THE FAERY QUEEN--THE FIRST PART.
[1580-1590.]
The _Faery Queen_ is heard of very early in Spenser's literary course.
We know that in the beginning of 1580, the year in which Spenser went to
Ireland, something under that title had been already begun and submitted
to Gabriel Harvey's judgment; and that among other literary projects,
Spenser was intending to proceed with it. But beyond the mere name, we
know nothing, at this time, of Spenser's proposed _Faery Queen_.
Harvey's criticisms on it tell us nothing of its general plan or its
numbers. Whether the first sketch had been decided upon, whether the new
stanza, Spenser's original creation, and its peculiar beauty and
instrument, had yet been invented by him, while he had been trying
experiments in metre in the _Shepherd's Calendar_, we have no means of
determining. But he took the idea with him to Ireland; and in Ireland he
pursued it and carried it out.
The first authentic account which we have of the composition of the
_Faery Queen_, is in a pamphlet written by Spenser's friend and
predecessor in the service of the Council of Munster, Ludowick Bryskett,
and inscribed to Lord Grey of Wilton: a _Discourse of Civil Life_,
published in 1606. He describes a meeting of friends at his cottage
near Dublin, and a conversation that took place on the "ethical" part of
moral philosophy. The company consisted of some of the principal
Englishmen employed in Irish affairs, men whose names occur continually
in the copious correspondence in the Rolls and at Lambeth. There was
Long, the Primate of Armagh; there were Sir Robert Dillon, the Chief
Justice of the Common Pleas, and Dormer, the Queen's Solicitor; and
there were soldiers, like Thomas Norreys, then Vice-President of
Munster, under his brother John Norreys; Sir Warham Sentleger, on whom
had fallen so much of the work in the South of Ireland, and who at last,
like Thomas Norreys, fell in Tyrone's rebellion; Captain Christopher
Carleil, Walsingham's son-in-law, a man who had gained great distinction
on land and sea, not only in Ireland, but in the Low Countries, in
France, and at Carthagena and San Domingo; and Captain Nicholas Dawtry,
the Seneschal of Clandeboy, in the troublesome Ulster country,
afterwards "Captain" of Hampshire at the time of the Armada. It was a
remarkable party. The date of this meeting must have been after the
summer of 1584, at which time Long was made Primate, and before the
beginning of 1588, when Dawtry was in Hampshire. The extract is so
curious, as a picture of the intellectual and literary wants and efforts
of the times, especially amid the disorders of Ireland, and as a
statement of Spenser's purpose in his poem, that an extract from it
deserves to be inserted, as it is given in Mr. Todd's _Life of Spenser_,
and repeated in that by Mr. Hales.
"Herein do I greatly envie," writes Bryskett, "the happiness
of the Italians, who have in their mother-tongue late writers
that have, with a singular easie method taught all that Plato
and Aristotle have confusedly or obscurely left written. Of
which, some I have begun to reade with no small delight; as
Alexander Piccolomini, Gio. Baptista Giraldi, and Guazzo; all
three having written upon the Ethick part of Morall
Philosophie both exactly and perspicuously. And would God that
some of our countrimen would shew themselves so wel affected
to the good of their countrie (whereof one principall and most
important part consisteth in the instructing men to vertue),
as to set downe in English the precepts of those parts of
Morall Philosophy, whereby our youth might, without spending
so much time as the learning of those other languages require,
speedily enter into the right course of vertuous life.
In the meane while I must struggle with those bookes which I
vnderstand and content myselfe to plod upon them, in hope that
God (who knoweth the sincerenesse of my desire) will be
pleased to open my vnderstanding, so as I may reape that
profit of my reading, which I trauell for. Yet is there _a
gentleman in this company_, whom I have had often a purpose to
intreate, that as his liesure might serue him, he would
vouchsafe to spend some time with me to instruct me in some
hard points which I cannot of myselfe understand; _knowing him
to be not onely perfect in the Greek tongue, but also very
well read in Philosophie, both morall and naturall_.
Neuertheless such is my bashfulness, as I neuer yet durst open
my mouth to disclose this my desire unto him, though I have
not wanted some hartning thereunto from himselfe. For of loue
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 vnderstand it_. But now that so good an opportunitie
is offered vnto me, to satisfie in some sort my desire; I
thinke I should commit a great fault, not to myselfe alone,
but to all this company, if I should not enter my request thus
farre, as to moue him to spend this time which we have now
destined to familiar discourse and conuersation, in declaring
unto us the great benefits which men obtaine by the knowledge
of Morall Philosophie, and in making us to know what the same
is, what be the parts thereof, whereby vertues are to be
distinguished from vices; and finally that he will be pleased
to run ouer in such order as he shall thinke good, such and
so many principles and rules thereof, as shall serue not only
for my better instruction, but also for the contentment and
satisfaction of you al. For I nothing doubt, but that euery
one of you will be glad to heare so profitable a discourse and
thinke the time very wel spent wherin so excellent a knowledge
shal be reuealed unto you, from which euery one may be assured
to gather some fruit as wel as myselfe.
Therefore (said I), turning myselfe to _M. Spenser_, It is you
sir, to whom it pertaineth to shew yourselfe courteous now
unto vs all and to make vs all beholding unto you for the
pleasure and profit which we shall gather from your speeches,
if you shall vouchsafe to open unto vs 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
myselfe, I do most earnestly intreate you not to say vs nay.
Vnto which wordes of mine euery man applauding most with like
words of request and the rest with gesture and countenances
expressing as much, _M. Spenser_ answered in this maner:
Though it may seeme hard for me, to refuse the request made by
you all, whom euery one alone, I should for many 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 vpon me; for
sure I am, that it is not vnknowne unto you, that I haue
alreedy vndertaken a work tending to the same effect, which is
in _heroical verse_ under the title of a _Faerie Queene_ to
represent all the moral vertues, assigning to euery vertue a
Knight to be the patron and defender of the same, in whose
actions and feates of arms and chiualry the operations 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 ouercome. Which work, _as I
haue already well entred into_, if God shall please to spare
me life that I may finish it according to my mind, your wish
(_M. Bryskett_) will be in some sort accomplished, though
perhaps not so effectually as you could desire. And the same
may very well serue for my excuse, if at this time I craue 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 satisfactions. For it would require
good aduisement and premeditation for any man to vndertake the
declaration of these points that you have proposed, containing
in effect the Ethicke part of Morall Philosophie. Whereof
since I haue taken in hand to discourse at large in my poeme
before spoken, I hope the expectation of that work may serue
to free me at this time from speaking in that matter,
notwithstanding your motion and all your intreaties. But I
will tell you how I thinke by himselfe he may very well excuse
my speech, and yet satisfie all you in this matter. I haue
seene (as he knoweth) a translation made by himselfe out of
the Italian tongue of a dialogue comprehending all the Ethick
part of Moral Philosophy written by one of those three he
formerly mentioned, and that is by _Giraldi_ vnder the title
of a Dialogue of Ciuil life. If it please him to bring us
forth that translation to be here read among vs, or otherwise
to deliuer to us, as his memory may serue him, the contents of
the same; he shal (I warrant you) satisfie you all at the ful,
and himselfe wil haue no cause but to thinke the time well
spent in reuiewing his labors, especially in the company of so
many his friends, who may thereby reape much profit, and the
translation happily fare the better by some mending it may
receiue in the perusing, as all writings else may do by the
often examination of the same. Neither let it trouble him that
I so turne ouer to him againe the taske he wold haue put me
to; for it falleth out fit for him to verifie the principall
of all this Apologie, euen now made for himselfe; because
thereby it will appeare that he hath not withdrawne himselfe
from seruice of the state to liue idle or wholly priuate to
himselfe, but hath spent some time in doing that which may
greatly benefit others, and hath serued 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 couetousnes, go to begge of others those things whereof
they haue no want at home.
