  characteristics  of  those 
writings,  and  insisting  upon  their  relation  rather  to 
conduct  than  to  dogma.  Erasmus,  with  all  his  classical 
refinement,  with  all  his  satiric  play,  was  a  reformer  ; 
his  Praise  of  Folly  and  his  Colloquies  are  more  than 
balanced  by  his  New  Testament  and  his  St.  Jerome. 
The  group  of  men  which  included  these  scholars, 
distinguished  as  it  was  by  culture  and  learning,  was 
comparatively  little  influenced  by  those  elements  of 
the  Renaissance  which  addressed  themselves  chiefly  to 
the  senses  and  the  imagination.  No  great  creator  of 
imaginative  work  in  English  literature  felt  the  breath 
of  the  Italian  Renaissance  during  that  first  half  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  In  Skelton  there  is  a  morning  gale  ; 
we  feel  the  breath  of  a  new  day.  But  Skelton  was 
reckless,  and  asserted  his  individuality  too  extrava- 
gantly. He  is  a  little  Rabelais,  full  of  verve,  learned, 
free-spoken  ;  capable  at  times  of  a  certain  frank  and 
delicate  charm.  The  palace  of  Art  was  not  to  be  taken 
by  violence,  and  the  disorderly  rabble  of  Skcltonical 
rhymes,  laughing  as  they  advance,  presently  fall  back 
defeated  from  its  outer  wall.  The  direct  influence  of 
Italy  is  first  seen  conspicuously  in  the  verses  of  VVyatt 
and  Surrey.  That  was  a  time  of  gloom  and  harshness 
in  which  their  sonnets  and  rondeaux  made  their 
appearance.  We  cherish  the  daffodil  of  early  spring 
for  its  own  sake,  and  yet  more  because  it  is  the 
herald  of  a  thousand  blossoms  whicii  lead  us  on  to 
the  rose : 


3IO  SPENSER, 

O  love-star  of  the  unbeloved  March, 
When  cold  and  shrill 

Forth  flows  beneath  a  low  dim-lighted  arch 

The  wind  that  beats  sharp  crag  and  barren  hill, 
And  keeps  untilmed  the  lately  torpid  rill. 

So    we    feel    to   the   poems   of  the    "courtly    makers," 
Surrey  and  Wyatt.     Returning  to  them  from  the  poetry 
of  the   close   of    Elizabeth's    reign,   their    verses   seem 
deficient  in  varied  colour  and   rich  perfume.      The  half- 
uncertain    twitter   of   other   tiny    songsters    in     Totters 
Miscellany,  whose  notes  vainly  imitate  the  clear  melan- 
choly-amorous notes  of  Petrarch,  are  less  important  for 
their  own  sakes  than  because  they  announce  that  the 
winter  of  poetry  is  over,  and  the  love-making  of  spring 
is    in    the    air.      As   yet   there  is  indeed  little  to  sing 
about  ;  the  skies  are  grey  ;  but  the  singers  will  at  least 
try  their  voices.      Tottd's  Miscellany  is  like  a  tuning  of 
instruments  before  the  symphony  opens.     In  the  days 
of    Henry,    Edward,   and    Mary,    the   graver   mind    of 
England    was    concerned    about    other    and    weightier 
matters    than    the    fictive    sorrows    of    an    Italianated 
sonneteer.      There    was    the    great    struggle,    swaying 
backward   and   forward,  for  the  free  circulation  of  an 
English   Bible  ;  there  were   the   fires   of  Smithfield   to 
kindle  or  to  quench  ;  there  were  the  service-books  of 
the  Anglican  Church  to  compose  and  recompose.      The 
contention  of  the  Churches  had  not  been  favourable  to 
literature  and  culture.      Erasmus,  when  he  shrank  from 
Luther's  violences  of  theological  war,  had  foreseen  this  ; 
the  fine  irony  of  the  humanist  reformer,  with  all  such 
delicate-tempered  weapons,  must  needs  appear  ineffec- 
tive to  those  who  endeavoured  to  emulate  the  hearty 
sledge-hammer  strokes  of  the  theological  reformer.      In 


THE  POET  A  ND  TEA  CHER.  3 1 1 

England  classical  studies  declined  ;  at  the   University 
of  Grocyn  and  Linacre  Greek  was  almost  forgotten. 

Was  England,  then,  to  have  a  literary  Renaissance, 
a  new  birth  of  the  imagination,  or  not  ?  Was  the 
Reformation  essentially  hostile  to  such  a  Renaissance  ? 
Might  it  not  be  that  some  man  at  once  of  fine  imagi- 
native genius  and  of  fine  moral  temper  was  destined  to 
arise,  who  should  bring  into  harmony  the  best  elements 
of  the  religious  movement  and  the  best  elements  of  the 
artistic  movement  ?  Some  preparation,  as  it  were,  for 
the  advent  of  such  a  writer  had  been  made.  The 
question  between  the  Churches  in  England  was  virtually 
settled  ;  the  nation,  working  in  its  own  large  practical 
way,  had  found  a  faith.  An  Englishman  born  about 
the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  might  enter  upon  a 
heritage  of  belief ;  the  moral  and  spiritual  forces  of  the 
time  were  organized,  and  were  strong  ;  they  had  not  yet 
stiffened  into  conventions  or  decayed  into  traditions. 
It  was  in  some  respects  a  happy  time  for  a  young 
man  of  aspiring  moral  temper.  From  day  to  day  the 
national  life  of  England  was  mounting  to  the  fulness  of 
the  flood.  In  the  Queen  the  nation  had  found  an  ideal 
centre  ;  loyalty  to  her  became  identical  with  loyalty  to 
England.  Much  of  the  homage  which  at  first  strikes 
us  as  servility  was  like  the  devotion  of  a  soldier  to  his 
banner  :  on  the  English  banner  was  inscribed  "  Eliza- 
beth." The  overgrown  power  of  Spain  lay  open  to 
attack  like  a  huge  galleon  hung  upon  by  some  per- 
sistent and  persecuting  seadog.  The  spirit  of  adventure 
and  enterprise  was  astir.  In  the  little  seaports  bronzed 
mariners  told  marvellous  tales  of  islands  in  far  ocean, 
and  trackless  rivers,  and  mines  of  silver,  and  a  city  of 


312  SPENSER, 

gold.  In  town  and  country  there  was  more  of  mirth 
and  merrymaking  than  had  been  know  n  since  Chaucer's 
pilgrims  jingled  their  reins  Canterburyvvard.  The 
great  nobles  gathered  around  their  sovereign,  and  were 
proud  to  bear  their  part  in  the  pageantry  of  a  court. 
Gay  fashions  of  dress  were  imported  from  the  Continent. 
Ideas  were  attired  in  fantastic  forms  of  speech  on  the 
Hps  of  peeress  and  of  page  :  when  the  tide  of  life  runs 
free  it  must  have  its  little  laughing  eddies.  We  know 
how,  in  the  history  of  an  individual  man  or  woman, 
when  shock  has  followed  shock  of  anguish  or  of  joy, 
if  these  do  not  overwhelm  and  crush  the  spirit,  they 
render  it  coherent  and  ardent,  they  transform  it  from  a 
state  of  cold  abstraction  into  one  molten,  glowing  mass. 
So  it  was  with  the  English  nation  in  the  sixteenth 
century  :  shock  had  followed  shock  ;  it  passed  from  its 
period  of  struggle  and  pain,  of  hesitancy  and  division, 
to  a  period  of  coherence  and  ardour,  when  it  became 
natural  to  think  greatly  of  man,  to  have  a  passionate 
faith  in  human  goodness,  a  passionate  apprehension  of 
evil,  to  hope  high  things,  to  dare  and  to  achieve  noble 
and  arduous  things. 

The  time  had  come  for  England  to  possess  her  poet. 
It  could  not  be  a  matter  of  doubt  after  the  year  1579 
who  that  poet  was.  Spenser  did  not  introduce  himself 
to  the  world  with  a  fanfare  of  trumpets,  as  about  to 
celebrate  a  triumph.  He  did  not  even  place  his  name 
upon  the  title-page  of  the  S/icpkerd's  Calendar.  He 
styled  himself  "  Immerito"  (the  Undeserving)  : 

I  never  list  presume  on  Parnasse  hill, 
But  piping  low  in  shade  of  lowly  grove 
I  play  to  please  myself,  all  be  it  ill. 


THE  POET  A  ND  TEA  CHER.  3 1 3 

Yet  he  could  not  but  be  conscious  of  his^h  powers  ; 
and  the  friend  who  introduced  the  volume  to  English 
readers,  while  commenting  on  the  author's  diffidence  in 
choosing  the  pastoral  form,  compares  him  to  a  young 
bird  who  proves  his  wings  before  making  a  higher  and 
wider  flight  :  "  So  flew  Virgil,  as  not  \  et  well  feeling 
his  wings.  So  flew  Mantuane,  as  not  being  full  sumd. 
So  Petrarque.      So  Boccace." 

In  the  ShcphcriVs  Calendar  wc  discern  much  of  the 
future  writer  of  the  Faery  Queen.  It  contains  the 
poetical  record  of  his  personal  griefs  as  a  lover  ;  it 
expresses  his  enthusiasm  for  his  art  as  a  poet ;  his 
loyally  to  the  crown  as  a  servant  of  the  Queen  ;  his 
lo\'alty  to  the  Reformation  as  an  English  churchman  ; 
his  delight  in  natural  beauty,  and  in  the  fairness  of 
woman.  It  is  now  gay  and  sportive,  now  staid  and 
serious  ;  sensuous  ardour  and  moral  wisdom  are  united 
in  it  ;  the  allegorical  form  in  miniature  is  already  em- 
ployed ;  it  exhibits  a  mode  of  idealized  treatment  of 
contemporary  public  affairs  not  dissimilar  in  essentials 
from  that  afterwards  put  to  use  in  his  romantic  epic. 
The  pastoral,  with  its  ideals  of  peace  and  simplicity, 
possessed  a  singular  charm  for  Europe  in  the  high- 
wrought  and  artificial  age  of  the  Renaissance.  It  had 
a  charm  for  Spenser ;  but  his  is  not  the  Arcadian 
pastoral  of  Sannazaro  and  Sidney.  Colin  and  Cuddie 
keep  their  flocks  upon  the  hills  of  Kent  ;  the  disdainful 
Rosalinde,  "  the  widow's  daughter  of  the  glen,"  is  a 
North-country  lass.  Spenser's  power  of  taking  up  real 
objects,  persons  and  incidents,  of  plunging  these  in 
some  solvent  of  the  imagination,  and  then  of  recreating 
them — the  same  and  not  the  same — is  manifest  through- 


314  SPENSER, 

out.  Everything  has  been  submitted  tothe  shaping  power 
of  the  imagination  ;  everything  has  been  idealised  ; 
yet  Spenser  does  not  remove  from  real  life,  does  not 
forsake  his  own  country  and  his  own  time  ;  he  does 
not  shrinlc  from  taking  a  side  in  controversies  then 
troubling  the  English  Church  ;  he  is  primarily  a  poet, 
but  while  a  poet,  he  also  aspires  to  be  what  Milton 
named  him — a  teacher.  In  these  poems  the  little 
archer,  Love,  shoots  his  roguish  shafts  ;  Pan  is  the 
patron  of  shepherds  ;  Cynthia  sits  crowned  upon  the 
grassy  green.  The  poet  freely  appropriates  what 
pleases  his  fancy  in  classical  or  neo-classical  mythology  ; 
yet  at  heart  he  is  almost  Puritan.  Not  indeed  Puritan 
in  any  turning  away  from  innocent  delights  ;  not  Puritan 
in  casting  dishonour  on  our  earthly  life,  its  beauty,  its 
splendour,  its  joy,  its  passion  ;  but  Puritan  as  Milton 
was  when  he  wrote  Lycidas,  in  his  weight  of  moral 
purpose,  in  his  love  of  a  grave  plainness  in  religion  and 
of  humble  laboriousness  in  those  who  are  shepherds 
under  Christ. 

The  tenth  eclogue  of  the  Calendar,  that  for  the 
month  of  October,  is  especially  characteristic  of  its 
author.  In  it,  as  stated  in  the  argument,  is  set  out 
"  the  perfect  pattern  of  a  poet."  In  what  way  does 
Spenser  conceive  of  poetry  }  We  know  how  in  periods 
which  are  not  creative,  periods  which  are  not  breathed 
upon  by  new  divine  ideas,  which  are  not  driven  by  the 
urge  of  strong  emotions,  poetry  comes  to  be  looked  on 
as  primarily  an  art,  or  even  as  an  accomplishment,  and 
it  is  treated  as  if  its  function  were  to  decorate  life  much 
as  the  artistic  upholsterer  decorates  our  houses.  At 
such  a  time  great  regard   is  had  to  the  workmanship 


1/ 


THE  POET  AND  TEACHER.  315 

of  verse  exclusive  of  the  burden  and  inspiration  of 
the  song,  and  elegant  little  specimens  of  mosaic  or  of 
enamelling  arc  turned  out  of  the  workshops  of  skilled 
artists  ;  until  the  thing  descends  into  a  trade.  In  the 
creative  periods  there  is  not  less  devotion  to  form  and 
workmanship  ;  but  the  devotion  is  of  a  less  self-conscious 
kind,  because  generative  powers  work  in  the  poet  with 
a  rapturous  blindness  of  love,  and  he  thinks  of  himselt 
less  as  a  master  of  technique  (though  he  is  also  this) 
than  as  a  man  possessed  by  some  influence  out  of  and 
beyond  himself,  some  dominant  energy  of  Nature  or  of 
God,  to  which  it  is  his  part  to  submit,  which  he  cannot 
lay  claim  to  as  if  it  were  an  attainment  of  skill,  and 
which  he  dare  not  call  his  own.  At  such  times  poetry 
aims  at  something  more  than  to  decorate  life  ;  it  is 
spoken  of  as  if  it  possessed  some  imperial  authority,  a 
power  to  bind  and  to  loose,  to  sway  man's  total  nature, 
to  calm,  to  regulate  and  restrain,  and  also  to  free,  to 
arouse,  to  dilate  the  spirit — power  not  to  titillate  a 
particular  sense,  but  to  discipline  the  will  and  mould  a 
character.  In  such  a  tone  of  high  assumption  Spenser 
speaks  of  poetry.  About  this  time  he  heard  much  of 
experiments  in  new  and  ingenious  forms  of  English 
verse.  Sidney  and  Dyer,  Drant  and  Gabriel  Harvey, 
were  full  of  a  scheme  for  introducing  classical  metres 
into  our  poetry,  and  Spenser  was  for  a  while  taken  by 
the  scheme.  He  could  not  at  such  a  time,  he  did  not 
ever,  despise  the  craftsman's  part  of  poetry  ;  yet  while 
he  thinks  of  poetry  as  an  art,  in  the  same  moment  it 
appears  to  him  to  be  "  no  art,  but  a  divine  gift  and 
heavenly  instinct  not  to  be  gotten  by  labour  and  learn- 
ing, but  adorned  with   both  ;  and   poured   into  the  wit 


3i6  SPENSER, 

by  a  certain  'KpOov<jLaorixo<i  and  celestial  inspiration." 
When  in  the  eclogue  the  needy  poet  complains  that 
Apollo  is  a  poor  paymaster,  Piers  replies  in  the  spirit 
of  Sidney  when  he  maintains  that  the  highest  end  of 
literature  is  to  instruct  and  incite  men  to  virtuous 
action  : — 

Cuddle,  the  prayse  is  better  than  the  price, 

The  glory  eke  much  greater  than  the  gayne  ; 

O  !  what  an  honor  it  is  to  restraine 

The  lust  of  lawless  youth  with  good  advice, 

Or  pricke  them  forth  witii  pleasaunce  of  thy  vaine, 

Whereto  thou  list  their  trayned  wills  entice. 

Soon  as  thou  gynst  to  set  thy  notes  in  frame, 
O,  how  the  rurall  routes  to  thee  doe  cleave  ! 
Seemeth  thou  dost  their  soule  of  sense  bereave  ; 
All  as  the  shephcard  that  did  fetch  his  dame 
l'vo\n  Plut(K's  baleful!  bowre  withouien  leave, 
His  musitks  might  the  hellish  hound  did  tame. 

From  the  eclogue  which  contains  this  pronounce- 
ment as  to  the  end  of  poetry,  it  appears  that  Spenser 
already  was  meditating  verse  of  a  loftier  kind,  and  was 
even  now  aware  that  he  should  before  long  change  his 
"  oaten  reeds  "  for  trumpets  : — 

Abandon,  then,  the  base  and  viler  clowne  ; 

Lift  up  thy  selfe  out  of  the  lowly  dust, 

And  sing  of  bloody  Mars,  of  wars,  of  giusts  ; 

Turne  thee  to  those  that  weld  the  awful  crowne, 

To  doubted  knights,  whose  wt)undlesse  armour  rusts. 

And  helmes  unbruzed  wexen  daily  browiie. 

The  Faery  Qitceii  is  here  almost  promised.  Was  this 
to  be  a  mere  romance  of  adventures,  like  Ariosto's 
Orlando,  but  unsupi^orted  by  the  wit  and  worldly 
wisdom  of  an  Ariosto  .-•  Or  did  Spenser  conceive  his 
great  poem  as  something  more  than  a  play  of  fancy } 
did   he  conceive  it   as  capable  of  winning  that  praise 


THE  POET  A  ND  TEA  CHER.  3 1 7 

which  he  declares  in  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  to  be  the 
true  glory  of  art  ? 

The  Shepherd's  Calendar  was  dedicated 

To  him  who  is  the  president 
Of  Noblesse  and  of  chevalree, 

to  Philip  Sidney,  "  the  noble  and  virtuous  Gentleman, 
most  worthy  of  all  titles  both  of  learniuLj  and  chcvalrie." 
It  was  possibly  on  the  enforcement  of  Sidney  that 
Spenser  undertook  his  task  "  to  sini^  of  knights  and 
ladies  gentle  deeds."  Now,  although  we  have  to  regret 
the  loss  of  the  work  entitled  Tlie  Rnglish  Poet,  in 
which  Spenser  treated  of  his  own  art,  there  remains  to 
us  the  admirable  essay  by  Sidney  written  in  defence 
of  poetry  against  the  well-meant  but  ill-considered 
attack  of  the  playwright-turned-precisian,  Stephen 
Gosson.  The  delight  and  pride  of  the  Queen,  the 
court,  and  indeed  of  all  cultivated  England,  in  Sidney, 
the  deep  and  universal  sorrow  for  his  early  death,  can 
be  accounted  for  only  by  some  extraordinary  personal 
noblenesses  over  and  above  those  which  dignify  the 
passionate  story  of  iho  Astrophel  and  Stella,  and  redeem 
from  mannered  sentimentality  the  endless  pages  of  the 
Arcadia.  Sidney,  the  radiant  "  Hcspcr-Phosphor  "  of  the 
time  of  Elizabeth,  fades  in  the  brightness  of  that  great 
morning,  yet  no  radiance  that  follows  is  quite  so  clear 
and  keen.  He  charmed  by  a  sweet  youthful  gravity 
underlying  a  sweet  j-outhful  joyousness  of  nature.  To 
Spenser  doubtless  he  appeared  to  be  the  realized  ideal 
of  what  Spenser  admired  more  than  any  other  earthly 
thing — the  chivalric  English  gentleman.  Sidney 
belonged  to  both  the  great  movements  of  his  century, 


3i8  SPENSER, 

and  he  felt  them  to  be  in  harmony  one  with  the  other. 
He  belonged  heartily  to  the  Reformation  ;  he  had.  the 
courage  to  appear  prominently  as  an  opponent  of  the 
French  marriage  ;  he  translated  Philip  of  Mornay's 
treatise  on  the  Tnie?iess  of  tJie  Christian  Religion.  He 
belonged  heartil)-  to  the  Renaissance,  introducing  into 
our  prose  literature  the  chiv^alric-pastoral  romance,  and 
engaging  eagerly  in  the  reform  of  versification  and  in 
the  criticism  of  poetiy.  "  The  Muses  met  him,"  says 
Matthew  Roydon,  "  every  day  upon  Mount  Parthenie," 
and  taught  him  to  say  and  sing  ;  there  was  in  his  face, 
says  the  same  writer,  "the  lineaments  of  Gospel  books." 
Sidne\-  could  perceive  no  feud  between  culture  and 
religion,  between  the  genius  of  art  and  the  moral  temper, 
between  the  Muses  on  "  Mount  Parthenie "  and  the 
Christian  P2vangelists. 

In  Sidney's  reply  to  Gosson's  attack  on  poetry  he 
inquires  what  is  the  end  or  object  of  the  life  of  man, 
and  he  answers — as  Aristotle  had  answered  in  the 
Nicoviachcau  Eiliics — it  is  virtuous  action.  He  com- 
pares, with  reference  to  their  tendency  to  Jead  men  to 
an  active  virtue,  three  branches  of  human  learning 
— philosophy,  history,  poetry  ;  and  his  contention  is 
that  to  poetry  must  be  assigned  the  highest  pjace. 
Philosophy  enlightens  the  intellect,  but  does  not  move 
the  will  ;  it  is  weak  in  its  influence  on  conduct  because 
it  deals  too  exclusivel)-  with  abstract  truth  ;  it  lays 
down  the  rule,  but  omits  to  give  the  example.  History 
fails  for  an  opposite  reason  :  it  deals  too  exclusive!}- 
with  concrete  fact  ;  it  gives  the  example,  but  the  example 
unilluminated  by  its  principle.  Poetrj-  excels  them  both, 
giving  as  it  does   neither   precept  apart  from  example, 


U 


THE  POET  A  ND  TEA  CHER.  3 1 9 

nor  the  example  apart  from  the  precept  or  principle, 
but  both  together  ;  and  thus  it  not  only  enlightens  the 
intellect,  but  vivifies  the  emotions  and  moves  the  will. 

In  the  spirit  of  Sidney's  Apologic  for  Poetry 
Spenser  conceived  and  wrote  the  Faery  Queen.  It  is 
an  attempt  to  harmonize  the  three  divisions  of  learning 
discussed  by  Sidney — history,  moral  philosophy,  poetry  ; 
and  to  make  the  first  and  second  of  these  subserve  the 
greatest  of  the  three.  The  end  of  the  whole  is  virtuous 
action  ;  Spenser  would  set  forth  an  ideal  of  human 
character,  and  incite  men  to  its  attainment.  He  thought 
of  his  poem,  while  never  ceasing  to  be  a  true  poem,  as 
if  it  were,  in  a  certain  sense,  a  study  in  ethics.  One 
day  Spenser's  friend  Bryskett  in  his  cottage  near  Dublin 
gathered  about  him  a  circle  of  distingui.shed  acquaint- 
ances, and  conversing  on  the  subject  of  ethics,  which  he 
wished  were  worthily  handled  in  English,  "  whereby  our 
>outh  might  speedily  enter  into  the  right  course  of 
vertuous  life,"  he  turned  to  Spenser  with  an  embarrass- 
ing request — that  Spenser  should  forthwith  proceed  to 
deliver  a  di.scourse  on  the  virtues  and  vices,  and  give 
the  company  a  taste  of  true  moral  philo.sophy.  Spen.ser 
naturally  excused  himself,  and  pleaded  on  his  own 
behalf  that,  though  he  could  not  improvise  a  lecture  on 
ethics,  he  had  actually  in  hand  a  work  which  might  in 
some  sort  satisfy  his  friend's  desire  :  "  For  sure  I  am, 
that  it  is  not  unknowne  unto  you,  that  I  have  already 
undertaken  a  work  tending  to  the  same  effect,  which 
is  in  heroical  verse  under  the  title  of  a  Faerie  Qiieene  to 
represent  all  the  moral  vertues,  assigning  to  every  vertue 
a  Knight  to  be  the  patron  and  defender  of  the  same,  in 
whose  actions  and  feats  of  arms  and  chivalry  the  opera- 


320  SPENSER, 

tions  of  that  vertue,  whereof  he  is  the  protector,  are  to 
be  expressed,  and  the  vices  and  unruly  appetites  that 
oppose  themselves  against  the  same,  to  be  beaten  down 
and  overcome." 

"  A  poet  at  that  time,"  says  the  Dean  of  St.  Paul's, 
commenting  on  this  passage,  "  still  had  to  justify  his 
employment  by  presenting  himself  in  the  character  of 
a  professed  teacher  of  morality."  But  this  is  hardly  in 
accordance  with  the  facts.  It  was  not  as  a  professed 
teacher  of  morality  that  Chaucer  had  told  his  Canter- 
bury Talcs  ;  it  was  not  as  a  professed  teacher  of  morality 
that  Marlowe  wrote  his  Hero  and Leander,  or  Shakespeare 
his  Vcu/is  and  Adonis.  "  Every  great  poet,"  said  Words- 
worth, "  is  a  teacher :  I  wish  either  to  be  considered  as 
a  teacher,  or  as  nothing."  May  it  not  be  that  Spenser 
had  higher  thoughts  than  of  justifying  his  employment .'' 
may  not  he,  like  Wordsworth,  but  unlike  Chaucer  and 
Marlowe,  have  really  aimed  at  edification — such  edifica- 
tion as  is  proper  to  a  poet }  "  You  have  given  me  praise," 
Wordsworth  wrote  to  John  Wilson,  "  for  having  reflected 
faithfully  in  my  poems  the  feelings  of  human  nature. 
I  would  fain  hope  that  I  have  done  so.  But  a  great 
poet  ought  to  do  more  than  this  :  he  ought,  to  a  certain 
degree,  to  rectify  men's  feelings,  to  give  them  new  com- 
positions of  feeling,  to  render  their  feelings  more  sane, 
[)urc,  and  permanent,  in  short,  more  consonant  to  nature 
and  the  great  moving  spirit  of  things,"  To  render  men's 
feelings  more  sane,  pure,  and  permanent — this  surely 
was  included  in  the  great  design  of  the  Faery  Queen  ; 
it  was  deliberately  kept  before  him  as  an  object  by 
Spenser — "  our  sage  and  serious  Spenser,  whom  I  dare 
to  name  a  better  teacher  than  Scotus  or  Aquinas." 


THE  POET  A  ND  TEA  CHER.  32 1 

How.  then,  should   we  read  the  Faery  Queen  ?     Is   it 

poetry?  or  is  it  philosophy?    Arc  we  merely  to  gaze  on 

with  wide-eyed   expectancy  as  at  a   marvellous  pageant 

or  procession,  in  which  knights  and  ladies,  Saracens  and 

wizards,  anticks  and  wild  men  pass  before  our  eyes  ?  or 

are  these  visible  shows  only  a   rind  or   shell,  which  we 

must  break  or  strip  away  in  order  to  get  at  that  hidden 

lom  which  feeds  the  spirit  ?     Neither  of  these  things 

we  to  do.      The   mere  visible  shows  of   Spenser's 

piem  are  indeed  goodly  enough  to   beguile  a  summer's 

tl-iy  in  some  old  wood,  and  to  hold  us  from  morning  to 

evening  in  a  waking   dream.     The  ethical  teaching  of 

Spenser  extracted  from  his  poetry   is   worthy  a  careful 

study.      Raphael  drew  his  fainting  Virgin  Mother  as  a 

leton   in  his  preparatory  study,  and  the  student  of 

;'hael  may  well  consider  the  anatomy  of  the  figure, 
because  whatever  an  artist  has  put  into  his  work,  that 
a  critic  may  try  to  discover  in  it.  So  the  moral 
philosophy  of  Spenser  even  apart  from  his  poetry 
may  rightly  form  a  subject  of  .study.  But  the  special 
virtue  of  the  Faery  Queen  will  be  found  only  by  one 
who  receives  it  neither  as  pageantry  nor  as  philosophy, 
but  in  the  way  in  which  Spenser  meant  that  it  should 
be  received — as  a  living  creature  of  the  imagination, 
a  spirit  incarnate,  "one  altogether,"  "of  a  reasonable 
soul  and  human  flesh  subsisting." 

There  are,  indeed,  portions  of  the  Faery  Queen  which 
are  not  vital — which  are,  so  to  speak,  excremcntitious. 
In  a  short  poem, — the  expression  of  a  moment  of  lyrical 
excitement, — a  single  line,  a  single  word  which  is  not 
vital,  destroys  the  integrity  of  the  piece.  But  a  poem 
which    has   taken    into    itself   the    writer's    entire    mind 

I-  21 


322  SPENSER, 

during  long  years  cannot  but  be  like  a  wide  landscape 
that  includes  level  with  rise,  and  sandy  patches  with 
verdurous  tracts.  It  seems  inevitable  that  in  such  com- 
prehensive works  as  the  Divine  Comedy,  the  Paradise 
Lost,  the  two  parts  of  Faust,  the  Faery  Queen,  the 
stream  of  pure  imagination  should  sometimes  well  out 
of  rocky  masses  of  intellectual  argument  or  didactic 
meditation.  The  dullest  portions  of  Spenser's  poem 
are  those  in  which  he  works  with  most  self-conscious- 
ness, piecing  together  definite  meanings  to  definite 
symbols  ;  where  his  love  of  beauty  slumbers  and  his 
spirit  of  ingenuity  awakes  ;  where  his  ideas  do  not  play 
and  part  and  gather  themselves  together  and  deploy 
themselves  abroad,  like  the  shifting  and  shredding  of 
clouds  blown  by  soft  upper  airs,  but  are  rather  cut  out 
with  hard  edges  by  some  process  of  mechanism.  When 
in  the  "  Legende  of  Temperance  "  the  poet  allegorizes 
Aristotle's  doctrine  that  virtue  is  a  mean  betwixt  the 
extremes  of  excess  and  of  defect,  our  distaste  for  EHssa 
and  Perissa  would  surely  content  the  moralist,  were  it  not 
that  our  feeling  towards  their  virtuous  sister  is  hardly 
less  unfriendly.  From  the  "  Castle  of  Alma  "  we  should 
not  be  ill-pleased  if  the  master-cook,  Concoction,  and 
the  kitchen-clerk,  Digestion,  were  themselves  ignobly 
conveyed  away  (if  allegory  would  permit  such  a  de- 
parture) by  that  nether  gate,  the  Port  Esquiline. 

These  lapses  and  declensions  we  may  pardon  and 
forget.  Upon  the  whole  the  Faery  Queen,  if  nothing 
else,  is  at  least  a  labyrinth  of  beauty,  a  forest  of  old 
romance  in  which  it  is  possible  to  lose  oneself  more 
irrecoverably  amid  the  tangled  luxury  of  loveliness  than 
elsewhere  in  English  poetry.      Spenser's  delight  in  the 


V 


THE  POET  AND  TEA  CHER.  323 

beauty  of  external  nature  is  often  of  a  hisj^h-wroucjlit 
and  elaborated  kind,  and  >'et  no  poet  has  written  a 
line  of  more  faultless  simplicity  than  that  which  tells 
how  Calepinc  when  recovered  from  his  wound  goes 
forth  "  to  take  the  air  and  hear  the  thrush's  song,"  But 
Spenser's  rare  sensibilit)-  to  beauty  would  have  found 
itself  ill  content  if  he  had  merely  solitudes  of  nature, 
however  fair,  to  contemplate.  In  his  perfect  joy  in  the 
presence  of  human  beauty  he  is  thoroughly  a  man  of  the 
Renaissance.  The  visions  which  he  creates  of  man  and 
woman  cast  a  spell  over  their  creator ;  they  subdue  and 
they  exalt  him  ;  he  cannot  withdraw  his  gaze  from  the 
creatures  of  his  imagination ;  he  must  satiate  his  senses 
with  their  loveliness  ;  all  his  being  is  thrilled  with  a 
pure  ecstasy  as  he  continues  to  gaze.  And  what  form 
of  human  beauty  is  there  to  which  Spenser  does  not 
pay  a  poet's  homage  ?  Is  it  infancy }  There  is  the  babe 
rescued  by  Calepine  from  the  bear's  jaws.  Spenser 
speaks  of  it  as  the  knight's  "  lovely  little  spoil."  Cale- 
pine takes  it  up  in  his  two  arm.s,  and  can  hardly  endure 
to  hear  its  gentle  moaning  ;  he  wipes  away  its  tears, 
and  cleanses  its  face,  and  searches  every  little  limb,  and 
every  part  under  the  swathe-bands,  to  be  assured  that 
the  tender  flesh  is  unhurt.  Is  it  old  age  }  There  is 
that  goodly  sire  who,  blind  himself,  granted  to  Saint 
George  a  prospect  of  the  New  Jerusalem  from  his 
delectable  mountain  ;  keen  of  inward  vision  is  the  old 
man,  though  his  earthly  eyes  are  dim  ;  he  is  bright  in 
his  extreme  age  with  a  visionary  glory : 

With  snowy  locks  .ndown  his  shoulders  shed  ; 
As  hoary  frost  with  spangles  doth  attire 
The  mossy  branches  of  an  oak  half  dead. 


324  SPENSER, 

Is  it  manhood  In  all  the  superb  vitality  and  grandeur 
of  early  adult  years  ?  There  is  Arthur  as  first  seen 
by  Una,  riding  towards  her  in  resplendent  armour,  or 
Artegall  as  shown  in  the  magic  globe  of  glass  to 
Britomart : 

Eftsoones  there  was  presented  to  her  eye 
A  comely  knight,  all  armed  in  complete  wise, 
Through  whose  bright  ventayle,  lifted  up  on  high, 
His  manly  face  that  did  his  foes  agrise. 
And  friends  to  terms  of  gentle  truce  entice, 
Lookt  forth,  as  Phcebus  face  out  of  the  East 
Betwixt  two  shady  mountains  doth  arise,  . 

Portly  his  person  was  and  much  increast 
Through  his  heroic  grace  and  honourable  gest. 

Or,  if  wc  look  for  a  more  youthful  type  of  manly 
strength  and  grace,  there  is  Calidore,  knightliest  of 
shepherds  and  milkmen,  devoted  to  the  service  of 
Pastorella,  Spenser's  "  shepherdess  queen  of  curds  and 
cream,"  his  bright  arms  exchanged  for  a  rustic  weed, 
and  his  spear  for  a  shepherd's  hook  : 

So  being  clad,  into  the  fields  he  went 
With  the  faire  Pastorella  every  day, 
And  kept  her  sheepe  with  diligent  attent. 
Watching  to  drive  the  ravenous  wolfe  away. 
The  whyiest  at  pleasure  she  mote  sport  and  play  ; 
And  every  evening  helping  them  to  fold  ; 
And  otherwhiles  for  need  he  did  assay 
In  his  strong  hand  their  rugged  teats  to  hold. 
And  out  of  them  to  presse  the  milke :  Love  so  much  could. 

But  more  than  any  other  form  of  beauty  that  of 
womanhood  charms  Spenser,  renders  his  imagination 
(to  use  a  favourite  word  of  his  own)  "  empassioned,"  or 
calms  and  completely  satisfies  it.  There  is  Una,  with 
face  sad  under  her  wimpled  veil,  yet,  however  sad, 
luminous  like  an  angel's,  and   making,  when  stole  and 


THE  POET  AND  TEA  CHER.  325 

fillet  have  been  laid  aside,  "  a  sunshine  in  the  shady 
place."  There  is  Belphcebe,  no  lily  but  a  rose  of 
chastit}-,  the  ideal  of  virginal  freedom,  vigour,  health, 
and  hardihood,  her  face  clear  as  the  sky,  with  the  glow 
in  it  of  the  quickened  blood,  her  eyes  two  living  lamps, 
her  broad  ivory  forehead  a  table  for  love  to  engrave 
his  triumphs  on,  her  voice  resonant  like  silver,  her 
moving  fleet  and  firm,  a  boar-spear  in  her  hand,  her 
brown  hair  the  lovelier  for  flowers  and  leaves  of  the 
forest  which  she  has  borne  away  in  her  speed.  There 
is  Britomart,  oi  sterner  virginal  force,  yet  made  for 
the  love  of  Artegall,  tall  and  large  of  limb,  a  martial 
maid.  Let  us  remember  Britomart  as  she  appears 
when,  roused  from  quiet  sleep  by  the  treachery  of 
Malecasta, — now  standing  for  a  moment  in  snow-white 
smock,  with  locks  unbound,  her  advanced  sword  in  her 
hand,  and  now  flying  with  the  flame  of  wronged  and 
insulted  maidenhood  in  her  heart  at  the  dastard  knights 
who  would  do  her  shame.  And  there  is  Amoret,  the 
type  of  perfect  womanhood,  as  Belphcebe  is  of  maiden- 
hood ;  Amoret,  brought  up  by  ?syche  in  the  garden  of 
Adonis, — 

To  be  the  ensample  of  true  love  alone 

And  loadstar  of  all  chaste  affection  ; 

Amoret,  the  most  tried  and  true  of  wives,  whom  I  like 

best  to  remember  as  pictured  in  the  first  form   of  the 

legend,   rescued   from    the   snares   and    tortures  of  the 

enchanter  Busirane,  and  now  lost  in  the  happy  secrecy 

of  one  long  embrace  : 

Lightly  he  dipt  her  in  his  armes  twaine, 
And  straitly  did  embrace  her  body  bright, 
Her  body,  late  the  prison  of  sad  pain, 
Now  the  sweet  lodge  of  love  and  dear  delight 


326  SFENSER, 

P)Ul  tlif  fair  lady,  overcomen  quite 
Uf  iiiim'  att'cction,  did  in  pleasure  melt, 
And  in  sweet  ravishment  poured  forth  her  spright. 
No  word  tliey  spake,  nor  earthly  thing  they  felt, 
I'ul  like  two  senseless  stocks  in  long  embracements  melt. 

And  there  is  Florimell,  wlio  seems  like  the  spirit  of  some 
inland  stream,  but  irresistibly  drawn  seaward  by  her  bold 
lover,  Marinell.  And  there  is  Serena,  scarcely  seen  in 
her  loveliness  by  the  lii^ht  of  stars,  unclothed  upon  the 
woodland  altar  and  prepared  for  death.  And  there  is 
Calidore's  shepherdess  maiden  gathering  strawberries  in 
the  greenwood — a  sister  of  Shakspeare's  Perdita.  And 
there  is  Charissa,  the  fruitful  mother,  hung  upon  by 
her  multitude  of  babes.  And  there  is  Dame  Celia,  the 
reverend  lady  of  the  "  House  of  Holiness,"  who  bows 
over  Una,  and  embraces  her  with  the  protectiveness 
of  age  and  experience  towards  youth.  And  there  is 
Spenser's  own  Elizabeth,  whom  Sir  Calidore  espies 
encircled  by  the  Graces,  and  diinccd  around  by  the 
hundred  naked  maidens,  lily  white. 

Now,  this  sensibility  to  beauty — the  beauty  of  earth 
and  sky,  the  beauty  of  man  and  woman — does  it  bring 
with  it  any  peculiar  dangers,  any  temptations  and 
seductions  .^  Every  noble  sensibility,  every  high  faculty 
of  man,  it  may  be  answered,  brings  with  it  some  pecu- 
liar danger.  Spenser  certainly  was  conscious  of  risks 
attending  this  sensibility  to  beauty.  Puritanism  was 
also  aware  of  these  risks  ;  and  Puritanism,  when  it 
had  attained  io  full  strength,  said,  "  Lest  thy  right  eye 
offend  thee  straightway  pluck  it  out."  Spenser  said, 
"  See  that  it  uffend  thee  not."  Ascetic  in  the  best 
sense  of  that  word  Spenser  assuredly  was  ;  he  desired 
to  strengthen  every  part  of  our  nature  by  heroic  disci- 


1/ 


THE  POET  AND  TEACHER.  327 

pline,  and  to  subordinate  the  lower  parts  to  the  higher, 
so  that,  if  strong,  they  might  be  strong  for  service, 
not  for  mastery.  But  Spenser  was  almost  as  free  as 
Wordsworth  from  asceticism  in  its  evil  sense,  and  for 
the  same  reason  as  Wordsworth.  To  Spenser  and 
to  Wordsworth  it  could  not  seem  desirable  to  put  out 
the  right  eye.  because  to  both  the  eye  was  an  inlet  of 
divine  things  for  the  uses  of  the  spirit.  With  respect 
to  beauty,  Spenser's  teaching  is  that  true  beauty  is 
always  sacred,  always  ennobling  to  the  spirit  which  is 
itself  sane  and  pure,  but  the  sensual  mind  will  put  even 
beauty  to  sensual  uses.  And  he  declares  further  that 
there  is  a  forged  or  feigned  beauty,  which  is  no  more 
than  a  fair  illusion  covering  inward  foulness  and  shame. 
The  true  beauty,  according  to  Spenser,  may  be  recog- 
nized by  a  certain  illuminating  quality  ;  it  is  not  mere 
pasture  for  the  eye  ;  rather  it  smites  the  gazer,  long 
accustomed  to  the  dimness  of  common  things,  as  if 
with  sudden  and  exquisite  light  ;  it  is  indeed  a  ray 
derived  from  God,  the  central  Luminary  of  the  universe. 
But  neither  the  Aristotelian  doctrine  of  the  mean,  nor 
Platonic  conceptions  of  love  and  beauty,  serve  best  to 
protect  and  deliver  us  from  the  temptations  of  sense  as 
set  forth  in  Spenser's  poetry.  By  his  enthusiasm  on 
behalf  of  the  noblest  moral  qualities,  by  his  strenuous 
joy  in  presence  of  the  noblest  human  creatures — man 
and  woman — Spenser  breathes  into  us  a  breath  of  life, 
which  has  an  antiseptic  power,  which  kills  the  germs  of 
disease,  and  is  antagonistic  to  the  relaxed  fibre,  the 
lethargy,  the  dissolution,  or  disintegrating  life-in-death 
of  sensuality.  i.Any  heroism  of  man  or  woman  is  like 
wine  to  gladden   Spenser's  heart  ;  we  see  through  the 


328  SPENSEF, 

verse  how  it  quickens  the  motion  of  his  blood.  A  swift, 
clear  flame  of  sympathy,  like  an  answering  beacon  lit 
upon  the  high  places  of  his  soul,  leaps  up  in  response 
to  the  beacon-fire  of  chivalric  virtue  in  another  soul, 
even  though  it  be  an  imagined  one,  summoning  his 
own.  The  enchantress  Acrasia  in  her  rosy  bower  is 
so  bewitchingly  fair  and  soft  that  it  goes  hard  with  us 
to  see  her  garden  defaced  and  herself  rudely  taken 
captive.  Or  it  would  go  hard  with  us  did  we  not  know 
the  faithfulness  and  soft  invincibility  of  Amoret,  the 
virgin  joy  and  vigour  of  Belphoebe,  the  steadfastness 
and  animating  trust  in  Una's  eyes, — or  had  we  not 
beheld  the  face  of  Britomart  shining  beneath  her  um- 
briere  like  daydawn  to  a  belated  wanderer,  and  then  all 
that  is  vain  and  false  and  sensual  becomes  to  us  what 
those  ignoble  knights  of  Malecasta  were  to  the  warrior 
virgin, — no  more  than  shadows  : 

All  were  faire  knights  and  goodly  well  beseene, 
But  to  faire  Britomart  they  all  but  shadows  beene. 

We  have  no  need  to  inspect  the  rout  of  monsters 
degraded  from  manhood  by  Acrasia's  witchcraft.  Brito- 
mart has  clean  delivered  us  from  Acrasia. 

And  so  we  are  brought  back  to  the  statement  that 
the  high  distinction  of  Spenser's  poetry  is  to  be  found 
in  the  rare  degree  in  which  it  unites  sense  and  soul, 
moral  seriousness  and  the  Renaissance  appetite  for 
beauty.  Herein  lay  his  chief  lesson  for  men  of  his 
own  time.  To  incite  and  to  conduct  men  to  an  active 
virtue  is  not  only  the  express  purpose  of  the  Faery 
Queen,  but  as  far  as  a  poem  can  render  such  service, 
the  Faery  Queen  doubtless  has  actually  served  to  train 


THE  PORT  AND  TEACHER.  320 

knights  of  holiness,  knights  of  temperance,  knights  of 
courtesy.  Spenser,  although  an  ardent  patriot  of  the 
time  of  Elizabeth,  or  rather  because  he  was  an  ardent 
patriot,  did  not  flatter  his  own  age.  He  believed  that 
the  world  had  declined  from  its  high  estate,  and  fearing 
that  things  might  tend  to  worse,  he  observed  anxiously 
the  wrong-doings  of  the  time.  He  speaks  very  plainly 
in  Motlicr  Hnbherd's  Talc  of  vices  in  the  court,  the 
church,  the  army.  He  desired  to  serve  his  country  and 
his  age.  as  other  great  Englishmen  were  doing,  and  yet 
in  his  own  proper  way.  Now,  Spenser  expected  little 
— perhaps  even  less  than  Shakespeare — from  the  people; 
the  doctrine  of  equality  he  held,  as  Shakespeare  also  held, 
to  be  a  dangerous  and  misleading  cry  of  demagogues  ; 
Spenser  expressly  argues  against  that  idea  in  his 
"Legend  of  Justice."  Liberty  he  held  to  consist  in  obe- 
dience to  highest  law  ;  that  people,  he  thought,  is  wise 
and  happy  which  follows  its  appointed  leaders.  What 
Spenser's  political  faith  would  be,  if  he  were  now  living, 
we  may  surmise,  but  cannot  assert.  Living  in  the  age 
of  great  monarchies,  he  was  monarchical  and  aristo- 
cratic. He  admired  heroic  personalities,  and  he  found 
some  of  these  among  the  gentle  and  noble  persons  of 
England.  He  had  known  Sidney  ;  he  served  under 
Lord  Grey,  When  he  conceived  and  planned  this  vast 
poem,  of  which  only  six  out  of  the  twenty-four  contem- 
plated books  were  written,  it  was  with  a  design  which 
doubtless  seemed  to  Spenser  the  best  suited  and  the 
most  needful  to  his  own  time  ;  his  end,  as  he  declared 
to  Raleigh,  was  "  to  fashion  a  gentleman  or  noble  person 
in  vertuous  and  gentle  discipline."  He  desired  to 
see  at  the  head   of  affairs   in    England   a  company  of 


330  SPENSER, 

noble  Kni^^lishmcn  serving  for  no  selfish  ends,  but 
following  honour  in  the  highest  sense  of  that  word — 
the  "  Gloriana"  of  the  Faeiy  Queen. 

Thus,  with  all  its  opulence  of  colour  and  melody, 
with  all  its  imagery  of  delight,  the  Faoy  Queen  has 
primarily  a  moral  or  spiritual  intention.  While  Spenser 
sees  the  abundant  beauty  of  the  world,  and  the  splen- 
dour (;f  man  and  of  the  life  of  man,  his  vision  of  human 
life  is  grave  and  even  stern.  For  life  he  regards  as  a 
warfare,  a  warfare  needing  all  our  foresight,  strength, 
and  skill.  Thus  to  a  certain  point  Spenser's  concep- 
tion of  life  may  be  said  to  be  the  Puritan  conception  ; 
it  is  certainly  the  reverse  of  the  Epicurean  conception. 
Nor  is  the  combat  between  good  and  evil  in  Spenser's 
poem  one  in  which  victory  is  lightly  or  speedily  attain- 
able ;  the  sustaining  thought  is  that  victory  is  possible. 
There  is  a  well-known  painting  by  Raphael  of  the 
Archangel  Michael  slaying  the  Dragon  ;  the  heavenly 
avenger  descends  like  a  young  Apollo,  with  light  yet 
msupportable  advance,  and  in  a  moment  the  evil  thing 
must  be  abolished.  There  is  a  little  engraving  by 
Albert  Durer  which  contrasts  strangely  with  that 
famous  picture.  It  represents  the  moment  of  St. 
George's  victory ;  the  monster,  very  hideous  and  ignoble, 
has  bitten  the  du.st  and  lies  impotent.  But  is  the 
victor  elated  .-•  He  is  too  weary  for  much  elation,  too 
thankful  that  the  struggle  is  ended  ;  he  rests  for  a  short 
space,  still  mounted  on  his  heavy  German  stallion;  we 
can  perceive  that  other  combats  await  him,  and  that 
the  battle  with  evil  is  a  battle  that  lasts  a  lifetime. 
Spenser's  conception  of  the  strife  with  Avrong  comes 
nearer  to  that  of  Durer  than  to  that  of  Raphael. 


THE  POET  AND  TEACHER.  331 

Among  the  elements  of  character  which  Spenser's 
ideal  noble  or  gentle  person  must  possess,  he  places 
godliness  first — the  religious  spirit  ;  and  the  religious 
spirit  honoured  by  Spenser  is  not  cloistered  or  contem- 
plative ;  he  does,  indeed,  assign  a  place  to  contempla- 
tion in  the  discipline  of  the  soul,  but  the  Knight  of  the 
Red-cross  is,  like  other  knights,  sent  forth  by  his  mis- 
tress, the  inspirer  and  prompter  of  honourable  deeds, 
to  achieve  knightly  victory  over  a  monstrous  evil.  Man 
in  relation  to  God  being  first  studied,  Spenser  then 
proceeds  to  consider  man  in  relation,  so  to  speak,  to 
himself  ;  and  the  subject  of  the  second  book  is  temper- 
ance, or,  as  we  might  say,  self-control.  "  Incontinence 
in  anger,"  says  Aristotle  {Nic.  Eth.,  B.  VII.,  chap,  v.),  *'  is 
less  disgraceful  than  incontinence  in  appetite."  And 
Spenser,  following  Aristotle,  deals  first  with  the  less 
depraved  form  of  incontinence.  "  People  arc  called 
incontinent,"  says  Aristotle,  making  a  distinction  be- 
tween the  scientific  and  the  metaphorical  use  of  the 
word,  "even  with  respect  to  honour  and  gain."  Spenser, 
again  following  Aristotle,  leads  his  Knight  of  Temper- 
ance into  the  delve  where  Mammon  lurks,  sunning 
his  treasure,  and  to  Pluto's  realm,  where  Queen  Philo- 
time,  the  patroness  of  worldly  honour,  as  Gloriana  is  of 
divine  honour,  sits  enthroned  in  glistering  splendour. 
F"rom  temptations  of  the  pride  of  life  Sir  Guyon  passes 
on  to  temptations  of  the  lust  of  the  flesh — Pha:dria,  mere 
wanton  frivolity,  a  bubble  on  the  Idle  Lake,  leading 
on  to  the  enchantress  Acrasia,  subduer  of  so  many 
stout  hearts.  With  a  tragic  incident  the  second  book 
of  the  Faery  Qiueit  opens — an  incident  which  presents 
in  all  its  breadth  the  moral  theme  of  the  legend.     After 


3?  2  SPENSEF, 

his  first  error  through  anger — being  angry,  as  Aristotle 
would  sa)',  witli  the  wrong  person  (for  he  is  on  the 
point  of  setting  his  lance  in  rest  against  his  fellow- 
servant  St.  George) — Guyon,  accompanied  by  the  Palmer, 
hears  the  piercing  cries  of  a  woman  in  distress,  and 
discovers  the  hapless  Amavia  lying  upon  the  dead  body 
of  her  husband,  and  bleeding  to  death  from  the  stroke  of 
her  own  hand.  It  is  all  the  work  of  Acrasia.  Mordant, 
the  dead  knight,  had  been  the  victim  of  her  sensual 
snares  ;  through  his  wife's  devotion  he  had  been  de- 
livered from  them,  and  restored  to  his  better  self ;  but 
the  witch  had  pronounced  a  spell : — 

Sad  Verse,  ^ive  death  to  him  that  death  does  give, 

And  losse  of  love  to  her  that  loves  to  live 

So  soone  as  Bacchus  with  the  Nymphe  does  linck. 

Coming  to  a  well,  Mordant  stooped  and  drank  ;  the 
charm  found  its  fulfilment,  and  of  a  sudden  he  sank 
down  to  die.  "  Probably,"  says  the  ingenious  Boyd,  "  by 
tlic  mortal  sentence  being  executed  '  when  Bacchus 
with  the  Nymph  does  link,'  may  be  meant  one  very 
conunon  effect  of  intemperance,  viz.,  dropsical  com- 
plaints." O  foolish  commentator  and  slow  of  heart,  has 
not  Spenser  himself  explained  that  this  is  no  mere 
stream  of  water,  but  a  metamorphosed  virgin,  who, 
flying  from  the  lust  of  Faunus,  was  changed  by  Diana 
into  a  foiuitain  }  Mordant,  although  he  has  escaped 
from  the  garden  of  Acrasia,  still  bears  the  sinful  taint 
in  his  veins,  and  he  is  slain  by  the  sudden  shock  of 
purity.  So  awful  is  innocence  ;  so  sure  to  work  out 
their  mischief,  soon  or  late,  are  Acrasia's  spells.  Mor- 
dant, the  strong  man,  lies  a  ruin  of  manhood  because 
he  could  not  resist  pleasure  ;  his  gentle  wife   perishes 


THE  POET  AND  TEACHER.  333 

because  she  cannot  with  womanly  fortitude  endure 
pain.  Both  are  the  victims  of  intemperance  ;  both 
die  because  they  lack  that  self-control  which  forms  the 
subject  of  the  entire  legend  ; 

The  strong  through  pleasure  soonest  falles,  the  weake  through 
smart. 

Guyon,  with  such  piteous  examples  in  view,  must 
learn  to  resist  alike  the  temptations  of  pleasure  and 
of  pain. 

From  a  man's  relation  to  God  (Book  I.)  and  a  man's 
relation  to  himself  (Book  II.),  the  poem  passes  to  his 
relations  to  his  fellows.  Chief  among  these  is  that 
between  the  .sexes,  the  law  of  which  is  chastity.  The 
representative  of  that  virtue,  the  Knight  of  Chastity,  is 
rightly  a  woman,  and  the  name  Britomart  is  chosen 
partly  because  this  was  a  Cretan  name  for  Diana. 
But  by  chastity  Spenser  means  no  cloistered  virtue, 
and  this  Diana  is  the  lover  of  Artegall.  There  is  no 
chastity,  Spenser  would  assure  us,  so  incapable  of  stain 
as  the  heroic  love  of  a  magnanimous  v/oman.  Next 
follows  the  love  of  man  for  man — friendship.  "  Friend- 
ship," says  Aristotle,  "  is  the  bond  that  holds  states 
together,  and  lawgivers  are  even  more  eager  to  secure 
it  than  justice."  Spenser  accordingly  gives  friend.ship 
the  precedence  of  the  sterner  virtue.  We  love  one 
another,  says  Aristotle,  either  bccau.se  we  are  useful 
to  one  another  ;  or  because  we  provide  pleasure  each 
for  the  other  ;  or,  finally,  because  "  we  wish  well  to 
one  another  as  good  men."  "  The  perfect  kind  of 
friendship  is  that  of  good  men  who  resemble  one 
another   in   virtue"   {Nic  Et/i.,    Book  VIII.,  chap,    iii., 


334  SI'ENSKR, 

§  6).  Spenser  makes  Aristotle's  distinctions  his  own. 
Sir  Blandamour  and  Paridcll  lay  aside  their  wrath,  and 
are  accorded  as  friends  for  sake  of  mutual  aid  against 
the  rival  claimants  of  the  false  Florimell  ;  it  is  an 
example  of  Aristotle's  "  accidental  "  friendship,  founded 
on  motives  of  utility  ;  under  it,  sa\'s  Spenser,  lay  hidden 
hate  and  hollow  guile  ;  nor  can  such  friendship  last 
long," 

l''or  virtue  is  the  band  that  bindetli  hearts  most  sure. 

The  second  kind  of  friendship  described  by  Aristotle 
— that  founded  on  motives  of  pleasure — is  of  a  higher 
nature ;  yet  even  this  is  not  the  ideal  friendship. 
Scudamour    finds    in    the   gardens    of   the   Temple   of 

Venus  "  thousand  pa\-res  of  lovers  "  (that  is,  of  friends), 
who  walk 

I'raysinL;-  their  Ciod,  and  yeclding  him  qreat  thankes, 
Ne  ever  ought  but  of  their  true  loves  talkt, 
Ne  ever  for  rebuke  or  blame  of  any  balkt. 

All  these  together  by  themselves  did  sport 
Their  spotless  pleasures  and  sweet  loves  content. 
Piut,  farre  away  from  these,  another  sort 
Of  lovers  lincked  in  true  harts  consent ; 
Whieh  loved  not  as  these  for  like  intent, 
But  on  chaste  vertue  grounded  their  dt^sire, 
Far  from  all  fraud  or  fayned  blandishment, 
Whieh,  in  their  spirits  kindling  zealous  fire, 
I'rave  thoughts  and  noble  deeds  did  everniore  aspire. 

It  was  the  fashion  of  Spenser's  time  to  do  high 
honour  to  friendship.  Ikit  doubtless  one  reason  why 
he  assigns  it  so  important  a  place  in  his  poem  was 
that  he  had  himself  known  the  worth  of  friendship 
and   tasted   its  delight.      In   one  of  the  few  letters  of 


THE  POET  AND  TEA  CHER.  335 

his  which  are  extant,  he  writes,  when  about,  as  he 
supposed,  to  leave  England  for  the  Continent  :  "  With 
you  I  end  my  last  Farewell,  not  thinking  any  more  to 
write  unto  )-ou  before  I  go  ;  and  withal  committing 
to  your  faithful  credence  the  eternal  memorie  of  our 
everlasting  friendship,  the  inviolable  memorie  of  our 
unspotted  friendship,  the  sacred  memorie  of  our  vowed 
friendship."  Having  assigned  its  place  to  love,  Spenser 
proceeds  to  determine  the  sphere  and  exhibit  the  action 
of  justice.  The  sternness  of  Spenser  in  this  fifth  Rook 
is  remarkable.  It  may  be  a  difficulty  with  some  readers 
to  bring  into  harmony  with  their  conception  of  Spenser 
his  emphatic  approval  of  the  terrible  policy  of  Lord 
Grey,  the  hero  of  this  book,  towards  the  Irish  people. 
Spenser  was  no  dreamer ;  his  Viciv  of  tlie  State  of 
Ireland  is  full  of  precise  information  and  practical 
suggestion.  But  towards  the  Irish  people  Spenser 
felt  as  an  old  Anglo-Indian  might  feel  towards  Sepoys 
in  time  of  mutiny.  Last  of  the  existing  Books  of 
the  Faery  Queen  is  the  legend  of  the  courteous  knight, 
Sir  Calidore.  And  Spenser's  chief  thought  on  this 
subject  is  that  true  courtesy  is  not  an  accomplish- 
ment or  an  acquirement,  but  grows  out  of  character, 
and  is  indeed  the  delicate  flowering  of  a  beautiful 
nature. 

All  these  virtues  are  summed  up  in  the  one  central 
virtue  of  Highmindedness  (/x€ya\oi/>v;(ta),  or,  as  Spenser 
names  it.  Magnificence.  "  Indeed,  greatness  in  every 
virtue  or  excellence,"  says  Aristotle,  "  would  seem  to  be 
necessarily  implied  in  being  a  high-souled  or  great- 
sogled  man."  But  there  is  one  thing,  Aristotle  goes 
on,  about  which  the  high-souled  man  is  especially  con- 


3.36  SPEArsER, 

cerned  :  "  For  desert  has  reference  to  external  good 
things.  Now,  the  greatest  of  external  good  things  we 
may  assume  to  be  that  which  we  render  to  the  gods 
as  their  due,  and  that  which  people  in  high  stations 
most  desire,  and  which  is  the  prize  appointed  for  the 
noblest  deeds.  But  the  thing  which  answers  to  this 
description  is  honour,  which,  we  may  safely  say,  is 
the  greatest  of  all  external  goods.  Honours  and  dis- 
honours, therefore,  are  the  field  in  which  the  high- 
minded  man  behaves  as  he  ought."  And  again  : 
"  High-mindedness,  as  we  have  said,  has  to  do  with 
honour  on  a  large  scale,"  Or,  as  Spenser  puts  it, 
Prince  Arthur,  his  ideal  of  "  Magnificence,"  is  the 
lover  of  Gloriana. 

Spenser's  conception  of  life  was  Puritan  in  its  serious- 
ness ;  yet  we  think  with  wonder  of  the  wide  space  that 
lies  between  the  Faery  Queen  and  our  other  great 
allegory,  the  Pilgriins  Progress.  To  escape  from  the 
City  of  Destruction  and  to  reach  the  Celestial  City 
is  Christian's  one  concern  ;  all  his  recompense  for  the 
countless  trials  of  the  way  lies  upon  the  other  side  of 
the  river  of  death.  His  consuming  thought  is  this  : 
"  What  must  I  do  to  be  saved  } "  Spenser  is  spiritual, 
but  he  is  also  mundane  ;  he  thinks  of  the  uses  of  noble 
human  creatures  to  this  world  in  which  we  move.  His 
general  end  in  the  poem  is  "  to  fashion  a  gentleman  or 
noble  person  in  virtuous  and  gentle  discipline."  "  A 
grand  self-culture,"  I  have  elsewhere  said,  "is  that  about 
which  Spenser  is  concerned  ;  not,  as  with  Bunyan,  the 
escape  of  the  soul  to  heaven  ;  not  the  attainment  of 
supernatural  grace  through  a  point  of  mystical  contact, 
like  the  vision  which  was  granted  to  the  virgin  knight. 


Ix 


THE  rOET  AXD  TEACHER.  3.^7 

Galahad,  in  the  mcdiarval  allcc^or\-.  Self-culture,  the 
formation  of  a  complete  character  for  the  uses  of  earth, 
and  afterwards,  if  need  be,  for  the  uses  of  heaven, — 
this  was  subject  sufficient  for  the  twenty-four  books 
designed  to  form  the  epic  of  the  ajje  of  Elizabeth. 
And  the  means  of  that  self-culture  are  of  an  active 
kind — namely,  warfare, — warfare,  not  for  its  own  sake, 
but  for  the  generous  accomplishment  of  unselfish 
ends,"  Bunyan,  with  whom  the  visionary  power  was 
often  involuntary,  who  would  live  for  a  day  and  a 
night  in  some  metaphor  that  had  attacked  his  imagi- 
nation, transcribed  into  allegory  his  own  wonderful 
experience  of  terrors  and  of  comfort.  Spenser  is  more 
impersonal  :  he  can  refashion  Aristotle  in  a  dream. 
But  behind  hirn  lies  all  the  sentiment  of  Christian 
chivalry,  and  around  him  all  the  life  of  Elizabethan 
England  ;  and  from  these  diverse  elements  arises 
a  rich  and  manifold  creation,  which,  if  it  lacks  the 
personal,  spiritual  passion  of  Bunyan's  allegory,  com- 
pensates by  its  moral  breadth,  its  noble  sanity,  its 
conciliation  of  what  is  earthly  and  what  is  divine 
"  A  better  teacher  than  Scotus  or  Aquinas."  We 
have  seen  to  some  small  extent  what  Spenser  sought 
to  impress  upon  the  mind  of  his  own  age.  He  strove, 
in  his  own  way  as  poet,  to  make  the  national  life  of 
England  a  great  unity, — spiritual,  yet  not  disdaining 
earth  or  the  things  of  earth.  He  strove,  as  far  as  in 
him  lay,  to  breed  a  race  of  high-souled  English  gentle- 
men, who  should  have  none  of  the  meanness  of  the 
libertine,  none  of  the  meanness  of  the  precisian,  l^ut 
the  contending  parties  of  the  English  nation  went  their 
ways — one  party  to  moral  licentiousness  and  political 
I.  22 


^^a  SPEiVSJiR, 

servility,  the  other  to  religious  intolerance  and  the 
coarse  extravagances  of  the  sectaries.  Each  extreme 
ran  its  course.  And  when  the  Puritan  excess  and  the 
Cavalier  excess  had  alike  exhausted  themselves,  and 
England  once  more  recovered  a  portion  of  her  wisdom 
and  her  calm,  it  had  become  impossible  to  revert  to 
the  ideals  of  Spenser.  Enthusiasm  had  been  dis- 
credited by  the  sectaries  until  it  had  grown  to  be  a 
byword  of  reproach.  The  orgies  of  the  Restoration 
had  served  to  elevate  common  decency  into  something 
like  high  virtue.  After  the  Puritan  excess  and  the 
Cavalier  excess,  England  recovered  herself  not  by 
moral  ardour  or  imaginative  reason,  but  by  good  sense, 
by  a  prosaic  but  practical  respect  for  the  respectable, 
and  by  a  utilitarian  conviction  that  honesty  is  the  best 
policy. 

"  A  better  teacher  than  Scotus  or  Aquinas."  Yet 
we  are  told  by  the  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  that  in  giving 
himself  credit  for  a  direct  purpose  to  instruct,  Spenser 
"  only  conformed  to  the  curiously  utilitarian  spirit  which 
pervaded  the  literature  of  the  time."  It  is  the  heresy 
of  modern  art  that  only  useless  things  should  be  made 
beautiful.  We  want  beauty  only  in  playthings.  In 
elder  days  the  armour  of  a  knight  was  as  beautiful  as 
sunlight,  or  as  flowers.  "  In  unaffected,  unconscious, 
artistic  excellence  of  invention,"  says  one  of  our  chief 
living  painters,*  "  approaching  more  nearly  to  the 
strange  beauty  of  nature,  especially  in  vegetation, 
medieval  armour  perhaps  surpasses  any  other  effort 
of  human  ingenuity."  What  if  Spenser  wrought  armour 
for  the  soul,  and,  because  it  was  precious  and  of  finest 
*  Mr.  G.  F.  Watts. 


I 


THE  PORT  A XD  TEACHER.  339 

temper,  made  it  fair  to  look  upon  ?  That  which  gleams 
as  bright  as  the  waters  of  a  sunlit  lake  is  perhaps  a 
breastplate  to  protect  the  heart  ;  tiiat  which  appears 
pliant  as  the  blades  of  summer  grass  may  prove  at  our 
need  to  bo  a  sword  of  steel. 


CERTA  IX  A  SPECrS  OI' 


III.  CERTAIN  ASPECTS  .  OF  THE  'FAERY 
QUEEN,'  AND  SOME  OF  THE  OTHER 
rOETRY  OF  SPENSER. 

J5Y   THE    RKV.    Wir.T.lAIM    B.    PHILPOT,    M.A.,    AUTHOR   OF     'A 

Pocket  oe  PEi'.r.LEs.' 

My  good  friend  Dr.  Grosart  has  asked  me  to  take  an 
instrument  in  his  band  of  Essayists  and  Annotators 
on  Spenser.  "  Say  for  me,"  he  wrote,  "  how  Spenser 
strikes  yoi/  as  a  poet."  I  suppose,  as  Socrates  laid 
liokl  of  the  menial  of  Menon,  he  calls  a  "  country 
parson  "  from  the  vasty  deep  of  rural  duties  (and 
one  given,  as  he  knows,  more  or  less  to  rural  ditties) 
in  order  to  learn,  if  he  can,  something  of  what  the 
common  ruck  of  readers  feel  that  we  owe  to  this 
Chief-Singer  in  the  Eand. 

This  command  to  say  how  Spenser  strikes  vic,  places 
it  quite  beyond  my  province  to  square-up-to  and  strike 
Sijcnscr,  or  to  play  upon  any  features  of  his  which 
might  seem  to  fail  here  and  tliere  of  the  measure  of 
the  beauty  of  the  Poet — a  head  on  which,  moreover, 
enough  thumps  and  to  spare  have  been  heaped  already 
both,  by  dead  and  quick.  Nor  need  I  ever,  in  walking 
through  his  "delightful  land  of  poesy" — a  dreamland, 
in  v.hich  slumber  may  be  pardoned — stand  with  the 
reader  over  this  sweet  poet  '*ludo  fatigatunique  somno," 


THE  POETRY  OF  SPEXSER.  341 

wearied  with  the  very  pains  which  he  has  taken  to 
please  us,  and  as  Horace  had  the  face  to  treat  Homer, 
twit  him  with  a  "dormitas."  Besides,  Poets  never 
strike  us  in   their  sleep. 

Leaving  it  to  others,  as  provided  for  by  our  Editor, 
to  examine  critically  and  broadly  the  "Characteristics" 
of  Spenser  as  a  Poet,  to  expound  his  "  Teaching,"  and 
to  expatiate  on  his  "  Introspection,"  I  hope  to  limit 
myself,  in  the  main,  to  calling  attention  to  "  Some 
Aspects  of  the  Faery  Queen  and  his  other  Poetry," 
wherein  also  I  must,  alas  !  leave  alone  much  that  I 
should  like  to  say. 

I  may  not  enter  on  Spenser's  "words"  :  with  those 
Professor  Angus  is  fully  to  deal  ;  but  perhaps  I  may 
pause  for  a  few  moments  over  his  lines. 

Wandering  through  this  rich  and  rare  garden,  I 
venture  to  offer  a  posy  of  cut  flowers.     Here  is  one  : — 

With  that  the  rolUne-  sea,  resounding  soft. 

(/'-.  (2-,  II.  xii.) 

The  whole  stanza  gives  us  an  inimitable  imitation  of 
the  music  of  the  sea.  How  wonderful  he  is  in  the 
translation  of  sounds  into  words  ! — hear  these  lines 
(Book  I.,  Canto  i.)  : — 

And  more,  to  lull  him  in  his  slumber  soft, 

A  trickling  stream  from  high  rock  tumbling  down 

And  ever  drizzling  rain  upon  the  loft, 

Mixed  with  a  murmuring  wind,  much  like  the  soun 

Of  swarming  bees,  did  cast  him  in  a  swoun. 

Cf.  Vergil,  "  P^cce  supcrcilio,"  etc.  Hark  the  sounds 
in  the  "  Bower  of  Bliss"  (H.  xii.),  and  the  "heavenly 
noise"  at  the  close  of  Book  I. —  lines  that  well  set 
forth  the  charm   of  his   own   verse.      Pray,  dear  reader, 


342  CERTAIN  ASPECTS  OF 

find  time  to  read  what  I  have  not  space  to  write. 
Note  again — 

All  was  bluvvn  away  of  the  waverinjj  wind. 

[Shepherd's  Calendar.) 

Is  not  this,  among  evenfooted  lines,  as  though  the  wind 
had  blown  the  very  words  about  .-'  Listen  to  the 
"  dying  fall  "  in  the  following  : — 

Yet  were  her  words  but  wind,  and  all  her  tears  were  water. 

(Book  VI.,  Canto  vii.) 

What  weariness  there  is  in  the  line 

'Jlieir  hearts  were  sick,  their  sides  were  sore,  their  feet  were  lame. 

See,  again,  how  his  words  can  trip  and  keep  step 
with  a  15ride  : — 

When  forth  from  virgin  bower  she  comes  i'  the  early  morn. 

But  I  have  extracted  a  thousand  such  lines — too  much 
sweet  poesy  for  my  posy. 

Much  might  be  said  as  to  the  characteristic  value  of 
the  Alexandrine.  Craik  (vol.  iii.,  p.  129)  has  analysed 
the  stanza,  showing  its  origin,  and  its  originality  in  the 
musical  charm  of  its  final  line.  The  variety  in  the 
fall  of  it  saves  it  from  monotony,  while  imparting  to  it 
a  monotone  as  of  the  sea.  The  changes  rung  upon  it 
are  endless.     This  is  the  usual  run  of  it : — 

And  ever  as  she  rode  her  eye  was  backward  bent. 

Ne  none  can  backward  turn  that  once  are  gone  amiss. 

And  talked  of  pleasant  things  the  night  away  to  wear. 

To  bear  unto  her  love  the  message  of  her  mind. 

With  such  com])are  these — which  no  less  have  six 
iambi,   but   which,   like    the   waters    at    Lauterbrunnen, 


THE  POETRY  OF  SPENSER.  343 

seem  twice  to  pause  and  fall  in  the  air,  before  they  drop 
into  the  current  of  their  canto  : — 

(Armies  of  lovely  looks,  and  speeches  wise) 
With  which  thou  canst  |  e'en  love  himself  |  to  love  entise. 
That  even  heaven  |  rejoiced  her  |  fair  face  to  see. 
Like  coals  |  that  through  |  a  silver  cen  |  ser  spark  |  led  bright. 
In  which  he  hath  |  great  glory  won,  |  as  I  hear  tell. 
Through  all  the  hills  |  and  valleys  did  |  before  him  fly. 
Like  scattered  chaff,  |  the  which  the  wind  |  away  doth  fan. 

But  half  the  beauty  is  shorn  from  a  line  which  is  shorn 
from  the  poem.  A  flower  suffers  with  its  wounded 
stalk  ;  and  no  lock  of  hair,  though  carefully  braided  in 
a  costly  ring,  has  the  sweetness  it  had  when  it  hung 
playing  over  its  native  forehead. 

How  ill  the  mere  ottava  riina  would  have  served  the 
needs  of  this  pure,  eternal  teacher,  is  shown  by  its 
admirable  aptitude  to  the  purposes  of  Byron.  It  is 
just  long  enough  to  point  a  joke,  or  give  some  turn, 
which  the  last  line,  being  no  longer  than  the  rest, 
carries  off  lightly.  That  last  longer  line,  added  with 
genuine  intuition  by  Spenser,  is  that  which  mainly 
imparts  to  the  stanza  its  impressive  solemnity.  No 
doubt  our  Milton  fully  felt  this  when  he  pressed  it  into 
the  sacred  service  of  his  Christmas  hymn.  Hear  also 
how  well  it  suits  the  epigram  or  aphorism : — 

Die,  rather  than  do  ought  which  mote  dishonour  yield. 

Ill  can  he  rule  the  great  that  cannot  reach  the  small. 
Like  the  last  of  a  chime,  such  lines  sink  deep  into  ear 
and  soul,  leaving  their  echoes — 

A  silver  sound  that  heavenly  music  seems  to  make. 
To  a  poet  there  must  be  sometliing  infinitely  comic 


.:;  1  ,|  C  'A'A'  /:■  /  AV  . I  SPJiCl'S  OF 

in  nuicli  of  what  the  critics  say  about  metres,  trai;ic 
and  otlicr.  Who  shall  lay  down  all  the  laws  of  the 
fitful  winds  of  feeling;,  which  come  and  go  as  they  list  ? 
(Kxlofred  Hermann,  in  his  Teutonic  desire  to  go  to 
(iniiui,  in  his  '  Epitome'  of  what  he  calls  docirina 
vuirica,  after  giving  you  twenty-four  chapters  and  703 
sections  about  the  changes  which  have  been  rung  on 
the  cadence  of  verse,  falls  back  in  the  last  chapter, 
wearied  of  analysis,  on  poems — and  those  perhaps  the 
sweetest — in  which  no  mortal  German  can  find  any 
law  at  all.  All  that  he  has  laid  down  about  all  the 
metres,  from  heroics  to  parapaionics,  has  only  been 
what  he  has  arrived  eit  from  poring  over  what  the 
poets — a  lawless  lot,  or  a  law  unto  themselves — have 
loved  to  [)lay  forth.  So  the  bards  have  it  all  their  own 
way  from  first  to  last !  If  haply  the  measure  into  which 
they  break  be  felt  by  humanity  to  be  out  of  measure 
iiiluiman,  why,  then,  except  they  can  persuade  humanity 
to  believe  in  them  (which,  alas  I  they  often  do),  such 
l)oems  soon  die  a  natural  death,  and  that  spool  winds 
itself  out.  We  may  well,  however,  hear  what  Godofred 
has  to  say  of  that  measure  rightly  called  "  heroic,"  to 
which  Spenser,  after  Boccace,  has  but  given,  with  that 
prolonged  close  which  makes  the  stanza  his  own,  the 
break  and  change  wh.ich  was  needed  for  its  perfection. 
"  The  variety  of  its  limbs  gives  this  verse  capacity  for 
infinite  rejjetition  without  becoming  displeasing,  while 
it  is  suitable  to  the  setting  forth  of  things  most 
diverse" — a  liberty  which  a  master  among  those  who 
know,  is  careful  to  vindicate  for  poets.  The  first 
heioic  line,  it  may  be  remembered,  is  stated  by 
Pau  jduias,  as  I   am   infcjriued   by  Alexandre  (^Dc   Orac. 


THE  POETRY  OF  SPENSER.  345 

Sihyl/.),  to  have  been  cooed  by  a  pigeon — and  a  very 
superior  pigeon  it  was  : — 

Zev?  TjVy  Zeu?  ecrrt,   Zeu?  ecraeTaf  o)  ixeydKe  Ztu. 
Fa   /capTTOv?  dviel'  8to   Kkrj^eTe  /xr^repa  yalav. 

And  all  the  successors  of  this  primal  Homer  have  sung, 
and  will  ever  sing,  more  or  less,  as  the  mood  of  the 
moment  has  led  them,  like  children  that  dance  in  a 
meadow. 

