THE NEW POET--THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR.
[1579.]
It is clear that when Spenser appeared in London, he had found out his
powers and vocation as a poet. He came from Cambridge, fully conscious
of the powerful attraction of the imaginative faculties, conscious of an
extraordinary command over the resources of language, and with a
singular gift of sensitiveness to the grace and majesty and
suggestiveness of sound and rhythm, such as makes a musician. And
whether he knew it or not, his mind was in reality made up, as to what
his English poetry was to be. In spite of opinions and fashions round
him, in spite of university pedantry and the affectations of the court,
in spite of Harvey's classical enthusiasm, and Sidney's Areopagus, and
in spite of half-fancying himself converted to their views, his own
powers and impulses showed him the truth, and made him understand better
than his theories what a poet could and ought to do with English speech
in its free play and genuine melodies. When we first come upon him, we
find that at the age of twenty-seven, he had not only realized an idea
of English poetry far in advance of anything which his age had yet
conceived or seen; but that, besides what he had executed or planned, he
had already in his mind the outlines of the _Faery Queen_, and, in some
form or other, though perhaps not yet as we have it, had written some
portion of it.
In attempting to revive for his own age Chaucer's suspended art, Spenser
had the tendencies of the time with him. The age was looking out for
some one to do for England what had been grandly done for Italy. The
time in truth was full of poetry. The nation was just in that condition
which is most favourable to an outburst of poetical life or art. It was
highly excited; but it was also in a state of comparative peace and
freedom from external disturbance. "An over-faint quietness," writes
Sidney in 1581, lamenting that there were so few good poets, "should
seem to strew the house for poets." After the first ten years of
Elizabeth's reign, and the establishment of her authority, the country
had begun to breathe freely, and fall into natural and regular ways.
During the first half of the century, it had had before it the most
astonishing changes which the world had seen for centuries. These
changes seemed definitely to have run their course; with the convulsions
which accompanied them, their uprootings and terrors, they were gone;
and the world had become accustomed to their results. The nation still
had before it great events, great issues, great perils, great and
indefinite prospects of adventure and achievement. The old quarrels and
animosities of Europe had altered in character: from being wars between
princes, and disputes of personal ambition, they had attracted into them
all that interests and divides mankind, from high to low. Their
animating principle was a high and a sacred cause: they had become wars
of liberty, and wars of religion. The world had settled down to the
fixed antipathies and steady rivalries of centuries to come. But the
mere shock of transition was over. Yet the remembrance of the great
break-up was still fresh. For fifty years the English people had had
before its eyes the great vicissitudes which make tragedy. They had seen
the most unforeseen and most unexpected revolutions in what had for ages
been held certain and immovable; the overthrow of the strongest
institutions, and most venerable authorities; the violent shifting of
feelings from faith to passionate rejection, from reverence to scorn and
a hate which could not be satisfied. They had seen the strangest turns
of fortune, the most wonderful elevations to power, the most terrible
visitations of disgrace. They had seen the mightiest ruined, the
brightest and most admired brought down to shame and death, men struck
down with all the forms of law, whom the age honoured as its noblest
ornaments. They had seen the flames of martyr or heretic, heads which
had worn a crown laid one after another on the block, controversies, not
merely between rivals for power, but between the deepest principles and
the most rooted creeds, settled on the scaffold. Such a time of
surprise,--of hope and anxiety, of horror and anguish to-day, of relief
and exultation to-morrow,--had hardly been to England as the first half
of the sixteenth century. All that could stir men's souls, all that
could inflame their hearts, or that could wring them, had happened.
And yet, compared with previous centuries, and with what was going on
abroad, the time now was a time of peace, and men lived securely. Wealth
was increasing. The Wars of the Roses had left the crown powerful to
enforce order, and protect industry and trade. The nation was beginning
to grow rich. When the day's work was done, men's leisure was not
disturbed by the events of neighbouring war. They had time to open
their imaginations to the great spectacle which had been unrolled before
them, to reflect upon it, to put into shape their thoughts about it. The
intellectual movement of the time had reached England, and its strong
impulse to mental efforts in new and untried directions was acting
powerfully upon Englishmen. But though there was order and present peace
at home, there was much to keep men's minds on the stretch. There was
quite enough danger and uncertainty to wind up their feelings to a high
pitch. But danger was not so pressing as to prevent them from giving
full place to the impressions of the strange and eventful scene round
them, with its grandeur, its sadness, its promises. In such a state of
things there is everything to tempt poetry. There are its materials and
its stimulus, and there is the leisure to use its materials.