With this answer of _M. Spensers_ it seemed that all the
company were wel satisfied, for after some few speeches
whereby they had shewed an extreme longing after his worke of
the _Fairie Queene_, _whereof some parcels had been by some of
them seene_, 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 should (as near as I could) deliuer
unto them the contents of the same, supposing that my memory
would not much faile me in a thing so studied and advisedly
set downe in writing as a translation must be."
A poet at this time still had to justify his employment by presenting
himself in the character of a professed teacher of morality, with a
purpose as definite and formal, though with a different method, as the
preacher in the pulpit. Even with this profession, he had to encounter
many prejudices, and men of gravity and wisdom shook their heads at what
they thought his idle trifling. But if he wished to be counted
respectable, and to separate himself from the crowd of foolish or
licentious rimers, he must intend distinctly, not merely to interest,
but to instruct, by his new and deep conceits. It was under the
influence of this persuasion that Spenser laid down the plan of the
_Faery Queen_. It was, so he proposed to himself, to be a work on moral,
and if time were given him, political philosophy, composed with as
serious a didactic aim, as any treatise or sermon in prose. He deems it
necessary to explain and excuse his work by claiming for it this design.
He did not venture to send the _Faery Queen_ into the world without also
telling the world its moral meaning and bearing. He cannot trust it to
tell its own story or suggest its real drift. In the letter to Sir W.
Ralegh, accompanying the first portion of it, he unfolds elaborately the
sense of his allegory, as he expounded it to his friends in Dublin. "To
some," he says, "I know this method will seem displeasant, which had
rather have good discipline delivered plainly by way of precept, or
sermoned at large, as they use, than thus cloudily enwrapped in
allegorical devises." He thought that Homer and Virgil and Ariosto had
thus written poetry, to teach the world moral virtue and political
wisdom. He attempted to propitiate Lord Burghley, who hated him and his
verses, by setting before him in a dedication sonnet, the true intent of
his--
Idle rimes;
The labour of lost time and wit unstaid;
Yet if their deeper sense he inly weighed,
And the dim veil, with which from common view
Their fairer parts are hid, aside be laid,
Perhaps not vain they may appear to you.
In earlier and in later times, men do not apologize for being poets; and
Spenser himself was deceived in giving himself credit for this direct
purpose to instruct, when he was really following the course marked out
by his genius. But he only conformed to the curious utilitarian spirit
which pervaded the literature of the time. Readers were supposed to look
everywhere for a moral to be drawn, or a lesson to be inculcated, or
some practical rules to be avowedly and definitely deduced; and they
could not yet take in the idea that the exercise of the speculative and
imaginative faculties may be its own end, and may have indirect
influences and utilities even greater than if it was guided by a
conscious intention to be edifying and instructive.
The first great English poem of modern times, the first creation of
English imaginative power since Chaucer, and like Chaucer so thoroughly
and characteristically English, was not written in England. Whatever
Spenser may have done to it before he left England with Lord Grey, and
whatever portions of earlier composition may have been used and worked
up into the poem as it went on, the bulk of the _Faery Queen_, as we
have it, was composed in what to Spenser and his friends was almost a
foreign land--in the conquered and desolated wastes of wild and
barbarous Ireland. It is a feature of his work on which Spenser himself
dwells. In the verses which usher in his poem, addressed to the great
men of Elizabeth's court, he presents his work to the Earl of Ormond, as
The wild fruit which salvage soil hath bred;
Which being through long wars left almost waste,
With brutish barbarism is overspread;--
and in the same strain to Lord Grey, he speaks of his "rude rimes, the
which a rustic muse did weave, in salvage soil." It is idle to speculate
what difference of form the _Faery Queen_ might have received, if the
design had been carried out in the peace of England and in the society
of London. But it is certain that the scene of trouble and danger in
which it grew up greatly affected it. This may possibly account, though
it is questionable, for the looseness of texture, and the want of
accuracy and finish which is sometimes to be seen in it. Spenser was a
learned poet; and his poem has the character of the work of a man of
wide reading, but without books to verify or correct. It cannot be
doubted that his life in Ireland added to the force and vividness with
which Spenser wrote. In Ireland, he had before his eyes continually, the
dreary world which the poet of knight errantry imagines. There men might
in good truth travel long through wildernesses and "great woods" given
over to the outlaw and the ruffian. There the avenger of wrong need
seldom want for perilous adventure and the occasion for quelling the
oppressor. There 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 treacheries, the
deceits and temptations, even the supposed witchcrafts and enchantments,
against which the fairy champions of the virtues have to be on their
guard. In Ireland, Englishmen saw, or at any rate 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. There were those,
too, who failed in the hour of trial; who were the 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 entrapped and overcome, and the men who disappointed hopes, and
became recreants to their faith and loyalty; 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.
The realities of the Irish wars and of Irish social and political life
gave a real subject, gave body and form to the allegory. There in actual
flesh 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
_Sansfoy_, and _Sansloy_, and _Sansjoy_; there were _Orgoglio_ and
_Grantorto_, the witcheries of _Acrasia_ and _Phædria_, the insolence of
_Briana_ and _Crudor_. And there, too, were real Knights of goodness and
the Gospel--Grey, and Ormond, and Ralegh, the Norreyses, St. Leger, and
Maltby--on a real mission from Gloriana'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 allegory itself--with the
wild wanderings of its personages, its daily chances of battle and
danger, its hairbreadth escapes, its strange encounters, its prevailing
anarchy and violence, its normal absence of order and law--as he had
continually and customarily before him in Ireland. "The curse of God was
so great," writes John Hooker, a contemporary, "and the land so barren
both of man and beast, that whosoever did travel from one end to the
other of all Munster, even from Waterford to Smerwick, about six score
miles, he should not meet man, woman, or child, saving in cities or
towns, nor yet see any beast, save foxes, wolves or other ravening
beasts." It is the desolation through which Spenser's knights pursue
their solitary way, or join company as they can. Indeed to read the same
writer's account, for instance, of Ralegh's adventures with the Irish
chieftains, his challenges and single combats, his escapes at fords and
woods, is like reading bits of the _Faery Queen_ in prose. As Spenser
chose to write of knight errantry, his picture of it has doubtless
gained in truth and strength by his very practical experience of what
such life as he describes must be. The _Faery Queen_ might almost be
called the Epic of the English wars in Ireland under Elizabeth, as much
as the Epic of English virtue and valour at the same period.