These  brief  remarks  on  Spenser's  line,  and  on  metres 
in  general,  lead  me  to  dwell  next — not  now  on  those 
"  dapper  ditties  "  of  his,  so  sweet  and  natural,  but  upon 
/as  stanza  ;  and  this,  not  so  much  for  the  beauty  of 
the  ideas  which  most  of  these  convey,  as  for  the  aptitude 
of  their  form  to  convey  beauty.  Hallam  remarks  that 
the  Spenserian  stanza  "  is  particularly  inconvenient  and 
languid  in  narration,  where  the  Italian  octave  is  sprightly 
and  vigorous  ;  though  even  this,"  he  adds,  "  becomes 
ultimately  monotonous  by  its  regularity — a  fault  from 
which  only  the  ancient  hexameter  and  our  blank  verse 
are  exempt."  Well :  chacicn  a  son  go/it.  How  any  one 
could  say  this — at  least  one  who  had  not  read  the  Idylls 
of  the  King — I  cannot  imagine.  The  above  poems  are 
of  the  right  length  for  blank  verse,  and  leave  nothing 
to  be  desired.  They  so  carry  all  of  us  along  with  their 
affecting  interest,  that,  whenever  I  read  them  to  my 
people,  it  requires  the  utmost  self-mastery  \qs\.  Jlentibus 
ailjlcam.  In  solitude  they  quite  break  me  down,  so  that 
I  have  to  shake  the  natural  drops  from  my  knuckles — 
a  lamentable  weakness  to  which  I  find  not  many  other 
non-dramatic  poems  reduce  me.  But  our  late  great 
critic  had,  besides   Milton,  only  such  poems  as  Young's 


3^6  CERT  A  IN  A  SPECTS  OF 

Night  T/uvig/its,  Polloks  Course  of  Time,  Cowper's  Task, 
ct  id  gemis  ovine.  How  could  he  say  that  blank  verse 
in  a  long  poem,  even  in  the  mighty  hands  of  a  Milton, 
was  in  its  nature  apt  to  be  exempt  from  monotony  ? 
Rather,  when  he  so  well  says  that  "  even  Virgil  and 
Tasso  do  not  hang  with  such  a  tenderness  of  delight, 
with  such  a  forgetful  delay,  over  the  fair  creations  of 
their  fancy "  as  Spenser  does,  I  should  be  disposed 
to  say  that  this  "linked  sweetness"  was  favoured  and 
enhanced  by  the  form  into  which  his  fancy  fell.  Even 
the  Epithalamiiim,  than  which  Hallam  knew  "  no  other 
nuptial  song,  ancient  or  modern,  of  equal  beauty," 
is  made  in  a  kindred  stanza,  only  longer  drawn-out ; 
and  owes  its  supreme  charm  to  the  change  into  the 
full  diapason  of  that  last  long  line,  which  we  have 
seen  to  be  our  poet's  characteristic  in  the  stanza  to 
which  he  has  given  his  name.  But  is  it  fair  to  compare 
the  English  stanza  or  sonnet  with  the  Italian  in  respect 
of  music  ?  It  has  always  struck  me  that  the  former 
can  gain  but  slight  charm  from  the  rhyme  when 
delayed  beyond  the  third  line  ;  for  the  ear  has  partly 
forgotten  the  likeness.  Whereas  in  the  Italian,  rhyme 
or  no  rhyme,  or  come  the  rhyme  where  or  when  it  list, 
the  very  language  is  all  b®und  to  be  music.  If  it  be 
brought  against  the  sonnet  that  it  requires,  like  olives, 
an  acquired  taste  ;  and  that,  while  its  law  binds  it  to 
one  main  idea,  it  is  hard  not  to  seem  to  elabour  that 
idea  to  commcasure  the  conventional  length — a  matter, 
methinks,  depending  somewhat  upon  him  who  wields 
the  goose-quill  ;  it  may  be  said  for  the  stanza  in 
question  that  the  lack  of  five  lines  favours  concentration, 
or  at  least    lays  the   poet   less  open   to  the   temptation 


niE  rOETRY  OF  SPENSER.  347 

of  "  words,  words."  Yet  the  sweet  idea  which  wanders 
through  its  thought  finds  ample  scope,  where  need  is,  to 
rise,  and  fall,  and  rise  again,  as  though  loth  to  die — and 
often  in  the  last  line  to  lift  itself  from  the  gates  of  death. 
Alas  !  I  have  small  space  to  quote.  But  step  anywhere 
into  this  paradise,  and  of  all  the  trees  of  the  garden 
thou  mayst  freely  eat.  Or  you  may  go  where  Craik  has 
selected  from  their  scattered  homes,  and  collected  into 
a  three-chambered  gallery,  some  of  the  best  pictures 
of  this  great  Artist-Poet. 

I  forewarn  the  reader  that  in  this  cruise  of  pleasure 
— too  brief  to  permit  much  art  of  steering — I  may, 
perchance,  tack  about  a  little.  And  if  I  am  to  say  how 
Spenser  strikes  me,  it  is  obviously  out  of  my  power 
to  say  when,  or  in  what  order,  his  hits  may  fall ! 

Our  poet  shows  every  now  and  then — as,  for  example, 
in  IMuiopotvios — a  power  of  noting  and  painting  small 
bits  of  nature,  with  a  microscopic  brush.     Take  this  : — 

There  he  arriving,  round  about  doth  fly 

From  bed  to  bed,  from  one  to  other  border,  etc.,  etc. 

Now  sucking  of  the  sap  of  herb  most  meet, 

Or  of  the  dew  which  yet  on  them  doth  he  ; 

Now  in  the  same  bathing  his  tender  feet  ; 

And  then  he  percheth  on  some  branch  thereby, 

To  weather  him,  and  his  moist  wings  to  dry,  etc.,  etc. 

The  velvet  nap  which  on  his  wings  doth  lie, 
The  silken  down  wherewith  his  back  is  dight, 
His  broad  outstretched  horns,  his  hairy  tiiighs, 
His  glorious  colours  and  his  glistering  eyes. 

Also  the  picturing  here,  delicate  as  the  web  which  it 
photographs  : — 

More  subtil  nets  Arachne  cannot  spin  ;  ' 

Nor  the  fine  nets,  which  oft  we  woven  see 
Of  scorched  dew,  do  nut  in  the  air  more  lightly  llee. 


348  CER TA  IN  A  SPECTS  OF 

And  in  another  place  he  speaks  of  "  the  veil  of  silk  and 
silver  thin  "  in  which  the  witch  is  "  arrayed,  or  rather 
disarrayed."  As  far  as  I  know,  this  miniature  work 
is  unequalled  till  we  come  to  Grasby  Vicarage  and 
Charles  Tennyson  Turner's  "  Sonnet  to  the  Gossamer- 
light "  (p.  307). 

I  have  not  very  carefully  searched,  but  I  only  find 
one  little  sign  that  Spenser  had  read  ^schylus,  who 
seems  somehow  to  have  been  then  generally  neglected. 
The  book  in  which  Guyon  found  the  story  of 
Prometheus  was  apparently  not  the  AecrjawrT^? ;  nor 
does  More  place  him  among  the  poets  of  Eutopia. 
Spenser  says,  "  as  things  wiped  out  with  a  sponge 
do  perish "  :  this  may  be  from  jSoXals  vypaxracov 
(TTToyyo^  cokeaep  ypa<^r)v  {Agam.  1329).  (But  I  own 
that  Spenser  had  his  own  washstand  to  suggest  his 
images.)  There  is  something  however  of  the  power  of 
that  vast  sombreness  of  ^Eschylean  mystery  in  this, 
among  other  pictures: — 

And  now  the  eventide 
His  broad  black  wings  had  through  the  heavens  wide 
By  this  dispread. 
(Query  :  was  "  by  this  "  a  Hibernicism  got  from  "  Mulla  mine"  ?) 

If,  however,  you  want  a  touch  of  strong  drawing,  take 
the  following  : — 

And  bit  his  tawny  beard  to  show  his  raging  ire. 

In  the  metre  of  Mother  Hubbard's  Tale  you  find 
his  poetry  to  be  notably  less  effective  than  when  he 
writes  in  his  own  stanza.  On  the  other  hand,  that  is 
better  adapted  for  schooling  and  scourging  the  errors 
and   follies   of  the   time,   which   he   does    with  scathii! 


THE  POETRY  OF  SPENSER.  349 

delicacy — with  a  scourge  of  small  cords,  but  sufficiently 
knotted,  one  would  think,  to  turn  them  out  of  the 
Temple, 

The  run  of  the  following  lines — 

No  tree,  whose  branches  did  not  bravely  spring  ; 
No  branch,  whereon  a  fine  bird  did  not  sit ; 
No  bird,  but  did  her  shrill  notes  sweetly  sing ; 
No  song,  but  did  contain  a  lovely  ditt — 

has  a  flow  of  the  words  which  tradition  delivers 
from  St.  John — which  go  something  like  this  (as  far 
as  I  remember,  for  to  me  they  were  handed  down  by 
A.  P.  S.)  :  "  Every  hill  shall  have  a  thousand  vines, 
every  vine  a  thousand  clusters,  every  cluster  a  thousand 
grapes." 

We  can  hardly  fail  to  note  that  ideas  and  expres- 
sions which  were  to  sink  into  the  ear  and  language  ot 
Milton  run  throughout.  See,  for  instance,  the  descrip- 
tion of  Satan,  "  swindging  of  the  dragon's  tail,"  the 
"  softly  sliding  "  down  of  white-robed  Peace  ;  and  much 
more. 

There  is  hardly  any  stanza  of  CJiilde  Harold — written 
in  the  Spenserian  stanza — more  belauded  than  that 
description  of  Cintra  "The  cork-trees  hoar"  etc.  (Francis 
Newman  quotes  it  in  his  learned  preface  to  his  trans- 
lation of  the  Iliad.)  The  Faery  Ouccn  has  many 
such  : — 

High  towers,  fair  temples,  goodly  theatres,  etc. 

The  painted  flowers ;  the  trees  upshooting-high,*  etc. 

The  dales  for  shade  ;  the  hills  for  breathing  space,  etc. 

*  See  alsu  the  cataUtguc  of  trees  in  Book  I.,  c.  i. 


350  CERTAIN  ASPECTS  OE 

Thus  he  loves   to  heap  up  the  details  of  a  picture  by 
a  kind  of  sorites  of  terms. 

Jlis  similes  are  after  the  grand,  set  manner  of  Homer 
and  Vergil: — 

Like  as  a  lion  mong-st  a  herd  of  deer,  etc. 

Like  a  wild  bull  that  being  at  a  bay,  etc. 

Like  as  a  huswife,  that  with  busy  care,  etc. 

As  when  a  cast  of  falcons  make  their  Ilight,  etc. 

Like  as  a  wayward  child,  whose  sounder  sleep,  etc. 

As  when  the  Hashing  levin  haps  to  light,  etc. 

And    each  of  these  similes,  we  find,  runs  through  its 
stanza. 

There  is  something  very  Sophoclcan  about  this  : — 

Nought  under  Heaven  so  strongly  dotli  allure  .... 

As  Beauty's  lovely  bait  .... 

And  mighty  hands  forget  their  manliness, 

Drawn  with  the  power  of  a  heart-robbing  eye. 

And  wrapt  in  fetters  of  a  golden  tress,  etc. 

Cf.    [<^pa;9  duiKaTe  ixd)(av,  k.t-\. 

See  what  a  happy  paradox  is  here  : — 

(ircat  Nature  ever  young,  yet  full  of  eld  ; 
Still  movi-ng,  yet  unmoved  from  her  stead  ; 
Unseen  of  any,  yet  of  all  beheld. 

What  can    be   more  simply  beautiful   and  wise   than 
this  talk  of  Mclibcc  to  Corydon  ?  (\T.  ix.)  : — 

In  vain,  said  then  old  jMeHbee.  do  men 
'i'hc  heavens  of  ihcir  fortune's  fault  accuse  ; 
Sith  tliey  know  b(!st  what  is  the  best  f(jr  th(>m  ; 
i''(.r  they  (()  each  such  fortune  do  diffuse 


THE  rOETR  Y  OF  SPENSER.  35 1 

As  they  do  know  each  can  most  aptly  use. 

For  not  that  which  men  covet  most  is  best 

Nor  that  the  worst  which  men  do  most  refuse  ; 

But  tittest  is  that  all  contented  rest 

With  that  they  hold ;  each  hath  his  fortune  in  his  breast. 

It  is  the  mind  that  maketh  good  or  ill, 

That  maketh  wretch  or  happy,  rich  or  poor,  etc.,  etc. 

Could  all  the  select  preachers  better  set  forth  tlie 
"  great  gain  "  } 

Here,  ye  gentlemen  and  ladies  of  England,  is  a 
fine  lesson  (or  you  : — 

What  virtue  is  so  fittincr  for  a  knight, 
Or  for  a  lady  whom  a  knight  should  love. 
As  Courtesy  ;  to  bear  themselves  aright 
To  all  of  each  degree  as  doth  behove  ? 
For.  whether  they  be  placed  high  above. 
Or  low  beneath,  yet  ought  they  well  to  know 
Their  good  ;  that  none  them  rightly  may  reprove 
Of  rudeness  for  not  yielding  what  they  owe  ; — 
Great  skill  it  is  such  duties  timely  to  bestow. 

Perhaps  we  shall  not  have  so  much  unparliamentary 
— or  rather  I  might  say  parliamentary — language,  when 
the  courtesy  of  Spenser  has  been  more  generally 
studied  by  our  households  and  their  representatives. 

In  his  power  of  lavish  indignation  and  wrath 
we  can  see  a  quarry  which  was  well  worked  by 
Shakespeare. 

I  have  not  seen  it  surmised — but  I  suppose  it  must 
have  been — that  our  dramatist,  in  the  scene  of  Lady 
Macbeth's  nightwalk,  had  in  memory,  consciously  or 
not,  the  vain  efforts  of  Guyon  "  by  washing  oft  and 
oft  "  to  cleanse  the  bloody  hands  of  that  babe.  Or  had 
cither,  both — or  neither  poet  read  in  the  CE(/.  7jr. 
olfxaL  y(J^p  ovT  av   Icrrpoi',  k.t.X.  .'' 


3S2  CERTAIN  ASPECTS  OE 

Perhaps    also  "  our   pleasant  Willy "  had  ringing  in 
his  car  those  solemn  lines  on  the  Mount  of  Olives — 

for  endless  memory 
Of  that  dear  f.ord  who  oft  thereon  was  found 


The  dear  romcmljrance  of  his  dyinc^  Lord 

and  other  such,  when  he  penned  lines  of  like  affection  ; 

as 

the  season 
Wherein  our  Saviour's  birth  is  celebrated, 
So  hallowed  and  so  gracious  is  the  time  ; 

or  when  he  seemed  to  bend  with  affectionate  reverence 
over  the  ground  trodden  by  "  the  dear  Redeemer's  feet." 
Such  touches  of  Nature  make  our  poets  kin. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  draw  out  how  those  times  of 
discovery  and  naval  adventure  dominated  Spenser's  fancy 
and  took  captive  his  spirit.  Though  sometimes  at  the 
end  of  his  canto  he  looses  with  Vergil  the  smoking 
necks  of  his  steeds,  yet  it  is  more  often,  as  at  the  end  of 
IJook  I. — 

Now  strike  your  sails,  ye  jolly  mariners,  etc.  ; 
and  note  at  the  beginning  of  Book  II. — 

liut  let  that  man  with  better  sense  advise 
That  of  the  w(jrld  least  part  to  us  is  read  ; 
And  daily  how  through  hardy  enterprise 
Many  great  regions  are  discovered,  etc. 

Nor  did  he  make  his  trips  across  St.  George's 
Channel  without  bringing  an  eye  for  all  he  .saw  of  the 
"  frothy  billows."  There  is  something  very  natural  and 
lifelike  in    the   weariness,   as  (jf  (jne   coming   into   port, 


THE  POETRY  OE  SPEXSEA'.  ;,55 

with  which  he  closes  the  cantos  ;  and  in  the  spirit,  as  of 
one  settini,^  sail,  with  wiiich  he  begins  them.  In  fact,  the 
poet  imagines  himself  bent,  like  a  Ulysses,  or  a  Drake, 
on  some  such  voyage  into  all  the  shores  and  ports, 
all  the  creeks  and  outlandish  places,  both  of  humanity 
and  fairyland.  Nor  perhaps  was  it  without  a  sense  of 
this,  that  our  valued  Worsley,  taken  off,  like  his  model, 
before  he  had  fully  bhjomed,  turned  the  Oiiyssey  into 
the  Spenserian  stanza.  And  if  any  question  the  course 
which  Spenser's  voyaging  took,  as  wild,  incongruous, 
and  improbable  beyond  licence — is  there  not  a  cause  ? 
If  we  admit  any  unknown  and  inscrutable  agency  of 
angel  or  spirit,  as  most  do — if  we  allow  the  mysterious 
workings  of  infinite  causes  amidst  strange  effects  in  the 
solemn  movements  of  the  inner  life,  as  all  must  do — 
why,  then,  without  going  further  afield,  you  have  the 
data  upon  which  a  poet,  preserving  the  great  truths, 
may  create  a  world  of  his  own  and  impose  his  own 
names  and  modes  on  the  creatures  of  his  choice.  It 
were  perhaps  more  interesting,  certainly  more  sweet 
and  agreeable,  to  roam  with  Una  through  the  woods, 
than  to  float  with  Ik^linda  on  the  Thames  (especially 
before  the  drainage  of  "  Augusta  "  was  taken  nearer  to 
the  Nore  !).  And  if  any  of  the  matter  of  this  great 
poem  be  such  as  our  modern  modes  would  reject  as 
having  fallen  irrecoverably  out  of  fashion,  yet  the  best 
parts  (which,  as  Todd  observes,  are  his  own)  are  KTrjfjLa 
€?  del — a  possession  for  ever.  I  remember  seeing, 
when  a  boy,  the  remains  of  some  rich  and  noble 
personage,  said  to  have  been  a  queen,  lying  outstretched 
in  her  coffin  of  stone,  like  the  skeleton  of  the  king 
found  by  Arthur  in  that  mountain  solitude  by  the 
I.  2^ 


.S54  CERTAIN  ASPECTS  OE 

dark  tarn — the  form  from  whose  head  he  took  that 
diamond-set  crown.  I'hcre  were  her  imperial  bones  ; 
and  from  her  imperious  brow — the  last  of  our  dust 
which  perishes — still  black  and  dank  hung  her  tresses. 
But  the  rubies  round  it,  the  sapphires  of  her  necklace 
and  the  amethysts  of  her  armlets,  still  shone  forth  as 
genuine  and  bright  as  when  they  flashed  from  her 
beauty,  while  she  stepped  before  the  eyes  of  the  gay 
assemblies  which  had  long  ago  gone  down  with  her  to 
the  dust.  So  with  this  royal  poem.  Whatever  may 
now  be  felt  to  be  fleeting,  grotesque,  fantastic,  or 
modish  in  style,  fashion,  or  language — whatever,  in 
fact,  there  may  seem  to  be  in  it  that  can  fade — there 
still  shine  out  untarnished  from  its  majestic  remains 
the  gems  which  sparkled  for  the  delight  of  the  court 
and  people  of  Elizabeth. 

Having  said  thus  little  of  the  line,  the  metre  and 
the  stanza,  and  having  acknowledged  with  my  pen's 
point  some  places  in  which  I  have  been  touched  by  this 
consummate  master,  let  us  again  take  ship  and  launch 
forth  awhile  into  some  further  thoughts  about  the  aim, 
the  tone,  and  the  idea  of  our  Poet.  And  if,  tacking 
hither  and  thither,  we  still  voyage  whithersoever  the 
mood  may  carry  us,  perhaps  it  is  the  wandering  spirit 
of  Spenser  himself  that  touches  the  tiller  !  It  were 
hardly  legitimate  to  treat  in  set  phrase  and  orthodox 
order  of  one  so  loosened  from  law. 

When  a  poet  comes  to  recognise  a  world  within  him- 
self— which  he  may  adapt  to,  which  he  may  stretch  over 
to,  by  \\'hich  he  may  give  life  to,  the  outside  world 
in  which  he  recognises  himself  to  be — then  he  will  either 
choose  a  subject,  or  content  himself  with  the  murmur- 


TirE  rOETRV  OF  SrEXSER.  355 

\n^s  of  the  moment,  as  the  winds  of  occasion  touch  the 
strinc^s  of  those  /Eohan  harps  which  He  ever  wiUinj^  for 
music  in  all  the  lattices  of  his  mind.  Habitude  has 
cjiven  him  facility.  Versed  in  varied  modes  of  utter- 
ance, ancient  and  modern,  he  has,  I  dare  say,  no  need 
to  cut  down,  fill  up,  measure  or  count  out,  his  lines  and 
his  feet.  Forth  spring  his  words  from  the  germinating 
idea  which  lights  upon  him — and  so  the  song,  the 
hymn,  the  ballad,  the  sonnet,  or  what  not,  is  made  or 
ever  he  is  aware.  It  has  done  its  first  work,  if  it  has 
pleased  himself.  If  having  thrown  it  off,  and  thrown 
it  aside,  he  at  any  time  find  it  again,  and  if  it  chance  to 
please  him  again — why,  then  perhaps  he  affectionately 
adorns  it  as  he  can,  polishing  it  to  the  nail  (whereby 
he  is  like  enough  to  scratch  it  across  the  grain,  or  dull 
by  his  fingering  any  pretty  lights  upon  its  wings) ;  and  so 
he  leaves  it  ready,  if  ever  any  should  seem  sanely  to  wish 
for  it,  to  fly  forth  from  "  the  wells  where  it  did  lie."  Or  it 
may  be  that  this  strange  and  strong  desire  for  the  fellow- 
feeling  of  our  fellow-creatures,  which  accounts  for  all 
books  not  written  for  the  need  or  the  love  of  the  circu- 
lating medium,  may  become  a  means  of  its  circulation. 
E.xcept  indeed  they  be  songs  purposely  made  for  persons 
in  plays,  this  is  how  those  minor  poems  arise,  which 
often  have  the  maximum  of  merit.  It  would,  however, 
be  interesting  to  know  which  of  such  songs  have  been 
transplanted  into  scenes  from  these  little  nurseries  or 
hothouses  in  which,  as  bedding-out  plants,  the  mental 
gardener  had  raised  them. 

But  when  a  poet  contemplates  a  great — I  mean  a 
large  poem,  then  his  meditative  soul  looks  all  round  him 
for  a  platform  on  which  io  {Any  forth  at  will  hi.;  views 


356  CERTAIN  ASPECTS  OE 

of  life  and  of  the  time.  Many,  perhaps  most,  poets 
would,  I  suppose,  write  dramas,  but  for  that  need  of 
tackling  with  the  technicalities  of  the  stage,  for  which 
hours  of  leisure  or  business-like  habits  are  rarely  forth- 
coming. Moreover,  the  wayward  genius  hates  to  have 
his  wings  clipped  to  fly  round  those  circles  which  can 
be  known  only  to  a  Manager. 

If,  however,  your  poet  find  or  make  for  himself  a 
non-theatrical  stage  whereon  to  work,  he  can  then  bring 
in  what  characters  from  time  to  time  may  please  him  ; 
and  thus  he  gains  scope  and  verge  enough  to  vent 
what  he  has  to  say  on  all  the  things  which  move  him 
most,  or  may  seem  to  him  most  needful  or  fitting  to 
be  said  about  men  and  things  in  general.  And  it  little 
matters  whether  he  take  a  great  war,  or  the  doings 
and  wanderings,  passions  and  vicissitudes,  of  a  great 
hero  ;  or,  on  any  transparent  pretext,  the  great  and 
wide  sea  of  humanity  in  which  are  things  moving  innu- 
merable— both  small  affairs  and  great. 

Now,  what  was  Spenser's  idea  in  his  Faery  Queen  ? 
It  were  worthy  of  more  special  and  detailed  pains  than 
I  have  seen  bestowed  upon  it,  to  mark  the  work  done 
by  this  great  master  in  advancing  the  English  character 
and  developing  the  kingdom  of  God  ;  I  mean,  in 
raising  our  insular  humanity — and  therein,  when  time 
was  riper,  much  continental  and  colonial  life — towards 
its  destined  model.  This,  I  confess,  to  me,  first  for 
my  own  sake,  and  then  for  that  of  "  men  my  brothers,'' 
is  the  prime  source  of  an  eternal  delight  in  Edmund 
Spenser. 

Here,  spread  before  his  consciousness,  lay  those 
outer    and   inner  worlds — Paradise    lost    in    both,   and 


THE  POETRY  OF  STKXSER.  y^-j 

in  both  regained — regained  for  man,  ideally  and  by 
Exemplar,  but  not  yet  by  men  in  the  lightening  of 
their  daily  and  hourly  toil  and  moil.  To  help  this  con- 
summation forward  by  all  his  faculties — what  nobler 
end  could  any  poet  ever  compass  ?  And  with  grati- 
tude has  this  been  felt  by  most  of  the  good  critics  that 
I  have  read.  Palgrave,  I  see,  closes  his  learned  and 
able  notice  in  this  edition  by  a  fine  eulogy,  as  you 
will  see,  to  the  like  purport.  William  Rossetti,  meagre 
as  his  Life  of  Spenser  is,  notes  that  the  Faery  Queen 
stands  alone  of  very  great  poems  beside  the  Divina 
CoiiDnedia,  in  taking  the  illustration  of  spiritual  virtue 
for  its  direct  theme.  All  the  sweet  birds  of  the  pure 
air  of  our  poet's  mind  came  and  flocked  under  the 
branches  of  this  great  tree  of  the  Saviour's  Faith  ; 
and  to  drive  thence  all  doleful  creatures,  all  things 
that  offend,  was  his  work.  He  recognised  himself  as 
a  man  blest  with  the  noblest  leanings,  and  full  of  the 
best  powers  of  our  nature  ;  nor  was  anything  human 
alien  from  the  mission  with  which  he  felt  himself 
charged. 

All  the  world  of  his  Faery  Queen  is  a  stage  ;  and 
all  his  men  and  women  are  knights  and  ladies, 
shepherds  and  shepherdesses,  good  and  bad — none 
indifferent ;  and  all  influences  are  at  work  among 
them,  whether  of  "  goblins  damned  "  or  of  "  spirits  of 
health."  It  is  all  a  true  picture  of  life,  to  those  who 
read  between  the  stanzas — life  which  is  one  battlefield 
of  wild  and,  individually  speaking,  of  doubtful  strife, 
with  its  dangers,  its  safeguards,  and  its  adventures  ; 
in  which  Arthur  and  the  chosen  apostles  of  Virtue  go 
about  "  making  amity  "  and  doing  good.     And  whether 


358  CERTAIN  ASPECTS  OF 

this  be  done  in  drama  or  in  allegory,  matters  in  effect 
but  little. 

In  this  dreamland,  where  but  few  images  arc  vain, 
the  scenes  and  the  personages  come  and  go,  form, 
dissolve,  and  re-form — as  the  spirit  of  the  dream  swells 
and  narrows,  and  again  opens  out  into  Stefo8ot  of 
winding  avenues  and  visionary  vistas — while  all  goes 
to  the  solemn  accompaniment  of  an  unearthly  music, 
as  in  some  vast  and  dim  cathedral  where  you  cannot 
see  the  choir.  I  remember  Dean  Stanley  telling  of 
some  such  dream  that  he  had  of  the  infinite  lavender 
columns  and  long-drawn  aisles  of  St.  Peter's.  Music 
falls  in  ancient  lines,  and  the  whole  atmosphere  is 
pervaded  with  dying  and  reviving  melodies. 

In  the  very  tempest  and  whirlwind  of  emotion,  wild 
with  all  passionate  longings  and  infinite  regrets,  there  is 
yet  begotten  a  moderation  which  is  far  from  frigidity, 
while  all  is  presided  over  by  a  sanity  not  unduly  self- 
conscious — in  marked  contrast  to  the  turgid  pedantry 
of  many  before  and  after  him,  who  were  but  sorry  poets. 
It  might  be  amusing,  though  not  edifying — it  certainly 
would  carry  one  far  a  iintsis — to  exhibit  this  in  the 
remains  of  those  poetasters,  so  well  taken  off  in  the 
drama-scene  in  Hamlet ;  by  whom  the  epithets,  meta- 
phors, and  allusions  are  lugged  in  accrvativi — -qSvafxaTa 
served  up  as  eSecr/xara,  confects  and  sweetmeats 
brought  in  as  pieces  de  n^sisianee — which  made  the  grave 
Stagirite  smile  at  Alcidamas. 

Some  critics  complain  that  in  the  Faery  Queen  you 
never  know  where  you  are.  Goodness  me  !  can  any 
one  suppose  that  the  poet  ever  meant  him  to  know 
where  he  was?  or  that  he,  Edmund  Spenser,  was  sitting 


/•///:•  rO/CTRV  OF  SPFXSKK.  359 

clown  to  write  a  consecutive  biography  of  Artcgal,  com- 
piling a  history  of  Ducssa  from  the  A^vicgate  Calendar, 
or  the  annals  of  Belphcebe  from  the  Court  jfonrnal} 
Was  not  his  story  but  the  tangled  tale  of  human  life  ? 
The  poem  had  not  been  descriptive  of  this,  had  it  not 
itself  been  like  a  tangled  wood.  For  in  this  strange, 
eventful  life  of  ours,  who  ever  knows  where  he  is  ?  All 
a  man  may  know  is,  that,  come  what  may,  he  is  under 
the  aegis  of  the  Invisible — living  and  moving,  both 
now  and  always,  safely  under  the  feathers  of  Immortal 
Love.  The  whole  recital  of  our  poet  is  but  the  reflex 
of  an  existence  in  which  no  man  knows  what  perils, 
what  adventures,  what  calls  of  duty  a  day  may  bring 
forth.  What  man  or  woman  knows,  starting  forth  on 
any  morning,  what  he  or  she  may  have  to  do,  or  what 
he  or  she  may  have  to  suffer }  Here  is  a  grand 
allegor>' — for  in  that  time  an  Epopopceia  was  nothing 
if  it  was  not  allegorical :  nay,  if  Plutarch  divines  it 
truly,  allegory  is  both  useful  and  pleasant  for  all  time, 
and  Bunyan  will  be  read  when  Macaulay  is  forgotten — 
here  is  an  allegory,  highly  paregoric,  teeming  with  great 
examples.  Spirits  of  men  and  women,  dependent  on 
the  Highest,  go  forth,  clad  in  the  whole  armour  of  the 
continuous  God  who  abides  as  our  Armourer  from 
generation  to  generation,  doing  without  fear  or  fail  the 
very  things  which  each  Christian  has  to  do  in  his  own  way 
— proving  manliness,  redressing  wrongs,  setting  right  a 
disjointed  time,  seeing  that  the  poor  and  necxJy  have 
what  is  fair,  pushing  back  the  heathen,  making  mild  a 
rugged  people  ;  and,  though  he  suffer  like  a  Prometheus 
and  the  Jesus,  subduing  them  to  the  useful  and  the  good 
— until  the  "  kingdom  come."    When  you  know  where 


36o  CKRTAIN  ASPECTS   OF 

you  are,  nnd  wli.it  at  au)'  hour  you  may  be  callctl  to 
bear  o\  do  in  this  tani;icd  wilderness  of  a  corrupt  aud 
transitory  world,  >ou  ma)-  then  expect  to  know  where 
you  are  \\hen  you  read  the  Faery  (J/iccn  ! 

We  may  thankfully  feel  that  each  man  is  special  in 
his  make  ;  but  it  is  rarely  that  down  hither  a  spirit  like 
vSpenser  is  breathed  from  the  bosom  of  God — one  who 
combines  omnij^resent  insight,  limitless  apprehension, 
omnitenacious  memory,  free  imagination  and  command 
of  lordly  music,  with  industrious  care  to  pour  forth  this 
inn(;r  life.  Still  more  rare  is  it  to  possess  in  our  hurnanity 
a  soul,  who,  having  these  gifts,  makes  it  his  main  purpose 
to  lay  them  all  out,  as  I  have  noted,  for  the  highest 
end — the  glory  of  God  and  the  building  up  of  the 
Master's  kingdom.  It  would  be  highly  interesting,  but 
for  me  here  too  long  a  task,  to  gather  from  the  poems 
and  ])refaccs  of  immortal  writers  splendid  passages 
in  which  they  proclaim  this  to  be  their  earnest  aim  ; 
but  none  that  I  know  of — either  Dante,  Froissart, 
Tasso,  Ralegh,  Milton,  or  even  our  peerless  Peer  in 
liis  dedication  of  In  Mci/ioriaiii  to  the  "  strong  Son  ot 
God,  immortal  Love" — has  done  so  with  more  avowed 
design  than  Sjienser.  Not  only  does  he  set  this  forth 
in  his  letter  to  Ralegh,  but  in  all  the  "fierce  warres 
and  faithful  lo\es"  which  "  moralise  his  song,"  you  are 
shown,  as  Kitchin  has  well  put  it,  "  the  struggles  of 
the  hum.'in  soul  after  holiness  and  purity,  under  the 
guidance  of  '  Gospel  truth.'"  You  are  made  "aware  of 
the  Christian  warrior,  who,  with  many  temptations  and 
.some  downfalls,  wins  his  heavenly  way  over  the  van- 
(luishcd  bodies  of  sins  and  temptations,  *  clad  in  the 
whole  armour,'  without   which,  says  the  poet,  he   could 


(X 


THE  POETRY  OF  SPEXSER.  361 

not  succeed  in  that  enterprise."  To  show  how  Spenser 
works  this  out  were  beyond  my  present  tether  ;  but  I 
cannot  help  saying  what  good  service  has  been  done  b\' 
the  Clarendon  Press  for  the  living  "  Great  lady  of  the 
greatest  Isle"  in  having,  under  the  practised  guidance 
of  its  editor,  opened  up  to  the  minds  and  spirits  of  her 
boys  and  girls  these  "  pictures  of  true  nobility  of  soul  in 
man  and  woman,"  together  with  "the  intrinsic  baseness 
and  miser)'  of  selfishness  and  vice,"  giving  them  "lessons 
of  religious  and  moral  truth,  and  setting  before  their 
young  and  fervent  imagination  the  beauty  and  chival- 
rous elevation  of  what  is  good  and  the  degradation  of 
what  is  evil"  :   a  poem 

bravely  furnished  all  abroad  to  tling- 
The  winged  shafts  of  truth, 
To  throng  with  stately  blooms  the  breathing  spring 
Of  iiope  and  youth, — 

in  which  the  poet  sings,  "  with  golden  stars  above,"  of 
"  what  the  world  will  be,"  and  what  the  rising  race 
may  help  it  to  be,  "  when  the  years  have  died  away." 
La  It  date,  pucri  ! 

There  is  no  nearer  wa}'  of  estimating  Spenser's  true 
value  and  importance  to  England,  than  by  imagining 
what  a  calamity  it  would  have  been  to  our  }'oulh,  if 
Spenser,  with  all  that  warmth  of  feeling  and  wealth 
of  fancy,  had  been  one  to  take  for  his  hero,  not  Arthur, 
a  prince  of  the  Prince — by  whose  side  Amoret  was 
"  alwa}'s  safe " — but  some  reckless  libertine  ;  just  as 
we  may  see,  altcrnaiido,  what  a  blessing  it  might 
have  been,  to  the  purifying — in  lieu  of  a  curse,  to  the 
putrefaction — of  his  time,  if  Lord  Byron  had  not  let 
liis   power  go   into   capti\ity  and    his   beauty  into   the 


362  CKRTAIX  ASPECTS   OF 

enemy's  hand — inspired   by  Archimago  and  bewitched 
by  Duessa. 

In  our  poet,  what  phase  of  life,  what  time  of  Hfe,  is 
left  unpictured  ?  Old  men  and  maidens,  young  men 
and  children,  girls  and  grandams — are  they  not  all  set 
forth  at  their  best  ?  We  may  say  of  him,  as  he  says  of 
the  old  man  who  remembered  the  infancies  of  Nestor 
and  Mathusalem,  "  This  man  of  infinite  remembrance 
was"  and  "laid  up  all  things  in  his  immortal  serine." 

On  everything  which  is  good  and  beautiful,  brave 
and  joyous,  lovely  and  sweet,  pure  and  of  good  report, 
if  there  be  any  virtue  and  if  there  be  any  praise,  on 
these  things  you  are  led  to  think.  You  have  seas  and 
mountains,  forests  and  lakes,  shade  and  sunshine,  night 
and  morning,  dew,  flowers,  birds,  rivers  and  rainbows, 
the  courses  of  Nature,  and  the  march  of  the  seasons 
and  months.  All  the  sweet  influences  of  sun  and  moon 
and  stars  flow  in  :  avli  cnarrant — the  heavens  are 
telling.  Grace  and  beauty  pass  before  us  in  all  the 
music  of  motion.  Wars  are  here,  and  popular 
rejoicings,  palaces  and  wastes,  cities  and  universities,  all 
chambers  of  imagery  and  regions  of  phantasy — while 
Love  is  in  and  over  all.  Lastly,  when  all  earthly 
sources  of  comfort  and  pleasure  are  v/ithered  and 
updricd,  here  is  the  Tree  of  Life  for  all  to  take  shelter 
under,  and  the  Well  of  Life  for  all  to  quaff.  You 
may  find  these,  and  far  more,  in  the  Faery  Queen — a 
title  playfully  inadequate,  and  serving  ill  to  set  forth 
the  v/cighty  ten.our  of  its  intent. 

It  is  as  though  he  had  made  his  own  the  glass 
\\hich  ]\Ierlin  gave  to  Ryence,  and  had  held  it  up  to 
all    nature,    all    history,   and    all    poetry   of    the    past  ; 


^ 


THE  POETRY  OF  SPEXSER.  .^^,3 

wielding  by  his  genius  and  welding  into  his  purpose 
all  the  lore  of  legend.  This  poem  is  like  that 
mountain-lake  where  Arthur  found  the  diamond-set 
crown,  gathering  all  the  rills,  and  imaging  all  the 
heavens  and  all  the  hills. 

Or  else  you  may  liken  the  Faery  Queen  to  some 
mighty  tree  flourishing  in  our  British  humanity,  quantum 
ad  avium,  tantum  ad  Ta)  tarn.  The  stupendous  magni- 
ficence of  the  arms,  the  flowing  grace  of  the  branches, 
the  tapering  delicacy  of  the  sprays  (like  fingers  of  some 
high-born  lady),  the  tender  leafage  that  dances  on  each 
as  light  and  as  high  as  dance  it  can — all  that  we  see 
up  yonder  in  the  air  is  only  the  outward  and  visible 
sign  of  the  depth  of  the  branchery  of  the  rootage,  and 
the  infinite  down-fibring  of  that  power  of  insight  and 
knowledge  whereby  "  Ed.  Sp."  up-drew  for  his  nourish- 
ment and  for  ours  so  much  of  all  there  then  was  to  be 
read  and  known  in  the  world.  For  he  was  like  Calchas, 
that   chaplain  of  the  Greek  forces — 

OS  T78r^  TO.  T    iovra — to.  irpo  r    iovra. 

And  as  our  forefathers  valued  an  oak  by  the  number 
of  estimable  fellow-creatures  that  could  crowd  beneath 
it  to  batten  and  fatten  on  its  fallen  acorns,  which 
autumn  and  the  wind  shook  down,  so,  if  we  only 
reckon  the  poets  who  from  time  to  time  have  thriven 
under  him,  Spenser  verily  was  a  tree  of  no  little  mark 
in  the  land. 

That  was  truly  a  sweet  bird,  who  thus  gave  so  many 
keynotes  to  the  best  melodies  of  our  mother-tongue] 
honouring  the  infinite  well-spring  of  life  and  thought  ; 
while  he  poured  forth  in  purest  music   all   the   undulu- 


364  CERTAIN  ASPECTS  OF 

tions  of  our  deepest  and  truest  emotions,  attuning  all 
those  influences  which  sweeten  the  world's  imagination, 
and  make  and  keep  our  humanity  limpid  and  our  lives 
fresh.  Beati  immaculati.  These  "  Hymns  of  Heavenly 
Beauty  and  of  Heavenly  Love  " — will  they  not  live  and 
move  in  our  literature  when  all  the  drunken  ribaldries 
of  lower  ranges  of  feeling,  and  all  the  mere  animal 
inspirations  of  form  and  touch,  will  have  proved  them- 
selves null,  void,  and  phantasmal — like  drink-songs 
raved  by  some  savage  on  the  rapids,  while  his  canoe  is 
already  within  the  suck  and  the  seethe  of  the  precipice 
of  the  fall  ?  Of  such  like  the  memory  shall  perish  with 
them.  They  shall  reap  the  corruption  which  they  have 
sown.  For  a  time  must  come  when  those  who,  with 
morbid  curiosity,  may  rake  them  from  their  innnon- 
desznio,  will  wonder  that  there  ever  lived  a  generation 
who  fancied  they  could  find  in  the  dismal  swamp  ot 
their  sinfulness  anything  beautiful  at  all. 

Of  Shakespeare  himself,  peerless  otherwise  in  the 
poet's  pleasaunce,  it  were  almost  an  even  problem  to 
ask,  whether  the  man  who  could  give  forth  such  flashing 
and  oracular  splendours  of  beauty  and  of  truth,  could 
have  had  a  soul  which  was  not  quite  high  and  holy  ; 
or  whether  on  the  other  hand  he  who  could  stoop  now 
and  then  to  tickle  the  ears  of  the  groundlings  as  he 
did,  could  have  in  reality  cared  very  much  for  the 
growth  of  that  kingdom  which  is  "  first  pure."  Times, 
I  grant,  differ  ;  and  humanity  did  not  profess  to  be 
so  refined  even  as  now.  With  Spenser,  however,  there 
can  be  no  such  question.  He  was  vivid,  certainly,  as 
his  age  allowed,  in  his  picturing ;  but,  remembering 
his    final   cause,  we   must   see    that  he   was    bound    to 


nrE  POETRY  OF  SPEXSJ-A'.  -,,G^ 

make  the  enchantress  enchantinc^.  Yet  on  the  whole 
view  he  sets  himself  beU)io  all  thintj.s  to  hold  the 
Catholic — and  herein  mainly  the  purer  and  reformed 
Faith,  which  except  a  man  try  to  hold  pure  and 
undefiled — we  know  the  rest.  He  saw  that,  except 
poets  and  teachers  taught  men  so,  society  would 
without  doubt  perish  everlastingly.  Thus  he  was  salt 
in  his  country  and  a  light  in  his  world.  Taking  the 
flower  of  chivalry,  courtes}',  and  justice  to  show  forth 
the  Ideal  King  who  was  above  all  the  Flower  and 
Seedvessel  of  our  humanity — he  made  it  his  magnifi- 
cent task  to  do  what  in  him  lay  to  draw  all  who 
should  read  him  up  to  the  Father  of  all.  Bcatiis  vir 
qui  non  abiit.  As  for  those  praises  of  his  Royal 
Lad}-,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  she  also  was  an 
Ideal. 

How  various  in  their  possibilities  and  opportunities 
are  the  minds  of  men,  live  when  they  may  !  There  are 
those  who  have  a  full  reservoir  of  only  what  is  common 
to  the  species,  but  who,  save  in  disorderly  and  muddy 
bursts,  cannot,  happily,  f^ow  their  stagnants  forth  in 
ink.  Other  such  have  a  vast  power  of  utterance,  and, 
though  they  have  little  that  is  worthy  to  be  uttered, 
are  as  voluble  as  those  should  be  who  have  much. 
There  are  those  again  who  have  rich  store  of  pure 
and  wholesome  gatherings,  which  they  draw  by  their 
KaOvSpoL  TTOTajioi,  at  every  elbow  and  turn  from  the 
everlasting  hills  ;  but,  alas  !  constrained  in  their  own 
selves,  they  are  pent  up,  as  those  should  be  whose 
vulgar  passions  flow  forth  so  freely.  Either  from  want 
of  energy  or  of  early  habitude,  or  from  undue  self- 
consciousness,  or  shamefaced ijcss,  or  some  other  wile  of 


366  CERTAIN  ASPECTS   OF 

the  Enemy,  they  hide  their  righteousness  in  their  heart — ■ 
which  a  royal  poet  once  disclaimed  as  a  sin.  Others,  too, 
have  many  of  these  defects  without  those  compensations. 
But  the  Life-source  now  and  again  sends  down  out  of 
His  unseen  reservoir  of  vitality  spirits  who,  from  clear 
lakes  of  infinite  genius,  ever  freshened  by  celestial 
supply,  and  by  the  springs  that  run  among  those  hills, 
have  at  full  command  a  boundless  flow  of  things  old 
and  new,  happy,  pleasing,  and  rife  with  noble  teaching  ; 
uniting  with  all  this  the  power  of  making  for  themselves 
definite  channels,  which  they  overflow  at  will,  and  to 
which  at  will  they  can  return.  Thus  our  Spenser — 
iioster  Ennuis — while  he  welled  forth  in  these  world- 
embracing  stories  of  immortal  virtue,  left  to  himself 
the  liberty  of  leaving  his  main  current  and  spreading 
himself  in  shining  levels  over  the  leas.  Herein  are 
caught  for  our  delectation  the  images  of  the  cloud-like 
mountains,  majestic  in  their  solidity  but  toned  in  the 
reflexion  ;  also  of  mountainous  clouds  of  pleasant 
fiction,  bright  or  dark,  enhanced  in  their  mirror  into 
a  semblance  of  solidity.  All  these  we  behold  driven 
by  the  inspiring  breath  of  the  winds  of  fancy  into  such 
enchanting  confusion,  that  truth  and  fact  charm  us  by 
the  fictions  that  float  among  them,  while  fictions  acquire 
an  air  of  reality  by  mingling  with  the  lights  and  shadows 
of  the  abiding  truths  which  surround  and  surmount 
them.  Then,  when  the  poet  has  compassed  those  open 
meads  to  his  heart's  content,  he  is  wont,  we  see,  to 
subside  again  into  the  main  drift  of  his  story.  But, 
lest,  on  that  score,  any  charge  him  with  vagabondage, 
here  you  have  his  splendid  apology  in  his  own  better 
image  (V.  xii.)  : — 


THE  POETRY  OF  SPEXSER.  V'7 

Like  as  a  ship,  that  through  the  ocean  wide 
Directs  her  course  unto  one  certain  coast, 
Is  met  by  many  a  counter  wind  and  tide. 
With  which  her  winged  speed  is  let  and  crost. 
And  slie  herself  in  stormy  surges  tost ; 
Yet,  making  many  a  board  and  many  a  bay, 
Still  winneth  way,  ne  hath  her  compass  lost ; 
Right  so  it  fares  with  me  in  this  long  way. 
Whose  course  is  often  stayed,  yet  never  is  astray. 

Many  of  these  sweet  sayings  flung  abroad  by  Spenser 
seem  sisters  by  the  half-blood  to  those  wandering 
voices  of  Orpheus  and  Linus  and  of  those  mystic  Sibyls 
that  flitted,  and  perhaps  flit,  from  age  to  age — many 
places  claiming  them  and  having  their  claims  allowed 
— children  of  nymph  and  mortal,  articulate  cuckoos, 
scattering  abroad,  wherever  there  is  seed  of  men  with 
growth  of  mind  and  of  eternal  soul,  the  divine  monitions 
of  the  Counsellor,  Who  is  under  us,  over  us,  and  in  us, 
and  in  Whom  we  are.  Indeed,  if  my  memory  serve  me, 
the  lady  of  Erythrae  told  us  she  was  going  to  vaticinate 
when  she  was  gone. 

I  remember  (in  i  S46  or  '47)  our  beloved  Arthur 
Penrhyn  Stanley,  talking  about  the  rising  poet,  said  that 
one  sign  that  Tennyson  would  be  a  national  poet  was, 
that  so  many  of  his  lines  fell  into  forms  pithy,  easy  to 
be  quoted,  and  of  a  nature  to  become  part  of  popular 
language.  Perhaps  this  is  not  so  usual  in  the  poetry  of 
our  Spenser.  With  Jam  the  precipitation  of  cr>'stals  is 
less  frequent.  It  is  rather  his  full  music  and  flowing 
melody  which  run  into  the  ear  and  soul,  forming  the  like 
channels  in  genial  and  thoughtful  readers.  The  Faery 
Queen  is  a  house-treasure  of  high  family  amusement, 
a  winter  evening  book — a  great  household  cake  to  cut 
and  come  again  to,  as  many   can   tell.      lie  was  not. 


368  CERTAIN  ASPECTS   OF 

however,  as  we  have  seen,  lacking  in  the  power  of 
proverb  and  of  oracle.  None  can  ever  again  make 
one  great  poem  to  match  this — for  its  graces  are  bound 
up  with  much  that  would  no  longer  be  natural  and  is 
quite  beyond  imitation.  It  must  remain  a  wonder  of 
antiquity.  These  great  later  poems  of  human  struggle, 
in  which  the  main  character  is  some  "  glorious  devil 
large  in  heart  and  brain  " — what  are  they  but  inverted 
pyramids  }  Those  are  more  likely  to  stand  the  changes 
of  time  in  which,  as  here,  the  interest  is  based  and 
centred  round  the  Model  of  Life,  while  all  else  is  set 
forth  as  the  mere  counter-working  of  principles  and 
types  that  select  themselves  for  extinction. 

To  walk  through  the  palatial  chambers  of  this  very 
Vatican  of  enchanted  and  enchanting  tales — to  what 
shall  I  compare  it  t  What  a  splendid  opportunity  is 
thus  granted  to  unlettered  people  of  regathering,  in  more 
attractive  form,  a  knowledge  of  what  our  great  world 
has  been  and  has  done  ;  so  that  they  too  may  read 
the  old  mythologies,  and  time-honoured  histories  more 
mythological  still,  which  taught  the  infancy  of  our  race, 
and  may  read  them  in  their  purified  and  uplifted  mean- 
ings. It  is  a  kindred  chance  to  that  which  a  kindly 
civilisation  now  gives  to  the  peasant  and  the  artisan  of 
pacing  in  silent  appreciation  through  solemn  galleries, 
where  hang  for  them  the  paintings  of  the  Old  Masters, 
the  wisest  and  the  best  of  the  sons  and  teachers  of  Art. 
We  have  in  this  Poem,  as  in  those  galleries,  the  faces, 
forms,  and  deeds  of  the  dead,  drawn  in  the  one  mode  by 
the  heart-driven  quill  of  the  dead  Poet,  and  in  the  other 
by  the  re-animating  brush  of  the  dead  Artist,- — if  those 
indeed    can    be    called    dead    who    at   least   are  living 


THE  POKTRV  OF  SPEXSER.  yUr^ 

enough  to  brines  the  ancient  dead  to  \\{>i,  and  to  make 
us,  who  are  from  time  to  time  alive,  live  more  and  better 
by  re-living  so  largely  in  the  past.  The  great  masters 
of  poetic  art  had  infused,  each  into  the  doings  of  his 
day  or  of  the  days  before  them,  by  the  sympathy  antl 
vivacity  of  their  genius,  a  greatness,  an  import,  and  a 
bearing  on  the  progress  of  humanity,  which  otherwise 
never  could  have  been,  or  which,  having  been,  would 
have  slept,  for  all  we  should  have  been  the  wiser,  an 
eternal  sleep.  And  most  of  those  deeds  of  past  days,  as 
recorded  by  the  poets  who  immortalised  them  first,  our 
Spenser  has  gathered,  grouped,  and  uphung  for  us  in  this 
great  gallery  of  his  Faery  Queen.  When  we  wander,  it 
may  be,  in  those  halls  of  the  sweet  and  moving  pictures 
of  the  world's  great  painters,  kindly  lent  by  their  happy 
possessors,  or  bought  by  the  wisdom  of  the  State,  and 
when  evening  draws  on  apace,  we  fail  to  see  them  rightly 
for  the  thickening  shadows  of  the  far-spent  day;  but,  lo 
and  behold  !  in  a  moment  this  power  lent  by  the  lightning 
causes  all  of  them  to  start  up  for  us  beautiful  as  in  the 
sunshine.  And  is  not  this  something  like  what  Spenser 
has  done  for  the  English  people  with  the  stories  of  the 
dim  and  half-forgotten  past .?  To  see  Homer,  Vergil, 
Dante,  Ariosto,  Tasso,  and  the  rest,  under  Spenser's 
illumination,  is  as  if  a  tongue  of  light  came  and  sat  on 
each  of  them,  shaking  the  "  Temple  of  Fame  "  in  which 
they  are  sitting.  As  the  people  wander  and  wait  in 
their  darkened  "  Hall  of  Ignorance,"  his  magic  light  from 
behind  and  from  above  makes  each  of  those  old  pictures 
in  succession  spring  into  vivid  lineaments  out  of  the 
melting  forms  of  the  one  which  he  withdraws.  So  he 
deals  with  the  great  events  of  all  time,  and  with  the 
1.  24 


370  CERTAIN  ASPECTS   OF 

stru,!^g!e.s    and    triumphs    of    all   the    sweet    and    holy 

virtues,  from  beginning  to  end  of  his  poem.     We  seem 

to  drink  with  wondering'  ears, 
The  voices  of  the  dead,  and  songs  of  other  years — 

while  through  all  we  hear  the  undersong  of  that 
primal  dove  that  gave  prophetic  murmurs  to  the  breezes 
that  swept  through  the  oaktrees  of  Dodona — "  God  is, 
God  has  been,  God  shall  be"  and  withal  a  better 
Voice  than  any  primeval  Sibyl  knew — "  This  is  my 
beloved  Son  :  hear  Him." 

But  who  can  rightly  describe  the  nature  of  this  vast 
poem  .''  It  seems  a  piece  of  xfjv)(poTr)^  to  try — so 
here  I  give  it  up.  The  whole  is  of  the  stuff  that  dreams 
are  made  of — dreams,  however,  which  give  to  the  body, 
not  only  of  that  time  but  of  all  time,  its  form  and 
pressure,  and  which  so  have  in  them  more  reality 
than  most  actualities  can  ever  have.  Aristotle  says 
the  whole  business  of  poets  is  Xeyeiv  xjjevSrj  rjSeoj^ — to 
"make-believe"  agreeably — and  adds  that  their  fictions, 
being  general  and  pertaining  to  all  humanity,  are  more 
true  than  all  biographical  facts,  which  are  mostly  but 
true  for  the  individual. 

Did  Spenser  carry  out  the  design  of  the  Faery  Queen 
and  finish  the  poem  }  Mcthinks  he  did  not  finish  the 
poem — for  did  he  not  find  that  he  had  already  carried 
out  the  design  .-'  The  purpose  of  the  earlier  day,  woven 
with  pains  into  a  larger  plan,  seems  to  have  gathered 
head,  more  quickly  and  amply  than  he  had  meant,  into 
his  first  three  books — perhaps  into  his  very  first.  Had 
he  not  swept  all  mythology  and  antiquity  and  faery 
lore  into  his  current  }  Surely  it  seemed  flat,  stale  and 
unprofitable  for  him  to  tell  it  all  over  and  over  again, 


TTTF  POETRY  OF  SPFXSF.R.  r^-x 

for  illustration  of  truths  of  the  same  kind   that  before 

he  had  dwelt  upon  so  fully  ?     This  is  not  to  say  that 

he  had  "  run  dry  " — for  the  well-sprin<j  of  the  poet  is 

perennial,  and  his  soul  is  from  day  to  day  renewed  from 

above,  new  every  mornincr.      Nay,  lest  any  should  think 

tliat,  see  with  what   unnaiT<Ting  spirit   he  enters   on   his 

sixth  course  : — 

Tlie  ways  thn^uc^h  which  my  weary  steps  I  guide 
In  this  delightful  land  of  Fantasy, 
Are  so  exceeding  spacious  and  wide, 
And  sprinkled  with  such  sweet  variety, 
Of  all  that  pleasant  is  to  ear  or  eye, 
That  I.  nigh  ravished  with  rare  thought's  delighf, 
My  tedious  travel  do  forget  thereby  ; 
And  when  I  gin  to  feel  decay  of  might. 
It  strength  to  me  supplies  and  cheers  my  dulled  sprite. 

Yet  I  suppose  even  poets  may  for  a  time  be  physically 
or  psychically  tired,  as  these  lines  seem  free  to  confess. 
A  great  judge  in  his  last  semi-coma  is  reported  to 
have  said,  "  Gentlemen  of  the  jury,  you  are  dismissed." 
So  with  Spenser.  Hear  the  end  of  the  whole  matter 
(Bk.  VII.,  c.  v\\.,adfiu)  :— 

Then  was  the  whole  assembly  quite  dismissed, 
And  Nature's  self  did  vanish — whither  no  man  wist. 

See  how  this  babe  of  nature  vani.shcs  with  her.     Were 

five  more  Books  of  battle  and  love,  fiction  and  faery, 

gods  and  goddesses — "  the  whole  synod  of  them  " — to 

work  round  on  the  stage  again  .''      His  two  only  stanzas 

on  Mutability  look  to  me  like  a  palinode  for  the  frailly 

of  his  purpose,  and  as  if  meant  for  a   last   word  and   a 

grand  a  Dieu  : — 

Thenceforth  all  shall  rest  eternally 
With  Him  that  is  the  God  of  Sabbaoth  hight. 
Oh  !  that  great  Sabbaoth  God,  grant  mcthat  Sabbath's  sight 


372   CERTAIN  ASPECTS   OE   SPENSER'S  POETRY. 

Can  )ou  think  that  he  meant  anything  further  to  come 

of  the  Faery  Qncoi  after  this  ?      I  trow  not. 

For  even  as  a  child, 
Tired  of  long  play, 
At  close  of  summer  day 
Lies  down  and  slumbers — 

even  so  his  Faery-Queenly  Muse  seems  to  me   to  have 
sunk  to  rest. 


IV.    THE    INTROSPECTION    AND    OUTLOOK 
OF   SPENSER. 

By  the  Rev.  William  Hubbard,  Maxchester. 

While  deprecating  too  rigid  a  definition,  the  idea  of 
this  Essay  may  be  stated  as  an  attempt  to  estimate 
Spenser  xvorking  ratJier  than  his  zuork  ;  tJie  poet  rather 
tluin  his  poetry.  Spenser  was  essentially  introspective. 
He  thrilled  with  self-consciousness.  This  accounts  for 
the  egoism  so  undisguisedly  present  in  his  writing.  We 
have  to  note  his  self-representation,  self-delighting,  and 
self-bewailing.  His  earliest  work,  the  ShepJiercVs  Calen- 
dar, "  that  new  beginning  in  English  poetry,"  is  much 
concerned  with  "  Colin,"  and  first  made  apparent  a 
native,  and  what  proved  a  predominating  habit.  From 
the  beginning  he  looked  on  his  surroundings  through 
himself  He  was  his  own  centre  and  source  of  interest. 
Even  Nature  reflected,  or  S}'mbolized  his  thoughts,  his 
moods  ;  and  sympathized  with  Jiis  sorrows  and  dis- 
appointments. Not  at  any  time  did  he  set  himself,  or 
feel  called  upon,  to  act  as  Nature's  interpreter — herein 
differing  fundamentally  from  Wordsworth  ;  or  to  make 
her  articulate  and  audible  for  her  own  sake.  He  used 
Nature  to  image  and  make  himself  intelligible  : — 

Thou  barren  ground  whom  Winter's  wrath  hath  wasted 
Art  made  a  mirrour,  to  behold  my  plight. 

♦  *  *  * 

Such  rage  as  Winter's,  raigneth  in  my  heart, 
My  life  blood  freezing,  with  unkindly  cold. 


371 


TliE  INTROSPECTION  AND 

Yuu  naked  trees  .   .   . 

*  *  *  *  . 

I  sec  your  teares,  tliat  from  your  bou.q-hs  do  rauie 
Whose  drops  in  drerie  ysicles  reraaine. 

*  *  *  * 

And  from  mine  eics  the  drizlin,!?  teares  descend 
As  on  your  bou.i^hs  the  ysicles  depend. 


lie  exemplifies  from  his  youth  a  lordly  audacity  of 
-enius,  which  orandly  claims  the  universe  of  things  as 
its  retinue,  never  dreamin-  of  aught  to  which  it  owes 
allegiance,  much  less  submission.  A  decade  or  more 
latcV  than  the  quotations  made  above,  we  find  him 
dealing  with  Nature  as  his  dependant  ;  waiting  on  him 
for  life,  m(;vemcnt  and  merriment.  The  lines  are  from 
Colin  Clout  : — 

Hobbinol  j^an  thus  to  him  arced. 

Colin  my  liefe,  my  life,  how  great  a  lossc 
Had  all  the  shepheards  nation  by  thy  lacke  i 
And  I  poore  swaine  of  many  greatest  crosse  : 
That  sith  thy  Muse  first  since  thy  turning  backe 
Was  heard  to  sound  as  she  was  wont  on  hye, 
Hast  made  us  all  so  blessed  and  so  blythe 
Whilest  thou  wast  hence  all  dead  ni  dole  did  he: 
The  woods  were  heard  to  waile  full  many  a  sythe, 
And  all  the  birds  with  silence  to  complame  : 
The  fields  with  faded  flowers  did  seem  to  mourne, 
And  all  their  flocks  from  feeding  to  reframe  : 
The  running  waters  wept  for  thy  returne 
And  all  their  fish  with  languour  did  lament  : 
But  now  b.ilh  woods  and  fields,  and  floods  revive, 
Sill:  ihou  an  come,  their  cause  of  merruTient, 
Tii.-.t  us  late  dead,  hast  made  againc  alive. 

He  saw  in  Nature  no  severely  jealous  mistress  to  whom 
he  must  pay  unceasing  devotion,  but  rather  his  own 
pcx.r  serving-maid.  To  another  Queen  than  she  he 
c.lTei-ed  his  iiomage.  He  made  as  well  as  "piped"  his 
melodies.      His  song  uas  born  out  of  his  own  life  ;   and 


1/ 


OUTLOOK  Ol'  SPENSER.  375 

right  noble  music  he  made.  Whether  he  had  uttered 
his  clearest,  richest,  fullest  notes,  none  now  can  ever 
know.  He  died  incomplete.  No  argument  drawn 
from  a  decline  of  imaginative  glory — speaking  broadly 
— in  the  later  books  of  the  Faery  Queen  can  be 
decisive,  for  while  he  was  "making"  tiiem,  he  was  afraid 
of  poverty  and  hankering  after  higher  employment  ; 
and  no  man  can  do  his  best,  or  is  at  his  best,  when 
such  are  his  conditions.  To  do  his  best  possible,  a  poet 
above  all,  must  have  rest  and  peace,  the  rest  and  peace 
of  moderate  contentment  and  perfect  self-possession. 
Fear  of  poverty  will  not  let  a  man  possess  himself. 
The  cold  malignant  glare  of  the  wolfs  eye,  however 
distant,  will  perturb  him,  and  deprive  his  hand  of  some 
of  its  skill.  However  the  case  were  with  Spenser,  in 
what  we  have  of  his,  the  cunning,  airy,  delightful, 
tireless  worker  is  in  every  line.  His  are  the  glow  and 
the  beauty.  As  I  have  said,  his  work  came  out  of  the 
substance  of  his  life.  Life,  not  as  significant  of  facts 
and  events  that  can  be  written  down  chronologically  or 
otherwise  in  a  biography  ;  nor  a  series  of  things  that 
can  be  specified  as  occupying  so  much  of  space  and 
time,  and  altogether  measurable  ;  but  the  poet's  in- 
definable stock  of  multiform  vitality,  which  defies  all 
weights  and  measures,  and  mocks  all  endeavours  of 
accountant  or  valuer. 

Note  specifically,  here,  his  power  of  self-projiXtioii. 
Not  into  the  hard  matter-of-fact  visible  world,  nor  into  the 
world  of  motive,  where  actions  have  their  secret  source 
and  spring,  but  into  the  region  of  sentiment,  heart- 
feeling  and  suffering.  He  clothes  himself  with  sorrowful 
experiences,   that  personally    he  could    not    have   had. 


376  THE  INTROSPECriON  AND 

lie  speaks  them  as  if  they  were  his  own,  as  poetically, 
though  not  actually  they  were.  He  bore  sorrows,  and 
sighed  and  moaned  under  the  weight  of  sorrows,  that 
had  never  bruised  his  heart.  How  piteously  he  wept 
and  wailed  !  And  like  enough  he  shed  real  tears, 
heaved  real  sighs,  endured  pangs,  and  believed  himself 
the  sufferer.  His  pictures  are  therefore  j-^/^-representa- 
tive.  Referring  again  to  the  Shepherd's  Calendar,  the 
reader  will  remember  "  Cuddie,"  the  discontented  boy. 
He  is  found  in  the  February  Eclogue: — 

Ah  for  pittie,  will  rancke  winter's  rage, 
These  bitter  blasts  never  gin  t'asswage  ? 
The  kene  colde  blowes  through  my  beaten  hide, 
All  as  I  were  through  the  bodie  gride. 

And  much  more  in  similar  strain.  Spenser's  tempera- 
ment leaves  us  without  wonder,  that  he  could  so  well 
assume  the  injured  tone,  and  utter  the  thoughtless 
petulance,  the  high-pitched  bad-tempered  whines,  of  a 
conceited  youth,  offended  at  the  world's  order  and 
procedure.  But  we  wonder  all  the  more  that  he  had 
so  early  sympathetically  acquainted  himself  with  the 
stored  and  ripened  wisdom  contained  in  "  Thenot's " 
answers.  We  wonder  that  he  could  speak  so  melodiously 
the  language  of  a  conquest  and  control  that  I  think  he 
never  for  himself  achieved. 

Selfe  have  I  worne  out  thrise  thirtie  yeares, 
Some  in  much  ioy,  many  in  many  teares  : 
Yet  never  complained  of  colde  nor  heat, 
Of  sommers  flame,  nor  of  winter's  threat : 
Ne  ever  was  to  Fortune  foe  man, 
But  gently  tooke,  that  ungently  came. 
And  ever  my  flockc  was  my  chiefe  care, 
Winter  or  Sonimer  they  mought  well  fare. 


OUTLOOK  OF  SPEXSKR.  m 

There  is  a  verse  in  the  sixth   Eclogue  which  is  marked 

by  exceeding  depth   and   mellowness.       It    is    Colin's 

self  who  speaks  : — 

And  I,  whilst  youth,  and  course  of  carelesse  yeeres, 
Did  let  me  walke  withouten  lincks  of  love, 
In  such  dcli>;hts  did  ioy  amon^^st  my  pecres  : 
But  rj'per  a.a^e  such  pleasures  doth  reproove, 
My  fansie  eke  from  former  follies  moove 
To  stayed  steps,  for  time  in  passing  weares 
(As  t^arments  doen,  which  wexen  old  above) 
And  draweth  new  delights  with  hoarie  haires. 

That  is  a  fine  instance  of  his  power  to  go  forth  and 
take  on  experiences,  sentiments,  and  emotions  not  his 
own.  He  was  only  in  his  dewy  prime  when  he  wrote 
those  lines  :  yet,  note,  his  "  course  of  carelesse  yeeres," 
and  the  reproof  of  riper  age  ;  but  most  of  all  the 
reference  to  the  passing  of  time.  How  he  must  have 
given  himself  up  to  a  part,  made  himself  old  and 
venerable,  to  have  felt  on  his  spirit  the  cooling, 
tempering,  ennobling  passage  of  time's  hand  !  The 
passing  of  time's  hand  over  the  head  whitens  the  hair, 
but  the  youth  Spenser  contrived  to  feel  its  chastening 
influence  on  his  heart,  drawing  to  new  delights  with 
hoary  hairs.  So  he  made  himself  his  subject,  and 
wrought  out  of  himself  in  endless  forms  of  delicate 
tracery  his  immortal  verse  : — 

Enough  is  me  to  paint  out  my  unrest 

And  poure  my  piteous  plaints  out  in  the  same. 

I  do  not  venture  to  pronounce  absolutely  on  his  love- 
wailings  ;  but  in  my  judgment  his  "  plaints"  arc  drawn 
out   in    such   golden    lengths,  and   in   such  enchanting 
measure,  that  I  am  forced  to  think  he  loved  them. 
Further    to    illustrate     Spenser's     introspection    and 


378  THE  IXTROSrECnOX  AND 

outlook,  wc  turn  to  his  iiiiellectual  sdf-consciousncss.  He 
is  distinguished,  in  this  respect,  by  a  notable  unsparing- 
ness  of  self-affirmation.  The  unconsciousness  of  our 
earlier  poets,  that  critics  have  lately  discovered  and 
lauded,  is  hard  to  find,  and  still  harder  to  credit.  For 
the  most  part,  men  have  done  their  work,  whether  in  late 
or  early  times,  waking  ;  and  the  wider  awake,  the  better 
has  been  their  work.  Spenser  was  no  unconscious 
maker  of  good  things.  Perhaps  he  was  a  little  over- 
conscious,  or  rather,  a  little  too  openly-conscious.  We 
would  be  soft  in  our  impeachments.  Certainly  few,  if 
any,  have  put  in  so  bold  a  claim  for  noteworthiness,  or 
sung  personal  supremacy  so  unequivocally,  as  he. 

He  saw  in  himself  no  common  singing-bird,  or  one 
of  many,  gifted  perchance  with  a  triile  sweeter  note 
than  his  fellow-songsters  ;  but  one  the  like  of  which 
can  scarce  be  heard  in  centuries.  Observe  with  what 
masterful  indifference  he  passes  over  the  whole  distance 
between  himself  and  "  the  old  famous  poet  Chaucer." 
No  one  had  lived  since  Chaucer,  till  Spenser  ap- 
peared. He  quietly,  and  as  by  right  of  nature,  ignores 
a  century  and  a  half,  and  takes  his  place  as  the  one 
lineal  descendant  of  England's  one  great  poet.  In 
him  he  recognised  the  kindredness  and  companionship 
which  makes  a  man  worthy  to  be  the  teacher  of  one 
who  places  himself  by  his  side  as  an  equal. 

The  gentle  Shepheard  sate  besiden  spring, 

All  in  the  shadow  of  a  bushie  Breere, 

That  Colin  hight,  which  well  could  pipe  and  sing, 

For  he  of  Tityrus  his  songs  did  lere. 

The    same    assurance  of  genius  is  manifest  in   what    we 
may  designate  his  choice  of  a    rival,  as  in  his  selection 


OUTLOOK  OF  SPENSER.  379 

of  a  maslcr.  With  his  Faery  Queen  openinj^"  before  his 
mind,  it  was  far  more  than  a  correct  perception,  it 
was  high  instinct,  which  prompted  him  to  match 
himself  with  Ariosto.  That  was  as  happy  and  sound 
a  judgment,  as  the  one  which  took  him  to  the 
feet  of  Chaucer,  Though  subjected  to  distinctive 
treatment,  and  pervaded  by  striking  differences  of 
tone,  the  world  of  the  Orlando  Furioso  is  the  world  of 
the  Faery  Queen.  It  is  the  world  of  romance  and 
chivalry,  knightly  jousts  and  worship  of  "  faire  women." 
Spenser's  emulation  was  not  only  fit,  but  fearless  ;  for 
we  must  remember  that  Ariosto's  was  at  that  time  the 
most  celebrated  song  in  Europe.  It  is  from  Gabriel 
Harvey  we  learn  Spenser's  ambitious  rivalry.  In  a 
letter  dated  April  i  580,  addressed  to  Spenser,  he  names 
together  the  Elvish  Queen  and  the  Orlando  Furioso — 
"  which,"  he  remarks,  "  you  will  needs  seem  to  emulate, 
and  hope  to  overgo,  as  you  flatly  professed  yourself  in 
one  of  )'our  last  letters."  Though  Spenser  was  not 
yet  thirty  years  of  age,  that  is  on  all  accounts  credible  ; 
and  having  the  ambition,  he  was  quite  the  man  to 
reveal  his  confidence  to  his  friend.  He  gave  himself 
in  pledge  to  fortune  and  to  fame,  but  not  without 
reckoning  his  chance  of  self-redemption.  He  held  the 
secret  of  his  power,  and  had  no  shadow  of  a  doubt  but 
that  the  genius  for  which  England  waited  had  at  length 
come.  Certainly  all  this  might  have  been  the  impudence 
of  conceit.  Then  failure  and  oblivion  would  have  been 
his  sufficient  and  abiding  rebuke.  "  Genius  consists 
neither  in  self-conceit  nor  in  humility,  but  in  a  power 
to  make  or  do,  not  everything  in  general,  but  something 
in    particular."      Genius    must    authenticate     itself    by 


38o  THE  j'N7KOS]'J:CTION  AAW) 

work.  Temperament,  discernments,  ambitions,  ecstasies, 
do  not  make  a  poet ;  there  must  be  forthcoming  tJie 
poem.  When  all  brave  words  are  said,  the  poem  is 
the  proof  that  a  great  poet  has  arisen.  The  world  can 
accept  nothing  less,  as  it  needs  nothing  more.  But 
before  it  is  written,  he  who  has  to  write  must  have 
premonition  of  his  faculty.  Spenser's  gift  was  not 
coy — did  not  shyly,  as  if  ashamed  or  afraid,  seek 
retirement  and  shade.  It  boldly  revealed  itself  to  its 
possessor,  and  pressed  early  for  recognition  and  trust; 
and  while  yet  a  \outh,  he  had  so  far  obtained  its 
use  and  exercise  as  to  write  a  work  which  was  past 
controversy — a  new  thing  in  our  national  literature,  and 
which  marks  something  like  an  epoch  in  the  history  of 
our  tongue.  The  Shepherd's  Calendar  went  far  toward 
establishing  the  adequacy  of  our  language  as  an  instru- 
ment of  thought  and  expression,  and  its  capability 
of  unfolding  the  resources  and  displaying  worthily  the 
inventiveness  of  the  highest  poetic  art.  The  age  was 
quick  with  immense  possibilities  of  thought  and  music, 
literary  and  imaginative  splendour.  All  the  elements 
of  epic  and  dramatic  art  lay  in  marvellous  profuseness 
close  at  hand.  An  endless  diversity  of  forces  were 
struggling  tov/ard  manifestation  ;  multitudinous  voices 
were  striving  strenuously  to  articulate;  mighty  impulses 
stirred  the  nation  ;  but  it  was  a  vast  chaotic  activity 
that  prevailed.  Amidst  it  all,  Spenser  rose — a  revelation 
of  law,  order,  sweetness,  grace  and  beauty,  a  new 
creation  of  the  in-forming  spirit  of  thought  and  utter- 
ance. At  once  his  superiority  was  owned,  his  assurance 
justified,  by  all  who  had  any  claim  to  be  heard.  At 
once   lie    asserted    an    authority  above  custom,    a   right 


OUTLOOK  OF  SPEXSER.  381 

above  the  dictates  of  ruling  taste  and  fashion,  beyond 
antiquity  itself  ;  the  ri^ht  of  an  original  genius  to  give 
his  own  message,  in  his  own  self-chosen  form,  and  in 
his  mother-tongue.  He  was  vindicated  in  his  conscious- 
ness of  intellectual  distinction  and  might. 

Another  note  of  his  intellectual  self-consciousness 
was  his  habit  o{  estiutating  and  passing  judgment  upon 
his  oii'H  work.  He  watched  minutely  the  outgoings  and 
shapings  of  his  mind.  He  beheld  joyously  his  creations, 
and  unfalteringly  pronounced  them  good.  He  studi- 
ously noted  the  formation  of  his  style  : — 

A  good  old  Shcpheard,  Wrenock  was  his  name, 
Made  me  by  art  more  cunning  in  the  same. 

Fro  thence  I  durst  in  derring  to  compare 
With  Shepheards  swaine,  what  ever  fed  in  field  : 
And  if  that  Hobbinoll  right  iudgement  bare, 
To  Pan  his  owne  sclfe  pipe  I  neede  not  yeeld. 

For  if  the  flocking  Nymphes  did  follow  Pan 

The  wiser  Muses  after  Colin  ran. 

His  audacity  has  been  commented  on  in  another  con- 
nection ;  it  is  irresistibly  suggested  here  : — 

Loe  I  have  made  a  Calender  for  every  yeare, 

That  Steele  in  strength,  and  time  in  durance  shall  outwearc  : 

And  if  I  marked  well  the  starres  revolution. 

It  shall  continue  til  the  worlds  dissolution. 

To  teach  the  ruder  Shepheard  how  to  feede  his  sheepc, 

And  from  the  falsers  fraude  his  folded  flocke  to  keepe. 

Doubtless  many  men  have  fancied  and  believed  their 
works  would  survive  both  steel  and  time,  but  few  have 
ventured  to  record  their  conviction,  and  send  it  forth 
abroad  for  all  that  list  to  read.  But  he  gathers  up 
and  concentrates  what  I  may  call  his  egoistic  energ\',  in 
one  flash-like  line  of  the  dedication  of  his  Faery  Queen 
"to  the  most  high,  mighty  and  magnificent  Elizabeth." 


-, « 2  f///':  /NTR  ospE(  •  Tiny  a  xn 

In  that  line  he,  Eh'zabcth's  ?-nost  humble  servant, 
hxlmuni'l  Spenser,  doth  "  consecrate  these  his  labours  to 
live  with  the  Eternity  of  iier  fame."  That  is  a  piece 
of  magnificent  daring  ;  but  clearh',  only  the  endorse- 
ment of  his  self-estimate  by  the  most  nobly  endowed 
minds  through  three  centuries  of  years,  saves  it  from 
being  deemed  the  vapouring  of  a  fool.  These  ample 
years  demonstrate  that  the  eye  and  ear  he  turned  upon 
himself  were  true,  and  we  almost  hold  him  blameless  of 
even  vanity.  Moreover  he  sings  his  own  sweetness  so 
sweetly,  or  his  own  grandeurs  so  grandly,  that  without 
thinking  of  the  need  of  forgiveness  we  forgive  him. 

Tliat  he  should  listen  to  and  be  charmed  by  his  own 
music  was  a  necessity.  He  had  a  gift  to  give  to  men. 
No  lyre  hitherto  had  struck  his  highest  notes.  His 
ear  must  needs  be  turned  inward.  He  could  not  learn 
his  measure,  however  attentively  he  listened,  without. 
No  one  knew  it.  He  may  have  caught  from  Sackville 
faint  and  fitful  strains,  that  were  a  far  distant,  echo-like 
suggestion  of  his  own  stately  numbers,  but  the  flood  of 
golden  melody  he  had  to  let  loose  upon  the  nation's 
delighted  sense  was  in  his  own  soul. 

There  is  also  to  be  detected  in  his  estimates  of  his 
poetry  an  admirable  candour.  He  exercised  a  wise 
critical  judgment  upon  himself.  I  mean,  he  knew 
inferior  work,  when  it  was  his  own  ;  and  was  so  con- 
stituted, that  it  was  impossible  for  l"um  to  be  idle,  and 
equally  impossible  for  him  to  be  content  with  feeble 
endeavour  and  poor  achievement. 

The  noblo  hart,  tlint  harbours  vcrtiinus  thoug-ht, 
And  is  with  child  of  gdorious  great  intent, 
Can  never  rest,  until  it  forth  have  brouj^ht 
'I'll'  elernall  brood  of  glorie  excellent. 


OUTLOOK  OF  SPENSER.  t,^ 

He  had  a  "  glorious  great  intent,"  and  could  "  never 
rest."  This  directs  us  to  the  keenness  of  his  intellectual 
purpose,  his  uncontrollable  impulse  to  excel.  He  most 
frequently  discovers  this.  Note  his  conscious  observa- 
tion of  effects  : — 

The  Shcpheard  boy  .   .   . 

•  •  •  •  • 

Sate  (as  his  custome  was)  upon  a  day, 

Charming  his  oaten  pipe  unto  his  peres, 

The  Shepheards  swaines,  that  did  about  him  play  : 

Who  all  the  while  with  greedie  listful  eares, 

Did  stand  astonisht  at  his  curious  skill, 

Like  hartlesse  deare,  dismayed  with  thunders  sound. 