But the poet had not yet been found; and everything connected with
poetry was in the disorder of ignorance and uncertainty. Between the
counsels of a pedantic scholarship, and the rude and hesitating, but
true instincts of the natural English ear, every one was at sea. Yet it
seemed as if every one was trying his hand at verse. Popular writing
took that shape. The curious and unique record of literature preserved
in the registers of the Stationers' Company, shows that the greater
proportion of what was published, or at least entered for publication,
was in the shape of ballads. The ballad vied with the sermon in doing
what the modern newspaper does, in satisfying the public craving for
information, amusement, or guidance. It related the last great novelty,
the last great battle or crime, a storm or monstrous birth. It told some
pathetic or burlesque story, or it moralized on the humours or follies
of classes and professions, of young and old, of men and of women. It
sang the lover's hopes or sorrows, or the adventures of some hero of
history or romance. It might be a fable, a satire, a libel, a squib, a
sacred song or paraphrase, a homily. But about all that it treated it
sought to throw more or less the colour of imagination. It appealed to
the reader's feelings, or sympathy, or passion. It attempted to raise
its subject above the level of mere matter of fact. It sought for choice
and expressive words; it called in the help of measure and rhythm. It
aimed at a rude form of art. Presently the critical faculty came into
play. Scholars, acquainted with classical models and classical rules,
began to exercise their judgment on their own poetry, to construct
theories, to review the performances before them, to suggest plans for
the improvement of the poetic art. Their essays are curious, as the
beginnings of that great critical literature, which in England, in spite
of much infelicity, has only been second to the poetry which it judged.
But in themselves they are crude, meagre, and helpless; interesting
mainly, as showing how much craving there was for poetry, and how little
good poetry to satisfy it, and what inconceivable doggrel could be
recommended by reasonable men, as fit to be admired and imitated. There
is fire and eloquence in Philip Sidney's _Apologie for Poetrie_ (1581);
but his ideas about poetry were floating, loose, and ill defined, and he
had not much to point to as of first-rate excellence in recent writers.
Webbe's _Discourse of English Poetrie_ (1586), and the more elaborate
work ascribed to George Puttenham (1589), works of tame and artificial
learning without Sidney's fire, reveal equally the poverty, as a whole,
of what had been as yet produced in England as poetry, in spite of the
widespread passion for poetry. The specimens which they quote and praise
are mostly grotesque to the last degree. Webbe improves some gracefully
flowing lines of Spenser's into the most portentous Sapphics; and
Puttenham squeezes compositions into the shapes of triangles, eggs, and
pilasters. Gabriel Harvey is accused by his tormentor, Nash, of doing
the same, "of having writ verse in all kinds, as in form of a pair of
gloves, a dozen of points, a pair of spectacles, a two-hand sword, a
poynado, a colossus, a pyramid, a painter's easel, a market cross, a
trumpet, an anchor, a pair of pot-hooks." Puttenham's Art of Poetry,
with its books, one on Proportion, the other on Ornament, might be
compared to an Art of War, of which one book treated of barrack drill,
and the other of busbies, sabretasches, and different forms of
epaulettes and feathers. These writers do not want good sense or the
power to make a good remark. But the stuff and material for good
criticism, the strong and deep poetry, which makes such criticisms as
theirs seem so absurd, had not yet appeared.
A change was at hand; and the suddenness of it is one of the most
astonishing things in literary history. The ten years from 1580 to 1590
present a set of critical essays, giving a picture of English poetry of
which, though there are gleams of a better hope, and praise is specially
bestowed on a "new poet," the general character is feebleness, fantastic
absurdity, affectation and bad taste. Force, and passion, and simple
truth, and powerful thoughts of the world and man, are rare; and
poetical reformers appear maundering about miserable attempts at English
hexameters and sapphics. What was to be looked for from all that? Who
could suppose what was preparing under it all? But the dawn was come.