At the Dublin meeting described by Bryskett, some time later than 1584,
Spenser had already "well entered into" his work. In 1589, he came to
England, bringing with him the first three books; and early in 1590,
they were published. Spenser himself has told us the story of this first
appearance of the _Faery Queen_. The person who discovered the
extraordinary work of genius which was growing up amid the turbulence
and misery and despair of Ireland, and who once more brought its author
into the centre of English life, was Walter Ralegh. Ralegh had served
through much of the Munster war. He had shown in Ireland some of the
characteristic points of his nature, which made him at once the glory
and shame of English manhood. He had begun to take a prominent place in
any business in which he engaged. He had shown his audacity, his
self-reliance, his resource, and some signs of that boundless but
prudent ambition which marked his career. He had shown that freedom of
tongue, that restless and high-reaching inventiveness, and that tenacity
of opinion, which made him a difficult person for others to work with.
Like so many of the English captains, he hated Ormond, and saw in his
feud with the Desmonds the real cause of the hopeless disorder of
Munster. But also he incurred the displeasure and suspicion of Lord
Grey, who equally disliked the great Irish Chief, but who saw in the
"plot" which Ralegh sent to Burghley for the pacification of Munster, an
adventurer's impracticable and self-seeking scheme. "I must be plain,"
he writes, "I like neither his carriage nor his company." Ralegh had
been at Smerwick: he had been in command of one of the bands put in by
Lord Grey to do the execution. On Lord Grey's departure he had become
one of the leading persons among the undertakers for the planting of
Munster. He had secured for himself a large share of the Desmond lands.
In 1587, an agreement among the undertakers assigned to Sir Walter
Ralegh, his associates and tenants, three seignories of 12,000 acres
a-piece, and one of 6000, in Cork and Waterford. But before Lord Grey's
departure, Ralegh had left Ireland, and had found the true field for his
ambition, in the English court. From 1582 to 1589, he had shared with
Leicester and Hatton and afterwards with Essex, the special favour of
the Queen. He had become Warden of the Stannaries and Captain of the
Guard. He had undertaken the adventure of founding a new realm in
America under the name of Virginia. He had obtained grants of
monopolies, farms of wines, Babington's forfeited estates. His own great
ship, which he had built, the Ark Ralegh, had carried the flag of the
High Admiral of England in the glorious but terrible summer of 1588. He
joined in that tremendous sea-chase from Plymouth to the North Sea,
when, as Spenser wrote to Lord Howard of Effingham--
Those huge castles of Castilian King,
That vainly threatened kingdoms to displace,
Like flying doves, ye did before you chase.
In the summer of 1589, Ralegh had been busy, as men of the sea were
then, half Queen's servants, half buccaneers, in gathering the abundant
spoils to be found on the high seas; and he had been with Sir John
Norreys and Sir Francis Drake in a bootless but not unprofitable
expedition to Lisbon. On his return from the Portugal voyage his court
fortunes underwent a change. Essex, who had long scorned "that knave
Ralegh," was in the ascendant. Ralegh found the Queen, for some reason
or another, and reasons were not hard to find, offended and dangerous.
He bent before the storm. In the end of the summer of 1589, he was in
Ireland, looking after his large seignories, his law-suits with the old
proprietors, his castle at Lismore, and his schemes for turning to
account his woods for the manufacture of pipe staves for the French and
Spanish wine trade.
He visited Spenser, who was his neighbour, at Kilcolman, and the visit
led to important consequences. The record of it and of the events which
followed, is preserved in a curious poem of Spenser's written two or
three years later, and of much interest in regard to Spenser's personal
history. Taking up the old pastoral form of the _Shepherd's Calendar_,
with the familiar rustic names of the swains who figured in its
dialogues,--Hobbinol, Cuddie, Rosalind, and his own Colin Clout,--he
described under the usual poetical disguise, the circumstances which
once more took him back from Ireland to the court. The court was the
place to which all persons wishing to push their way in the world were
attracted. It was not only the centre of all power, the source of
favours and honours, the seat of all that swayed the destiny of the
nation. It was the home of refinement, and wit, and cultivation, the
place where eminence of all kinds was supposed to be collected, and to
which all ambitions, literary as much as political, aspired. It was not
only a royal court; it was also a great club. Spenser's poem shows us
how he had sped there, and the impressions made on his mind by a closer
view of the persons and the ways of that awful and dazzling scene,
which exercised such a spell upon Englishmen, and which seemed to
combine or concentrate in itself the glory and the goodness of heaven,
and all the baseness and malignity of earth. The occasion deserved a
full celebration; it was indeed a turning-point in his life, for it led
to the publication of the _Faery Queen_, and to the immediate and
enthusiastic recognition by the Englishmen of the time of his unrivalled
pre-eminence as a poet. In this poetical record, _Colin Clout's come
home again_, containing in it history, criticism, satire, personal
recollections, love passages, we have the picture of his recollections
of the flush and excitement of those months which saw the first
appearance of the _Faery Queen_. He describes the interruption of his
retired and, as he paints it, peaceful and pastoral life in his Irish
home, by the appearance of Ralegh, the "Shepherd of the Ocean," from
"the main sea deep." They may have been thrown together before. Both had
been patronized by Leicester. Both had been together at Smerwick, and
probably in other passages of the Munster war; both had served under
Lord Grey, Spenser's master, though he had been no lover of Ralegh. In
their different degrees, Ralegh with his two or three Seignories of half
a county, and Spenser with his more modest estate, they were embarked in
the same enterprise, the plantation of Munster. But Ralegh now appeared
before Spenser in all the glory of a brilliant favourite, the soldier,
the explorer, the daring sea-captain, the founder of plantations across
the ocean, and withal, the poet, the ready and eloquent discourser, the
true judge and measurer of what was great or beautiful.
The time, too, was one at once of excitement and repose. Men felt as
they feel after a great peril, a great effort, a great relief; as the
Greeks did after Salamis and Platæa, as our fathers did after Waterloo.