A  poetic  device  doubtless,  yet  denoting  the  sensitive- 
ness of  the  poet's  mind  to  the  opinions,  at  least,  of 
his  friends.  To-day  those  "  Shepheard  swaines,"  the 
reviewers,  would,  I  think,  give  him  a  little  anxiety.\  He 
had  a  greediness  of  sympathetic,  appreciative  praise. 
He  would  have  worked  without  it  ;  but  he  worked,  and 
the  work  was  better,  with  it.  In  the  sixth  Eclogue 
of  the  Calendar  Hobbinoll  thus  discourses  to  his 
friend  : — 

Colin,  to  heare  thy  rj'mes  and  roundelayes 
Which  thou  were  wont  on  wasteful  hils  to  sing, 
I  more  delight,  then  larke  in  Sommer  dayes : 
WTiose  Eccho  made  the  neighbour  groves  to  ring, 
And  taught  the  byrds,  which  in  the  lower  spring 
Did  shroude  in  shady  leaves  from  sunny  rayes, 
Frame  to  thy  songe  their  cheereful  cheriping, 
Or  holde  their  peace,  for  shame  of  thy  sweete  layes. 

I  sawe  Calliope  with  Muses  moe, 

Soone  as  thy  Oaten  pype  began  to  sounde. 

Their  yvorie  Luites  and  Tamburins  forgoe  : 

And  from  the  fountaino,  where  they  sat  arounde, 

Renne  after  hastilie  thy  silver  sounde. 

But  when  they  came,  wher  thou  thy  skil  didst  showe. 

They  drawe  aback,  as  halfe  with  shame  confounde, 

Shepheard  to  see,  them  in  their  art  out-goe. 


38|  THE  INTROSPECTION  AND 

"  Cuddy  "  in  Colin  Clout  says  of  love  : — 

Well  may  it  seeme  by  this  thy  deep  insight, 
That  of  that  God  the  priest  thou  shouldest  bee  : 
So  well  thou  wot' St  the  mysteries  of  his  might, 
As  if  his  godhead  thou  didst  present  see. 

In  all  these  verses  the  commendation  is  generous 
and  rich,  and  very  likely  is  a  reproduction  of  praise 
bestowed  by  those  to  whom  he  may  have  read  his 
poems.  It  was  the  kind  of  praise  he  desired  and 
sought.  Colin's  answer  to  Cuddy,  as  above,  shows 
admirably  the  love  of  the  excellent,  and  the  just  appre- 
hension and  estimate  of  the  poet's  place  and  functions, 
which  co-existed  with  Spenser's  love  of  praise,  as 
follows  : — 

Of  loves  perfection  perfectly  to  speake, 
-  ■    Or  of  his  nature  rightly  to  define, 

Indeed  (said  Colin)  passeth  reasons  reach. 

And  needs  his  priest  t'  expresse  his  power  divine. 

The  tenth  Eclogue  of  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  I 
take  to  be  a  deliberate  study  of  himself,  an  intellectual 
autobiography  referring  to  the  development  of  his 
gifts  and  the  perfecting  of  his  style.  He  is  measuring 
and  trying  the  strength  of  his  wings  ;  he  is  busy  dis- 
covering whether  his  pinions  may  be  trusted  to  follow 
the  glance  of  his  eye.  The  eagle  eye  should  have  the 
eagle  wing.  Spenser,  in  this  Eclogue,  is  preparing  to 
prove  he  has  both.  In  illustration  take  the  following. 
"  Cuddie  "  is  out  of  heart,  and  Piers  rebukes  him  : — 

Ciiddic,  for  shame  hold  up  thy  heavie  head, 

***** 
Piers,  I  have  piped  carst  so  long  with  paine, 
That  all  mine  Oten  reedes  bene  rent  and  wore  : 
And  my  poor  muse  hath  spent  her  spared  store, 
Yet  little  good  hath  got,  and  much  lesse  gaine. 


OUTLOOK  OF  SPENSER.  385 

After  further  dialoc^ue,  Piers  gives  the  following 
counsel  : — 

Abandon  then  the  base  and  viler  clowne, 
Lift  up  thy  selfe  out  of  the  lowly  dust: 
And  siri^-  (jf  biuudy  Mars,  of  wars,  of  .i^iusts, 
Turnc  thee  to  those,  that  weld  the  awfull  crowne, 
To  doubted  kni.i:fhts,  whose  woundlesse  armour  rusts, 
And  holmes  enibruzod  wexen  daily  browne. 
There  may  thy  Muse  display  her  Huttriny:  win.2f, 
And  stretch  her  seife  at  lar^'-e  from  East  to  West. 

But  we  must  refrain,  for  the  whole  might  be  quoted. 
Spenser  was  a  man  of  soaring  literary  ambition,  and 
exhibited  what,  perhaps,  may  be  described  as  a  haughty 
sensitiveness  to  the  judgment  of  his  peers,  a  semi- 
disdainful  eagerness  to  please.  Very  specially  he 
wished  to  please  the  high,  whether  of  birth  or  station. 
He  put  low  price  on  lowly  praise  : — 

So  praysen  babes  the  pecocks  spotted  train, 
And  wondren  at  bright  Argus  blazing  eye. 

The  better  please,  the  worse  despise,  I  aske  no  more. 

As  already  quoted — 

.     the  flocking  Nymphes  did  follow  Pan, 
The  wiser  Muses  after  Colin  ran. 

His  genius  was  aristocratic  in  its  preferences.      It  loved 

the  stately  halls  of  the  noble  and  the  courts  of  kings  : — 

O  pecrlesse  pocsie,  where  then  thy  place  ? 
If  not  in  princes  paliace  thou  doest  sit. 

His  scorn  of  the  popular  ta-ste  is  seen  in  lines  wherein 
he  laments  the  decay  of  love  for  "  loftie  verse,"  and  sa}s 
bitterly — 

Tom  piper  makes  us  better  mcl(jdic. 

P>urleigh,  and  such  as  he,  gladly  would  Spenser  have 
conciliated  ;   but   in   jiure  hi'.dimiiidcdness  he  refused  to 
I.  •  2 ; 


386  THE  INTROSPECTION  AND 

lower  his  poetic  tone,  or  forego,  ever  so  little,  of  the 
claim  of  his  exalted  muse  iii)on  honour  and  all  noble 
regard.  It  fretted  and  worried  him  not  to  be  under- 
stood and  admired  ;  yet  he  had  the  manliness  to 
continue  his  pursuit  of  perfection  in  his  art,  when 
chilled  by  disappointment,  and  languishing  in  what  to 
him  was  very  much  like  banishment  and  neglect.  This 
is  a  trait  upon  which  every  honourable  mind  must  dwell 
with  pleasure. 

In    his    art   and    its    Divine   creations  he  found  relief 
from  "  sullen  care,"  and  secured  joy  and  freedom  : — 

Tlic  waics,  throu_L,''h  which  my  weary  steps  I  guyde 
In  this  dehghtfull  land  of  Faery, 
Are  so  exceeding  spacious  and  wyde, 
And  sprinckled  with  such  sweet  variety 
Of  all  that  pleasant  is  to  eare  or  eye, 
That  I,  nigh  ravisht  with  rare  thoughts  delight, 
My  tedious  travell  doe  forget  thereby  ; 
And,  when  I  gin  to  feele  decay  of  might. 
It  strength  to  me  supplies,  and  chears  my  dulled  spright. 

In   "  land  of  Faery  "    he    sang   and  clapped    his  wings 

for   gladness.      Its   scenes  and    forms    were   to   him   as 

familiar  as  the  scenes  and  forms  of  the  common  world 

are   to   other   men.       It  is  a  land   "  exceeding  spacious 

and  wyde  "  ;  but  he  kenned  the 

.      .     .     strange  waies  where  never  foote  did  use, 
Nc  none  can  find  but  who  was  taught  them  by  the  Muse. 

He    loved    amplitude    and    "  waies  where  never  foote 

did  use."      He  had  a  disdain  of  beaten  footways.      He 

must    have  width   and  spaciousness  to  feel  like  himself 

and  find  his  most  exalted  powers  : — 

What  more  felicitie  can  fall  to  creature 

Then  to  enjoy  delight  with  liberlie, 

And  to  be  J-ord  of  all  the  workes  of  xVature, 

To  raine  in  th'  aire  from  th'  earth  to  highest  skie, 


nUTLOOK  OF  SPENSER.  3S7 

To  food  on  ilowres,  and  weeds  of  c^lorious  feature, 
To  t.iko  wliat  ever  thing-  doth  please  the  eie  ? 
WTio  rests  not  pleased  with  such  happines, 
Well  worthie  he  to  taste  of  wretchednes. 

These  lines  are  redolent  of  joy  and  freedom.  The 
new  outburst  of  intellectual  life  and  energy  his  age  was 
witnessing  required  the  freedom  he  so  delightfully  sings. 
Without  it  the  new  and  fitting  forms  for  thought 
and  knowledge  and  song  could  not  be  found.  With 
Spenser,  to  the  glorj-  of  our  once  despised  English 
tongue,  the 

....  golden  oriental  gate 

Of  greatest  heaven  gan  to  open  fair, 

and  forth  there  streamed  the  light  of  a  seven-fold  beauty 
and  splendour,  and  floods  of  divinest  melody. 

Such  decided  introspection  as  we  have  seen — in 
ways  direct  and  indirect — characterised  the  poet,  must 
necessarily  govern  his  attitude  towards  external  objects. 
We  may  fairh*  presume  it  probable  that  a  writer  with 
such  a  dominating  introspective  habit  will  be  guided  in 
his  judgment  and  use  of  objects  almost  solely  by  their 
accidental  relation  to  his  own  mind  and  feeling,  rather 
than  by  positive  knowledge  and  accurate  outward 
observation.  He  studied,  I  must  reiterate,  all  facts, 
persons  and  events  through  his  own  heart  and  interests, 
rather  than  as  they  were  in  themselves.  This  obser- 
vation is  very  much  limited  to  his  intellectual  mood. 
Any  moral  element  that  may  be  implicated  does  not 
for  the  present  come  into  sight.  What  we  mean  is — that 
facts,  forms,  or  persons,  which  the  poet  disposed  himself 
to  deal  with,  had  all  to  pass  into  and  through  the 
special,  peculiar,  potent,  individual  self-consciousness 
known  as  Edmund  Spenser,  to  undergo  metamorphosis 


388  rilE  INl'R  0SPEC770N  A  ND 

and  so  be  subjected   to   his  dominion  and  made  meet 
for  his  use.      The   universe  generally  as  it  came  to  his 
hand  was  not  to  his  mind.      It  refused  to  dovetail  with 
his  conceptions  and  designs.      He  was  not  king  in  it. 
So,  with  small    regard   to  existing   interests,  he,  by  a 
process  and   magic    all   his  own,  transformed  it  into  a 
"  Faery  "  Land.      It  is  only   now  and  then   the   earth 
is  permitted  to  see  a  man  who,  dissatisfied  with    the 
universe  as  it  is,  straightway  creates  another.      In  the 
world  of  his  creation   Spenser  reigns   without  a  rival, 
and,  as  far  as  I   know,  without  any  to  challenge  his 
crown.      It    is    a    world     in    which,   to   the  looker-on, 
anything  seems  to  happen.      Events  purely  considered 
are  bound  by  no  inevitable  sequences.      Its  personages 
come    and   go    like    shadows,  one   passing  apparently 
through   the   other   without    inconvenience.     They   re- 
appear,  like   relatives    who    emigrated    long   ago,   and 
were  believed  dead,  and  their  features  almost  forgotten. 
.  Or  they  are  suddenly  missing,  and  are  never  accounted 
for  or  inquired  after.     Others  of  them   fight,  and  hack 
and  hew  each  other  till  they  stand  ankle-deep  in  their 
own  blood,  and  then   walk  away  as  if  they  had  only 
been  brushing  the  dust  off  each  other's  armour.     Time 
and  space  are  such  trifles,  that  they  make  no  odds  on 
either  side.     This  is  the  outer  of  Spenser's  world  ;  its 
phenomena,  its  reality,  its  substance,  is  the  eternal  truth 
of  the  soul  and  the   unseen.      He  lived  in  the  region  of 
the  soul.     Hence,  broadly  regarded,  his  world  is  not  the 
world  of  historic  visibility.    He  was  not  capable  of  pure, 
dispassionate  observation  of  external  things.    He  would 
not  have  made  a  botanist,  nor  a  modern  scientist.      He 
was  too  subjective  for  that.    His  \vord  concerning  what  is 


OUTLOOK  OF  SPENSER.  389 

outward  is  not  to  be  taken  ;  he  is  unvciacious.  Notice 
the  parts  of  the  Baery  Qiicoi  in  which  he  is  reasonably- 
supposed  to  be  treatini^  veritable  history,  and  the  same 
conception  will  frequently  be  discovered  appearing 
under  another  and  distinct  name  ;  and  the  same  name 
hiding  another  conception.  His  personages  and  ideas 
suffer  repeated  transmigrations.  Space  will  not  permit 
me  to  illustrate,  but  the  remark  applies  to  Elizabeth, 
Philip  of  Spain,  Mary  of  Scotland,  Sidney,  Leicester, 
and  others.  It  is  difficult  to  fix  his  characters  definitely 
and  once  for  all.  One  is  not  sure  who  the  person  may 
be  the  next  time  he  is  met  with,  or  whose  soul  the 
poor  body  may  have  in  it.  The  abiding  truth  of 
Spenser's  poetry  is  not  to  be  sought  in  his  forms,  nor 
in  the  personal  identity  of  his  characters,  but  in  the 
great  moral  ideals  which  he  intends  to  represent,  and 
to  which  he  is  steadfast,  whatever  mortal's  name  they 
bear,  or  whatever  be  the  changeful  mortal  guise  they 
may  put  on.  We  take  it  as  absolute,  that  his  charac- 
terisations of  men  are  not  reliable.  He  was  not  a 
mirror-holder  for  his  contemporaries.  He  had  not  that 
vital  kind  of  passiveness  by  which  a  man  receives 
the  truthful  impressions  of  other  men,  and  is  able 
to  re-present  them.  Intellectual  self-abnegation  was 
to  Spenser  a  natural  impo.ssibility.  When  starting  with 
a  living  man,  friend  or  foe,  his  imagination  lightened 
upon  and  played  about  him,  altering  combinations  and 
proportions,  adding  feature  to  feature,  attribute  to 
attribute,  until  in  his  creative  delight  he  forgot  whom 
he  intended  to  paint.  I  should  hesitate  to  accept  his 
estimate  of  any  of  his  contemporaries  unless  otherwise 
authenticated.    I  luive  read  with  pleasure  Dr.  Palgrave's 


390  THE  INTR OSPKCTION  A  ND 

discriminating  reflections  (Vol.  III.,  p.  Ixii),  on  what 
must  be  deemed  a  defect  in  Spenser's  outlook,  and  by 
them  am  strengthened  in  the  judgment  which,  I  may 
be  permitted  to  state,  I  had  formed  on  independent 
grounds.  Spenser  in  his  portraitures  was  governed  by 
personal  antipathies  and  attachments  ;  to  men  as  such 
he  was  indifferent.  In  this  how  unlike  Chaucer,  who 
loved  men  and  knew  their  ways  !  and  still  more,  how 
unlike  Shakespeare!  Spenser  would  have  scorned  with 
burning  scorn  Shakespeare's  pains  spent  on  sots  and 
sinners,  clowns,  grave-diggers,  and  serving-maids.  He 
loved  them  that  loved  him  at  his  elevation  ;  those  .that 
hated  him — well,  he  did  not  love  ;  and  for  the  rest, 
poetically  at  least,  he  did  not  care.  He  had  not 
enough  of  pity  for  ignorance,  frailty,  and  wandering, 
to  labour  with  considerate  regard  just  for  men.  The 
reader  will  remember  the  giant  Demagogue,  in  the 
second  canto  of  the  fifth  Book  of  the  Faery  Queen  : 
and  also  the  hard  steely  contempt  manifest  in  the 
poet's  treatment  of  the  "mighty  Gyant's "  followers. 
They  are  "  foules,  women,  and  boys," — they 

.     cluster  thick  unto  his  leasinq-s  vainc 
Like  foolish  flies  about  an  hony  crocke. 

Artcgall  was  loth 

.     .     .     his  noble  hands  t'  embrew 
In  the  base  blood  of  such  a  rascall  new. 
*  *  *  *  >i^ 

He  [Talus]  like  a  swarm  of  iiyes  them  overthrew. 

And  it  is  impossible  not  to  feel  the  savage  satisfaction 
S[)cnser  enjoys,  as  he  follows  the  Iron  Man  with 
"  ikiile  "  discomfiting  and  scattering  the  human  vermin  : 


OUTLOOK  OF  SPENSER.  391 

Ne  any  of  them  durst  come  in  his  way, 
But  here  and  there  before  his  presence  flew, 
And  hid  themselvjs  in  holes  and  bushes  from  his  vow. 

As  a  general  criticism,  made  in  passing,  it  may  be 
noticed  that  Spenser's  Justice  is  a  little  too  dependent 
on  the  Iron  Man,  and  delights  a  little  too  much  in  his 
exploits,  to  be  esteemed  absolutely  perfect ;  also,  that 
even  in  the  case  of  Sir  Sanglion  and  the  ladies,  although 
he  copies  Solomon,  Sir  Artcgall's  wisdom  limps.  Sir 
Artegall — that  is,  Arthur,  Lord  Grey — retained  the 
poet's  admiration  and  affection  to  the  end.  He  was 
Spenser's  friend  and  patron,  and  when  his  lordship  had 
fallen  into  misfortune  and  disgrace,  he  did  not  fail  to 
honour  and  champion  him.  Indeed,  it  is  another  of  the 
noble  parts  of  Spenser's  character,  that  those  who  had 
befriended  him,  and  shown  him  sympathy  and  favour, 
he  never  ceased  to  love,  however  far  they  might  decline 
from  fame  and  fortune.  His  devotion  to  Grindal, 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  whose  praises  he  sings  in 
the  fifth  Eclogue  of  the  Calendar,  is  another  instance 
in  point.  He  was  steadfast  in  his  devotion  to  patrons 
and  friends  ;  but  the  position  taken  here  is  that 
sympathetic  characterisation  on  Spenser's  part  always 
implies  personal  relationship,  and  when  done  is  not 
to  be  trusted.  He  idealised  his  portraits  out  of  all 
likeness. 

On  the  same  lines  I  should  have  noted  Spenser'^ 
studies  of  Nature.  But  herein  I  have  been  anticipated 
by  the  Editor  and  fellow-essayists  in  this  volume  and 
in  Vol.  HI. 

Summarily  I  remark  that  of  his  inaccuracies  and 
anachronisms   I    make  but  liule.      He   did   not  pretend 


392  JIIE  INIROSfECnON  AND 

to  write  a  floral  dictionary,  or  even  a  horticultural 
calendar.  Such  inaccuracies  arc  no  violation  of  the 
order  (;f  S[)enser's  idealistic  u(n-ld.  As  I  have  said, 
anything-  can  happen  there,  and  come  to  hand  when 
needed.  "  Roses  "  and  "  daffadillies  "  and  "  ^oolds  " 
can  bloom  toc^ether  well  enough,  and  endless  variety 
of  trees  grow  in  one  forest  without  difficulty  or 
wonder,  i-ar  more  unlikely  things  occur  there  con- 
tinually. Such  criticism  appears  to  me  to  result  from 
liasliness,  or  a  misapprehension  of  Spenser's  art.  His 
law  of  consistency  Vv'as  not  that  of  the  natural  world  ; 
he,  therefore,  was  not  bound  by  it.  His  law  of  con- 
sistency was  ideal,  and  that  we  find  in  his  floral 
combinations.  When  he  would  weave  a  garland  for 
the  brow  of  great  Elizabeth,  or  other  goddess,  he  must 
pick  the  freshest,  brightest,  and  most  fragrant  beauties 
of  the  floral  year.  The  whole  year  of  glories  must 
yield  their  tribute.  That  in  l-ys  case,  if  not  the  truth 
of  nature,  is  deepest  truth  of  art.  It  is  ideal  grouping, 
and  is  perfectly  harmonious  with  his  style  and  purpose. 
N<.>ne  the  less  does  it  remain  true  that  no  poet  had 
more  o^^cn-cyed  obscrvableness  of  Nature's  aspects  and 
ininutiiL-  of  workmanship — as  elsewhere  illustrated. 

ToSi)cnscr's  subjective  habits  we  trace  a  disadvantage 
inherent  in  his  style — namely,  his  icnhomelincss.  I  wonder 
whetiier  JIazlitt  means  the  same  thing  when  he  says 
"  Spenser's  characteristic  is  7'cino/cness."  I  cannot  quite 
tell.  In  what  has  preceded,  we  have  reached,  if  not 
bared,  the  root  of  it.  The  ordinary  and  familiar  did 
not  attract  liim.  Alexander  Smith  says,  "Search  ever 
so  diligently,  j-ou  will  not  find  an  English  daisy  in  all 
his  enchanted  forests.''      That  is  typical.      Most  readers 


OUTLOOK  OF  SPENSER.  y^i, 

at  first  find  him  difficult  to  approach.  He  is  pre- 
occupied, looking  away,  and  treats  you  with  a  distant 
proud  reserve.  He  does  not  meet  you  at  the  door, 
and  with  ready  greeting  draw  you  warmly  in.  He 
almost  tells  you,  that  unless  you  are  a  person  of 
superior  quality,  he  does  not  desire  your  acquaintance. 
This  is  partly  accounted  for  by  his  taste  for  "  dark 
conceits."  And  his  delight  in  transforming  matter- 
of-fact  into  allegory,  and  in  looking  at  things  that 
belonged  to  the  ground,  far  up  in  the  air,  is  more  than 
apparent.  Another  motive  has  been  found  in  a  refer- 
ence to  "jealous  opinions  "  :  that  is,  a  fear  of  treacherous 
interpretation  of  some  of  his  alliisions,  by  those  in 
power.  The  real  reason  is  the"  bent  of  his  genius  ; 
hence,  as  I  have  said,  it  is  inherent  in  his  style. 
Being  what  he  was,  he  could  not  have  avoided  it. 
All  objects  had  to  pass  up  into  the  region  of  the 
imagination,  and  take  on  an  air  of  far-off-ness.  If  in 
his  land  of  faery  a  cock  crow,  he  puts  such  spaces 
between  us  and  the  homely  bird,  and  sets  him  in  such 
large  and  suggestive  connections,  that  we  almost  stand 
in  awe  of  him  : — 

What  time  the  native  Belman  of  the  nig^ht, 
The  bird,  that  warned  Peter  of  his  fall, 
First  rin;,'s  his  silver  Bell  t'  each  sleepy  \vi.i,^ht 
That  should  their  minds  up  to  devotion  call. 

I  low  far  off  he  is  !  from  what  a  distance  the  note  of 
his  "  silver  bell  "  reaches  us  !  It  comes  out  of  the 
blank  undefinable  night.  Then  how  large  and  serious 
the  associations — "  Peter  and  his  fall,"  and  the  "  mind's 
devotions  "  !  Up  there  in  the  night,  clothed  with  such 
suggestiveness,  he  impresses  our  imaginations  after  the 


394  THE  INTR  OSPECTION  A  ND 

manner  of  some  reverend  Scripture  character,  or  grave 
ecclesiastical  dignitary. 

Not  one  of  his  figures  can  be  thought  of  as  an  old 
acquaintance,  nor  as  one  whom  we  had  seen  in  child- 
hood at  the  home  of  our  parents,  or  even  in  a  dream. 
He  did  not  write  of  things  or  men  as  we  know  them, 
through  the  eyes  and  ears  and  near  familiar  intercourse  ; 
but  as  they  are  known  introspectively  through  the  subtle 
workings  of  mind  and  spirit — Jiis  mind  and  spirit. 

His  characters  are  virtues,  rather  than  virtuous  men 
and  women.  His  figures  are  too  supreme  in  their 
beauty,  too  terrible  in  their  repulsiveness  or  glory,  to 
be  human.  His  ladies  are  not  our  English  maidens,  of 
whom  we  are  so  pardonably  proud,  and  that  we  delight 
in  as  sisters,  lovers,  and  wives.  Where  shall  we  find  a 
picture  of  Spenser's  as  a  companion  for  this  of  Chaucer's  .'' 

I  saw  her  dance  so  comelily, 

Carol  and  sing  so  sweetely, 

And  laug-h,  and  play  so  womanly, 

And  looke  so  debonairly, 

So  goodly  speak  and  so  friendly, 

That,  certes,  I  trow  that  nevermore 

Was  seen  so  blissful  a  treasure. 

She  is  sprightly  and  pure,  laughs,  dances  and  sings, 
and  is  full  of  all  womanly  sweetness.  No  wedded  man, 
surely,  lives  in  England  to-day,  but  feels  he  has  loved 
that  same  girl  ;  and  no  man  unwedded  but  feels  he 
does  and  will,  to  his  life's  end,  if  she  will  let  him.  But 
Spenser's  women  are  not  thus  conqueringly  attrac- 
tive and  covctablc.  When  they  dance,  they  dance  by 
themselves  ;  and  we  are  in  the  main  content  that  they 
should.  They  seldom  laugh  and  carol,  unless  they  are 
wanton.      The   cherry   lips  and   ruddy  checks,  and  the 


^ 


OUTLOOK  OF  SPENSER.  395 

ros)',  huniiin  radiance  of  our  ICnj^lish  tlcsh  and  blood 
and  soul,  arc  lacking.  They  are  whiter  than  whitest 
snow,  and  often  twice  as  cold.  They  are  fierce,  amorous, 
foul  temptresses,  to  be  fought  with  and  hated  ;  or 
goddesses  of  virtue  and  beauty,  to  be  fought  for  and 
won  only  by  the  doughtiest  knights.  To  pass  to  other 
examples.  How  horribly  revolting  is  the  delineation 
of  Errour — 

A  monster  vile,  whom  God  and  man  doth  hate. 

♦  «»»»* 

H.ilfe  like  a  serpent  horribly  displaide, 
But  th'  other  halfe  did  womans  shape  retaine, 
Most  lothsom,  lilthie,  foule,  and  full  of  vile  disdaine. 

And   who  that  has   ever   read   the    Faery    Queen    can 

forget  the  dismal,  awful  weirdncss  of  the  domains  of 

IMammon  i* — 

By  that  wayes  side  there  sate  infemall  Payne, 
And  fast  beside  him  sat  tumultuous  Strife  : 
The  one  in  hand  an  yron  whip  did  straine, 
The  other  brandished  a  bloudy  knife. 
And  both  did  gnash  their  teeth,  and  both  did  threaten  life  ; 

On  thother  side  in  one  consort  sate 
Cruell  Revenge,  and  rancorous  Despight, 
Disloyall  Treason,  and  hart-buming  Hate, 
But  gnawing  Gealosie  out  of  their  sight 
Sitting  alone,  his  bitter  lips  did  bight. 
And  trembling  Fcare  still  to  and  fro  did  fly, 
And  found  no  place  where  safe  he  shroud  him  might  ; 
Lamenting  Sorrow  did  in  darknesse  lye. 
And  Shame  his  ugly  face  did  hide  from  living  eye. 

No  one  less  redoubtable  than  Sir  Guyon  wcjuld 
dare  to  enter  and  explore  such  a  domain  of  horrors. 
Much  as  we  attribute  of  this  unearthliness  to  Spenser's 
genius,  we  must  not  in  this  connection  entirely, forget 
his  age.  He  belonged  to  it  ;  was  borne  on  by  its 
might  and  movement.      He  was   not  "  the  very  body  of 


3gf>  JILE  INTROSPECTION  AND 

the  time,  his  form  and  pressure,"  but  the  rare  spirit  of 
it.  He  caus^ht,  or  was  caup.ht  in  the  stream  of  holy- 
breath  that  had  gone  forth.  lie  drank  the  nectar  of 
the  gods,  not  the  intoxicating  wines  of  men.  He  stood 
on  that  side  of  his  age  which  opened  next  the  infinite. 
With  all  its  exuberance  of  flcshliness  and  sordidness, 
it  would  not  permit  men  to  grovel  utterly  in  the  earth. 
The  vague,  boundless  suggestiveness  of  new  knowledge, 
new  lands,  new  enterprises  ;  the  immense  expansion  of 
the  universe  to  men's  thoughts  gave  them  an  upward 
look,  full  of  mystery  and  wonder.  The  diplomacies 
and  intrigues  of  kings  and  courtiers,  the  dalliances  of 
love,  could  not  bound  their  vision,  nor  limit  their 
interest.  They  were  snatching  tastes  of  life's  higher 
raptures,  and  were  drunk  with  intellectual  and  spiritual 
ecstacy.  Spenser  has  caught,  and  held,  and  embodied 
those  emotions,  impulses,  and  activities.  His  was  the 
one  supreme  imagination  that  stood  up  in  all  its 
strength  and  vastness  to  salute  the  growing  sunrise  ; 
and  the  Faery  Oitccn  is  radiant  with  the  light  and 
colour  of  the  ascending  day.  The  eager  uplookings 
and  longings  of  the  age  found  in  it  their  imperishable 
expression,  their  incorruptible  clothing.  To  this  must 
be  in  part  attributed  the  profound  effect  which,  despite 
its  unhomeliness,  it  immediately  produced.  It  struck 
and  led  the  high  ethereal  temper  of  the  noblest  minds. 
And  doubtless,  though  conceived  and  uttered  in  forms 
of  subtlest  invention  and  fancy,  his  contemporaries  felt 
in  it,  more  distinctly  than  we  can,  the  beat  of  the  earth- 
pulse  ;  they  recognized  some  of  their  own  life  coursing 
along  its  intricate  windings  of  thought  and  phrase  ;  and 
they   caught   accents   to   which   our  cars  are   dull — the 


W 


OUTLOOK  OF  SPENSER.  V)7 

accents  and  speech  of  those  whom  thcj'  encountered  in 
the  too  often  maliirnant  and  deadlycontemporar)''  striving 
after  honour,  wealth  and  fame.  Ours  are  chiefly  the 
immortal    cadences,   the  timeless  music. 

And  now  we  pass  to  Spenser's  conception  ivni philosophy 
of  life.  He  was  more  than  a  romancer,  more  than  a 
poet,  more  than  a  lover  and  creator  of  beauty.  He 
had  a  theory  and  philosophy  of  life,  of  which  his  great 
poem  is  at  once  the  parable  and  exposition.  The 
lonely  adventuring,  and  the  singlehanded  dread  en- 
counters with  dragons  and  monsters  painted  in  the 
Faery  Queen,  show  with  sufficient  clearness  that 
Spenser's  conception  of  life  was  intensely  personal, 
inward  and  spiritual.  The  necessity  of  personal 
prowess  is  developed  with  a  definiteness  and  fiery 
energy  little  short  of  startling.  The  strain  upon  the 
individual  will,  courage  and  steadfastness  is  excessive. 
Life  is  singularly  stern.  No  unwatchfulness,  no  laxity 
can  for  a  moment  be  indulged  without  disaster.  The 
best  estate  of  manhood  is  most  sustainedly  required 
of  his  knights  for  anything  approaching  victorious 
endeavour.  They  can  only  recover  themselves  from 
defeat  or  failure  by  the  most  costly  exertion,  and 
against  fearful  odds.  Individual,  invincible,  all-achieving, 
all-conquering  manhood,  is  Spenser's  ideal.  This 
reminds  us  once  more,  by  way  of  contrast,  of  his  great 
predecessor  Chaucer.  With  great  skill  in  characterisa- 
tion, he  still  allowed  men  to  dwell,  or  address  them- 
selves to  their  pilgrimage,  in  companies.  The  perils  of 
the  way  are  not  so  terrible,  the  escapes  not  so  thrilling, 
the  overthrows  are  not  so  desperate.  Chaucer  is  more 
<»f  this  world'.      He  took   men  much  as  he  ffunid  them. 


:ir,8  TTTE  INTROSPECTION  AK7^ 

without  any  very  painful  desire  to  refine  or  impro\-e 
them.  Moreover,  he  Hked  their  fellowship,  and  he 
journeyed  or  rested  or  feasted  with  them  as  one  of 
themselves.  He  observed  their  manners  and  listened 
to  their  tales  with  a  good-humoured,  contented  satis- 
faction. Life  with  him  is  much  easier  and  pleasanter 
than  with  Spenser.  His  folk  are  not  overburdened 
with  weit^ht  of  personal  responsibility  and  heavy 
enterprise.  They  are  gay  and  mirthful — even  comic  ; 
they  jest  and  laugh,  eat  and  drink,  like  common  every- 
day mortals.  After  five  centuries  their  features  have 
not  faded  ever  so  little,  nor  are  they  in  anywise  remote 
from  us.  With  the  slightest  possible  changes, — 
changes  that  are  the  merest  accidents  of  time, — they 
are  w^ith  us  now.  We  saw  and  talked  with  them 
yesterday,  and  we  shall  do  the  same  to-morrow,  or  day 
after.  So  it  happened  that  the  world  did  not  much 
disappoint  Chaucer,  nor  did  he  find  it,  on  the  whole, 
a  bad  world  to  live  in  ;  his  complaints  were  therefore 
few.  The  pilgrimage  was  full  of  entertainment,  and 
the  fare  along  the  road  more  than  passable.  Not  so 
Spenser.  Life  to  him  was  no  agreeable  jaunt  ^  to 
Canterburv  with  sprightly  dames  and  merry-making 
friars,  but 'a  sore  and  terrible  conflict.  Whoso  will  get 
behind  the  "  visionary  shapes  "  of  his  creation  will  find 
himself  in  presence  of  tragic  realities.  Penetrate  his 
parable  of  Duessa  and  Una,  Sir  Guyon  and  Acrasia, 
Artegall,  Radegund,  Britomart,  and  the  rest,  and  we 
discover  Edmund  Spenser,  and  every  other  earnest 
man,  fighting  on  his  own  account,  with  principalities 
and  powers,  the  great  battle  of  the  soul.  His  Letter 
to    Ralci-h    reveals    a    distinct    didactic   purpose    and 


OUTLOOK  OF  SPENSER.  .t;09 

motif  \  but  on  this  I  need  not  dwell,  as  Professor  Dowdcu 
deals  with  it  in  his  Essay.  I  would  simply  accentuate 
that  his  potential  didactic  purpose  projected  Spenser 
far  beyond  his  age,  or  rather,  parted  him  a  degree 
from  the  main  current  of  its  tendency.  That  tendency 
compelled  a  severe  recurrence  to  facts — the  facts  of 
actual  human  activity,  and  of  the  visible  world  in 
England.  Not  alone  were  men  like  Cecil,  Ralegh, 
Drake,  Bacon,  looking  out  upon  the  real  world  with 
unwonted  desire  and  vision  ;  but  the  new-born  poets, 
the  makers  of  a  dramatic  literature  as  great  and 
wonderful  as  anything  the  world  has  in  it,  were 
busy  with  the  eternal  types  of  men  and  character, 
and  were  finding  boundless  delight  and  fertility  in 
the  occupation.  The  new  writers  forsook  the  old 
haunts  of  the  Muses,  dismissed  summarily  ideal 
knights  and  ladies,  and  forthwith  betook  themselves  to 
the  common  resorts  and  dwelling-places  of  ordinary 
men.  This  is  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  fresh  revela- 
tion that  had  been  given  of  the  good  and  glory  of 
human  life.  A  divine  light  broke  upon  the  eventide 
darkness  of  human  life,  and  men  saw  that  the  concerns 
of  this  sublunary  state  furnished  worthy  employment 
for  the  noblest  and  most  gifted  minds.  They  also  saw 
that  the  government  of  the  world  was  not  entirely  in 
the  hands  of  malignant  powers  ;  that  the  earth  was 
not  a  kind  of  devil's  playground,  a  place  for  Apollyon 
to  air  and  exercise  in  and  find  diversions.  Doubtless 
devils  were  here  in  plenty,  and  had  to  be  reckoned 
with,  but  they  were  extraneous,  illegitimate  powers, 
and  no  part  of  any  rightful  authority  and  rule.  The 
Divine   moral  order   was    perceived,  and  the  hearts  of 


^00  .SYV'VA'.VA'A'W  INTROSPr.CTION  AND  OU77J10K. 

men  began  to  be  filled  with  new  and  []^laddcr  emotion. 
A  Gulf-stream  had  set  in,  and  the  coldness,  barrenness, 
and  death-like  rigidness  of  the  middle  ages  gave  place 
to  a  summer  of  gladness,  freedom,  and  beauty.  The 
terror  and  gloom  of  the  earth  vanished,  myriads  of  evil 
spirits  were  exorcised,  and  this  earth  of  ours,  this 
England,  became  a  brighter,  happier,  holier  place  to 
live  in.  iS'ow  Spenser,  while  participating  in  the  new 
spirit,  adhered  somewhat  firmly  to  the  old  intellectual 
.standpoint,  the  sternness  of  the  old  moral  ideal.  His 
philosophy  of  life,  as  he  held  it,  conflicted  with  the 
new  forms  and  conceptions,  so  that  while  in  very  truth 
belonging  to  his  age,  he  was  unable  to  enter  into  and 
represent  its  more  practical  and  palpable  tendencies 
and  activities.  He  held  fast  the  truth  of  the  mediaeval, 
and  what  was  later  the  truth  of  the  Puritan  period, 
and  what,  rightly  understood  and  interpreted,  is  truth 
for  evermore  ;  but  he  failed  to  rec(3ncilc  it  with  the 
rediscovered  dignity,  desirableness  and  divineness  of 
terrestrial  objects  and  aims.  He  knew  no  intermediary 
s[)here  in  which  they  could  be  adjusted  ;  indeed,  had 
he  done  so,  we  should  not  to-day  possess  the  Faery 
(Jitccn.  We  owe  it  to  his  defective  outlook.  His 
introspectiveness,  joined  with  his  conception  of  life, 
turned  his  glance  aside,  caused  him  to  look  askance. 

But  our  allotted  space  is  filled.  We  leave  Edmund 
Si'KNSER,  recognising  in  In'm  a  man  of  singular 
excellencies,  and  a  poet  who  is  an  everlasting  glory  to 
our  nation  and  tont/ue. 


W 


^0( 


APPENDIX 

OF 

NOTES     AND     ILLUSTRATIONS 

AND 

DOCUMENTARY  EVIDENCES, 

TO 

THE  LIFE  OF  SPENSER: 

BY  THE  EDITOR. 


26 


w 


APPENDIX. 

A:  ENTRIES  CONCERNING  SPENSER  FROM  THE 
BURNLEY  CHURCH  REGISTER. 

{See  Life,  Introd.,  p.  xxxviii.) 

Baptisms. 

1564.  Elizabeth  Spenser,   dought'  of    Lawrence   Spenser,   bap. 

the  xiij  day  of  Maie. 

1565.  Henrie  Spenser,  sonne  of  Rob't  Spenser,  bap.  the  x.xj  day 

of  Novemb''. 

1566.  Henrie  Spenser,   sonne  of  Henrie   Spenser,   bap.  the  x.xj 

day  of  Novemb'. 
156;.  John  Spenser,  sonne  of  Laurence  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xij 
day  of  Decemb'. 

1570.  Jenett   Spenser,   dought'  of  Thomas   Spenser,   bapt.   the 

XXV  day  of  Decerab^ 

1 57 1.  Barnard  Spenser,  sonne  of  Laurence  Spenser,  bapt.  the 

x.xjx  day  of  Julie. 

1572.  Leonard  Spenser,  sonne  of  Thomas  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xxx 

day  of  Auguste. 

1574.  Nathan  Spenser,  sonne  of  George  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xxviij 

day  of  Maie. 

1575.  Richard  Spenser,  sonne  of  Laurance  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xx 

day  of  Octob'. 
1577.  Ellen  Spenser,  dought'  of  Edward  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xviij 

of  Auguste. 
1579-80.  Isabell  Spenser,  dought'  of  Edward  Spenser,  bapt.  the 

xxiiij  day  of  Marchc. 

1583.  Ambrosse  Spenser,  sonne  of  John  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xviij 

day  of  August. 

1584.  Marie  Spenser,  dought'  of  John  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xxiij 

day  of  AprilL 


.lo.|  APPENDIX. 

iS'*^4.  J'^lin  Spenser,  sonne  of  Edward  Spenser,  bapt.  the  third 
day  oi'  Aprill. 

1585.  Rob'te  Spenser,  sonne  of  John  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xiiij  day 

of  Septemb'. 

1586.  Margaret  Spenser,    >  doughf'    of    Edward    Spenser,    the 
Anne  Spenser,  \      x  day  of  Aprill.   ' 

1586.  John  Spenser,  sonne  of  John  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xiiij  day  of 
Auguste. 

1586.  Jenett  Spenser,  base  doughf  of  John  Spenser,  bapt.  the 

xj  day  of  Decemb''. 

1587.  Henrie  Spenser,  base  sonne  of  John  Spenser,  bapt.  the  vij 

day  of  Male. 
1388.  Lawrance  Spenser,  sonne  of  George  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xiiij 
day  of  Aprill. 

1588.  Henrie  Spenser,  sonne  of  John  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xxj  day 

of  Julie. 
1588-89.  James  Spenser,  sonne  of  John  Spenser,  bapt.  the  second 
day  of  Marche. 

1589.  Rob'te  Spenser,  base  sonne  of  John  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xxj 

day  of  December. 
1.S90.  John  Spenser,  sonne  of  John  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xvij  day  of 

Januarie. 
1591.   Henrie  Spenser,  sonne  of  Giles  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xxx  day 

of  Maie. 
1591.  George  Spenser,    sonne  of  George  Spenser,  bapt.  the  vj 

day  of  June. 
1592-93.  John  Spenser,  sonne  of  Edmund  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xij 

day  of  fl'ebruarie. 
159,5.  Susan  Spenser,    doughf  of  George  Spenser,    bapt.  the  ix 

day  of  December. 
i59j"94-  Lawrence  Spenser,  sonne  of  John  Spenser,  )    ,  ,    .      ., 

Lucie  Spenser,    doughf  of  John  Spenser,  )      ^P  ' 

XX ij  day  of  ffebruarie" 

1594.  Giles  Spenser,  sonne  of  Giles  Spenser,  bapt.  the  vij  day  of 

Juhe. 
1594-95.   Rob'te  Spenser,  sonne  of  Edmund  Spenser,  bapt.  the 
ij  day  of  March. 

1595.  Jenett  Spenser,  dought"^  of  John  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xj  day 

of  Maie. 

1595.  Edmunde  Spenser,  sonne  of  John  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xxvi 

day  of  October. 

1596.  Ellen   Spenser,    doughf  of   George  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xv 

day  of  Auguste. 
1598.  Mary  Spenser,  doughf  of  Edmunde   Spenser,   bapt.    the 
xxHij  day  of  Septemb''. 


W 


APPENDIX. 


405 


1598.  Lawrence  Spenser,  sonne  of  Barnard  Spenser,   bapt.  the 

V  day  of  Novemb'. 

1599.  Alice  Spenser,  dou>jhter  of  George  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xiij 

day  of  May. 
1599.  Isabell  Spenser,  dought'  of   George    Spenser,    bapt.   the 

.xj  day  of  Novemb'. 
1601.  Alice  Spenser,  doughter  of  Kdniund  Spenser,  bapt.  the  xij 

day  of  April. 

Mr.  F.  C.  Spencer  has  e.xtracted  these  later  baptismal  entries:  — 
1605.  Elizabeth  Spenser,  daughter  of  Edmund  Spenser,  bapt.  20th 

of  August. 
1609.  Mary  Spenser,  daughter  of   Edmund   Spenser,  bapt.    the 

8th  August. 
161 1.  Anne  Spenser,  daughter  of   Edmund  Spencer,  bapt.   the 

5th  December. 
16 13.  John  Spenser,  son  of  Edmund  Spenser  of  Hurstwood,  bapt. 

the  21st  July. 
1615.  Elizabeth    Spenser,  daughter   of   Edmund   Spenser,  bapt. 

loth  July. 
1617.  Anne  Spenser,  daughter  of  Lawrence  Spenser,   bapt.  4th 

June. 
1619-20.  George  Spenser,  son  of  Lawrence  Spenser,  bapt.  8th  Feb. 
1 62 1.  Edmund  Spenser,  son  of  Edmund  Spenser  of  Hurstwood, 

bapt.  23rd  Jan. 
1626.  Anne  Spenser,  daughter  of  Edmund  Spenser,  bapt.  30th 

April. 
1628.  Eleanor    Spenser,   daughter    of    Edmund   Spenser,   bapt. 

7th  Aug. 
1634.  Ambrose  Spenser,  son  of  Edmund  Spenser,  bapt.  2nd  March. 
1637,  Alice  Spenser,  daughter  of  Edmund  Spenser  of  Hurstwood, 

bapt.  5th  May. 
1 65 1.  Lawrence  Spenser,  son  of  James  Spenser  of  E.xtwistle,  bapf. 

4th  Nov. 
1651.  ,  son  of  Lawrence  Spenser  of  Fondle,  bapt.  20th 

Sept. 
1653.  Alice,  daughter  of  Lawrence  Spenser  of  the  Ridge,  bapt. 

27th  Nov. 
1664.  Lawrence,  son  of  George  Spenser  of  Marsden,  bapt.  24th 

March. 
1666.  Edmund,   son   of  George   Spenser   of  Filey   Close,    bapt. 

23rd  Sept. 
1685.  Edmund,  son  of  Richard  Spenser  of  Brierclifife,  bapt.  13th 

July- 

1703.  Lawrence,  son  of  George  Spenser  of  Ightenhill  Fark,  bapt. 
31st  Dec. 


400  ,^^    APPENDIX. 

Marriages. 

The  entries  which  follow  of  marriages,  in  which  one  of  the  parties 

was  a  Spenser,  I  also  find  in  the  Burnley  Registers,  from  1562 

to  1599. 

1562.  Richard  Lee  and  Jenett  Spenser  mar.  the  xxj  day  of  June. 

1565-66.  Rob'te  Spenser  and  Alice  Whitaker  mar.  the  xiiij  day 

of  Januarie. 
1568-69.  Thomas  Spenser  and  Elizabeth  Cronkshey  mar.  the  xv 

day  of  Januarie. 
1572.  Henry  Spenser  and  Jenett  Boothe  mar.  the  xxj  day  of  Julie. 
1572.  George  Spenser  and  Jenett  Hartley  mar.  the  xxviij  day  of 

Julie. 
1574.  Henr)'  Lee  and  Anne  Spenser  mar.  the  xyj  day  of  October. 
1574.  Richard  Waltone  and  Grace  Spenser  mar.  the  viij  day  of 

ffebruarie. 
1582.  Heniy  Nutter  and  Alice  Spenser  mar.  y*^  viij  day  of  October. 
1582.  John  Spenser  and  Anne  Whitehead  mar.  y^   xxiiij  day  of 

October. 
1587-88.  Rob'te  Whitaker  and  Elizabeth  Spenser  mar.  ye  xx  day 

of  ifebruarie. 
1588-89.  Edmund  Seedall  and  Grace  Spenser  mar.  the  iiij  day  of 

ffebruarie. 
1589.  Giles  Spenser  and  Grace  Pollard  mar.  y<^  xv  day  of  Sep- 
tember. 
1593.  Nicholas  Towne   and  Grace  Spenser  mar.    y^   xx  day  of 

November. 

1593.  Edmund  Spenser  and   Ellen    Sagar   mar.  y«    xxij    day  of 

November. 

1594.  John  Spenser  and  Ellen  Hurstwood  mar.  y«  xvj  day  of  May. 

1596.  George  Spenser  and  Anne  Cronkshay  mar.  y^  xjx  day  of 

July. 

Spenser  and  Mary  Mitchell  mar.  ye  x  day  of  Auguste. 
les  WillishuU   and  Grace  Spenser  mar.   y^   vj  day  of 
ffebruarie. 

1597.  Rt)bert  Parke  and  Elizabeth  Spenser  mar.  y^  xxvij  day  of 

September. 
1597-98.  Barnard  Spenser  and  Alice  Barnes  mar.  y^  xxij  day  of 

Januarie. 
1599.  George  Spenser  and  Isabell  Grimshay  mar.  y^  xxviij  day 

of  July. 

Burials. 

1562.  A  child  of  Richard  Spenser  sepult.  the  xxvj  day  of  Julie. 

1564.  Jenett  Spenser  sepult.  the  x  day  of  May. 

1566.  Agnes  Spenser  sepult.  the  xjx  day  of  ffebruarie. 


J"' 
1596.  John 
1596.  Jame 


APPENDIX.  407 

157a.  Isabell  Spenser  sepult.  the  xjv  day  of  Auguste. 
1572.  Thomas  Spenser  sepult.  the  first  day  of  December. 
1577.  Edmund  Spenser  sepult.  the  jx  day  of  November. 

1580.  Ux'  Henry  Spenser  sepult.  the  x.w  day  of  March. 

1581.  Jenett  Spenser  sepult.  the  xviij  day  of  l)ecemb^ 
1584-83.  Geori^c  Spenser  sepult.  the  xxi.x  day  of  ffebruarie. 

1585.  GeoTi^a'  Spenser  sepult.  the  second  day  of  Aprill. 

1586.  Margaret  Spenser  sepult.  the  xxj  day  of  Aprill. 

1586.  Rob'te  Spenser  sepult.  the  xvij  day  of  Auguste. 

1587.  Edmund  Spenser  sepult.  the  iiij  day  of  Aprill. 
1587.  John  Spenser  sepult.  x.xjx  day  of  June. 

1587.  Uxor  George  Spenser  sepult.  the  xj  day  of  November. 
1588-89.  A  child  of  John  Spenser  sepult.  x  day  of  March. 
1 59 1.   Henry  Spenser  sepult.  the  xx.xj  day  of  Octob'. 

1593.  Lawrence  Spenser  sepult.  the  third  day  of  Septemb'. 

1594.  Giles  Spenser  sepult.  the  v  day  of  June. 
1596.  John  Spenser  sepult.  xxviij  day  of  Alarche. 

1596.  A  child  of  Giles  Spenser  sepult.  the  xiij  day  of  Aprill. 

1597.  A  child  of  Nathan  Spenser  sepult.  the  xvj  day  of  Aprill. 
1597.   \}yJ  Richard  Spenser  sepult.  the  iij  day  of  November. 
1597.  -^  child  of  Edmund  Spenser  sepult.  the  xij  day  of  Novemb^ 

1597.  Ux' Lawrence  Spenser  sepult.  the  second  day  of  Januarie. 

1598.  A  child  of  Barnard  Spenser  sepult.  the  xxvj  day  of  Aprill. 

1599.  Rob'te  Spenser  sepult.  the  xvij  day  of  Marche. 
1601.   Uxor  John  Spenser  sepult.  the  xix  day  of  December. 
1601.  George  Spenser  of  Clyviger  slayne  in  a  colle  pitt  sepult.  the 

XXV  day  of  September. 

1604.  Alice  Spenser,  daughter  of  John   Spenser,  sepult.  the  vj 

day  of  October. 

1605.  Ux'  Edmund  Spenser  of  Hurstwood  sepult.  the  .xj  day  of 

June. 

1607.  Edmunde  Spenser  of  Habergham  Eves  sepult.  the  xiij  day 

of  Marche. 

1608.  Alice  Spenser  of  Habergham  Eves  sepult.  xvj  day  of  May. 
1612.  Edward  Spenser,  sonne  of  George  Spenser,   sepult.  xxiij 

day  of  May. 
1615.  George  Spenser,  son  of  Lawrence  Spenser,  sepult.  xj  day 

of  September. 
161 7.  Edmunde  Spenser  sepult.  the  .xjx  day  pf  Auguste. 
1618-19.  John  Spenser  of  Redlies  sepultus  the  .xjx  day  of  Januarie. 
162 1.  Marie  Spenser,  daughter  of  Edmunde  Spenser,  sepult.  the 

xiij  day  of  May. 
Mr.  F.  C.  Spencer  supplies  the  following  entry  of  burial : — 
1654.  Edmund  Spenser  of  Hurstwood,  yeoman,  the  28th  September. 


4o8 


APPENDIX. 


B:  LANCASHIRE  DIALECT- WORDS  AND  PHRASES 
FROM  THE  WORKS  OF  SPENSER. 

{See  Life,  Introd.,  p.  xlvi.) 


Aberr,  ahcar  =  hear. 

Abie,  aby,  abyc  ^  abide.  '  Led  it 
able '  =  let  it  be  as  it  is,  is  a 
quite  common  phrase  still  in 
North  -  East  Lancashire,  and 
usually  pronounced  '  abee,'  as 
'  let  him  abee.'  (Sh.  Cal.,  Eel.  i. 
72). 

Aboard,  aboard. 

Abyde,  endure  :  'Aw  connot  abide.'' 

^Iffeare,  to  frighten. 

Affeared,  frightened. 

Afoove,  before. 

Alablasler,  alabaster. 

Algates,  all  ways,  by  any  means. 

Aleiv,  outer}' — '  pil-a-lew  '  =  great 
noise. 

Amearsed,  fined. 

Aike,  chest.  (See  Will  of  Edmund 
Spenser  of  Hurstwood,  1587,  in 
the  Life — Introduction,  pp.  xvi- 
xviii.) 

Aslake,  to  appease. 

Aslarl,  started,  startled. 

Atween,  between. 

Awarned,  forewarned,  admonished: 
'  I'll  awarnt  thee.' 

Ayme,  idea,  notion.  Lane,  'like 
aime.' 

f3(tj/nid,  beaten. 

Balke,  a  bar  or  beam ;  and  hence 
the  verb  'to  balk'  or  hinder,  to 
stop  the  way,  to  prevent.  Wil- 
kinson gives  '  1  cud  ha  vvun  but 
he  balked  me  "  (67/.  Cal.,  Eel.  ix. 
94)- 

Banms,  curses. 

Bashed,  abashed. 


B(fyf,  to  rest  or  refresh. 

Beare,  a  bier. 

Beare,  to  bear. 

Becomen,  become. 

Beforne,  before. 

Belive,  forthwith. 

Bents,  rushes,  bent  grass. 

Beseek,  beseech. 

Besprint,  bestrewn. 

Besiadde,  distressed  (?). 

Bet,  beat. 

Betide,  befall. 

Bickerment,  quarrelling,  strife. 

Biggen,  building,  pile. 

Bin  and  bene — local  pronunciation 
of  '  be  '  {Sh.  Cal.,  Eel.  ix.  162). 

Bleard,  dimmed. 

Bhnket,  blanket — e very-day  use. 

Bloosnies,  blossoms  —  in  habitual 
use. 

Blouien,  blown. 

Blubber'd,  face  swollen  with  weep- 
ing. 

Bode,  did  abide. 

Bodie,  person.  Dr.  Thomas  Chal- 
mers— the  great  Scottish  divine 
— was  wont  to  say  that  once  a 
clergyman  came  to  be  over- 
familiarly  spoken  of  as  a  'fine 
body,'  or  a  'good  body,'  it  was 
time  he  left  his  parish.  But 
whilst  so  far  true,  it  must  be 
added  that  in  individual  cases — 
e.g.,  toward  an  aged  clergyman — 
it  has  a  touch  of  tender  afifection- 
ateness  behind  the  (seeming) 
contempt.  It  is  in  this  kindlier 
sense  Spenser  employs  it. 


APPENDIX 


409 


Bond,  bound. 

BoMiIasse,  bonny  lass — common 
still. 

Board,  board. 

Boot,  advantage — '  and  summat  to 
boot: 

Boughts,  bouts,  turns. 

Bomiches,  bunches. 

Bourne,  a  small  brook. 

Bousing,  drinking. 

Bousing  can,  a  drinking  pot. 

Bout,  about. 

Brade,  broad — '  Braidley  '  =  broad 
pastures  (Lane,  word  to-day). 

Bntg  and  brngly,  proud,  proudly : 
'  How  brag  yond  bullock  bears  ' 
is  a  North-East  Lancashire  far- 
mer's phrase  still  (S/i.  Cal.  iii.  1 7. ) 

Brakes,  brackens,  ferns,  bushes. 

Brast,  burst — very  common. 

Breere,  briar. 

Bretne,  chilly. 

Brenne,  burn. 

Brent  ('brunt'),  burnt. 

Bringen,  bring. 

Broughten,  brought. 

Bryses,  flics  —  occasionallj'  heard 
still. 

Buckle,  to  make  a  vigorous  start. 

Busse,  a  kiss — Lane,  buss,  to  kiss. 

Butten,  butt. 

Caren,  to  care. 

Carke,  care. 

Carle,  a  churl,  a  clown. 

Causen,  to  argue. 

Cham/red,  bent. 

C/iatten,  chatted. 

Chaufe  (chafe),  to  make  angry. 

Chaufd,  chafed. 

Chawed,  chewed. 

Cheer,  countenance,  aspect. 

Cheriping,  chirping. 

Chips,  husks:  the  term  'chippens  ' 
is  particularly  applied  to  potato 
parings  before  being  boiled. 
—Wilkinson.  (S/i.  Cal.  vii.  188.) 

Clap,  a  birth  :  at  one  clap  =  at  one 
birth. 

Clapt,  placed. 


Clinkt,  a  kej'hole. 

Clout,  a  rag,  a  patch,  a  worthless 
old  garment:  'clouted'  = 
patched.  A  proverbial  saying  is 
still  current,  '  Don't  cast  a  clout 
till  May  is  out  '=-do  not  take  off 
your  underclothing.  'Clouted' 
also  =  clotted. 

Con,  to  know,  to  learn ;  but  see 
next  word. 

Conno,  a  common  contraction 
of  'can  not.'  1  am  not  aware 
that  'con'  is  ever  used  in  the 
folk-speech  of  this  locality  in  the 
sense  of  '  to  look  over,"  '  to  learn,' 
or  '  to  know.'  The  poet  here, 
however,  uses  the  word  '  conne  ' 
in  the  sense  of  to  know — 'Of 
Muses,  HobbinoU,  I  coniie  no 
skill'  (Eel.  vi.  65).— Wilkin- 
son. 

Coragc,  courage. 

Corbe,  curved,  crooked. 

Coronations,  carnations.  By  the 
Ribble,  last  summer,  a  farmer 
friend  invited  me  specially  to 
see  his  'coronations.' 

Cotes,  places  for  sheep,  etc. ;  cot- 
tages. 

Coulter,  plough-iron. 

Craggs,  necks,  including  the  head. 
Hence  also  '  scraggy '  =  bony 
and  lean,  like  the  neck  of  a  sheep 
when  killed  and  dressed  by  the 
butcher.— Wilkinson.  {Sh.  Cal. 
ix.  46.) 

Crakes,  cracks,  praises,  boastings. 

Crancke,  stiflly,  proudly  {Sh.  Cal. 
i.x.  46). 

Cranks,  turnings,  twistings. 

Cratch,  a  hay-rack. 

Creast,  crest. 

Criinosin,  crimson. 

Cruddles,  crouches. 

Cruddled,  curdled. 

Cruddling,  cowering. 

Cryen,  cry. 

Cuddy,  Cuddie  -  {a.m\V\'.\r  name 
for    Cuthbert,    and    common    in 


4to 


APPEND/X. 


Worsthorn  and  Iliirstwoud. 
Wilkinson  states  (1867),  "  The 
compiler  of  a  Burnley  Almanac 
in  the  East  Lancashire  dialect, 
styles  himself  KesterO'Cnddy's.' 
The  Rev.  F.  G.  Fleay,  in  his 
valuable  Guide  to  Chancer  and 
Sfieiiticr  (1S77)  in  his  supple- 
mentary note,  "  Note  on  the 
Pastoral  Names,"  pp.  85,  90, 
adds  correctively  —  "  Cuddie 
(Cutty)  is  an  abbreviation  of 
Christopher,  not  of  Cuthbert,  as 
commonly  supposed.  The  Cutty 
of  William  Brown[e]  is  Christo- 
pher Brooke ;  but  who  Spen- 
sers  Cuddy  is,  is  very  doubtful," 
etc.  This  is  a  mistake.  'Cud- 
die  '  is  still  in  living  use  for 
Cuthbert  in  North-East  Lanca- 
shire. 'Cutty'  is  a  mere  fancy- 
name  of  Browne's,  and  is  not 
to  he  used  to  enforce  a  wrong 
meaning  on  'Cuddie.' 

CitUiiiiibiue,  columbine  —  common 
still. 

Daffadillies,  daffadoivndillics,  dafl'o- 
dils — in  every-day  use,  as  in  a 
nursery  rhyme  in  which  it  is 
pronounced  '  dafiidandillies  '  (5/7. 
Cal.  iv.  140- 1). 

Dapper,    smart,    pretty   iSh.  Cal.  x. 

13). 
Dar,  darrc,  dare. 
Dared,  darrrd,  dared,  defied. 
DaiDieen,  dance. 
Dear  I  tug,  darling, 
Deanie,  dewy  :   '  deaw  '  =  tiew. 
DefJIy,  cleverly,  nimbly. 
Delve — Lane,  delf  or   delph — a  pit, 

a  stone-quarry. 
Dentpt,  deemed,  supposed. 
Desigtiment,  plot,  plan. 
Dirk,  dirhes,  dark,  darkens. 
Dill  (dittv),  a  sons;. 
Divcls,  devils. 
Doale,  distribution    or  dealing  out 

(as  of  alms). 
Doen,  do. 


Dujte — Lane,  dolfed,  put  off,  un- 
dressed. 

Duole,  sorrow,  pain. 

Dun,  to  do,  to  put  on. 

Drad,  dreed,  dreaded,  reverenced. 

Drent,  drenched,  drowned — Lane. 
'  dreaunt.' 

Dresl,  prepared — applied  to  cook- 
ing of  food. 

Drift,  purpose,  object. 

Dyen,  die. 

Earely,  early. 

Earne,  to  yearn,  to  be  moved  with 
pity. 

Easely,  gently. 

Easement,  relief. 

Eft,  oft,  again.  Quite  common,  and 
in  Lancashire  Eve  heard  over  and 
over  a  well-known  hj'mn  sung 
'  And  eften  its  glories  confest.' 

Eld,  age — still  in  use — e.g..  '  he  is 
gettin  eld  now  an"  dotes." — 'Wil- 
kinson.    {Sli.  Cat.  ii.  54.) 

Element,  '  th'element '  —  the  ele- 
ment. 

Ellcs,  else.- 

Eniong,  among. 

End,  'th'  end  '  =  the  end. 

Endure}!,  endure. 

Eii/tes,  efts,  small  lizards. 

Englien  bow,  a  bow  of  yew. 

Eyne,  ene,  eyes — Lane.  '  een.' 

Faine,  willing,  wishful,  glad. 

Faire,  fairly. 

Faring,  going  on. 

Fearen,  to  frighten. 

Feld,  fallen,  thing. 

Fell,  fierce — felly,  fiercely.  'The 
Hies  is  as  fell  as  owt '  (Tenny- 
son's Northern  Farmer). 

Feowe,  few. 

Fct,  fett,  fetchen,  fetch. 

Flit,  to  fluctuate — Lane,  to  remove 
to  another  dwelling. 

Flocken,  to  (lock. 

Flusli,  to  rush  together. 

Fond,  /and,  found — Lane,  'fun,' or 
'  fund.' 

Foorde,  ford. 


U' 


APPENDIX. 


411 


Foorth,  lortli. 

FooU,  loou 

Forty,  near  to, 

Forray,  to  ravage,  to  raid. 

Forslackt,  delayed. 

Forst,  first. 

Forswat — '  swat '  for  '  sweat.' 

Forswotik,  wearied,  overdone. 

Fower,  four. 

Fray,  to  frighten. 

Frayde,  afraid. 

Frettne,  a  stranger  :  Lane.  '  fremd.' 

Fro,  from. 

FunitMiettt,   furniture. 

Galage,  a  wooden  shoe — still  occa- 
sionally used. 

Gail,  begun. 

Gtt*igt  go — Wilkinson  annotates : 
A  Burnley  landlady  was  once 
asleep  in  church,  when  the  clock 
struck  twelve,  bhe  immediately 
roused  up  and  exclaimed,  'Tback 
perlor  bell  rings.  Billv,  gang  ye.' 
(SA.  CaL  iii.  57.) 

Gardin,  garden. 

Gars,  causes,  makes  do  {Sh.  CaL 
iv.  I). 

GaU,  way — '  Gooin  zgaturs  '  means 
accompanying  a  friend  a  short 
distance  on  the  way  home. 
'  Town-gate  '  and  '  Water-gate  ' 
are  also  common  terms  for 
'street "  and  'river' — Wilkinson. 
{Sh.  CaL,  Epil.  1.  8^ 

Gaynen,  gain,  get. 

GasenienI,  gaze. 

Geare,  household  stutT,  dress, 
equipage. 

Gtathcr,  gather. 

Gelt,  a  gelding. 

Gert,  girded. 

Gesse,  suppose. 

Gin,  begin :  gin  =  engine. 

Girlotides,  garlands.  '  Eh,  an'  the 
girlonds  ar  bonnie" — said  in  my 
hearing  on  seeing  the  Christmas 
decorations  of  our  Sunday  School. 
(Sh.  Ca/.,  Eel.  vi.  49.) 

Girt,  anayed. 


Glade,  a  passage  through  a  wood. 

Glee,  mirth. 

Glen,  a  narrow  valley — E.  K.  blun- 
ders over  this  word  in  his 
'  Glosse.' 

Grange,  a  granary,  a  farm. 

Gieave,  grove. 

Greet,  to  cr)-,  lament  iSh.  CaL,  Eel. 
iv.  I). 

Gnde,  to  hurt,  a  sharp  pain  ;  com- 
monly pronounced  '  gerd,'  as  it 
conies  in  gerds — i.e.  in  sudden 
fits,  pierced. — Wilkinson.  {Sh. 
CaL,  Eel.  ii.  I.) 

Grin  ',  grind  ;  Lane,  grun  ',  ground. 

Gripie,  to  grasp,  to  grip. 

Hiible,  fit,  capable. 

Hafaideale,  half,   a  moiet\'. 

Hale,  haul. 

//«//,  a  local  pronunciation  of 'have,' 
as  '  We  han  rivan  for  you.' — 
Wilkinson.     {Sh.  Cat.  ix.  163.) 

Handsell,  a  gift  to  a  first  purchaser. 

HarbroHgh,  a  habitation  ;  a  shelter, 
a  lodging.  Hence  '  W^indy  Har- 
bour,' the  name  of  a  farm  in  the 
neighbourhood  ;  also  probably 
Habergham  Hall,  the  residence 
of  the  now  extinct  familj'  of 
Habergham. —  Wilkinson.  {Sh. 
CaL  vi.  17.) 

Hard,  heard, 

Haunten,  haunt, 

Haveour,  behaviour — '  This  is  still 
a  common  expression  for  manners 
or  demeanour  before  superiors 
— '  Shew  thi  haveour  and  thank 
'em  kindly.' — Wilkinson.  {Sh. 
CaL  iv.  66.) 

Headpeece,  head — '  Eh,  mon,  what  a 
heod-piece  !  '  I  heard  applied  to 
the  local  Liberal  M.P.s  notice- 
able upper  storey. 

Heame,  home. 

Hearbts,  herbs — pronounced  often 
'j'arbes.' 

Heard,  heard  -  grootnes,  herd, 
shepherds, 

Htare,  hair. 


412 


APPENDIX. 


Hell,  to  cover^Laiic.  'hill,'  'hull." 

Hem,  them. 

Henst  in  hand,  hasl  in  hand. 

Hereto,  here. 

Hetlierto,   to   this   tiim    or   place — 

Lane,  'hitherto.' 
Heiven,  hewn. 
Hcyileguycs,  an   old  countrj'  dance 

or  sport. 
Hkldei-  and  sliiddii;  he    and    she. 

him  and  her  (Sli.  Cat.  ix.  232). 
Hie,  ir,o  and  hasten. 
Hild,  covered — so  in  Tim  Bobbin, 

hill  =  to  cover. 
Huldeu,  hukl. 
Holme,   a    river    islet    or    riverside 

strip  of  land. 
Hond,  hand. 
Hung,  hnns. 
Hounl,  hunt. 
Hoorded,  hoarded. 
Hoild,  hurled. 

Hornpipe,  a  Lancashire  dance. 
Houslingfire,  sacramental  fire. 
Hnrlen,  to  hurl,  to  rush. 
Hnsmife,  housewife. 
Ingate,  entrance. 
Jesseniynes,  jessamines. 
Kuies,  keys. 
Keene,  sharp. 
Keigtit,     caught  —  modern      Lane. 

'  ketcht,  kotcht.' 
Ketnd,  combed. 
Ke)i,  to  know,  to  find  out. 
Kend,  kenl,  knew. 
KeusI,  iniderstands. 
Kest,  cast. 
Kestrel,  a  hawk. 
Kidst,  knovvest. 
A'///,  killed. 

Kirke,  church— a  house  of  a  Lan- 
cashire man   near  my  church  he 

has  called  'Kirk  Side  '  {Sit.  Cal., 

Eel.  V.  12). 
Kirtle,  a  woman's  gown. 
Kynd,  nature. 
Kyne,  cattle. 
Lad—^'\\\o\\    laesie    lad' — a    rom- 

inon  Lane,  exjin  ssion. 


Lad,  led. 

Lanck,  lean. 

Lasse,  a  girl — Lane,  'my  lass,' my 
sweetheart. 

Latch,  latched,  catch,  caught — an 
infectious  disease  is  called 
'latching'  {Sh.  Cal.  v.  290). 

Laycn,  lay. 

Leaden,  led. 

Learne,  teach. 

Least,  lest, 

Lenged,  belonged  ;  also  wished. 

Lengcr,  longer. 

Letten,  let.  " 

Lctliec,  local  familiar  name  for 
Letitia.  In  the  genealogj-  of  the 
Spensers  (as  before)  a  Lettice 
Nowell  IS  found  married  to 
Lawrence  Spenser  of  Filley 
Close,  in  Pendle. 

Lever,  rather  ('  liefer').  '  Fde  liefst 
ha  this,'  is  a  very  common  ex- 
pression when  choice  has  to  be 
made.— Wilkinson.  {Sh.  Cal.,Y.c\. 
V.  167.) 

Lie/,  as  soon 

Lich,  lick,  like. 

Lidge,  ledge,  edge. 

Ligge,  liggen,  lie  down — very  com- 
mon, and  in  bordering  Yorkshire, 
as  'Come  lig  thee  down'  (Sh. 
Cal.  V.  216,  ix.  118). 

Liker,  more  likely. 

Lite,  alight. 

Liven,  live. 

Livelod,  livelihood. 

Lumpish, dull, stupid — Lane,  'lump- 
head,'  a  stupid  fellow. 

Land,  ground,  land. 

Long,  belong. 

Looken,  look. 

Loord,  laz3'  loord,  idle  fellow. 

Loove,  love. 

Loover,  chimney-opening  in  roof 
for  escape  of  smoke. 

Lope,  leapt. 

Lose,  loose;  loast,  loosed. 

Losel,  a  wasteful  fellow. 

Loiire,  frown,  gloom  over. 


u 


APPENDIX. 


413 


Lyne,  linen. 

Maister,  master. 

Makcit,  make. 

Mangv,  scabby. 

Mattie,  many. 

Mar<i,  spoiled  —  Lane.  '  a  mard 
child.' 

Marry,  a  common  interjection,  but 
with  no  thought  of  the  Virgin 
Mary  in  it. 

Maskat,  to  mask. 

Maystred,  mastered. 

Miiyzed,  stunned. 

Meare,  a  boundary — Lane.  '  meare- 
stanes'  =  boundary'  stones. 

Medle,  tttedkd,  to  mingle,  mingled. 

Mill,  to  intermeddle — in  ever>-day 
use  in  East  Lancashire,  as  '  He's 
awl  us  utellin  on  me.  In  a  worse 
sense  the  word  sadly  puzzled 
both  judge  and  counsel  a  few 
years  ago  at  Lancaster. — Wilkin- 
son.    (Sh.  Cal.  viii.  208.) 

Mtrimake,  a  carousal. 

Met,  meet. 

Mickle,  much ;  large  size  {Sh.  Cal., 
Eel.  vii.  16) 

Minisiud,  diminished. 

Mirke,  dark,  obscure. 

Mirksome,  darksome. 

Misdotu,  done  amiss. 

Mis/are,  misfortune. 

Mislikc,  mislickc,  dislike. 

Missle,  drizzle,  to  rain  slightly, 
descend  in  small  drops  (of  rain), 
as  from  mist:  "  It  now  also  means 
'  to  leave  a  company  one  by  one,' 
in  a  quiet  or  stealthy  man- 
ner."— Wilkinson.  (Sh.  Cal.  xi. 
208.) 

Mochel,  much. 

Moldwarp,  mole  —  now  '  mowdy- 
warp.' 

Monc,  sorrow. 

Monin-cHl,  monument. 

Moo/her,  mother. 

Mostwhat,  partly. 

Mott,  might,  must — present  form 
'  mut.' 


Mought,  might :  '  It  moiight  a  been 
worse,'  is  in  habitual  use. 

Moystic,  ilamp,  misty. 

Mucky,  foul,  dirty. 

Mum,  silent. 

Needments,  necessaries. 

Natre,  nearer.  '  Nar  '  and  '  war  ' 
are  local  contractions  of  '  nearer' 
and  'worse,'  as  'He's  war  nur 
he  wor,  un  they  think  he'll 
newur  mend.'  'A  nar  cut'  is  a 
nearer  road. — Wilkinson.  (Sh. 
Cal.  vii.  87.) 

Nempt,  named. 

Nett,  neat. 

Nm'fattglcness,  love  of  novelty — 
Lane,  new-fangled,  novel. 

Nought,  naught  :  '  I  think  nought 
o'm,'  i.e.  nothing  of  him — a  com- 
mon expression. 

A^oM/<:,head — Lane. 'noule'=  noddle. 

Nourse,  nurse. 

Noursle,  to  nurse. 

Nourtred,  nurtured. 

Ojffal,  refuse. 

Other,  'th'other'  »  the  other. 

Other  some,  others. 

Ouzell,  blackbird. 

Overcraw,  to  insult — Lane,  'over- 
craw' — in  common  use.  On  the 
close  of  a  Lancashire  school- 
prize  distribution,  I  heard  two 
Lancashire  boys  in  passionate 
debate,  and  among  other  things 
this  fell  angrily,  'Ye  wunna 
ower-craw  me.'  VVilkinson  adds 
"  '  To  pluck  a  crow '  with  any  one 
is  to  quarrel  with  him,  or  to  find 
fault  with  him  for  some  offence." 
(Sh.  Cal.  ii.  142.) 

Overhent,  overtook. 

Overgrast,  covered  with  grass. 

Overwent,  over-run. 

Pas,  surpass. 

Passeu,  pass. 

Paunce,  a  pansy  (lower. 

Pearch,  perch. 

Pearcheth,  perches. 

Ptarbt,    brisk,   conceited — now  in 


4'4 


APPENDIX. 


Lane.  '  peart '  =  lively,  self-assert- 
ive— 'He's  as  peart  as  a  robin  " 
{Sh.  Cai,  Eel.  ii.  8). 

Pcylous,  dangerous. 

Pheer,  fecr,  companion. 

Pible,  pebble. 

Pight,  pitched— quite  common. 

Pill,  to  rob. 

Pine,  to  waste  away. 

Plainc,  to  complain. 

Playcii,  play. 

Plesh,  a  plash. 

Poke,  bag  or  sack. 

Poiuichcd,  hit— Lane,  'punched.' 

Poivy'd,  poured. 

Poivring,  pouring. 

Prankt,  decked  out. 

Pvayscu,  praise. 

Prcnse,    throng,     crowd — to    push 
through. 

Prise,  to  crush,  scuftle. 

Proffer,  offer. 

Prolliiig,  |3rowling,  plundering. 

Pnttocks,  kites. 

PyncH,  pine. 

Quaid,  subdued. 

Quight,     for     'quit,'    quitten,     de- 
livered, freed. 

Ottook,  quaked,  trembled. 

Rahblenicnt,    a    disorderly   crowd, 
rabble. 

Rad,  read. 

Rajl,  reft,  bereft. 

Rmup,  to  rush  about — Lane.    '  on 
the  ramp.' 

Roiisnki,  plundered. 

Rast,  erased. 

Rdl/ir,  early. 

Raitght,  reached. 

Reck,  care,  reckon. 

Reed,  to  advise  (obsolete). 

Reek,  reekcii,  reeking,  smoking  {Sh. 
Cnl.  ix.  117). 

Rcliven,  to  live  again. 

Rcmie,  run. 

Reus,  runs. 

Rciv,  to  rue,  pity. 

Rine — aloeal  pronunciation  of 'rind" 
=  outside    peel    or   bark — quite 


common      {Sh.      Cal.,      Eel.      ii. 
121). 
Rift,  a  gap,  a  cleft. 
Rive,  riven,  rived,  to  tear  asunder, 

torn,  tore. 
Robben.  rob. 

Routes,  bullocks;  young  cattle — in 
evcry-day   use    in    the   country 
{Sli.  Cal.  ii.  5). 
Roscniarie,  rosemary. 
Routes,  rolls. 
Roiviue,  roivntes,  room,  rooms — so 

pronounced  still. 
Ruddcd,  reddened. 
Ruddock,  robin  redbreast. 
Ruinate,  to  bring  to  ruin. 
Rnlen,  rule. 

Rushrings,  circlets  of  twined  rushes 

made  by  children,  of  the  pith  of 

rushes,  sometimes  of  the  rushes 

whole. 

Sad,    heavy — quite    common;    e.g., 

'  sad  cakes." 
Sainc,  sayne,  say. 
Sam,  together. 
Saye,  a  fabric  of  thin  silk. 
Scnrmages,        skirmishes  —  Lane. 

'scrimages.' 
Scattcrlings,  rovers  or  ravagers. 
Score,  reckoning. 
Scrikc,  to  scream. 
Scare,  dry,  consumed. 
Seely,  silly. 
Seenicn,  seem. 
Sens,  since. 
Settcn,  set. 
Shankes,  legs. 

Slieddeth,  spilleth — quite  fairuliar. 
Sliend,  to  spoil. 
SIteres,  cuts,  cleaves. 
Sliootcii,  shoot. 
Shop,  abode. 

Shright,  shrieked  —  Lane,  'skriked." 
Sib,  of  kin,  akin.  Only  the  other 
day  an  old  Lancashire  lady  said 
of  a  young  .Scottish  friend,  '  Then 
she  really  is  sib  to  me '  =  a  rela- 
tive by  marriage. 
Sich,  sike,  sic,  such,  such  as.     Not 


APPENDIX. 


415 


long  ago  a  countrj'man  from 
Hapton,  near  Burnley,  expressed 
his  opinion  that  'sic  a  mother, 
SIC  a  dowtcr,"  alwaj's  held  in 
good  families.— Wilkinson.  (5/i. 
Cai,  Eel.  ii.  211.) 

Sicker,  sure. 

Siken,  since. 

Simple,  simplicity — Lane,  simple 
=  to  commit  foolish  mistakes  in 
a  statement. 

Sin,  since. 

SithoLs,  since  then. 