The next ten years, from 1590 to 1600, not only saw the _Faery Queen_,
but they were the years of the birth of the English Drama. Compare the
idea which we get of English poetry from Philip Sidney's Defense in
1581, and Puttenham's treatise in 1589, I do not say with Shakespere,
but with Lamb's selections from the Dramatic Poets, many of them unknown
names to the majority of modern readers; and we see at once what a bound
English poetry has made; we see that a new spring time of power and
purpose in poetical thought has opened; new and original forms have
sprung to life of poetical grandeur, seriousness, and magnificence. From
the poor and rude play-houses, with their troops of actors most of them
profligate and disreputable, their coarse excitements, their buffoonery,
license, and taste for the monstrous and horrible,--denounced not
without reason as corruptors of public morals, preached against at
Paul's Cross, expelled the city by the Corporation, classed by the law
with rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, and patronized by the great
and unscrupulous nobles in defiance of it--there burst forth suddenly a
new poetry, which with its reality, depth, sweetness and nobleness took
the world captive. The poetical ideas and aspirations of the Englishmen
of the time had found at last adequate interpreters, and their own
national and unrivalled expression.
And in this great movement Spenser was the harbinger and announcing
sign. But he was only the harbinger. What he did was to reveal to
English ears as it never had been revealed before, at least, since the
days of Chaucer, the sweet music, the refined grace, the inexhaustible
versatility of the English tongue. But his own efforts were in a
different direction from that profound and insatiable seeking after the
real, in thought and character, in representation and expression, which
made Shakespere so great, and his brethren great in proportion as they
approached him. Spenser's genius continued to the end under the
influences which were so powerful when it first unfolded itself. To the
last it allied itself, in form, at least, with the artificial. To the
last it moved in a world which was not real, which never had existed,
which, any how, was only a world of memory and sentiment. He never threw
himself frankly on human life as it is; he always viewed it through a
veil of mist which greatly altered its true colours, and often distorted
its proportions. And thus while more than any one he prepared the
instruments and the path for the great triumph, he himself missed the
true field for the highest exercise of poetic power; he missed the
highest honours of that in which he led the way.
Yet, curiously enough, it seems as if, early in his career, he was
affected by the strong stream which drew Shakespere. Among the
compositions of his first period, besides _The Shepherd's Calendar_, are
_Nine Comedies_,--clearly real plays, which his friend Gabriel Harvey
praised with enthusiasm. As early as 1579 Spenser had laid before
Gabriel Harvey for his judgement and advice, a portion of the _Fairy
Queen_ in some shape or another, and these nine comedies. He was
standing at the parting of the ways. The allegory, with all its tempting
associations and machinery, with its ingenuities and pictures, and
boundless license to vagueness and to fancy, was on one side; and on the
other, the drama, with its _prima facie_ and superficially prosaic
aspects, and its kinship to what was customary and commonplace and
unromantic in human life. Of the nine comedies, composed on the model of
those of Ariosto and Machiavelli and other Italians, every trace has
perished. But this was Gabriel Harvey's opinion of the respective value
of the two specimens of work submitted to him, and this was his counsel
to their author. In April, 1580, he thus writes to Spenser.
In good faith I had once again nigh forgotten your _Faerie
Queene_; howbeit, by good chance, I have now sent her home at
the last neither in better or worse case than I found her. And
must you of necessity have my judgement of her indeed? To be
plain, I am void of all judgement, if your _Nine Comedies_,
whereunto in imitation of Herodotus, you give the names of the
Nine Muses (and in one man's fancy not unworthily), come not
nearer Ariosto's comedies, either for the fineness of
plausible elocution, or the rareness of poetical invention,
than that _Elvish Queen_ doth to his _Orlando Furioso_, which
notwithstanding you will needs seem to emulate, and hope to
overgo, as you flatly professed yourself in one of your last
letters.