In the struggle in the Channel with the might of Spain, England had
recognized its force and its prospects. One of those solemn moments had
just passed when men see before them the course of the world turned one
way, when it might have been turned another. All the world had been
looking out to see what would come to pass; and nowhere more eagerly
than in Ireland. Every one, English and Irish alike, stood agaze to "see
how the game would be played." The great fleet, as it drew near, "worked
wonderfully uncertain yet calm humours in the people, not daring to
disclose their real intention." When all was decided, and the distressed
ships were cast away on the western coast, the Irish showed as much zeal
as the English in fulfilling the orders of the Irish council, to
"apprehend and execute all Spaniards found there of what quality
soever." These were the impressions under which the two men met. Ralegh,
at the moment, was under a cloud. In the poetical fancy picture set
before us--
His song was all a lamentable lay
Of great unkindnesse, and of usage hard,
Of Cynthia the Ladie of the Sea,
Which from her presence faultlesse him debard.
And ever and anon, with singults rife,
He cryed out, to make his undersong;
Ah! my loves queene, and goddesse of my life,
Who shall me pittie, when thou doest me wrong?
At Kilcolman, Ralegh became acquainted with what Spenser had done of the
_Faery Queen_. His rapid and clear judgment showed him how immeasurably
it rose above all that had yet been produced under the name of poetry in
England. That alone is sufficient to account for his eager desire that
it should be known in England. But Ralegh always had an eye to his own
affairs, marred as they so often were by ill-fortune and his own
mistakes; and he may have thought of making his peace with Cynthia, by
reintroducing at Court the friend of Philip Sidney, now ripened into a
poet not unworthy of Gloriana's greatness. This is Colin Clout's
account:--
When thus our pipes we both had wearied well,
(Quoth he) and each an end of singing made,
He gan to cast great lyking to my lore,
And great dislyking to my lucklesse lot,
That banisht had my selfe, like wight forlore,
Into that waste, where I was quite forgot.
The which to leave, thenceforth he counseld mee,
Unmeet for man, in whom was ought regardfull,
And wend with him, his Cynthia to see:
Whose grace was great, and bounty most rewardfull;
Besides her peerlesse skill in making well,
And all the ornaments of wondrous wit,
Such as all womankynd did far excell,
Such as the world admyr'd, and praised it.
So what with hope of good, and hate of ill,
He me perswaded forth with him to fare.
Nought tooke I with me, but mine oaten quill:
Small needments else need shepheard to prepare.
So to the sea we came; the sea, that is
A world of waters heaped up on hie,
Rolling like mountaines in wide wildernesse,
Horrible, hideous, roaring with hoarse crie.
This is followed by a spirited description of a sea-voyage, and of that
empire of the seas in which, since the overthrow of the Armada, England
and England's mistress were now claiming to be supreme, and of which
Ralegh was one of the most active and distinguished officers:--
And yet as ghastly dreadfull, as it seemes,
Bold men, presuming life for gaine to sell,
Dare tempt that gulf, and in those wandring stremes
Seek waies unknowne, waies leading down to hell.
For, as we stood there waiting on the strond,
Behold! an huge great vessell to us came,
Dauncing upon the waters back to lond,
As if it scornd the daunger of the same;
Yet was it but a wooden frame and fraile,
Glewed togither with some subtile matter.
Yet had it armes and wings, and head and taile,
And life to move it selfe upon the water.
Strange thing! how bold and swift the monster was,
That neither car'd for wind, nor haile, nor raine,
Nor swelling waves, but thorough them did passe
So proudly, that she made them roare againe.
The same aboord us gently did receave,
And without harme us farre away did beare,
So farre that land, our mother, us did leave,
And nought but sea and heaven to us appeare.
Then hartlesse quite, and full of inward feare,
That shepheard I besought to me to tell,
Under what skie, or in what world we were,
In which I saw no living people dwell.
Who, me recomforting all that he might,
Told me that that same was the Regiment
Of a great Shepheardesse, that Cynthia hight,
His liege, his Ladie, and his lifes Regent.
This is the poetical version of Ralegh's appreciation of the treasure
which he had lighted on in Ireland, and of what he did to make it known
to the admiration and delight of England. He returned to the Court, and
Spenser with him. Again, for what reason we know not, he was received
into favour. The poet, who accompanied him, was brought to the presence
of the lady, who saw herself in "various mirrors,"--Cynthia, Gloriana,
Belphoebe, as she heard him read portions of the great poem which was
to add a new glory to her reign.
"The Shepheard of the Ocean (quoth he)
Unto that Goddesse grace me first enhanced,
And to mine oaten pipe enclin'd her eare,
That she thenceforth therein gan take delight;
And it desir'd at timely houres to heare,
All were my notes but rude and roughly dight;
For not by measure of her owne great mynde,
And wondrous worth, she mott my simple song,
But joyd that country shepheard ought could fynd
Worth harkening to, emongst the learned throng."
He had already too well caught the trick of flattery--flattery in a
degree almost inconceivable to us--which the fashions of the time, and
the Queen's strange self-deceit, exacted from the loyalty and enthusiasm
of Englishmen. In that art Ralegh was only too apt a teacher. Colin
Clout, in his story of his recollections of the Court, lets us see how
he was taught to think and to speak there:--
But if I her like ought on earth might read,
I would her lyken to a crowne of lillies,
Upon a virgin brydes adorned head,
With Roses dight and Goolds and Daffadillies;
Or like the circlet of a Turtle true,
In which all colours of the rainbow bee;
Or like faire Phebes garlond shining new,
In which all pure perfection one may see.
But vaine it is to thinke, by paragone
Of earthly things, to judge of things divine:
Her power, her mercy, her wisdome, none
Can deeme, but who the Godhead can define.
Why then do I, base shepheard, bold and blind,
Presume the things so sacred to prophane?
More fit it is t' adore, with humble mind,
The image of the heavens in shape humane.
The Queen, who heard herself thus celebrated, celebrated not only as a
semi-divine person, but as herself unrivalled in the art of "making" or
poetry,--"her peerless skill in making well,"--granted Spenser a pension
of 50_l._ a year, which, it is said, the prosaic and frugal Lord
Treasurer, always hard-driven for money and not caring much for poets,
made difficulties about paying. But the new poem was not for the
Queen's ear only. In the registers of the Stationers' Company occurs the
following entry:--
Primo die Decembris [1589].
