The acres of Kilcolman offered no delights to "the wight forlore,
forgotten in that waste." Our tender and melancholy poet was not blessed
with that fortitude which, even in a barren solitude, can muse on its
own glory, as Petrarch and Rousseau were wont, and which knows also to
value a repose freed from spiteful rivalries and mordacious malignity.
And now opened his tedious suings at court, for what, but to obtain some
situation in his native home, which offered repose of mind, and
carelessness of the future? We know of his restless wanderings to
England, and his constant returns to Ireland. We find the poet, in
1590, wearied by solicitations, throwing out the immortal lines so
painfully descriptive of
What hell it is in suing long to bide.
It was in this year that the first three books of the romantic epic were
published, which was followed by the grant of a pension in February,
1591. But five years afterwards the poet still remains the same
querulous court-suitor; the miserable man wasting his days and his
nights; for then he tells us in his "Prothalamion," how on a summer's
day he
Walk'd forth to ease his pain,
Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames.
------------------I whose sullen care,
Through discontent of my long fruitless stay
In princes' court, and expectation vain
Of idle hopes which still do fly away,
Like empty shadows, to afflict my brain.
When this was written Spenser had possessed the lands of Kilcolman more
than ten years, and held his pension. Were the lands profitless, and the
pension still to be solicited? The poet has only perpetuated his "secret
sorrows;" his pride or his delicacy has thrown a veil over them. He has
sent down to posterity his disappointments, without alluding to the
nature of his claims.
It was in 1597 that Spenser laid before the Queen his memorable "View of
the State of Ireland." This state-memorial still makes us regret that
our poet only wrote verse; there is a charm in his sweet and voluble
prose, a virgin grace which we have long lost in the artificial
splendour of English diction. Here is no affectation of Chaucerian
words; the gold is not spotted with rust. The vivid pictures of the
poet; the curiosity of the antiquary; and above all, a new model of
policy of the practical politician, combine in this inestimable tract.
Spenser suggested that the popular hero of that day, his noble friend
the Earl of Essex, would be more able to conciliate popular favour in
Ireland. By an alternate policy, from that day to the present, has our
government tried to rule that fair "Land of Ire," either by a Lord
Grey's severity of justice--the Arthegal, accompanied by his "iron man,"
with his "iron flail;" or by the generous graciousness of an Earl of
Essex, courting popularity: but neither would serve; the more quiet
wisdom lay in colonization, happily begun, and so fatally neglected. The
powerful eloquence of the poet and the secretary attracted the Queen's
attention. She recommended Spenser to the Irish Council to be Sheriff of
Cork; again was "the wight forlore" sent back to his undesired locality;
yet now, perhaps, honours and promotion were awaiting the "miserable
man." The royal letter was dated in September, and in the following
month, suddenly, the Irish insurrection broke out. The flight of Spenser
and his family from the Castle of Kilcolman was momentous--perhaps they
witnessed the flames annihilating their small wealth. Spenser himself
lost more than wealth; for the father beheld the sacrifice of his child,
and the author was bereaved of all his manuscripts, now lost or
scattered--his hopes, his pride, and his fame! He flew to England, not
to live, but to experience how this last stroke of fortune went beyond
the force of his own passionate descriptions, or of his nature to
endure. In an obscure lodging, and within three short months, the most
sensitive of men, broken-hearted, closed his eyes in mute grief, and in
a premature death; Spenser perished at the zenith of human life.
Curiosity has been excited to learn the occasion of the inveterate
prejudice of an insensible Lord Treasurer against a tender poet, who had
courted his favour. This hostility of "the mighty peer" seems not to
have broken forth openly till the publication of the first three books
of the "Faery Queen;" for all the poet's personal allusions to Burleigh
were written shortly after that event.
Can so small a creature as a poet when it creeps into the sphere of a
jealous statesman's policy draw on itself his hateful attention? Are
crafty politicians in office like richly-laden travellers who start at a
crossing shadow? Burleigh possessed the full confidence of his sovereign
from her youth; but she was a woman subject to caprices, and would call
her ancient friend and servant "an old fool." Burleigh was fearfully
jealous of two potent rivals--the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of
Essex; these "men of arms," the patrons of Spenser, were each
subsequently the head of the opposition to the pacific administration of
the Lord Treasurer.
"The sage old sire," moreover, well knew the romantic self-idolatry of
his royal mistress; her infirmity of poetical susceptibility; her
avidity of poignant flatteries on her beauty, her chastity, and even on
her verse. Her Majesty was now in the ascension of that glorified
beatitude, the "Faery Queen;" and this transfiguration was the work of
him whom he held to be a creature of his great rivals!
We are interested to detect the vacillating conduct of the poet to the
implacable statesman. Spenser accompanied his presentation copy of the
"Faery Queen" to the Lord-Treasurer with a sonnet, in which he
humiliated the muse before his great court-enemy--
On whose mighty shoulders most doth rest
The burden of this kingdom's government,
Unfitly I these idle rimes present,
The labour of lost time and wit unstay'd.
If Spenser had complained of former cold neglect, now he had to endure,
what a poet can never forgive, bitter disdain.
Wounded in spirit, the poet composed, immediately after the first
appearance of the "Faery Queen," "The Ruins of Time;" there, eulogising
the departed Sir Francis Walsingham for his love of learning and care of
"men of arms," he launches forth a thunderbolt against the wary and
frigid Burleigh--
For he that now wields all things at his will,
Scorns one and th' other, in his deeper skill.