Besides that you know, it hath been the usual practice of the
most exquisite and odd wits in all nations, and specially in
Italy rather to show, and advance themselves that way than any
other: as, namely, those three notorious discoursing heads,
Bibiena, Machiavel, and Aretino did (to let Bembo and Ariosto
pass) with the great admiration and wonderment of the whole
country: being indeed reputed matchable in all points, both
for conceit of wit and eloquent deciphering of matters, either
with Aristophanes and Menander in Greek, or with Plautus and
Terence in Latin, or with any other in any other tongue. But I
will not stand greatly with you in your own matters. If so be
the _Faery Queene_ be fairer in your eye than the Nine Muses,
and Hobgoblin run away with the garland from Apollo: mark what
I say, and yet I will not say that I thought, but there is an
end for this once, and fare you well, till God or some good
angel put you in a better mind.
It is plain on which side Spenser's own judgement inclined. He had
probably written the comedies, as he had written English hexameters, out
of deference to others, or to try his hand. But the current of his own
secret thoughts, those thoughts, with their ideals and aims, which tell
a man what he is made for, and where his power lies, set another way.
The _Fairy Queen was_ 'fairer in his eye than the Nine Muses, and
Hobgoblin did run away with the garland from Apollo.' What Gabriel
Harvey prayed for as the 'better mind' did not come. And we cannot
repine at a decision which gave us, in the shape which it took at last,
the allegory of the _Fairy Queen_.
But the _Fairy Queen_, though already planned and perhaps begun, belongs
to the last ten years of the century, to the season of fulfilment not of
promise, to the blossoming, not to the opening bud. The new hopes for
poetry which Spenser brought were given in a work, which the _Fairy
Queen_ has eclipsed and almost obscured, as the sun puts out the morning
star. Yet that which marked a turning-point in the history of our
poetry, was the book which came out, timidly and anonymously, in the end
of 1579, or the beginning of 1580, under the borrowed title of the
_Shepherd's Calendar_, a name familiar in those days as that of an early
medley of astrology and homely receipts from time to time reprinted,
which was the Moore's or Zadkiel's almanac of the time. It was not
published ostensibly by Spenser himself, though it is inscribed to
Philip Sidney in a copy of verses signed with Spenser's masking name of
_Immerito_. The avowed responsibility for it might have been
inconvenient for a young man pushing his fortune among the cross
currents of Elizabeth's court. But it was given to the world by a friend
of the author's, signing himself E. K., now identified with Spenser's
fellow-student at Pembroke, Edward Kirke, who dedicates it in a long,
critical epistle of some interest to the author's friend, Gabriel
Harvey, and after the fashion of some of the Italian books of poetry,
accompanies it with a gloss, explaining words, and to a certain extent,
allusions. Two things are remarkable in Kirke's epistle. One is the
confidence with which he announces the yet unrecognized excellence of
"this one new poet," whom he is not afraid to put side by side with
"that good old poet," Chaucer, the "loadstar of our language." The other
point is the absolute reliance which he places on the powers of the
English language, handled by one who has discerned its genius, and is
not afraid to use its wealth. "In my opinion, it is one praise of many,
that are due to this poet, that he hath laboured to restore, as to their
rightful heritage, such good and natural English words, as have been
long time out of use, or almost clean disherited, which is the only
cause, that our mother tongue, which truly of itself is both full enough
for prose, and stately enough for verse, hath long time been counted
most bare and barren of both." The friends, Kirke and Harvey, were not
wrong in their estimate of the importance of Spenser's work. The "new
poet," as he came to be customarily 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 was
immature and imperfect, not a little that was fantastic and affected.
But it was the first adequate effort of reviving English poetry.