Mr. Ponsonbye--Entered for his Copye, a book intytuled the
_fayrye Queene_ dysposed into xij bookes &c., authorysed under
thandes of the Archbishop of Canterbery and bothe the Wardens.
vj{d.}
Thus, between pamphlets of the hour,--an account of the Arms of the City
Companies on one side, and the last news from France on the other,--the
first of our great modern English poems was licensed to make its
appearance. It appeared soon after, with the date of 1590. It was not
the twelve books, but only the first three. It was accompanied and
introduced, as usual, by a great host of commendatory and laudatory
sonnets and poems. All the leading personages at Elizabeth's court were
appealed to; according to their several tastes or their relations to the
poet, they are humbly asked to befriend, or excuse, or welcome his
poetical venture. The list itself is worth quoting:--Sir Christopher
Hatton, then Lord Chancellor, the Earls of Essex, Oxford,
Northumberland, Ormond, Lord Howard of Effingham, Lord Grey of Wilton,
Sir Walter Ralegh, Lord Burleigh, the Earl of Cumberland, Lord Hunsdon,
Lord Buckhurst, Walsingham, Sir John Norris, President of Munster. He
addresses Lady Pembroke, in remembrance of her brother, that "heroic
spirit," "the glory of our days,"
Who first my Muse did lift out of the floor,
To sing his sweet delights in lowly lays.
And he finishes with a sonnet to Lady Carew, one of Sir John Spencer's
daughters, and another to "all the gracious and beautiful ladies of the
Court," in which "the world's pride seems to be gathered." There come
also congratulations and praises for himself. Ralegh addressed to him a
fine but extravagant sonnet, in which he imagined Petrarch weeping for
envy at the approval of the _Faery Queen_, while "Oblivion laid him down
on Laura's hearse," and even Homer trembled for his fame. Gabriel Harvey
revoked his judgment on the _Elvish Queen_, and not without some regret
for less ambitious days in the past, cheered on his friend in his noble
enterprise. Gabriel Harvey has been so much, and not without reason,
laughed at, and yet his verses welcoming the _Faery Queen_ are so full
of true and warm friendship, and of unexpected refinement and grace,
that it is but just to cite them. In the eyes of the world he was an
absurd personage: but Spenser saw in him perhaps his worthiest and
trustiest friend. A generous and simple affection has almost got the
better in them of pedantry and false taste.
Collyn, I see, by thy new taken taske,
Some sacred fury hath enricht thy braynes,
That leades thy muse in haughty verse to maske,
And loath the layes that longs to lowly swaynes;
That lifts thy notes from Shepheardes unto kinges:
So like the lively Larke that mounting singes.
Thy lovely Rosolinde seemes now forlorne,
And all thy gentle flockes forgotten quight:
Thy chaunged hart now holdes thy pypes in scorne,
Those prety pypes that did thy mates delight;
Those trusty mates, that loved thee so well;
Whom thou gav'st mirth, as they gave thee the bell.
Yet, as thou earst with thy sweete roundelayes
Didst stirre to glee our laddes in homely bowers;
So moughtst thou now in these refyned layes
Delight the daintie eares of higher powers:
And so mought they, in their deepe skanning skill,
Alow and grace our Collyns flowing quyll.
And faire befall that _Faery Queene_ of thine,
In whose faire eyes love linckt with vertue sittes;
Enfusing, by those bewties fyers devyne,
Such high conceites into thy humble wittes,
As raised hath poore pastors oaten reedes
From rustick tunes, to chaunt heroique deedes.
So mought thy _Redcrosse Knight_ with happy hand
Victorious be in that faire Ilands right,
Which thou dost vayle in Type of Faery land,
Elizas blessed field, that _Albion_ hight:
That shieldes her friendes, and warres her mightie foes,
Yet still with people, peace, and plentie flowes.
But (jolly shepheard) though with pleasing style
Thou feast the humour of the Courtly trayne,
Let not conceipt thy setled sence beguile,
Ne daunted be through envy or disdaine.
Subject thy dome to her Empyring spright,
From whence thy Muse, and all the world, takes light.
HOBYNOLL.
And to the Queen herself Spenser presented his work, in one of the
boldest dedications perhaps ever penned:--
To
The Most High, Mightie, and Magnificent
Empresse,
Renowmed for piety, vertve, and all gratiovs government,
ELIZABETH,
By the Grace of God,
Qveene of England, Fravnce, and Ireland, and of Virginia,
Defendovr of the Faith, &c.
Her most hvmble Servavnt
EDMVND SPENSER,
Doth, in all hvmilitie,
Dedicate, present, and consecrate
These his labovrs,
To live with the eternitie of her fame.
"To live with the eternity of her fame,"--the claim was a proud one, but
it has proved a prophecy. 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, except in the
stories about Burghley's dislike of him, as an idle rimer, and perhaps
as a friend of his opponents. But his brother poets, men like Lodge and
Drayton, paid honour, though in quaint phrases, to the learned Colin,
the reverend Colin, the excellent and cunning Colin. A greater than
they, if we may trust his editors, takes him as the representative of
poetry, which is so dear to him.
If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me,
Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other.
_Dowland_ to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;
_Spenser_ to me, whose deep conceit is such
As passing all conceit, needs no defence.
Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound
That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes;
And I in deep delight am chiefly drown'd
Whenas himself to singing he betakes.
One god is god of both, as poets feign;
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.
(_Shakespere_, in the _Passionate Pilgrim_, 1599.)
Even the fierce pamphleteer, Thomas Nash, the scourge and torment of
poor Gabriel Harvey, addresses Harvey's friend as heavenly Spenser, and
extols "the Faery Singers' stately tuned verse." Spenser's title to be
the "Poet of poets," was at once acknowledged as by acclamation. And he
himself has no difficulty in accepting his position. In some lines on
the death of a friend's wife, whom he laments and praises, the idea
presents itself that the great queen may not approve of her Shepherd
wasting his lays on meaner persons; and he puts into his friend's mouth
a deprecation of her possible jealousy. The lines are characteristic,
both in their beauty and music, and in the strangeness, in our eyes, of
the excuse made for the poet.
Ne let Eliza, royall Shepheardesse,
The praises of my parted love envy,
For she hath praises in all plenteousnesse
Powr'd upon her, like showers of Castaly,
By her own Shepheard, Colin, her owne Shepheard,
That her with heavenly hymnes doth deifie,
Of rustick muse full hardly to be betterd.
She is the Rose, the glorie of the day,
And mine the Primrose in the lowly shade:
Mine, ah! not mine; amisse I mine did say:
Not mine, but His, which mine awhile her made;
Mine to be His, with him to live for ay.
O that so faire a flower so soone should fade,
And through untimely tempest fall away!
She fell away in her first ages spring,
Whil'st yet her leafe was greene, and fresh her rinde,
And whilst her braunch faire blossomes foorth did bring,
She fell away against all course of kinde.
For age to dye is right, but youth is wrong;
She fel away like fruit blowne downe with winde.
Weepe, Shepheard! weepe, to make my undersong.
Thus in both his literary enterprises, Spenser had been signally
successful. The _Shepherd's Calendar_ in 1580 had immediately raised
high hopes of his powers. The _Faery Queen_ in 1590 had more than
fulfilled them. In the interval a considerable change had happened in
English cultivation. Shakespere had come to London, though the world
did not yet know all that he was. Sidney had published his _Defense of
Poesie_, and had written the _Arcadia_, though it was not yet published.