Sitten,  sit. 

Stxt,  sixth. 

Skyne,  skies. 

Sleepen,  sleep. 

Slouth,  sloth. 

Smirke,  nice,  pert,  prim ;  hence  to 
'smirk'  is  to  smile  in  a  pert  or 
winning  manner.  '  A  smitkin 
hussy." — Wilkinson.  (S/».  Cal. 
ii.  72.) 

Smit,  smote, 

S>nouldry,  hot,  sweltering. 

Snorted,  entangled,  ensnared. 

Sncbbe,  to  snub  or  check;  also  chip 
or  break.  '  Donna  sncb  the  child 
that  way' — I  overheard  lately. 
Exactly  as  Spenser  thus  pro- 
nounced is  this  and  nearly  all  his 
Lancashire  words  pronounced. 

Snuff,  sniff. 

Sods,  clods  of  earth. 

Soote,  sweet,  sweetly. 

Soothsich,  truly. 

Sory,  sorry. 

Sauces,  blows. 

Souse,  to  strike  heavily  —  Lane, 
'soss,'  to  bump  down  roughly. 

Sousing,  plunging. 

Soust,  dipped. 

Sparre,  sperre,  to  fasten  :  '  spcrr  '  = 
a  bar  or  prop ;  and  hence  '  to 
spcrr '  =  to  fasten  with  a  prop 
or  bolt— Wilkinson.  (Sh.  Cal.  v. 
227.) 

Speeden,  hasten. 

Sporten,  sport. 


Sprad,  spread. 

Sprcnt,  sprinkled. 

Staddlc,  slcalc,  a  staff,  stalk,  handle 
— Lane,  'steyl.' 

Stankc,  slanck,  weary  or  faint. 

S/ark,  'stark  lame'  =  stiff,  totally 
lame. 

Sleane,  stone. 

Steare,  a  young  ox. 

Sted,  place — quite  common. 

Steeme,  smoke. 

Slept,  steeped. 

Sterved,  star\'ed. 

Sticke,  hesitate :  '  stick  not '  =  hesi- 
tate not. 

Siond,  stand. 

StOHping,  stooping. 

Stour,  stotire,  a  fight,  a  great  com- 
motion. 

Stownd,  space,  season,  etc. 

Si  ray  en,  stray. 

Stroakc,  stroke — '  He's  don  a  gud 
sirooak  o  wark' — I've  often  heard. 

Shook,  struck. 

Slur.  It  has  acquired  a  wide 
signification  in  the  dialect ;  for  it 
means  anything  about  which 
there  is  some  commotion.  A 
public  meeting  is  'a  great  slur'; 
so  also  a  numerously-attended 
tea-party,  etc. — Wilkinson.  (Sh. 
Cal.  i.x.  182.) 

Supi,  drank. 

Swart,  swarthy,  black. 

Swarv'd,  swerved. 

Swat,  sweat. 

Swat,  sweated. 

Swell,  oppressed  with  heat — Lane, 
'swelled.' 

Swerd,  a  sword  ;  pr.  '  suerd.' 

Swinci,  swinke,  labour.  In  Ribbles- 
dale  a  countrywoman  from  whom 
I  was  getting  a  jug  of  milk  said 
'  Ye  swat  as  yud  been  swinckin' — 
as  nearly  as  I  could  catch  the 
phrase.  I  discovered  she  meant 
'  as  if  I  had  been  toiling  hard.' 

Stvound,  a  swoon,  a  fainting  fit — 
familiar  use. 


4i6 


APPENDIX. 


Tainc,  taken. 

Teld,  told. 

Tellcii,  tell. 

Theare,  there. 

Th'cnd,  the  end. 

Then,  than — quite  common  still. 

Th'ekmmt,  the  element. 

Thetch,  thatch. 

Themes,   custom — Lane,  'th'ewse.' 

Thilk,  this,  there. 

Thinken,  think, 

TKone,  the  one. 

Th'other,  the  other. 

Thresh,  thrash. 

Thrid,  threed,  thread. 

Thumping,  bumping,  stamping. 

Tickle,  unstable,  ticklish — easily  let 
loose,  as  '  As  tickle  as  a  mause- 
trap.'  '  The  word  also  means 
easily  set  laughing  ;  and  in  this 
sense  a  person  is  said  to  be  as 
kittle  as  ovvt '  (Wilkinson).  To 
'  kittle,'  Scotice,  is  also  to  'tickle.' 
{Sh.  Cal.,  Eel.  vii.  14.) 

Tide,  time,  season. 

Tind,  kindled,  excited. 

Todde,  a  bush. 

ToMi  Piper— local  name  still  for 
the  village  musician  who  pipes 
to  the  rustic  dancers.  I  met 
with  it  a  couple  of  miles  from 
the  foot  of  Pendle  Hill. 

Tooting,  searching  or  prying  about. 
I've  often  and  often  heard  this 
word  applied  to  gossips  and 
busybodies — '  peepin  an'  tootin 
abeaut '  (Sh.  Cal.  iii.  66). 

Tottie,  shaky,  staggering  —  '  He's 
but  lotlie  yet '  I  heard  not  long 
since  said  of  a  man  just  recover- 
ing from  a  fever  (Sh.  Cal,  ii.  55). 

Tound,  tugged. 

Toung,  tongue. 

Trast,  traced,  tracked. 

Trtaden,  tread. 

Treen,  of  a  tree  or  trees. 

Trewe,  true. 

T'road,  the  path. 

Tway,  two. 


Twittin,  scoffing,  upbraiding. 

Uncouth,  strange — Lane,  'uncoth, 
unco.' 

Uncrudded,  uncurded. 

Unkempt,  uncombed. 

Unkent,  unknown. 

Unlich,  unlike. 

Unwares,  unexpectedly, 

Unwist,  unknown. 

Upbrast,  burst  forth. 

Usen,  use. 

Vavjles,  vaults. 

Vetch  bed,  bed  of  vetchj/  straw  (as 
common  in  Lane.) 

Voyded,  parted. 

Wad,  a  bundle. 

Wage,  wages,  reward. 

Wagmoires,  quagmires  —  a  local 
farmers  phrase  to  describe  the 
moorland  bog  concealed  by  being 
grassed  over. 

Wanne,  wan,  won. 

Warelessc,  stupified. 

Wark,  work,—  no  one  ever  hears 
'work'  in  Lancashire. 

Warre,  worse — pronounced  'waar. ' 

Wasten,  waste. 

Wayne,  waggon. 

Weasand,  withered. 

Weleaway — an  interjection. 

Weet,  wet,  wets. 

Weetless,  ignorant. 

Welke,  to  deceive. 

Wend,  to  go. 

Wax,  wexen,  to  grow,  increased. 

What,  most-what,  mostly — Lane. 
'  pertly-what '  =  partly. 

Whether,  which. 

Whist,  hushed. 

Whot,  hot. 

Wight,  person. 

Wimble,  alert,  quick-darting.  The 
other  day  a  good  and  genuine 
North-East  Lancashire  woman 
(from  Whalley)  said  to  myself, 
'  I'm  fairly  wim  o'  my  leggs,' 
meaning  the  same.  Wilkinson 
gives  'He's  as  wimble  as  a 
monkey'  (Sk.  Cal.,  Eel.  iii.  91). 


APPENDIX,  417 

Wouldm,  would.  shut  the  gate'   (SA.   Cal^   Eel. 

IVondrcn,  wotulcr,  v.  227). 

Woode,  mad,  wild,  frolicsome,  lull  Ybcnt,  inclined, 

of  action   and   temper  (Wilkin-  Ybet,  beaten. 

son)   (SA.  Crt/.,  Eel.  viii.  75-6) —  Ybrent,  burnt. 

Lane,  'wird,  woode.'  Ycarne,  earn. 

Wowed,  wooed.  Yerks,  jerks,  lashes, 

IVoxen,  waxed.  Yit,  yet. 

VVraken,  wreaked,  Ylikc,  alike — Lane,  'elike.' 

Wrast,  wrest — Lane,    'wrastling,'  VoW,  yonder — pron.  '  yand,' that. 

wrestling.  Yonkcrs,  young  ones. 

Wrak,  wrote.  Yottngth,  youth — quite  common. 

IVroughteii,  wrought,  worked.  Yonnkcr,  a  joung  fellow. 

Yatc,  gate — '  Tine    t'  yate '  means  Youthen,  youth. 


Further  : — There  was  heredity  in  the  representations 
of  the  '  talk  '  and  discussions  on  '  theological  topics  ' 
in  the  ShephcnTs  Calendar,  as  in  the  actual  facts.  This 
can  be  established  beyond  gainsaying.  In  Townley 
Hall — close  to  the  "  North  partes,"  wherein  Spenser 
sojourned,  and  where  he  unquestionably  composed  much 
of  the  ShephenVs  Calendar — there  then  lay  a  I\Ianu- 
script  of  Mysteries,  which  he  may  have  seen  and  read. 
Some  of  our  Readers  will  know  the  Tenvneley  Mysteries 
(Surtees  Society,  1836),  but  it  is  to  be  feared  very  few 
capable  literary  men  have  read  or  critically  studied  them. 
And  yet  in  these  popular  Mysteres — in  the  "  Mactacio 
Abel,"  "  Processus  Noe,"  "Abraham,"  "  Isaac,"  "Jacob," 
"  Processus  Prophetarum,"  "Pharao,"  "Caesar  Augustus," 
"  Annunciacio,"  "  Salutacio  Elizabeth,"  "  Prima  Pagina 
Pastorum,"  "  Secunda  Pagina  Pastorum,"  "  Oblacio 
Magorum,"  "  Fugacio  Josci)hi  et  Marine  in  i4igyptum," 
*'  Magnus  Herodes,"  "  I'urificacio  Maria;,"  "  Pagina  Doc- 
torum,"  "  Johannes  Baptista,"  "  Conspiracio  et  Capcio," 
"  Coliphizatio,"  "  Flagcliacio,"  "  Processus  Crucis,  Cruci- 
fi.xio,"  "Processus  Talentorum,"  "E.xtractio  Animarum  ab 

I.  27 


4i8  APPENDIX. 

Inferno,"  "  Rcsurrcctio  Domini,"  "  Pcregrini,"  "Thomas 
Indiit,"  "  Aacencio  Domini,"  "Juditium,"  "Lazarus," 
and  "Suspentio  Judae,"  we  have  precisely  the  blending 
of  converse  '  about  "  heathen  divinities  "  and  "  points  of 
Christian  theology"  that  are  found  in  the  Shepherd's 
Calendar,  especially  in  "  Mactacio  Abel,"  "  Annunciacio," 
"  Salutacio  Elizabeth,"  "  Prima  Pagina  Pastorum  "  and 
"  Secunda  Pagina  Pastorum."  This  is  to  be  accentu- 
ated, because  the  whole  of  these  Mysteries  reveal 
their  Northern  origin,  and  reflect  the  living  characters 
and  manners  of  North-East  Lancashire  and  West 
Yorkshire,  or  the  identical  districts  embraced  by  the 
Shepherd's  Calendar.  Two  points  only  may  I  tarry  to 
emphasize  as  bearing  on  the  realism  of  the  Shepherd's 
Calendar.  First — It  is  striking  how  the  identical 
religious  opinions  that  are  discussed  in  the  Calendar 
appear  in  the  Mysteries,  and  not  only  so,  but  pointed 
with  the  very  same  proverbial  sayings,  "wise  saws 
and  modern  instances."  Second — Notwithstanding 
that  about  a  century  was  interposed  between  the 
Mysteries  and  the  Shepherd's  Calendar,  the  current 
forms  of  speech,  peculiarities  of  phrasing,  peculiarities 
of  wording  in  it,  are  found  in  the  Mysteries.  The 
latter  I  proceed  to  prove  by  noting  (as  promised 
in  Life,  p.  105). 

NOR'ni-l<:AST  LANCASHTRK  \VORJ)S  COMMON  TO  THE 
TOIU'NELEY MYSTERIES  AND  THE  SHEPHERD'S 
CALENDAR. 

Be    it    understood — (i)   These    arc    all    North-East 
Lancashire,    though   also    frequently   Yorkshire,  words. 


APPEXDIX. 

(2)  They  all,  or  nearly  all,  occur  in  Spenser. 
them  alphabetically  : — 


419 


I  classify 


Aby,  tu  sull'cr  lor. 

Afore,  be  lure. 

Algales,  always. 

Apon,  upon. 

Anyde,  disposed  of. 

Avoutre,  adultery. 

Avyse,  to  teach. 

Awnter,  adventure,  risk. 

Balk,  a  ridge  of  land. 

Bayle,  grief,  misery. 

Bcfonie,  Ijefore. 

Belaniy,  bel-ainie. 

Bclifi,  fjuickly. 

Bent,  the  open  field. 

Bcre,  a  noise. 

Bel,  beaten. 

Beyld,  shelter. 

Big,  to  build. 

Bigyng,  a  building. 

Blome,  blossom. 

Boole,  a  threat. 

Bowne,  reaily. 

Brade,  a  start,  sudden  tur 

Brciil,  burst. 

Biede,  breadth. 

Brckylle,  brittle. 

Breme,  fierce. 

Brend,  burnt. 

Brere,  brier. 

Btyntly,  fiercely. 

Bun,  bound. 

Busk,  to  prepare. 

Carl,  a  clown. 

Cled,  clad. 

Clekyt,  hatched. 

Clout,  a  ganncnt. 

Con,  to  know. 

Conning,  knowledge. 

Couth,  know. 

Coylle,  a  coal. 

Crak,  to  boast. 

Croft,  yard  of  a  house,  etc. 

Dalle,  the  hand. 

Dare,  to  quake. 

Dawnce,  dance. 


Dayntethe,  a  dainty  thing. 

Dede,  death. 

Defly,  cleverly. 

Delf  to  dig. 

Dente,  to  judge. 

Depart,  to  divide. 

Dere,  damage. 

Derling,  darling. 

Oight,  furnished. 

Dold,  stupid. 

Dowre,  a  slut. 

Doyle,  grief. 

Dre,  to  endure. 

Drcdc,  withoutcn,  without  doubt. 

Drely,  slowly. 

Dyng,  to  cast  down. 

Bene,  eyes. 

Eft,  again. 

Eld,  age. 

Elyke,  alike. 

Enie,  an  uncle. 

Emong,  among. 

Ethe,  easily. 

Eaed,  faded. 

Fainc,  glad. 

^rtW,  found. 

Fang,  to  take. 

/>!/-,  to  fare,  go. 

Fareit,  fared. 

Fature,  an  idle  fellow. 

Felle,  knock  down. 
/>»-«•,  mate,  wife. 
Ferly,  strange. 
Flay,  to  frighten. 
Flyt,  to  fly. 
Flyte,  to  scold, 
/"bc/ir,  to  fetch. 
Fan,  found. 
Fonden,  foolish. 
Forspoken,  bewitched. 
Fortliv,  therefore. 
Fott,  fetch. 
Foyne,  a  heap. 
Fray,  a  disturbance. 


420 


APPENDIX. 


Fro,  from. 

Fry,  seed. 

Fyle,  defile. 

Gar,  compel. 

Gate,  a  waj',  a  going. 

Gaiude,  a  trick. 

Gnytig,  go. 

Geld,  barren. 

Gere,  household  goods. 

Geyn,  given. 

Granie,  anger,  sorrow. 

Grescs,  grasses. 

Gryse,  tremble. 

Gyn,  an  engine. 

Gyrth,  protection. 

Hard,  heard. 

Hark,  to  drag. 

Hee,  high. 

Hend,  hand. 

Hes,  has. 

Higlit,  named. 

Hoorc,  a  whore. 

Ichen,  each  one. 

Ilk,  each. 

1st,  is  it  ? 

/  wis,  certainly. 

Ken,  to  know. 

Kyti,  kindred. 

Lake,  to  play. 

Layt,  to  seek. 

Z,e/"f,  to  believe. 

Lere,  to  learn. 

Lever,  rather. 

Levyn,  lightning. 

Lig,  lie  down. 

Lite,  strife. 

Z-os^/,  dissolute  fellow. 

Lout,  salute  humbly. 

Maister,  master. 

Mekelle,  much. 

Melle,  meddle. 

Mcnt,  to  remember. 

Meyn,  to  complain. 

Meyt,  fit. 

Mo,  more. 

Mon,  must. 

Mot,  may. 

Moiv,  to  make  mouths. 

Muk,  manure. 


My  cite,  much. 

Myrk,  dark. 

Mysfare,  to  go  wrong. 

A'^ar,  nearer. 

Nesh,  tender. 

Nillc,  will  not. 

Nold,  would  not. 

Noryshc,  nurse. 

Notiier,  neither. 

Ofi-sithes,  oft-times. 

Othcrgates,  otherwise. 

Owe,  o\'er. 

Peasse,  to  make  quiet. 

Pight,  strength. 

Pleyn,  complain. 

Preasse,  a  press  or  crowd. 

Prefe,  prove. 

Prest,  ready. 

Pyiic,  pain. 

Qucme,  pleasure. 

Quite,  to  requite. 

Rad,  afraid. 

Radly,  quickly. 

Ratldy,  readily. 

Royd,  arrayed. 

Rccoldc,  recollect. 

Rcdc,  advice,  to  advise. 

Rcfc,  to  bereave. 

Rekc,  to  care. 

Ren,  to  run. 

Reprefe,  reproof. 

Reiv,  to  repent. 

Sam,  together. 

Sayn,  say. 

Scathe,  injury. 

Sek,  a  sack. 

Sckyr,  sure,  certain. 

Sely,  simple. 

Sen,  since. 

Share,  to  cut  off. 

Shcne,  bright. 

Shcnt,  destroyed,  shamed. 

Shrew,  to  curse. 

Shryke,  to  shriek. 

Sithc,  time. 

Silhens,  afterwards. 

Sleivtlie,  sloth. 

Snek,  door-latch. 

Sane,  soon. 


APPENDIX. 


421 


^par,  to  shut  out. 
Spyr,  inquire. 
Stad,  to  place. 
Slang,  to  sting. 
Stark,  stifl". 
Stcd,  to  stop. 
Stou.md,  an  acute  pain. 
Stowre,  trouble,  peril. 
Sty  the,  firm. 
Swap,  a  blow. 
Sivelt,  to  melt. 
5un'w^",  to  toil  hard. 
Sv2>,  kinsman. 
Sytltcti,  since. 
7Vw/,  to  take  heed. 
Ttyn,  to  afflict 
FrvM,  grief. 
Than,  then. 
Thru;  strength. 
Thole,  to  sutler. 
ThrylU,  to  pierce. 


7>'</f,  a  time. 
T^yw^,  to  lose. 
Uncouth,  unknown. 
Won,  went. 
IVap,  to  wrap. 
War,  worse. 
Wark,  to  ache. 
Wate,  wet. 
Weld,  to  wield. 
Wend,  thought. 
Were,  doubt. 
Wex,  waxed,  grew. 
tl'hick,  living. 
Won,  wont;  to  dwell. 
Wood,  mad. 
Wrake,  revenge. 
Wrast,  wrest. 
Wrokyn,  to  revenge. 
Yates,  gates. 
Yode,  to  go. 
Yrk,  obstinate. 


Lowell  (as  before,  p.  358)  observes  :  "We  have  at 
last  got  over  the  superstition  that  shepherds  and 
shepherdesses  are  any  wiser  or  simpler  than  other 
people."  Granted  ;  and  now  we  need  to  get  over  this 
other  superstition,  that  other  people  are  any  wiser  or 
simpler  than  shepherds  or  shepherdesses.  Finally, 
here,  I   illustrate 


POINTS  OF  THEOLOGY  TALKED  OF  ALL 
LANCASHIRE  CONTEMPORARILY. 


OVER 


In  1574,  Mr,  Nicholas  Daniel,  B.D.,  \'icar  of 
Preston,  wrote  a  long  and  singular  letter  to  the 
Bishop  of  Chester,  the  original  of  which  is  preserved 
at  Chester,  and  which  was  copied  by  the  late  Canon 
Raines,  F.S.A.,  into  a  volume  of  his  Lancashire  MSS. 
Mr.  Daniel  complained  sorely  of  the  Romish  practices 
and    preferences,  of  a  large  body   of  his   parishioners. 


422  APPENDIX. 

boldl)-  abetted  by  his  own  curate,  Mr.  William  Wall, 
who  had  been  a  priest  in  Queen  Mary's  time,  and 
was  one  still  at  heart.  Amongst  many  other  things 
the  Vicar  of  Preston  told  his  Bishop  were  these : — 

"A  number  here  wyll  not  reccave  the  holy  sacrament:  the 
preste  [curate]  doth  juglc  and  bcare  with  them,  he  hath  destroyde 
tliys  parishe  and  the  countrye  aboute  in  bering  with  them  and 
takyng-  gyfts  yerely  of  them  (besydes  his  boorishe  lyfe  too  abhomi- 
nable  to  be  told),  and  even  this  daye  hath  an  hoare  great  w'th 
chyld  within  one  myle  of  Preston,  and  because  he  bereth  with 
suche  they  beare  with  hym,  so  y'  against  my  heart  and  conscience 
I  am  compellyd  to  kepe  hym  ;  but  I  wyll  now  geve  hym  warninge 
to  dep't  at  Mydsomer  and  discharge  y-  Cure  from  an  hoormonger 
w'ch  hath  a  wyfe  of  hys  owne,  and  thys  ys  my  way  to  r3'd  hym." 
.  .  .  "  He  hath  so  accustomed  to  give  y''  sacrament  into  y'' 
mouthes  y^  they  will  not  take  it  into  y^  handes,he  \vynketh  at  them 
y'  have  y''  children  christened  at  y*  handes  of  ould  preestes  in 
houses."  .  .  .  "  Not  only  thys,  but  even  upon  Easter  Day  he 
served  a  company  in  hys  owne  house,  and  no  man  knoweth  what 
they  were.  He  causcth  bells  to  be  ronge  for  soulls,  when  I  am 
preaching  the  gospell,  and  allsoe  cometh  boldlye  to  me  and 
byd  me  come  down ;  he  never  read  the  Articles  sett  out  for 
cxerye  quarter  ;  he  never  wold  saye  y"  evening  prayer  on  Sater- 
dayes,  but  only  singe  to  mocke  God  and  y"  people."  .  .  . 
"  And  we  have  here  a  Popish  boy  our  parish  clerke,  not  knowne 
in  y^  Church,  but  only  at  Organe  on  the  .Sunday,  and  suche  a 
noyse  they  make  y'  no  man  understond  a  worde  they  singe.  No 
Geneva  Psalme  they  will  have  before  the  sermon ;  no  bell  wyll  he 
tole  to  a  sermon,  so  y'  he  must  be  swore  to  obey  in  lawfull  thinges, 
or  els  he  shall  not  serve."  .  .  .  "  The  table  which  we  mynister 
on  ys  an  olde  Altar,  whereon  an  C  [lOo]  masses  have  been  sayde 
to  songe  ;  a  pulpitt,  many  swynes  troofe  better  ;  altar  stones  and 
Idolls  seates  standinge,  and  I  have  moved  to  abolish  such  abuses 
but  I  cannot  be  hard  [heard].  I  dygged  of  late  in  myne  owne 
groundes  and  found  a  greate  nomber  of  alabaster  Images  which 
I  destroyde, — and  for  such  course  we  lose  the  love  of  Idolatrars." 

The  same  conflict  and  inevitable  '  talk  '  went  on 
all  around  ;  and  in  good  sooth  down  to  recent  times 
North-East  Lancashire  especially  has  been  famous 
for  its  '  theological '  di.scussions  and  '  talk.' 


1/ 


A  PPENDIX.  423 


C:    DESCENT  OF  THE  TRAVERSES. 
{See  Life,  Introd.,  p.  Ixii.) 

In  the  statements  of  The  Patrician  respecting  John 
Travers,  Esq.,  of  St.  Finbarry's  and  of  Ballynamorta, 
CO.  Cork,  Ireland,  whose  wife  was  Sarah  Spenser  (as 
shown),  he  is  said  to  have  been  "  eldest  son  of  Brian 
Travers,  of  Natcby,  in  Lancashire,  Esq."  This  is  a 
claim  to  be  of  the  head-house  of  the  Traverses.  It  is 
inexact  in  respect  of  the  designation  of  Brian  Travers. 
He  was  not  "  of  Nateby,"  nor  did  he  own  any  portion 
of  the  estates  of  the  chief  lineage  of  the  Traverses  of 
Lancashire,  at  Nateby,  Tulketh,  etc.,  although  the 
family  of  Brian  Travers,  wherever  domiciled,  whether 
in  Lancashire,  Cheshire,  or  in  Ireland,  doubtless  branched 
off  from  the  common  stock  of  the  Traverses. 

I  have  now  to  sketch  the  descents  of  Travers  of 
Nateby  and  of  Tulketh,  near  Preston,  co.  Lancaster, 
through  five  generations,  from  teitip.  Henry  VIII.  and 
beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  down  to  A.D.  1626, 
when  the  last  known  representatives  sold  the  Nateby 
estate.  The  names  of  all  male  members  of  each 
generation  obtainable  from  Wills,  Inquisitions,  Preston 
Guild  Rolls,  and  Heralds'  Visitation,  are  thus  furnished, 
but  no  Brian  or  even  John  Travers  among  them. 

William  Travers,  of  Nateby  and  Tulketh,  Esq.,  in 
possession  temp.  Henry  VIII.,  married  Margaret,  daugh- 
ter of  Lawrence  Preston,  of  Preston  in  Amounderness, 
and  had  issue,  sons,  Lawrence  (who  died  young)  ; 
William  (who  succeeded)  ;  and  Anthony  (living,  and  a 
"foreign"  burgess  of  Preston   at  the  Guild  of   1562): 


424  APPENDIX. 

and  daughters,  Grace,  Elizabeth,  Ann,  Dorothy,  and 
Ah'ce.  The  father,  Wilh'am  Travers,  served  in  the 
wars  in  Scotland,  and  died  in  that  country  28th  July, 
1524.      (Inq.  p.  m.  16  H.  VIII.) 

William  Travers  of  Natcby,  Esq.,  son  and  eventual  heir 
of  William,  married  Dorothy,  daughter  of  Thomas  Pres- 
ton of  Preston  Patrick,  co.  Westmoreland,  Esq.,  and  had 
issue  four  sons,  Richard,  William,  Thomas,  and  Robert, 
rll  enrolled  as  "foreign"  burgesses  at  the  Guild  Mer- 
chant of  Preston  in  1562,  and  described  as  sons  of 
William  Travers,  Esq.,  then  deceased.  This  William 
Travers  died  at  Nateby,  24th  July,  1558.  (Inq.  p.  m. 
1st  Eliz.) 

Richard  Travers  of  Nateby,  Esq.,  son  and  heir  of 
William,  married  Grace,  daughter  of  Richard  Redman, 
of  Harwood  Castle,  co.  York,  and  had  issue,  sons, 
William,  Thomas,  and  Richard.  Richard  died  loth 
April,  1576.      (Inq.  p.  m.  19th  Eliz.) 

William  Travers  of  Nateby,  Esq.,  son  and  heir  of 
Richard,  succeeding  at  an  early  age  in  1576,  held  the 
estates  about  fifty  years.  He  married  Agnes,  daughter 
of  Thomas  Latham,  of  Parbould,  Esq.,  and  had  issue, 
sons,  Richard,  Edward,  and  William  ;  and  daughters, 
Isabel,  wife  of  James  Wall,  of  Preston,  gent.  ;  Ellen, 
Dorothy,  Ellinor,  and  Catherine.  William  Travers, 
Esq.,  was  a  burgess  of  Preston  at  the  Guild  Merchant 
in  1582,  1 602,  and  1622.  He  was  living  in  1626,  but 
the  date  and  place  of  his  death  are  unknown. 

Richard  Travers,  gent,  son  of  William,  was  born  in 
I  590.  He  married,  and  had  issue  two  daughters,  Jane 
and  Alice.  He  was  a  Guild  burgeiss  of  Preston  in 
1622,  and   living  in    163 1.      In    1626   he  joined  with 


U 


APPENDIX.  425 

his  father,  Williain,  in  breakint^  the  entail  of  the  family 
estates,  when  Nateby  was  sold  to  George  Preston,  of 
Holker  in  Furncss,  Esq.  This  transaction  closes  the 
history  of  the  Traverses  of  the  elder  line  as  a  Lancashire 
territorial  family. 

Hence  it  appears  that  Brian  Travers,  father  of  John 
who  married  the  Poet's  sister,  was  neither  himself  head 
of  the  family  of  Travers  of  Nateby,  nor  owner  of  that 
estate  ;  nor  could  he  have  been  even  a  son  of  any  one 
of  the  scions  of  that  house.  Who,  then,  was  Brian 
Travers  .''  The  only  one  of  this  name  who  occurs  in 
local  records  of  the  period  is  a  Brian  Travers,  in  the 
reign  of  Philip  and  Mary,  who  was  "  Deputy  Steward 
to  Sir  John  Savage,  Knight,  and  one  of  the  Bailiff's  of 
the  Honour  of  Halton,  co.  Chester."  In  his  ofificial 
capacity  this  Brian  Travers  appears  as  a  party  to  several 
law-suits  in  the  Chancery  of  Lancaster  in  the  reign 
named  and  early  in  Elizabeth.  The  latest  reference  is 
in  15th  Elizabeth  (a.d.  1572),  in  which  Brian  Travers 
was  plaintiff  in  a  suit  about  two  Salt  VViches  at  North- 
wich,  CO.  Chester.  This  Brian  Travers  seems  to  have 
resided  in  Cheshire,  but  this  does  not  forbid  his  having 
been  connected  with  a  branch  of  Travers  of  Lancashire. 
One  such  branch  held  lands  and  a  mansion-house  at 
Ridgate,  in  Whiston,  parish  of  Prescot,  represented  in 
25th  Elizabeth  (1582)  by  John  Travers  of  Ridgate, 
and  in  30th  Elizabeth  (1593-4J  by  William  Travers, 
Esq.,  who  in  that  year  died  seised  of  messuages,  lands, 
etc.,  including  Ridgate,  or  Rudgate,  in  the  manor  of 
Whiston,  and  estate  in  Windlc,  Hardshaw,  and  Rain- 
forth  (Lancashire). 

Sarah  Spenser,  as  being  herself  of  Lancashire,  would 


426  APPENDIX. 

naturally   marry  a  Lancashire  man.     And  so  we  have 
another  link  in  the  chain  of  evidence. 

I  add  a  final  notice  : — In  the  Annals  of  S.  Fin-Ban's 
Cathedral  [Cork]  I  find  this: — "  1623.  George  Lee, 
Dean  and  the  Chapter,  grant  to  Robert  Travers,  of 
Mooretown  in  Ibawn,  Esq.,  a  place  of  burial  in  the  south 
side  of  the  Chancel  of  our  Church,  next  the  South  wall 
at  the  window  now  the  most  eastern  of  the  same  side  ; 
in  which  place  John  Travers,  father  of  the  same  Robert, 
as  well  as  Sara  Spenser  ats  Travers,  mother  of  Robert, 
with  his  paternal  grandmother,  as  also  his  two  brothers, 
are  buried.  In  which  place  the  said  Robert,  with  our 
consent  heretofore  had  erected  a  marble  tombe,  until 
the  next  walls  of  the  ruin  being  destroyed  through  age, 
in  order  that  they  may  be  repaired  anew."  This 
monument  has  disappeared  ;  probably  destroyed  in  the 
demolition  of  the  old  building  in  1734.* 


D  :  JEAN  VANDER  NOODT  OR  NOOT. 

{See  Life,  p.  23.) 

I  add  these  biographical  details  on  this  early  friend 
of  Spenser.  From  Dr.  W.  J.  A.  Jonckbloet's  Geschie- 
denis  der  Ncderla7idsche  Lctterknnde,  1873  (erste  Deel, 
P-  3  53)>  and  other  Flemish  authorities,  we  learn  that 
he  was  born  at  Brecht,  province  of  Antwerp,  in  1538. 
Towards  1560  he  became  resident  in  Antwerp, 
where    he    was    appointed    alderman      {echerUi),     and 

♦  I  am  indebted  to  Dr.  Cauldfield,  Cork,  for  above  quotation 
and  other  local  helps  ;  also  to  the  Right  Rev.  the  Bishop  of  Cork 
for  his  kind  interest. 


A  PPENDIX.  427 

acted  as  such  from  1562  to  1565.  At  the  time 
of  the  historically  memorable  insurrection  of  the 
Calvinists  (1567)  he  was  signalized  by  his  boldness 
against  the  Roman  Catholics.  But  the  insurrection 
having  been  quenched  in  blood,  he  fled  to  England. 
He  appears  to  have  arrived  in  London  in  1568,  on 
the  execution  of  Egmont  and  Stakcr.  His  Theatre 
of  Voluptuous  Worldlings  was  published  in  French  and 
in  English  in  1569.  All  the  Dutch  biographers  state 
that  in  London  he  formed  an  intimate  acquaintance 
with  the  poet  Spenser.  It  is  to  be  wished  that  they 
had  adduced  authorities  for  this.  But  as  it  is,  being 
independent  of  the  Sonnets,  it  agrees  with  our  worked- 
out  conclusion.  It  is  singular  that  his  name  does  not 
appear  in  connection  with  the  Dutch  (Protestant) 
congregation  in  London,  nor  in  any  of  the  numerous 
lists  of  exiles.  He  also  proceeded  to  France,  and 
became  a  friend  of  Ronsard  and  other  French  cele- 
brities. In  1579  he  returned  to  Antwerp  in  extreme 
poverty — so  much  so  that  he  had  to  apply  to  the 
magistrates  for  a  pauper's  alms.  Because  of  his  abject 
poverty,  the  Flemish  and  Belgian  writers  state  that 
he  accepted  the  pecuniary  assistance  of  the  partisans 
of  the  king.  It  was  at  this  time  he  called  Philip  II. 
"  the  best  of  kings."  Such  a  collapse  of  principle  is 
mournful.  Such  utter  impoverishment  is  in  strange 
contrast  with  his  own  designation  in  his  title-pages  of 
patrician,"  or  of  "  gent "  in  not  a  few  Elizabethan 
title-pages.  His  contemporaries  pronounced  him  "  the 
prince  of  poets."  There  are  words  by  him  in  self- 
praise  that  would  be  incredible  if  they  were  not 
extant,  e.g.  : 


428  APPENDIX. 

Summary  and  Preface  to  the  Lof -sang  van  Brabant. 
Addressed  to  the  Estates  of  Brab'.,  1580. 

V.  d  Noot  explains  his  aims  in  Ufe  in  general,  and  in  writing 
this  poem  in  particular.  Men  pursue  various  ends,  some  stay  at 
home,  others  go  abroad,  some  mine,  some  fish,  .  .  .  .  :  "but 
I  have,  alone  and  above  all,  from  my  youth  upward,  had  a  special 
love  for  the  heavenly  art  which  God  through  Phoebus  and  the 

9  Muses,  excites  in  the  calm  breast  of  divine  poets 

Impossible  to  check  an  innate  impulse     .     .     .    and  my  Inspira- 
tion has  carried  me  rather  to  heavenly  than  to  earthly  things. 

"Seeing  that  God  has  deigned  to  give  Brabant,  too,  her  Poet 
(as  he  gave  Homer  to  the  Greeks,  Vergil  to  the  Romans,  Petrarch 
to  the  Tuscans),  he  cannot  weary  of  thanking  him  for  his  g-ood 
gifts,  and  for  having  thus  furnished  him  with  this  heavenly  art. 

"  Next  to  G''.  my  aim  is  to  honour  and  immortalize  my  country, 
and  my  good  countrymen  and  women.  '  And  also  to  show  pos- 
terity that  I,  too,  once  lived.'  " 

He  was  a  various-languaged  man.  He  died  in 
1595.  Some  of  his  French  sonnets  and  snatches  of 
verse  are  slight,  but  pretty,  with  a  flavour  of  the  Pleiad 
school.     Two  brief  specimens  must  suffice : — 

From  the  ' '  A  brege  de  V  Olym^iade. ' ' 

SONNET. 

Je  vis  ma  Nimphe  au  coingd'ung  ioly  pr6, 
Au  mois  de  May,  aupres  d'ung  jardinage, 
Environne  d'ung  clair  et  beau  rivage, 
Estant  par  tout  fort  plaisamment  borde 

Delis,  de  fleurs,  et  d'herbes  diapre  : 
On  ne  vit  one  plus  ioly  paysage. 
Plus  beaux  tapis,  ny  plus  plaisant  feuillage. 
Tant  noblement  estoit  le  champ  orne, 

Comme  Flora  entre  fleurs  estoit  elle. 

Pour  sa  bcaute  il  faut  bien  qu'on  I'appelle 
L'Almc  Venus  :  pour  son  savoir,  Minerve  : 

Diane  aussi  pour  sa  chastete  grande  : 

Pour  son  bon  port  Junon  qui  tout  commande 
Depuis  ce  temps  devint  ma  raison  serve. 

Ses  petits  dents  sont  trop  plus  blancs  qu'yvoire, 
Et  son  parler  (plus  doux  qu'on  s9auroit  croire) 
Est  parfume  d'une  soiiefue  odeur, 
Tant  douce  (a  foy)  qu'on  ne  peut  trouver  fleur, 


APPEXDIX.  429 

Muse  ou  parfum,  en  I'Arabie  hcureuse 

Qui  sent  mieux  que  sa  bouche  amoureuse  ; 

Dix  inille  amours  sortent  de  ses  beaux  yeux, 

Et  qui  plus  est  mille  iifraces  des  cieux 

Volent  tousiours  4  I'entour  de  sa  bouche, 

Qui  plus  que  miel,  ros6e,  ou  manne  est  douce,  etc. 

It  is  not  improbable  that  Vandcr  Noodt  brought 
his  AbrcgL^  de  rOlyuipiadc  before  Spenser.  Curiously 
enough,  in  his  preface  to  it  he  announces  that  like  the 
Eaery  Queen  it  was  to  be  in  "  Twelve  Books,"  which 
were  nearly  ready  for  publication,  but  never  were 
published.  Mr.  A.  H.  Bullen,  London,  has  favoured  me 
with  these  details  of  the  "  Argument "  of  his  allegorical 
poem.  Read  along  with  the  etching-like  engravings, 
they  strike  me  as  having  suggested  some  features  of 
the  Faery  Queen.  Illustrative  quotations  from  the 
Olympiades  will  be  found  in  the  Notes  and  Illustra- 
tions of  our  Glossarial  Volume  (Vol.  X.) 

Abrcgc  des  doiize  livres  Olympiades. 

ARGUMENT. 

Mercury  shows  the  poet  in  sleep  the  "  Idea"  of  Beauty,  the 
lady  Olympia  ;  announcing^  that  he  shall  one  day  possess  her. 
Presently  live  noble  Ladies  find  him,  and  lead  him  to  search  for 
his  mistress.  He  seeks  for  her  in  the  garden  of  Madame 
Iledone,  who  flatters  him  in  order  to  keep  him,  but  he  leaves  her 
and  enters  the  Chateau  of  Plutus,  who  tries  vainly  to  keep  him. 
Afterwards  he  enters  the  Palace  of  Kuclia,  and  conceives  the 
desire  of  living-  there  in  honour  and  glory,  but  his  companions 
urge  him  forward.  The  promised  hour  comes  at  length,  and  the 
the  poA  meets  "la  I')ame  gracieuse,"  whose  divine  beauty  he 
describes.  He  is  drawn  by  the  beauty  of  his  lady  to  the 
(harden  of  Ldvc,  where  he  sees  Love  sitting  in  a  Triumphal 
Chariot ;  he  follows  the  chariot  and  sees  Love  descend  in  front  of 
a  beautiful  theatre.  In  the  midst  was  the  fountain  of  Venus. 
Then  comes  to  him  the  voice  of  Venus,  bidding  him  to  perse- 
vere in  his  love.  Afterwards  he  is  drawn  by  the  virtues  of  his 
Lady  to  the  Temple  of  Arete.  Seeing  her  play  on  a  lute  "  dedans 
un  pre  verdoiant,"  he  was  so  enraptured  with  her  sweet  songs 


430  APPENDIX. 

and  lier  beauty  that  Erato  took  him  to  the  mountains  "  d'Elicon 
et  Parnasse,"  where  Phoebus  embraced  him  and  the  Sisters 
inspired  him  with  entlmsiasm  and  poetic  spirit.  At  parting  he 
plays  so  sweetly  amon^^  the  poets  in  the  Elysian  fields  that  he 
receives  a  crown  of  laurel  from  Phcebus,  a  crown  of  myrtle  from 
Venus,  of  olive  from  Miner\'a,  of  ivy  from  Bacchus.  Con- 
ducted by  the  five  Demoiselles,  the  poet  then  reaches  a  virtuous 
matron,  Theude,  who  is  accompanied  by  the  maidens  Pistis, 
Elpis,  and  others.  Theude  shows  him  the  strait  path,  which 
seems  very  difficult  to  pass  by  reason  of  rockers  and  ronces, 
but  whosoever  passes  along  it  with  good  courage,  will  find  (she 
says)  eternal  repose.  Well-armed  he  proceeds  on  the  road  to 
combat  with  the  World,  the  E'lesh,  and  the  Devil  ;  the  vices 
are  figured  under  the  shapes  of  various  beasts,  Wolves,  Leopards, 
Lions,  Dogs,  Bears,  etc.  He  gains  the  victory,  but  it  then 
remains  to  fight  the  monster  Ptochia.  However,  Sponde  and 
Ergasia  bring  the  daughters  of  Plutus  (Chrysea  and  Argyrea)  to 
his  help,  and  Ptochia  flees.  Afterwai-ds  he  comes  to  some  fair 
fields,  where  his  Lady  appears  before  him,  accompanied  with 
gods  and  goddesses.  The  marriage  is  solemnized  ;  a  feast  is 
made,  and  the  fauns  and  satyrs  serve  the  wines. 

Finally — As  evidence  of  Vander  Noodt's  strong 
detestation  of  the  Papists,  and  so  confirming  our  inter- 
pretation of  the  '  September  '  Eclogue,  take  these  inter- 
pellated passages  from  the  English  Theatre  for  Wovld- 
liiti';s  {\^6c)),  in  which   Spenser's  Sonnets  appeared — 

"lleere  we  might  speak  and  reherse  many  things:  Namely 
of  the  keeping  of  their  stewes,  and  how  they  goe  a  whoring  two 
maner  of  wayes  :  wliereunto  we  might  ioyne  and  declare  what 
gainc  and  profite  the  rufiian  prelates  get  thereby.  As  it  is  to  be 
scene,  namely  at  Rome,  what  revenues  and  rents,  that  great  and 
sovcraign  ruffian  getteth  by  his  whoores.  And  afterward  of  the 
drowning  and  killing  of  children,  and  secretly  murthering  ;  and 
casting  in  corners  and  ditches,  as  is  usually  practised  amongst 
the  riggish  and  lecherous  prelates"  (fol.  52' b,  11.  2-15). 

Again — 

"  Thys  may  those  testifie  whiche  hcarde  the  Sermone  of  one 
B.  Cornel  is  y"  Hisper  at  Bruges,  B.  John  vanden  Hagen  at 
Gaunt  [Ghent],  and  that  worthie  knave  that  preached  at  S. 
Goule,  whiche  for  his  behaviour  was  banyshed  oute  of  the  Haghe 


W 


APPENDIX.  431 

in  Hollanflc.  as  ihc  rest  of  them  wore  woorthie  to  bee.  Hut  God 
be  thanked,  thai  tin-  Papistesof  ourecountrey  ean  none  otherwyse 
dense  them  selves  than  wyth  suche  foule  and  liltliie  dishe  cloutes, 
and  fy),'ht  wytli  such  dartes  wherwyth  they  hurte  them  selves" 
(fol.  38  b,  11.  5-17). 

Neither  of  these  extracts  arc  in   the   original   French. 


E:    TRANSLATION    OF   SPENSER'S  LATIN  VERSE- 
LETTER  TO  HARVEY. 

{See  Life,  p.  69.) 

IJy  Richard  Wilto.n,  M.A..  Londesborough  Rectory. 

To  that  Most  Accomplished  Alan,  now  for  a  long  time  for 
many  reasons  Most  Illustrious,  G.  H.,  the  Letter  of  his 
'•  Immerito, "  about  to  sail  for  France  and  Italy, 

GREETING. 

Thus  \,  though  mean,  to  my  illustrious  friend, 
Not  void  of  friendliness,  my  greetings  send : 
And  thus  a  veteran  poet  I  address, 
A  poet  I  myself,  though  new,  no  less ; 
May  you,  retum'd  after  long  absence,  find 
A  Heaven  that  smiles  around  you  to  your  mind  ; 
A  Heaven  more  fair  than  that  which  bends  o'er  me. 
Behold,  of  late,  the  God  that  rules  the  sea, 
Gave  tne  clear  signals  (may  He  be  the  God 
Who  makes  the  rebel  bend  beneath  His  rod 
And  dooms  the  perjured  lover):   He  prepares 
And  gently  smooths  with  His  propitious  airs 
The  waves  my  winged  bark  must  shortly  plough  : 
His  angT)' winds  e'en  Father  i-Eolus  now 

Lulls,  and  his  blustering  storms 

Thus  all  things  ready  for  my  journey  seem, 

Unready  only  I  myself  do  deem. 

For  wounded  how  I  know  not,  my  sick  mind 

Has  long  been  tost  witli  doubtful  wave  and  wind, 

While  Love,  the  steersman  strong,  my  strengthless  bark, 

Still  hurries  hither,  thither,  through  the  dark  ; 

Reason  that  followed  better  counsels  slain, 

By  Cupid's  bow  its  glory  cleft  in  twain  : 

Of  hesitation  I  am  still  the  sport. 

And  vext  with  tempest  in  Uie  verj-  port. 


432  APPENDIX. 

Thou  great  despiser  of  the  quivered  Love 
(That  impious  name  I  pray  the  gods  above 
May  pardon)  these  hard  knots  untie  for  me  ; 
Henceforth  my  great  Apollo  thou  shalt  be. 
Thy  spirit  stirs  thee  highest  fame  to  gain, 
And  bids  the  poet  breathe  a  loftier  strain 
Than  can  be  found  in  Love  the  light  and  slight, 
And  yet,  alas,  Love  is  not  always  light ! 
All  things  you  heed  not  save  eternal  praise, 
And  for  the  splendid  image  which  you  raise, 
The  things  the  foolish  crowd,  as  gods,  adore. 
Farms  and  great  friends,  a  town  house,  golden  store  : 
The  things  which  please  the  eye,  fair  forms,  fine  shows. 
Sweet  faces  where  the  colour  comes  and  goes, 
All  these  you  trample  under  foot  with  scorn. 
As  mocking  fancies  of  the  senses  born. 
Meet  for  my  Harvey  this  may  stand  confess' d, 
The  copious  orator  and  noble  breast — 
A  thought  old  Stoic  wisdom  v^ould  endorse 
And  stamp  with  sanctions  of  eternal  force ; 
But  all  men  do  not  think  alike  of  course  ! 

The  eloquent  Ulysses,  driven  afar 
By  adverse  winds  beneath  an  unknown  star, 
A  distant  exile  on  the  stormy  deep. 
Where  whirlpools  in  a  fatal  eddy  sweep. 
Despised  Calypso's  couch  and  heavenly  charms. 
For  his  wife's  tearful  eyes  and  faithful  arms. 
Such  power  had  Love  and  Woman  o'er  his  soul. 
Woman  more  strong  than  Love  in  her  control. 
But  him,  however  wise,  you  leave  behind. 
So  wonderful  the  grandeur  of  your  mind. 
Matched  with  the  ideal  image  of  such  fame 
And  varied  glories  as  surround  your  name, 
The  things  the  foolish  crowd,  as  gods,  adore 
Farms,  and  great  friends,  flocks,  herds,  and  golden  store. 
The  things  which  please  the  eye,  fair  forms,  fine  shows. 
Sweet  faces  where  the  colour  comes  and  goes. 
The  things  which  please  the  taste  and  take  the  ear — 
All  these  you  pass  unmarked,  nor  hold  them  dear. 
Truly  3'ou  have  high  notions,  but  I  ween 
High  notions  do  not  always  knowledge  mean. 
Who  knows  in  small  things  how  to  be  unwise 
Oft  from  the  proudly  knowing  bears  the  prize. 
The  Sophists  once,  a  miserable  crew, 
At  Aristippus  their  reproaches  threw. 


^x 


APPENDIX.  433 

Bociuso  ho  mildly  incasurod  out  his  speech 

The  tyrant  in  his  puqile  pride  to  reach  : 

But  he  in  turn  of  their  vain  saws  made  light, 

Whom  a  gnat's  flying  shadow  could  affright. 

And  all  who  study  to  delight  grandees 

Study  to  be  unwise ;  and  so  they  please. 

In  fine,  whoe'er  his  brows  with  wreaths  would  bind, 

And  with  the  favouring  crowd  approval  find. 

Learns  foolishly  to  trifle,  and  lays  claim 

To  folly's  idle  praise  which  merits  shame. 

The  name  of  Wise,  old  Father  Ennius  bore 

Alone  amid  a  countless  crowd  of  yore. 

Yet  he  is  praised  because  his  liquid  song 

Amid  the  foolish  winecups  flowed  along. 

Nor  w  ith  your  leave,  great  Cato  of  our  day. 

May  you  obtain  the  Poet's  honoured  bay, 

Howe'er  you  sing  and  build  the  loft)'  rhyme. 

Unless  you  play  the  fool  to  please  the  time  ; 

For  all  things,  wheresoe'er  you  look  around. 

With  nought  but  fools  and  foolishness  abound. 

But  lo,  amidst  the  whirling  stream  is  seen 

A  central  way  of  safety  yet,  I  ween. 

He  who  desires  to  figure  in  men's  eyes 

As  neither  too  unwise,  nor  yet  too  wise, 

To  him  alone  the  Wise  man's  name  you  give  : 

He  in  the  via  media  strives  to  live. 

For  on  one  side  the  threatening  waters  call, 

And  on  the  other  fatal  lightnings  fall. 

To  slight  too  much  Life's  flowing  joys  beware — 
A  tender  Wife  late-answering  to  your  prayer  : 
Nor,  if  you're  wise,  from  offered  riches  shrink, 
Whate'er  the  Curii  and  Fabricii  think — 
Their  wretched  fancies  leave  the  wretched  race. 
Pride  of  their  age.  of  our  age  the  disgrace. 
Nor  yet  too  eagerly  these  joys  pursue  ; 
Danger  on  either  side  confronts  the  view. 
He  who  the  happy  medium  truly  knows, 
If  Heaven  on  any  one  the  gift  bestows. 
Him  the  alone  Wise  man  on  earth  write  down. 
Though  Socrates  himself  may  wear  a  frown. 

By  natural  force  some  men  li\'e  piously, 
Others  maintain  a  stem  integrity  ; 
Others  in  manly  fortitude  excel  ; 
But  in  all  men's  opinions  he  does  well. 
Who  still  •'  the  useful  with  the  sweet  has  blent." 
The  gods  to  me  long  since  the  sweet  had  sent ; 

28 


434  APPENDIX. 

But  ne'er  the  useful :  how  I  wish  that  the}' 
The  useful  now  would  send  to  me  some  day, 
And  e'en  the  sweet :  O  that  the  gods  to  me 
(Since  great  and  small  to  gods  must  equal  be) 
Unless  they  envy  mortals  too  much  bliss 
Could  find  it  in  their  power  to  grant  me  this, 
And  let  the  sweet  and  useful  both  be  mine  ! 
Such  Fortune,  Harvey,  is  already  thine  ; 
She  with  an  equal  hand  to  thee  is  kind, 
And  gives  thee  sweet  and  useful  to  thy  mind  : 
But  I  being  born  beneath  a  cruel  star, 
Set  out  in  search  of  her  through  lands  afar, 
Where  wild  Caucasian  mountains  soar  on  high, 
And  Pyrensean  summits  pierce  the  sky. 
And  where  base  Babylon  corrupts  the  air : 
But  if,  though  sought  for,  she  is  found  not  there, 
In  endless  wanderings  on  the  mighty  deep 
With  old  Ulysses  o'er  the  waves  I'll  sweep 
In  search  of  her;  and  thence  will  sadly  go 
With  sorrowing  Ceres  to  the  realms  below, 
To  whom  one  world  sufficed  not  her  fond  quest. 
Seeking  her  stolen  daughter  without  rest. 

For  in  this  native  nook,  this  dim  retreat, 
I  blush  to  waste  my  days  ;  it  is  not  meet 
A  youth  with  genius  not  unblest,  should  spend 
In  duties  mean,  repeated  to  no  end, 
,  The  precious  morning  of  his  fairest  years, 

Nor  see  the  hoped-for  fruit  crown  the  green  ears. 

So  I  will  go  at  once,  but  who  will  pray 

For  blessings  from  above  upon  my  way  ? 

And  up  the  weary  Alps  I  will  ascend, 

But  who  in  the  meanwhile  will  greet  my  friend 

With  letters  redolent  of  British  dew 

And  songs  that  waft  the  sighs  of  lover  true? 

The  Muse  beneath  some  alien  height  will  mourn 

The  silence  long  with  ceaseless  wail  forlorn  : 

And  grieve  with  flowing  tears  and  clouded  brow 

That  sacred  Helicon  is  silent  now  ; 

And  Harvey  kind  (though  dear  to  all  he  be, 

And  justly,  for  more  sweet  than  all  is  he) ; 

My  Angel  Gabriel  (though  with  friends  girt  round, 

And  troops  of  kindred  souls  about  him  found) 

For  his  "  Immerito  "  will  ofttimes  call, 

The  only  absent  dear  one  of  them  all ; 

And  with  a  longing  soul  will  breathe  the  vow — 

"  O  would  my  Edmimd  were  beside  me  now  ! 


APPENDIX.  435 

Who  wrote  mc  all  the  news,  nor  failed  to  tell 
The  tender  love  which  made  his  bosom  swell; 
And  oft  with  heart  and  words  would  kindly  pray 
For  blessin.2;-s  from  above  upon  my  way, — 
God  bring  him  safely  back  again  some  day!  " 


F:    HARVEY'S  LETTERS  TO  SPENSER. 

{See  Life,  p.  -ji.) 

"  To  his  very  unfrendly  frende 
that  procurid  y  edition  of  his 
so  slender  and  extemporall  devises." 

The  Letter  tlnis  proceeds  : — 

"  Ma.gnifico  Signor  Benevolo,  behoulde  what  millions  of  thankes 
I  recounte  unto  you,  and  behoulde  how  highely  I  esteeme  of  your 
good  Mastershipps  overbarish  and  excessive  curtesy,  first  in  pub- 
lishing abroade  in  pr)'nte  to  the  use  or  rather  abuse  of  others,  and 
nowe  in  bestowing  uppon  myselfe  a  misshapin  illfavorid  freshe 
copy  of  my  precious  poems,  as  it  were,  a  pigg  of  myne  owne  sowe. 
Tniste  me,  there  ar  sundry  weighty  and  etfectuall  causes  why 
I  should  accounte  it  the  very  greatist  and  notabliste  discourtesy 
in  good  erneste  that  ever  heretofore  was  ofFerid  me  by  ether 
frende  or  foe  :  and  truly  there  never  happenid  any  on  thinge  unto 
me  that  did  ever  disorder  and  distraute  the  power  of  my  mynde 
so  mutche.  Alasse  they  were  hudlid,  and  as  you  know  bunglid 
upp  in  more  haste  then  good  speede,  partially  at  the  urgent  and 
importune  request  of  a  honest  goodnaturid  and  worshipfull  yonge 
gentleman  who  I  knewe,  beinge  prixy  to  all  circumstaunces,  and 
very  aflfectionate  towards  me  or  anye  thinge  of  my  dooinge,  would 
for  the  tyme  accept  of  them  accordinglye  :  esspecially  considering 
they  were  the  very  first  rimes  in  effect  that  ever  he  perusid  ot 
mine  in  Inglishe  :  and  so  I  remember  I  then  excussid  the  matter, 
terming  them  my  fine  Verlayes,  and  first  experiments  in  that 
kinde  of  fingeringe  and  goodly  wares.  It  is  Italian  curtesye  to 
give  a  man  leave  to  bee  his  own  car\'er.  And  nowe  forsoothe,  as 
a  mighty  peece  of  worke  not  of  mine  own  voluntarie  election, 
which  might  have  chosen  a  thousand  matters  both  more  agreable 
to  my  person  and  more  acceptable  to  others,  but  they  muste 
needs  in  all  haste  no  remedye  be  sett  to  sale  in  Bartholomewe 
and  Stirbridge  fayer,  with  what  lack  ye  Gentlemen  ?  I  pray  you 
■will  you  see  any  freshe  ncwe  bookes  ?  Looke,  I  beseeche  you, 
for  your  loove  and  buie  for  your  moonye.     Let  me  yet  borrowe  on 


436  APPENDIX. 

crackd  groate  of  your  purse  for  this  same  span  new  paniflett.  I 
wisse  he  is  an  University  man  that  made  it,  and  yea  highlye 
conimendid  unto  me  for  a  greate  scholler.  I  marry,  good  syr,  as 
you  saye,  so  it  should  appeare  in  deede  by  his  greate  worke  :  by 
my  faye  he  hath  taken  verye  soare  paynes,  beshrowe  my  hart 
else.  What  ?  Will  \\f  fetche  it  ?  I  will  not  steeke  to  bestowe 
so  mutch  in  exhibition  uppon  the  University.  Doist  thou  smyle 
to  reade  this  stale  and  beggarlye  stuffe  in  writinge  that  thy  eares 
have  so  often  lothid  and  so  disdaynefully  abhorrd  in  the  speak- 
inge  ?  Am  not  I  as  suer  as  of  the  shirte  or  gowne  on  my  backe 
to  heare  and  putt  up  these  and  twentye  such  odious  speaches  on 
both  sides  of  my  hede  before  on  fayer  day  be  quite  over  paste, 
and  nowe  I  beseeche  your  Benivolenza  what  more  notorious  and 
villanous  kind  of  iniurye  could  have  bene  devised  againste  me 
by  the  mortallist  enemy  I  have  in  this  whole  world  ?  Besides,  if 
peradventure  it  chaunce  to  cum  once  owte  whoe  I  am,  (as  I  can 
hardly  conceive  howe  it  can  nowe  possibely  be  wholye  kept  in,  I 
thanke  your  good  mothers  eldist  ungracious  sonne)  nowe,  good 
Lorde,  howe  will  my  right  worshipful!  and  thrise  venerable  masters 
of  Cambridge  scorne  at  the  matter  ?  Tell  me  in  good  soothe,  as 
thou  art  an  honest  gentleman,  doist  thou  not  verelye  suppose  I 
shalbe  utterlye  discredditid  and  quite  disgracid  for  ever  ?  Is 
it  not  a  thinge  neerelye  impossible  ether  still  to  mainetayne  or 
againe  to  recoover  that  prseiudiced  opinion  of  me  amongste  them, 
that  heretofore,  by  means  of  good  fortune  and  better  frendes  and 
I  knowe  not  what  casualtye  else,  was  conceavid  ?  What  greater 
and  more  odious  infamye  for  on  of  my  standinge  in  the  Univer- 
sitye  and  profession  abroade  then  to  be  reckon'id  in  the  Beade- 
roule  of  Inglish  Rimers,  esspecially  beinge  occupied  in  so  base 
an  obiecte  and  handelinge  a  theame  of  so  slender  and  small 
importance  ?  Canst  thou  tell  me  or  doist  thou  nowe  begin  to 
imagin  with  thyselfe  what  a  wunderfuU  and  exceedinge  displea- 
sure thou  and  thy  Prynter  have  wroughte  me  ?  In  good  faythe, 
I  feare  me  it  will  fall  oute,  to  the  greatist  discurtesye'on  thy  parte 
and  the  most  famous  discreddit  on  mine  that  ever  was  procurid 
by  a  frende  towards  his  frend.  If  they  hade  bene  more  than 
excellentlye  dun,  flowinge,  as  it  were,  in  a  certayne  divine  and 
admirable  veyne,  so  that  a  good  fellowe  moughte  well  have  saide. 
Did  you  ever  reade  so  gallant  passionate  geere  in  Inglishe  ? 
^Vhat  greate  notable  fame  or  creddit,  I  pray  you,  could  they 
worke  me,  beinge  still  to  bee  reputid  but  for  fine  and  phantas- 
ticall  toyes,  to  make  the  best  of  them  ?  Nowe,  beinge  on  the 
contrarie  side  so  farr  otherwise,  as  all  the  worlde  seithe,  and  I 
must  needs  confesse,  howsoever  it  pleasith  your  delicate  Master- 
shipp  to  bestowe  a  delicate  liverye  uppon  them,  and  christen 
them  by  names  and  epithitcs,  nothingc  agreable  or  appliante  to 


^ 


APPENDIX.  437 

the  thinges  themselves  (purposinge  of  all  likchood  to  give  mc 
that  as  a  plaster  for  a  broakin  pate),  what  other  fruite  is  hereby 
reapid  unto  me,  but  displeasure  of  my  worshipfullist  dearist 
frendes ;  malicious  and  infamous  speaches  of  my  professid  and 
socrett  enemyes :  contempte  and  disdaync  of  my  punyes  and 
underlings  ?  finally  what  but  dislikinge,  murmuring,  whisperinge, 
open  or  cloase  quippinge,  notorious  or  auricular  iybinge  on  every 
hande  ?  In  faythe,  you  have  showid  me  a  very  frendly  and 
gracious  louche,  1  beshrowe  your  kyinde  harteroote  for  your 
labour.  Howbeit  perforce  I  must  nowe  be  constraynid  (the 
wounde  beinge  so  far  past  all  remedy  and  incurable)  to  make  a 
vertu  of  necessity  as  many  poore  honest  men  have  dun  before  me, 
and  if  not  sufficiently  contente  and  satisfie  m)Tie  owne  phansye 
(which  is  simplye  unpossible)yetto  countenaunce  oute  the  matter 
as  easely  as  I  can  :  setting  the  best  and  impudentist  face  of  it 
that  I  can  borrowe  here  amongst  my  acquayntaunce  in  Cam- 
bridge, havinge  none  such  of  myne  owne.  And  herein  onlye  to 
saye  trothe  and  to  be  playne,  thou  maist  make  me  sum  litle  peece 
of  amendes  if  so  be  your  good  mastershippes  worshipp  woulde 
deigne  tlie  voutesafynge  me  by  the  next  carrier  that  cummith 
downe  to  Sterbridge  fayr  ether  so  reasonable  quantity  of  your 
valorous  and  invincible  currage  or  at  the  leste  the  clippings  of 
your  thrishonorable  mustachyoes  and  subboscoes  to  overshadow 
and  to  coover  my  blushinge  against  that  tyme,  1  beseech  your 
goodlinesse  lett  this  ilfavorid  letter  sulfize  for  a  dutifuU  soUicitor 
and  remembrer  in  that  behaulfe  (and  esspecially  in  the  other 
ceconomicall  matter  you  wott  of  for  the  very  greatist  parte  and 
highest  poynte  of  all  my  thoughtes  at  this  presente)  without 
farther  acquajTitinge  my  benefactours  and  frendes  with  these 
pelting  scholastical  sutes  and  I  pnesume  of  our  oulde  familiaritye 
so  mutch  that  I  suppose  it  needlesse  e.xtraordinarilye  to  procure 
any  noblemans  petitory  or  commendatorye  letters  in  any  sutch 
private  respectes.  For  the  on  I  hope  in  the  heavens  my  chin  will 
on  day  be  so  favorable  and  bountifuU  unto  me  by  meanes  of  sum 
hidden  celestiall  influence  of  the  pianettes  and  namely  a  certa>Tje 
prosperous  and  secrete  aspecte  of  Jupiter  as  to  minister  super- 
abundant matter  of  sufficient  requitall  to  add  a  certayne  most 
reverende  venerable  solemne  grace  to  my  Prresidentshipp  when 
it  commes  :  and  as  for  the  other  it  were  but  lost  labour  to  reiterate 
the  selfesame  promisses  and  warrants  that  were  so  fully  and 
resolutely  determined  uppon  at  our  last  meeting,  and  shall  as 
largely  and  assuredly  be  perfourmid  at  the  place  and  feaste 
appointid.  In  the  meanwhile  I  knowe  you  may  for  your  habilitye 
and  I  trust  you  will  of  your  gentlenes  affourde  me  so  muche  ot 
your  stoare  ether  wayes  as  shall  reasonabely  scne  to  be  imployed 
on  so  available  and  necessary  uses.    Rathere  then  fayle,  I  re- 


438  APPENDIX. 

quesle  you  most  hartelye  lett  me  borrowe  them  both  upon  tolerable 
usurye  ;  1  can  forthwith  give  you  my  obligation  for  repayment  of 
the  principalis  with  the  loane  made  in  as  forcible  and  substantial! 
manner  as  you  or  your  lernid  counsell  can  best  devise." 

There  follows  a  jest-serious  scheme  of  a  bond  or  obh"ga- 
tion.  I  overpass  some,  and  take  the  frequently-referred- 
to  recognition  of  Spenser's  Lancashire  home  : — 

"  You  see  nowe  what  homely  and  ridiculous  stuffe  I  still  sende 
abroade  amongste  my  frendes,  accordinge  to  my  wontid  manners, 
rather  desiringe  continuaunce  of  entier  frendshipp  and  ould 
acquayntaunce  by  familiar  and  good  fellowlye  writinge  then 
affecting  the  commendation  of  an  eloquente  and  oratorlike  stile 
by  over  curious  and  statelye  enditinge.  To  be  shorte,  I  woulde 
to  God  that  all  the  ilfavorid  copyes  of  my  nowe  prostituted  devises 
were  buried  a  greate  deale  deeper  in  the  centre  of  the  erthe  then 
the  height  and  altitude  of  the  middle  region  of  the  verye  English 
Alpes  amountes  unto  in  your  shier.  And  as  for  this  paultinge 
letter  I  most  afifectionatelye  praye  the,  mi  best  belovid  Immerito, 
retourne  it  me  back  againe  for  a  token,  fast  inclosid  in  thye  ver^'e 
next  letters  all  to  be  tome  and  halfied  in  as  manye  and  as  small 
peaces  and  filters  as  ar  the  motes  in  the.  Sonne." 

The  Letter  closes  still  gravely  jesting,  and  then  succeeds 
the  serio-comic  "  foresayd  obligation,"  for  which  I  must 
send  the  Reader  to  the  Letter -Book  (pp.  64-8). 

Another  Letter  is  even  more  suggestive  and  im- 
portant :  for  it  is  of  special  significance  and  declarative 
of  Spenser's  intellectual  rank,  that  this  scholar  among 
scholars,  this  superlatively  conceited  and  self-opinionated 
"  Fellow  "  of  the  University — for  he  was  a  "  Fellow" — 
should  have  turned  to  him  for  literary  help  and  advice 
when  he  was  called  upon  to  play  an  important  part 
in  University  duty.  I  recognise  in  this  the  instinctive 
homage  of  the  inferior  to  his  superior. 

I  can  give  only  a  single  (lengthy)  quotation  from  this 
Letter : — 


APPENDIX,  439 

"A  tliousaiide  recomendations  presupposid  unto  your  good  wis- 
dum,  and  twise  as  many  to  your  goodly  worshipp.  1  lurtilied  your 
goodlincs  the  last  weeke  as  well  bi  letters  as  by  my  factour  in  that 
behalfe,  M.  Umphrye,  howe  litle  come  was  shaken  in  y"  late  greate 
outragious  tempest  you  wott  of;  and  now  forsoothe  approachith  y 
solemne  and  grand  feaste  of  Pennycoste,  1  wisse  a  greater  plague 
than  Y  former,  and  farr  more  terrible  privately  unto  my  purse 
then  that  other  publickly  pra^iudiciale  agaynste  my  good  name. 
And  may  it  please  your  good  Mastershipp  to  heare  all  ?  Marry, 
Syr,  the  very  worst  and  most  unlookid  for  newes  is  yit  behinde. 
Forsoothe  my  poore  selfe  for  wante  of  a  better  must  be  faynte  to 
supply  -f  roome  of  a  greater  Clarke  and  play  II  Segnor  Filosofoes 
parte  uppon  the  Comencemente  stage.  A  most  suddayne  and 
strange  resolution  in  all  respectes.  O  that  I  were  a  compounde 
of  all  the  sciences  as  well  speculative  as  active  and  specially 
those  that  consist  in  a  certayne  practicall  discourse  ether  of 
speach  or  reason  (notwithstanding  ther  excessive  vanitye)  that 
the  ilfavorid  coniurer  Agrippa  so  furiously  and  outragiously 
cryeth  oute  uppon.  It  were  a  fitt  of  frenesis  moria  I  suppose  to 
wishe  y  morall  and  philosophical!  wisdum  of  Socratis,  y"  divine 
notions  and  conceites  of  Plato,  y*"  suttle  and  intricate  acumen  of 
Aristotle,  y*'  brave  eloquence  of  Tully,  y*"  gallant  pronunciation  of 
Hortensius,  and  so  forthe,  after  y''  manner  of  thessame  greate 
learnid  scholarissimi  scholares  that  rowle  so  trimly  in  there  anti- 
quityes,  whereas  we  knowe  not  for  certainty  whether  any  sutch 
creatures  and  apotheoses  were  ever  in  the  worlde  or  noe,  or,  if 
peradventure  they  were,  who  seeith  not  they  must  needes  be 
rotten  above  a  hundrith  thousande  ages  agone,  not  so  mutch  as 
the  lest  sig-nitication  of  an  ould  ilfavorid  tumbe  or  any  peece  of  a 
rustye  monumente  remaining-  behinde  to  helpe  colour  the  matter. 
But  would  to  God  in  heaven  I  had  awhile  for  there  sake  the  pro- 
founde  leminge  of  M.  Duffington,  the  mysticall  and  supermeta- 
physicall  philosophy  of  Doctor  Dee,  the  rowlinge  tongue  ether 
of  M.  Williamson,  over  fine  Cambridge  barber,  or  of  Mistrisse 
Trusteme-trulye,  mye  Welche  ostisse,  the  trim  lattin  phrases  and 
witty  proverbes  of  him  that  built  Caius  College  and  made  Lon- 
dinensis  Booke  de  Anliquitate,  y"  audacity  of  my  cuntryman 
M.  Atturnye  and  Clarke  of  ouer  towne,  and  lastly,  the  disputative 
appetite  of  Doctor  Busbye,  with  the  like  affectionate  zeale  to  the 
Commencement  groates  and  aftemoono  seavenatiocke  dinnars, 
which  persons  according  to  ther  severall  quality  do  all  still 
fioorishe  and  karry  the  creddit  at  this  daye.  Kunninge  would 
nowe  be,  I  perceive,  no  burden,  and  eloquence,  if  a  man  had  it, 
were  more  worth  then  a  crackd  testeme  in  his  purse  or  a  payer 
of  tatterid  venetias  in  his  presse.  Had  it  not  nowe  bene  a  point 
of  wisdom  to  have  layed  upp  against  a  deere  yeare  'i    And  to 


440  APPENDIX. 

have  furnisshed  myselfe  a  yeare  or  twoe  since  of  sutch  necessary 
howsehowlde  provision  as  is  requisite  at  such  a  droute  ?  Good 
Eloquence  and  gentle  Philosophy,  and  ye  loove  me  pittye  my 
case  and  helpe  mc  this  once,  and  I  will  never  be  assuredlye  here- 
after soe  farr  to  seeke  agayne.  Ye  have  holpen  sum  I  knowe 
owte  of  the  same  place  to  fayer  riches  and  good  manages  and  I 
knowe  not  what  secrett  likinge  else  :  I  beseech  ye  nowe  extende 
your  favorable  curtesyes  thus  far  towards  me  as  to  afforde  me 
on  tolerable  oration,  and  twoe  or  three  reasonable  argumentes, 
and  lett  me  aloane  agoddes  name  to  shifte  for  the  other  myselfe. 
I  am  not  to  trouble  y"  often  :  goodnowe  be  a  litle  compassionate 
this  once.  I  have  no  other  meanes  or  staye  in  the  whole  worlde 
to  repose  my  affiaunce  in,  being  heggid  in  on  everyside  with  so 
many  pore  bankerupte  neyghbours,  that  ar  a  greate  deale  reddier, 
Godd  wott,  to  borrowe  abroade  of  every  on  then  to  lende  at  home 
to  any  on." 

Take  further  this  : — 

"  In  y"  meane  space  I  knowe  you  maye  for  your  hability,  and  I 
prsesume  you  will  of  your  gentlenes,  affourde  me  so  mutch  of  your 
stoare  other  wayes  as  shall  reasonablely  serve  to  be  imployed  on 
so  avayleable  and  necessar}'  uses.  Rather  then  fayle,  I  request 
you  most  humbly  let  me  borrowe  them  bothe  uppon  tolerable 
usurye.  I  am  forthwith  to  give  you  my  obligation  for  repayment 
of  the  principalis  with  the  loane  at  the  daye  appoyntid,  contrived 
in  as  forcible  and  substantial!  manner  as  your  selfe  or  your  lemid 
counsell  can  best  devise." 

The  remainder  of  these  Letters  follow,  and  are  of  con- 
tinuous interest  ;  but  again  I  must  refer  the  Reader  to 
the  Letter-Book  or  our  collection  of  Harvey's  works  (in 
HuTH  Library). 


G:    DONI'S  "MORAL  PHILOSOPHY." 

{See  Life,  p.  93.) 

A  literary  '  find '  by  myself,  without  noticing  more 
than  a  woodcut  that  doubtless  gave  Spenser  the 
iVlgrind  or  Grindal  incident  (see  Glossary,  s.v)^  and 
by  Mr.  Harrold  Littlcdale  (now  in  Baroda,  India),  vviih 


APPENDIX.  441 

careful  study  of  it,  gives  us  another  of  the  books  that 
Spenser  read,  and  the  source  of  the  personifications, 
the  prosopopeia  and  other  things  in  MotJier  HubbcriVs 
Tale.  The  Foxe,  Ape,  Mule  ("  moyle"),  Lion  King, 
Camel,  Sheep,  Wolf,  and  other  animals  are  all  "  per- 
sonages^' in  a  quaint  quarto  full  of  still  quainter 
woodcuts  entitled,  Doni.  Tlie  Morall  Philosopliic  of 
Doni,  cnglislud  out  of  Italian  by  Sir  Tliovias  North. 
London,  1570. — Second  edition,  1601. 

This  Moral  Philosophic  of  Doni  was  the  great  fable- 
book  of  the  time,  drawing  many  of  its  stories  from 
mythical-eastern  sources,  and  putting  things  exactly 
as  they  are  put  in  Mother  Hubbenfs  Talc,  in  sarcastic 
exposure  of  the  doings  at  Court  and  elsewhere.  Sooth 
to  say  some  of  the  'tales'  are  tediously  told,  but  a 
mordant  phrase  leaps  up  now  and  again  to  point  a 
moral.  The  "  Foxe"  and  "  Ape"  and  "Moyle"  of  Spenser 
have  each  traits  taken  from  Doni.  Besides,  it  may  be 
stated  en  passant,  this  same  tome  is  utilized  in  the 
ShcpJurd's  Calendar  3ir\di  in  the  Visions  of  the  World's 
Vanity. 

As  a  specimen  of  Doni  the  Mule's  advice  of  how  to 
thrive  at  Court  may  be  compared  with  the  following 
(p.  24),  from  him  : — 

"  The  proude  Moyle  [mule]  sayde,  I  intcnde  to  know  thum.  and 
therefore  I  will  get  me  to  the  Court.  And  I  will  you  to  know, 
dear  Mother  [the  She-Asse]  that  manual  craft  is  one  exercise, 
and  to  know  to  behave  themselves  in  Court  is  another  arte. 
But  to  me  that  must  remaine  in  Prince's  Court,  I  may  not  goe  so 
plainly  and  simplie  to  work,  but  must  use  everie  one  with  arte, 
feeding  still  their  humour :  to  deal  in  other  matters  with  deceite, 
and  in  mine  owne  to  have  a  subtile  witte,  devising  still  all  I  may 

to  be  chiefe  about  the  Prince In  Prince's  Courts,  he 

that  proceedcth  not  stoutly  in  his  matters,  besides  that  like  he  is 


442  APPENDIX. 

thought  a  coward,  they  take  him  for  a  foole.  What  ?  Know  you 
not  that  Fortune  favoreth  still  the  proude  and  stout?  Think  yee 
my  stoutnesse  will  not  favour  me,  accompanied  with  the  malice 
of  understanding  ;  and  with  the  pride  of  i^eputing  myself  for  Noble 
bloud,  which  prehemlnences  obtain  happie  state  in  Court;  and 
he  that  hath  that  name  to  be  w^ise,  subtile,  sharpe  of  witte,  and 
with  that  to  be  of  noble  house,  hath  made  him  already  a  Cloke 
for  sinne,  and  garment  for  his  naughtinesse." 

So  in  Doni  (p.  21)  the  herdsman  renders  a  false 
account  of  his  herd,  as  in  Mother  Hubberd,  and  we 
have  passionate  words  of  "suitors'  delays"  (p.  27). 


H:    THE  IDENTIFICATION  OF  "  CUDDIE." 

[Sec  Life,  p.   102.) 

Dean  Church  in  recounting  the  "  homely  names," 
amongst  others  (p.  42)  says — "  Cuddie,  perhaps  for 
Edward  Kirke  "  ;  but  Edward  Kirke  himself  annotates 
— "  I  doubte  whether  by  Cuddie  be  specified  the 
authores  selfe,  or  some  other.  For  in  the  eyght 
yEclogue  the  same  person  was  brought  in  singing  a 
Caution  of  Colin's  making,  as  he  sayth.  So  that 
some  doubt  that  the  persons  be  different."  This 
makes  Cuddie  as  =  Kirke  impossible.  But  the 
reason  assigned  for  not  regarding  "  Cuddie  "  as  "  the 
authour  him.selfe  "  seems  rather  to  confirm  that  ;  for 
if  Cuddie  were  Cc^lin  and  Colin  Cuddie  it  was 
natural  that  Cuddie  should  be  introduced  as  "singing 
a  Cantion  of  Colin's  making."  I  do  not  think  that 
there  can  be  much  doubt  that  covertly  Spenser 
meant  by  Cuddie  to  represent  himself.  Moreover, 
this  is  confirmed  by  the  manner  in  which  Gabriel 
Harvey    refers    to    Cuddie    in    one   of    his    Letters    to 


APPENDIX.  443 

Spenser  (as  '•  Iinmcrito  ").  He  thus  writes — "  I  pray 
now,  what  saith  M.  Cuddie,  alias  you  know  who, 
in  the  tenth  Aeglogue  of  the  foresaid  famous  new- 
Calendar  ?  "  ("  A  Gallant  familiar  Letter.  .  .  .")  It 
is  the  more  important  to  note  this,  inasmuch  as  the 
tenth  Eclogue  makes  complaint  of  the  vanity  of  his 
poetical  efforts  hitherto. 