The _Shepherd's Calendar_ consists of twelve compositions, with no other
internal connexion than that they are assigned respectively to the
twelve months of the year. They are all different in subject, metre,
character, and excellence. They are called _Æglogues_, according to the
whimsical derivation adopted from the Italians of the word which the
classical writers called Eclogues: "_Æglogai_, as it were =aigôn= or
=aigonomôn logoi=, that is, Goatherd's Tales." The book is in its form
an imitation of that highly artificial kind of poetry which the later
Italians of the Renaissance had copied from Virgil, as Virgil had copied
it from the Sicilian and Alexandrian Greeks, and to which had been given
the name of Bucolic or Pastoral. Petrarch, in imitation of Virgil, had
written Latin Bucolics, as he had written a Latin Epic, his _Africa_. He
was followed in the next century by Baptista Mantuanus (1448-1516), the
"old Mantuan," of Holofernes in _Love's Labour's Lost_, whose Latin
"Eglogues" became a favourite school-book in England, and who was
imitated by a writer who passed for a poet in the time of Henry VIII.,
Alexander Barclay. In the hands of the Sicilians, pastoral poetry may
have been an attempt at idealizing country life almost as genuine as
some of Wordsworth's poems; but it soon ceased to be that, and in
Alexandrian hands it took its place among the recognized departments of
classic and literary copying, in which Virgil found and used it. But a
further step had been made since Virgil had adopted it as an instrument
of his genius. In the hands of Mantuan and Barclay it was a vehicle for
general moralizing, and in particular for severe satire on women and the
clergy. And Virgil, though he may himself speak under the the names of
Tityrus and Menalcas, and lament Julius Cæsar as Daphnis, did not
conceive of the Roman world as peopled by flocks and sheep-cotes, or its
emperors and chiefs, its poets, senators, and ladies, as shepherds and
shepherdesses, of higher or lower degree. But in Spenser's time, partly
through undue deference to what was supposed to be Italian taste, partly
owing to the tardiness of national culture, and because the poetic
impulses had not yet gained power to force their way through the
embarrassment and awkwardness which accompany reviving art,--the world
was turned for the purposes of the poetry of civil life, into a pastoral
scene. Poetical invention was held to consist in imagining an
environment, a set of outward circumstances, as unlike as possible to
the familiar realities of actual life and employment, in which the
primary affections and passions had their play. A fantastic basis,
varying according to the conventions of the fashion, was held essential
for the representation of the ideal. Masquerade and hyperbole were the
stage and scenery on which the poet's sweetness, or tenderness, or
strength was to be put forth. The masquerade, when his subject belonged
to peace, was one of shepherds: when it was one of war and adventure, it
was a masquerade of knight errantry. But a masquerade was necessary, if
he was to raise his composition above the vulgarities and trivialities
of the street, the fire-side, the camp, or even the court; if he was to
give it the dignity, the ornament, the unexpected results, the
brightness, and colour, which belong to poetry. The fashion had the
sanction of the brilliant author of the _Arcadia_, the "Courtier,
Soldier, Scholar," who was the "mould of form," and whose judgment was
law to all men of letters in the middle years of Elizabeth, the
all-accomplished Philip Sidney. Spenser submitted to this fashion from
first to last. When first he ventured on a considerable poetical
enterprise, he spoke his thoughts, not in his own name, nor as his
contemporaries ten years later did, through the mouth of characters in a
tragic or comic drama, but through imaginary rustics, to whom every one
else in the world was a rustic, and lived among the sheep-folds, with a
background of downs or vales or fields, and the open sky above. His
shepherds and goatherds bear the homely names of native English clowns,
Diggon Davie, Willye, and Piers; Colin Clout, adopted from Skelton,
stands for Spenser himself; Hobbinol, for Gabriel Harvey; Cuddie,
perhaps for Edward Kirke; names revived by Ambrose Phillips, and laughed
at by Pope, when pastorals again came into vogue with the wits of Queen
Anne.[42:1] With them are mingled classical ones like Menalcas, French
ones from Marot, anagrams like Algrind for Grindal, significant ones
like Palinode, plain ones like Lettice, and romantic ones like Rosalind;
and no incongruity seems to be found in matching a beautiful shepherdess
named Dido with a Great Shepherd called Lobbin, or when the verse
requires it, Lobb. And not merely the speakers in the dialogue are
shepherds; every one is in their view a shepherd. Chaucer is the "god of
shepherds," and Orpheus is a--
"Shepherd that did fetch his dame
From Plutoe's baleful bower withouten leave."