Marlowe had begun to write, and others beside him were preparing the
change which was to come on the English Drama. Two scholars who had
shared with Spenser in the bounty of Robert Newell were beginning, in
different lines, to raise the level of thought and style. Hooker was
beginning to give dignity to controversy, and to show what English prose
might rise to. Lancelot Andrewes, Spenser's junior at school and
college, was training himself at St. Paul's, to lead the way to a larger
and higher kind of preaching than the English clergy had yet reached.
The change of scene from Ireland to the centre of English interests,
must have been, as Spenser describes it, very impressive. England was
alive with aspiration and effort; imaginations were inflamed and hearts
stirred by the deeds of men who described with the same energy with
which they acted. Amid such influences, and with such a friend as
Ralegh, Spenser may naturally have been tempted by some of the dreams of
advancement of which Ralegh's soul was full. There is strong
probability, from the language of his later poems, that he indulged such
hopes, and that they were disappointed. A year after the entry in the
Stationers' Register of the _Faery Queen_ (29 Dec., 1590), Ponsonby, his
publisher, entered a volume of "_Complaints, containing sundry small
poems of the World's Vanity_," to which he prefixed the following
notice.
THE PRINTER TO THE GENTLE READER.
SINCE my late setting foorth of the _Faerie Queene_, finding
that it hath found a favourable passage amongst you, I have
sithence endevoured by all good meanes (for the better
encrease and accomplishment of your delights,) to get into my
handes such smale Poemes of the same Authors, as I heard were
disperst abroad in sundrie hands, and not easie to bee come
by, by himselfe; some of them having bene diverslie imbeziled
and purloyned from him since his departure over Sea. Of the
which I have, by good meanes, gathered togeather these fewe
parcels present, which I have caused to bee imprinted
altogeather, for that they al seeme to containe like matter of
argument in them; being all complaints and meditations of the
worlds vanitie, verie grave and profitable. To which effect I
understand that he besides wrote sundrie others, namelie
_Ecclesiastes_ and _Canticum canticorum_ translated, _A
senights slumber_, _The hell of lovers_, _his Purgatorie_,
being all dedicated to Ladies; so as it may seeme he ment them
all to one volume. Besides some other Pamphlets looselie
scattered abroad, as _The dying Pellican_, _The howers of the
Lord_, _The sacrifice of a sinner_, _The seven Psalmes_, &c.,
which when I can, either by himselfe or otherwise, attaine
too, I meane likewise for your favour sake to set foorth. In
the meane time, praying you gentlie to accept of these, and
graciouslie to entertaine the new Poet, _I take leave_.
The collection is a miscellaneous one, both as to subjects and date: it
contains among other things, the translations from Petrarch and Du
Bellay, which had appeared in Vander Noodt's _Theatre of Worldlings_, in
1569. But there are also some pieces of later date; and they disclose
not only personal sorrows and griefs, but also an experience which had
ended in disgust and disappointment. In spite of Ralegh's friendship, he
had found that in the Court he was not likely to thrive. The two
powerful men who had been his earliest friends had disappeared. Philip
Sidney had died in 1586; Leicester, soon after the destruction of the
Armada, in 1588. And they had been followed (April, 1590) by Sidney's
powerful father-in-law, Francis Walsingham. The death of Leicester,
untended, unlamented, powerfully impressed Spenser, always keenly alive
to the pathetic vicissitudes of human greatness. In one of these pieces,
_The Ruins of Time_, addressed to Sidney's sister, the Countess of
Pembroke, Spenser thus imagines the death of Leicester,--
It is not long, since these two eyes beheld
A mightie Prince, of most renowmed race,
Whom England high in count of honour held,
And greatest ones did sue to gaine his grace;
Of greatest ones he, greatest in his place,
Sate in the bosome of his Soveraine,
And _Right and loyall_ did his word maintaine.
I saw him die, I saw him die, as one
Of the meane people, and brought foorth on beare;
I saw him die, and no man left to mone
His dolefull fate, that late him loved deare:
Scarse anie left to close his eylids neare;
Scarse anie left upon his lips to laie
The sacred sod, or Requiem to saie.
O! trustless state of miserable men,
That builde your blis on hope of earthly thing,
And vainlie thinke your selves halfe happie then,
When painted faces with smooth flattering
Doo fawne on you, and your wide praises sing;
And, when the courting masker louteth lowe,
Him true in heart and trustie to you trow.
For Sidney, the darling of the time, who had been to him not merely a
cordial friend, but the realized type of all that was glorious in
manhood, and beautiful in character and gifts, his mourning was more
than that of a looker-on at a moving instance of the frailty of
greatness. It was the poet's sorrow for the poet, who had almost been to
him what the elder brother is to the younger. Both now, and in later
years, his affection for one who was become to him a glorified saint,
showed itself in deep and genuine expression, through the affectations
which crowned the "herse" of Astrophel and Philisides. He was persuaded
that Sidney's death had been a grave blow to literature and learning.
The _Ruins of Time_, and still more the _Tears of the Muses_, are full
of lamentations over returning barbarism and ignorance, and the slight
account made by those in power of the gifts and the arts of the writer,
the poet, and the dramatist. Under what was popularly thought the
crabbed and parsimonious administration of Burghley, and with the
churlishness of the Puritans, whom he was supposed to foster, it seemed
as if the poetry of the time was passing away in chill discouragement.
The effect is described in lines which, as we now naturally suppose, and
Dryden also thought, can refer to no one but Shakespere. But it seems
doubtful whether all this could have been said of Shakespere in 1590. It
seems more likely that this also is an extravagant compliment to Philip
Sidney, and his masking performances. He was lamented elsewhere under
the poetical name of _Willy_. If it refers to him, it was probably
written before his death, though not published till after it; for the
lines imply, not that he is literally dead, but that he is in
retirement. The expression that he is "dead of late," is explained in
four lines below, as "choosing to sit in idle cell," and is one of
Spenser's common figures for inactivity or sorrow.[107:1]
The verses are the lamentations of the Muse of Comedy.
THALIA.
Where be the sweete delights of learning's treasure
That wont with Comick sock to beautefie
The painted Theaters, and fill with pleasure
The listners eyes and eares with melodie;
In which I late was wont to raine as Queene,
And maske in mirth with Graces well bescene?
O! all is gone; and all that goodly glee,
Which wont to be the glorie of gay wits,
Is layed abed, and no where now to see;
And in her roome unseemly Sorrow sits,
With hollow browes and greisly countenaunce,
Marring my joyous gentle dalliaunce.