I :    SPENSER'S  FRIENDSHIP  WITH  SIR  PHILIP  SIDNEY. 
{See  Life,  p.  121.) 

Though  thou  hadst  wade  a  general  Survey 

Of  all  the  best  of  metis  best  knowledges  ; 
And  knew  as  much  as  ever  learning  knew, 

y'et  did  it  make  thee  trust  thyself  the  lesse, 
And  lesse  presume. 

S.\>iUEL  Daniel,  of  Earl  Devonshire. 

"  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Harvey  had  sent  Spenser  to  Sidney,  and  that 
Sidney,  in  quick,  warm  friendship,  had  invited  him  to  stay  at  the  family 
mansion,  whither,  though  chiefly  residing  at  Court,  he  often  came  on 
one  errand  or  another.  The  friendship  was  very  memorable.  From  it 
there  ensued  to  Spenser  large  help  in  the  exercise  of  his  genius,  and  a 
chief  part  of  the  slight  worldly  advancement  that  came  to  him.  It 
furnished  Sidney  with  a  very  strong  inducement  to  devote  himself  to 
letters  more  heartily  than  he  had  ever  done  before,  and  provided  him 
with  the  best  possible  counsellor  and  felloiv-studcnt.  .  .  .  Sidney 
received  from  Spenser  more  perhaps  than  he  gave  to  him  ;  for  in  the 
world  of  letters  Spenser  was  by  far  the  greater  man  of  the  two." — 
H.  R.  Fo.\  LouKNE,  Memoir  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  pp.  236,  413 
(1862). 

As  stated  (p.  121),  I  think  it  necessary  to 
demonstrate  that  the  relation  of  the  "  newe  poete " 
to  Sir  Philip  Sidney  was  of  '  friendship  '  in  the 
deepest  and  tenderest  sense  of  the  word.  This  I  feel 
obligatory  on  mc  from  a  (modern)  tendency  to  regard 
their  intercourse  —  whatever  it  might   be  —  as   more 


444  APPENDIX. 

formal  than  real,  and  distant  rather  than  "  inner." 
The  men  of  mark  who  have  fallen  into  this  heresy 
compel    attention   and  refutation    (if  it  may   be). 

I  JLidije  that  this  pseudo-destructive  criticism 
originates  in  a  misapprehension  of  their  relative 
positions  when  they  crossed  each  other's  path.  We 
think  of  the  historical  Sir  Philip  Sidney  with  his 
nimbus  of  glory  around  his  forehead  and  his  mighty 
name.  But  in  1577-9  ^^  was  "Master  Philip 
Sidney "  only,  just  as  afterwards  Sir  Edward  Dyer 
was  then  "  Master  Edward  Dyer  "  only.  He  had  done 
little  or  nothing  of  remarkable.  Ccrtes,  he  had  written 
nothing  to  give  him  fame  in  literature.  Possibly 
some  scattered  sonnets  of  the  lustrous  Astrophel 
and  Stella  series  may  have  been  privately  circulated 
"  among  friends,"  as  Shakespeare's  were  later.  But 
he  had  no  such  distinction,  or  sanction,  to  make  it  a 
presumption  in  a  man  of  "  gentle  blood  "  like  Edmund 
Spenser  to  stand  on  the  same  level  with  him.  Besides, 
Spenser  was  by  at  least  two  years  senior  of  Sidney, 
and  came  to  him  with  the  superlative  commendation 
of  Gabriel  Harvey,  on  whose  judgment  the  "  Knight 
of  Courtesy "  relied.  I  do  not  see  how  as  between 
man  and  man  "  Master  Philip  Sidney  "  was  in  almost 
any  way  superior  to  "  Master  Edmund  Spenser,"  so 
as  to  make  it  honour  or  condescension  for  the  latter 
to  be  welcomed  at  Penshurst.  To  argue  that  the  social 
position  and  wealth  (the  latter  questionable,  moreover) 
of  the  Sidneys,  made  it  a  condescension,  is  fundamen- 
tally to  misread  Sidney  and  equally  to  misplace  the 
attraction  of  the  one  to  the  other.  "  TJie  Patron  of 
viy  yoiuig  Muses  "  settles  for  ever  t/ie  ground   of  their 


A  PPENDIX.  445 

first  "  intimacy,"  and  the  impulse  of  their  friendship 
(Ep.  to  Ruines  of  Time). 

But,  be  all  this  as  it  may,  attention  to  the  allusions 
to  Sir  Philip  Sidney  in  the  Poetry  and  Letters  of 
Spenser  must  satisfy  that  theirs  was  '  friendship,'  and 
no  mere  society-familiarity.  The  most  outstanding 
memorial  of  this  '  friendship '  is  the  dedication  of  the 
SliepJurcTs  Calendar,  thus  in  the  title-page  : — 

Entitled  to  the  Noble  and  Vertvous  Gentleman  most  worthy  of 
all  titles  both  of  learning  and  chevalrie,  M.  Philip  Sidney. 

together  with  the  verse-words,  already  quoted  : — 

To  him  that  is  the  president 
Of  noblesse  and  of  chivalrie  ; 
And  if  that  Envy  barke  at  thee, 
As  sure  it  will,  for  succour  flee 

Under  the  shadow  of  his  wine;-. 

Taken  by  itself,  neither  the  '  Entitling '  nor  these 
lines  would  go  for  much.  For  then,  as  now,  "  great 
men  " — titular  or  actually — were  '  pestered  '  with 
unsought  honours  of  this  sort,  as  Spenser  himself 
reported  of  the  Schoole  of  Abuse,  dedicated  by  Gosson 
to  Sidney,  and  not  accepted.  But  when  Sidney  was 
gone — long  after — the  Poet  addressed  a  sonnet  to 
"  Sidney's  sister,  Pembroke's  mother,"  and  he  ex- 
pressly informs  us  that  her  illustrious  brother  was  the 
FIRST  to  recognize  and  quicken  his  poetic  genius:  e.g.: — 

To  the  right  honourable  and  most  virtuous 
Lady  the  Countesse  of  Pembroke. 

Remembraunce  of  that  most  Heroicke  spirit, 
The  hevens  pride,  the  glory  of  our  dales, 

Which  now  triumpheth,  through  immortall  merit 
Of  his  brave  vertucs,  crownd  with  lasting  bales, 

Of  hcvenlie  blis  and  everlasting  praies  ; 


446  APPENDIX. 

Who  FIRST  MV  Muse  did  lift  out  of  the  flore, 

To   SING   HIS  SWEET  DELIGHTS  IN  LOWLIE  LAIES  ; 

Bids  mc,  most  noble  Lady,  to  adore 
His  goodly  image,  living  evermore 

In  the  divine  rcsemblaunce  of  your  face  .     .     . 

(Vol.  VIII.,  p.  336.) 

Wc  cannot  take  less  out  of  that  than  that  before 
publication,  and  so  prior  to  the  '  Entitling,'  Sidney 
had  'lauded'  the  Shepherd's  Calendar.  I  have 
noticed  the  '  rejection '  of  the  dedication  of  the 
Sehoo/e  of  Abuse.  I  recur  to  it  to  accentuate  how 
tenderly  and  affectionately  Spenser  reports  the 
'  rejection ' — "  Newe  Bookes  I  heare  of  none,  but 
only  of  one,  that  writing  a  certaine  Booke,  called  The 
Sehoo/e  of  Abase,  and  dedicating  it  to  Maister  Sidney, 
was  for  his  labour  scorned  ;  if  at  least e  it  be  in  the 
f^oodncssc  of  that  nature  to  seorne''  (Vol.  IX,,  p.  263). 
None  but  friend  speaking  to  friend  would  have 
interchanged  words  on  so  personal  a  matter ;  and 
yet  it  is  clear  Sidney  had  told   Spenser. 

Other  casual  references  in  his  Letters  accord  with 
daily  closest  intimacy  and  '  fellowship,'  as  thus  : 
"  As  for  the  twoo  worthy  Gentlemen,  Master 
Sidney  and  Master  Dyer,  they  have  me,  I  thanke 
them,  in  some  use  of  familiarity  "  ;  and  "  I  will 
imparte  yours  [Harvey's]  to  Maister  Sidney  and 
Maister  Dyer  at  my  nexte  going  to  the  Courte " ; 
and  "  I  beseech  }-ou  continue  with  usuall  writings,  as 
you  ma)-,  and  (if  all  things  let  me  heare  some  Newes 
from  you,  as  gentle  M.  Sidney,  I  thanke  his  good 
Worship,  hath  required  of  m.e,  and  so  promised  to  doe 
againe " ;  and  "  I  would  hartily  wish,  you  would 
either  send  mc  the   Rules  and  Precepts  of  Arte,  which 


APPENDIX.  447 

you  observe  in  Quantities,  or  else  followe  mine,  that 
M.  Philip  Sidney  gave  me,  being  the  very  same  which 
M.  Drant  devised,  but  enlarged  with  M.  Sidney's  own 
judgement." 

Turning  now  to  the   poetry,  in   "  April,"   Hobbinol 
[Harvey]  is  made  thus  to  describe  Spenser — 

Colin  thou  kenst,  the  Southeme  shepheardes  boye. 

On  this  Edward  Kirke  "  glosses  " — "  Colin  thou  kcnst, 
knovvest.  Seemeth  hereby  that  Colin  perteyneth  to 
some  Southern  noble  man,  and  perhaps  in  Surrye 
or  Kent,  the  rather  bicause  he  so  often  nameth  the 
Kentish  downes,  and  before  as  lytJie  as  lasse  of  Kent." 
This  is  one  of  a  number  of  purposely  vague,  definite- 
indefinite  seeming  '  glosses  '  wherein  E.  K.  told  only 
half  he  knew,  and  that  disguisingly.  '  Penshurst '  is 
unquestionably  indicated,  and  thereby  the  "  noble- 
man "  Leicester  and  his  nephew  Sidney.  There  are 
other  like  allusions  to  Penshurst,  as  in  E.  K's  "  glosse  " 
in  "  June  "  Eclogue — "  Forsake  tlie  Soyle.  This  is  no 
Poetical  fiction,  but  unfeynedly  spoken  of  the  Poete 
selfe,  who  for  speciall  occasion  of  private  affayres 
(as  I  have  becne  partly  of  himselfe  informed)  and  for 
his  more  preferment,  removing  out  of  the  North  partes, 
came  into  tlie  South,  as  Hobbinol,  indeed,  advised  him 
privately."  ..."  TJie  Dales.  The  South  partes, 
zvhere  he  uoiue  [1579]  abydeth,  which  thoughe  they 
be  full  of  hylles  and  woodes  (for  Kent  is  ver)- 
hyllie  and  woodye,  and  therefore  so  called,  for 
Kantsh  in  the  Saxon's  tongue  signifieth  woodie)  yet 
in  respecte  of  the  North  partes  they  be  called  dales." 
And  so  in   "  Julyc  "  he  sings  of — 


448  APPENDIX. 

The  salt  Medway,  that  trickling  stremis 
Adowne'the  dales  of  Kent ; 

and,  again  in  "  November  " — 

Shepheards,  that  by  your  flocks  on  Kentish  downes  abyde, 
Waile  ye 

Then  we  have  the  epistle-dedicatory  to  the  "  Countess 

of  Pembroke  "  ("  sister  unto  Astrofell ")  of  the  Rnincs 

of  Time,  to   which   the    old-world  name   of    "Golden 

Epistle "     is     surely    applicable.       It    is    a     heart-full 

tribute  to  a  "  dead /r/W/c/"  : — 

"Most  Honourable  and  bountifull  T>adie,  there  bee  long-  sithens 
deepe  sowed  in  my  brest,the  seedeof  most  entire  love  and  humble 
affection  unto  that  most  brave  Knight  your  noble  brother  de- 
ceased ;  which  taking  roote  began  in  his  life  time  some  what  to 
bud  forth  :  and  to  shew  theselves  to  him,  as  then  in  the  weake- 
nes  of  their  first  spring.  And  would  in  their  riper  strength  (had 
it  pleased  high  God  till  then  to  drawe  out  his  dales)  spired  forth 
fruit  of  more  perfection.  But  since  God  hath  disdeigned  the 
world  of  that  most  noble  Spirit,  which  was  the  hope  of  all  learned 
men,  and  the  Patron  of  my  young  Muses  ;  togeather  with  him 
both  their  hope  of  anie  further  fruit  was  cut  off :  and  also  the 
tender  delight  of  those  their  first  blossoms  nipped  and  quite 
dead.  Yet  sithens  my  late  cumming  into  England,  some  frends 
of  mine  (which  might  [much  prevaile  with  me,  and  indeedc 
commaund  me)  knowing  with  howe  straight  bandes  of  duetie 
I  was  tied  to  him  :  as  also  bound  unto  that  noble  house  (of  which 
the  chiefe  hope  then  rested  in  him)  have  sought  to  revive  them 
by  upbraiding  me  :  for  that  I  haue  not  shewed  anie  thankefuU 
remembrance  towards  him  or  any  of  the ;  but  suffer  their 
names  to  sleep  in  silence  and  forgetfulnesse.  Whome  chieflie 
to  satisfie,  or  els  to  avoide  that  fowle  blot  of  unthanke- 
fulnesse,  I  have  conceived  this  small  Poeme,  intituled  by  a 
generall  name  of  the  worlds  Ritines :  yet  speciallie  intended  to 
the  renowming  of  that  noble  race,  from  which  both  you  and  he 
sprong,  and  to  the  eternizing  of  some  of  the  chiefe  of  them  late 
deceased.  The  which  I  dedicate  unto  your  La.  as  whome  it 
most  specialli(^conccmeth:  and  to  whome  I  acknowledge  myselfe 
bounden,  by  many  singular  favours  and  great  graces.  I  pray  for 
your  Honourable  happincssc  :  and  so  humblie  kisse  your  handes. 
"  Your  Ladiships  cucr 

"  humblie  at  commaund. 

"E.S." 


APPENDIX.  449 

It  would  seem,  from  some  criticisms,  needful  to  point 
out  that  the  words  "  the  seede  of  most  entire  love  and 
humble  affection  unto  that  most  brave  Knight  your 
noble  brother  deceased  ;  which  taking  roote  began 
in  his  life  time  some  what  to  bud  forth  :  and  to  shew 
themselves  to  him,  as  then  in  the  weakenes  of  their 
first  spring,"  has  no  reference  whatever  to  the  fulness 
or  narrowness  of  their  intimacy  or  friendship,  but  to  the 
slenderness  of  the  Poet's  erewhile  verse-expressions  of 
his  profound  love  for  him,  because  of  his  premature 
death.  This  is  made  plain  by  the  promise  of  larger 
and  worthier  celebration  of  him  had  he  been  spared — 
"  And  would  in  their  riper  strength  (had  it  pleased 
God  till  then  to  drawe  out  his  daies)  spired  forth  fruit 
of  more  perfection."  This  "  fruit  of  more  perfection  " 
is  to  be  found  in  Spenser's  many  after-tributes  to 
Sidney  and  his  impassioned  sense  of  loss.  We  all 
know,  too,  that  the  Stcinmata  Dndleiana  was  meant 
specially  to  celebrate  the  Dudleys,  and  Sir  Philip 
foremost  of  them  all. 

But  the  grandest  of  all,  the  immortal  portraiture  of 

the  "  brave   Courtier  "  set  over-against    the  "  slie  Fox  " 

[Burleigh]  would   alone  testify  to  an  admiration  born 

of  the  profoundest  'friendship  ' — as  witness  : — 

The  slie  Fox 

.     .     .     .  with  shaq)  quips  ioy'd  others  to  deface, 
Thinking  that  their  dis^-^racing  did  him  ^^race  : 
So  whilst  that  otht-r  like  vaine  wits  he  pleased, 
And  made  to  lauj^di,  his  heart  was  i^Teatly  eased. 
But  the  right  gentle  minde  would  bite  his  lip. 
To  heare  the  lavell  so  good  men  to  nip  : 
For  though  the  vulgar  yeeld  an  open  eare. 
And  common  Courtiers  loue  to  gybe  and  fleare 
At  everie  thing,  which  they  heare  spoken  ill, 
And  the  best  speachcs  with  ill  meaning  spill ; 

I.  29 


450  APPENDIX. 

Yet  the  brave  Courtier,  in  whose  beauteous  thought 

Regard  of  honour  harbours  more  than  ought, 

Doth  loath  such  base  condition,  to  backbite 

Anies  good  name  for  envie  or  despite  : 

He  stands  on  tearmes  of  honourable  minde, 

Ne  will  be  carried  with  the  common  winde 

Of  Courts  inconstant  mutabilitie, 

Ne  after  every  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  idleness  he  doth  detest. 

The  canker  worme  of  everie  gentle  brest  ; 

The  which  to  banish  with  faire  exercise 

Of  knightly  feates,  he  daylie  doth  devise  : 

Now  menaging  the  mouthes  of  stubborn  steedes, 

Now  practising  the  proofe  of  warlike  deedcs. 

Now  his  bright  armes  assaying-,  now  his  speare, 

Now  the  nigh  aymed  ring  away  to  beare< 

At  other  times  he  casts  to  sew  the  chace 

Of  swift  wilde  beasts,  or  runne  on  foote  a  race, 

T'enlarge  his  breath,  (large  breath  in  armes  most  needfull) 

Or  els  by  wrestling  to  wex  strong  and  heedfull, 

Or  his  stiffe  armes  to  stretch  with  Eughen  bowe. 

And  manly  legs  still  passing  too  and  fro. 

Without  a  gowned  beast  him  fast  beside  ; 

A  vaine  ensample  of  the  Persian  pride, 

Who  after  he  had  wonne  th'  Assyrian  foe, 

Did  euer  after  scorne  on  foote  to  goe. 

Thus  when  this  Courtly  Gentleman  with  toyle 

Himselfe  hath  wearied,  he  doth  recoyle 

Unto  his  rest,  and  therewith  sweete  delight 

Of  Musicks  skill  revives  his  toyled  spright, 

Or  els  with  Loves,  and  Ladies  gentle  sports. 

The  ioy  of  youth,  himselfe  he  recomforts  ; 

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  : 


APPENDIX.  451 

With  wliom  he  close  conft-rs  with  wise  discourse, 

Of  Natures  workes,  of  heaven's  continuall  course, 

Of  forrciiie  lands,  of  people  different, 

Of  kinj;,'domes  chanj^^e,  of  divers  >,'^overnment. 

Of  dreadfull  battailes  of  renowmed  Knights  ; 

With  wiiich  he  kindleth  his  ambitious  sprights 

To  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  pu<-posis. 

And  in  his  Princes  service  spends  his  dayes. 

Not  so  much  fur  to  gainc,  or  for  to  raiee 

Himselfe  to  high  degree,  as  for  his  grace. 

And  in  his  liking  to  winne  worthic  place  ; 

Through  due  deserts  and  comely  carriage, 

In  whatso  please  employ  his  personage, 

That  may  be  matter  meete  to  gaine  him  praise  : 

For  he  is  fit  to  use  in  all  assayes. 

Or  else  for  wise  and  civil  governaunce. 

Whether  for  Armes  and  warlike  amenaunce. 

For  he  is  practiz'd  well  in  policie,       * 

And  thereto  doth  his  Courting  most  applie  : 

To  learne  the  enterdeale  of  Princes  strange, 

To  marke  th'  intent  of  Counsells,  and  the  change 

Of  states,  and  eke  of  private  men  somewhile. 

Supplanted  by  fine  falshood  and  faire  guile  ; 

Of  all  the  which  he  gathereth,  what  is  fit 

T'  enrich  the  storehouse  of  his  powerfull  wit. 

Which  through  wise  speaches,  and  grave  conference 

He  daylie  eekes,  and  brings  to  excellence. 

Contrast  this  magnificent  '  aside  '  portraiture — for  it 
is  introduced  of  purpose  to  glorify  its  original — with 
Wordsworth's  "  Happy  Warrior,"  worthy  to  be  placed 
beside  it.  Every  syllabic  beats  with  the  yearning  of 
personal  friendship,  every  line  is  an  added  touch  of  a 
likeness  drawn  with  wet  eyes  from  a  face  ever-pre.sent 
to  memory  at  its  holiest,  and  the  sum-total  such  a 
memorial  as  only  undying  affection  could  have  wrought. 
Edmund  Spenser  was  not  merely  uttering  the  '  general 
bruit '  of  Sidney,  as  of  the  "  ideal  knight,"  the  Galahad 


452 


APPENDIX. 


and  more  of  the  Court,  but  Wc^s  painting  the  Friend 
whom  it  was  a  glory  to  have  known  and  loved  and 
been  loved  by. 

There  remains  the  priceless  '  collection '  entitled 
Astrophel.  The  introductory  poem  (Vol.  III.,  pp. 
213-21),  with  all  its  strange  archaic  '  pa.storal'  frame- 
work and  singular  introduction  of  "  Stella  "  as  present 
at  the  death  of  her  adorer — a  poetical  license  most 
permissible — is  all  a-thrill  with  a  '  friend's  '  emotion 
and  glistening  with  tears.  The  form  may  be  outre,  as 
any  clipped  tree  of  "y"  old  English  Garden,"  but  bloom 
and  fragrance  are  in  it,  and  finer  and  costlier  things 
than  dews.  The  sorrow  is  chastened,  the  friendship  is 
remoter  ;  but  I  can  discern  no  lower  or  less  real  key 
in  either  the  carried  out  purpose  of  a  collection  of 
memorial-poems   such  as  this,  or  in   Astrophel  itself. 

Besides,  such  an  inference  of  no  'intimacy,'  no 
'friendship'  on  this  ground,  would  equally  apply  to 
the  other  contributions  to  the  "Astrophel"  set  of 
poems,  including  Sidney's  own  sister's.  This  alone 
condemns  the  inference. 

It  were  long  to  tell  of  how  under  changing  names, 
but  always  superbly,  Sidney  is  introduced  into  the 
Faery  (Jnecn.  To  myself  it  is  demonstrated  by  a 
thousand  touches  that  the  memory  of  Sir  Philip  was 
a  "  holy  thing  "  to  Edmund  Spenser  ;  that  it  haunted 
him,  that  it  inspired  him.  How  anything  like  the 
(quantity  and  quality  of  celebration  of  Sidney  is  to  be 
thought  of  save  as  the  outcome  of  innermost  '  friend- 
ship' and  passionate  devotion,  I  cannot  imagine. 

How  straight  out  of  the  heart  is  this  tribute !  It 
takes    us   to  fatal    Zutphen   (d.    1586): — 


APPENDIX.  453 

Most  gentle  spiritc,  broalhcd  from  above, 
Out  of  the  bosome  of  the  maker's  blis, 
In  whom  all  bountie  and  all  vcrtuous  love 
Appeared  in  their  native  properties  ; 
And  did  enrich  that  noble  breast  of  his 
With  treasure  passing  all  this  worlde's  worth, 
Worthie  of  heaven  itself,  which  brought  it  forth. 

His  blessed  spirite,  full  of  power  divine, 
And  influence  of  all  celestiall  grace  ; 
Loathing  this  sinful!  earth  and  earthlie  slime, 
Fled  backe  too  soone  unto  his  native  place. 
Too  soone  for  all  that  did  his  love  embrace, 
Too  soone  for  all  this  wretched  world,  whom  he 
Rob'd  of  all  right  and  true  nobilitie. 


O  noble  spiritc,  live  there  ever  blessed. 

The  world's  late  wonder,  and  the  heaven's  new  ioy. 

Live  ever  there,  and  leave  me  here  distressed 

With  mortall  cares,  and  cumbrous  world's  anoy, 

But  where  thou  dost  that  happines  enioy  ; 

Bid  me,  6  bid  me  quicklie  come  to  thee. 

That  happie  there  I  male  thee  alwaies  see. 

{Rutnes  of  Time,  Vol.  IIL,pp.  21-2.) 

Passionate  is  one  line  interwoven  into  this  Lament 
that  tells  of  his  death  by  "  guiltic  hands  of  enemies  " 
(1.  299). 

Thus  a  guest  ever  welcome  at  Penshurst,  it  mu.st 
follow  {tneo  JKctiiio)  that  the  benefit  and  influence  were 
upward  from  Spen.ser  to  Sidney,  not  downward  from 
Sidney  to  Spenser.  In  poetic  genius  comparison  were 
an  outrage  ;  and  the  richer  spirit  must  have  dominated 
the  less  rich.  I  may  be  wrong,  but  I  have  a  soup(^on 
of  suspicion  that  if  Sir  Philip  Sidney  had  lived  to 
have  published  his  Defence  of  Poesie  himself,  there 
would  have  been  an  acknowledgment  of  indebtedness 
to    Spenser   in   its   composition.      Is   it    utterly   impro- 


45-1  APPENDIX. 

bciblc — as  I  ventured  earlier  to  suggest — that  Sir 
Philip  should  have  incorporated  or  adapted  the 
EuglisJi  Poet  of  Spenser  in  his  Defence  ?  I  trow  not. 
Only  thus  can  I  understand  its  suppression  when 
'finished'  and  ready  for  the  press. 

But  with  reference  to  the  Defence  of  Poesie,  it  has 
been  held  that  Sidney's  notice  of  the  She/Sherd's  Calendar 
is  cold.  I  differ.  I  prefer  Dean  Church's  putting  of 
it  :  "  In  this  year,  probably,  after  it  was  published,  we 
find  it  [The  Shepherd's  Calendar']  spoken  of  by  Philip 
Sidne}%  not  without  discriminating  criticism,  hut  as  one 
of  the  feiu  recent  examples  of  poetry  ivorthy  to  be  named 
after  Chancer : — 

"I  account  the  Mirror  of  Alagistrates  meetly  furnished  of 
beautiful  parts  ;  and  in  the  Earl  of  Surrey's  Lyrics  many  things 
tasting  of  birth,  and  worthy  of  a  noble  mind.  The  Shepherd' s 
Calendar  HATH  JIUCH  POETRY  in  his  Eglogues  :  indeed  worthy 
tlie  reading  if  I  be  not  deceived.  That  same  framing  of  his  style 
in  an  old  rustic  language  I  dare  not  allow,  sith  neither  Theocritus 
in  Greek,  Virgil  in  Latin,  nor  Sanazar  in  Italian,  did  affect  it. 
Besides  these  do  I  not  remember  to  have  seen  but  few  (to  speak 
boldly)  printed  that  have  poetical  sinews  in  them." 

It  will  more  bring  out  the  weight  and  worth  of 
Sidney's  praise,  "  hath  much  poetry "  and  "  indeed 
worthy  the  reading," — with  the  fine  acknowledgment 
of  his  bias  in  favour  of  his  friend  "if  I  be  not  deceived," 
if  we  ponder  his  criticism  of  the  Mirror  of  Alagistrates, 
named  along  with  the  Calendar.  Sackville  certainly 
was  his  honoured  friend  ;  and  yet  that  did  not  prevent 
this  drastic  verdict : — 

"Our  tragedies  and  comedies,  not  without  cause,  are  cried 
out  against,  observing  rules  neither  of  lowest  civility,  nor 
skilful  poetr}'.  l^xcepting  Gorboduc  (again  to  say  of  those 
that  1  have  seen),  which  notwithstanding  as  it  is  full  of  stately 


APPENDIX.  455 

spetchcb  and  well-soundini,'  phrases,  climbing^  to  the  height  of 
Seneca  his  style,  and  as  full  of  notable  morality,  which  it  doth 
most  delightfully  teach,  and  so  obtains  the  very  end  of  poesy  ; 
yet  in  full,  //  is  very  defectttuus  in  the  circumstances,  which 
grieves  me  because  it  might  not  remain  as  an  exact  model  of 
all  tragedies.  For  it  is  faulty  both  in  place  and  time,  the  two 
necessary  companions  of  all  corporal  actions.  For  when  the 
stage  should  always  represent  but  one  place,  and  the  uttermost 
time  presupposed  is  it  should  all  both  by  Aristotle's  precept  and 
common  reason,  be  but  one  day,  there  is  both  many  days  and 
many  places,  inartiticially  imagined.  But  if  it  be  so  in  Gorbodvc, 
how  much  more  in  all  the  rest  ?" 

We  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  justness  or  unjust- 
ness  of  the  criticism  based  on  the  Aristotelian-alleged 
limitations  of  time  and  place — the  Elizabethan  Drama 
swept  away  such  cobwebs — but  with  the  fact  that  it 
is  criticism.  Thus  is  it  throughout  the  Defence.  He 
made  conscience  of  his  verdicts  for  or  against.  Revi- 
sion for  publication  might  and.  probably  would  have 
toned  down  a  good  deal  of  the  '  faulting,'  and  infused 
more  of  human  sympathy  and  more  warmth  of  colour- 
ing ;  but  the  words  on  Spenser  exceed  rather  than  fall 
short  of  Sidney's  scrupulously  measured  praise. 

The  two  men  were  the  complement  of  each  other. 
They  could  scarcely  have  failed  to  meet,  or  meeting  not 
to  run  to  each  other — like  globes  of  dew.  Everywhere 
I  find  Spenser  missing  and  mourning  his  '  friend.' 
That  Sir  Philip  Sidney  has  left  behind  him  no  slightest 
scrap  evidential  of  all  this  is  not  peculiar  to  the 
'  friendship  '  with  Spenser.  I  have  read — at  Hatfield 
and  elsewhere — sheafs  of  his  letters,  but  have  never 
come  upon  a  single  line  on  literary  matters,  or  even  on 
Stella.  I  am  not  aware  that  his  Sonnets,  or  Arcadia, 
or  Defence,  are  mentioned  once  in  all  the  vast  Sidneian 
correspondence. 


456  APPENDIX. 

It  would  have  been  a  flaw  in  the  fine  marble  of 
Sidney's  almost  spotless  reputation  had  he  met  Edmund 
Spenser  and  been  to  him  a  '  patron  '  only.  Patronage 
of  such  a  man  by  such  a  man  would  have  been  an 
anachronism.  We  have  no  such  delightful  and  delight- 
ing pictures  of  Spenser  and  Sir  Philip  together,  as  of 
Sir  Walter  Ralegh  and  he,  by  aldered  Mulla.  It  is 
just  possible  the  "Shepherd  of  the  Ocean"  and  "Colin 
Clout  "  got  nearer  to  one  another  than  "  the  Knight  of 
Courtesy"  and  "Immerito,"  as  assuredly  Ralegh's  was 
incomparably  the  larger  and  richer  nature,  and  even 
Essex's  in  not  a  few  elements,  a  more  lovable  than 
Sidney's.  But  I  must  pronounce  it  treason  to  the  facts 
and  our  "  Pleasures  of  Imagination  "  to  throw  suspicion 
on  either  the  reality  or  the  intensity  of  mutual  regard  as 
between  the  two  great  contemporaries.  I  unhesitatingly 
pronounce  on  their  intimate  '  friendship.' 

J:  ARTIFICIAL  ETHICS. 

{Sec  p.   122.) 

Thomas  Arnold,  M.A.,  in  the  Diihlin  Review  (3rd  Series, 
Vol.  IV.,  1880,  pp.  321-32),  has  an  elaborate  paper  on  "  Spenser 
as  a  Text-Book."  It  is  vehemently  anti-Protestant,  as  with 
perverts.  It  proceeds  on  that  basis  of  artificial  morality  so  sadly 
common  among  Roman  Catholic  writers,  by  which  chastit)' 
becomes  unchaste  from  the  mode  in  which  it  is  exalted  at  the 
expense  of  God's  ordinance  of  marriage,  whilst  'womb'  is  iterated 
and  reiterated  in  such  a  way  as  becomes  offensive  to  a  pure 
mind  and  heart.  Mr.  Arnold  picks  here  and  there  bits,  and 
in  the  most  iniquitous  way  makes  them  the  warrant  for  a  charge 
of  licentiousness  on  the  Faerie  Qi/eene  that  is  simply  as 
shocking  as  it  is  slanderous.  Earlier  the  North  Ainericati 
Review  (vol.  v.,  Sept.  1817)  anticipated  this  treacherous  treat- 
ment thus — "Another  and  higher  merit  of  Spenser  is  the  lofty 
and  sustained  tone  of  morality,  which  pervades  the  whole  of  his 


APPENDIX.  457 

poem.  Not  but  there  are  many  passages  in  the  Faerie  Qucene 
of  too  dangerous  a  tendency  jftakc7i  separate  from  the  general 
order,  and  from  their  more  immediate  concatenation.  But  let 
him  who  experiences  danger  from  a  single  line,  or  a  single  scene, 
read  on  to  the  close  of  the  adventure  wherein  it  occurs.  The 
sequel  will  be  sure  to  contain  a  sedative  to  rectify  and  quell  the 
combustion  of  the  most  unhallowed  imagination.  Vice  is  never 
represented  there  without  its  merited  and  inevitable  consequences. 
But  what  is  better  still,  our  poet  generally  prepares  us  to  encounter 
the  'slipper)'  places'  by  a  previous  train  of  pure  and  delicate 
sentiment,  with  which  he  artfully  e.Kcites  emotions  that  strengthen 
and  mould  us  into  an  attitude- which  fortities  our  fallible  virtue. 
And  this  is  the  praise  of  Spenser,  that  whilst  his  subject  inevitably 
leads  his  readers  among  scenes  which  are  a  fiery  furnace  to 
virtue,  he  is  the  only  man  who,  like  the  angel  of  God,  could 
guard  them  safely  through,  whilst  the  astonished  critic  e.xclaims 
with  Nebuchadnezzar,  '  Lo,  I  see  four  men  loose  walking  in  the 
midst  of  the  fire,  and  they  have  no  hurt.'  Such  is  the  Faerie 
Queene — a  poem  which  draws  so  great  a  line  of  distinction 
between  the  wantonness  of  nature  and  the  mystery  of  wickedness, 
that  in  its  perusal  the  cheek  of  Virtue  scarcely  knows  why  it 
blushes,  whilst  the  rapacity  of  a  depraved  imagination  seeks  for 
its  food  in  vain"  (pp.  318-19).  So  the  Westminster  Rczne-iV 
(.x.Kxi.,  p.  143,  N.  S.:  1867), — "The  bent  of  the  poet's  fancy,  the 
nature  of  the  subjects  described,  the  example  of  the  authors  he 
imitated,  the  taste  of  the  readers  for  whom  he  catered,  would 
have  excused  if  not  justified  immodesty  and  licentiousness.  But  in 
spite  of  the  most  seducing  influences  Spenser's  name  remained 
delicately,  spotlessly  pure.  A  corrupt  imagination,  however,  may 
frequently  be  shown,  not  only  by  what  it  says,  but  by  what  it 
avoids.  Its  diseased  association  cannot  bear  what  would  be 
harmless  to  others.  But  Spenser  not  only  revelled  in  the  lovely, 
luxurious,  and  voluptuous  creations  of  his  fancy,  but  exulted  in 
the  most  free  and  fearless  utterance  of  his  feelings.  For  perfect 
melodious  expression,  and  the  most  vivid  and  full  conception  of 
beauty  in  all  its  forms,  the  '  Bower  of  Bliss'  never  has  been, 
and  certainly  never  will  be,  equalled  in  the  Knglish  language." 
Mr.  Arnold's  paper  is  nasty  in  its  prudery,  and  malignant  in  its 
accusation  of  Protestant  morality. 


458  APPENDIX. 

K :    DOCUMENTS  AND  STATE-PAPERS  ON  LORD 

GREY'S  ADMINISTRATION— SMERWICK. 

{See  Life,  p.   139.) 

Bearing  the  Facts  of  our  text — indisputable — in 
recollection,  the  series  of  State  Documents  preserved 
in  H.M.  Public  Record  Office  are  of  the  profoundest 
interest  and  value.  I  furnish  them  here  in  cxtenso  and 
in  integrity. 

On  the  20th  of  February,  1578-9,  Patrick  Lom- 
barde,  a  Waterford  merchant,  being  in  Lisbon,  wrote 
to  his  wife,  desiring  her  to  inform  the  Mayor  of  Water- 
ford,  Pierce  Walsh,  privately,  that  "three  ships  of  130 
tons,  with  80  pieces  of  ordnance  and  600  men  each, 
were  ready  to  start  with  James  Fitz-Maurice,  with  the 
first  fair  wind,  to  Ireland."  On  27th  February,  1578-9, 
a  bark  from  Pilboa  arrived  at  Kinsale,  stating  that 
James  Fitz-Maurice  was  at  Groin,  waiting  for  a  ship 
of  400  tons  to  sail  for  Ireland,  and  "  to  capture  all 
English  and  Huguenots  "  he  might  fall  in  with. 

All  accounts — and  they  are  numerous — concur  in 
stating  that  James  Geraldyn's  landing  took  place  on 
the  17th  or  1 8th  of  July,  1579;  that  he  then  took 
possession  of  Fort-del-Ore,  and  that  immediately  John 
and  James  of  Desmond,  his  cousins,  proffered  to  join 
him.  On  the  20th  July,  Carter  and  Davells  announced 
from  Cork  to  the  Lord  Justice  their  intention  to  "  raise 
the  country  the  best  they  can,  and  draw  near  the  coast"; 
and  between  that  date  and  the  ist  of  August  they  were 
murdered  in  the  castle  of  Tralee  by  Sir  John  of  Desmond, 
at  the  bidding  of  the  Earl  of  Desmond — as  related  in 
our  account  of  the  Desmond  forfeitures  (Appendix  L). 


APPENDIX.  459 

Events  now  thickened  upon  each  other.  Between 
this  date  and  the  25th  of  August,  James  Geraldyn  met 
his  death  in  an  encounter  with  the  Bourkes  ;  and  from 
the  camp  at  Cork  on  the  23rd  of  August,  1579,  Sir 
William  Drury  wrote  to  Sir  Francis  Walsingham,  as 
follows  : — 

"Albeit  the  foreigTi  practisers  may  seem  to  be  disappointed  by 
the  suddaine  taking  awaye  this  principal  instrument  (James 
Fitz-Maurice).  yet  the  traitor  that  remaincth,  John  of  Desmond, 
is  not  to  be  slightly  regarded,  both  because  his  power  is  more 
than  the  others,  his  wisdome  I  think  equal,  and  his  credit 
universal  with  all  the  idlenesse  of  Ireland,  only  the  other  sur- 
mounted him  in  ippocrisie  to  allure  men  to  the  cause  of  religion, 
and  a  long  experience  how  to  protract  the  warre.  What  friends 
he  hath  here  and  what  cold  enemies,  my  brother  Drewe  can 
infonn  you,  that  knoweth  both  my  opinion  of  the  Erie  his  brother, 
and  of  the  devocion  I  find  in  Clancarre,  Barrie,  Roche  and  others." 

On   the   3rd  of  September,  1579,  Sir  Nicholas  Maltbie 
writes  from  Kilmallocke  : — 

"  The  Earle  hath  not  three  men  of  the  countrie  that  will  follow 
him  more  than  his  household,  unless  such  as  think  he  is  arming 
them  against  the  State." 

"All  have  followed   Sir  John,"  writes  another.     Again 
Sir  William  Drur>-  to  Walsingham  : — 

"  14th  September,  1579. 
"There  is  much  to  be  gathered  by  the  continuance  of  Doctor 
Sanders  with  the  rebels,  and  that  the   Spaniards  remain   with 
them  without  any  desire  to  return  to  their  own  countrie." 

Again,  Lord  Chancellor  Gcrrard  to  Burleigh  : — 

"  i6th  Sept.,  1579. 
"That  devlish  traitor  Sanders  fl  heard  by  examination  of  some 
persons  who  were  in  the  Fort  with  him  and  heard  his  four  <»r  five 
Masses  a  day)  persuadcth  all  men  that  it  is  lawful  to  kille  any 
English  Protestant,  and  that  he  hath  authoritie  to  warrant  all 
such  from  the  Pope,  and  absolution  to  alle  whosoe  can  draw 
blood." 


4^0  APPENDIX. 

During  the  Winter  the  war  was  prosecuted  against 
the  Desmonds  energetically.  Passing  over  some  months, 
here  is  the  report  of  Justice  Myaghe  of  the  condition 
of  things  in  Munster  and  West  Kerry,  written  on  the 
last  day  of  March,  i  580  : — 

"The  rebels  in  Munster  doe  still  continue  their  rebellion, keeping 
themselves  in  desart  places,  ex;pecting  the  coming  of  foreign 
^powers,  which  the  dotted  Doctor  and  traitour  Saunders,  doth  verifie 
unto  them,  offering  his  head  to  be  cutte  offe  yf  aide  come  not 
by  the  xx  day  of  April  next.  There  arrived  in  Dyngell,  in  Kerrie, 
two  Spanish  barkes,  about  the  26  of  February,  to  understand  the 
state  of  the  rebels  and  Doctor  Sanders,  who  declared  they  were 
sent  from  the  Court  of  Spain,  upon  report  that  all  the  Geraldyns 
were  overthrown  and  killed.  They  came  to  know  the  certainty 
thereof,  and  finding  afore  them  in  the  town  the  said  dotting 
Doctor,  he  did  return  them  with  speed,  with  vehement  letters  for 
the  speedie  sending  into  Ireland  the  ayde  promised ;  and  also 
certifying  the  prosperous  successe  of  the  Geraldyn,  setting  them 
forth,  as  I  understand,  a  thousand  times  with  more  force  and 
success  than  they  have  had,  or  are  like  to  have,  and  so  the  said 
barques  are  departed,  about  the  first  of  March.  This  much  I 
am  advertised  of  by  the  Earl  of  Clancarre,  who  came  from  these 
parts  of  late,  and  was  here  at  Cork  with  the  Lord  General 
[Ormond],  promising  to  serve  her  Majestie  with  all  his  force 
against  the  said  rebels.  Alsoe,  the  saide  Earl  of  Clancarre,  his 
son  and  heire,  remaineth  in  my  custody  this  twelvemonth  and 
halfe,  as  pledge  for  the  good  and  dutiful  behaviour  of  his  father. 
He  hath  no  more  sonnes  but  the  same.  Methinkes  if  I  had  not 
good  regard  in  keeping  the  sonne,  the  father  had  been  as  farre 
outte  as  the  reste.  Likewise  I  doe  understand,  the  Baron  of 
Lixnaw  and  Patrick  his  son,  are  ready  to  ron  from  the  traytours 
to  the  Lord  General,  if  that  they  may  be  received,  affirming  that 
they  were  in  haste  joined  to  the  Erie,  their  old  enemie,  but  to 
save  themselves  from  his  furie  and  rage  till  they  might  come  to 
the  Governor,  which  two  principal  pillers,  the  Erie  of  Clancarre 
on  this  side  [viz.  Desmond]  and  the  Baron  of  Lixnaw  on  the 
other  side  [in  Kerry],  being  pulled  from  the  traitors,  they  are 
left  bare  and  destitute.  John  Myaghe." 

In  the  April  following  this  communication,  Lord 
Justice  Pelham  and  the  General  Ormond,  having  first 
destroyed  the  fortifications  of  Carrigafoyle  and  Aske- 


ArrKXDix.  461 

lyn,  commenced  a  march  towards  Dingel,  where  the 
Spaniards  and  other  foreigners  still  held  their  ground  ; 
but  finding  a  scarcity  of  provisions,  they  desisted  until 
the  June  following,  when  a  Journey,  of  which  a  daily 
"Journal"  has  been  preserved,  was  commenced  at 
"  Lymerick  "  on  the  12th  June,  15  So,  and  ended  at 
Cork  about  the  4th  July.* 

We  have  thus  again  reached  the  arrival  of  Lord 
Grey  and  Spenser.  The  Siege  of  Fort-del-Ore  was 
decided  on,  and  both  proceeded  thither.  From  the 
I  2th  September — a  month  after  the  arrival  of  the  new 
Lord  Deputy  and  his  Secretary — to  the  early  part  of 
November  [1580]  the  invading  host  held  out.  Philip 
O'Sullivan,  in  telling  the  story,  has  passed  off  absurdi- 
ties and   falsehoods,  mere  romanticist   fictions,  for 

history.  But  before  coming  to  these,  we  must  reproduce 
at  this  point  a  State-document  which  proves  that  in  the 
short  interval  between  their  arrival  and  final  shutting 
up  in  Fort-del-Ore,  the  Spanish  invaders  made  an 
inroad  into  the  country  ;  than  which  what  more  damn- 
able procedure  could  be  taken  against  a  Nation.?  This 
crucial  Paper  is  addressed  from  the  "  Commons  of 
Lixnawe  "  to  "  James  Goold,  Her  Majestie's  Attorney 
for  Munster,  and  to  Thomas  Arthur,  the  Recorder  of 
Limerick." 

"27111  September,  1580. 
"Worshipful  Sirs, — You  shall  understand,  that  the  Erie  [Des- 
mond] with  his  force  of  stran^^ers  came  to  Ardart,  the  last  Friday 
at  afternoon,   and  there  remayned  until  yesterday,   and  one   of 
theyse  Spaniards  was  killed  theyre  on  Sonday.     At  Monday  they 

*  See  the  Kerry  Maf^azinc,  as  before,  No.  13,  vol.  ii.,  1845, 
pp.  1—4,  for  "  Journal  of  an  Expedition  to  the  Din^^ell,"  A.D.  1580. 
The  Journalist  was  Nicholas  Wliite,  Master  of  the  Rolls.  It 
was  written  for  Burleigh.     State- Papurb,  M.  58,  1580. 


462  APPENDIX. 

took  theyr  journey,  the  most  part  of  them,  with  the  Erie  towards 
Fyenyn  [Fenit],  and  there  came  theyr  gaUies  to  them,  with  such 
instruments  as  they  had,  bragging  to  breake  vessels,  and  there 
were  two  of  them  Spaniards,  killed.  Thanking  God  we  are  whole 
as  yet  both  men  and  Castel,  and  if  God  will  send  us  a  fewe  bands 
of  soldiers,  they  will  flee  (as  we  thinke)  out  of  the  countrie.  As 
for  theyr  brags  of  ordnance  we  see  none  of  it  as  yet.  The  same 
strangers  keepe  the  campe  at  Ardart  and  Fyenyn,  and  as  for  the 
spoyHng  of  the  west  part  of  the  countrie,  the  Erie,  with  his  Irish- 
menne,  rose  forth  yesternight  to  take  the  spoyls  of  the  west  of 
the  countrie  ;  and  we  cannot  tell  at  the  writing  hereof  where  these 
men  are,  but  feare  not,  for  there  are  not  of  the  same  more  than 
ii  c.  shot  [200],  and  they  look  daily  for  more.  There  is  in  great 
estimacion  with  them  one  Friere  Mathew  Oviedo,  which  they  do 
call  Commisarius  A^usiolicus,  and  the  Bishop  of  Killalow, — 
Donel  Ryan,  his  sonne, — Anthony  O'Brien  and  Edmund  Oge 
Lacey's  [Lacy]  son,  which  is  the  Chancellor  of  Limerick  as  they 
say,  and  one  Blasketi  a.  Capteyn.  Desiring  you  both  to  hasten 
some  helpe  unto  us,  and  consider  the  peril  of  the  poore  country  ; 
the  rest  with  the  bearer :  and  thus  humbly  we  take  our  leave, 
with  our  hartie  commendacions  to  your  Worships  and  to  all  yours. 
In  alle  haste  from  Lixnawe,  the  27th  of  September,  1580,  at  ix  of 
the  clocke.  "Your  assured  friends, 

"  The  Commons  of  Lixnawe. 
"To  our  verie  loving  friendes  Mr.  James  Goolde, 
Her  Majestic' s  Attorney,  and  Mr.  Thomas  Arthur, 
Recorder  of  the  citie  of  Limerick." 

Thus  the  long- rumoured  'invasion'  was  about  to 
be  a  reahty.  From  these  Letters  it  is  evident  that 
Desmond  had  persuaded  the  "  strangers  "  and  "  foreign- 
ers" to  join  him  in  making  a  demonstration  both 
in  the  interior  and  along  the  coast  ;  and  we  find  in 
another  communication  from  the  Vice-Admiral  [Bing- 
ham] to  Walsingham,  reliable  information  of  the  real 
numbers  and  extent  of  this  invading  force  : — 

Report  from  Sir  Richard  Bingham  to  Sir  Francis 
Walsingham. 

"October  18,  1580. 
•'  Understanding  that  the  enemie  was  fortified  at  Smerwicke,  in 
the  old  fortresse  which  James  FitzMaurice  first  prepared,  I  weighed 
anker,  and  hasted   me   thither  with   alle   speede,  and  brought 


A  PPENPIX.  463 

myself  to  the  entrie  of  the  harbour  in  four  daies  aftei  I  departed 
off  Portland,  off  which  I  spent  ten  hours  at  an  anchor,  but  without 
the  harbour  of  Valcntia  :  the  morrowe  evening,  Tuesday,  I  entered 
the  harbour  into  the  ordinar\'  rode,  within  canon  shotte  of  the 
fortress  :  their  two  shippes  and  g^allies  could  easlie  be  taken. 
They  left  Spayn  with  tive  shippes,  the  greater  a  Baskeyne 
[BiscajTier]  of  400  tons,  two  more  of  one  six  score  and  one 
four  score  tons,  the  other  two  of  three  score  tons ;  into  these 
they  shipped  about  a  thousand  and  more  poore  simple  Bissw^'ners 
[Biscayners  -],  very  rag^ged,  and  a  grete  part  boyes.  In  the 
grete  Haskeyne  were  shipped  their  Colonel,  an  Italian,  also  the 
Irish  Bishop,  two  preachers,  400  of  the  companie,  much  of  their 
munition,  and  as  they  gave  out,  full  xii  thousand  ducketts 
[ducats].  In  coming  they  lost  one  of  their  six  score  shippes, 
and  one  otlier  not  come,  they  hear  to  be  taken  by  the  Rochellers  : 
in  the  six  score  ship  was  an  Earl's  son  with  divers  yonge 
gentlemen. 

"  About  the  3d  of  this  present  October,  the  great  Baskeyne  and 
their  ship  of  four  score  (tons)  departed  for  Spayne,  and  of  the 
600  menne  they  brought  from  Spayne,  there  went  awaye  from 
them  agayn  (the  Frenchmanne  doth  assure  us)  more  then  200 
sick  or  malecontent  with  the  countrie  and  their  poore  entertayn- 
ment,  and  of  the  rest  that  remain  many  die  daily,  so  that  there 
should  not  be  here  of  the  most  above  500  at  the  highest. 

"  Since  they  landed,  they  had  spent  their  time  in  this  Fort. 
Their  Lieutenant-Colonel,  with  300  of  his,  joined  with  the  Erie 
traytor.  went  to  the  siege  of  two  Castels  of  Mac  Morris  ;  the  one 
is  called  Feonade  [F"enit]  castel,  the  other  Ardarte.  Their 
greatest  artillarie  to  batter  them  was  a  falcon,  wherebye  it  seems 
they  were  but  younge  soldiers  :  they  were  well  defended  of  Irish- 
men :  they  departed  from  both  with  loss  of  divers  men,  and  one 
captain  killed.  There  are  now  in  the  Forte  300,  who  with  the 
helpe  of  the  Irish,  do  dailie  strengthen  their  fortifications;  the 
rest  are  with  John  of  Desmond,  who,  this  Wednesday  the  .xviii, 
is  come  to  the  Dyngel,  and  looked  for  at  the  fortress. 

"  There  are  two  notable  places  which  they  give  forth  they  will 
fortifye,  that  do  lie  in  the  Baye  of  Tralee ;  the  one  is  called 
Bcngounder,  the  other  is  called  Kilballylith  [Kilballylahiffe], 
which  places  are  naturally  strong  as  I  leame." 

On    the   28th   of    October — ten  days    afterwards — 
Bingham    repeats    the   same     intelligence,    with     little 
variation,   and    concludes    thus  : — 
"As  I  am  informed  by  Mac  Morris's  brother,  they  have  had 


464  APPENDIX. 

their  engineer   to   Tralee,  where  they  have  ehosen  a  seat,  and 
have  measured  it  forth  " 

Having  thus  consecutively  and  historically, — from 
indisputable  documents, — traced  and  separated  the  two 
distinct  invasions  of  James  Geraldyn  and  Sebastian 
San  Joseph,  to  within  ten  days  of  the  capture  of 
Fort-del-Ore,  it  is  now  our  duty  to  correct  the 
confused,  inaccurate  and  malignant  'history'  of  Philip 
O'Sullivan.  This  we  are  enabled  still  to  do  by  papers 
in  II.M.  Public  Record  Office.  From  these  it  will  be 
demonstrated  how  inevitable  and  how  righteous  was 
the  execution  of  these  Spaniards  and  Italians  and  other 
Pope-sanctioned  'invaders'  of  England's  territory. 

Philip  O'Sullivan  is  the  fons  et  origo  of  the  Irish 
accounts  of  the  siege  and  capture  of  Fort-del-Ore. 
His  HistoricE  CatJwlicce  Ibernice  Compcndiiini  has  been 
accepted  as  authoritative.  Originally  published  at 
Lisbon,  in  1621,  it  has  ever  since  been  canonized. 
And  yet  when  his  narratives  are  placed  in  the  "fierce 
light  "  of  historic  documents,  they  are  found — with 
rare  exceptions — to  be  uncritical  and  partizan  and 
fictitious.  Specifically,  here  is  his  account  of  Fort- 
del-Ore  ;  and  every  one  can  compare  it  with  the 
State- Papers  already  given  and  to  be  given,  and 
see  for  himself  the  groiesqneric  of  mis-statement 
and  the  perversity  of  sentiment.  The  narrative 
occurs  in   c.  xv.  ;   and    thus  runs  : — 

"  jaines  Geraldyn,  having  about  eight  hundred  suldicrd,  witli 
Sebastian  San  Joseph  for  tlieir  commander,  as  appointed  by 
the  Pope,  embarking  them  in  six  ships,  with  a  large  supply  of 
provisions  and  engines  of  war,  and  weapons  to  arm  for  four 
thousand  Irish,  set  sail  for  Ireland,  accompanied  by  Cornelius 
O'Muhean,  Bishop  of  Killaloe,  and  Dr.  Sanders;  and,  after  a 
prosperous  voyage,  arrived  in  Ardnacant  Harbour  [near  Dingle], 


A  PPENDIX.  465 

which  the  Eni,'lish  call  Snierwick.  I  n  that  harbour  is  a  projecting 
rock,  which  the  natives  call  Fort-del-Ore,  well  fortified  by  nature, 
beiny  partly  washed  by  the  sea,  having  steep  rocky  sides,  and 
joined  to  the  mainland  by  a  wooden  bridge.  It  belonged  to  one 
Peter  Rice,  a  Dingle  merchant,  who  had  three  or  four  men, 
armed  with  small  arms,  in  charge  of  it.  James  Geraldyn  having 
made  Peter  Rice  prisoner,  tied  him  on  the  top  of  a  warlike 
machine  called  a  sow  S^muckum\  which,  by  the  help  of  the 
soldiers,  he  moved  nigh  to  the  rock.  Peter  Rice  roaring  out, 
ordered  his  servants  to  surrender  the  place,  and  James  G«ral- 
Ayn  at  once  garrisoned  it  with  si.x  hundred  men,  under  the 
command  of  Sebastian  San  Joseph,  and  having  fortified  it  by  six 
days  of  continued  labour,  with  a  wall  and  fosse  on  the  mainland, 
he  placed  his  batteries  in  order.  It  was  a  fortress  of  great 
strength,  scarcely  to  be  stormed.  He  furnished  it  with  wine, 
oil-,  vinegar,  biscuit,  and  flesh-meat  obtained  in  the  neighbour- 
hood ;  and  he,  directing  San  Joseph  to  defend  his  fortress 
courageously,  departed,  leaving  with  him  an  Irish  knight, 
named  Plunkett,  as  interpreter." 

There  follows  an  account  of  the  death  of  James 
Geraldyn  [James  Fitz-Morrjs]  at  Ikal-an-tha-an 
Bhorin  [Barrington's  Bridge]  in  an  encounter  with  the 
Bourkes.  It  does  not  need  to  be  introduced  here, 
but  I  note  it,  because  it  is  told  by  O'Sullivan  as  if 
the  events  were  in  immediate  and  consecutive  order 
instead  of  being  divided  by  the  interval  of  an  entire 
year.      He  then  continues  : — 

"News  of  James's  death  having  spread,  many  of  the  Irish 
who  shared  in  his  designs,  giving  up  all  hope,  remained  quiet  ; 
Sebastian  San  Joseph  lost  all  courage.  The  Knglish  on  the  other 
hand  elated,  demanded  re-enforcements  from  England.  The 
Queen  slackened  her  persecution,  and  sought  to  attach  the  Irish 
to  her.  It  was  said  that  the  Karldom  of  Desmond  was  promised 
to  Thomas  Butler,  Earl  of  Ormond,  if  he  would  at  once  conclude 
the  war.  Owen  0'.Sullivan  Hear,  my  relative  (being  thought 
likely  tojuin  in  the  war)  was  made  prisoner,  and  confined  in  his 
own  Cattle  of  Dunbay.  under  the  charge  of  Kenton,  an  Knglish- 
man,  nor  was  he  set  free  until  the  war  was  at  an  end. 

"  Then  Grey,  an  Englishman,  Viceroy  of  Ireland  (with  the  Earl 
of  Ormond  and  other  Irish  allies,  though  Catholics,  chiefly  the 
Anglo-Irish  of  Meath)  collected  about  fifteen  hundred  soldiers, 

I.  30 


466  APPENDIX. 

a  force  far  too  small  to  brsic.i^e  a  fortress  of  such  slrcngth  as 
the  Golden  Fort  ;  nevertheless,  with  these  and  a  few  merchant 
ships,  they  besieged  Sebastian  by  sea  and  land,  placing  their 
batteries  in  order ;  but  the  besieged  despised  their  advances, 
being  not  only  skilled  in  the  arts  of  defence,  but  completely 
defended  by  the  nature  of  their  stronghold. 

"  The  besiegers  had  now  played  their  batteries  in  vain  for  about 
ftnty  days,  spending  their  force  for  nothing,  suffering  from  the 
inclemency  of  the  winter,  encamped  in  a  few  tents  in  a  wild  and 
deserted  district ;  the  Irish  who  served  with  them  reluctantly 
were  deserting  daily,  and  several  of  the  English  slain  by  cannon 
shot,  among  the  rest  John  Shickius,  a  man  of  great  repute 
among  them.  Still  ashamed  to  retreat,  though  frustrated,  the 
Viceroy  tried  to  obtain  by  stratagem  what  he  could  not  by  force. 
He  made  signal  for  a  parley.  Plunkett  used  all  his  etforts  to 
prevent  communication  with  the  English,  a  cunning  and  trea- 
cherous race,  likely  to  deceive  Sebastian,  who  was  a  rash  and 
credulous  man  :  but  Sebastian  having  the  chief  command, 
decided  on  granting  a  parley  ;  whereupon,  on  pledge  of  safety, 
he  went  to  the  Viceroy,  in  his  camp,  and  addressing  him  with 
his  hat  off  (while  Plunkett  kept  his  on  his  head)  was  considered  a 
mean-spirited  fellow. 

"  The  Viceroy  and  Commander  invited  each  other  to  a  treaty. 
Plunkett  misinterpreted  their  speeches  to  each  other  :  declaring 
to  the  Viceroy  that  the  Commander  would  sooner  lose  his 
life  than  surrender,  and  signifying  to  the  Commander  that  the 
Viceroy  was  hesitating  about  granting  to  the  besieged  their 
lives.  Sebastian,  who  discovered  this  false  interpretation  by 
seeing  the  Viceroy's  face  little  in  accordance  with  Plunkett' s 
words,  ordered  him  to  be  carried  back  to  the  Fort  in  chains,  and 
continued  the  conference  with  another  interpreter.  When  it  was 
concluded,  he  returned  to  the  Fort,  telling  his  men  that  he  had 
obtained  most  equitable  conditions.  Plunkett,  though  in  chains, 
bellowed  out  that  '  the  Pope's  fortress  was  treacherously  sur- 
rendered ;  that  the  Viceroy  must  soon  give  up  the  siege  through 
the  severity  of  the  weather  ;  that  John  of  Desmond  was  coming 
to  their  relief ;  that  all  the  Irish  were  deserting  from  the  English  ; 
that  all  this  would  come  to  pass  if  the  Commander  would  but 
hold  out ;  that  they  had  provisions  for  many  montns,  and  in  fine, 
th.it  lie  had  no  faith  in  th(^  h(>retics.' 

"To  the  same  effect  spoke  the  leader  of  the  Sp.'iniards  and 
Hercules  Pisanus,  who  declared  themselves  ready  not  only  to 
defend  the  Fort,  but  even,  if  need  were,  to  engage  the  enemy  in 
the  open  field ;  but  the  Commander  brought  the  soldiery  over 
to  his  opinion.  Thus  the  cowardice  of  the  leader  prevailed 
against  the  courage  of  others,  and  he  who  thought  more  of  his 


APPENDIX.  467 

life  than  his  honour  ultimately  lost  both.  He  surrendered  his 
fortress  in  the  month  of  December,  on  conditions  confirmed  by 
the  Viceroy's  oath,  which  would  have  been  just  enough  for  any 
surrender — namely,  that  he  should  be  let  go  free  and  safe,  with 
men,  arms,  baggage,  and  all  effects.  But  the  perfidy  of  the  heretics 
was  not  to  be  bound  bv  faith,  or  the  solemnity  of  an  oath,  nor  by 
those  laws  of  war  held  inviolate  even  by  heathens  and  barbarians. 
The  Fort  being  given  up,  the  garrison  were  ordered  to  lay  down 
their  arms,  and  being  thus  defenceless,  were  put  to  death  by 
the  English,  the  Commander  alone  excepted,  who  is  said  to 
have  been  allowed  to  return  to  Italy.  Plunkett  was  spared  a 
while,  to  undergo  a  more*  cruel  death,  and  shortly  after  was 
slain,  when  his  bones  had  been  first  broken  with  a  mallet. 
Henceforth  Grey's  fijith  passed  into  a  proverb,  expressive  of 
any  great  and  barbarous  treachery."  * 

And  now  let  this  egregious  Narrative  be  sifted  and 
detected  and  demonstrated  to  be  false,  by  these  further 
State- Papers.  These  consist  of  two  Letters  fron\ 
Sir  Richard  Bingham,  the  Naval  Commander — pre- 
served among  the  MSS.  of  the  British  Museum  ;  and 
last,  AND  DECI.SIVE  OF  THE  FACT.s,  Lord  Grcy's  own 
despatch  to  the  Queen,  written  from  before  the  Fort, 
the  day  after  surrender,  which  is  still  to  be  seen  in 
H.M.  Public  Record  Office  under  its  date. 

Before  giving  these  new  Papers,  it  is  to  be  stated 

here  that  O'SuUivan's    last    I-:ditor   (Rev.  M.  O'Kelly 

of  Maynooth),  after  acknowledging  curiously  that  his 

author  has  confused  the  two  landings  of  the  Spaniards 

and  run  them  into  one,  has  the  following  note : — 

"All  accounts  agree  that  it  was  a  general  massacre  in  cold 
blood,  but  the  English  authorities  say  the  Fort  surrendered  at 
discretion.  The  Four  Masters  insinuate  that  the  English 
troops  surprised  the  garri.son,  while  the  leaders  of  both  parties 
were  treating  together  for  some  settlement.  Four  nobles  only 
were  spared." 

•  These  quotations  of  translations  of  O'Sullivan  are  taken  from 
the  Kerry  Magazine,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  42-3.  They  are  scrupulously 
true  to  the  original. 


468  APPENDIX. 

The  colouring^  which  the  "Four  Masters  "  referred  to 
give  to  the  transaction  nearly  corresponds — as  will  be 
seen — with  that  of  Bingham's  Letters,  in  which  he 
represents  the  deed  as  the  unauthorised  act  of  the 
unlicensed  soldiers  and  sailors.  Neither  these  nor 
O'Sullivan's  exacerbating  account  are  to  be  accepted. 
Lord  Grey  unquestionably  tells  the  truth,  the  whole 
truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth.  The  execution  was 
a  deliberate  and  ordered  slaughter,  sufficiently  dreadful, 
but  it  was  not  aggravated  by  broken  faith  or  violated 
oath,  while  the  whole  dramatic  and  modernly  sensa- 
tional episode  about  Plunkett,  which  O'Sullivan  has 
worked  up  so  graphically,  proves  to  be  a  mere  fiction 
invented  in  his  exile.  It  may  be  remarked  in  passing 
that  O'Donovan's  as  compared  with  Mac  Dermot's 
translation  of  the  Annals  of  the  "  Four  Masters"  drops 
one  word,  "  unawares "  ("  the  Lord  Justice's  people 
passed  onwarde  nnwarcs  to  the  island  "),  that  com- 
pletely alters  the  whole  complexion  of  the  Narrative 
and  hides  its  agreement  with  Bingham's  suggestion 
and  solution. 

I  have  now  to  submit  successively  the  Documents 
announced,  which  give  an  almost  continuous  narrative 
of  the  final  issue  of  the  event.  Nothing  could  s 
vividly  bring  before  us  the  conditions  under  which  Lord 
Grey  and  Spenser  had  to  solve  a  difficult,  a  delicate 
and  perilous  problem  : — 

I.  Sir  Richard  Bingham  to  the  Earl  of  Leicester, 
(Cotton.  MSS.,  Tit.  B.  xiii.,  fol.  313.) 

"  Righte  Honorable,  and  my  singular  g-ood  Lord,  may  it  please 
you  to  be  advertised,  that  on  Thursday  the  20th  of  October, 
about  12  of  the  clock  at  nightc,  thcr  came  in  to  us  a  small  catche 
or  craer  of  Sir  William  Wynter's,  who  had  in  her  the  master  of 


A  PPJt.VD/X.  469 

the  Acate  and  of  the  Marlian,  who  had  bene  sente  by  Xphcr 
Baker,  the  captyne  of  the  Tygar  to  Southampton,  to  presse 
marnTiers,  and  weare  by  the  afforesaide  Baker  sent  for  agayne 
with  such  extreme  haste,  that  they  were  constrayned  to  come 
away  and  to  levye  behynd  them  all  thos  which  they  had  prest, 
and  came  on  ther  course  for  the  Cost  of  Irclande,  and  so  for  this 
place  as  they  weare  informmed  of  my  beinii^e  heare.  But  on  the 
way  they  never  harde  on  the  Admirall  nor  any  other  of  the  Heate, 
yet  they  touched  in  two  or  three  places.  She  had  in  her  a 
certayne  of  municion,  as  shovells,  with  such  lyke.  On  the  2^  day, 
in  the  eveninge,  ther  came  by  the  Smerwicke,  somewhat  off  into 
the  sea,  a  smalle  barke,  which  we  made  to  be  the  Marlian,  and  the 
rather  for  that  we  weare  informed  the  day  before  of  such  an 
Englishe  barke  that  had  fous^'ht  with  a  smale  Spanish  pennes  in 
the  Ventrie,  and  had  slayneof  the  Knglishe  six,  and  ranneherselfe 
agTounde :  well,  we  gave  her  a  signe  to  drawe  her  in,  but  she 
refused  the  harbar,  and  bare  up  as  we  coulde  judge  for  the  rj'ver 
of  Lemiricke,  by  lyke  takinge  us  for  the  enimye.  The  same 
23  day  I  sent  Mr.  Wynter's  craer  to  Lemiricke  with  advertise- 
ments towards  your  Honor,  as  allso  to  my  Lorde  Deputie,  who 
as  I  was  informed  by  Mr.  Clyntton,  shoulde  be  ther,  thoughe  loth 
to  sende  her,  for  that  she  was  chardged  with  suche  munisons,  yett 
thorough  the  wante  of  others,  constrayned  to  use  her. 

"Monday,  the  31  of  October,  my  Lord  Ueputie  came  with  his 
horse-men  to  the  est  syde  of  the  harbar  of  Smericke  from  his 
camp,  which  was  an  8  or  10  miles  off,  who,  after  he  had  taken 
som  vewe  of  the  place,  and  had  had  som  spoche  with  myself 
conceminge  the  same,  he  departed  home  to  campe,  who  showed 
me  that  he  had  greate  marvell  of  the  Admirall,  for  that  he  never 
harde  from  him  nor  that  he  was  on  the  cost,  but  ounce,  that  Sir 
Warran  Sellinger  wrote  unto  him  that  he  was  with  the  fleate  at 
Kynsale.  The  thirde  day  of  November,  the  craer  that  I  sente  to 
Lemiricke  with  the  I'res  towards  your  Honor,  came  backe  agayne, 
and  brought  with  her  the  Marlian,  which  indeide  was  the  barke 
y'  past  by  the  rode,  and  had  had  that  fray  in  the  Ventrie,  with 
a  smale  Spaniard,  as  the  Irish  had  showed  us,  and  had  but  4  men 
slayne,  and  two  more  shote  with  the  harcabuse,  which  will  recover. 

"  The  captayne  of  which  showed  me  y'  he  left  the  Admirall  at 
Kynsale,  who  he  thought  would  have  followed  him,  for  he  sente 
him  forthe  to  se  if  he  coulde  doble  the  Old  Head,  with  this  order, 
that  if  he  coulde  he  shoulde  shote  off  a  peace  and  then  he  would 
follow,  which  cape  he  dobled  well,  and  shote  off  a  peace,  and 
came  on  his  way,  with  wynde  enoughe  to  ser\e  his  torne  to  have 
broughte  him  to  the  place  of  service,  and  at  his  arryvinge  with 
me,  which  is  the  present  day  (the  3d  of  November),  he  marvi:lls 


470  APPENDIX. 

muche  that  the  Adniiiall  was  not  come,  and  had  not  followed 
him,  and  dowts  least  he  hath  brocke  somewhat  that  mighte  be 
his  furtlier  lett,  for  that  the  wynde  served  nowe  agayne  better  to 
bring  him  from  Kynsale  then  the  other  from  Lemiricke.  This 
and  that,  which  my  Lord  Deputic  showed  me  of  him.,  is  all  the 
ncwse  that  I  have  harde  of  the  Admirall  sythens  we  came  to  the 
cost  or  Smericke  rode,  which  is  nowc  17  daies  past,  and  16  that 
we  liave  layne  in  this  harbor. 

"  Further  to  adverti[ze]  your  Ilonore,  that  we  hear  by  the  Irish 
that  the  smale  Spanish  pennes  that  the  IMarlian  came  agrounde, 
in  the  Ventrie,  recovered  herselffe  agayne,  and  toke  in  a  70  or  80 
Spanyards,  with  which  they  put  off  into  the  seas,  in  a  great 
freate  of  wyndes  and  fowle  weather,  in  which  we  thinke  they 
coulde  never  leyye  to  see  Spayne.  All  the  rest  that  ar  lefte 
behynd,  to  the  number  of  300  and  more,  ar  in  the  fortresse  by. 
John  of  Desmond  is  gonne  into  Conolothe,  to  inne  with  the  Earle. 
Uppon  the  3d  of  November  the  Spanyards  executed  one  on  the 
gallos,  without  the  forte,  which  we  judge  to  be  a  mutyner  of  their 
owne,  or  som  stragler  of  my  Lorde  Deputie's  campe,  or  els  som 
one  of  the  Irishe  which  they  apprehended  and  imprisoned  for 
having  conference  with  us  a  three  or  four  daies  before.  I  cannot 
myself  wey  to  loke  abroadc^  into  other  harbars,  for  then  shoulde  I 
sett  at  lybertie  thes  at  tlie  fortresse,  with  such  shipping  as  they 
liave  heare.  Thus,  with  my  humble  and  dutyfull  seiTice  com- 
mended unto  your  Honore,  I  most  humblye  take  my  leyvc. 
From  Smericke  rode,  aborde  the  .Swiftsuer,  the  3d  of  November 
1580. 

"  Your  Honor's  most  humble  and  assured  to  comand, 

"Rc.  Bingham. 
"  To  the  Righte  Honorable,  and  his  singular 
good  Lorde,  the  Earle  of  Leicester,  at  the 
Courte,  gyve  this." 

2.  Sir  Richard  Bingham  to  Mr.  Ralph  Lane. 
(Cotton.  MSS.,  Tit.  A  xii.  ff.  313-17.) 

"  Right  worshipful,  and  my  singular  good  friend,  may  it  please 
you  to  be  advertised  that  on  Saturday,  being  the  5th  of  November, 
in  the  afternoon,  the  Admiral,  with  the  rest  of  the  fleete  which 
had  been  absent  with  him,  came  into  the  harbour  of  Smenvickc, 
to  which  place  the  Lord  Deputy  came  that  day,  for  encampment 
at  the  Dingel,  hearing  of  their  arrival  here,  to  confer  with  them 
for  the  landing  of  two  culvcrins  out  of  the  Revenge,  two  out  of 
the  Swiftsure,  and  two  out  of  the  Tygre,  with  one  other  forth  of 
the  Acate,  and  another  forth  of  the  Ayde,  as  also  what  powder 
and  shot  they  might  spare  for  the  batteric  of  the  fortress,  with 


APPENDIX.  471 

all  other  nccessario  preparation  for  the  trcnchc  ;  further  to  advise 
your  worship  that  on  Monday,  being  the  seventh  of  this  present, 
earlie  in  the  morning  my  Lord  Deputy  marched  with  his  campe 
from  the  Dingel  towards  the  enemie,  where  about  noono  he 
pitched  his  tent  within  the  canon-shotte,  and  in  the  evening  there 
was  an  order  taken  that  most  of  the  rnen  forth  of  the  ships  should 
come  to  labour  to  begin  the  trenche,  which  trenche  the  first  night 
was  brought  one  hundred  paces,  and  two  culverins  placed  witliin 
three  hundred  paces  of  their  forte  to  dismount  their  pieces,  which 
were  ready  to  plaie  at  break  of  day,  and  before  two  o'clock  aftcr- 
noone  thev  were  all  dismounted.  The  night  following  and  the 
next  day,  being  Wednesday,  we-  came  with  our  trenche  within 
six  score  paces  of  their  curtayne,  when  we  cast  sufficient  ahead 
for  the  guard  of  the  ward  that  day,  which  my  conche  had.  This 
day,  in  the  forenoon,  about  nine  or  ten  of  the  clock,  Mr.  Cheekc 
was  struck  from  the  fort,  being  on  the  height  of  the  trenche : 
this  same  day,  about  four  of  the  clock  in  the  afternone,  they 
came  to  the  point  of  the  rampier  which  we  had  beaten  on  with 
our  culverins,  with  a  white  banner  bareheaded,  and  requested  a 
parley,  which  my  Lord  granted  them  :  on  which  they  were  con- 
tented the  same  night  to  surrender  up  the  place  with  their  lives, 
and  all  therein  was,  to  my  Lord's  wille,  to  have  mercie  or  not 
mercie,  as  he  shold  think  good ;  yet  for  that  it  was  nighte  and 
no  time  to  get  them  forthe,  they  were  by  my  Lord  respeited  untill 
the  morrowe,  but  the  best  of  them  taken  forth  as  gages  or 
pledges  ;  and  we,  that  notwithstanding,  followed  our  trenche, 
which  we  finished  that  same  night  within  three  score  paces  of 
their  forte,  and  so  ran  the  same  all  along  their  fronte,  where  we 
mcante  to  plaie  our  batterie,  to  which  we  brought  the  same  night 
two  pieces.  In  the  mominge,  which  was  Thursday  and  the  tenth, 
early  in  the  morning,  my  Lord  sent  in  divers  gentlemen  to  take 
order  that  such  munitions  of  powder  and  vittles  should  be  pre- 
served to  her  Majestie's  use  as  there  was.  Then  order  was  taken 
that  the  Colonel,  with  the  captains  and  chief  officers,  should 
come  forthe  and  deliver  up  ther  ensigne  with  order  and  ceremony 
thereto  belonging ;  this  done,  the  bands  which  had  the  ward  of 
that  daie,  which  was  Mr.  Denny's,  then  entered;  but  in  the 
meantime  were  entered  a  number  of  mariners  upon  the  parte  next 
to  the  sea,  which  with  the  soldiers  aforesaid  having  possessed  the 
place,  fell  to  revellinge,  and  spoiling,  and  withall  to  killinge,  in 
which  they  never  ceased  while  there  lived  one  :  the  number  slaine 
might  be  between  four  and  five  hundred,  but  as  some  do  judge, 
between  five  and  six  hundred:  they  had,  as  I  hear,  of  powder 
left  50  barrels,  of  pykes  4,000,  other  furniture  of  arms,  har- 
quebus,   morrjons,    and    such    like,   to    the   like    proportion  ;    of 


472  APPENDIX. 

victuals  they  had  great  store,  save  that  they  wanted  water, 
which  they  had  not  within  their  forte.  Thus  hath  my  Lord  most 
worthily  atchieved  this  enterprise,  and  so  nobly  and  liberally  dealt 
with  all  sorts  that  he  hath  given  a  great  satisfaction  and  content 
to  all  his  fo  lowers.  Thus  with  my  hartie  commendations  unto 
yourselfe  and  all  the  rest  of  my  good  friends,  I  take  my  leave 
'  From  Smerwicke  Roade,  the  xi  of  November  1580. 
"  Your  most  assured, 

..^r    xu     •  ,  , -.  '•  Rc.  Bingham. 

Jo  the  right  worshipful,  and  my  very 
good  friend,  Mr.  Ralph  Lane,  at  the 
Court,  give  this." 