The "fair Elisa," is the Queen of shepherds all; her great father is
Pan, the shepherds' god, and Anne Boleyn is Syrinx. It is not unnatural
that when the clergy are spoken of, as they are in three of the poems,
the figure should be kept up. But it is curious to find that the
shepherd's god, the great Pan, who stands in one connexion for Henry
VIII., should in another represent in sober earnest the Redeemer and
Judge of the world.[42:2]
The poems framed in this grotesque setting, are on many themes, and of
various merit, and probably of different dates. Some are simply amatory
effusions of an ordinary character, full of a lover's despair and
complaint. Three or four are translations or imitations; translations
from Marot, imitations from Theocritus, Bion, or Virgil. Two of them
contain fables told with great force and humour. The story of the Oak
and the Briar, related as his friendly commentator, Kirke, says, "so
lively and so feelingly, as if the thing were set forth in some picture
before our eyes," for the warning of "disdainful younkers," is a first
fruit, and promise of Spenser's skill in vivid narrative. The fable of
the Fox and the Kid, a curious illustration of the popular discontent at
the negligence of the clergy, and the popular suspicions about the arts
of Roman intriguers, is told with great spirit, and with mingled humour
and pathos. There is of course a poem in honour of the great queen, who
was the goddess of their idolatry to all the wits and all the learned of
England, the "faire Eliza," and a compliment is paid to Leicester,
The worthy whom she loveth best,--
That first the White Bear to the stake did bring.
Two of them are avowedly burlesque imitations of rustic dialect and
banter, carried on with much spirit. One composition is a funeral
tribute to some unknown lady; another is a complaint of the neglect of
poets by the great. In three of the Æglogues he comes on a more serious
theme; they are vigorous satires on the loose living and greediness of
clergy forgetful of their charge, with strong invectives against foreign
corruption and against the wiles of the wolves and foxes of Rome, with
frequent allusions to passing incidents in the guerilla war with the
seminary priests, and with a warm eulogy on the faithfulness and wisdom
of Archbishop Grindal; whose name is disguised as old Algrind, and with
whom in his disgrace the poet is not afraid to confess deep sympathy.
They are, in a poetical form, part of that manifold and varied system of
Puritan aggression on the established ecclesiastical order of England,
which went through the whole scale from the "Admonition to Parliament,"
and the lectures of Cartwright and Travers, to the libels of Martin
Mar-prelate: a system of attack which with all its injustice and
violence, and with all its mischievous purposes, found but too much
justification in the inefficiency and corruption of many both of the
bishops and clergy, and in the rapacious and selfish policy of the
government, forced to starve and cripple the public service, while great
men and favourites built up their fortunes out of the prodigal
indulgence of the Queen.
The collection of poems is thus a very miscellaneous one, and cannot be
said to be in its subjects inviting. The poet's system of composition,
also, has the disadvantage of being to a great degree unreal, forced and
unnatural. Departing from the precedent of Virgil and the Italians, but
perhaps copying the artificial Doric of the Alexandrians, he professes
to make his language and style suitable to the "ragged and rustical"
rudeness of the shepherds whom he brings on the scene, by making it both
archaic and provincial. He found in Chaucer a store of forms and words
sufficiently well known to be with a little help intelligible, and
sufficiently out of common use to give the character of antiquity to a
poetry which employed them. And from his sojourn in the North he is said
to have imported a certain number of local peculiarities which would
seem unfamiliar and harsh in the South. His editor's apology for this
use of "ancient solemn words," as both proper and as ornamental, is
worth quoting; it is an early instance of what is supposed to be not yet
common, a sense of pleasure in that wildness which we call picturesque.