And him beside sits ugly Barbarisme,
And brutish Ignorance, ycrept of late
Out of dredd darknes of the deepe Abysme,
Where being bredd, he light and heaven does hate:
They in the mindes of men now tyrannize,
And the faire Scene with rudenes foule disguize.
All places they with follie have possest,
And with vaine toyes the vulgare entertaine;
But me have banished, with all the rest
That whilome wont to wait upon my traine,
Fine Counterfesaunce, and unhurtfull Sport,
Delight, and Laughter, deckt in seemly sort.
All these, and all that els the Comick Stage
With seasoned wit and goodly pleasance graced,
By which mans life in his likest image
Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced;
And those sweete wits, which wont the like to frame,
Are now despizd, and made a laughing game.
And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made
To mock her selfe, and truth to imitate,
With kindly counter under Mimick shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah! _is dead of late_;
With whom all joy and jolly merriment
Is also deaded, and in dolour drent.
* * * * *
But that same gentle Spirit, from whose pen
Large streames of honnie and sweete Nectar flowe,
Scorning the boldnes of such base-borne men,
Which dare their follies forth so rashlie throwe,
Doth rather choose to sit in idle Cell,
Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell.
But the most remarkable of these pieces is a satirical fable, _Mother
Hubberd's Tale of the Ape and Fox_, which may take rank with the
satirical writings of Chaucer and Dryden for keenness of touch, for
breadth of treatment, for swing and fiery scorn, and sustained strength
of sarcasm. By his visit to the Court, Spenser had increased his
knowledge of the realities of life. That brilliant Court, with a goddess
at its head, and full of charming swains and divine nymphs, had also
another side. It was still his poetical heaven. But with that odd
insensibility to anomaly and glaring contrasts, which is seen in his
time, and perhaps exists at all times, he passed from the celebration of
the dazzling glories of Cynthia's Court, into a fierce vein of invective
against its treacheries, its vain shows, its unceasing and mean
intrigues, its savage jealousies, its fatal rivalries, the scramble
there for preferment in Church and State. When it is considered what
great persons might easily and naturally have been identified at the
time with the _Ape and the Fox_, the confederate impostors, charlatans,
and bullying swindlers, who had stolen the lion's skin, and by it
mounted to the high places of the State, it seems to be a proof of the
indifference of the Court to the power of mere literature, that it
should have been safe to write and publish so freely, and so cleverly.
Dull Catholic lampoons and Puritan scurrilities did not pass thus
unnoticed. They were viewed as dangerous to the State, and dealt with
accordingly. The fable contains what we can scarcely doubt to be some of
that wisdom which Spenser learnt by his experience of the Court.
So pitifull a thing is Suters state!
Most miserable man, whom wicked fate
Hath brought to Court, to sue for _had-ywist_,
That few have found, and manie one hath mist!
Full little knowest thou, that hast not tride,
What hell it is in suing long to bide:
To loose good dayes, that might be better spent;
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to day, to be put back to morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow;
To have thy Princes grace, yet want her Peeres;
To have thy asking, yet waite manie yeeres;
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires;
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.
Unhappie wight, borne to disastrous end,
That doth his life in so long tendance spend!
Who ever leaves sweete home, where meane 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, himselfe will a daw trie:
That curse God send unto mine enemie!
Spenser probably did not mean his characters to fit too closely to
living persons. That might have been dangerous. But it is difficult to
believe that he had not distinctly in his eye a very great personage,
the greatest in England next to the Queen, in the following picture of
the doings of the Fox installed at Court.
But the false Foxe most kindly plaid his part;
For whatsoever mother-wit or arte
Could worke, he put in proofe: no practise slie,
No counterpoint of cunning policie,
No reach, no breach, that might him profit bring,
But he the same did to his purpose wring.
Nought suffered he the Ape to give or graunt,
But through his hand must passe the Fiaunt.
* * * * *
He chaffred Chayres in which Churchmen were set,
And breach of lawes to privie ferme did let:
No statute so established might bee,
Nor ordinaunce so needfull, but that hee
Would violate, though not with violence,
Yet under colour of the confidence
The which the Ape repos'd in him alone,
And reckned him the kingdomes corner stone.
And ever, when he ought would bring to pas,
His long experience the platforme was:
And, when he ought not pleasing would put by
The cloke was care of thrift, and husbandry,
For to encrease the common treasures store;
But his owne treasure he encreased more,
And lifted up his loftie towres thereby,
That they began to threat the neighbour sky;
The whiles the Princes pallaces fell fast
To ruine (for what thing can ever last?)
And whilest the other Peeres, for povertie,
Were forst their auncient houses to let lie,
And their olde Castles to the ground to fall,
Which their forefathers, famous over-all,
Had founded for the Kingdome's ornament,
And for their memories long moniment:
But he no count made of Nobilitie,
Nor the wilde beasts whom armes did glorifie,
The Realmes chiefe strength and girlond of the crowne.
All these through fained crimes he thrust adowne,
Or made them dwell in darknes of disgrace;
For none, but whom he list, might come in place.
Of men of armes he had but small regard,
But kept them lowe, and streigned verie hard.
For men of learning little he esteemed;
His wisdome he above their learning deemed.
As for the rascall Commons, least he cared,
For not so common was his bountie shared.
Let God, (said he) if please, care for the manie,
I for my selfe must care before els anie.
So did he good to none, to manie ill,
So did he all the kingdome rob and pill;
Yet none durst speake, ne none durst of him plaine,
So groat he was in grace, and rich through gaine.
Ne would he anie let to have accesse
Unto the Prince, but by his owne addresse,
For all that els did come were sure to faile.
Even at Court, however, the poet finds a contrast to all this: he had
known Philip Sidney, and Ralegh was his friend.
Yet the brave Courtier, in whose beauteous 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 everie tattling fable flie;
But heares and sees the follies of the rest,
And thereof gathers for himselfe the best.
He will not creepe, nor crouche with fained face,
But walkes upright with comely stedfast pace,
And unto all doth yeeld due curtesie;
But not with kissed hand belowe the knee,
As that same Apish crue is wont to doo:
For he disdaines himselfe t' embase theretoo.
He hates fowle leasings, and vile flatterie,
Two filthie blots in noble gentrie;
And lothefull idlenes he doth detest,
The canker worme of everie gentle brest.
Or lastly, when the bodie list to pause,
His minde unto the Muses he withdrawes:
Sweete Ladie Muses, Ladies of delight,
Delights of life, and ornaments of light!
With whom he close confers with wise discourse,
Of Natures workes, of heavens continuall course,
Of forreine lands, of people different,
Of kingdomes change, of divers gouvernment,
Of dreadfull battailes of renowned Knights;
With which he kindleth his ambitious 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 purposis,
And in his Princes service spends his dayes,
Not so much for to gaine, or for to raise
Himselfe to high degree, as for his grace,
And in his liking to winne worthie place,
Through due deserts and comely carriage.