It  will  be  observed  how  these  successive  narratives 
reduce  O'SulHvan's  vapouring  to  its  proper  dimensions, 
and  that  the  investiture  of  the  place  was  complete.' 
They  are  self-authenticating  ;  but  it  is  to  be  marked 
and  re-marked  that  Bingham  writes  as  one  outside, 
and  had  to  say  "  as  I  hear,"  and  "  as  some  judge."  We 
have  now  to  read  as  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter, 
an  extract  from  Lord  Grey's  dispatch  of  the  12th 
November,  1580,  "to  the  Queen  from  the  camp  at 
Smerwick,"  in  which,  after  reporting  his  arrival  before 
Fort-del-Ore  on  the  7th  of  the  month,  he  thus  pro- 
ceeds : — 

_    "The  same  afternoon  (7th)  we  landed  our  artillery  and  munition 
in  the  evening  we  fell  to  our  work,  carried  our  trenche  to  within 

.xiiu  score  [paces]  of  the  place,andplanted  two  culverins,  with  which 
next  morning,  upon  daie,  we  saluted  them,  and  they  for  an  hour 
or  two  as  fully  requited  us,  till  two  of  their  best  pieces  at  last 
taken  awaie,  they  had  not  on  that  side  but  muskets  and  hackbus- 
acroke  to  answer  us,  which,  with  good  heat,  they  plied  us  with 
\  he  day  so  spent  (8th  Nov.)  at  night,  with  spade  we  falle  again" 
and  by  morning  brought   our  trenche   within   8    score   of  their 
ditch.      Ihis  night  they  gave   four  sallies  to  have   beaten  our 
labourers  from  work,  and  gave  them  vollies  veiy  gallantlie  but 
were  as  gallantlye  set  on  again  by  Ned  Dennyeand  his  companve 
who  had  this  night  the  watch.    (9th  Nov.)  No  sooner  day  peeped 
but  they  played  very  hotly  upon  us,  yet  as  God  would  have  it 
tor  a  good  time  without  hiirte,  till  unlukely  good  fohn  Cheke   too 


APPENDIX. 


473 


carelessly  advancing  himself  to  looke  over,  strucken  on  the  hede 
tumbled  down  at  my  fete ;  dead  I  took  him,  and  for  so  I  caused 
him  to  be  carried  away,  yet  it  pleased  God  to  send  him  his  spirit 
agajTie  ;  and  yet  doth  live  in  speeche  and  greatest  memorie  that 
ever  was  scene  in  suche  a  wounde ;  and  truly,  Madam,  so  dis- 
posed to  God,  and  made  so  divine  a  confession  of  his  faith,  as 
all  divines  and  others  of  your  Majesty's  realmes  could  not  have 
passed  or  matcht  it  :  so  wrought  in  him  God's  spirit,  plainlie 
declaring  him  a  child  of  His  elected,  to  the  no  lesse  comfort  of 
his  goode  and  godlie  friends,  than  grete  instruction  of  any  other 
hearer,  of  whom  there  was  a  goode  troupe." 

"  Pardon  me,  1  beseecheyour  Highnesse,  in  case  my  digression 
be  tedious :  the  affection  I  bear  the  gentleman  causeth  the  fault 
if  there  be  anie.* 

"  Their  shotte  thus  annoying  us,  I  endeavoured  to  watch  their 
next  volley,  and  happily  did  perceive  it  to  come  from  under  a 
ceitayn  building  of  timber,  at  the  point  of  the  campe,  which  was 
sette  uppe  and  propped  outwardlie  like  a  hovel,  and  inwardlie 
slanting  like  a  pentisse  [pent-house].  I  went  streight  to  the 
barricade,  and  willed  the  gunners  to  point  their  pieces  at  that 
place.  Sir  William  Wynter  himself  made  the  shotte.  At  two 
t)Tes  [discharges]  our  gentrie  were  displaced,  and  by  that  two 
other  tyres  were  given,  in  great  haste  lept  on  to  the  top  of  their 
vauntmure  [battlement]  with  an  ensign  of  a  sheete,  and  crave  a 
parley.  Word  was  sent  by  John  Zouch  and  Piers,  who  had  the 
Ward,  that  the  Colonel  would  send  me  to  treat.  Presently  was 
sent  one  Ale.\andro,  the  camp-master,  who  said  they  were  there 
on  false  speches  and  grete  promises.  I  said  I  found  two  nations, 
and  willed  a  Spanish  capteyn  to  be  by,  who  came.  I  said  I 
marvelled  their  nation  at  peace  with  your  Majesty,  they  should 
come.  The  Spaniard  said  the  King  had  not  sent  them,  but  one 
John  Martines  di  Ricaldi,  Governor  for  the  King  at  Bilboa.  The 
other  avouched  that  they  were  all  sent  by  the  Pope  for  the  defence 
of  the  Catholica  Fide.  I  answered,  I  marvelled  that  men  of  that 
accompt,  as  some  of  them  made  show  of,  should  be  carried  into 
unjust,  wicked  and  desperate  actions,  by  one  that  neither  from 
God  or  man  could  claim  any  princely  power  or  empire ;  but 
indeed  a  detestable  shavelin.ir,  the  right  antichriste,  and  general 
ambitious  tyrant  over  all  right  principalities,  and  patron  of  the 
dtabolico  fide,  I  could  not  rest  but  greatlie  wonder.  Their  fault, 
therefore,  I  saw  to  be  greatlie  aggravated  by  the  malice  of  their 
commander,  and  at  my  handes,  no  condition,  no  composition 
were  they  to  e.xpect,  other  then  they  should  simplie  render  me 

•  This  "  Cheke  "  is  the  John  Shickius  of  O'Sullivan — son  of  the 
famous  Sir  John  Cheke. 


474  APPENDIX. 

the  forte,  and  yield  themselves  to  my  will  for  lyf  or  dcth  :  with 
this  answer  they  departed.  There  were  but  one  or  two  came  to 
and  froe  to  have  gotten  a  certaintie  for  some  of  their  lyves,  but 
finding  that  it  would  not  be,  the  Coronel  came  forthe  to  ask  respite ; 
but  finding-  it  a  gayning  time,  I  would  not  grant  it. 

"  He  then  embraced  my  knees,  simplie  putting  himselfe  to  my 
mercie :  only  he  prayed  that  for  that  nighte  he  might  abide  in 
the  forte.     I  asked  hostages,  and  they  were  given. 

"Morning  came  :  I  presented  my  forces  in  battaile  [array] 
before  the  forte  :  the  Coronel  came  with  x  or  xi  of  his  chief 
gentlemen,  trayling  their  ensigns,  rolled  up,  and  presented  them 
to  me,  with  their  lives  and  the  forte.  I  sente  streighte,  certeyne 
gentlemen  in  to  see  their  weapons  and  armoires  laid  down,  and 
to  guard  the  munition  and  victual,  then  left,  from  spoyl  :  then 
I  put  in  certeyn  bandes,  who  straight  fell  to  execiition.  There 
were  six  hundred  slayn,  ammunition  and  victual  grete  store, 
though  much  wasted  through  the  disorder  of  the  soldiers,  which 
in  the  [con] fusion  could  not  be  helped." 

Such  is  the  Truth,  with  no  paHiatives  or  excuses. 
He  "  put  in  "  Sir  Walter  Ralegh — as  we  learn  other- 
wise— and  ordered  "  execution  "  to  be  done.  He  has 
no  reserves.  He  had  given  no  "  pledge."  He  had 
contrariwise  told  them  explicitly  and  unmistakably 
that  they  were  at  his  mercy.  And  who  to-day,  sup- 
posing the  same  "  shaveling,"  or  Spain  or  France  or 
Italy,  so  to  invade  English  territory,  and  erect  fortifica- 
tions on  that  territory,  and  "  ravage  and  spoil,"  would 
think  of  other  than — Execution  }  It  was  a  terrible 
business.  The  Spaniards  and  Italians  were  but  the 
misguided  tools  of  others.  One  cannot  but  pity 
their  doom.  Yet  was  the  doom  RKiiiTEOUS.  The 
only  regret  one  feels  is  that  those  who  sent  them  had 
not  the  courage  of  their  convictions  to  accompany 
them.  Then  they  should  have  met  with  the  same 
.stern  yet  just  "  execution,"  O'Sullivan's  romance  of 
the  "  forty  days'  siege,"  the  "  frustrated  force,"  and  the 
"  request  for  parley  "  from   the   English  side,  and    the 


u 


APPENDIX.  475 

Lord   Deputy's  "  oath,"  cannot  stand  before  this   Dis- 
patch.* 

More  than  this — Such  mihtar)'  "executions"  were  the 
recognised  law  of  War.  Only  a  couple  of  years  onward 
the  Marquis  de  Santa  Cruz — a  Spaniard  be  it  remem- 
bered— dealt  with  a  similar  garrison-band  of  "  French 
adventurers "  within  Spanish  territory,  consisting  of 
eighty  nobles  and  gentlemen  and  upwards  of  two 
hundred  soldiers,  who  were  "  taken  "  in  an  attempt  on 
the  Azores  during  a  period  of  peace  (nominal)  between 

*  With  reference  to  Plunkett  the  interpreter  and  his  discovered 
treachery  of  misinterpretation  between  the  parties,  as  told  by 
O'Sullivan,  Lord  Grey  makes  no  mention  of  him  ;  but  in  another 
letter  from  Bingham  to  Walsingham  we  read:  "  They  sent  out 
Alesandro,  and  one  Plunkett,  borne  near  Drogheda :  twcntye 
chief  men  we  saved.  Dr.  Saunders'  chief  man,  an  Englishman, 
Plunkett  a  friar,  and  some  others.  This  day  was  executed  an 
Englishman,  who  served  Dr.  Saunders,  one  Plunkett,  of  whom 
before  is  written,  an  Irish  priest,  their  arms  and  legs  were  broken, 
and  hanged  on  a  gibbet,  on  the  walls  of  the  forte."  The  treachcr)' 
of  Plunkett  explains  his  aggravated  death  ;  whilst  Sanders  and 
his  accomplices  were  the  chief  promoters  of  the  invasion  and 
mischief.  We  have  abolished  such  barbarisms  of  mode  ;  but  we 
have  a  feeling  that  hanging  was  too  good  for  such  WTetches. 

In  the  Kerry  Magazine,  vol.  i.,  pp.  1 13-19,  will  be  found  a 
ver>'  full  and  extremely  interesting  account  of  the  "True  History 
of  Fort-del-Ore,  Smerwicke  Harbour."  The  "fortress"  was  long 
made  a  sinecure-post.  In  1829  it  was  abolished;  and  now  "  a 
few  acres  of  ground,  a  few  miserable  cabins,  under  the  control 
of  '  The  Commissioners  of  Woods  and  Forests,'  and  the  ivied 
buttresses  of  the  old  bridge,  including  the  heel  stotie  in  which  the 
barrier  gate  once  turned  on  its  iron  pivot,  are  all  that  remain 
of  this  once  important  fortress  "  (p.  119).  The  following  papers  in 
the  same  periodical  shed  side-lights  on  the  storj'  of  Ireland  of  the 
period  in  relation  to  Grey  and  Spenser,  and  onward : — "  Antiqui- 
ties of  Kerry — The  Castle,"  i  ,  pp.  2-6;  "The  Murdering  Hole," 
pp.  17-23;  "The  White  Friars  of  Tralee,"  pp.  j^yj  ;  "The 
Walling  of  the  Town,"  pp.  49-51  ;  "Last  Geraldyn  Chief," 
pp.  65-74;  "Of  the  Dennys,"  pp.  129-32  ;  "The  Old  Countess 
of  Desmond,"  Vol.  II.,  pp.  141-8,  pp.  161 -6,  and  various  other 
important  and  careful  historical  papers. 


476  APPENDIX. 

France  and  Spain,  Then  in  the  wars  of  the  Low 
Countries  and  in  the  "  religious  wars  "  of  France,  such 
incidents  were  of  perpetual  occurrence.  At  Smerwick 
they  were  Spaniards,  and  Spaniards  would  have  shown 
no  mercy  to  Englishman  Drake  and  his  gallant  braves, 
had  they  caught  their  terrible  and  ubiquitous  foes. 
Thus,  independent  of  mis-statements  and  perversions 
of  the  facts,  it  is  mere  sentimcntalism  to  cry  out  of 
wrong  for  the  inevitable  "  execution."* 

I  shut  up  the  Vindication  by  reproducing  here 
Spenser's  own  Narrative  from  his  Veue  of  Ireland.  He 
is  speaking  of  the  ingratitude  of  the  Government  in 
England  for  the  services  rendered  by  the  Queen's 
servants  and  the  hasty  reversal  of  their  plans.  He 
then  proceeds  : — 

"  Soe  I  '\^Eudoxus'\  remember  that  in  the  late  government  of 
that  good  lord  Graye,  where  after  longe  travell  and  many  peril- 
lous  assaies,  he  hadd  brought  thinges  almost  to  this  passe  that 
ye  speake  of,  that  yt  was  even  made  readye  for  reformation,  and 
might  have  ben  brought  to  what  her  majestye  would,  like  com- 
plainte  was  made  against  him,  that  he  was  a  bloodye  man,  and 
regarded  not  the  life  of  her  subjectes  noe  more  then  dogges,  but 
hadd  wasted  and  consumed  all,  soe  as  now  shee  had  nothinge 

*  I  would  refer  the  reader  to  Mr.  Thomas  Keightley's  paper 
"On  the  Life  of  Edmund  Spenser,"  in  Eraser's  Magazine 
(vol.  1.x. ,  pp.  410-22),  from  whence  I  take  the  above  historical 
fact : — "  As  against  the  Spaniards  the  following  fact  is  conclusive : 
On  the  26th  of  July,  1582,  a  French  Fleet,  under  the  command  of 
the  King  of  France,  was  defeated  by  that  of  the  Spaniards  off 
the  Azores,  whither  it  had  gone  to  maintain  the  cause  of  one  of 
the  claimants  of  the  crown  of  Portugal.  The  Spanish  admiral 
informed  the  French  prisoners  that  as  no  war  had  been  declared 
between  the  two  kingdoms,  he  could  only  look  on  them  as  pirates. 
He  caused  the  noblemen  to  be  beheaded,  and  the  others  to  be 
executed  with  sundry  indignities  "  (p.  417).  It  was  by  a  slight 
reference  in  this  paper  that  I  was  first  guided  to  the  Kerry 
Magazine  and  its  matterful  historical  articles. 


APPhNDIX.  4yj 

left  ;  but  to  roic;-ne  in  theire  ashes  :  her  Majesties  eare  was  sonne 
lent  thereunto,  all  suddenlye  turned  topyse  turvie  ;  the  noble 
Lord  cttsoones  was  blamed  ;  the  wretched  people  pittied ;  and 
newe  cuunsells  plotted,  in  which  it  was  concluded  that  a  generall 
pardon  should  be  sent  over  to  all  that  would  accepte  of  yt  :  upon 
which  all  former  purposes  were  blancked,  the  Governor  at  a  baye, 
and  not  onely  all  that  g-reate  and  longe  charge  which  shee  hadd 
before  beene  at,  quite  lost  and  cancelled,  but  alsoe  all  that  hope 
of  good  which  was  even  at  the  doore  putt  backe,  and  cleane 
frustrate.  All  which  whether  yt  be  trew,  or  noe,  your  selfe  cann 
well  tell. 

"  /ren.  Too  trewe,  Eudo.x.,  the  more  the  pittye,  for  I  may  not 
forgett  soe  memorable  a  thinge  :  ncyther  cann  I  be  ignorante  of 
that  perillous  devise,  and  of  the  whole  meanes  by  which  it  was 
compassed,  and  verye  cunninglye  contrived,  by  soweinge  first 
dyssension  betweene  him  and  an  other  noble  personage,  wherein 
they  both  at  length  found  how  notablie  they  had  beene  abused, 
and  how  therebye,  under  hand,  this  universal  alteracon  of  thinges 
was  brought  aboute,  but  then  to  late  to  stale  the  same  ;  for  in 
the  meane  tyme  all  that  was  formerly  done  with  longe  labour  and 
great  toyle,  was  (as  you  saye)  in  a  moment  undone,  and  that 
good  Lord  blotted  with  the  name  of  a  bloody  man,  whom,  who 
that  well  knewe,  knewe  to  be  most  gentle,  affable,  lovinge  and 
temperate  ;  but  that  the  necessitye  of  that  present  state  of  thinges 
enforced  him  to  that  violence,  and  almost  changed  his  verrye 
naturall  disposition.  But  other\vise  he  was  so  farre  from  delight- 
ing in  blood,  that  oftentymes  he  suffred  not  just  vengeance  to 
fall  where  it  was  deserved  :  and  even  some  of  those  which  were 
afterwardes  his  accusers,  had  tasted  to  much  of  his  mercyc,  and 
were  from  the  gallowes  brought  to  be  his  accusers.  But  his 
course  indeede  was  this,  that  he  spared  not  the  heades  and 
principalis  of  any  mischevous  practize  or  rebellion,  but  shewed 
sharpe  judgement  on  them,  cheiHy  for  an  example  sake,  that  all 
the  meaner  sort,  which  also  were  then  generally  infected  with 
that  evill,  might  by  terror  thereof  be  reclaymed,  and  saved,  yf 
it  were  [possible].  For  in  the  last  conspiracye  of  some  of  the 
the  English  Pale,  thinke  you  not  that  there  were  many  more 
guyltie  then  [they]  that  felt  the  ponishement  ?  or  was  there  any 
almost  clere  from  the  same  ?  yet  he  towched  onely  a  fewe  of 
speciall  note  ;  and  in  the  triall  of  them  also  even  to  prevent  the 
blame  of  crueltie  and  parciall  proceadinge  as  seekinge  their 
blood,  which  he,  in  his  great  wisedome  (as  it  seemeth)  did  fore- 
see would  be  objected  against  him  ;  he,  for  avoydinge  thereof, 
did  use  a  singular  discretion  and  regarde.  For  the  Jury  that 
went  upon  their  triall,  he  made  to  be  chosen  out  of  their  neerest 


478  APPENDTX. 

kinnesmen,  and  their  Judges  he  made  of  some  their  owne  fathers, 
of  others  their  uncles  and  dearest  freindes,  who  when  they  coulde 
not  but  justly  condemne  them,  yet  uttered  their  judgment  in 
aboundance  of  teares,  and  yett  even  herein  he  was  accompted 
bloody  and  cruell. 

'^Etidox.  Indeede  so  have  I  heard  it  often  so  spoken,  but  I 
perceyve  (as  I  alwaies  verely  thought)  that  it  was  most  unjustly  ; 
for  hee  was  alwaies  knowne  to  be  a  most  just,  sincere,  godly,  and 
right  noble  man,  far  from  suche  steamenesse,  far  from  suche 
unrighteousnes.  But  in  that  sharpe  execucon  of  the  Spaniards 
at  the  forte  of  Smerwick,  I  heard  it  specially  noted,  and,  if  it  were 
trewe  as  some  reported,  surely  it  was  a  great  towche  to  him  in 
honor,  for  some  say  that  he  promised  them  life  ;  others  that  at 
the  least  he  did  put  them  in  hope  thereof. 

"Ireu.  Both  the  one  and  the  other  is  most  untrue ;  for  this  I 
can  assure  you,  my  self  beinge  as  neare  them  as  any,  that  hee 
was  so  farre  from  promisinge  or  putting  [them]  in  hope,  that 
when  first  their  Secretary,  called,  as  I  remember  Segnor  Jeffrey, 
an  Italian  [being]  sent  to  treate  with  the  Lord  Deputie  for  grace, 
was  flatly  refused  ;  and  afterwardes  their  Coronell,  named  Don 
Sebastian,  came  forth  to  intreate  that  they  might  part  with  their 
armes  like  souldiers,  at  least  with  their  lyves,  accordinge  to  the 
custome  of  warre  and  lawe  of  Nations,  it  was  strongely  denyed 
him,  and  tolde  him  by  the  Lord  Deputie  him  selfe,  that  they 
coulde  not  iustly  pleade  either  custome  of  warr,  or  lawe  of  Nations, 
for  that  they  were  not  any  lawfull  enemyes  ;  and  if  they  were, 
willed  them  to  shewe  by  what  comission  they  came  thither  into 
another  Princes  domynions  to  warre,  whether  from  the  Pope  or 
the  Kinge  of  Spayne,  or  any  other.  Then  when  they  saide  they 
had  not,  but  were  onely  adventurers  that  came  to  seeke  fortune 
abroade,  and  serve  in  warrs  amongest  the  Irishe,  who  desired  to 
entertayne  them,  it  was  then  tolde  them,  that  the  L-ishe  them 
selves,  as  the  Earle  and  John  of  Desmonde  with  the  rest,  were 
no  lawfull  enemyes,  but  Rebells  and  traytors  ;  and  therefore  they 
that  came  to  succor  them  no  better  then  rogues  and  runnagates, 
specially  corhinge  with  no  licence,  nor  commission  from  their 
owne  Kinge  :  so  as  it  shoulde  be  dishonorable  for  him  in  the 
name  of  his  Queene  to  condicon  or  make  any  tearmes  with  suche 
rascalls,  but  left  them  to  their  choyce,  to  yielde  and  subm}^;! 
them  selves,  or  no.  Whcrupon  the  said  Coronell  did  absolutely 
yeild  him  selfe  and  the  fort,  with  all  therein,  and  craved  onely 
mercy,  which  it  being  thought  good  not  to  shew  them,  botli  for 
daiunger  of  themselves  yf,  being  saved,  they  should  afterwardes 
joyne  with  the  Irishe,  and  also  for  terror  of  the  Irish,  who  were 
muchc  imboldncd  by  those  forreync  succours,  also  put  in  hope  of 


L^ 


APPENDIX.  479 

more  ere  longe ;  there  was  no  other  way  but  to  make  that  short 
ende  of  them  which  was  made.  Therefore  most  untruly  and 
maliciously  doe  theis  evill  tongues  backbite  and  sclaunder  the 
sacred  ashes  of  that  most  just  and  honorable  personage,  whose 
leaste  vertue,  of  many  most  excellent  which  abounded  in  his 
heroicke  spirit,  they  were  never  able  to  aspire  unto. 

"Eudox.  Truly,  Iren  :  I  am  right  glad  to  be  thus  satisfied  by 
you  in  that  I  have  often  heard  questioned,  and  yet  was  never 
hable,  to  choke  the  mouthe  of  suche  detractors  with  the  certayne 
knowledge  of  their  sclaunderous  untruthes  :  neither  is  the  know- 
ledge thereof  impertinent  to  that  which  we  formerly  had  in  hand, 
I  meane  to  the  through  prosecutinge  of  that  sharpe  course  which 
yee  have  sett  downe  for  the  bringing  under  of  those  rebells  of 
Ulster  and  Connaght,  and  preparinge  a  waye  for  their  perpetuall 
reformacon,  least  happely,  by  any  suche  synister  sugcstions  of 
creweltie  and  to  muche  bloodshed,  all  the  plott  might  be  over- 
throwne,  and  all  the  cost  and  labour  therein  imployed  be  utterly 
lost  and  cast  away."     (Vol.  IX.,  pp.  164-8.) 

It  will  be  observed  how  closely  this  flawless  Testimony 

— written    when    Lord    Grey    was    for    years    dead — 

agrees  with  the   State  Papers.     And  thus  Lord  Grey, 

the    Lord    Deputy,   and    his    illustrious   Secretary    are 

vindicated. 


L:   THE  FORFEITURE  OF  DESMOND'S  LANDS- 
JUSTIFICATION. 

[See  Life,  p.   139.) 

.  .  .  richness  from  Affection's  sunless  deep  ; 
To  pour  on  broken  reeds — a  masted  shower  ; 
And  to  make  idols,  and  to  find  them — clay. 

Mrs.  llKMANsj. 

Vials  of  wrath — filled  to  the  brim — have  been 
poured  out  from  generation  to  generation  by  (so-called) 
patriotic  Irish  Historians  and  Biographers  and  Essayists 
and  Reviewers,  and  to-day  by  Sir  John  Pope  Hennessy, 
on  the  head  of  Spenser  ;  none  the  less  unhesitatingly 
that  the  accepted  epithet  of  "gentle  Spenser"  (as  with 


48o  APPENDIX. 

Shakespeare)  is  recalled.  It  is  recalled  and  reiterated 
by  Hennessy  to  barb  sarcasm  and  sneer  rather  than 
to  modify  allegations,  or  give  sonp^on  of  suspicion  that 
the  allegations  might  pcradventure  be  groundless. 

I  select  Sir  John  Pope  Hennessy  rather  than  a 
pitiably  partizan  and  perpetually  blundering  paper  in 
the  Dublin  Revieiv  (xvii.,  pp.  41  5-47,  1844),  because 
{a)  The  latter  is  mere  assertion  of  ignorance,  not  know- 
ledge, and  throughout  characterized  by  the  most  illiberal 
and  provocative  spirit,*  and  because  (/;)  The  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  in  Ireland  of  the  Irish  knight,  may  be  taken 
as  representative  of  the  concentrated  public  opinion  of 
Irishmen  on  the  problem  of  Ireland  under  Elizabeth. 
This  book  is  the  result  of  self-evidcntly  considerable 
though  superficial  research — in  certain  directions  ;  has 
a  look  of  candour  ;  is  skilfully  put  together,  and  most 
skilful — treacherously  skilful  as  was  the  kiss  of  Judas — 
in  its  pseudo-pathetic  vein  of  condemnation,  as  though 
really  it  were  a  sorrow  to  need  to  tell  such  tragical  facts 
in  association  with  names  so  illustrious.  An  examina- 
tion of  this  book  by  any  one  well-read  and  impartial 
("  indifferent "  was  the  old  word,  though  in  other  sense 

*  Queen  Elizabeth  in  this  scandalous  paper  is  only  "a  profli- 
g-atc  woman  "  :  Lord  Grey  "one  of  the  worst  of  a  bad  line," 
and  Spenser's  personal  testimony  to  the  greatness  and  nobleness 
of  Grey  is  thus  pronounced  upon:  "Ahymn  to  Purity  in  the 
den  of  a  brothel,  or  a  hymn  to  pity  on  the  lips  of  the  lurking 
assassin,  or  a  hymn  of  the  Atheists  of  '92  around  the  altars  of 
God,  might  be  as  bad,  but  what  could  be  worse  ?  "  (pp.  418-19). 
All  this  by  a  writer  who  betrays  in  every  page  gross  ignorance 
of  the  most  elementary  facts,  and  does  not  even  spell  properly  the 
names  he  traduces:  e.g.,  Ware  becomes  Hare,  and  Talus  is  Jalus. 
The  praise  of  Sir  John  Perrott  at  the  expense  of  Grey  and  Spenser 
is  an  infamy  to  the  man  praised.  The  Sm.erwick  or  Fort-del-Ore 
myth  is  the  main  basis  of  this  wretched  vituperation. 


1/ 


APPENDIX.  481 

than  now  it  is  used*  will  satisfy  that  a  more  misleading 
lop-sided  "History"  (save-the-mark)  has  rarely  been 
palmed  upon  the  world.  I  may  not  traverse  the 
whole  wide  field.  Hut  having^  already  exposed  the  mis- 
statements and  libels  on  the  matter  of  Smkrwick  or 
Fort-del-Ore,  I  shall  now  'study'  the  Earl  of  Desmond 
as  drawn  by  Hennessy  and  Irish  Historians,  not  as  a 
rebel  and  double-dyed  traitor  to  his  own  "  flesh  and 
blood,"  but  a  Hi:r<o  and  a  Saint,  and  his  forfeited  lands 
not  an  inevitable  penalty,  but  Spoliation.  The  neck 
of  Desmond's  rebellion  was  broken  by  Lord  Grey.  He 
was  recalled  before  its  Leader  fell.  But  the  after- 
forfeiture  was  the  sequel  of  what  the  Lord  Deputy  did, 
and  it  was  out  of  that  forfeiture  Ralegh  and  Spenser 
obtained  their  possessions. 

The  sum-and-substance  of  Irish  scntiincnt  on  Des- 
mond is  expressed  by  Sir  John  Pope  Hennessy  in  his 
final  statement  of  the  fate  of  the  (once)  great  House  of 
the  Gcrald)-ncs,  thus  : — 

"In  August  1580  Sir  James  Fitzgerald,  the  Earl  of  Desmond's 
brother,  was  captured  and  brought  to  Cork,  where  he  was  tried 
by  Captain  Raleigh  and  Captain  Scntleger.  They  sentenced  him 
to  be  hanged,  drawn  and  quartered.  Portions  of  his  body  re- 
mained for  a  considerable  time  above  the  gates  of  the  city.  The 
other  brother,  Sir  John  of  Desmond,  was  killed  in  tlie  following 
year,  and  his  body  brought  to  Raleigli,  who  was  acting  as 
Governor  of  Cork.  Ilis  head  was  sent  to  Dublin  Castle,  and  his 
body  was  suspended  by  the  heels  from  a  high  gibbet  over  the 
river  Lee,  on  the  north-gate  bridge  of  Cork,  where  it  swung  for 
three  years.  Before  long  the  skeleton  of  the  Earl  was  also 
hanging  from  the  walls  of  Cork,  his  head  having  been  sent  as 
'  a  goodly  gift  to  her  Highnesse  '  in  London.  'Such  was  the 
fate,'  says  the  Abbe  MacGeoghegan,  'of  the  illustrious  Fitz- 
geralds  of  Desmond,  the  Maccabees  of  our  day,  who  sacrificed 
their  lives  and  properties  in  the  defence  of  the  Catholic  cause  '" 
(P-  ^1)- 

I-  31 


482  APPENDIX. 

In  harmony  with  this  is  the  refrain  everywhere  of 
"  the  spoiled  and  desolate  fields  of  Desmond  "  (p.  1 1  5). 
I  pronounce  these,  and  the  like,  to  be  a  caricature  of 
the  actual  FACTS  ;  and  seeing  that — apart  from  Lord 
Grey  and  Sir  Walter  Ralegh,  not  to  say  Elizabeth — 
the  veracity  and  whole  character  of  Spenser  are  involved 
with  proof  of  this,  I  proceed  to  offer  proof* 

It  so  chances  that  THOMAS  CHURCHYARD  (the 
'Palemon'  of  Spenser's  Tearcs  of  the  Muses),  among 
his  many  quaint  and  curious  "  bokes,"  published  the 
following   {rar.  rar^  : — 

"A  Scourge  for  Rebels,  wherein  are  many  noble 
services  truly  set  oute  and  thoroughly  discoursed  with 
every  particular  pointe  touchinge  the  troubles  of 
Irelande,  as  far  as  the  painfulle  and  dutifulle  service 
of  the  Earle  of  Ormonde  in  sundry  sortes,  is  mani- 
festly knowen,  written  by  Thomas  Churchyard, 
gentleman,  imprinted  at  London   for  Thomas  Cadman, 

1584." 

En  passant  be  it  noted  that  the  Scourge  affirms 
that  the  "  services  "  it  commemorates  are  "  TRULY  set 
oute  and  thoroughly  discoursed."  Be  it  noted  further 
that,  though  published  in  the  glare  of  the  events, 
this  "  truly  set  oute "  never  was  challenged.  Then, 
significantly,  be  it  noted,  that  Sir  John  Pope  Hennessy 
and  Irish  historians  conveniently  ignore  the  book.  How 
does  the  '  Story  '  of  Desmond  read  as  "  thoroughly 
discoursed "     of    by     this     old      English  "  gentleman," 

*  See  again  iny  Preface  for  my  grateful  indebtedness  to  the 
Kerry  J/«^-a2/w(  1854-5)— vol.  i.,  pp.  65—74,  97—  ^01.  Church- 
yard's extremely  rare  Scourge  fur  Rebels  is  in  the  British 
Museum,  and  with  it  I  had  been  long  familiar. 


APPENDIX.  483 

Thomas  Churchyard  ?  I  have  to  show  this  :  and  I 
state  anticipatively  that  documents  in  H.M.  PubHc 
Record  Office  will  be  adduced  and  produced  to 
establish   the  record    of  the   Scourge  for  Rebels. 

I  pass  over  eulogies  of  the  Victor  in  the  prodigious 
strife.  I  pass  over,  too,  the  many  names  of  "  the 
gentlemen  of  blood  "  who  shared  their  Leader's 
overthrow,  besides  "  two  hundred  and  forty-six  menne 
and  confederates,  that  were  puttc  to  the  sword  and 
executed."     There  comes,  then,  this  : — 

"  Thus  was  the  Erie  of  Desmond  and  alle  his  force  consumed, 
and  left  accompanied  onely  with  seven  menne  and  his  prieste, 
who  from  the  tenth  of  last  March  (1583)  hidde  them  in  a  glinne 
within  Sleave-Luchra,  having-  no  other  foode  for  the  space  of 
seven  weekes  than  but  six  plowe  garrans,  whereon  they  fedde, 
without  bredde,  drinke,  or  any  other  sostenance. 

"  About  the  20th  September  last,  Oesmonde  being  hardlie 
followed  by  certaine  kearnes,  appointed  by  the  Lord  General  to 
serve  against  this  traytour,  his  priest  was  taken  from  him  with 
another  e  of  his  menne,  and  brought  to  the  Castle  of  Ormond. 

"Since  which  time,  the  Erie  being  relieved  by  a  Captain  of 
Gallowglas,  called  Goharra  Mac  Dunaha  Mac  Swynie,  the  Earl 
of  Ormond  having  advertisement,  pursued  him  into  O'Leary's 
countrie,  where  he  tooke  most  of  his  goodes,  insomuch  that  last 
November  the  said  Goharra  was  enforced  to  repayre  to  Inniskive 
(Mac  Carthy  Reagh's  country  in  the  County  of  Cork),  and 
there  took  15  cowes  and  8  garranes  from  one  O'Donoghue  Mac 
Terge,  of  Inniskive  aforesaid,  which  Donogho,  with  ten  more  of 
his  companie,  made  pursuit,  rescued  his  cowes  and  garrans, 
slewe  said  rebel  and  sent  his  head  to  the  Earl  of  Ormond. 

"  The  nth  of  said  November,  the  Earl  of  Desmond,  for  want 
of  said  Goharra,  was  urged  by  meyr  famyne,  to  send  to  one 
Daniel  Mac  Daniel  O'Moribertagh,  to  seeke  some  relief,  which 
Daniel  made  answer  to  him,  that  he  was  sworn  to  the  Lord 
General,  and  had  delivered  his  pledge  for  doinge  good  service 
against  Desmond  and  his  adherents,  wherefore  he  would  give 
him  no  relief  at  alle." 

There  follows  :  "  The  Examinacion  of  Owen  Mac 
Donnil   O'Moribertagh,   taken   the    26th   of  November, 


484  APPENDIX. 

1583,  before  those  whose  Names  are  hereunto  sub- 
scribed, of  the  manner  and  discourse  how  the 
Erie  of  Desmond  was  pursued  and  slayne."  This 
great  State-Paper  squelches  the  rabid  and  screaming 
rhetoric  of  Irish  writers  and  their  abettors.  The 
simple  unexaggerate  narrative  transmutes  their  pathos 
into  bathos,  though  I  am  far  from  being  insensible 
to  the  pathos  of  so  utter  a  Fall.  It  reveals  the 
true  and  inevitable  reason  for  the  "cutting  off"  c/" 
Desmond's   head  : — 

"  In  the  dawninge  of  the  daye  on  Monday,  the  loth  of 
November,  they  put  themselves  in  order  to  sette  upon  the 
traytours  in  their  cabbins,  the  examinate  [=Owen  Mac  Donnil 
O'Moribertagh],  with  his  brother  Donel  and  their  kerne,  tooke 
the  fonvarde,  and  appointed  the  souldieres  to  keepe  the  rerewarde 
(saving  one  Daniel  O'Kellye,  a  souldier,  which  had  but  his 
sworde  and  targett,  stood  in  the  forewarde  with  them).  They  alle 
making  a  great  cr>-e  entered  the  cabbin  where  the  Erie  laye,  and 
this  examinate  ranne  throwe  the  cabbin  after  the  Erie's  com- 
panie,  which  fledde  to  the  woode,  and  at  his  return  backe  to  the 
cabbin  doore,  the  Erie  being  stroken  by  one  of  the  companie  (b}'^ 
whom  he  knoweth  not  but  that  alle  the  footmenne  and  souldieres 
were  together  in  the  cabbin)  he  discovered  himself  saying  '  I  am 
the  Erie  of  Desmond,  save  my  life.'  To  whom  this  examinate 
answered  '  Thou  hast  killed  thyself  long  agone,  and  now  thou 
shalt  be  prisoner  to  the  Queen's  Majesty  and  to  the  Erie  of 
Ormond,  Lord  General  of  Munster '  :  whereupon  he  took  him  by 
the  arme  (being  cutte)  and  willed  the  Erie,  who  was  slowe  in 
going,  to  make  speede  else  they  would  carry  awaye  his  heade, 
SEEING  THE  TRAITOURS  WERE  VERIE  NEARE  TO  HAVE  HIM 
RE.SCUED. 

"Whereupon  Donell  Mac  Donel  sayde  '  I  will  carry  him  on  my 
backe  a  while,  and  so  shall  every  one  of  you.'  Donnel  carried  a 
good  whyle,  and  being  wearie  he  put  him  offe.  The  TRAITOURS 
BEING  AT  hand,  all  the  companie  refused  to  carry  him  anie 
further,  conside7-ing  the  eminent  danger  they  stood  in,  the 
traytours  drawiitg  neere. 

"  Whereupon  this  Deponent  Owen  Mac  Donel,  willed  the 
souldier  Daniel  O'Kellye,  to  culle  off  the  Erie's  heade,  for  that 
they  could  not  apply  to  fight  and  to  carrye  him  awaye  :  to  whose 


u- 


APPENDIX.  485 

direction  Kellic  obeyed,  saying  he  would  do  so,  drawing  out  his 
sword  and  striking  off  the  Erie's  heade.  .  .  .  Then  "  The  fore- 
said Daniel  O'Kellye  (being  likewise  examined  before  these) 
testified  that  the  Erie  of  Desmond  was  pursued  in  the  order  and 
manner  afore  WTitten,  and  that  he  himself  wounded  the  said  Erie 
within  his  cabbin,  and  after  cutte  of  his  head  (lest  he  should 
BE  rescued)." 

If  ever  there  were  "justifiable  chance-medley"  it 
was  assuredly  here.  "So  much  for  Desmond!"  (as 
with  Shakespeare's  Buckingham).  Now  let  us  consult 
State-Papers  to  demonstrate  the  rebellion  and  treason 
and  persistent  self-seeking^  of  the  Earl  of  Desmond. 
The  first  is  the  "  Deed  of  Combination,"  by  which 
the  Earl  and  other  notables  of  the  Palatinate  bound 
themselves  to  resist  the  government.  This  has  been 
published  (somewhat  incorrectly)  in  Cox's  Hibcrnica 
Anglicana  : — 

"  The  CoMBiNATfSTj  of  Garrett,  late  Earl  of  Desmond, 

ATTALNTED  OF   HiGH-TREASON   IN   ANNO    1578. 

(Cotton.  MSS.,  Tit.  B.  xiii.,  f.  248,  Brit.  Mus.) 

"  Whereas  the  Right  Honorable  Garrett,  Erie  of  Desmond, 
hath  assembled  us  his  kinsmen,  followers  and  servants  about 
him,  after  his  coming  out  of  Dublin,  and  made  us  privy  to  such 
articles  as  by  the  Lord  Deputy  and  Counsel  were  delivered  unto 
him  the  8th  of  July,  1578,  to  be  performed,  and  also  his  answer 
to  said  articles,  which  answers  we  find  so  reasonable  as  we  with 
one  minde  do  counsel  and  advise  the  said  Earle  not  to  yield  to 
anie  more  than  in  his  said  answer  is  already  granted,  and 
further,  the  said  Earle  declared  unto  us,  that  if  lie  do  not  yielde 
presentlie  to  the  performance  of  the  same  articles,  and  put  in  his 
pledge  for  obser\ation  thereof,  that  then  the  Lord  Deputie  will 
bende  his  force  and  make  warre  against  him. 

"  We,  the  persons  underwritten,  do  advise  and  counsel  the  said 
Erie,  to  defend  himself  from  the  violence  of  the  said  Lord  Deputie, 
that  doth  aske  'so  unreasonable  a  demand  as  in  the  said  articles 
is  conteyned,  and  for  to  defend  and  stick  to  this  our  advice  and 
counsel,  we  renounce  God  if  we  doe  spare  life,  body,  land,  and 
goodes,  but  will  be  aiding,  helping,  and  assistinge  the  said  Erie 


486  APPENDIX. 

to  mayntain    and  defend  this  our  advice  against  the  said  Lord 
Deputie,  or  any  other  that  will  covett  the  said  Erie's  inheritance. 
"  In  witness  whereof,  that  this  is  our  counsel  to  the  Erie,  we 
have  hereunto  putte  our  hands  the  xviij"'  of  July,  1578. 

[Sii^ned]  "  GARRETT  Dejsmond"  (and  18  others). 

I  would  fix  attention  on  the  clause  engaging  to 
defend  Desmond  "  against  the  said  Lord  Deputie,  or 
any  other  that  will  covett  the  said  Erie's  inheritance." 
This  clause  furnishes  a  clue  to  the  history  behind 
the  "  Deed  of  Combination,"  and  to  the  vacillation  and 
uncertainty  and  falsity  of  Desmond's  after-proceedings. 

Irish  historians,  who  have  made  a  martyr-hero  out 
of  this  Earl,  insist  that  it  was  the  settled  purpose  of 
the  English  Government  to  provoke  him  into  rebellion 
in  order  to  manufacture  a  plea  for  the  partitioning  of 
his  immense  Palatinate.  I  believe  this  has  no  warrant, 
not  a  shred,  historically.  This  is  not  the  place  to  argue 
it.  But  it  is  the  place  to  make  clear  the  mingled 
jealousies  and  suspicions,  self-aggrandizement  and  de- 
signs in  another  direction,  to  wit,  towards  that  very 
James  Fitz-Morris  of  Desmond,  his  able  if  turbulent 
cousin,  whose  desperate  enterprise  he  was  AT  FIRST 
seemingly  ready  to  resist  to  the  uttermost,  and  yet 
when  the  '  cousin  '  was  dead,  engaged  in  it  to  his  own 
destruction,  but  with  far  other  hopes.  State-Papers 
in  H.M.  Public  Record  Office  make  this  absolutely 
certain.  In  the  confidential  Correspondence  of  the  time 
there  is  a  long  and  full  despatch — dated  30th  March, 
1579 — from  the  Lord  Deputy  to  Lord  Burleigh,  de- 
tailing the  various  measures  of  precaution  and  prepara- 
tion he  was  taking  in  anticipation  of  the  Italian  and 
Spanish  landing  at  Fort-dcl-Ore — of  which  fully  in  pre- 
ceding Appendix — and   here  are  certain   unmistakable 


APPENDIX.  48^ 

words  showing  the  steps  he  took  to  secure  the  fidelity 
of  the  two  great  Earls  of  Munster,  Desmond  and 
Clancarre- — the  former  only  our  concern  : — 

"  The  Erie  of  Desmond  himself  is  come  to  me,  and  professeth 
as  much  loyaltie  and  dutie  as  any  nianne  mayc,  and  indeed  I 
doubt  not  but  that  his  private  offence  to  James,  who  pretendeth 
(as  shoulde  appear  by  his  title  abroad)  himselfe  to  be  Erie  of 
Desmond,  and  his  good  usage  and  entreatie,  will  keep  him 
sounde,  though  otherwise  he  were  not  so  welle  given,  as  trulie  I 
must  needs  say  in  alle  appearance  he  is." 

About  the  same  date  Drury  writes  to  Sir  Francis 
Walsingham  to  the  same  effect : — 

"  Desmond  is  with  me,  to  all  appearance  as  well  bent  and 
disposed  as  may  be  wished,  and  likely  to  continue,  as  well  for 
that  he  hath  no  cause  for  any  other  usage  towards  him  as  because 
the  title  which  James  taketh  upon  him  abroad  of  the  Erie  of 
Desmond  will  make  him  hate  the  rebel." 

These  Letters — and  there  are  others — flash  in  light 
upon  the  'shifty'  and  irresolute  course  pursued  by 
Desmond.  They  reveal  emphatically  that  the  white 
terror  of"  covetting  his  inheritance"  came  from  "  cousin" 
James  Fitz-Morris  of  Desmond,  not  England. 

James  Fitz-Morris  of  Desmond,  as  everybody  knows, 
dared  to  '  land '  in  Ireland,  and  when  the  Earl  of 
Desmond  returned  from  the  Lord  Deputy  homeward, 
when  in  July  that  'landing'  took  place  at  "  Dingel," 
this  innocent  and  canonized  Earl  once  and  again  wrote 
to  the  English  Government  in  Ireland  announcing  his 
determined  purpose  to  resist  his  "  cousin  "  ! 

Here  are  glimpses  of  his  actual  sentiments  and 
intended  doings,  from  the  "  Advices  out  of  Munster," 
in  a  dispatch  of  Sir  Henry  Wallop  to  the  Earl  of 
Leicester  (Cotton.  MSS.,  Tit.  B.  xiii.)  : — 


488  APPENDIX. 

"Clonmel,  loth  April,  1583. 

" 'Jhc  first  of  this  month  the  Countess  of  Desmond  submitted 
herself  to  the  Lord  General :  here  is  a  bruit  [  =  rumour]  that 
Desmond  himself  should  come  hither  in  two  or  three  dales  upon 
a  protection. 

"John  Lacy,  who  came  lately  out  of  England,  having  licence 
to  deale  with  the  Earle  his  master  concerning  his  submission,  at 
his  coming  pleaded  him  to  submit  himself  simplie  to  her  Majestie's 
mercy  ;  and  in  manifestation  to  yield  himself  to  the  Lord  General. 
The  first  part  of  his  speeche  he  heard  with  patience ;  but  to  the 
seconde,  he  bade  '  avaunt  churle'  with  other  opprobrious  wordes, 
saying  '  Shall  1  yield  myself  to  a  Butler,  mine  anciente  and  knowne 
enemie  ?  No,  if  it  were  not  for  those  English  churles  that  he 
hath  at  command,  I  would  drinke  alle  their  bloode  as  I  would 
warm  milke.' 

"  The  late  overthrowe  he  gave  the  Butlers,  being  as  the  countrie 
saith  six  to  one,  causeth  him  so  to  insult  against  them. 

"  Being  lately  demanded  by  one  of  his  chief  gallowglasse,  why 
he  suffered  the  Lord  Mac  Maurice,  Pat  Condon  and  Donogh 
Mac  Cartie,  and  others,  to  goe  from  him,  '  Content  thyself,'  said 
he,  '  these  shall  doe  me  better  service  there  than  they  could  doe 
here  ;  for  they  shalle  helpe  me  to  alle  necessaries  and  keep  such 
othe  safe  as  I  shall  put  to  them.'  " 

So  that  first  his  'fear'  of  his  'cousin'  James 
Fitz-Morris  of  Desmond  and  a  Feud  with  his  old 
hereditary  rival  and  enemy — Irishman,  not  Enghshman 
— "  The  Thierna  Dubh'  Ormond,"  not  any  thought  of 
being  a  '  Maccabee '  for  '  the  CathoHc  faith,'  inspired 
continuous  resistance. 

One  /;//  out  of  many  State-despatches  witnesses  to 
his  sorrowful  condition  ;  — 

"Earl  ui'  Or.mond  lo  Lord  Burleigh. 

"June  i8th,  1583. 
'•  I  he  unliappy  wretch,  the  Earl  of  Desmond,  wandereth  from 
place  to  place  lorsaken  of  all  men  ;  the  poore  Countess  lamenteth 
greatlie  the  foUie  of  her  husband,  whom  reason  could  never  rule." 

With  our  knowledge  of  Desmond's  own  blood- 
thirsty sentiments  and  treacherous  placing  of  men 
who  were  to  '  serve '  fiim  by  betraying  others,  what  are 


APPENDIX.  489 

we  to  think  ul   and  how  can  we  keep  down  our  gorge 
in  reading  this  Letter  ? — 

"  Desmond  to  Ormond. 

"5th  June,  1583. 
"My  Lord, — Great  is  my  griefe  when  I  thinke  how  heavilie 
her  Majestic  is  bent  to  dishonour  mee,  and  howbeit  I  carry  that 
name  of  an  undutiful  subjecte,  yet  God  knowoth,  that  my  harte 
and  minde  are  most  lowlie  inclined  to  serve  my  most  loving  prince; 
so  it  may  please  her  Highnesse  to  remove  her  heavie  displeasure 
from  me.  As  I  maie  not  condemn  myself  of  disloyaltie  to  her 
Majestic,  so  can  I  not  expresse  myself,  but  must  confess  that  I 
have  incurred  her  Majestie's  indignacion  ;  yet  when  the  cause 
and  means  which  were  found  and  which  caused  me  to  committ 
folly  shall  be  known  to  her  Highnesse,  I  rest  in  assured  hope  that 
her  most  gracious  Majestic  will  both  think  of  me  as  my  heart 
deserveth  and  also  of  those  that  wronge  me  into  undutifulness, 
as  their  cunning  devices  meriteth.  From  my  hearte  I  am  sorrie, 
that  follie,  bad  counsel,  streights,  or  anie  other  thinge  hath  made 
me  to  forget  my  dutie ;  and  therefore  I  am  desirous  to  have 
conference  with  your  Lordship  to  the  end  that  I  maie  declare  to 
you  how  tyrannouslie  I  was  used.  Humbly  craving  that  you  will 
please  to  appoint  some  place  and  tyme,  where  and  when  I  may 
.ittend  your  Honour;  and  then,  1  doubt  not  to  make  it  appear 
how  dutieful  a  minde  I  carry ;  how  faithfully  I  have  atmyne  owne 
charge  served  her  Majestic  before  1  was  proclaimed  ;  how  sorrow- 
ful I  am  for  mine  offences,  and  how  faithful  1  am  affected,  ever 
hereafter  to  ser\e  her  Majestic.  And  soe  I  committ  your  Lord- 
ship to  God,  the  fifth  of  June,  1583. 

"Gerrott  Desmond." 

"And  soc  I  committ  your  Lordship  to  God";  and 
this  from  the  man  who  had  only  a  couple  of  months 
before  expressed  his  fiendish  desire  to  "  drinke  all  the 
bloode"  of  the  Ormonds  as  he  "  would  warme  milke"  ! 
A  more  abject,  dastardly  Letter,  in  its  throwing  over 
of  all  his  'confederates'  after  disgracing  them,  is  not 
conceivable. 

But  we  must  pursue  the  historical  progress  of 
circumstance  and  action.  The  Earl  of  Desmond,  so 
LONG   AS    HIS   COUSIN   LIVED,   resisted  all  appeals  to 


490  APPENDIX. 

side  with  him.  Had  he  been  that  "  Maccabee  for  the 
Catholic  faith "  your  patriotic  Irishmen  would  make 
him  out,  could  he  have  remained  silent  to  a  glowing 
and  touching  appeal  like  this  made  to  him  by  Sanders, 
— one  of  a  sheaf  in  H.M.  Public  Record  Office — in 
James's  name  ?* — 

"James  Fitz-Maurice  to  the  Erle  of  Desmond. 

"July  i8,  1579. 
"  AUe  dear  and  hartie  commendations  in  most  humble  manner 
premised,  forasmuch  as  James  Fitz-Morris  being  authorized  there- 
unto by  his  Holiness,  warfareth  under  Christ's  ensign  for  the 
restoring  of  the  catholicke  faithe  in  Ireland,  God  forbidde  the 
day  should  ever  come,  wherein  it  might  be  sayd  that  the  Erie  of 
Desmond  hath  forsaken  his  poore  kinsman,  his  faithful  sei-vant, 
the  lieutenant  of  his  spiritual  father,  the  banner  of  his  merciful 
Saviour,  the  defence  of  his  ancient  faith,  the  delivery  of  his  dear 
countrie,  and  the  safe-guard  of  his  home  and  posterity." 

To  this  heart-stirring  letter  Desmond  gave  no 
answer  but  inaction.  "  His  Holiness "  and  His 
Holiness's  "  Nuncio "  and  "  the  restoring  of  the 
catholicke  faith  in  Ireland,"  made  no  impression  upon 
him,  so  long  as  "  James  Fitz-Morris "  lived  ;  but  it 
is  a  damning  historic  fact  that  so  soon  as  his 
cousin  was  "  slayn  in  his  fray  with  the  Bourkes," 
and  Sanders  had  attached  himself  to  the  Earl, 
Desmond  went  all  the  lengths  the  Nuncio  sought. 
That   astute    emissary    of    his    Holiness    very   swiftly 

*  If  it  be  asked  what  evidence  there  is  that  this  appeal  was 
written  by  Sanders,  I  answer  there  is  most  conclusive  evidence, 
for  whereas  it  begins  with  an  appeal  by  Sanders  in  his  own 
person  to  the  Earl's  feelings  as  a  religionist,  it  ends  in  the  person 
of  James  of  Desmond.  Along  with  it  are  a  number  of  letters  in 
the  Irish  character  and  language,  beautifully  written,  being 
stirring  ajjpeals  from  James  of  Desmond  to  his  old  acquaintances 
and  associates  among  the  Irish  to  join  him. 


APPENDIX,  491 

saw  the  reason  of  the  prior  "  let,"  and  profited  by 
it.  He  urged  on  the  Earl  daily  "  that  the  death 
of  James  was  the  providence  of  God  to  give  him  all 
the  glory  of  the  enterprise."  That  '  glory '  drew 
the  Earl  into  the  Papal  toils,  and  we  have  seen 
its  miserable  issue  in  the  beheading  of  the  already 
wounded   '  Wanderer.' 

The  whole  lights  and  shadows  of  the  conduct  of 
this  detestable  villain  are  still  more  vividly  shown 
in  another  document  preserved  in  H.M.  Public  Record 
Office.  It  is  entitled  "  Erie  Desmond's  Defence  of 
Himself."  It  would  appear  that  this  Paper  was 
laid  before  the  Council  of  England,  as  Walsingham's 
notes  on  the  MS.  suggest : — 

"After  my  harte  commendacions,  and  although  through  envious 
people  there  hath  been  heretofore  a  little  gelosc  [jealousy] 
between  us,  without  anie  cause  offered,  I  doubt  not  on  either 
side,  whereby  our  acquaintance  hath  been  the  lesse  ;  notwith- 
standing I  have  that  good  opinion  of  your  good  nature,  that  I 
hope  to  find  your  friendship  in  alle  my  good  causes,  and  therefore 
thought  it  gode  to  certifie  unto  you  what  service  I  have  done 
since  the  arrival  of  James  Fitz-Morrice,  and  how  little  it  hath 
beene  regarded. 

"First,  before  the  Traitour  arrived,  there  landed  at  Smerwicke 
Haven,  three  Irish  scholars  in  marriners*  attire,  which  upon 
suspicion  I  caused  to  be  examined  and  sent  to  the  Gaol  of 
Limerick ;  who,  in  fyne,  were  knowen  to  be  gentlemen,  and  one  of 
them  a  bishopp,  who  were  sente  by  the  Traitourc  to  practise  with 
the  North,  to  join  with  him,  for  which  they  were  by  my  Lord 
Justice  executed. 

"Upon  intelligence  had  of  the  Traitour's  arrival  at  the  Dangyn, 
I  being  then  in  the  Countie  of  Tipperarie,  have  not  only  by  poste 
testified  thereof  to  my  Lord  Justice,  but  also  sent  wamynge  to 
the  citizens  of  Corke  and  Limerick,  and  to  all  the  LL.  [Lords]  and 
Gentlemen  of  the  Province,  to  have  their  forces  in  readiness  to  e.xpell 
the  Traitour ;  and  with  alle  speede  I  marched  with  such  force  as 
in  short  time  I  was  able  to  make  over  the  mountayns  to  Kerry, 
and  so  to  Smerwicke  Haven,  where  the  Traitour,  with  his  com- 
panie,  fortified  a  rock  compassed  round  about  with  the  sea,  saving 


492  APPENDIX. 

a  narrow  passage  wherebye  menne  might  passe  to  the  lande ; 
and  the  23d  Julie,  I  encamped  about  him,  so  as  he  could  neither 
have  victuals  from  the  countrie  nor  able  to  send  his  messengers 
abroad  to  his  friendes,  where  he  was  kept  so  straighte  that  his 
victuals  were  almost  spente. 

"  Upon  the  26th  of  Julie,  as  the  Traitour,  having  the  aide  of 
200  of  the  Flaherties  that  came  to  his  aide  by  water,  were 
skirmishing  with  some  of  my  menne,  suddenlie  came  into 
the  Haven  Captain  Courtenay,  with  a  littel  ship  and  pynnance 
and  without  anie  resistance  tooke  the  Traytour's  shippes,  saving 
one  barke  that  he  brought  under  the  forte,  where  she  was  Isroken  ; 
so  as  then  the  gallies  of  the  Flaherties  being  ronne  away,  the 
Traitour  was  like  in  a  short  time  to  starve  within  the  Forte,  or 
els  to  jaeld  himself  to  Her  Majestie's  mercie.  But  my  unhappie 
brother  John,  envyinge  the  goode  successe  of  my  service  that 
then  was  likely  to  ensue,  most  cruelly  murderd  Air.  Davells, 
with  the  Provost  Marshall,  with  their  companie,  and  most 
unnaturallie  enticed  my  brother  James  to  accompanie  him_  to 
that  detestable  acte.  Whereof  having  advertisement,  doubting 
that  the  executioners  of  so  odible  [=detestable]  an  acte,  would 
practize  to  destroie  me,  as  often  heretofore  the  said  John  hath 
done,  and  being  by  the  Justice  Meaughe,  earnestlie  desired  (as 
the  rest  were)  I  woulde  [=went]  to  Traly ;  and  from  thens  the 
Justice  and  I  woulde  over  the  mountayns,  lest  that  my  wicked 
"brethren  wold  under  pretence  of  friendship  enter  to  Asketyn,  and 
there  imbrue  their  crewel  hands  with  the  bloode  of  my  wife  and 
Sonne,  whom  Sir  John  mortalie  hated  ;  and  from  thence  the  4th 
of  August,  to  Limerick,  to  have  conference  with  my  Lord  Justice 
about  the  service ;  and  so  returning  to  Conneloghe,  being  in 
campe  at  Gorestonne,  I  had  intelligence  that  the  traitours  were 
upon  the  fastness  of  the  Grete  Wood.  I  suddenlie  went  thither, 
and  chased  them  over  the  mountains  to  Kogyrrick-Kearig,  and 
from  thence  to  the  Grete  Wood,  whither  also  I  pursued  them, 
and  so  still  pursued  them  to  BaUincashkiim-Corkcinohir,  where 
they  were  out  of  alle  hope  to  escape  ;  so  as  eche  of  them  was 
forced,  the  17th  of  August,  at  night,  for  their  safe-guard  to  scatter, 
and  runne  to  such  places  as  eche  of  them  thoughte  beste,  so  as 
James  Fitz-Morris  ran  to  Oiv)iy  Mitlryan,  where  he  was  slaine 
the  xviii.  of  August,  by  my  nephews  Theobald  and  Ulick  Burke. 
Sir  John  also  forced  to  runne  to  the  fastness  of  Lynamore,  and 
Sir  James  to  Glaniieskye ;  and  the  Warde  of  the  Forte,  under- 
standing that  their  master  was  slaine,  ranneawaie,  and  some  of  my 
menne  entered  therein,  whereof  I  having  newes  hasted  me  thither, 
and  brake  down  the  fortifications  which  the  Traitour  made  ; 
whereof  I  certified  the  Lord  Justice,  who  sent  me  word  by  letters 


APPENDIX.  493 

that  he  would  make  his  repaire  into  Keny,  wherein  ho  willed  me 
to  meete  him  in  the  borders  thereof,  with  provisions  of  beeves 
for  his  campe,  which  I  had  in  readiness,  and  accordinglie  ex- 
pected his  Lordship's  cominge.  In  which  journey  certeyn  of 
my  poor  tenants  were  altogether  spoyled  of  their  kync  and 
cattel,  whereof,  I  having  advertisement,  made  my  repaire  to  the 
Lord  Deputy,  about  the  second  of  September,  to  Kylmallock,  to 
understand  what  suddenncsse  had  altered  his  intended  course; 
and  at  my  being  there,  he  willed  me  to  gather  my  intended  com- 
panye,  and  bring  them  for  his  better  assistance  in  the  service,  the 
vi""  of  September,  nere  his  camp  by  the  Crete  Wood,  which  1 
have  done  accordinglye,  and  came  myself  with  a  fewe  companye 
to  understand  his  Lordship's  pleasure,  leaving  my  menne  in 
campe  within  two  miles  of  his.  After  which  tyme  his  Lordshippe 
willed  me  and  the  Lord  Ker)e  [=Kerr)']  to  declare  our  opinions, 
and  to  settle  downe  a  plotte  whereby  the  traitours  might  be  the 
sooner  overthrowne,  which  plotte  we  delivered  the  Lord  Justice  in 
writing,  the  copie  whereof  I  doe  send  you  here  inclosed,  nothing- 
doubting,  if  the  same  were  followed.  Her  Majestic' s  ministers 
need  not  to  put  Her  Highness  to  the  charge  she  is  now  att, 
neither  the  subject  so  much  over-pressed,  nor  yet  the  traitours  to 
pass  anie  waie  without  their  losse.  But  my  reward  for  the  same, 
and  for  other  services  done  to  my  great  risk  and  charges,  to  my 
no  lesse  travel  and  payne,  hath  been  torestrayne  me  from  libertie, 
the  vii"'  of  September,  and  kept  me  until  the  ix"'  of  same,  at 
which  tyme  I  was  enlarged,  on  condition  that  I  would  send  my 
Sonne  to  Limerick.  Now  in  the  mene  time  of  my  restraint,  my 
menne  hearing  thereof  skattered,  and  for  the  most  part  fledde  to 
the  traytours,  whereby  they,  being  before  daunted,  were  with 
cccc  persons  increasde,  and  my  force  by  so  much  weakened.  1 
will  not  by  particulars,  certifie  unto  you  what  hindrance  I  and  my 
tenants  did  sustaine  by  my  Lord  Justice's  being  in  campe  in  the 
small  countie  of  Lymerick,  neither  will  1  declare  tiie  charge  1 
have  been  at  in  following  the  service,  which  would  not  grieve  me, 
if  the  Governor  had  due  consideration  to  the  same.  The  26th 
of  last  month  I  happened  to  kill  five  of  the  Traitour's  menne, 
whereof  were  principally  Rory  Jty-Dillun  and  Kragury  0'I\yne, 
who  were  of  James  Fitz-Morrice's  council,  and  as  such  practisers 
between  Sir  John  and  Alagherone  Mac  E>iasJ)ecA\  The  other 
three  were  Kerrymen. 

"And  since  my  Lord  Justice  departed  the  Province,  Sir  Nicholas 
Maltbie.  the  forthe  of  this  presente  (month)  being  in  campe  at 
the  Abbeye  of  Nenaghe,  sent  certyn  of  his  menne  to  enter  into 
Rathmore,  a  manor  of  myne,  and  there  murdered  the  keepers, 
spoileth  the  towne  and  castel,  and  tooke  awaie  from  thence  cer- 


494  APPENDIX. 

tayn  of  my  evidences  and  other  writings.  On  the  vi""  of  the  same, 
he  not  only  spoyled  Riith-Keally  [=  Rath-Keale]  a  towne  of 
myne,  but  also  tyranouslie  burned  both  houses  and  corne.  Upon 
the  vii">  of  same  month,  the  said  Sir  Nicholas  encamped  within 
the  Abbey  of  Asketyn,  and  there  most  maliciously  defaced  the 
ould  monuments  of  my  ancestors,  fired  both  the  abbie,  the  whole 
towne,  and  the  come  thereabouts,  and  ceased  not  to  shoote  at 
my  menne  within  Asketyn  Castel.  These  dealings  I  thought 
goode  to  signifye  unto  you,  desiring  you,  as  you  are  a  gentleman, 
to  certifie  thereof  unto  her  Majestic  and  the  Lords  of  the  Counsel, 
nothinge  doubting  but  you  will  procure  speedie  revenge  for  re- 
dresse  hereof,  as  also  frende  me  in  my  good  cause  ;  and  so  I 
commit  you  to  God,  from  Asketyn,  the  x''*  of  October  1579.  Your 
assured  loving  frende.     [To  Richard,  Earl  of  Clanrickarde  ?] 

This  remarkable  *  Defence '  shows  how  partizan 
and  misleading  are  the  Writers  of  Ireland  on  Irish 
histoiy.  As  an  example  I  name  Dr.  Curry's  Civil 
Wars  of  Ireland.  He  expressly  states  that  "  A  Bishop 
and  a  Friar,  with  his  son,  had  been  delivered  as  hos- 
tages for  Desmond's  fidelity,  and  that  on  the  outbreak 
of  the  Rebellion  these  two  men  were  executed  by  the 
Lord  Deputy's  order."  It  will  be  seen  that  all  this  is 
pure  (or  impure)  invention.  The  "  bishop  and  friar," 
by  the  indisputable  evidence  of  Desmond's  own  '  De- 
fence,' were  not  hostages  at  all,  but  of  the  men  who 
had  been  landed  on  the  Irish  coast,  engaged  in  the 
desperate  as  infamous  enterprise  of  '  practising '  to 
raise  rebellion  and  levy  war  against  the  State,  More 
than  this — be  it  noted,  that  they  were  arrested  by 
Desmond  himself,  and  ultimately  tried,  condemned  and 
righteously  executed  for  treason,  at  a  crisis  when 
treason  was  rampant.  Their  manufactured  character 
of  "hostages"  by  which  to  "point  a  moral  and  adorn 
a  tale,"  is  absolutely  fictitious. 

But  still  more  lurid  is  the  light  cast  on  the  character 


u 


APPENDIX.  495 

of  Desmond  himself  by  this  '  Defence.'  I  have  not 
counted  how  often  the  name  "  Traitour  "  is  appHed  to 
James  Fitz-Morrice,  but  how  base  the  nature  that  could 
so  denounce  his  '  cousin  '  so  lon^  as  he  was  alive  and 
might  "  take  possession  "  of  his  "  broad  acres,"  and  so 
soon  as  the  breath  was  out  of  him  fall  in  with  every 
iota  of  Sanders'  scheme !  Equally  base  and  foul  is  his 
bitter  railing  and  malignant  insinuations  against  his 
own  flesh  and  blood  in  his  brothers.  For  not  only 
does  he  thus  behind  his  back  report  to  the  Council 
against  his  "  unhappie  brother  "  John,  but  he  charges 
him  with  his  intended  murder  ("as  often  heretofore  the 
said  John  hath  done  "),  and  the  murder  of  his  wife  and 
son  ("  whom  Sir  John  mortalie  hated"). 

Baser  beyond  even  these  basenesses  is  his  pseudo- 
detestation  of  the  perpetrators  of  Davell's  murder, 
contemporaneous  with  his  actual  egging  of  them  to 
do  it,  as  thus  written  {State  Paper  Office,  vol.  xlvii., 
Ireland  1579,  p.  479)  in  a  list  of  charges  laid  against 
Desmond  : — 

"  When  James  Fitz-Morris  denied  to  come  to  Sir  James  or  Sir 
John,  until  they  had  committed  some  such  notorious  facte,  as 
might  bringe  them  in  as  grete  danger  of  the  lawe,  as  himself,  the 
Erie  to  accomplish  that,  wrote  his  Tres  to  Davells  and  Carter  to 
come  to  him  to  Kerry  7vithout  grete  company ;  atid  hy  the  waye. 
Sir  John  and  Sir  James,  loith  their  /otlowers,  murthred 
them.  Rury  Mac  Shcchyc,  the  Erie's  follower,  charged  the  Erie 
with  being  the  procurer  of  the  murther  of  Bryan  Diiffc,  zcho  /aye 
in  the  next  beddc  to  Davells,  and  so  privy  to  the  murther  of 
Davells.  Sir  James  when  charged  with  the  cruel  facte,  answered 
that  '  he  wasDut  the  Erie's  executioner.' 

A  final  Desmond  document,  of  about  the  same  date 
with  these  others,  is  an  additional  demonstration  of  two 
things:  (i)  That  the  great  Earl  was  a  traitor.   (2)  That 


496  APPENDIX 

he  knew  it  and  its  inevitable  consequences,  and  made 
preparation  accordingly.  This  State-paper  is  sugges- 
tively endorsed — 

"  Deed  of  Feoffment  made  by  Garret  Erle  of  Desmond 
made  seven  weeks  after  the  Combination. ' ' 

It  thus  runs  : — 

"By  this  deed  the  Erie  of  Desmond  enfeofs  James  Butler,  Baron 
of  Dunboyn,  Thomas  Power,  Lord  of  Cunaghmore,  and  John 
Fitz-Gerald,  son  of  Edmund,  with  all  his  landes  in  the  County  of 
Kerry,  Corke,  Waterford  and  Tipperary,  to  hold  to  the  use  of  the 
said  Gerald  and  Dame  Eleanor  his  wife,  to  pay  his  debts,  to  give 
;^iooo  to  each  of  his  daughters  ;  then  to  hold  to  the  use  of  his 
heire  James,  with  remaincler  to  the  heires  of  his  father  James, 
further  remainder  to  tlie  heires  of  his  grandfather  John,  and  of 
his  great-grandfather  Thomas,  remainder  to  his  brother  Thomas, 
then  remainder  to  the  right  heires  of  his  son  James  for  ever. 

Witnesses  :  Morrish  Sheehan  and  Richard 

John  Synnott.  T-iston,  as  Attorneys  for  this  Erie, 

"Roger  Skiddy,  Warder  of      delivered  seizin  to  the  feoffes,  of 
Youghal.  the  lands  in  Kerry,  at  Tralee,  of 

William  Galway.  the  lands  in  Cork  at  Carrigcrohan, 

Thomas  Coppinger.  of  the  lands  in  Co.  Waterford,  at 

Richard  Oliver.  Mac-Kolpa    [Macollop]    and    of 

Edmund  Gould.  the  lands  in  Tipperaiy,  at  Balla- 

Charlcs  Bay.  dn.ghcd." 

It  goes  without  saying  that  it  lies  on  the  surface  of 
this  Deed  that  it  was  meant  to  avert  from  his  Family 
the  foreknown  consequences  of  the  Rebellion  he  medi- 
tated, spite  of  all  his  "fine  words"  of  loyalty  and  hatred 
of  "  traitours."  The  endorsement  shows  that  the  Govern- 
ment did  not  acknowledge  its  validity  ;  and  in  accord 
with  this,  when  his  son  James,  who  had  been  brought 
up  in  London,  was  sent  back  to  Ireland  in  1601,  to 
counteract  the  designs  of  his  cousin,  the  Sugan  Earl, 
he  went  as  "  RESTORED  in  blood  and  nobility,"  not  as 
inheriting  his  father's  estates. 


U 


APPENDIX.  497 

The  Countess  of  Desmond  is  spoken  of  throughout 
the  State-correspondence  of  the  period  as  "  ever 
lookinge  to  settle  alle  things  well  according  to  the 
English  manner  "  ;  and  the  terms  of  the  Deed  explain 
that  it  was  in  the  hope  of  being  able  to  rescue  her  only- 
son  from  the  whirlpool  of  ruin  and  confiscation  into 
which  her  husband  was  plunging,  she  was  induced  to 
give  him  up  to  the  Lord  Deputy  at  the  commencement 
of  the  troubles.  It  is  also  possible  that  an  additional 
motive  might  have  been  the  preservation  of  him  from 
that  "  hatred  of  Sir  John  of  Desmond,"  his  uncle, 
named  bitterly  in  the  Earl's  '  Defence.'  She  herself 
'  clave '  to  her  husband  "  for  better  for  w^orse,"  until 
at  long-last  she  found  him  utterly  self-willed  and  his 
fortunes  desperate. 

.  In  the  face  of  these  historical  and  authentic  Papers 
it  needcth  not  that  Englishmen  vindicate  the  forfeiture 
of  the  lands  ot  the  Earl  of  Desmond  or  their  distribu- 
tion among  the  "  Undertakers,"  of  whom  Edmund 
Spenser  and  Sir  Walter  Ralegh  were  the  greatest. 
From  inception  to  close  "  the-  Erie  "  was  in  complicity 
with  his  brothers  Sir  John  and  Sir  James  ;  and  beyond 
this  is  the  incontestable  Fact  that  Sanders,  the  Pope's 
agent,  and  most  able  and  active  mover  in  the  insur- 
rection, was  attached  to  Desmond's  person  as  long 
as  he  lived.  '  Pledges  '  (so-called)  of  '  loyaltj' '  and 
voluble  phrases  of  allegiance  were  falsified.  They 
were  scarcely  delivered  when  he  was  found  "  attacking 
the  English  camp  at  Rathkealc,  in  person,  on  two 
successive  nights,"  and  answering  the  appeal  of  Sir 
Nicholas  Maltbie,  the  English  victor  of  Connilloe 
(near    Limerick),  to    "  return    to    his     allegiance "    by 

I.  32 


498  APPENDIX. 

declaring  that  he  "owed  the  Queen  no  allegiance,  and 
would  no  longer  yield  her  obedience."  Evasions,  shifts, 
penitences,  alternated  with  defiance  and  insult,  culmi- 
nated in  the  proclamation  early  in  December  1579 
of  the  "  Great  Earl  "  as  an  "  outlawed  traitor."  That 
was  a  righteous  proclamation.  What  followed  on  the 
part  of  the  Earl  makes  our  blood  run  hot  as  we  read 
of  the  ravage  and  the  spoil  when  Desmond  unfurling 
his  standard  at  Ballyhowra  (in  Cork)  cried  "havoc." 
His  sacrilegious  outrages  at  Youghal,  wherein  cruelties 
were  perpetrated  by  him  that  drew  remonstrances 
from  the  very  Spaniards  in  his  army  as  they  pitifully 
"  parted  their  garments  "  to  cover  the  "  little  children  " 
stripped  in  wintry  cold  of  their  poor  'clokes.'  Through 
four  miserable  years  the  Desmond  Palatinate  was  sub- 
jected to  such  miseries  as  draw  down  an  involuntary' 
curse  on  the  memory  of  the  "  Great  Earl "  who  thus 
involved  his  wretched  '  vassals '  in  woes  so  terrible 
that,  as  Spenser's  Veiic  remains  to  tell,  they — with 
their  wives  and  children — followed  the  plundering 
army  beseeching  that  they  might  be  "  killed  by  the 
sword  "  rather  than  be  left  to  pine  in  famine.  The 
same  Vcuc  describes  the  natives  of  the  country  as 
"  creeping  out  of  the  woods  like  anatomies  of  death  " 
— as  "  feeding  on  carrion  " — as  "  not  sparing  to  scrape 
carcasses  from  the  graves  " — as  flocking  to  "  a  plot  of 
watercresses  and  shamrocks  as  to  a  feast  "  and  dying 
off  on  this  insufficient  nourishment,  "so  that  in  short 
space  there  was  none  almost  left,  and  a  most  populous 
and  plentiful  country  suddenly  left  void  of  man  and 
beast."  'i'hc:  Continuer  of  Hollinshed  confirms — 
"  Erom  one  end  of  Munster  to  the  other,  from  Water- 


W 


APPENDIX.  499 

forde  to  Smerwick,  a  distance  of  one  hundred  and 
thirty  miles,  no  man,  woman,  or  child  was  to  be  met 
except  in  the  townes  ;  nor  any  beast,  but  the  very 
wolves,  the  foxes,  and  such  like  ravening  beasts."  The 
"deep  damnation"  of  all  this  rests  on  the  memory 
of  the  "  Great  Earl "  of  Desmond,  not  on  England. 
And  so  the "  Forfeiture "  stands  justified  a  hundred 
times  over. 

It  must  never  be  forgotten  either  that  the  stern 
and  unfaltering  dealing  with  turbulent  Ireland  had 
this  inscribed  on  it — in  the  words  of  Lord  Grey — "  I 
have  never  taken  the  life  of  any,  however  evil,  who 
submitted."  This  holds  of  all.  It  holds  supremely 
of  the  scheme  of  'starving  out'  embodied  by  Spenser 
in  his  Veuc.  It  was  identical  with  a  Siege,  identical 
with  Germany  before  Paris  in  our  own  time.  Not  a 
county,  not  a  district,  not  a  town,  not  a  hamlet,  not  a 
household,  not  a  man,  but  on  'coming  in'  would  have 
received  "free  pardon"  and  protection.  It  is  mon- 
strous to  ignore  that  it  was  a  death-struggle,  in  which 
England's  life  was  at  stake  as  well  as  Ireland's 
England's  Future  as  well  as  Ireland's  Present.  It  is 
all  very  well  to  cull  or  coin  phrases  of  a  "Tamerlane 
policy,"  and  fling  into  shadow  the  kind  of  rebellion 
and  rebels  grappled  with.  I  am  far  from  defending  all 
the  ferocities  of  the  State-corre.spondcncc  of  the  period, 
and  I  am  not  blind  to  the  self-seeking  greed  of  too 
many  of  the  English  new  adventurers  and  colonizers  ; 
but  were  Rebellion  to  arise  to-day  in  Ireland  on  such 
lines  as  were  laid  in  Elizabeth's  time,  the  truest  mercy 
would  be  as  absolute  use  of  force  as  England's  resources 
could  command. 


500  APPENDIX. 

These  historical  Narratives  and  State-Papers,  besides 
their  Vindication  of  great  Englishmen  and  England, 
must  actualize  to  the  present-day  reader  what  a  respon- 
sible and  anxious  '  trust  '  it  was  to  be  either  Lord 
Deputy  or  Secretary  in  Ireland  at  such  a  time. 

M  :   ON   BRYSKETT'S  DISCOURSE  OF  CIVILL  LIFE. 
{Sec  Life,  p.  149.) 

The  'boke'  of  Bryskctt  was  first  unearthed  by  Todd 
{Life  before  Works,  8  vols.,  8vo,  1805),  and  he  must 
have  the  praise  of  the  happy  recovery.  The  following 
is  its  title-page — "  Lod.  Br."  representing  Lodowick 
Bryskett,  who,  it  will  be  remembered,  is  named  in  one 
of  the  Sonnets  of  the  Avioretti: — 

"  A  Discovrse  of  Civill  Life  :  Containing  the  Ethike 
part  of  Morall  Philosophic.  Fit  for  the  instructing  of 
a  Gentleman  in  the  course  of  a  vertuous  life.  By 
Lod.  Br.  London,  printed  for  William  Aspley.  1606. 
(4to.) 

It  is  dedicated  to  his  "  Singvlar  good  Lord,  Robert 
Earle  of  Salisbury,"  but  the  Discourse  itself  is 
described  as  "  Written  to  the  right  Honorable  Arthur, 
late  Lord  Grey  of  Wilton.  By  Lod.  Bryskett."  He 
acknowledges  Lord  Grey's  goodness  to  him,  and  con- 
tinues : 

"  Vox  wlieii  at  my  humble  sule  you  vouchsafed  to  graunt  me 
libertie  without  offence,  to  resigne  the  ofBce  which  I  then 
held  seven  yeeres,  as  Gierke  of  the  Councell,  and  to  with- 
draw myselfe  from  that  thanklesse  toyle  to  the  quietnes  of  my 
intermitted  studies,  I  must  needes  confesse,  I  held  my  selfe  more 
bound  unto  you  therefore,  then  for  all  other  the  benefits  which 
you  bestowed  upon  me,  and  all  the  declarations  of  honourable 


U 


APPENDIX.  501 

affection,  whereof  you  had  given   me  many  testimonies  before" 
(p.  2). 