And first for the words to speak: I grant they be something
hard, and of most men unused: yet English, and also used of
most excellent Authors and most famous Poets. In whom, when as
this our Poet hath been much travelled and throughly read, how
could it be, (as that worthy Orator said,) but that 'walking
in the sun, although for other cause he walked, yet needs he
mought be sun-burnt'; and having the sound of those ancient
poets still ringing in his ears, he mought needs, in singing,
hit out some of their tunes. But whether he useth them by such
casualty and custom, or of set purpose and choice, as thinking
them fittest for such rustical rudeness of shepherds, either
for that their rough sound would make his rymes more ragged
and rustical, or else because such old and obsolete words are
most used of country folks, sure I think, and I think not
amiss, that they bring great grace, and, as one would say,
authority, to the verse. . . . . Yet neither everywhere must
old words be stuffed in, nor the common Dialect and manner of
speaking so corrupted thereby, that, as in old buildings, it
seem disorderly and ruinous. But as in most exquisite pictures
they use to blaze and portrait not only the dainty lineaments
of beauty, but also round about it to shadow the rude thickets
and craggy cliffs, that by the baseness of such parts, more
excellency may accrue to the principal--for ofttimes, we find
ourselves I know not how, singularly delighted with the show
of such natural rudeness, and take great pleasure in that
disorderly order:--even so do these rough and harsh terms
enlumine, and make more clearly to appear, the brightness of
brave and glorious words. So oftentimes a discord in music
maketh a comely concordance.
But when allowance is made for an eclectic and sometimes pedantic
phraseology, and for mannerisms to which the fashion of the age tempted
him, such as the extravagant use of alliteration, or, as they called it,
"hunting the letter," the _Shepherd's Calendar_ is, for its time, of
great interest.
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, which might be compared with his work. Fugitive
pieces, chiefly amatory, meet us of real sprightliness, or grace, or
tenderness. The stanzas which Sackville, afterwards, Lord Buckhurst,
contributed to the collection called the _Mirror of Magistrates_,[46:3]
are marked with a pathetic majesty, a genuine sympathy for the
precariousness of greatness, which seem a prelude to the Elizabethan
drama. But these fragments were mostly felicitous efforts, which soon
passed on into the ungainly, the uncouth, the obscure or the grotesque.
But in the _Shepherd's Calendar_ we have for the first time in the
century, the swing, the command, 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 when
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 Shakespere 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 that the _Shepherd's Calendar_ is not to be matched
in any language.[46:4] And this was at once recognized. The authorship
of it, as has been said, was not formally acknowledged. Indeed, Mr.
Collier remarks that seven years after its publication, and after it had
gone through three or four separate editions, it was praised by a
contemporary poet, George Whetstone, himself a friend of Spenser's, as
the "reputed work of Sir Philip Sidney." But if it was officially a
secret, it was an open secret, known to every one who cared to be well
informed. It is possible that the free language used in it about
ecclesiastical abuses was too much in sympathy with the growing
fierceness and insolence of Puritan invective to be safely used by a
poet who gave his name: and one of the reasons assigned for Burghley's
dislike to Spenser is the praise bestowed in the _Shepherd's Calendar_
on Archbishop Grindal, then in deep disgrace for resisting the
suppression of the puritan prophesyings. But anonymous as it was, it had
been placed under Sidney's protection; and it was at once warmly
welcomed. It is not often that in those remote days we get evidence of
the immediate effect of a book; but we have this evidence in Spenser's
case. In this year, probably, after it was published, we find it spoken
of by Philip Sidney, not without discriminating criticism, but as one of
the few recent examples of poetry worthy to be named after Chaucer.
I account the _Mirror of Magistrates_ 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 much poetry in his Eglogues: indeed
worthy the 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.
Sidney's patronage of the writer and general approval of the work
doubtless had something to do with making Spenser's name known: but he
at once takes a place in contemporary judgment which no one else takes,
till the next decade of the century. In 1586, Webbe published his
_Discourse of English Poetrie_. In this, the author of the _Shepherd's
Calendar_ is spoken of by the name given him by its Editor, E. K----, as
the "new poet," just as earlier in the century, the _Orlando Furioso_
was styled the "nuova poesia;" and his work is copiously used to supply
examples and illustrations of the critic's rules and observations.
Webbe's review of existing poetry was the most comprehensive yet
attempted: but the place which he gives to the new poet, whose name was
in men's mouths, though like the author of _In Memoriam_, he had not
placed it on his title-page, was one quite apart.