The fable also throws light on the way in which Spenser regarded the
religious parties, whose strife was becoming loud and threatening.
Spenser is often spoken of as a Puritan. He certainly had the Puritan
hatred of Rome; and in the Church system as it existed in England he saw
many instances of ignorance, laziness, and corruption; and he agreed
with the Puritans in denouncing them. His pictures of the "formal
priest," with his excuses for doing nothing, his new-fashioned and
improved substitutes for the ornate and also too lengthy ancient
service, and his general ideas of self-complacent comfort, has in it an
odd mixture of Roman Catholic irony with Puritan censure. Indeed, though
Spenser hated with an Englishman's hatred all that he considered Roman
superstition and tyranny, he had a sense of the poetical impressiveness
of the old ceremonial, and the ideas which clung to it, its pomp, its
beauty, its suggestiveness, very far removed from the iconoclastic
temper of the Puritans. In his _View of the State of Ireland_, he notes
as a sign of its evil condition the state of the churches, "most of them
ruined and even with the ground," and the rest "so unhandsomely patched
and thatched, that men do even shun the places, for the uncomeliness
thereof." "The outward form (assure yourself)," he adds, "doth greatly
draw the rude people to the reverencing and frequenting thereof,
_whatever some of our late too nice fools may say_, that there is
nothing in the seemly form and comely order of the church."
"Ah! but (said th' Ape) the charge is wondrous great,
To feede mens soules, and hath an heavie threat."
"To feed mens soules (quoth he) is not in man;
For they must feed themselves, doo what we can.
We are but charged to lay the meate before:
Eate they that list, we need to doo no more.
But God it is that feeds them with his grace,
The bread of life powr'd downe from heavenly place.
Therefore said he, that with the budding rod
Did rule the Jewes, _All shalbe taught of God_.
That same hath Jesus Christ now to him raught,
By whom the flock is rightly fed, and taught:
He is the Shepheard, and the Priest is hee;
We but his shepheard swaines ordain'd to bee.
Therefore herewith doo not your selfe dismay;
Ne is the paines so great, but beare ye may,
For not so great, as it was wont of yore,
It's now a dayes, ne halfe so streight and sore.
They whilome used duly everie day
Their service and their holie things to say,
At morne and even, besides their Anthemes sweete,
Their penie Masses, and their Complynes meete,
Their Diriges, their Trentals, and their shrifts,
Their memories, their singings, and their gifts.
Now all those needlesse works are laid away;
Now once a weeke, upon the Sabbath day,
It is enough to doo our small devotion,
And then to follow any merrie motion.
Ne are we tyde to fast, but when we list;
Ne to weare garments base of wollen twist,
But with the finest silkes us to aray,
That before God we may appeare more gay,
Resembling Aarons glorie in his place:
For farre unfit it is, that person bace
Should with vile cloaths approach Gods majestie,
Whom no uncleannes may approachen nie;
Or that all men, which anie master serve,
Good garments for their service should deserve;
But he that serves the Lord of hoasts most high,
And that in highest place, t' approach him nigh,
And all the peoples prayers to present
Before his throne, as on ambassage sent
Both too and fro, should not deserve to weare
A garment better than of wooll or heare.
Beside, we may have lying by our sides
Our lovely Lasses, or bright shining Brides:
We be not tyde to wilfull chastitie,
But have the Gospell of free libertie."
But his weapon is double-edged, and he had not much more love for
That ungracious crew which feigns demurest grace.
The first prescription which the Priest gives to the Fox who desires to
rise to preferment in the Church is to win the favour of some great
Puritan noble.
First, therefore, when ye have in handsome wise
Your selfe attyred, as you can devise,
Then to some Noble-man your selfe applye,
Or other great one in the worldës eye,
That hath a zealous 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 Sainte Radegund:
Fast much, pray oft, looke lowly on the ground,
And unto everie one doo curtesie meeke:
These lookes (nought saying) doo a benefice seeke,
And be thou sure one not to lack or long.
But he is impartial, and points out that there are other ways of
rising--by adopting the fashions of the Court, "facing, and forging, and
scoffing, and crouching to please," and so to "mock out a benefice;" or
else, by compounding with a patron to give him half the profits, and in
the case of a bishopric, to submit to the alienation of its manors to
some powerful favourite, as the Bishop of Salisbury had to surrender
Sherborn to Sir Walter Ralegh. Spenser, in his dedication of _Mother
Hubberd's Tale_ to one of the daughters of Sir John Spencer, Lady
Compton and Monteagle, speaks of it as "long sithence composed in the
raw conceit of youth." But, whatever this may mean, and it was his way
thus to deprecate severe judgments, his allowing the publication of it
at this time, shows, if the work itself did not show it, that he was in
very serious earnest in his bitter sarcasms on the base and evil arts
which brought success at the Court.
He stayed in England about a year and a half [1590-91], long enough
apparently to make up his mind that he had not much to hope for from his
great friends, Ralegh and perhaps Essex, who were busy on their own
schemes. Ralegh, from whom Spenser might hope most, was just beginning
to plunge into that extraordinary career, in the thread of which, glory
and disgrace, far-sighted and princely public spirit and insatiate
private greed, were to be so strangely intertwined. In 1592 he planned
the great adventure which astonished London by the fabulous plunder of
the Spanish treasure-ships; in the same year he was in the Tower, under
the Queen's displeasure for his secret marriage, affecting the most
ridiculous despair at her going away from the neighbourhood, and pouring
forth his flatteries on this old woman of sixty as if he had no bride of
his own to love:--"I that was wont to behold her riding like Alexander,
hunting like Diana, walking like Venus; the gentle wind blowing her fair
hair about her pure cheeks like a nymph; sometimes, sitting in the shade
like a goddess; sometimes, singing like an angel; sometimes, playing
like Orpheus--behold the sorrow of this world--once amiss, hath bereaved
me of all." Then came the exploration of Guiana, the expedition to
Cadiz, the Island voyage [1595-1597]. Ralegh had something else to do
than to think of Spenser's fortunes.
Spenser turned back once more to Ireland, to his clerkship of the
Council of Munster, which he soon resigned; to be worried with law-suits
about "lands in Shanballymore and Ballingrath," by his time-serving and
oppressive Irish neighbour, Maurice Roche, Lord Fermoy; to brood still
over his lost ideal and hero, Sidney; to write the story of his visit in
the pastoral supplement to the _Shepherd's Calendar_, _Colin Clout's
come home again_; to pursue the story of Gloriana's knights; and to find
among the Irish maidens another Elizabeth, a wife instead of a queen,
whose wooing and winning were to give new themes to his imagination.
FOOTNOTES:
[107:1] _v. Colin Clout_, l. 31. _Astrophel_, l. 175.