He  thus  announces  the  occasion  of  his  '  Discourse  '  : — 

"The  occasion  of  the  discourse  grew  by  the  visitation  of 
certaine  gentlemen  comming  to  me  to  my  little  cottage  which  I 
had  newly  built  neare  unto  Dublin  at  such  a  time,  as  rather 
to  prevent  sicknesse,  then  for  any  present  griefe,  I  had  in  the 
springe  of  the  yeare  begunne  a  course  to  take  some  physicke 
during  a  few  dayes.  Among  which,  Doctor  Long  Primate  of 
Ardmacc'i,  Sir  Robert  Dillon  Knight,  M.  Dormer  the  Queenes 
Sollicitor,  Capt.  Christopher  Car  lei  I,  Capt.  Thomas  Norreis, 
Capt.  War  ham  St.  Legcr,  Capt.  Nicolas  Dawtrey,  and  M. 
Edmoitd  Spenser  late  your  Lordship's  Secretary,  and  Th.  Smith 
Apothecary"  (pp.  5-6). 

After    pleasant    badinage  and  grave    quips   by   the 

Primate    and    "  the   company,"    Bryskett    expresses    an 

ardent   desire    that   "  some   of   our   countrimen    would 

show  themselves  so  wel   affected  to  the  good  of  their 

countrie   ....   as  to  set  downe  in  English  the  precepts 

of  those  parts  of  Morall  Philosophy,  whereby  our  youth 

might  without  spending  of  so  much  time,  as  the  learning 

of  those  other  languages  require,   speedily  enter  into 

the  right  course  of  a  vertuous  life."      Then  he  adds  a 

personal  explanation — 

"  In  the  meane  while  I  must  struggle  with  those  bookes  which 
I  understand,  and  content  my  selfe  to  plod  upon  them,  in  hope 
that  God  (who  knoweth  the  sincerenesse  of  my  desire)  will  be 
pleased  to  open  my  understanding,  so  as  I  may  reape  that  profit 
of  my  reading,  which  I  travell  for"  (p.  25). 

But   he   has   his    eye   on   another  ;   and   now   EDMUND 
Spenser  is  introduced  : — 

"  Yet  is  there  a  gentleman  in  this  company,  whom  I  have  had 
often  a  purpose  to  intreate,  that  as  his  leisure  might  serve  him, 
he  would  vouchsafe  to  spend  some  time  with  me  to  instruct  me  in 
some  hard  points  which  I  cannot  of  my  selfe  understand  :  knowing 
him  to  be  not  onely  perfect  in  the  Greek  tongue,  but  also  very 
well  read  in  Philosophie,  both  morall  and  naturall.     Nevertheles 


502  APPENDIX. 

sucli  is  my  bashfulnes,  as  I  never  yet  durst  open  my  mouth  to 
disclose  this  my  desire  unto  him,  though  1  have  not  wanted  some 
hartning  thereunto  from  himselfe.  For  of  his  love  and  kindnes 
to  me,  he  encouraged  me  long  sithens  to  follow  the  reading  of 
the  Greeke  tongue,  and  offered  me  his  helpe  to  make  me  under- 
stand it.  But  now  that  so  good  an  oportunitie  is  offered  unto 
me,  to  satisfie  in  some  sort  my  desire ;  I  thinke  I  should  commit 
a  great  fault,  not  to  my  selfe  alone,  but  to  all  this  company,  if  I 
sh.ould  not  enter  my  request  rhus  farre,  as  to  move  him  to  spend 
this  time  which  we  have  now  destined  to  familiar  discourse  and 
conversation,  in  declaring  unto  us  the  great  benefites  which  men 
obtaine  by  the  knowledge  of  Morall  Philosophic,  and  in  making 
us  to  know  what  the  same  is,  what  be  the  parts  thei-eof,  whereby 
vcrtues  are  to  be  distinguished  from  vices  :  and  finally  that  he 
will  be  pleased  to  run  over  in  such  order  as  he  shall  thinke  good, 
such  and  so  many  principles  and  rules  thereof,  as  shall  serve  not 
only  for  my  better  instructio,  but  also  for  the  contentmet  and 
satisfaction  of  you  al.  For  1  nothing  doubt,  but  that  every  one 
of  you  will  be  glad  to  heare  so  profitable  a  discourse,  and  thinke 
the  time  very  wel  spent,  wherein  so  excellent  a  knowledge  shal 
be  revealed  unto  you,  from  which  every  one  may  be  assured  to 
gather  some  fruit,  as  wel  as  my  self.  Therfore  (said  I)  turning 
my  selfe  to  M.  Spenser,  It  is  you  sir,  to  whom  it  pertaineth  to 
shew  your  selfe  courteous  now  unto  us  all,  and  to  make  us  all 
beholding  unto  you  for  the  pleasure  and  profit  which  we  sliall 
gather  from  your  speeches,  if  you  shall  vouchsafe  to  open  unto  us 
the  goodly  cabinet,  in  which  this  excellent  treasure  of  vertues 
lieth  locked  up  from  the  vulgar  sort.  And  thereof  in  the  behalfe 
of  all,  as  for  my  selfe,  I  do  most  earnestly  intreate  you  not  to 
say  us  nay.  Unto  which  words  of  mine  every  man  applauding, 
most  with  like  words  of  request,  and  tlie  rest  with  gesture  and 
countenances  expressing  as  much,  M.  Spe)iser  answered  in 
this  manor. 

"  'fhough  it  may  seeme  hard  for  me  to  refuse  the  request  made 
by  you  all,  whom  every  one  alone,  I  should  for  manj'  respects  be 
willing  to  gratifie  :  yet  as  the  case  standeth,  I  doubt  not  but 
with  the  consent  of  the  most  part  of  you,  I  shall  be  excused  at 
this  time  of  this  taske  which  would  be  laid  upon  me.  For  sure  I 
am,  that  it  is  not  unknowne  unto  you,  that  I  have  already  under- 
taken a  work  teding  to  the  same  eifect,  which  is  in  heroical  verse, 
under  the  title  of  a  Paerie  Qt/eene,  to  represent  all  the  moral 
vcrtues,  assigning  to  every  virtue,  a  Knight  to  be  the  patron  and 
defender  of  the  same  :  in  whose  actions  and  feates  of  armes  and 
chivalry  the  operations  of  that  virtue,  whereof  he  is  the  protector, 
are  to  be  expressed,  and  the  vices  and  unruly  appetites  that 
oppose  themselves  against  the   same,   to   be  beate  downe   and 


ly 


APPENDIX.  503 

overcome.     Which  work,  as  I  have  already  well  cntred  into,  if 
God  shall  please  to  spare  me  life  that  I  may  finish  it  according 
to  mv  mind,  your  wish  (M.  Rryshctf^  will  be  in  some  sort  accom- 
plished, though  perhaps  not  so  effectually  as  you  could  desire. 
And  the  same  may  very  well  serve  for  my  excuse,  if  at  this  time 
I  crave  to  be  forborne  in  this  your  request,  since  any  discourse, 
that  I  might  make  thus  on  the  sudden  in  such  a  subject,  would 
be  but  simple,  and  little  to  your  satisfaction.    For  it  would  require 
good  advisement  and  premeditation  for  any  man  to  undertake  the 
declaration  of  these  points  that  vou  have  proposed,  containing  in 
effect  the  Kthicke  part  of  Morall  Philosophie.     Whereof  since  1 
have  tal.il  in  hand  to  discourse  at  large  in  my  poeme  before 
spoken,  I  hope  the  e.xpectation  of  that  work  may  serve  to  free  me 
at  this  time  from  speaking  on  that  matter,  notwithstanding  your 
motions  and  all  your  intreaties.     But  I  will  tell  yuu  howe  I  think, 
by  himselfe  he  may  very  well  excuse  my  speech,  and  yet  satisfie 
all  you  in  this  matter.    I  have  scene  (as  he  knoweth)  a  translation 
made    by    himselfe   out    of  the    Italian   tongue,    of  a   dialogue 
comprehending  all  the  Kthick  part  of  Moral  Philosophy,  written 
by  one  of  those  three   he  formerly  mentioned,   and   that   is  by 
Giraldi,  under  the  title  of  a  dialogue  of  civil  life.     If  it  please 
him  to  bring  us  forth  that  translation  to  be  here  read  among  us, 
or  otherwise  to  deliver  to  us,  as  his  memory  may  serve  him,  the 
contents  of  the  same;  he  shal  (I  warrant  you)  satisfie  you  all 
at  the  ful,  and  himselfe  wil  have  no  cause  but  to  thinke  the  time 
wel  spent  in  reviewing  his  labors,  especially  in  the  company  of 
so  many  his  friends,  v.-ho  may  thereby  reape  much  profit,  and 
the  translation  happily  fare  the  better  by  some  mending  it  may 
receive  in  the  perusing,  as  all  writings  else  may  do  by  the  ofte 
examinatio  of  the  same.     Neither  let  it  trouble  him,  that  I  so 
turne  over  to  him  againe  the  taske  he  wold  have  put  me  to  :  for 
it  falleth  out  fit  for  him  to  verifie  the  principall  part  of  all  this 
Apologie,  even  now  made  for  himselfe,  because  thereby  it  will 
appeare  that  he  hath  not  withdrawne  himself  from  the  service  of 
the  State,  to  live  idle  or  wholy  private  to  himselfe,  but  hath  spent 
some  time  in  doing  that  which  may  greatly  benefit  others,  and 
hath  served  not  a  little  to  the  bettering  of  his  owne  mind,  and 
increasing  of  his   knowledge,  though  he    for   modesty   pretend 
much  ignorance,  and  pleade  want  in  wealth,  much  like  some  rich 
beggars,  who  either  of  custom,  or  for  covetousnes,  go  to  begge  of 
others  those  things  whereof  they  have  no  want  at  home  "(pp. 25-8). 

Bryskett  proceeds — 

"  With  this  answer  of  M.  Spenser's,  it  seemed  that  all  the 
company   were   wel    satisfied ;    for  after    some    few    speeches, 


504  APPENDIX. 

whereby  I  hey  had  shewed  an  extreme  longing  after  his  worke 
of  the  Faerie  Qiiccne,  whereof  some  parcels  had  bin  by  some 
of  them  sene,  they  all  began  to  presse  me  to  produce  my 
translation  mentioned  by  M.  Spenser,  that  it  might  be  perused 
among  them  ;  or  else  that  I  sliould  (as  neare  as  1  could)  deliver 
unto  them  the  contents  of  tlie  same  "  (p.  28). 

And  so  Lodowick  went  for  his  'papers'  through  the 
"  courteous  force  "  of  the  '  company,'  and  the  MS.  was 
submitted.  It  forms  the  vokune  yclept  A  Discourse  of 
Civill  Life.  It  does  not  seem  to  have  been  observed 
that  Spenser  onward  takes  his  part  in  the  conversational 
remarks  on  the  Discourse,  albeit  SiR  RoBERT  DiLLON 
and  the  Lord  Primate  [Long]  are  the  chief  interlocutors, 
with  Dormer  and  Carleil,  and  others  subordinately. 

On  the  second  day  (out  of  the  three  days  given  to  the 
Discourse)  Captain  Dawtrey  hinted    that   mere  Platonic 


"Yea,"  said  he,  "let  not  our  dinner,  1  pray  you,  be  so  temperate 
for  Sir  Robert  Dillon's  words,  but  that  we  may  have  a  cup  of 
wine;  for  the  Scriptures  telleth  us  that  wine  gladdeth  the  heart  of 
man.  And  if  my  memory  faile  me  not,  I  have  read  that  the  great 
banket  of  the  Sages  of  Greece,  described  by  Plutarke,  was  not 
without  wine  ;  and  then  T  hope  a  Philosophical  dinner  may  be 
furnished  with  wine  ;  otherwise  I  will  tell  you  plainly,  I  had 
rather  be  at  a  camping  dinner  than  at  yours,  howsoever  your 
rerebanket  v;ill  haply  be  as  pleasing  to  me  as  to  the  rest  of  the 
company  "  (]).  49). 

We  are  told  then — 

"  Whereat  the  rest  laughing  pleasantly,  I  called  for  some  wine 
for  Captaine  Dazvtrey,  who  taking  the  glasse  in  his  hand,  held  it 
up  for  a  while  betwixt  him  and  the  window,  as  to  consider  the 
color  :  and  then  putting  it  to  his  nose  he  seemed  to  take  comfort 
in  the  odour  of  the  same  "  fbid.). 

The  Lord  Primate  resumed  the  conversation  playfully 
from  Captain  Dawtrey's  wine  and  action,  Spenser 
must   have   been    a   good  listener,    for    it  is  not  until 


APPENDIX.  505 

well  on  that   he   interposes.      Very  bright   and   vivid    is 
the  description  of  the  "  third  dayes  meeting  "  : — 

"  I  was  not  yet  fully  apparelled  on  the  next  morrow,  when  looking 
out  of  my  window  towards  the  citie,  I  might  perceive  the  com- 
panie  all  in  a  troupe  coming  together,  not  as  men  walking  softly 
to  spurt,  or  desirous  to  refresh  themselves  with  the  morning  deaw, 
and  the  sweete  pleasant  ayre  that  then  invited  all  persons  to 
leave  their  sluggish  nestes ;  but  as  men  earnestly  bent  to  their 
jomey,  and  that  had  their  heads  busied  about  some  matter  of 
greater  moment  then  their  recreation.  I  therefore  hasted  to 
make  me  ready,  that  they  might  not  rtnd  me  in  case  to  be  taxed 
by  them  of  drowsinesse,  and  was  out  of  the  doores  before  they 
came  to  the  house :  where  saluting  them,  and  they  having 
courteously  returned  the  good  morrowe  unto  me  ;  the  Lord 
Primate  asked  me  whether  that  company  made  me  not  afraide  to 
see  them  come  in  such  sort  upon  me  being  but  a  poore  Farmer  : 
for  though  they  came  not  armed  like  soldiers  to  be  cessed  upon 
me,  yet  their  purpose  was  to  coynic  upon  me,  and  to  eate  me  out 
of  house  and  home  "  (p.  157). 

Right  genially  did  the  Host  answer  ;  and  so  the 
'  Discourse '  was  resumed,  but  not  until  "  a  table 
furnished  "  had  been  cleared  of  its  viands.  Early  in 
the  conversation  we  read — 

"M.  ^^J^^wjfr  then  said:  If  it  be  true  that  you  say,  by  Philosophic 
we  must  learne  to  know  our  selves,  how  happened  it,  that  the 
Brachmain  men  of  so  great  fame  as  you  know  in  India,  would 
admit  none  to  be  their  schoUers  in  Philosophy,  if  they  had  not 
first  learned  to  know  themselves:  as  if  they  had  concluded,  that 
such  knowledge  came  not  from  Philosophie,  but  appertained  to 
some  other  skill  or  science  ?  "  (p.  163). 

Again — on  the  question  coming  up — "  It  is  there- 
fore no  good  consequence  to  say,  that  because  the 
passible  soulc  dieth,  therefore  the  possible  soule  likewise 
is  mortall,"  Spenser  breaks  in — 

"Yea  but  (said  M.  Spenser)  we  have  ixb  Aristotle,  that  the 
possible  understanding  suffereth  in  the  act  of  understanding : 
and  to  suffer  importeth  corruption ;  by  which  reason  it  should  be 
mortall  as  is  the  passible"  (p.  271). 


So6  APPENDIX. 

Bryskett  replies,  and  is  replied  to — 

"Why  (said  Master  Speitser),  doth  it  not  seeme,  \h-dX  Aristotle 
when  he  saith,  that  after  death  we  have  no  memorie,  that  he 
meant  that  this  our  understanding  was  mortall  ?  For  if  it  were 
not  so,  men  should  not  lose  the  remembrance  of  things  done  in 
this  life  "  (p.  272). 

And  again — following  the  Lord  Primate — 

"Yet  (saj'd  Master  Spenser)  let  me  aske  you  this  question  :  if 
the  understanding  be  immortal),  and  multiplied  still  to  the  number 
of  all  the  men  that  have  bene,  are,  and  shall  be,  how  can  it  stand 
with  that  which  Aristotle  telleth  us  of  multiplication,  which  (saith 
he)  proceedeth  from  the  matter  ;  and  things  materiall  are  always 
corruptible  ?  "  (p.  2"]^^). 

And  still  unsatisfied — 

"  But  how  Cometh  it  to  passe  (replied  Master  Spenser')  that  the 
soule  being  immortal!  and  impassible,  yet  by  experience  we  see 
dayly,  that  she  is  troubled  with  Lethargies,  Phrensies,  Melan- 
cholic, drunkennesse,  and  such  other  passions,  by  which  we  see 
her  overcome,  and  debarred  from  her  office  and  function  ?"(p.274). 

Finally — 

■'Why  (sayd  M.  Spenser),  doth  your  author  meane  (as  some  have 
not  sticked  even  in  our  dayes  to  affirme)  that  there  are  in  us  two 
several!  soules,  the  one  sensitive  and  mortall,  and  the  other  Intel- 
lective and  Divine?"  (p.  275). 

We  have  one  last  reference  to  Spenser — 
"  This  (loe)  is  as  much  as  mine  author  hath  discoursed  upon 
this  subject,  which  I  have  Englished  for  my  exercise  in  both 
languages,  and  have  at  your  intreaties  communicated  unto  you  : 
I  will  not  say  being  betrayed  by  M.  Spenser,  but  surely  cunningly 
thrust  in  to  take  up  this  taske,  wherby  he  might  shift  himselfe 
from  that  trouble"  (p.  278). 

And  so  we  read  in  conclusion  — 

"  Here  all  the  companie  arose,  and  giving  me  great  tliankes, 
seemed  to  rest  very  well  satisfied,  as  well  with  the  manner  as 
with  tlie  matter,  at  the  least  so  of  their  courtesie  they  protested. 
And  taking  their  leaves  departed  towards  the  Citie"  (p.  279). 

Earlier  in  the  book  {iit  supra)  we  have  another  notice- 


u 


APPENDIX.  507 

able  bit.  Plcasantl)-  dcscribin;^  their  invasion  of  Lodo- 
wick  Bryskett's  "  little  cottage "  as  to  make  "  coynie  " 
upon  him  "and  to  eate  him  out  of  house  and  home," 
or  to  "cesse"  as  soldiers  on  him,  the  Host  thus  met 
his  "companie"  and  incidentally  brings  before  us  their 
estimate  of  the  condition  of  Ireland  under  Lord  Grey: — 

"  To  whom  I  answered,  that  as  long  as  I  saw  Counsellers  in  the 
Companie,  I  neede  not  feare  that  any  such  unlawful  exactio  as 
coynie  should  be  required  at  my  hand :  for  the  lawes  had  suffi- 
ciently provided  for  the  abolishing  thereof.  And  though  I  knew 
that  among  the  Irishr>'  it  was  not  yet  cleane  taken  away,  yet 
among  such  as  were  ameynable  to  law,  and  civill,  it  was  not  used 
or  exacted.  As  for  souldiers,  besides  that  their  peaceable 
maner  of  coming  freed  me  from  doubt  of  cesse,  thanked  be  God 
the  state  of  the  realme  was  such  as  there  was  no  occasion  of 
burthening  the  subiect  with  them,  such  had  bin  the  wisedome, 
valour,  and  foresight  of  our  late  Lord  Deputie,  not  onely  in 
subduing  the  rebellious  subiects,  but  also  in  overcoming  the 
forreine  enemie  :  whereby  the  garrison  being  reduced  to  a  small 
number,  and  they  provided  for  by  hir  Maiestie  of  victual  at 
reasonable  rates,  the  poore  husbandman  might  now  eate  the 
labors  of  his  owne  hands  in  peace  and  quietnes,  without  being 
disquieted  or  harried  by  the  unruly  souldier. 

"  We  have  (said  sir  Robert  Dillon)  great  cause  indeed  to  thanke 
God  of  the  present  state  of  our  country,  and  that  the  course 
holden  now  by  our  present  Lord  Deputie, doth  promise  us  a  continu- 
ance if  not  a  bettering  of  this  our  peace  and  quietnesse.  My  Lord 
(rrey  hath  plowed  and  harrowed  the  rough  ground  to  his  hand  : 
but  you  know  that  he  that  soweth  the  seede,  whereby  we  hope 
for  harvest  according  to  the  goodnesse  of  that  which  is  cast 
into  the  earth,  and  the  reasonablenesse  of  times,  deserveth  no 
lesse  praise  then  he  that  manureth  the  land.  God  of  his  good- 
nesse graunt,  that  when  he  also  hath  finished  his  worke,  he  may 
be  pleased  to  send  us  such  another  Bayly  to  oversee  and  preserve 
their  labours,  that  this  poore  countrey  may  by  a  wel-ordered  and 
settled  forme  of  government,  and  by  due  and  equall  administra- 
tion of  iustice,  beginne  to  flourishe  as  other  Common-wealcs.  To 
which  all  saying  Amen,  we  directed  our  course  to  walke  up  the 
hill,  where  we  had  bene  the  day  before  ;  and  sitting  down  upon 
the  little  mount  awhile  to  rest  the  companie  that  had  come  from 
Dublin,  we  arose  againe,  and  walked  in  the  greene  way,  talking 
still  of  the  great  hope  was  conceived  of  the  quiet  of  the  countrey, 


5o8  APPENDIX. 

since  the  forrene  enemie  had  so  bin  vanquished,  and  the  domesticall 
conspiracies  discovered  and  met  withall,  and  the  rebels  cleare 
rooted  out ''  (pp.  158-9). 


N:  MR.  S.  EVANS  ON  A  "LOST  POEM"  BY  SPENSER. 
{See  Life,  p.  161.) 
En  passant,  the  fact  that  the  collected  "  Sixe 
Bookes  "  of  1596,  i.e.  the  Faery  Queen,  still  bore  in 
the  forefront  the  oricrinal  announcement  "  Disposed 
into  twelve  bookes  Fashioning  XII.  Morall  vertues," 
settles  the  ingenious,  but  somewhat  paradoxical  paper 
of  Mr.  Sebastian  Evans  entitled  "  A  Lost  Poem  by- 
Edmund  Spenser "  i^Macmillans  Magazine,  vol.  xlii., 
pp.  145-51).  The  whole  theory  is  that  the  "Two 
Cantoes  of  Mutabilitie "  and  the  two  stanzas  of 
"  Mutabilitie "  never  could  have  been  meant  to  form 
part  of  the  Faery  Queen,  on  these  grounds  : — 

"Whatever  may  have  been  Spenser's  wishes  and  intentions  when 
he  published  his  first  three  books  in  1590,  he  was  no  longer  of  the 
same  mind  when  he  published  his  six  books  in  1596.  The  Letter 
to  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  intimating  the  manifesto  of  his  design  is 
already  suppressed.  There  is  no  hint  throughout  the  volume 
that  the  author  considered  his  work  unfinished,  or  had  any  inten- 
tion of  adding  to  it.  The  poem  is  committed  to  the  world  as 
ended,  if  not  concluded,  and  a  careful  survey  of  the  internal 
evidence  discloses  no  promise  of  any  contemplated  completion. 
Had  Spenser  really  meant  to  finish  the  Faerie  Queene  on  the 
scheme  he  originally  sketched  out,  it  would  be  very  difficult  to 
account  for  such  an  omission,  which,  as  Spenser  superintended 
the  production  of  the  volume,  cannot  well  have  been  other  than 
intentional.  It  is  true  that  there  is  no  attempt  to  reduce  the 
various  parts  of  the  poem  into  a  connected  whole.  Such  a  task 
would  have  been  impossible"  (p.  146). 

As  simple  matter-of-fact,  every  single  statement 
here  is  historically  and  critically  inaccurate.  First,  as 
shown,  the    title-page  of  the  collective  edition  in  two 


"^y 


APPENDIX.  509 

volumes  of  1596  expressly  bears  that  the  Poem  was 
to  be  completed  in  "  xij  bookes."  Second,  the  Letter 
to  Ralegh  was  not  suppressed,  but  was  reproduced  in 
integrity  in  every  copy.  Third,  the  Poem  has  frequent 
postponements  of  description  and  incident  because  an 
after-place  must  be  found  for  them.  These  must 
suffice : — 

So  forth  he  went  his  way, 
And  with  him  eke  the  salvage  (that  whyleare 
Seeing  his  royall  usage  and  array 
Was  greatly  growne  in  love  of  that  brave  pere) 
Would  ncedes  depart ;  as  shall  declared  be  elsewhere. 

(B.  VI.,  c.  v.,  close). 

As  earlier  : — 

....  WTien  time  shall  be  to  tell  the  same. 

{Ibid.,  c.  v.,  1.  21). 

Then  conclusively — There  is  Sonnet  80  of  the 
Amoretti,  in  which  the  Poet  not  only  announces  the 
completion  of  the  "six  books,"  but  in  so  doing  confirms 
his  resolution  to  go  forward  with  the  other  six  if  he 
were  but  released  from  the  turmoil  of  his  love-chase. 
Thus  : — 

After  so  long  a  race  as  I  have  run 
through  Faery  land,  which  those  six  books  ccipile, 
give  leave  to  rest  me,  being  halfe  fordonne, 
and  gather  to  my  selfe  new  breath  awhile. 

Then  as  a  steed  refreshed  after  toyle, 
out  of  my  prison  I  will  breake  anew 
and  stoutly  will  that  second  worke  assayle, 
with  strong  endevor  and  attention  dew. 

This  was  also    but  the  continuance   of  Sonnet    33, 

wherein,  addressing  Lodowick  Bryskctt,  he  acknowledges 

scarcely  pardonable  delay  : — 

Great  wrong  I  doe,  I  can  it  not  deny 

to  that  most  sacred  Empresse  my  dear  dred, 
not  finishing  her  Queene  of  faery. 


5ro  APPENDIX. 

Further — In  the  great  Sonnet  to  Essex,  affixed  to 
the  Faery  Queen,  no  intention  could  have  been  more 
pronouncedly  made  than  this  : — 

When  my  muse,  whose  fathers  nothing  flitt 
Doe  yet  but  flagg,  and  lowly  learns  to  fly 
With  bolder  wing  shall  dare  alofte  to  sty 

To  the  last  praises  of  this  Faery  Qiiene, 
Then  shall  it  make  more  famous  memory 
Of  thine  Heroicke  parts.  (Vol.  VIII.,  p.  2,2^.) 

Fourth,  to  pronounce  it  "  impossible  "  to  the  Poet  to 
"  reduce  the  various  parts  of  the  poem  into  a  connected 
whole  "  is  idle  assertion.  Equally  unhistoric  and — 
must  I  say  frivolous  >.    is  this  : — 

"  In  1579  the  conception  of  the  poem  was  an  inspiration.     In 
1596  its  continuance  would  have  been  an  anachronism." 

But  it  was  'continued'  in  1596,  and  suppose  the 
other  books  had  been  ready  and  published  in  the  short 
interval,  how  could  '  anachronism '  ensue  as  between 
1596  and  1599  .''  Thus  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Sebas- 
tian Evans — himself  true  Singer  and  Critic — must  be 
summarily  dismissed  as  "  not  proven  "  and  disproven. 
But  I  do  not  mean  by  this,  that  it  is  not  still  open 
for  argument  whether  the  "  Two  Cantoes  of  Mutabilitie" 
and  the  two  stanzas  were  or  were  not  intended  by 
Spenser  to  be  incorporated  in  the  Faery  Queen.  I 
cannot  therefore  withhold  the  conclusion  of  this  notice- 
able paper : — 

"Surely  aflcr  being  practically  lost  to  the  world  for  more  than 
two  centuries  and  a  half,  it  is  high  time  that  the  'Two  Cantoes  of 
Mutabilitie'  should  at  last  be  recognised  not  as  a  virtually 
incongruous  and  only  half- intelligible  appendage  to  the  Fae^'ie 
.Queene,  but  as  one  of  the  noblest  independent  poems  of  the 
noblest  age  of  English  poetry." 


U 


APPENDIX.  511 

O  :  CRITICAL  ANALYSIS  OF  THE  AMORETTI. 
{See  Life,  p.  196.) 

Turning  to  the  Ainoretti*  the  opening  Sonnet  strikes 
a  key-note  of  absolute  passion.  For  he  writes  as  for 
herself  alone,  with  no  thought  of  others  seeing  or  hear- 
ing or  knowing.  His  single  idea  is  that  she  shall  be 
'  pleased  ' — opening  : — 

Happy  yc  leaves  when  as  those  lilly  hands, 
which  hold  my  life  in  their  dead  doing  might 
shall  handle  you  and  hold  in  love's  soft  bands, 
lyke  captiues  trembling  at  the  victor's  sight. 

And  happy  rymes  bath'd  in  the  sacred  brooke 
of  Helicon,  whence  she  derived  is. 

and  closing — 

Leaves,  lines,  and  rymes,  seeke  her  to  please  alone, 
whom  if  ye  please,  I  care  for  other  none. 

En  passant,  is  that  odd-looking  allusion  to  Helicon  a 
hint  at  her  name  Elizabeth  as  ^=  Helice  in  Sonnet  34 
— i.e.  Klisc  .'' 

In  Sonnet  2,  he  has  found  out  that  the  "  lamping 
eyes  "  of  the  first  Sonnet  can  burn  ;  that  she  is  "  that 
fayrest  proud "  and  "  soverayne  beauty."  He  is  by 
her  "  huge  brightnesse  dazed  "  in  Sonnet  3.  Sonnet  4 
is  noticeable  as  it  dates  the  commencement  of  the 
wooing  at  close  of  the  year  [1592]  and  begins  the 
new  year  with  January,  not  March — 

New  yeare  forth  looking  out  of  lanus  gate 
Uoth  seeme  to  promise  hope  of  new  delight ; 

and  she  is  invoked  to  partake  of  the  "  lusty  Spring's 
timely  howre  " — 

Then  you  faire  flowre  in  who  fresh  youth  doth  raine, 
prepare  your  selfe  new  love  to  entertaine. 

•  Vol.  IV.,  pp.  69—125. 


512  APPENDIX. 

"  We  do  not  read  five  sonnets "  (says  the  Penii 
Monthly,  as  above)  "  before  we  find  that  his  passion  is 
counselled  by  honour  and  admiration,  and  is  not  the 
spoiled  child  of  Desire  "  (p,  740). 

His   friends — as   in    the  case   of  "  Rosalind  " — have 

been  speaking  evil  of  her  hauteur  or  pride.      He  tells 

them    it    is    "  rudely "    done,    and    like   the    wounded 

shell-fish  that  heals  its  hurt  by  forming  a  pearl   over 

it,  he  persuades  himself  to  think  well  of  her  alleged 

'  portlinesse  ' — 

For  in  those  lofty  lookes  is  close  implide, 
Scorn  of  base  things  and  'sdeigne  of  foule  dishonour. 

and  again — 

Was  never  in  this  world  ought  worthy  tride  * 

without  some  spark  of  such  self-pleasing  pride  (Sonnet  5). 

The  "  rebellious  f    pride  "  continues  ;  but  he  is  patient 

and  persuasive  "  to    knit    the  knot  that  ever  shall   re- 

maine  "  (Sonnet  6).      He  pleads  with  her  (Sonnet  7)  to 

look  on  him  gently,  not  to  "  lowre  or  look  askew  " — 

for  then  he  exclaims- — 

Then  doe  I  die,  as  one  with  lightning  fyred. 

"  Lightly  come,  lightly  go  "   is   remembered,  and  so  he 

waits  and  waits.      Like  a  strain  of  dulcet  music  breaks 

in  Sonnet  8  to  her  as — 

More  then  most  faire,  full  of  the  living  fire 
Kindled  above  unto  the  maker  neere. 

He  now  takes  a  less  serious  turn,  and  plays  as  lovers 
are  wont  with  '  comparisons  '  that  were  '  odorous  '  and 
not  "  odious."  He  sweeps  sky  and  earth  and  the 
mines  of  diamonds  for  fitting  symbols  of  her  "  poure- 
full  eies  "  (Sonnet  9).  She  puts  him  in  a  frenzy  (not 
*  Proved  to  be  worthy.  f  =  rejecting,  disdainful. 


APPENDIX.  513 

"  fine  ")  with  her  holding-ofif  disdain  and  ".tormenting  " 
of  him  (Sonnets  10,  1 1,  and  12).  "Tyrannesse"  and 
"  crucll  warriour  "  escape  his  unwary  pen.  But  spite 
of  all  he  is  held  captive.  Sonnet  1 3  gives  us  this 
delicious  portraiture — 

In  that  proud  port,  which  her  so  goodly  graceth, 
whiles  her  faire  face  she  reares  vp  to  the  skie  : 
and  to  the  ground  her  cic-lids  lozv  embaseth, 
most  goodly  temperature  ye  may  descr}',* 

My  Id  htimblesse  niixt  zvith  awful  I  ?naiesty. 

He  had  been  "  beaten  off,"  or  recurring  to  his 
former  image  he  had  "the  siege"  of  his  obdurate  beauty 
"  abandoned  quite  "  :  that  is,  he  had  apparently  tried 
an  interspace  of  silence  and  absence.  Ikit  it  would 
not  do.  He  is  drawn  again  to  his  "  castcll,"  he  remem- 
bers that  such  arc  not  taken  on  "  the  first  assay,"  and 
so  he  will  collect  all  his  forces  of  "  playnts,  prayers, 
vowcs,  ruth,  sorrow,  and  dismay,"  and  again  seek  to 
take  it  (Sonnet  14). 

"  The  old  soldier,  the  Sire  de  iMontluc  had  said,  '  La  femme  qui 
ecoute,  comme  la  ville  qui  parkmente,  est  prete  de  se  rendre,' 
and  Spenser  would  have  the  trumpets  from  the  battlements  deliver 
fierce  and  continuous  defiance  long  before  they  sued  for  a 
parley"  {Perm  Motith/y,  p.  741). 

As  in  the  lipitlialamiuvi  he  names  the  "  merchants  " 
of  Cork,  so  in  Sonnet  15,  in  likening  his  love  to  all 
manner  of  "  prctious  things  "  in  gems,  he  addresses  the 
"  tradcfull  Merchants."  lint  he  passes  from  the  outward 
to  the  inward,  and  closes  finel)-  : — 

But  that  which  fairest  is,  but  few  behold, 
her  mind  adorned  with  virtues  manifold. 

In   Sonnet    16  he  commemorates  a   "one  day"  with 
•  Cf.  Shakespeare's  "best-tempered  pieces." 

I-  33 


5T4  APPENDIX. 

her,  and  tliough  he  does  not  express  it,  he  tells  how 
like  motes  in  a  sunbeam,  in  her  "  glauncing  sight," 
he  beheld  "  legions  of  loves  with  little  wings."  Alas, 
the  "  Damzell  "  made  him  captive  with  "  twincle  in  her 
eye,"  and  broke  Cupid's  "misintended  dart."  One  is 
thankful  for  this  touch  of  humour  "  with  twincle  in 
her  eye."  He  avows  that  it  is  utterly  vain  to  attempt 
"  the  glorious  pourtraict  of  that  Angel's  face  "  : — 

The  sweet  cye-glaunces,  that  like  arrowes  gHde, 

the  charming-  smiles,  that  rob  sencefrom  the  hart : 

the  lovely  pleasance,  and  the  lofty  pride, 

cannot  expressed  be  by  any  art.  (Sonnet  17.) 

The  "  Cuckow,  messenger  of  Spring " — and  by  the 
way,  young  Michael  Bruce  fetched  his  "  O  cuckoo, 
messenger  of  Spring,"  thence — "  his  trompet  shrill  hath 
thrise  already  sounded  "  to  warn  "  all  lovers  wayt  upon 
their  king,"  but  his  lady-love  comes  not  (Sonnet  19). 
So  far  from  coming,  she  as  a  '  lyonesse,'  nay,  "  more 
cruell  and  more  salvage  wylde,"  keeps  him  in  constant 
misery  and  vainly  suing  and  pursuing  (Sonnet  20). 
She  is  petulantly  mood-marked,  now  all  sunshine  and 
in  a  moment  all  cloud  : — 

.   .   .  with  one  looke  she  doth  my  life  dismay, 

and  with  another  doth  it  streight  recure, 

her  smile  me  drawes,  her  frowne  me  drives  away. 

(Sonnet  21.) 

A  Saint's  day  has  come  round,  a  "  holy  season " 
wherein  "  men  to  devotion  ought  to  be  inclynd,"  and 
so  he  bethinks  him  this  for  his  "  sweet  Saynct  some 
service  fit  will  find  "  (Sonnet  22).  She  is  next  more 
unattainable  and  volatile  and  provocative  than  ever. 
He   thought  he   had   her  love  ;  but   on    a  sudden  h<? 


^ 


APPENDIX.  515 

discoveis  that  all  his  wooini^  has  been  a  "  Penelope's 
web  " — 

for  with  one  lookc  she  spils  that  long  I  sponne, 
and  with  one  word  my  wliole  year's  work  doth  rend. 

(Sonnet  2^.) 

In  Sonnet  24  she  is  "a  new  P.mJora."  In  Sonnet  25 
he  is  "  in  the  depths,"  and  cries — 

How  loni^  shall  this  lyke  dyini^  lyfe  endure, 
And  know  no  end  of  her  owne  myseiy  : 
but  wast  and  weare  away  in  tormes  unsure, 
t\vi\t  feare  and  hope  depending  doubtfully. 

Shakespeare  ("  terms  unsure  ")  and  Coleridge  ("  life  in 
death  ")  had  read  this  Sonnet.  There  comes,  however, 
a  '•  but  '  ("  much  virtue  in  a  but  ")  : — 

But  yet  if  in  your  hardned  brest  ye  hide 
a  close  intent  at  last  to  shew  me  grace  : 
then  all  the  woes  and  wrecks  which  I  abide, 
as  meanes  of  blisse  I  gladly  wil  embrace. 

He  recovers  from  his  deathly  despondency,  and  in  a 
gracious  Sonnet  (26)  thinks  of  how  the  "  rose  is  sweet," 
but  that  "  it  growes  upon  a  brcere,"  and  so  with  all. 
There  is  an  abatement  in  everything.  Hence  he 
will  bear  the  "  little  paine  "  over  against  the  "  endlesse 
pleasure."  liut  another  ebullition  of  feminine  vanity 
because  of  her  beauty  has  stung  him,  and  he  dons 
the  monk's  cowl  and  preaches  of  '  death  '  and  the 
charnel-house  that  shall  devour  all  the  "  fleshe's 
borrowd  fjiyre  attire,"  and  half-reproachfully,  half- 
spitefully  hints  that  his  verse  "that  never  shall  expyre  " 
will  be  all  that  shall  keep  memory  of  her  charms 
(Sonnet  27). 

As  sudden  as   her  disdain  is   her  ruth.      The  wooer 
finds  himself  in  her  presence,  and  she  has  actually  put 


5i6  APPENDIX. 

into  the  splendour  of  her  golden  hair  his  badge  of  a 
"  laurel  leaf."  It  rekindles  the  dim-burning  lamp  of 
hope  — 

The  laurell  leafe  which  )'ou  this  day  doe  weare 

g-ives  me  great  hope  of  your  relenting-  mynd  (Sonnet  28). 

But  with  classical  aptness  he  thereupon  bids  her  beware 

of  Daphne's  fate.     The   mood   is  changed — and  when 

next  he  offers  a  '  bay  '  leaf  the  "  stubborne  damzell  doth 

deprave  "  his  "  simple  meaning  with  disdaynful  scorne." 

And   yet  he   cannot   but  yearn   after  her, — if  she  will 

only   accept   him   as   her   "  faithfuU    thrall,"  he  will  "  in 

trump  of  fame  "  blazon  her  "  triumph  "  : — 

Then  would  I  decke  her  head  with  glorious  bayes 

and  fill  the  world  with  her  victorious  prayse  (Sonnet  29). 

Sonnet    30   likens  his   'love'   to  "  yse "  and  himself  to 

"  fyre,"  and  he  sports  with  the  conceit  of  the  miracle — 

that  tire  which  all  things  melts,  should  harden  yse. 

In    Sonnet    3  1    she  is  once  more  "  hard   of   hart,"    and 

proud   and   cruel,  and  her  "  pryde   depraves   each  other 

better  part."      He  has  been   at  the   village-blacksmith's 

to  have  his  horse  shod,  and  he  thinks  how  the  '"  payne- 

full  smith  "  that  with  "  force  of  fervent  heat  " 

the  hardest  yron  soone  doth  mollif)- 
would  have  no  success  with  her  who 

harder  growes  the  harder  she  is  smit  (Sonnet  }^2). 
He   has    been    a — fool,    a    wrong-doer.      His   immortal 
task   of   the  completion   of  his   Faery   Queen  has   been 
thrust    aside.       He    is    neglecting    his    "  most     sacred 
Empresse,"  his  "  dear  dred,"  by  not  finishing  the  Poem 

that  mote  enlarge  her  living  prayses  dead. 
But  he  appeals  to  his  friend  Lodowick  Bryskett,— who 


U 


APPENDIX.  517 

evidently  had  been  reminding-  him  of  what  was  eagerly 

l«X)ked  for, — whether  it  was  possible,  tossed  and  turmoiled 

as  he  was  in  "  troublous  fit,"  to  sit  down  to  so  "  tedious 

toyle  "  {=  prolonged  toil) — (Sonnet  32). 

He  has   lost  sight  of  his  guiding  '  star,'  and   is  being 

driven  about  and  out  of  course  in   his   Life's  voyage, 

and  can  only  hope  against  hope  that  his  "  lodestone," 

his  Helice,  will  "  shine  again  "  and  "  looke  "  on  him — 

Till  then  I  wander  carefull,  comfortlesse, 
in  secret  sorrowe  and  sad  pensivenesse. 

At  this  point  I  would  observe  that  in  this  Sonnet  (34), 

as    in    many  others,   there    are    incidents    and    realistic 

records  that  never  would  have  suggested  themselves  to 

the  Poet.      To  the  man,  the  lover,  the\'  came  because 

they  were   not  fiction,  but  fact.      This  holds  broadly   of 

the  Auiorclti.      Neither   in   web   nor  woof  are  they    of 

the  stuff  of  mere   imagination.      There  are   iridescences 

of  imagination  and  of  fancy  as  inevitable  as  those  on 

a  dove's  neck  or  peacock's  crest   by  the   mere   act  of 

movement  ;  but  these  show  because  the  man  and  lover 

is  also  a  born  poet. 

She  is  the  one  object  of  his  "  hungry  eyes,"  but  he  is 

a   Narcissus  "whose    eyes  him    starv'd "    (Sonnet    35). 

He    again    strikes   a   deeper  and    tenderer  note.      The 

long  delay  is  killing  him  ;  and  he  pleads — 

.   .  .  when  yc  have  shewed  all  c.xtremilyes 
then  thinke'how  little  glory  ye  have  gayned— 

and  again — 

But  by  his  death  which  some  perhaps  will  mone 
ye  shall  condemned  be  of  many  a  one  (Sonnet  36). 

She   is  coquettishly  binding  her  "golden  tresses"  in  a 
"  net  of  gold," 


5i8  APPENDIX. 

.   .   .  and  with  sly  skill  so  cunningly  them  dresses 
[that]  that  which  is  gold  or  heare,  may  scarce  be  told — 

and  he  calls  on  his  '  eyes  '  to  beware  how  they  '  stare  ' 

henceforth  too  rashly  on  that  guileful  net  (Sonnet  t,'^). 

He  is  unable  by  all  his  "poetic  pains,"  which  "was 
wont  to  please  some  dainty  eares,"  to  allure  her.  Arion 
won  the  'dolphin'  by  his  "sweet  musick,  which  his 
harpe  did  make,"  but  she  is  deaf  to  him,  whatever 
'skill'  he  shows  (Sonnet  38).  So  too  of  '  Orpheus  ' 
in  Sonnet  44.  But  immediately  one  "  smile,  daughter 
of  the  Oueene  of  love  "  vouchsafed  "  rapt "  him  "  with 
ioy  resembling  heavenly  madnes "  (Sonnet  39).  He 
h'ngcrs  tenderly  and  softly  on  the  memory  of  that 
'  smile,'  comparing  it  "  unto  the  fayre  sunshine  in 
somers  day"  arisen  on  his  "storme  beaten  heart"  (Sonnet 
40,  harking  back  to  Sonnet  16).  But  the  old  caprices 
return,  and  she  is  'cruell'  as  ever  "to  an  humbled 
foe"  perplexingly  (Sonnet  41).  Yet  must  he  love  on, 
and  seeks  that  she  will  him  "  bynd  with  adamant 
chayne  " — the  '  chayne  '  being  marriage,  "  L©ve!s  linked 
sweetness  long  drawn  out,"  as  Mr.  Harrold  Littledale 
has  punningly  written  me  (Sonnet  42).  He  knows  not 
how  to  be  silent,  for  that  his  "  hart  will  breake,"  and 
he  knows  not  how  to  "  speake,"  for  that  will  "  her  wrath 
renew."  He  will  '  try '  to  '  plead  '  with  his  eyes  in 
Love's  "  learned  letters  " — 

Which  her  deep  wit,  that  true  harts  thought  can  spel 
wil  soon  conceive,  and  learne  to  construe  well  (Sonnet  ^3). 

Evidently  the  Wooer  had  a  profound  sense  of  her 
intellectual  capacity '  co-equal  with  his  admiration  of 
her  bewitching  beauty  "  of  feature  "  —as  with  Petrarch's 


APPENDIX.  519 

"In  alto  intcUetto  un   puro  core"  (=^  highest  intellect 

with   the    purest    heart).       He  supplicates    the   '  lady ' 

that   she  will   '  leave '    in    her  "  glasse    of  christal  "  or 

her  looking-glass,  her   "  goodly  selfe    for  evermore  to 

view,"   and  rather  see  her  "  semblant  trcw  "  within   his 

'hart'  (Sonnet  45).      He  had  to  keep  the  "numbered 

dayes "    during   which     his    visits    were    to    last,    and 

when  their  date  was  expired   she  sent  him   about   his 

business — 

When  my  abodes  prefixed  time  is  spent 

My  crucll  fayre  streight  bids  me  wend  my  way. 

Even  in  the  face  of  a  "hideous  storme  "  he  must 
forth.  We  shall  give  Elizabeth  the  benefit  of  the 
doubt  of  the  so-called  "  hideous  storme."  She  was 
probably  weather-wiser  than  the  Poet  (Sonnet  46). 
One  has  a  curious  feeling  in  actualizing  this  chit  of 
a  maiden  thus  ordering  about  imperiously  the  im- 
mortal Singer  of  the  Faery  Queen.  Her  eyes  are  at 
their  old  wickedness,  albeit  looking  as  smiling  and 
lovely  as  ever  (Sonnet  47).  He  has  been  pretty 
hard  upon  her  of  late,  and  she  avenges  herself  by 
writing  him  that  his  last  Sonnet,  or  a  Sonnet  and 
Letter,  she  had  flung  into  the  fire — unread.  To 
openly  accuse  one's  love  of  guile  and  of  deliberately 
snaring  men  for  her  own  glor}-,  brought  the  accuser 
— all  Jurists  agree — within  the  utmost  pains  and 
penalties  of  Cupid's  statute  de  licrctico  co}nburendo  in 
that  case  made  and  provided — and  so  he  bows  to 
the  sentence  of  ignition  of  his  "  innocent  paper  " 
(Sonnet  48).  Her  "imperious  eyes"  are  still  doing 
their  terrible  work.  He  implores  that  they  shall  be 
turned  on  '  enemyes,'  not  "  on  him  that  never  thought 


520  APPENDIX. 

her  ill "  (Sonnet  49).  He  is  '  sick  '  by  his  "  hart's 
wound  "  and  of  his  "  bodie's  greife,"  and  is  visited 
by  his  'leach'  to  "  apply  fit  medicines"  (Sonnet  50). 
He  would  "  throw  physic  to  the  dogs "  if  his  "  lyfe's 
Leach"  would  but  "minister  to  a  mind  diseased" 
(^=  dis-eased).  Sonnet  5 1  avows  that  he  was  "  un- 
trainde  in  lover's  trade  " — accentuating  '  trade  '  ;  for 
his  love  was  passion,  aspiration,  devotion,  no  "  buy- 
ing and  selling"  as  of  "  fayrest  images"  fashioned 
of  marble.  He  will  go  on  hoping.  The  intervals 
between  visits  seemed  long,  and  to  imprison  him  "  to 
sorrow  and  to  solitary  painc."  This  is  the  oppres- 
sive thought  as  '  homeward  '  he  from  "  her  departs." 
One  is  thankful  to  alight  on  that  '  homeward '  as 
written  of  Kilcolman  (Sonnet  52).  There  is  no 
'  artifice '  here.  The  absences  were  utterly  real  and 
utterly  trying.  She  is  a  '  Panther,'  or  the  Poet  has 
been  reading  Lyly's  Captives,  and  appropriates  the 
metaphor  (Sonnet  53).  He  thinks  in  his  solitude 
of  the  '  Theatre '  of  my  Lords  Leicester  and  Essex 
within  which  he  had  seen  Comedy  and  Tragedy. 
Plis  love  is  a  spectator  "  that  ydly  sits."  He 
stingingly  pronounces  her  immobility,  to  prove  her 
"no  woman,  but  a  sencelesse  stone"  (Sonnet  54). 
There  was  jealous  love-wrath  there.  He  is  troubled 
and  puzzled  afresh  by  her  "  cruell  faire,"  the  beauty 
so  beautiful,  the  cruelty  so  relentless.  He  cannot 
solve  of  what  element  or  substance  she  was  '  made.' 
He  ends  with  the  '  skye,'  and  closes  another  Sonnet 
(55)  by  beseeching  that 

sith  to  heaven  ye  lykened  are  the  best 
be  lyke  in  mercy  as  in  all  the  rest 


APPENDIX.  S2I 

Still  "  cruell  ainl  unkind  "  as  '  tygre,'  and  "  [)roud  .iiui 
pitilesse  "  as  a  '  stormc,'  and  "hard  and  obstinate"  as 
"  rocke  amidst  the  raging  floods,"  which  '  wrecks  '  the 
ship  "of  succour  desolate"  (Sonnet  56).  He  calls 
a  truce  from  his  "  sweet  warriour "  that  all  his 
wounds  may  be  healed  (Sonnet  57).  She  has  been 
urging  that  she  was  all-in-all  to  herself  and  needed 
no  '  help  '  from  him  or  an}-.  He  once  more  preaches 
a  small  sermon  of  vanitas  vanitatiim  (Sonnet  5S). 
She  continues  in  this  "  selfc  assurance,"  and  he  cleverly 
turns  it — 

Most  happy  she  that  most  assured  doth  rest, 

but  he  most  happy  who  such  one  loves  best.  (Sonnet  39.) 

Sonnet  60  is  biographically  of  supreme  importance 
as  fixing  his  age — as  seen  earlier  (Chap.  II.,  p.  i ). 
He  is  penitent  and  suppliant  before  his  '  Idoll,'  she 
"of  the  brood  of  Angels,"  and  meekly  recalls  his 
"  rash  blames  " — 

Such  heavenly  formes  ought  rather  worshipt  be, 

then  dare  be  lov'd  by  men  of  meane  degree.  (Sonnet  61.) 

Another  new  year  has  arrived,  and  he  prays — 

So  let  us,  which  this  chaunge  of  weather  vew, 
chaunge  eeke  our  mynds  and  former  lives  amend. 

(Sonnet  62.) 

Each  is  to  forgive  whatever  needs  forgiveness.  At 
long-last  he  has — hope  : 

After  long  stormes  and  tempests  sad  assay, 
which  hardly  I  endured  heretofore  : 
in  dread  of  death  and  daungerous  dismay, 
with  which  my  silly  barke  was  tossed  sore, 

I  doe  at  length  descry  the  happy  shore, 
in  which  i  hope  ere  long  for  to  arryve. 


522  APPENDIX. 

He  exults  in  the  prospect  of  "  the  ioyous  safety  of  so 

sweet  a  rest"  (Sonnet  63).     And  so  now  he  will  have 

"all  the  little  Loves  clap  their  hands  for  joy;  she  yields  indeed,  and 
disdain  and  indifference  and  long  reserve  are  swept  away  in  the 
rush  of  a  happy  passion.  Struggle,  fear,  doubt  and  despair  melt 
and  are  lost  in  the  serene  air  which  breathes  round  the  two,  the 
poet  and  his  love  ;  he  has  no  reproaches,  she  no  reproaches  to 
offer"  {The  Peiui  Monthly,  p.  746). 

He  has  now   more  than   interchange  of  letters  and 
sonnets    and    "  sweetc    speche."      He    has    to    tell    of 

'  kisses  ' :  — 

Comming  to  kisse  her  lyps,  (such  grace  I  found) 
me  seemd  I  smelt  a  gardin  of  sweet  fiowres. 

(Sonnet  64.) 

He  enumerates  the  '  flowrcs  '  of  this  his  '  gardin.'  It 
has  been  complained  that  the  comparisons  arc  "common- 
place," and  that  there  is  lack  of  "  floral  accuracy."* 
Granted:  but  it  is  the  sweet  'common-place'  that 
never  grows  stale,  the  bringing  together  into  the  celes- 
tial (not  terrestrial)  '  gardin  '  of  her  '  feature  '  the  old 
old  favourites  of  "  Gillyflowres  "  and  "  Pincks  "  and 
"  Strawberries  "  and  "  Cullambynes  "  and  "  yong  lesse- 
mynes."  As  for  lack  of  "  floral  accuracy,'  it  is  not 
wanted  here.  Let  it  be  marked  the  '  kisse '  was  not 
of  cheek  but  of  '  lyps,'  There  follows  a  bright,  pure, 
sweet,  gracious  strain  (Sonnet  65),  worthy  of  a  place  in 
the  Epitlialainiuui  itself.      It  thus  opens  : — 

The  doubt  which  ye  misdeeme,  fayre  love,  is  vainc  ; 
that  fondly  feare  to  loose  your  liberty, 
when  loosing  one,  two  liberties  ye  gayne, 
and  make  him  bond  that  bondage  earst  dyd  fly. 

Master  Spenser  (relatively)  long  years  before  (1578-9) 

had  sought  his  "  Rosalind,"  and — as  we  have  seen — 

"  Mr.  Palgrave's  Essays,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  Ixx.wiii. 


U 


APPEXDIX.  523 

there  was  at  least  one  other  in  15  So  whom  Ilarvcy 
slyly  if  not  mischievously  called  "  altera  Rosalindula  "  ; 
but  ever  since  then  he  had  shunned  marriage.  Not 
until  he  met  his  Elizabeth  had  he  thought  of  that 
'  chayne.' 

If  there  were  momentary  doubt  or  maidenly  hesitancy 
in  Sonnet  65,  in  the  66th  she  has  surrendered  abso- 
lutely. Very  modest,  even  lowly,  is  the  Lover-poet's 
infinite  sense  of  her  condescension  in  accepting  him. 
The  long  "  weary  chace  "  is  ended,  the  "  gentle  deare  " 
(play  on  'deer  '  and  'dear')  returned  by  his  way  : — 

There  she  beholdini;  me  with  mylder  lookc. 
souf^ht  not  to  fly,  but  fearelesse  still  did  bide : 
till  I  in  hand  her  yet  halfe  tremblin),'  tooke, 
and  with  her  owne  goodwill  her  fyrmly  tydc.  (Sonnet  67.) 

We    have    now    a    "  higher    strain " — a    grave,     awed, 

adoring,  supplication  to  that 

Most  glorious  Lord  of  lyfe  that  on  this  day 
Didst  make  Thy  triumph  over  death  and  sin  : 

and  closing  with  music  rather  than  mere  words : — 

So  let  us  love,  deare  love,  lyke  as  we  ought, 
love  is  the  lesson  which  the  Lord  us  taught.  (Sonnet  68.) 

"  Famous  warriours  of  the  anticke  world  "  were  wont  to 

"erect  trophees,"  and  he  bethinks  him   how  he   shall 

"  record  the   memor)'  "  of  his  "  love's  conquest  "    ("  my 

love's  conquest  ").     He  answers  proudly  : — 

Even  this  verse  vowd  to  eternity, 

shall  be  thereof  immortall  monument : 

and  tell  her  prayse  to  all  posterity, 

that  may  admire  such  wodd's  rare  wonderment. 

(Sonnet  60.) 

He  is  eager  to  have  the  marriage-day  fixed,  and  sends 
Spring,   "  the   herald    of  Love's    mighty    king,"    as    his 


524  APPENDIX. 

ambassador  (Sonnet  70).  She  has  been  showing  him 
her  "  drawen  work  "  of  a  bee  and  a  spider,  and  very 
deftly  does  he  accept  the  symbols,  adding  : — 

But  as  your  worke  is  woven  all  above 

with  woodbynd  flowers  and  fragrant  Eglantine, 
so  sweet  your  prison  you  in  time  shall  prove  .... 

And  all  thensforth  eternall  peace  shall  see 

betweene  the  Spyder  and  the  gentle  Bee.    (Sonnet  71.) 

Miiiopotinos  is  recalled.  He  must  sing  of  that 
"soverayne  beauty"  that  he  has  won  for  his  very  own, 
and  that  has  brought  down  "heven's  blisse"  to  earth 
(Sonnet  72).  His  '  hart  '  captived  "  in  the  fayre 
tresses  "  of,  her  "  golden  hay  re  "  like  as  "  a  byrd  "  is 
perpetually  "flying  away"  to  her  (Sonnet  73).  Sonnet 
74  celebrates  his  three  Elizabeths — mother,  queen, 
love  ("  my  lives  last  ornament  ").  They  have  been 
together  by  the  sea-shore.  He  has  written  her  name 
"  upon  the  strand,"  and  a  first  and  second  time  the 
'  waves '  came  and  "washed  it  away."     What  said  she  .-' 

Vayne  man,  sayd  she,  that  doest  in  vaine  assay, 
a  mortall  thing  so  to  immortalize  (Sonnet  75) 

— very  prettily  and  modestly  said.  But  he  re-asserts 
how  she  "  shall  live  by  fame  "  in  her  poet-husband's 
verse — 

our  love  shall  live,  and  later  life  renew. 

Similarly  Shakespeare  asks  in  his  sonnet — 

For  who  to  frail  mortality  doth  trust  ? 

Sonnets  "j^  and  'j'j — as  occasionally  others — are 
warm  if  still  pure. 

"  He  is,  however,  very  outspoken  in  a  way  which  the  manners 
of  to-day  quite  forbid,  and  though  we  are  probably  right,  from  a 
practical  point  of  view,  in  saying  fie  when  we  do,  it  is  nevertheless 
really  like  drawing  in  a  freer  air  to  escape  to  the  Tudor  age,  from 


u 


APPENDIX.  5J5 

a  squeamish  ^^cnoration  which,  divorcing'  the  spirit  from  the  body, 
damns,  as  did  the  Manichican  of  old,  half  the  natural  motmns  i.f 
flesh  and  blood.  The  poet  looks  forth  upon  the  j^raciouM  htnt.i^e 
which  he  is  soon  to  possess,  and  how  ),'oodly  it  all  seems  to  him 
he  never  hesitates  to  tell.  Do  not  mistake,  however :  it  i.s  of  her 
virtuous  mind  of  which  he  has  by  far  the  most  to  sinjf  "  i^The 
Penn  Monthly,  pp.  746-7). 

But   our  generation    has  not  forbidden   but   welcomed 

Dante  G.  Rossetti's  House  of  Life  ! 

He  is  still  '  lackyng'  his  "love,"  and  goes  wcaryingly 

"  from    place  to  place "    like  "  a  yong  fawnc  that  late 

hath  lost  the  hynd  "  (Sonnet  78).      He  has  a  vision  of 

her  "  exceedinge  lovlinesse,"  and  e.xults  that  "  men  call 

her  fayre  "  ;  but  her  "  vertuous  mind  "  is  "  much  more 

praysed"  of  hitn — 

That  is  true  beautie  :  that  doth  arj^e  you 
to  be  divine  and  borne  of  heavenly  seed  : 
deriv'd  from  that  fayre  Spirit,  from  whome  al  true 
and  perfect  beauty  did  at  first  proceed.  (Sonnet  79.) 

It  is  to  the  praise  of  Spen.ser  that  he  thus  '  sang  ' 
recurringly  after  he  had  won  his  '  love.'  Many  men 
might  have  said  this  while  wooing  who  would  have 
scoffed  at  it  when  they  had  won.  He  is  true  and  pure, 
and  links  on  this  79th  with  his  13th  and  27lh  Sonnet.s, 
and  again  his  ecsta.sy  breaks  forth  in  the  noble  83rd 
Sonnet,  "  a  thing  of  beauty  and  a  joy  for  ever." 

He    loiters    over   his    Faery   Queen    since    the    "  si.x 
books  "  were  finished.      He  must  take  re.st — 

To  sport  my  muse  and  sin;,'  my  love's  sweet  praise. 

(Sonnet  80.) 

Then  flows  forth  another  rapturous  verse-portrait — 
Fayre  is  my  love,  when  her  fayre  golden  hcarcs 

with  the  loose  wynd  waving 

fayre  when  the  rose  in  her  red  cheekes  appcares 
or  in  her  eyes  the  fyre  of  love  doih  sparke, 


526  APPENDIX. 

but  "  fayrest  of  all  "  when  she  apeaks  "  her  words  so 
wise"  (Sonnet  8i).  He  wishes  "the  equall  hevens  " 
had  among-  her  man\-  endowments  enabled  her  "by 
hevenly  wit  "  to  "  invent  verse."  But  as  she  "  mote 
not,"  he  shall  set  her  "immortall  prayses  forth" 
(Sonnet  82).  He  chari^^cs  himself  to  "let  not  one 
sparkc  of  filth}- lustfull  fyrc  breake  out"  that  might  her 
"sacred  peace  molest"  (Sonnet  84).  He  has  been 
reading  his  love-sonnets  to  some  friend,  and  he  tells 
him  he  did  but  flatter  ;  but  he  denies  with  "  heavenly 
fury"  the  impeachment  (Sonnet  85).  (Compare 
Shakespeare's  Sonnet,  "  That  thou  art  blamed.") 

I  pause  here — I  think  it  is  simply  impossible  to  go 
beyond  Sonnet  85  of  the  Amorctti  as  addressed  to 
Elizabeth.  The  restfulness  of  success,  even  triumph,  is 
fitly  brought  to  a  music-like  ending,  when  we  thus  take 
this  Sonnet  as  the  last. 

Her  worth  is  written  with  a  .fjolden  quill  : 
that  me  witli  heavenly  fury  doth  inspire, 
and  my  ^''lad  mouth  witli  her  sweet  prayses  fill, 

is  a  finale.  Pit}'  that  ever  the  Poet  gathered  together 
the  others  that  follow.  They  seem  to  me  to  bear  on 
surface  and  in  substance  their  own  evidence  of  having 
been  inspired  by  a  different  object  and  under  wholly 
different  circumstances.  Moreover  the  85  Sonnets  of 
the  Amorctti  bring  us  well  on  into  1594,  and  thus 
leave  no  chronological  room  for  a  quarrel  and  estrange- 
ment so  utter  as  Sonnet  ^6  would  demiand.  I  ask 
the  Reader,  therefore,  to  stop  short  at  Sonnet  85  as 
his  wooing  of  his  Wife  ;  and  to  apply  all  thereafter  to 
an  earlier  love-passion  and  agitation,  in  other  words 
to  Rosalind  and    Menalcas,    or    mayhap    '  altera   Rosa- 


APPENDIX.  5i7 

lindula.'  Thinc^s  do  stranijcly  duplicate  themselves, 
no  doubt,  but  one  can  scarcely  conceive  another 
'Menalcas'  or  meddler  (again)  coming  between  Spenser 
and  his  love  to  stir  up  "coles  of  yre."  Kqually  im- 
probable is  it  that  a  *  curse '  so  urgent  as  in  Sonnet  86 
(cf.  Shakespeare's  Sonnets  on  absence)  ever  could  have 
been  so  quickly  lifted  off  as  to  admit  of  reconcilia- 
tion. Moreover,  instead  of — as  chronologicallj-  it  must 
have  been — a  few  weeks'  or  at  most  months'  interval 
between  sundering  and  re-acceptance.  Sonnet  S7  speaks 
of  banishment  and  miserable  '  waiting  '  through  tedious 
days,  wherein  he  prays  for  night,  and  in  "  interminable 
darkness"  longs  for  the  sun.  He  goes  'wrapt'  in  the 
thought  of  that  '  image '  which  for  the  time  being  is 
the  light  of  his  life  (87th  and  88th  Sonnets).  Vcr>' 
pathetic  and  unexaggerate  is  the  delineation  of  his 
"  woful   state  " — 

Lyke  as  the  Culver  on  the  bared  boutjh 

sits  mourning  for  the  absence  of  her  mate  ; 

and  in  her  songs  sends  many  a  wishful  vow . 

for  his  returne  that  seemes  to  linger  late  : 
So  I  alone  now  left  disconsolate, 

moume  to  my  selfe  the  absence  of  my  love. 

(Sonnet  89.) 

No  '  invention,'  no  '  fancy  '  there  !      Hut    assuredly  of 
'  Rosalind,'  or  '  Rosalindula,'  not  of '  Klizabcth." 

There  are  various  dates  besides  the  famous  one  of 
Sonnet  60,  in  the  Amorctti.  One — as  noted — Ixrgins  a 
new  year — 4th  January  and  19th  April  [i59-]-  ^^^ 
22nd  is  a  Fast-day  =Vigil  of  Ascension-day  or  of  Whit- 
Sunday.  The  Goth  in  l  592.  The  40th  tells  us  when  his 
courtship  began.  The  63rd  is  January  i  593.  The  68th  is 
Easter-day.    "Barnaby  the  Bright  "  was  i  ith  June,  i  594. 


528  APPENDIX. 

Looking  back  upon  the  Sonnets  of  the  Avioirtti,  a 
reader  who  is  at  all  in  sympathy — not  critical  or 
cynical — must  be  left  with  an  impression  that,  cunning 
as  is  their  art  and  (as  a  whole)  dainty  their  workman- 
ship, they  were  genuine  love-sonnets.  That  is,  that  we 
have  in  the  Amorctti  a  real  live  'passion'  and  a  man's 
heart  uttering  itself,  as  distinguished  from  the  mere 
artistic  work  of  the  far-off  imitators  of  Petrarch, 
wherein  human  affection  or  intensity  of  desire  held 
slightest  place.  Many  of  these  Sonnets  authenticate 
themselves  as  the  very  mind  and  spirit  of  their 
fashioner.  Their  swift  alternation  of  mood,  their 
meditativeneps,  their  reflectiveness,  their  breaks  of 
almost  rudeness  through  continuous  disdain  of  the 
"  fair  ladie,"  their  pathetic  penitences,  their  simplicities, 
their  sadness  in  absence,  their  sunniness  in  presence, 
their  cxquisitcness  of  painstaking,  and  their  occasional 
fierce  tumultuous  wrath,  make  it  impossible  to  hesitate 
in  accepting  the  Aiiwrt-tti  as  a  true  '  Diar)'  of  Edmund 
Spenser's  wooing.  Earlier  a  suggestion  was  thrown 
out  that  possibly  some  of  the.sc  love-sonnets  were  of 
the  songs  despised  by  '  Rosalind.'  It  is  difficult,  if  not 
impossible,  to  communicate  one's  impression  on  a  thing 
of  this  sort,  and  wc  really  have  nothing  of  fact  whereby 
to  determine  it.  I  will  only  name  Sonnets  3,  7,  9,  12, 
26,  and  41,  as  of  those  that  might  have  been  originallj' 
addressed  to  'Rosalind.'  It  v. as  the  "newe  poete's" 
wont  to  preserve  and  re-work  on  his  most  fugitive  and 
'green  '  productions — in  this  resembling  a  greater,  John 
Milton.  I  have  dared  to  assert  that  Sonnets  ZC}  to  89 
belong  to  'Rosalind  '  or  '  Rosalindula,'  not  to  '  Elizabeth,' 
absolutely. 


yy 


AFP£.\D/X.  ,,,^ 


P:  DR.  GEORGE  MACDONALI)  ON  SPENSER'S 
FAERY  QUE  EX. 

{See  Life,  p.  199.) 

"Though   not  greatly  prejudiced   in   favour  of  books,  f^dy 
Florimel  had  borrowed  a  little  in  the  old  Library  of  ry>«;<:i.»  H'tc^r. 
and  had  chanced  on  the  Faerie  Quecne.     Shi-  ' 
upon  the  name  of  the  author   in  books  ol' c\- 
turning  over  its  leaves,  she  found  her  owr       I- 
could  her  mother  have  found  the  nam  jty 

'.vas  roused,  and  she  resolved — no  li^  ;lie 

poem  through,  and  see  who  and  W; .vas. 

Notwithstanding  the  difficulty  she  met  with  at   tirst,  she   had 
persevered,  and  by  this  time  it  had  become  rasv  pnnutfh.     Thr 
copy  she  had  found  was   in   small  vohim.^        ''      '     ' 
carried  one  about  with  her  wherever  she  v 
her  first  acquaintance  with  the  sea  and  i! 

soon  came  to  fancy  she  could  not  fix  her  ,k 

without  the  sound  of  the  waves  for  an  .1  'he 

verse— although   the   greater  noise  of  ai'  im 

would  have  better  suited  the  nature  of  S;  '.)r, 

indeed,  he  had  composed  the  greater  par»  .  h 

a  sound  in  his  ears  ;  and  there  are  indication^  m  in  (....-ui  lt^olf 
that  he  consciously  took  the  river  as  his  chosen  analog\ie  after 
which  to  model  the  flow  of  his  verse"  {Malcolm,  c.  xv.). 


Q:  AFTER  MARRIAGE  AT  KILCOLMAN;  BY  DKAN 
CHURCH. 

{See  Life,  p.  203.) 

"  His  marriage  cnLrht  to  have  made  him  I  -u 

to   find  the    highest    eiijoym.  ut    in  the  q^  of 

country  life.     He  was  in  the  ,):im<'   .f  Iif\  ill 

his  fellows  in   his  special  wor-  id 

interest  in  what  remained  to  b'  Id 

not   but  feel  himself  at   a   di-  of 

England,  and  socially  at  disa.i  ■*€ 

lines  had  fallen  to  them  in  its  1  h 

he  loved  so  well  was  still  friendly   i  >   oon,   .1  m.  :.  «...    >•.....  .tod 

dangerous.    He  is  never  weary  oi  praising  the  natural  advantages 

I.  34 


530 


APPENDIX. 


of  Ireland.  Speaking  of  the  North,  he  says  (in  Vtme  of  Ireland) 
— '  Suer  it  is  yett  a  most  bewtifuU  and  sweete  Country  as  any 
is  under  heaven,  seamed  throughout  with  many  goodlie  rivers, 
replenished  with  all  sortes  of  fishe  most  aboundantlie  :  sprinkled 
with  verie  many  sweete  Ilandes  and  goodlie  lakes,  like  little  inland 
seas,  that  will  carrie  even  shippes  uppon  their  waters  ;  adorned 
with  goodlie  woodes,  fitt  for  buildinge  of  houses  and  shippes,  so 
comodiouslie,  as  that  if  some  princes  in  the  world  had  them,  they 
would  soone  hope  to  be  lordes  of  all  the  seas,  and  er  longe  of  all 
the  worlde  :  also  full  of  verie  good  portes  and  havens  openinge 
uppc)  England  and  Scotland,  as  invitinge  us  to  come  unto  them, 
to  see  what  excellent  comodities  that  Countrie  can  afforde, 
besides  the  soyle  itselfe  most  fertile,  fitt  to  yelde  all  kynde  of  fruit 
that  shalbe  comitted  there  unto.  And  lastlie  the  heauens  most 
milde  and  temperate,  though  somewhat  more  moyste  then  the 
partes  towardes  the  West '  "  (Vol.  IX.,  p.  38).  "  His  own  home 
at  Kilcolman  charmed  and  delighted  him.  It  was  not  his  fault 
that  its  trout  streams,  its  Mulla  and  Faunchin,  are  not  so  famous 
as  Walter  Scott's  Teviot  and  Tweed,  or  Wordsworth's  Yarrow 
and  Duddon,  or  that  its  hills.  Old  Mole  and  Arlo  Hill,  have  not 
kept  a  poetic  name  like  Helvellyn  and  '  Eildon's  triple  height.' 
'J'hey  have  failed  to  become  familiar  names  to  us.  But  the 
beauties  of  his  home  inspired  more  than  one  sweet  pastoral 
picture  in  the  Faery  Queen  ;  and  in  the  last  fragment  remaining 
to  us  of  it,  he  celebrates  his  mountains  and  woods  and  valleys  as 
once  the  fabled  resort  of  the  Divine  Huntress  and  her  Nymphs, 
and  the  meeting-place  of  the  Gods"  (pp.  170-1). 


R-.  LORD  ROCHK  AND  SPENSER  AGAIN. 
{See  Eife,  p.  204.) 

Just  prior  to  liis  marriage,  Spenser  must  have  been 
once  more  worried  and  perplexed  by  the  procedure  of 
his  old  adversary  Lord  Roche  of  Fermoy.  We  saw  that 
contemporaneous  with  Ralegh's  persuasion  of  the  Poet 
to  go  to  Court  with  his  Faery  Qvecn  in  1590,  there 
was  his  'Dispute'  with  this  frantic  Anglo-Irish  peer. 
Any  .settlement  arrived  at  in  i  590-1  must  have  been 
a   truce    rather   than    a    'settlement.'       For   in    1593 


W 


APPKXD/X. 

Roche  is  found  petitioiiini;  tlr;  Lord  Clvm.;cii,.r  .| 
Ireland  thus  : — 

"Whereas    one    Eilmiind   Spenser,    ijentleman,    hath  lately 
exhibited  suit  against  y'  suppliant,  for  three  pluwe  lands,  parcel 
of  Shanballymore  (your  suppliant's  inheritance;  V  •  ,  .cc- 
president  and  counsell  of  Munster  ;  which  land  rc- 
tofore  decreed  for  your  suppliant  against  th  •  ,nd 
others  under  whom  he  conveied  ;  and  ne\  the 
said  Spenser  being  dark  of  the  councili  ■,  c. 
and  did  assyne  his  office  unto  one  Nicholas  i.-r 
agreements,  with  covenant  that  during  his  liei.  Ii 
in  the  said  office  for  his  cawses,  by  occasion  ot 
he  doth  multiply  suits  against  your  suppliant,  in  th.  r^.i.  ; 
uppon  pretended  title  of  others  "  {Orifrinal  in  Rolli  • 

At  the  same  time  Lord  Roche  presented  siiil 
another  petition  against  the  widow  Joan  O'Calla^'han. 
whom  he  states  to  be  his  opponent  "  by  supjxjrtation 
and  maintenauncc  of  Edmund  Spenser,  gentleman,  a 
hea\)-  advcrsar)  unto  your  su|)pnant"  (JtU.).  He  still 
further  exhibited  a  '  plaint '  or  pica, — 

"  That  Edmund  Spenser  of  Kilcolman,  gpn»l«*man,  hathmt<»r*rl 

into  three  plough    lands,  parcell  of    Hall'  '    ' 

your  suppliant  thereof  and  continueth  by  i. 
nes  the  possession  thereof,  and  maktth  i;i' 

of  the  said  lande,  and  converfeth  a  gre.it  o  ^i 

thereuppon  to  his  proper  use.  to  the  dam.i  mt 

of  two  hundred  pounds  sterling.     When  >  iind 

Spenser  appearinge  in  person  had  several  il,i>iv*  |iii-ii.M-it  unto 
him  peremptorlie  to  answere,  which  he  neglected  to  do  ;  thcrr- 
fore  after  adaye  of  grace  given  on  12th  of  Krbniary.  15^4.  Lord 
Roche  was  decreed  his  possession  "  {Ibid.). 

Evidently  Spenser  had  bought  these  *  plough-lards ' 
on  a  defective  title,  and  in  his  zeal  for  the  widow 
O'Callaghan  accepted  too  credulously  her  statements. 
Evidently  too  the  rascal  peer  took  uttermost  advantage 
of    the  letter    of    the    law,  and    the    disgusted    Pocl- 


532  APPENDIX. 

gentleman  retired  from  the  miserable  contest*  It  is 
pleasant  to  know  that  all  this  was  foreclosed  before 
Barnaby's  "  bright  day,"  and  that  no  private  feud  or 
exacerbation  remained  to  mar  the  joyousness  of  the 
welcome  at  Kilcolman. 

*  See  Irish  Minstrelsy,  or  Bardic  Remains  of  Ireland  .  .  . 
collected  and  edited  with  Notes  and  Illustrations  by  James 
Flardiman.  London,  2  vols.  8vo,  1831,  pp.  319-21.  This  writer 
comments — "When  Spenser — the  poetic,  the  gentle  Spenser — 
was  guilty  of  these  oppressive  and  unjust  proceedings,  the  reader 
may  easily  guess  at  the  conduct  of  his  more  ignorant  and  brutal 
fellow  planters,  by  whom  the  country  was  converted  into  a  desert." 
Fiddlesticks  !  There  were  no  "  oppressive  and  unjust  proceed- 
ings." Spenser  held  rightfully  to  his  purchased  possessions 
until  it  was  made  technically  clear  that  his  and  others'  titles  were 
defective.  To  have  given  up  without  legal  decision  his  lands  to 
such  a  man  as  Lord  Roche  would  have  been  to  invite  plunder, 
and  to  have  deserted  the  widow  O'Callaghan  would  have  been 
cowardice.  It  must  be  added  that  Roche  was  constantly  in  hot 
water  over  alleged  '  encroachments.'  Broadly  it  is  historically 
true  that  men  of  the  type  of  Roche  were  in  restless  outlook  for 
"disputable  titles."  More  than  that—Dean  Church  (p.  62)  has 
reproduced  specimens  of  Irish  dealing  with  Irish  in  Munster — 
"  The  Lord  Roche  kept  a  freeholder,  who  had  eight  plowlands, 
prisoner,  and  hand-locked  him  till  he  had  surrendered  seven 
plowlands  and  a  half,  on  agreement  to  keep  the  remaining  half- 
plowland  free  ;  but  when  this  was  done,  the  Lord  Roche  extorted 
as  many  exactions  from  that  half-plowland,  as  from  any  other 
half-plowland  in  his  country  ....  And  even  the  great  men 
were  under  the  same  oppression  from  the  greater:  for  the  Earl 
of  Desmond  forcibly  took  away  the  Seneschal  of  Imokilly's  corn 
from  his  own  land,  though  he  was  one  of  the  most  considerable 
gentlemen  in  Munster  "  (Cox's  History  of  Ireland,  p.  354).  And 
yet  your  Hardimans  would  have  us  credit  that  this  scoundrel 
Roche  was  dealt  with  by  the  "poetic,  the  gentle  Spenser" 
unjustly  and  oppressively!  Then  how  evident  it  was  diamond 
cut  diamond  even  in  the  case  of  the  "great  "  Karl  of  Desmond  ! 