This place [to wear the Laurel] have I purposely reserved for
one, who, if not only, yet in my judgement principally,
deserveth the title of the rightest English poet that ever I
read: that is, the author of the _Shepherd's Calendar_,
intituled to the worthy Gentleman Master Philip Sidney,
whether it was Master Sp. or what rare scholar in Pembroke
Hall soever, because himself and his friends, for what respect
I know not, would not reveal it, I force not greatly to set
down. Sorry I am that I cannot find none other with whom I
might couple him in this catalogue in his rare gift of poetry:
although one there is, though now long since seriously
occupied in graver studies, Master Gabriel Harvey, yet as he
was once his most special friend and fellow poet, so because
he hath taken such pains not only in his Latin poetry . . .
but also to reform our English verse . . . therefore will I
adventure to set them together as two of the rarest wits and
learnedest masters of poetry in England.
He even ventured to compare him favourably with Virgil.
But now yet at the last hath England hatched up one poet of
this sort, in my conscience comparable with the best in any
respect: even Master Sp., author of the _Shepherd's Calendar_,
whose travail in that piece of English poetry I think verily
is so commendable, as none of equal judgement can yield him
less praise for his excellent skill and skilful excellency
showed forth in the same than they would to either Theocritus
or Virgil, whom in mine opinion, if the coarseness of our
speech, (I mean the course of custom which he would not
infringe,) had been no more let unto him than their pure
native tongues were unto them, he would have, if it might be,
surpassed them.
The courtly author of the _Arte of English Poesie_, 1589, commonly cited
as G. Puttenham, classes him with Sidney. And from this time his name
occurs in every enumeration of English poetical writers, till he
appears, more than justifying this early appreciation of his genius, as
Chaucer's not unworthy successor, in the _Faery Queen_. Afterwards, as
other successful poetry was written, and the standards of taste were
multiplied, this first enthusiastic reception cooled down. In James the
First's time, Spenser's use of "old outworn words" is criticized as
being no more "practical English" than Chaucer or Skelton: it is not
"courtly" enough.[49:5] The success of the _Shepherd's Calendar_ had
also, apparently, substantial results, which some of his friends thought
of with envy. They believed that it secured him high patronage, and
opened to him a way to fortune. Poor Gabriel Harvey, writing in the year
in which the _Shepherd's Calendar_ came out, contrasts his own less
favoured lot, and his ill-repaid poetical efforts, with Colin Clout's
good luck.
But ever and ever, methinks, your great Catoes, _Ecquid erit
pretii_, and our little Catoes, _Res age quæ prosunt_, make
such a buzzing and ringing in my head, that I have little joy
to animate and encourage either you or him to go forward,
unless ye might make account of some certain ordinary wages,
or at the least wise have your meat and drink for your day's
works. As for myself, howsoever I have toyed and trifled
heretofore, I am now taught, and I trust I shall shortly
learn, (no remedy, I must of mere necessity give you over in
the plain field) to employ my travail and time wholly or
chiefly on those studies and practices that carry, as they
say, meat in their mouth, having evermore their eye upon the
Title, _De pane lucrando_, and their hand upon their
halfpenny. For I pray now what saith Mr. Cuddie, alias you
know who, in the tenth Æglogue of the aforesaid famous new
Calendar.
* * * * *
The dapper ditties, that I wont devise
To feed youths' fancy and the flocking fry,
Delighten much: what I the best for thy?
They han the pleasure, I a sclender prize.
I beat the bush, the birds to them do fly.
What good thereof to Cuddie can arise?
But Master Colin Clout is not everybody, and albeit his old
companions, Master Cuddie and Master Hobinoll, be as little
beholding to their mistress poetry as ever you wist: yet he,
peradventure, by the means of her special favour, and some
personal privilege, may haply live by _Dying Pelicans_, and
purchase great lands and lordships with the money which his
_Calendar_ and _Dreams_ have, and will afford him.
FOOTNOTES:
[42:1] In the _Guardian_, No. 40. Compare Johnson's _Life of Ambrose
Phillips_.
[42:2] _Shepherd's Calendar_, May, July, and September.
[46:3] First published in 1559. It was popular book, and was often
re-edited.
[46:4] Dedication to Virgil.
[49:5] Bolton in Haslewood, ii. 249.