^ 


APPENDIX  ^•,, 

S:   LITERATURE   OF   iHl.    VKAK    13./). 

{Sec  Life.  p.  208.) 

This  }ear  of  our  Lord  1 596  was  renowned  in 
literdture  besides  by  the  publication  of  Master  John 
Florio's  "  Most  copious  and  exacte  Dictionar>c  in 
Italian  and  Englishe  .  .  .  dedicated  to  the  ri^hl 
honorable  the  Earlc  of  Southampton  " — "  The  di>- 
covcrie  of  the  larj^e,  ritche  and  bewtifull  Kmpirc  of 
Guiana,  with  a  relation  of  the  great  and  golden  Cittic 
of  Manoa,  which  the  Spaniards  call  Eldorado,  and  of 
the  provinces  of  Emeria,  Aromaya,  Amapaya  and 
other  Countries  with  their  Ryvers  adioyninge  [jcrformcd 
in  the  yere  1595  by  Sir  VV.  Ralegh  knight  captaync 
of  her  maiesties  guarde,  lord  warden  of  the  Stanyrcis 
and  her  maiesties  lieutenant  of  the  countie  of  Come- 
wall  " — "  The  Countesse  of  Hedfordes  Temple  " — 
"  The  histor}'  of  the  Damnable  Life  and  Deserved 
Death  of  Doctor  John  Faustus"— "A  booke  called 
Venus  and  Adonis "  by  Master  William  Shakesi)earc 
— "  A  booke  called  Lyl lie's  light  " — "  A  newe  ballad 
of  Romeo  and  Juliett  " — "  A  booke  of  master  Church- 
yardc's  makinge.  Called  the  Welcomme  Home  of  the 
Earle  of  Essex  and  the  Lord  Admirall  " — "  Cloris  or 
the  Complaynt  of  the  passion  of  the  despised  Sheppard. 
by  W.  Smyth,"  with  verse-dedication  to  S[>cnser*  — 
"  Sinetes  mournful  maddrigal  vpon  his  Discontented 
fortunes  " — "  Orchestra  or  a  poeme  of  Dauncingc  "  by 
Sir  John  Davics, 

•  Reproduced  in  our  Occasional  Issues  of  Unique  and  Rare 

Books. 


554  APPENDIX, 


T:  DEAX   CHURCH   ON    THE   STATE   OF   IRELAND 
IN  1597-9. 

{See  Life,  p.  220.) 

Dean  Church  has  very  strikingly  presented  the  peril. 
''  There  was  one  drawback,"  he  says,  "  to  the  enjoy- 
ment of  his  Irish  country  life,  and  of  the  natural 
attractiveness  of  Kilcolman.  '  Who  knows  not  Arlo 
Hill  ? '  he  exclaims,  in  the  scene  just  referred  to  from 
the  fragment  on  Mutability.  '  Arlo,  the  best  and 
fairest  hill  in  all  the  holy  island's  heights.'  It  was 
well  known  to  all  Englishmen  who  had  to  do  with 
the  South  of  Ireland.  How  well  it  was  known  in  the 
Irish  history  of  the  time,  may  be  seen  in  the  numerous 
references  to  it,  under  various  forms,  such  as  Aharlo, 
Harlow,  in  the  Index  to  the  Irish  Calendar  of  Papers 
of  this  troublesome  date,  and  to  continual  encounters 
and  ambushes  in  its  notoriously  dangerous  woods.  He 
means  by  it  the  highest  part  of  the  Galtee  range, 
below  which  to  the  north,  through  a  glen  or  defile, 
runs  the  '  river  Aherlow.'  Galtymore,  the  summit, 
rises,  with  precipice  and  gully,  more  than  3000  feet 
above  the  plains  of  Tipperary,  and  is  seen  far  and 
wide.  It  was  connected  with  the  'great  wood,'  the 
wild  region  of  forest,  mountain,  and  bog,  which 
stretched  half  across  Munster,  from  the  Suir  to  the 
Shannon.  It  was  the  haunt  and  fastness  of  Irish 
outlawr).'  and  rebellion-  in  the  South,  which  so  long 
sheltered  Desmond  and  his  followers.  Arlo  and  its 
'  fair  forests,'  harbouring  '  thieves  and  wolves,*  was 
an  uncomfortable  neighbour  to  Kilcolman.     The  poet 


APPENDIX.  ,3^ 

describes  it  as  ruined  by  a  curse  pronounced  on  the 
lovely  land  by  the  offended  goddess  of  the  Chase — 

Which  too  too  true  that  land's  in-dwellers  since  have  found. 

He  was  not  only  living  in  an  insecure  part,  on  the 
ver>'  border  of  disaffection  and  disturbance,  but  h'kc 
ever>'  Englishman  living  in  Ireland,  he  was  living  amid 
ruins.  An  English  home  in  Ireland,  however  fair,  was 
a  home  on  the  sides  of  ^tna  or  Vesuvius  :  it  stood 
where  the  lava  flood  had  once  passed,  and  upon  not 
distant  fires"  (as  before,  pp.  172-3). 


U:  DEAN    CHURCH   ON   SPENSER'S   INDEBTEDNESS 
TO  IRELAND. 

{See  Life,  p.  221.) 

I  must  again  draw  upon  the  brilliant  monograph  of 

Dean    Church,    who    with    fine    insight     weighs     and 

estimates    the    influence    of    Ireland   and    Irish   affairs 

on  the  Faery  Queen.      He  thus  writes — 

••  It  is  idle  to  speculate  what  difference  of  form  th^  Faery  Qurrn 
might  have  received,  if  the  design  h.id  ' 
peace  of  England  and  in  the  society  of  1 
that  the  scene  of  trouble  and  danger  ir, 
affected  it.    This  may  possibly  account,  ■ 
for  the  looseness  of  texture,  and  the  war' 

which  is  sometimes  to  be  seen  in  it.    Spc;.,. 

and  his  p>oem  has  the  character  of  the  work  01  a  ;■ 

reading,  but  without  books  to  verifi'  or  correct       I- 

doubted  that  his  life  in  Ireland  ad  ' 

with  which  Spenser  wTOte.     In  1: 

continually  the  drear)-  world  whii 

imagines.     These  men  might  in  ^ 

wildernesses  and  "great  woods "'  ,_- 

ruffian.    There  the  avenger  of  wTonj;  ;.v^.. , 

adventvire  and  the  occasion  for  quellmg  the  oppressor,     f i*cfe 


53f)  APPENDIX. 

the  armed  and  unrelenting  hand  of  right  was  but  too  truly  the  only 
substitute  for  law.  There  might  be  found  in  most  certain  and 
prosaic  reality,  the  ambushes,  the  disguises,  the  trea:cheries,  the 
deceits  and  temptations,  even  the  supposed  witchcrafts  and  en- 
chantments, against  which  the  fairy  champions  of  the  virtues 
have  to  be  on  their  guard.  In  Ireland  Knglishmen  saw,  or  at  any 
rale  thought  they  saw,  a  universal  conspiracy  of  fraud  against 
righteousness,  a  universal  battle  going  on  between  error  and 
religion,  between  justice  and  the  most  insolent  selfishness.  They 
found  there  every  type  of  what  was  cruel,  brutal,  loathsome. 
They  saw  everywhere  men  whose  business  it  was  to  betray  and 
destroy,  women  whose  business  it  was  to  tempt  and  ensnare  and 
corrupt.  They  thought  that  they  saw,  too,  in  those  who  waged 
the  Queen's  wars,  all  forms  of  manly  and  devoted  gallantry,  of 
noble  generosity,  of  gentle  strength,  of  knightly  sweetness  and 
courtesy.  Hiere  were  those,  too,  who  failed  in  the  hour  of  trial ; 
who  were  th^'  victims  of  temptation  or  of  the  victorious  strength 
of  evil.  Besides  the  open  or  concealed  traitors,  the  Desmonds 
and  Kildares,  and  O'Neales,  there  were  the  men  who  were  en- 
trapped and  overcome,  and  the  men  who  disappointed  hopes, 
and  became  recreants  to  their  faith  and  loyally,  like  Sir  William 
Stanley,  who,  after  a  brilliant  career  in  Ireland,  turned  traitor 
and  apostate,  and  gave  up  Deventer  and  his  Irish  bands  to  the 
King  of  Spain,  'j'he  realities  of  the  Irish  wars  and  of  Irish  social 
and  political  life  gave  a  real  subject,  gave  body  and  form  to  the 
allegor}'.  'J'here  in  actual  desh  and  blood  were  enemies  to  be 
fought  with  by  the  good  and  true.  There  in  visible  fact  were  the 
vices  and  falsehoods,  which  Arthur  and  his  companions  were  to 
quell  and  punish.  There  in  living  truth  were  Sansfay,  and 
Sans/oy,  and  Sa//sJoy  ;  there  were  Orgoglio  and  Graiitorto, 
the  witcheries  q{  Arras  ia  and  Plucrlrki,  the  insolence  ai  Brian  a 
and  Crndor.  And  there,  too,  were  real  Knights  of  goodness  and 
the  (jospel — Grey,  and  Ormond,  and  Ralegh,  the  Norreyses, 
St.  Leger,  and  Maltby — on  a  real  mission  from  Gloinana's  noble 
realm  to  destroy  the  enemies  of  truth  and  virtue.  The  allegory 
bodies  forth  the  trials  which  beset  the  life  of  man  in  all  conditions 
and  at  all  times.  But  Spenser  could  never  have  seen  in  England 
such  a  strong  and  perfect  image  of  the  allegoiy  itself  with  the 
wild  wanderings  of  its  personages,  its  daily  chances  of  battle  and 
danger,  its  hairbreadth  escapes,  its  strange  encounters,  its  pre- 
vailing anarchy  and  violence,  its  normal  absence  of  order  and 
law — as  he  had  continually  and  customarily  before  him  in  Ireland" 
(as  before,  pp.  88-90). 


w 


APPENDIX 

V:    STATK-PAPERS    DRAWN    I  r    \'.\    s,  i  .ns,  ,<    in 
H.M.  PUBLIC  RECORD  OFFICE  (Bundle  i88,  No.  i8). 

{^See  Life,  p.  231.) 

A  BRIEFE  NOrK  OV  IRKLANl). 

Ihe   kinges   of  England   haue   lands  of'  inheritance 
as    Lxjrds   of   Ireland    in   good    fuhrtance    hefide    the 
title  of  the  Crowne,  as  the 
Erledome  of  vlfter 

wholly   Lords  of  Connought   Meth  of  foure 
partf  of  Leinfter  and  four  ptes  of  Moiinller. 


/in  Ireland 

•     5530-. 

I  in  Leinster   . 

•       930/ 

sides  there  are]'"  ^°""""^^'^^ 
^in  Mounster 

.       90of 

.       2IOO| 

luwne 

iinVlster 

.     2060 \ 

.^in  Meth 

•    540J 

There  is  of  arrable  Land  in  it  J 8640  plowlands 
befides  Rivers  meadowes  bogg('  and  woods  :  cuic 
plowland  conteineth  120.  acres,  eine  acre  4.  perches 
in  bredth  and  40.  in  length,  eiiie  pch  21.  footc,  cuic 
foote  I  2.  inches.  In  Fxlward  the  4'''  his  tyme  (whoc 
had  Ireland  in  his  obedience)  it  yeelded  the  Crowne 
of  England  14146"  fterling,  taking  but  a  noble  for 
a  plowland.  And  befides  he  received  for  Cuitomes, 
fifbingf  and  other  Royalties  1 00000  mark('  ycrclic 
paid  to  the  Caftle  of  Dublin,  as  yet  appereth  by 
recorde.     And   had   aboue   this,  his  yerelie    Rent  of 


53^  APPENDIX. 

Vlfter,  Connought,  Meth,  Leinfter  and  Mounfter, 
w"''  was  22000''  fterlijig,  more  then  this  had  they 
advoufons  of  manie  Churches,  Wardes,  Marriages 
and  guift  of  dius  other  good  thingf. 

TO  THE  QUEEN  E. 

Out  of  the  afhes  of  difolacon  and  waftnes  of  this 
your  wretched  Realme  of  Ireland,  vouchfife  mofte 
mightie  EmprelTe  o''  Dred  foveraigne,  to  receive  the 
voices  of  a  fewe  mofte  vnhappie  Ghoftes ;  of  whome 
is  nothinge  hut  the  ghoft  nowe  left,  w"^  lie  buried 
in  the  bottome  of  oblivion,  farr  from  the  light  of 
yo'  gracious  fuiiftiine  ;  w^''  fpredeth  it  felfe  ou  coun- 
tries mofte  remote,  to  the  releeving  of  their  deftitute 
Calamities  and  to  the  eternall  adiiancement  of  yo'' 
renowne  and  glorie  ;  yet  vpon  this  miferaL)le  land, 
being  yo""  owne  iufte  and  heritable  dominion  letteth 
no  one  little  beame  of  yo'  large  mercie  to  be  fhed  : 
either  for  vnworthinefle  of  vs  wreches  w"''  no  way 
difcerue  fo  great  grace,  or  for  that  the  miferie  of 
o'  eftate  is  not  made  knownc  vnto  you  but  rather 
kept  from  ycV  knowledge  by  fuch'  as  by  conceale- 
merst  thereof  think  to  haue  their  blames  concealed. 
Pardon  therefore  mofte  gracious  Soveraigne  vnto 
miferable  wreches,  w"'"  without  yo'  knowledge  and 
mofte  againft  yo'  wilt  are  plunged  in  this  fea  of 
forrowes,  to  make  there  eueti  cafe  knowne  vnto  you 


APrENDIX.  539 

and  to  caH  for  tynielic  rcdrelTe  viito  you,  it  yet  at 
Itart  any  t\  nie  be  left,  vv"''  that  yo""  ma'""  in  yo'  excel- 
lent wifdome  may  the  better  knowe  how  to  redreflc, 
may  the  fame  vuchfafe  to  confider  from  what  be- 
gining  the  fame  firft  fprunge  and  by  what  late  euill 
meanes  it  is  brought  to  this  miferable  condicon  w"'' 
wee  nowe  Complaine  of. 

The  firft  caufe  and  Roote  thereof,  was  the  indired 
defire  of  one  pfons  privat  gaine,  to  whome  yo'  ma|'*= 
Comitted  this  vnfortunat  gounm^;  whoexhe  first  cause 
whiles  he  fedd  yo'  expedlacon  w'*"  the  rebellion, 
hope  of  increafing  this  yo"^  kingdome  with  a  newe 
Countie  (to  witt  the  Countie  of  Monohan)  vnder 
that  p^tence  fought  to  enlarge  his  owne  treafure  and 
to  infeoffe  his  fonnes  and  kinfmen  in  att  the  territorie  ; 
w'^*'  nfight  neijtheles  haue  ben  tollerated  in  regard 
fome  good  fhould  thereby  haue  come  vnto  you,  had 
it  not  ben  wrought  by  mofte  iniufte  and  diftionorable 
meanes.  ftor  after  that  he  had  receaved  A.  B.  into 
yo'  faith  and  pteccon  pmlling  him  to  make  him 
M".  Mahon  for  lOO.  beefes,  after  wards  whereas  an 
other  of  his  kinfemen  offered  300  he  vniuftly  tooke 
and  honge  him  and  in  his  ftede  inverted  the  other  ; 
wherevpon  the  land  lord('  and  gent  of  the  Countrie 
adioyning  being  terrified  with  the  face  of  fo  foule 
a  trecherie,  began  eftfoones  to  combine  themfelues 
and    to   labour    the    Erie     of  Tireone     vnto    theirc 


540  APPENDIX. 

pte  ;  who  neutheles  did  not  manifeftlie  adhere  vnto 
The  Erie  of  ^^hem  nor  durft  breake  out  into  manifeft 
enlSiTinto  rebclHon,  but  taking  onely  diflike  of  fuch 
^ufe^cansrs"^  bad  dealing,  begann  to  finde  greuance  at 
thereof.  ^.^^  gou'nm'  (as  in  deede  vnder  correftiou 
me  feemes  fome  caufe  he  had)  :  for  firft  he  might 
feare  by  that  example  left  he  might  be  intrapped  in 
the  like  ;  then  was  he  by  this  new  Countizing  of 
the  Countrie  of  Monohan,  both  to  loofe  that 
feignoritie  w'^''  he  claimed  of  that  land  and  all  fo 
that  feruice  w'^'"  he  claimed  of  Macmahon  ;  who  by 
holding  nowe  of  yo'  Ma'""  fhould  be  ffreed  from  his 
challenge.  Laftly  he  was  by  fome  his  frendf  made 
to  beleeve  (whether  trulie  or  no  god  knowes)  that 
ther  was  a  pradlife  pvilie  wrought  by  the  deputie 
either  againft  his  life  or  libertie  ;  where  vpon  he 
kept  him  felfe  aloofe  and  durft  not  comitt  his  faftie 
in  to  the  gouW  yet  offred  ftill  if  he  might  haue 
leave  to  come  into  England  freelie  to  iuftifie  him 
felfe  before  yo'  Ma''''  ;  w"^^  whether  he  fo  trulie 
meant  is  vn-taine  yet  that  leave  ftiould  not  haue 
ben  denied,  fince  if  he  had  not  pformed  it  he  might 
haue  bene  in  tyme  difcoued  before  he  had  growne 
vnto  this  head  that  nowe  he  is.  But  fo  fone  as  the 
reft  which  then  were  out,  felt  him  thus  wauling  and 
doubtfully  difpofed,  they  increafed  his  oft'ence  with 
daily  caufes  of  diflike  vntill  fuch  tyme  as  they  might 


^ 


APPEXD/X. 

pradiz  w"^  yo^  Ma"«  adufarie  the  kinf  of  Spainc 
to  drawe  him  to  his  ptie  and  not  with[out]  Arong 
feares  and  vaine  hopes  to  feede  his  cuill  humo'. 
Yet  ail  this  while  durft  he  not  break  out  into 
open  difloialtie  but  fo  carried  him  fclfe  as  that 
he  might  make  advantage  of  both  ptics,  either 
to  worke  his  owne  Condicons  of  peace  with  yo' 
Ma"^  by  fearing  you  with  his  enterdealc  with  the 
king  of  Spaine  or  if  he  could  not  accompiifhc 
this  to  vfe  the  fame  direftly  againll  you.  Vet 
all  this  while  matters  might  haue  bene  fo  managed 
as  that  he  might  well  enough  haue  bene  contcined 
in  reafonable  termes  but  that  fome  were  allwaics 
againil:  it  who  covited  nothing  more  then  to  alien 
him  from  yo'  obedience  and  to  Minifter  ncwc 
matter  of  Jeloufies  ftiii  againft  him.  Wherevjx)n 
he  breaking  at  length  openlv  fourth  yet  was  fo 
dauled  with  and  fo  faintly  pfecuted  as  that  meeting 
fome  tyme  w'''  fome  good  fuccelTes  in  fight  he  tookc 
greater  hart  thereby,  and  hauing  once  lelt  his  ownc 
ftrength  and  the  faintnelTe  of  thofe  w"^  were  fctt 
here  to  followe  him,  grewe  extreamlie  infolcnt ;  w*** 
he  allfo  increafed  through  occafion  of  the 
devifion  of  the  gou'nm'-  here  betwixt  S'  n; 
Wittm.    Ruflell   and  S'  John   Norris.     Of  an.i  .Mr  i^hn 

_  Norru. 

W*"  the  one  being  fharplie  bent  to  pfccute 

him  the  other  thought  by  good  treaties  rather  [to] 


542  APPENDIX. 

wynn    him    to   make    fair   warrs.      But    by  fome    it 

Sir  John  Norris  was   thought   that  the    onely   purpose    of 

thesmcrmiKMlt  ^^'  ]o\\\\   No'  MS  ill    handHiig  thingf  after 

o  uni  se  c.    j.|^,^^    |-^j.^g    ^^.^^     ,.^    obtaine    the    abfolute 

goi/nm'    to   him    felfe. 

After  w'''  the  change  of  gounm'  fucceeding  the 
death  of  the  noble  Lo.  Burrowes  enfewyng,  the 
Lo.  Tjiirrowes.  fiiidric  aitcracoHs  ot  Comicills  and  pur- 
pofes  following,  together  vvith  the  devifion  and 
ptaking  of  thofe  them  fehies  of  yo'  Councill  here, 
haue  fince  brought  thing(^  to  that  dangerous  con- 
dicon  that  nov.e  the)'  ftand  in.  ffor  from  this  head 
through  toJleracon  and  too  much  temporizinir  the 
euiH  is  fpred  into  ah  ptes  of  the  Keahne  and  growne 
in  to  fo  vniiVfali  a  ccjntagion  thnt  nothing  but  a 
mofte  violent  medecyne  will  ferue  to  recoS  yt.  ffor 
atl  the  Irifh  of  all  ptes  are  confederated  and  haue 
genial  lie  agreed  to  fhake  of  the  yoke  of  there 
obedieiice  to  the  Crowne  of  England.  And  even 
now  the  vennyme  is  crept  vpp  hither  into  this 
Prouince  of  Mounlfer  w'''  hath  hitherto  continued 
in  reafonable  good  quietnes.  The  w"''  nowe  fo  much 
as  it  was  lately  [less]  euill  then  the  reft  fo  much  is 
it  nowe  worfe  then  all  the  reft,  and  become  indeed 
amofte  miferable  difolacon  like  as  a  fire,  the  longer 
it  is  kept  vnder  the  more  violentlie  it  burneth  when 
it  breaketh  out. 


APPENDIX . 


543 


There  came  vpp  hither  latehe  of  the  Kehclls  not 
paft  '2000  bein^  feiit  by  the  faid  IVaito'  K.  of* 
Tyreone  ;  ppreiitly  vpon  whole  ariveall  all  the  Infh 
role  vpp  in  Armes  agaiiill  the  eiiglifh,  w'*'  were 
lately  planted  theire,  To  that  in  fewe  daies  the[y] 
became  5.  or  6000  ;  whereby  manifertly  appercth 
that  the[y]  were  foriulie  combined  with  them,  rtor 
as  Capteine  Tirrell  one  of  the  cheefe  lead''  ot  them 
faid  openlie,  he  had  before  his  coming  vp  "io.  of 
the  beft  lordf  and  gentlemens  hand('  writing  fent  him 
pmilling  him  to  ioyne  w'"'  him  heare,  w"''  accordinglic 
they  pformed.  And  going  ftraight  vppon  the  F.ngli(h 
as  they  dwelt  difparfed,  belore  they  could  afl'emble 
themfelues,  fpoiled  them  all,  there  howfes  facked  and 
them  felues  forced  to  flie  away  for  fafetye.  So  many 
as  they  could  catch  they  hewed  and  malTacred  mifcr- 
ablie  ;  the  red  leaving  all  behinde  them  fledd  w"' 
their  wives  and  children  to  fuch  porte  towncs  as 
were  next  them,  where  they  yet  remaine  like  moftc 
pittifull  creatures  naked  and  comfortles,  lying  vndcr 
the  towne  walls  and  begging  aboute  all  the  ftretcs, 
daily  expeLS:ing  when  the  lall  extremity  (hallK  lade 
vpon  them.  Coulde  yo'  ma'""  molK-  nicifull  eyes  fee 
but  fome  pte  of  the  image  of  thefe  o'  morte  ruefull 
calamities,  they  would  melt  w'''  remorce  to  fc  fo 
manie  foules  of  yo'  fuithfull  fubject(^  brought  hither 
to  inhabit  this  vo'  land,  of  the  w'**  many  were  the 


544  APPENDIX. 

Jaft  day  men  of  good  fubftance  and  abilitie  to  live, 
others  of  verie  able  bodies  to  ferue  yo''  Ma''®  nowe 
fuddeinly  become  fo  wretched  wightf  and  miferable 
out  caftf  of  the  worlde  as  that  none  of  the  Countrie 
people  here  vouchfafeth  to  comiferate  but  rather 
to  fcorne  and  approbriouflie  revile  them  as  people 
abandoned  of  all  helpe  and  hope  and  expofed  to 
extreme  miferie. 

Truelie  to  think  that  a  Countrie  fo  rich,  fo  weti 
peopled,  fo  firmlie  fenced  and  fortified  with  fo  manic 
ftronge  Caftles,  w"'  manie  faire  walled  townes  and 
with  fea  halfe  wallinir  it  aboute,  fhould  be  fuddeinl 


le 


wunne,  hir  inhabitant^  baniihed,  their  goods  fpoiled, 
there  dwelling  places  difolated  and  all  the  land 
allmofte  in  a  moment  overcume,  w'^'^out  flroke 
ftricken,  w"'out  bloud  fhedd,  w^'^out  enernie  en- 
counte[rc]d  or  x^^w^^  w'^out  forreine  invalion,  it  is 
amoite  niveloufe  thing  and  but  fo  wrought  of  god, 
hardlie  to  be  beleeued  of  man  ;  being  fuch  indeede 
as  hardlie  anie  hiitorie  can  aford  example  of  the  like. 
And  furelie  fhould  any  ftranger  here  that  the  Englifh 
nation  fo  mightie  and  puifant,  fo  farr  a  broade  in  a 
Countrie  of  yo""  owne  dominion,  lying  hard  vnder 
the  lapp  of  England,  fhould  by  fo  bafe  and  Barbarous 
a  people  as  the  Irifh,  fo  vntrained  in  warrs,  fo  inexpte 
of  all  goum'  and  good  pollicies,  be  fo  fuddenlie  troden 
downe  and  blowne  away  allmofte  with  a  blaft  ;  they 


'^ 


APPENDIX.  54  <. 

would  tor  eu  condcninc  vs,  not  knowing  the  mcancs 
how  the  fame  is  come  to  parte.  Therefore  it  is 
nott  a  mifle  to  confider  by  what  meanes 
and  euill  occafions  all  this  mifcheefe  is  c-iu--..i4ii 
happened  ;  the  rather,  for  the  better  re-  ii.. 
drelfing  thereof  and  avoyding  the  like 
hereafter.  Some  think  that  the  firft  plott  by  w^*' 
the  late  vndertakers  of  yo'  ma''"  Land('  here  in 
Mounfter  were  planted  was  not  wett  inlVituted  nor 
grounded  vpon  found  aduifem'  and  knowledg  of  the 
Countrie  ;  fFor  that  more  care  was  therin  taken  for 
ptitt  and  vtilitie  then  for  ftrength  and  fafetie.  (for 
indeed  what  hope  was  there  that  a  forte  of  hufband- 
men  trained  vpp  in  peace,  placed  a  broade  in  fundrie 
places,  difperfed  as  yo'  land  l[a]ye  difperfed,  ftiould 
be  able  to  maintaine  and  defend  them  felues  againft  a 
people  newlie  recoued  out  of  the  relikes  of  rebellion 
and  yet  praftizing  Armes  and  warlike  exercifcs; 
w'''out  due  pvifion  therefore  w"''  is,  that  lirft  rebcl- 
lioufe  people  fhould  haue  bine  vtterlie  difarmed  and 
for  eu  bounde  from  the  vfe  of  the  like  hearafter 
and  in  ftede  thereof  be  compelled  vnto  other  more 
Civill  trades  of  life  ;  w^*'  they  fhould  haue  bene 
fettled  in  by  fuch  fure  eftablilhm'  that  they  (hould 
neS  haue  bene  able  to  haue  fwerved  from  the  fame. 

But  the  devifo'  thereof  phapps  thought  that  the 
civill  example  of  the  Englifh  being  fctt  before  them 

I.  35 


546  APPENDIX. 

and    there    daylie   conSfing    w'''    them,   would  haue 

brought  them  by  diflike  of  there  owne  favage  life 

to  the  liking  and  imbrafing  of  better  civilitie.     But 

it  is  farr  other  wife  ;  for  in  fteede  of  following  them 

they  flie   them  and   moft  hatefullie  fhune 

j'^giish for'' them    for    2^"   caufes:     ffirft    becaufe    they 

twoe  causes.  ^_^^^    ^g    \^^\\^    brought    vpp    llcenciouflie 

and  to  liue  as  eche  one  lifteth,  w^^  they  efteeme 
halfe  happines;  fo  that  nowe  to  be  brought  into 
anie  better  order  they  accompte  it  to  be  reftrained  of 
theire  libertie  and  extreame  wretchednes.  Secondlie, 
becaufe  they  naturallie  hate  the  Engliih,  lo  that  theire 
faAions  they  allfo  hate.  The  caufe  of  this  originall 
hate  is  for  that  they  were  Conquered  of  the  Englifh  ; 
the  memorie  whereof  is  yet  frelh  among  them  and 
the  defire  bothe  of  reuenge  and  allfo  of  recouie  of 
theire  landC  are  daylie  revived  and  kindled  amongft 
them  by  their  lordf  and  Councello'"' ;  for  w*^''  they 
both  hate  o'  lelues  and  o'  lawes  and  cuftomes. 
I'herefore  in  the  firft  inftitucon  ihould  haue  bene 
pvided  for  that  before  newe  building  were  eredted 
the  olde  fhould  haue  bene  plucked  downe.  ffor  to 
think  to  ioyne  and  patch  them  both  together  in  an 
equalitie  of  ftate  is  impolfible  and  will  neS  be  without 
daunger  of  agreat  downefall  fuch  as  nowe  is  hapened 
Howe  then,  fhould  the  Irifh  haue  ben  quite  rooted 
out  ?     That  were  to  bloudie  a  courfe :  and  yet  there 


APPENDIX.  S47 

contiiuKiH  rcbcllioiirc  decdcs  dclenic  little  better.  Hut 
then  when  this  prouince  was  planted  they  were  lb 
weake  that  they  might  hauc  bene  framed  and  fafhoncd 
to  anie  thinge  :  then  fhould  they  haue  ben  dilarmed 
for  eut*  and  ftronge  garrilons  fett  oil*  them,  w'*'  they 
fhould  haue  ben  forced  at  there  owne  charges  to 
maintains  without  anie  charge  to  yo'  Ma'",  fmcc 
there  difloyall  dealinges  were  the  caufe  thereof. 
Which  they  would  then  haue  ben  morte  glad  to 
bere  ;  by  w'^^  meanes  yo'  Ma'"'  might  haue  had  even 
out  of  this  Prouince  3.  or  4000  fouldiers  continuallie 
maintained  vuto  you,  whome  youe  might  at  all  tymes 
haue  vfed  to  yo'  feruice  w"'  continuall  liipplie  and 
change  of  newe. 

And  this  I  vndertake  (vnder  corredion  vpon  all 
that  I  haue  in  the  world)  fhould  haue  bene  aftbrded 
you  w'''  as  litle  greevance  and  burden  of  the  Countrie 
as  nowe  they  beare  allreadie,  ffor  the  charge  w^''  nowc 
this  Prouince  beareth,  what  of  yo^  Ma''"  Comi^ficon, 
what  of  the  Prefident  his  Impoficon,  what  of  Sheriffes 
and  Ceflb^'  extorcon  and  other  daylie  bad  occalions 
is  no  lefle  then  woulde  maintaine  you  lo  great  a 
garrifon  :  befides  it  is  nowe  exaded  w"'  the  peoples 
great  difcontentm'  that  wolde  be  then  yeelded  with 
verie  good  witi  when  they  fhould  be  fure  to  knowc 
the  vttennofle  of  there  charge. 

This  at  the  tyme  of  the  late  placing  of  mhabitantC 


548  APPENDIX. 

here  might  haue  cafly  bene  eftabhfhed,  but  thoccaiioii 
was  then  let  flipp  when  this  Country  was  weake 
and  wafte;  yet  fince  the  like  is  likely  and  muft  of 
neceflitie  eniue  againe  after  the  fubdueing  of  this 
Frefent  ger^all  rebellioUj  it  is  expedient  to  be  minded 
before  it  be  to  be  effe(5ted.  But  in  the  meane  feafon 
wee  poore  wreches  w"''  nowe  beare  the  burden  of 
all  oufightC  power  out  o'  mofte  humble  and  pittioufe 
plainte  vnto  yo'  mofte  excellent  Ma"*"  that  it  may 
pleafe  you  to  cafte  yo'  gracioufe  minde  vnto  the 
cairtiill  regarde  of  o*^  miferies  ;  w^''  being  quite 
baniilied  out  of  o'  inhabitace  and  the  lands  vpon 
w''''  wee  haue  fpent  all  the  fmall  porcon  of  o'  abilities 
in  building  and  ereding  fuch  traides  of  huft^andries 
as  wee  haue  betaken,  haue  nowe  nothing  left  but  to 
cry  vnto  you  for  tymelie  aide  before  wee  be  brought 
to  vtter  diftru6tion  and  o''  wreched  Hues  (w'^''  onelie 
now  remaine  vnto  vs)  be  made  the  pray  of  doggs 
and  fauage  wilde  beaftt".  Whereas  yo''  Ma'""  as  you 
haue  hitherto  made  yo""  felfe  through  all  the  worlde 
a  glorioufe  example  of  mcie  and  Clemencye  and 
euer  vnto  thefe  vile  Catifes  (though  mofte  vnworthie 
thereof)  fo  nowe  by  extending  vpon  them  the  terror 
of  yo'  wrath  in  avengem^  of  there  continuall  dis- 
loyalltie  and  difobedience,  you  ftiall  fpreade  the 
hoiio'able  fame  ot  yo'  Juftice  and  redeeme  both  yo'' 
owne   bono'   and  all  fo  the  reputacon  of  yo"^  people, 


W 


APPENDIX.  ,•. 

v/^^  thefe  bafe  raikalls  through  yo'  fo  loiigc  fuffrancc 
and  this  fo  late  hapened  reproche  [have]  (hakcn 
and  endangered  with  att,  mofte  all  Chriftian  prince  ; 
befides  w'=''  you  fhali  fetle  a  ppetual  cftahlifhmcnl 
both  of  peace  (whereby  yo'  riches  (hall  be  much 
increafed)  and  all  fo  of  great  ftrength,  w*"*'  mav  from 
hence  be  drawiie  both  to  the  better  aflurance  of  this 
yo""  kingdome  and  all  fo  to  the  continuall  feruice  of 
that  yo'  Reahne  of  England,  ffor  wee  well  hope 
and  that  is  fome  comforte  to  vs  in  all  thefe  o'  miferies, 
that  God  hath  put  this  maddinjr  minde  fo  genallie 
into  all  this  rebellioufe  nacioH  the  rather  to  llirrc 
vpp  yo'  Ma''"  now  to  take  vengance  of  all  theire 
longe  and  lewde  &  wicked  vfage  and  to  make  an 
vniitol  reformacon  of  all  this  Realmc  ;  w''*  nowe 
doth  allmofte  offer  yt  felfe  vnto  yo  that  [you]  may 
worke  a  ppetuall  eftablifhm'  of  peace  and  g(X)il  gounm', 
to  yo'  Ma'"'^  great  bono'  and  no  lefle  pfitt.  So  that 
nowe  at  length  you  may  haue  an  end  of  wafting 
yo'  treafure  and  people  in  this  forte  as  y<'U  haue 
done  too  longe  and  hindering  you  from  more  honor- 
able atchivem". 

Pardon  therefore  mofte  gracious  Soii'aignc  to 
wreched  greued  wight^  yo'  true  faithful!  fubicctf 
w""*  too  ftiarplie  haue  tafted  of  thefe  euills,  to  vn- 
foulde  vnto  yo'  Ma'^  the  feeling  of  theire  mifcric 
and  to  feeke  to  imp^lTe  in  yo'  Princelie   mindc  the 


550  APPENDIX. 

due  fence  thereof,  whereby  fome  meete  redreffe  may 
be  tymehe  pvided  therefore,  before  wee  feele  and 
yo""  Ma*'^  here  of,  that  w""*"  wee  fimple  wreches  fee 
hard  at  hand.  But  o""  feare  is  lefte  yo""  Ma''""  wonted 
merciful!  minde  fhould  againe  be  wrought  to  yo"" 
wonted  milde  courfes  and  pfwaded  by  fome  milde 
meanes  either  of  pdons  or  proteccons,  this  rebeUioule 
nacion  may  be  againe  brought  to  fome  good  con- 
formacon ;  w''''  wee  befeech  aUmightie  god  to  averte 
and  to  fett  before  yo'  gracious  eyes  the  iufte  con- 
fideracon  howe  that  poflibhe  may  be.  ffor  it  is 
not  eafie  to  thinke  that  they  whoe  haue  imbrewed 
them  felues  fo  deeplie  in  o'  bloud  and  inriched  them 
felues  w'^  o""  goods,  fhould  eS  truft  vs  to  dwell  againe 
amongfte  them  :  or  that  wee  fhould  endure  to  liue 
amongft  thofe  peacablie,  w"'out  taking  iufte  reuenge 
of  them  for  all  o''  euils,  Befides  they  haueing  once 
thus  fhaken  vs  will  eumore  pfume  vpon  the  pride 
of  there  owne  ftrength  w"^*"  they  haue  nowe  prooued ; 
through  knowledge  whereof  they  will  be  ymboldened 
eS  hearafter  vpon  the  leaft  diflike  to  revoke  from 
yo""  obedience :  And  the  relaps  of  euills  yo''  Ma'"" 
well  knowes  be  mofte  p'illoufe.  Moreou  howe  great 
difhono'  it  fhall  be  to  proted  or  pdon  them  w"""  not 
onelie  haue  allwaies  carried  them  felues  vndutifully 
but  nowe  allfo  in  theire  Comon  meeting^  and  their 
PrieftC  preachingf    do    fpeake    fo   lewdlie    and    dis- 


APPENDIX.  , 

honorably  of  yo'  mofte  facred  Ma""  that  it  pcrccth 
C  very  foules  to  here  it.  But  if  yo'  highnclTe  will 
difpofe  yo'  felfe  to  be  iiiciined  to  any  fuch  milder 
dealing  w'*"  them  or  to  temporiz  any  longer  with  pdons 
and  pteccons  as  hath  bene  done  by  yo'  goiino'^  here, 
then  we  humbly  befeeche  yo'  Ma'"'  to  call  vs  yo' 
poore  fubjedf  alltogether  away  from  hence^  that 
at  leaft  we  may  die  in  o'  Countrie  and  not  fee  the 
horrable  calamities  w'^''  will  thereby  come  vpon  all 
this  land  and  from  hence  phapps  further,  as  it  may 
well  be  thought.  The  w'*"  I  humblic  befeeching 
allmightie  god  to  put  in  yo'  gracioufe  minde  as 
may  be  mofte  for  his  glorie  and  yo""  owne  kingdomes 
good  we  ceafe  not  day  lie  to  pray  vnto  allmightie 
god  to  Iceepe  and  maintaine  yo'  longc  profpcroMs 
reigne,  ou  vs  in   all   happines. 

FINIS. 

Certaine  points  to  be  confidercd  of  in  the 

recouery  of  the  Realme  of  Ireland. 

Qjuejiton. — The  queftion   is  whether  be  better  and 

eafier  for  hir  Ma""  to  fubdue  Ireland  throughly  and 

bring    it  all    vnder  or  to  rcforme  if  and   to  repairc 

hir  decayed  ptes. 

Of  thefe  twoe  that  muft'j   Ccharge 
needes  be  better  and  alfof   )p^pj)| 
eafier     which     may     be  I    h^.^^^. 
done  with  less  J 


552  APPENDIX. 

Reajon. — The  afilimpt  then  is  that  it  will  be  lefle 
charge,  lefle  p'ill  and  lefle  fpending  of  tyme  to  fub- 
dewc  it  alltogether  then  to  go  about  to  reforme  it. 

Proofe  of  the  reajon. — If  you  feeke  to  reforme  it, 
then  you  muft  retaine  and  faue  the  ptes  that  feeme 
founde  and  afterward  recou  the  ptes  that  are  vn- 
founde. 

To  fave  and  retaine  the  ptes  founde  is  verie  hard 

and  allmofte  vnpoffible,  for  that  from  them  the  ptes 

vnfounde  witt  receive  both  fecret  and  open  fucco'\ 

Q.     .f.  f  ^y  working  vnderhand 

1  trecheroudy 

^         (  by  milde  and  gentle 
Open  -   .  ^  & 

(  intreaty 

C  by  warlike  purfute 

To  recouer  them  nuifl:  be  \  by   milde  and   gentle  in- 

(       treaty 

By  gentle  treatie  muft) offering  peacable  condicons 

be  cither  by  i  abiding  till  they  feck  for  peace. 

To  offer  them  is  mode  difliono'able  and  yet 
phapps  they  will  not  accept  yt  being  offered,  w'"' 
would  be  more  difhono''. 

To  abide  till  they  feeke  yt  would  be  chargable 
and  allfo  p'illoufe,  for  they  will  not  feeke  it  till  they 
be  driven  to  it  by  force. 

llicrefore  they  muff  needs  be  driven  to  it  by 
force. 


ArPExnrx 


5S3 


But  whether  with  great  force  or  with  fmale  f  Charge 

force  is  nowe  to  be  coiifidered    by  com-  ]  Pcrill 

paring  the  (  TynK-. 

The  lefle  force  feemeth  leiTe  charge  but  confidcr- 

ing  the  long  continuance  that  it  will  require  and  the 

p'ill  thereby  growinge  both  to  Ireland  and   ailfo  to 

England  it  felfe  in  fuffering  To  great  a  rebellion  [to] 

ftand   fo  longe  on   foote,  it  will   in  the  end    proouc 

more    chargable    and    allfo    nuich    more    dangerous 

and  yet  not  fo  effeduall. 

Refoluco)]. — Befides    in    fo   longe   continuance   the 

Countrie  maladie  will  confume  all  the  forces. 

The  refolucon  therefore  appereth 

That    the    greater  force    will    finifb    all    in   one  ycre 

or    2"   yeres,    w'"'  the    lefTe    will   not   do   in    4   or    5. 

yeres. 

Lefs  chargfull  is  the  groiTe  accomptc. 

.,,         (  To  the  forces  thcmfelues. 
Less  penllous  -    „,    ,      ,     ,      ,,     1 

^  (To  both  the  Kealmes. 

LefTe  lofTe  of  tyme  by  means  of  the  fpedie  finifliing 
of  the  enterprife. 

Great  force  muft  be  the  inftrum'  but  famine  muft 
be  the  meane,  for  till  Ireland  be  familhed  it  can  not 
be  fubdued. 

But  if  the  reformacon  fhall  neStheles  be  intended 
then  thefe  ^poficons  are  therein  to  be  conddcrcd  and 
obferued. 


554  APPENDIX. 

That  there  can  be  no  conformitie  of  gounm' : 
where  is  no  conformitie  of  religion. 

That  there  can  be  no  founde  agreem'  betwene 
twoe  equall  contraries — viz.  the  Enghfh  and  Irifh. 

That  there  can  be  no  aflurance  of  peace  where  the 
worft  forte  are  the  ftronger. 

This  will  be  accomplifhed  with  loooo. 
men  in  halfe  a  yere  w'^''  els  will  not  be 
pformed  of  3000  in  2°.  yeres  and  the  fame 
10000  wilbe  thence  pfentlie  ymployed  to 
the  reft  of  the  warr. 

ffbr  the  conveyance  of  the  portf  w*^''  are  to  be 
poflefl'ed  ftronglie  as  well  to  let  in  o'  owne  forces 
continuallie  as  to  keepe  out  others  and  allfoe  for  the 
great  reliefe  of  townes  here  for  the  rawe  fouldier. 

That  the  fame  is  meetest  to  be  begunc  in  Mounfter 
and  from  thence  to  pceede  to  the  reft  throughe  Kery 
and  Oftalye. 

That  the  laving  of  garrifons  will  make  but  a 
.ptrac'^ive  warr  vnies  the  Oueene  do  firft  make  hir 
felfc  miftris  of  the  feild,  whereunto  there  is  neceftarie 
a  competent  force  of  Horfe. 

All  that  the  garrifon  can  doe  is  but  to  take  prayes, 
but  if  the  enemie  were  once  broken  he  muft  be 
forced  to  fcatter  and  then  the  garrifons  ftioulde  haue 
good  meanes  of  feruice  vpon  the  broken  ptes. 

If  it   ftiail    feeme    that    the   refolucon    to    fubdue 


u 


APPENDIX. 


555 


Ireland  wholly  w"'  ftronge  force  is  too  Moutidie  .iiui 
crewell  the  fame  is  thus  to  be  iiiittigated. 

That  before  the  great  force  goe  forthe  gci^ali 
proclamacon  be  made  that  all  w*-"''  will  come  in  and 
fubmitt  themfelues  abfolutelie  w'''in  ten  or  twelue 
dales  (the  principall  excepted)  fhall  haue  jxlon  of 
life,  onelie  vpon  condicon  that  theirc  bodies,  their 
landf  and  theire  goods  fhalbe  at  the  difpoficon  of 
hir  Ma''%  w'^''  if  they  refufe  what  reafon  but  after- 
wards rigor  fhould  be  extended  to  them  that  will 
not  receive  nicie,  and  haue  vtterlie  renownced  there 
obedience  to  hir  Ma"". 

Whereas  manie  of  the  lords  of  the  Countric  not 
longe  before  the  confederating  of  this  rebellion 
pcured  there  freeholders  to  take  there  lands  of 
them  felues  by  leafe  manie  of  w"-''  are  fince  gone 
into  rebellion.  That  pvifion  may  be  made  for  the 
avoyding  of  fuch  fraudulent  conueyanccs  made 
onelie  to  defeat  hir  Ma'"'"  of  the  benefitt  of  theire 
attainder. 

M  :    WIDOW  AND  FAMILY  OF  SPENSKR  AND 

DESCENDANTS. 

{See  Life,  page  239.) 

The  Widow  of  Spenser  {lu'e  Elizabeth   Hoylc)  was 

with  him  when  he  died  ;  and  the  honours  paid  to  her 

deceased  husband  by  the  foremost  of  the  land   must 

have  been    pleasing   to    her.       The   Amontti   sonnets 

show  that  she   was    intellectual    and    cultured.      It    is 


556  APPENDIX. 

to  be  feared  that  temporarily  at  least  she  was  left 
in  straitened  circumstances  ;  but  the  generous  Essex 
would  not  leave  his  Poet-friend's  widow  and  children 
unhelped.  The  Funeral  was  at  his  expense,  and  the 
Family  could  not  but  be  cared  for  by  him. 

She  returned  to  Ireland,  and  married  again  a 
(at  present)  unknown  Roger  Seckerstone.  Such  re- 
marriage jars  on  our  feeling,  but  in  our  ignorance  of 
the  circumstances  that  led  to  it,  silence  is  better 
than  (nn's)judgmcnt.  Especially  is  it  unwarrantable 
tf)  qnrite   againsl:   her  from   Shakespeare — 

'J1ie  fimoral  baked  ments 
Did  coldly  furnish  forth  the  marriage  tables, 

(as    is   done    in    the    Atlantic   ]\Toiiihly,    vol.    xxi.,    pp. 

393 — 405).      The    marriage   must    have    taken    place 

between  March    T6or    and    1603,  since  a  Petition   was 

presented  by  the    Priv}'   Council   to    Sir  George  Carcw, 

Lord    President   of  Munstcr,   bearing  the   former  date, 

in  behalf  of  the  widow   and    clnldren  of  I'klm.  Spenser 

"  in    regard   he    was   a   servitor  of  that   realme."      Our 

information    on    her    marriage    re.iches    us     somewhat 

unpleasantl}'  in    the  Hrst  blush  of  it — viz.,  in  a  Petition 

of  Sylvanus  Spenser  -the  eldest  son — in  1603,  wherein, 

addressed    to     the    Chancellor   of   Ireland,   we   read   as 

follows  : — 

"  Whereas  your  J\^titioner's  father  luhnund  Spenser  was 
seized  in  his  demesne  in  ffee  of  Kyllcollman  and  divers  other 
lands  and  tenements  in  the  county  of  Corke,  which  descended  to 
your  petitioner  by  the  death  of  his  said  father,  so  it  is  right 
honorable,  the  evidences  of  the  sayd  inheritance  did  after  the 
deceast!  of  petitioner's  father  cum  to  the  hands  of  Roger  Secker- 
stone and  petitioner's  mother,  which  they  uniustly  detayneth 
[,v/r] ;  which  evidiMiees  forasmuch  as  your  petitioners  can  have 
no    accion  at  comon  lawe,    he   not  knowing  theire    dates    and 


u 


APPENDIX.  KK7 

certainty,  he    is  dryvcn  to  sue  in   consiil' 

Honourable  Lordship,  and  avoweth  th.i;  t^ 

stone,  his  mouther's  now  husband.  •! 

evidences,  to  your  petitioner's  dam  i  '■  •, 

wherein    he   prays    remedy"  (Orig.   iv ...    .....     .   .  ..k 

Records,  Dublin). 

Three   things   mitigate   the   harshness  of  this  reve- 
lation.      First — It    must     be     remembered     that     the 
Petitioner,  Sylvanus  Spenser,  could  not  have  been  born 
sooner  than  1595  (the  marriage  i  ith  June,  15941.  and 
thus  in   1603    was  only  in  his   ninth  year,  and  hence 
others,    not    himself,   acting    herein.      Second — Those 
others   acting — whoever  they  may   have   been — mii;hl 
be   distrusted  by   the    Widow,    who  would    naturally 
consider  that  the   family-documents  were  fitly  in  her 
own  custody.     Sylvanus  in    1603   must  have  been  in 
England  ;  for  among  the   State  Papers  of  Ireland  (vol. 
215,    116    A,  in    Russi/l  and  PreiuUrgast's  CaUndar, 
1603-6,  Irish  Series),  in  a  list  of  "The  Names  of  such 
of  the  Undertakers  in  Munster  as  are  now  resident  in 
England,"   is  "The  heir    of  Edmund   Spenser,   gent." 
(p.    116).      Possibly  on  the  re-marriage  of  his  mother 
she  was  refused  the  custody  of  the  child  (or  children). 
This  would  seem  to  denote  passion  in   the  ofe-ents  and 
advisers  for  Sylvanus— and  the  Widow  is  entitled   to 
the  benefit  of  this.     Third— It  is  not  improbable  that 
in  the  destruction   of  Kilcolman   many  of  the   family- 
papers  would   perish  and   only  chance-preserved   ones 
be   producible.     There  is    no   record   of  the    issue   of 
this  Petition  in   the  name   of  Sylvanus  Spenser.      Hut 
in   or  before    1606  the  Widow  of  Spenser  was  once 
more  a  widow.       She  is  so  styled  in  the  "  Indenture 
between  her  and  Sir  Richard  Buyle  (in  Chap.  IX.).     In 


5S8  APPENDIX. 

1605    Sylvanus   Spenser   had  possession  of  Kilcolman 
and    related    lands,    as    appears    by    these    evidences. 
At   the    time    that    Sir   Edmund   Pelham     was     chief 
baron    of     the     Irish    Exchequer,    viz.,    on    the     19th 
of  June,   1605,  a  writ  of  scire  facias  \n2ls  issued  from 
that    Court,  which  directed  the   Sheriff  of  the   county 
of  Cork   to  make  known  to  the  heirs  of  the  Poet  and 
all  the  tenants  and  possessors  of  his  estates,  that  they 
should    appear    in    the    Exchequer   in    the    following 
Michaelmas   term,    to   show  why    they  should   not   be 
charged  with  the  "  principal  beasts  and  reliefs  "  which 
are     reserved    in    his     patent  ;    and     accordingly     the 
Sheriff  [Sir  Francis   Kingeswell]  distrained   the   Poet's 
heir   and    occupier    of   his    estates,   Silvanus    Spenser, 
gentleman,  by    his  bailifs    Peter  Dyllon    and   Thomas 
Howard    (Memoranda    Roll,   3    James    I.,    mem.    39). 
In    Michaelmas  term     in    the    same    year    the    Court 
directed    the    Sheriff  of  the  same   county   of  Cork   to 
seize  the  manor,  castle,  town,  and   lands  of  Kilcolman 
into  the  king's  hands  ;    and  this  was   done  accordingly 
by    Anthony    Kemys,    Esq.,    the    then    Sheriff   (same 
Record,    mem.    52).      On    P>iday,    the    31st    January, 
1605,  Sylvanus   appeared    upon   that  writ  of  seizure, 
and    upon    the  4th   of  February   following    the  Court 
ordered  him  to  pay  his  rent  and  heriot,  and  to  have 
a  .supersedeas  of  that  Writ.     On   Saturday,  the   28th 
of  June,    1606,  he   appeared    in    Court,   and   tendered 
£'^  2s.    lid.   due  by  a  recognisance  for  the  last  pay- 
ment of  £16   ^s.    lod.,  "for  his  heriot  and  relief  upon 
the  death  of  his  father  Edmund  Spenser,  for  his  lands 
holden  of  his  Majesty   in   fee  farm."      The  Exchequer 
records  further  inform  us  that   Sylvanus  Spenser   (of 


APPENDIX.  559 

course  throui;h  liis  advisers,  for  as  wc  have  seen  he 
was  only  then  in  iiis  eleventh  year)  was  engaged  in 
a  contest  with  Sir  Allan  Apsloe,  kni|^ht,  and  John 
Power  of  Doncraile,  as  to  the  lands  of  Carigin  and 
Ardaham,  which  Apsloe  claimed  as  being  i>art  of 
Doncraile,  and  not  of  Kilcolman,  as  contended  for 
Sylvanus  Spenser.  How  this  dispute  cvenluaied  is 
unknown  {Gentleman s  Magazine,  vol.  xliv.  [185 5 J, 
pp.  605-9).  But  it  is  some  consolation  to  know  that 
Kilcolman  was  not  lost  to  the  Poet's  family  by  the 
'  Rebellion.'  This  further  emerges  in  an  inciuisitiun, 
and  the  original  Petition  in  the  Rolls  Court,  Dublin, 
taken  at  Mallow,  in  co.  Cork,  mi  71I1  An 'n>i,  1611. 
The  following  is  an   extract  :— 

"The  said  jurors  do  find  and  present  ih.ii  a  pan  or  portion 
of   a   seignory    >;ranted  by  those   patents   from  th.-   Ut.-  Qurn 
Elizabeth  unto  Edmond  Spencer  late  of  Kil' 
of  Cork  Esquire  deceased,  after  his  death  (!■ 
Spencer  his  sonne  and  heire,  whoe  doth  n.  , 
the  same,  in  manner  and  form  as  followeth,  viz..  : 
Spencer  is  seized  in  [possession]  of  his  demesn. 
Castell  of  Kilcolmane  at  ccc  acres  of  land,  p.i- 
seignory,  being  the  demesne  lands  of  the  same 

Other  properties  are  enumerated  {Onec  hi  Week,  by 
Charles  B.  Gibson,  vol.  xii.,  pp.  7C— 82). 

Sylvanus  Spenser  married  ICllcn,  eldest  daughter  of 
David  Nagle  (or  Nangle),  of  Monaniny.  co.  Cork, 
Esquire,  by  Ellen,  daughter  of  William  Kochc.  of 
Ballyhooly,  co.  Cork,  Esq.,  who  died  at  Dublin  14th 
November,  1637  (Gibson's  J /isiory  0/  Ou  County  and 
City  of  Cork,  2  vols.  8vo,  1861,  s.  n.  freqiuHttr). 
She  was  a  Roman  Catholic.  They  had  issue  (n) 
Edmond  Spcneer,  of  Kilcolcman  Castle,  co.  Cork.  Esq., 


56o  APPENDIX. 

which  was  erected  into  a  manor  i8th  February,  1638 
— to  remedy  defective  titles.  He  is  called  "  eldest  son  " 
in  Nagle  pedigree  in  Trinity  College,  Dublin.  Most 
probably  died  .s-.  p.  ;  certainly  without  male  issue, 
as  his  nephew  Nathaniel  Spencer  succeeded  to 
Kilcolman. 

The  Court  of  Exchequer,  by  its  process,  charged 
Edmund  Spenser,  as  tenant  of  the  manor,  town  and 
lands  of  Killcollman,  and  other  lands,  with  the  yearly 
fee-farm  rent  of  £c)  \os.  5|c/.,  whereupon  the  tenants 
thereof,  John  Butts,  John  O'Hannewle,  John  Colpis, 
and  William  Shanachan  appeared,  and  stated  that  that 
rent  was  reserved  "  upon  an  antient  pattent  granted 
of  y"  said  lands,  with  other  lands,  to  Edmund  Spenser, 
Esq.,  who  was  former  proprietor  thereof,"  and  they 
claimed  Kilcolman,  Lisnamucky,  and  Knocknemad- 
dery  as  parcels  set  out  to  them  in  satisfaction  of 
their  arrears  for  service  in  Ireland,  subject  to  a  quit 
rent  of  205.  10^/.  ;  and  they  pray  that  the  other 
lands,  namely,  Ardcnreagh,  Ardcnbane,  Knocken- 
gappell,  and  Glangarret,  should  be  liiible  to  the 
old  patent  rent.  The  Court,  finding  that  the  manor, 
castle,  etc.,  of  Kilcolman,  and  the  lands  of  Ardcn- 
reagh, Ardenbane,  Knockengappell,  Knocknemaddcry, 
and  Glangerrott  were  by  patent  dated  the  i8th 
February,  14  Charles  I.,  granted  to  Edmund  Spenser, 
Esq.,  at  the  yearly  rent  of  ^9  \os.  5|c/.,  exonerates 
the  said  tenants  from  the  payment  of  that  rent. 
By  the  Auditor-general's  report  which  is  attached  to 
this  order,  it  appears  that  the  lands  of  Kilcolman 
and  Lisnamucky  contained  314a.  2r.  i6p.  profitable, 
and  93a.    ir.   24p.  unprofitable,  and   Knocknemaddery 


APP£X/)/X. 

1003a.  or.  32p.  profitable,  and  189a.  2r.  i6p.  un- 
profitable ;  and  that  they  were  the  property  of 
William  Spenser,  "  English  Papist, "  and  had  been 
disposed  of  "  to  Captain  Peter  Courtho{>c  and  his 
troopc  of  the  Earle  of  Orrery's  late  rci^'imrnt.  in 
anno  1654,  20th  May"  (Original  ! 
of  Michaelmas  term,  166 1,  in  Gcul 
1855,  p.  607).  It  may  be  added  llidt  »o  cany  4s 
1609,  in  a  draft  book  of  orders  of  the  revenue 
side  of  the  E.xchequer,  there  is  this  entry — "  Corke. 
Edmond  Spencer, — Kilarogaw,  Kilwanton,  Hackheli.s* 
ton,  Neghwan,  Ballintegan,  Rynny,  in  com'.  Cork. 
Sp'cialties  and  temp'alties"  (//;/</.,  p.  606).  Further, 
on  I  8th  February,  1636,  a  fee-farm  grant  was  made  to 
Edmund  Spencer,  Esq.,  of  the  lands  of  Kilcolman,  etc, 
in  the  co.  of  Cork  [Ibid.,  p.  607). 

(/;)  William  Spencer  (b.  1634)  of  Rinny — originally 
a  castle  of  the  Fitzgeralds — co.  Cork,  Esq.,  named 
as  second  son  in  the  Nagle  pedigree,  and  stylcil  as  "  of 
Rinny  "  in  the  deed  of  sale  by  his  grandson  Edmond 
Spencer  in  1748.  He  married  an  unknown  l^arbara. 
To  the  honour  of  Cromwell  be  it  stated  that  the  Pro- 
tector addressed  a  letter  to  the  Iri.sh  Council — dated 
Whitehall,  27th  March,  1657 — in  favour  of  thii 
Edmond  Spencer  as  being  a  grandson  of  the  Poet. 
This  Letter  is  given  in  Carlyle's  -CronruxU  {^>cc  s.  «.), 
and  has  been  repeatedly  published.  The  Letter  uas 
effectual.  He  had  the  estate  of  Kilcolman  'restored* 
to  him  ;  but  so  far  as  can  be  made  out  not  until 
after  the  Restoration.  And  he  had  afterwards  a  roy^ 
grant,  dated  31st  July,  1678,  of  lands  in  the  counties 
of  Gahvay  and  Roscommon,  to  the  extent  of  nearly  two 

1.  3<5 


•,b2  APPENDIX. 

tlioiisanJ  acres.  Balinasloe  was  a  part  of  this  acquisi- 
tion, where  a  house  still  exists  which  is  shown  as  his 
residence.  At  the  Revolution  William  Spencer  attached 
himself  to  the  Prince  of  Orange  and  received  in  con- 
sequence in  1697  the  forfeited  estate  of  his  cousin 
Hugoline,  He  obtained  these  "forfeited  estates  "  by 
a  petition  presented  to  Charles  Earl  of  Mountrath  and 
Henry  Earl  of  Droghcda,  praying  "  in  consideration 
for  his  services,  sufferings,  and  losses  in  the  late 
troubles"  in  Ireland,  that  the  King  [William  HI.] 
would  grant  him  the  forfeited  estate  of  Hugolin 
Spenser,  "  who  is  outlawed  for  high  treason,"  and  "  to 
whome  the  petitioner  is  next  Protestant  heire."  Upon 
receipt  of  this  petition  it  was  reported  that  the  said 
estate  was  of  the  clear  yearly  value  of  £6"]  lys.  6d. 
above  all  quit  and  Crown  rents  and  incumbrances,  and 
stated  that  the  petitioner  deserved  the  King's  grace 
and  favour,  in  consequence  of  his  said  services  and 
losses;  and  therefore  his  Majesty  on  14th  June, 
anno  9'',  granted  to  Nathaniell  Spencer,  gentleman, 
son  of  the  said  William,  the  town  and  lands  of 
Rinny,  containing  332  acres  ;  Killahorry,  contain- 
ing G3  acres;  and  the  rectories  and  impropriate 
tithes  of  Rinny,  Novvens  alias  St.  Nowens,  Temple 
Breedy  alias  Kilbride,  and  Brinny  in  the  co.  of 
Cork  (Communia  Roll  of  the  Exchequer  1695  to 
1697,  i"^  Gentlcnuuis  Magazine,  1855,  p.  608).  The 
King's  letter  granting  unto  William  Spencer  the 
estate  of  Hugolin  is  in  the  Rolls  Office,  Ireland,  and 
is  dated  23rd  April,  1697. 

In  the  Book  of  Arrears  of  Crown  and  Quit  Rents  of 
the  year  1702,  the  following  entries  occur: — 


APPEXDIX. 

"  Co.  Cork. 
Hugolin  Spencer,  Fermoy  Bar. 

Iri»h  Acre*  A 

prof.  .. 

Renyal's  Riny  i  pl'd       .     .     .     395     0  00  11     .      , 

Buttevant  ^  pl'd 30    o  00  00  tO  to 

Part  to  Nathaniell  Spencer  425    o  00  1 1    •       : 

Applottment  of  ;^24,ooo    .     .    £2j    o    sh 

"On  22nd  July,    1717,    a   Mr.    Francis    "  '•      '  ■  i- 

vally,  in  the  co.  of  Cork,  gentleman,  filed  .1  irt 

of  Chancery  in  relation  to  the  lands  of  <.  ue 

estate  of  Sir  Matthew  Deane  of  Dromore,  15.irt.,  .-n 

demised  to  one  Michael  Barry,  in  trust  for  a    i  -c, 

'  for  and  during  the  then  warrs  between  Englan  1  <•,' 

and  afterwards  leased  for  twenty-one  years  in  irusi  to  U  iiium 
Spencer,  late  of  Renny,  Esq.,  with  others:  and  bv  this  bill  the 

plaintiff  accuses  Nathaniel  Spencer,  Eisq..  •'-••  - '  ''  "  of 

said  William,  of  a  confederacy  with  the  :'  ■  nl 

the  plaintiff  from  obtaining  a  lease  of  the  a  1». 

"  On  the  24th  Januar}',  1743,  a  bill  was  t:  .-T 

of  Ireland  by  Edmond  Wall  against  Ed:  ne 

Power,     sen'    and   jun',     and    William     1  rd 

recites  a  previous  bill  which  had  been  filcl  ::.  ;rt 

upon  the  12th  July,  1737.  stating  that  Hugolin  ^:  >-n 

seized  in  fee  of  the  lands  of  Rynny  ;  that  in  ti.  he 

mortgaged  them  to  Pierce  Power  the  elder  for  j(.  ,  •<^t 

annum  interest,  and  that  he  forfeited  his  estate  in  •  ■  1 

{^Geni.  Alag.,  1855,  p.  bo8). 

On  24th  November,  1697,  he  and  his  son  Nathaniel 
mortgaged  all  their  lands  in  Gahvay,  Roscommon,  and 
Cork  for  ;^2ioo;  and  26th  February,  1716,  sold 
Balinasloe  to  Frederick  Trench,  ancestor  of  the  Farl 
of  Clancarty. 

(<:)  Hugolin  Spenser — of  Rinny  —  restored  429 
acres  of  land,  co.  Cork,  by  the  Act  of  Settlement. 
1663-4.  He  had  "forfeited"  them  by  his  .share  in 
the  revolt  of  164 1.  He  was  a  Roman  Catholic.  He 
had  a  mortgage  of  ;{;500  upon  Rinny  (deed  of  sale 
174S). 


566  APPENDIX. 

of  the  parsonages,  rectories  and  tithes  of  Templebridge 
otherwise  Kilbride,  Briny  or  Riny,  Ovvans,  and  Kilbo- 
nane,  and  also  of  the  abbey  of  Buttevant,  and  half  a 
ploughland  thereto  belonging,  all  situate  in  the  county 
of  Cork.  According  to  a  MS.  in  Trinity  College, 
Dublin  (referred  to  by  Todd),  he  is  described  on  4th 
May,  1642,  as  a  "  Protestant"  residing  in  the  barony 
of  Fermoy,  and  so  impovished  by  the  "  Troubles  "  as 
to  have  been  unable  to  pay  his  debts.  He  died  ajite 
1656.  He  had  married  Dorothy  Morees  or  Maurice  ; 
and  on  the  occasion  his  brother  Sylvanus  made  over  to 
him  a  part  of  his  estate,  i.e.  the  lands  of  Rinny  or 
Renny,  near  Kilcolman.  In  the  Book  of  Orders  of 
Cromwell's  Court  of  Claims,  6th  June,  1654,  to  29th 
October,  1655  (PP-  213,  218),  she  is  described  as 
"  Dorothy  Maurice  alias  Spencer,  widow  of  Peregrine 
Spencer"  {Gent.  Mag.,  1855,  P-  607).  During  the 
Commonwealth  of  Cromwell  it  appears  to  have  been 
the  general  rule  with  the  Government  in  Ireland  to 
make  fee-farm  leases  or  grants  of  all  such  estates  as 
came  into  their  possession,  or  under  their  control  ;  and 
we  find  that  amongst  others  Peregrine  Spencer  was,  in 
the  year  1656  (although  then  deceased),  charged  with 
the  fee-farm  rent  of  ^i  js.  6d.  for  "the  late  house  of 
y''  ffryers  of  Killnemalagh  alias  Buttevant,"  as  assignee 
of  Arthur  Usher,  the  farmer  thereof ;  and  at  the  same 
time  Edmond  Spencer  was  called  upon  to  pay  the  sum 
of  i^9  I  OS.  5^^/.  as  tenant  of  "  the  manor,  towne  and 
lands  of  Kilcolman,  with  others  "  (Book  of  Arrears 
of  I'ee-farm  Rents,  1656,  in  Gcjit.  Mag.,  1855,  p.  607): 
Most  probably  Nathaniel  Spencer,  who  has  been 
called   son   of  Sylvanus,   was    really  son   of   Peregrine. 


APPENDIX. 

He  became  a  clergyman — was  of  Ballycannon.  ca 
Waterford.  He  was  collated  and  installed  Prebendary 
of  Kilrossantie,  diocese  of  Lismore.  loth  November, 
1662,  and  in  1663  Prebendary  of  Sl  Patricks,  Water- 
ford  (Cotton's  Fasti,  s, «.).  He  died  intestate  34th 
September,  1669.     He  had  married  Mar        •  ':ter 

of    Richard    Deanc,    li.D.,    afterwards     1  of 

Mora  or  Moretown.     They  had  issue    J  ^rr 

— entered  as  pensioner  Trinity  College,   .  ;  \^^x 

May,  1684,  being  then  sixteen  years  of  age,  and  con- 
sequently born  in  1668.  A  fourth  child — a  daughter 
of  Edmund  Spenser  and  Elizabeth  hiswife^ — was  Catha- 
rine, s.  p.  She  married  William  Wiseman,  Ksq^  of 
Bandon.  The  Patrician,  as  before,  writes  doubtfully 
of  this  filiation  and  marriage,  tliough  both  arc  pro- 
nounced "  very  probable."  Amongst  the  pensioners  in 
Cromwells  Civil  List  Establishment,  under  Clonmcll,  it 
is  found  that  "  Katherine  Spencer,"  a  captain's  widow 
and  5  children,  had  "js.  a  week  {Gent.  Mag.,  as  before, 
1855,  p.  607). 

Such  was  the  course  of  the  immediate  Family  of  the 
Poet.      Looking   further   on — the   following  dates    arc 
found  : — William    Spencer,    second    son    of    S\  Ivanus 
Spenser,  had  an  only  son,  whose  name  was  Nathaniel 
He  is  designated  of  Kilcoleman  Castle  and   Rcnny,  c<\ 
Cork,  Esq.,  in  171  5.      He  sold  the  former  by  n  m'>ft- 
gage  of  the  9th  and  loth  May,  1715.     His  \'. 
14th  October,  I  7  18,  was  proved  at   Dublin,   : 
1734 — Arthur   Hyde  and  Jephson  Hustccd. 
(Craik   and    Dr.    Milner  Barry  correct  the    / 
14th    August,     17 18).      He    had    marric-d    KosamoiKJ, 
dau-htcr  of  a  Pniikclcy.     William   Sixrnccr  had  al-io  a 


5('8  APPEXDIX. 

daughter  named  Susannah.  She  occurs  in  the  Will 
of  Natham'el  Spencer,  in  1718,  as  a  sister.  She  was 
unmarried  in  1720.  This  Nathaniel  Spencer — son  of 
William,  had  issue  as  follow  : — ((?)  Edino)id  Spencer  of 
Rinny,  co.  Cork,  Esq. — born  25  Nov.,  171  i.  He  sold 
Rinny  6th  December,  1748.  The  Deed  of  Sale  was 
registered  at  Dublin  7th  Dec.  He  also  sold  Bally- 
nasloe,  co,  Galway.  The  '  mortgage '  of  Renny  must 
have  been  redeemed,  or  he  could  not  have  possessed  it. 
He  is  the  same  person  described  as  "  of  Renny  "  and 
of  "  Mallow,"  and  who  is  mentioned  in  AntJiologia  Hib. 
in  1793  as  then  remembered  in  Dublin  as  a  lineal 
descendant  of  the  Poet.  He  is  also  mentioned  therein 
as  having  been  a  few  years  before  resident  in  Mallow, 
and  as  having  in  his  possession  an  original  portrait  of 
Si)enscr,  which  he  valued  so  highly  as  to  have  refused 
i^500  for  it,  and  also  "  many  curious  papers  and  docu- 
ments relative  to  his  ancestor"  (vol.  i.,  pp.  189,  190). 
This  Edmond  married  in  1736  Anne,  eldest  daughter 
of  John  Freeman  of  Ballinquile,  co.  Cork,  Esq.,  second 
brother  of  William  Freeman  of  Castle  Cor,  Esq.,  and 
.son  of  Richard  Freeman,  of  Killvaric,  co.  Cork,  and 
Judith  his  wife,  daughter  of  George  Crofts,  of  Velvets- 
town  and  Churchtown  "  {Landed  Gentry,  s.n.  "  Crofts  "). 
Before  his  marriage  he  had  been  "  Agent  "  to  Freeman 
of  Castle  Cor,  cousin  of  his  wife.  He  appears  as  a 
Witness  to  the  marriage  of  Usher  Philpot,  alderman  of 
Cork  in  1 746.  He  is  there  styled  "  of  Glanmore." 
I'hiipot's  property  adjoined  Renny.  He  is  said  to 
h.ive  left  the  following  epitaph  for  himself: — "  Here 
lies  the  J^ody  of  Edmond  Spenser,  great-great-grand.son 
of  the  poet  Spenser.      Unfortunate   from   his   cradle   to 


APPE.VD/X.  S69 

his  grave."  Their  issue  was  Rosamond  Spencer,  an 
only  child.  She  was  living  at  Mallow,  co.  Cork,  in 
1805.     She  was  said  to  have  had  the   Poet's  "  picture" 

She    married Burnc,   Ksq,,  of  Ca&tic   Cootc,  ca 

Roscommon,  Lieut.  52nd  foot,  who  is  found  in  an 
office  in  the  Customs,  London.  Their  issue  were  James 
Spencer  Burne,  Est}.,  a  captain  in  the  Army — died  x.  />. 
He  was  born  in  1764.  One  of  his  sponsors  was 
Edmond  Spenser,  probably  his  grandfather.  AI«o — 
Alicia  Hurne,  \ounu[est  child  (born  4th  Nov.,  1769), 
sole  heiress  of  her  brother.  She  made  a  runaway 
marriage  with  a  Dr.  Sherlock,  of  Charlcvillc,  near 
Ballyhowra,  co.  Cork,  "  an  inferior  person,"  adds  the 
Patrician  (vol.  v.,  p.  56).  She  died  so  lately  as  9th 
October,  1850,  aged  81.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Sherlock  had 
issue  as  follow  : — 

1.  Henrietta— died  in  infancy. 

2.  Grace — died  in  infancy. 

3.  Rosamond— married  a  Mr.  N 111  1:1 
ters,  one  married  to  a  Mr.   Puebles,  a 
the  Courts  of  Cork  (1848);  another  man. 
wrote  poetry  (1848).     Writin><  in  1861,  t; 
his  History  uf  the  County  and  City/  0/ 
Road"    [Cork],    states :—"  Here   lives    ": 
descendant  of  the  poet,  whose  mother,   Mis. 
picture  of  the  poet.     Mrs.  Neilan  derives  from  .\ 

of  Renny,  whose  wife's  name  was  Rosamond.     >.    •"■ - • 

Rosamond.     .She  keeps  a  Dame's  School"  ji.  yi'i). 

4.  Letitia-.\nn— married  Mr.  Supple-  hvinvj  in  Uubhn  (iNB). 

5.  Alicia  Spenser— died  "  about  1845." 

6.  Joseph  (only  son)— died  in  1837. 

{b)  Nathaniel  Spencer,  of  Strabane,  co.  Tyrone,  gent — 
named  in  his  father's  Will  of  171  8,  and  as  of  Slrabanc 
in  the  Deeds  of  Sale  of  Kilcolman  and  Rcnnyin  174**. 
(c)  John  Spencer— ^\so  named  \n  his  fathcr.s  Will  of 
I.  37 


i^yo 


APPENDIX. 


Maternal  Pedigree  of  Rev.  R.  P.  G.  Tiddemax,  M.A., 

TRACED   TO   THE   POET   Si'ENSER. 

F.DMi'M)  SrFNSF.R's  wife's  Christian  name  Ei.izarf.th — surname  unknown 
[now  disclosed  in  this  Life.  Chap.  IX.,] — had  issue 


Sylvan  IS, 
had  issue. 


Lawrk.nce. 


Pkkkgkine. 


EliMlNI 

no  issue. 


Nathaniel,  died  1734. 
and  left  ;  sons  and  i  d. 


Wi 

had 


Catuekine. 


.I.IAM, 
issue. 


1 
Rev.  Nathaniel  fpro- 

bal)ly  a  mistake — son  of 

Peregrine]. 


Nathaniel,  marriec 
niond,  and  left  issue. 


Rosa- 


Susannah. 


Edmund, 

of  Renny,  Mallow  and  Dublin  ;  he 
married  .Ann,  dau.  of  John  Free- 
man, F^M].,  of  Rallanquil  in  the  co. 
of  Cork.  Styled  "  of  Kilcolman  "  in 
his  m.'irriai;e-!>ettlemeiH,  which  is 
in  Mr.  Tidneman's  possession.  Mr. 
T.  remembers  his  mother  speaking 
of  a  valuable  portrait  of  the  poet 
which  had  remained  in  the  family, 
and  was  then  possessed  by  Mrs. 
Sherlock,  her  youngest  sister  [dis- 
owned by  the  family  for  her  run- 
away marriage,  as  before].— 


N.vi'HANiEL.      John.       Darhara. 


I  daughter,  Fos.amond,  who  married  James  Bunie,  by  whom 
she  had  issue  i  son  and  3  daus.^^ 

I ; ' : 1 

James  Spencer  BiKNE,    Rosamond,  married  Capt.     Letitia-    Alicia. 

died  unmarried  at  Pondi-     Richard    Tiddeman,    and-       Ann. 

cherry,  India.  had  issue.=r 


I  son,  the  Rev.  Richard  Philii>  Goldsworthv  Tiddeman, 
nov,-  Rector  of  Fin^est,  Ibstonc.  Ilenley-on-ThameS;  Oxon. 


APPEXDIX.  57  r 

I  7  I  S  ;  but  as  he  is  not  named  in  the  Deeds  of  Sale 
aforesaid,  he  must  have  died  previous  to  1748  and 
J',  p.,  as  otherwise  his  heirs  would  have  been  mentioned 
therein.  (^)  Barbara  Spencer — named  both  in  Will 
and  Deed  of  Sale,  as  before.  She  married  an  Edmonti 
Connelly,  of  Shane's  Castle,  Antrim,  gent. — also  named 
in  the  Deeds  of  Sale  of  1748. 

Though  in  part  repeating  some  of  the  preceding 
details,  I  very  gladly  avail  myself  of  a  MS.,  "  Maternal 
Descent  "  of  a  living  representative  of  Spenser,  with 
which  I  have  been  favoured  by  Professor  Hales.  It 
appears  on  the  opposite  page. 


END   OF    VOL.    I. 


Prhited  h  Hazell,  Watson,  and  Vinev,  Limited,  Lmdon  and  AyUtlury. 


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