The Faerie Queene — Volume 01

by Edmund Spenser

CHAPTER IV.

1591-1599.

It is easy to imagine how intensely Spenser enjoyed his visit to London. It is uncertain to what extent that visit was prolonged. He dates the dedication of his Colin Clouts Come Home Again 'from my house at Kilcolman, the 27 of December, 1591.' On the other hand, the dedication of his Daphnaida is dated 'London this first of Januarie 1591,' that is 1592 according to our new style. Evidently there is some mistake here. Prof. Craik 'suspects' that in the latter instance 'the date January 1591' is used in the modern meaning; he quotes nothing to justify such a suspicion; but it would seem to be correct. Todd and others have proposed to alter the '1591' in the former instance to 1595, the year in which Colin Clouts Come Home Again was published, and with which the allusions made in the poem to contemporary writers agree; but this proposal is, as we shall see, scarcely tenable. The manner in which the publisher of the Complaints, 1591, of which publication we shall speak presently, introduces that work to the 'gentle reader,' seems to show that the poet was not at the time of the publishing easily accessible. He speaks of having endeavoured 'by all good meanes (for the better encrease and accomplishment of your delights) to get into my hands such small poems 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 been diverslie imbeziled and purloyned from him since his departure ouer sea.' He says he understands Spenser 'wrote sundrie others' besides those now collected, 'besides some other Pamphlets looselie scattered abroad . . . which when I can either by himselfe or otherwise attaine too I meane likewise for your fauour sake to set foorth.' It may be supposed with much probability that Spenser returned to his Irish castle some time in 1591, in all likelihood after February, in which month he received the pension mentioned above, and on the other hand so as to have time to write the original draught of Colin Clouts Come Home Again before the close of December.

The reception of the Faerie Queene had been so favourable that in 1591—it would seem, as has been shown, after Spenser's departure—the publisher of that poem determined to put forth what other poems by the same hand he could gather together. The result was a volume entitled 'Complaints, containing sundrie small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie, whereof the next page maketh mention. By Ed. Sp.' 'The next page' contains 'a note of the Sundrie Poemes contained in this volume:'

1. The Ruines of Time. 2. The Teares of the Muses. 3. Virgils Gnat. 4. Prosopopoia or Mother Hubbards Tale. 5. The Ruines of Rome, by Bellay. 6. Muiopotmos or The Tale of the Butterflie. 7. Visions of the Worlds Vanitie. 8. Bellayes Visions. 9. Petrarches Visions.

In a short notice addressed to the Gentle Reader which follows—the notice just referred to—the publisher of the volume mentions other works by Spenser, and promises to publish them too 'when he can attain to' them. These works are Ecclesiastes, The Seven Psalms, and Canticum Canticorum—these three no doubt translations of parts of the Old Testament—A Sennight Slumber, The State of Lovers, the Dying Pelican—doubtless the work mentioned, as has been seen, in one of Spenser's letters to Harvey—The Howers of the Lord, and The Sacrifice of a Sinner. Many of these works had probably been passing from hand to hand in manuscript for many years. That old method of circulation survived the invention of the printing press for many generations. The perils of it may be illustrated from the fate of the works just mentioned. It would seem that the publisher never did attain to them; and they have all perished. With regard to the works which were printed and preserved, the Ruines of Time, as the Dedication shows, was written during Spenser's memorable visit of 1589-91 to England. It is in fact an elegy dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke, on the death of Sir Philip Sidney, 'that most brave Knight, your most noble brother deceased.' 'Sithens my late cumming into England,' the poet writes in the Epistle Dedicatorie, 'some friends of mine (which might much prevaile with me and indeede commaund me) knowing with howe straight bandes of duetie I was tied to him; as also bound unto that noble house (of which the chiefe hope then rested in him) have sought to revive them by upbraiding me; for that I have not shewed anie thankefull remembrance towards him or any of them; but suffer their names to sleepe in silence and forgetfulnesse. Whome chieflie to satisfie, or els to avoide that fowle blot of unthankefulnesse, I have conceived this small Poeme, intituled by a generall name of the Worlds Ruines: yet speciallie intended to the renowming of that noble race from which both you and he sprong, and to the eternizing of some of the chiefe of them late deceased.' This poem is written in a tone that had been extremely frequent during Spenser's youth. Its text is that ancient one 'Vanity of Vanities; all is Vanity'—a very obvious text in all ages, but perhaps especially so, as has been hinted, in the sixteenth century, and one very frequently adopted at that time. This text is treated in a manner characteristic of the age. It is exemplified by a series of visions. The poet represents himself as seeing at Verulam an apparition of a woman weeping over the decay of that ancient town. This woman stands for the town itself. Of its whilome glories, she says, after a vain recounting of them,

They all are gone and with them is gone,
Ne ought to me remaines, but to lament
My long decay.

No one, she continues, weeps with her, no one remembers her,

Save one that maugre fortunes injurie
And times decay, and enuies cruell tort
Hath writ my record in true seeming sort.

Cambden the nourice of antiquitie,
And lanterne unto late succeeding age,
To see the light of simple veritie
Buried in ruines, through the great outrage
Of her owne people, led with warlike rage,
Cambden, though time all moniments obscure,
Yet thy just labours ever shall endure.

Then she rebukes herself for these selfish moanings by calling to mind how far from solitary she is in her desolation. She recalls to mind the great ones of the land who have lately fallen—Leicester, and Warwick, and Sidney—and wonders no longer at her own ruin. Is not Transit Gloria the lesson taught everywhere? Then other visions and emblems of instability are seen, some of them not darkly suggesting that what passes away from earth and apparently ends may perhaps be glorified elsewhere. The second of these collected poems—The Teares of the Muses—dedicated, as we have seen, to one of the poet's fair cousins, the Lady Strange, deplores the general intellectual condition of the time. It is doubtful whether Spenser fully conceived what a brilliant literary age was beginning about the year 1590. Perhaps his long absence in Ireland, the death of Sidney who was the great hope of England Spenser knew, the ecclesiastical controversies raging when he revisited England, may partly account for his despondent tone with reference to literature. He introduces each Muse weeping for the neglect and contempt suffered by her respective province. He who describes these tears was himself destined to dry them; and Shakspere, who, if anyone, was to make the faces of the Muses blithe and bright, was now rapidly approaching his prime. There can be little doubt that at a later time Spenser was acquainted with Shakspere; for Spenser was an intimate friend of the Earl of Essex; Shakspere was an intimate friend of the Earl of Southampton, who was one of the most attached friends of that Earl of Essex. And a personal acquaintance with Shakspere may have been one of the most memorable events of Spenser's visit to London in 1589. We would gladly think that Thalia in the Teares of the Muses refers in the following passage to Shakspere: the comic stage, she says, is degraded,

And he the man whom Nature selfe had made
To mock herselfe and Truth to imitate,
With kindly counter under Mimick shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late;
With whom all joy and jolly meriment
Is also deaded and in dolour drent.

The context shows that by 'dead' is not meant physical death, but that

That same gentle spirit, from whose pen
Large streames of honnie and sweete nectar flowe,

produces nothing, sits idle-handed and silent, rather than pander to the grosser tastes of the day. But this view, attractive as it is, can perhaps hardly be maintained. Though the Teares of the Muses was not published, as we have seen, till 1591, it was probably written some years earlier, and so before the star of Shakspere had arisen. Possibly by Willy is meant Sir Philip Sidney, a favourite haunt of whose was his sister's house at Wilton on the river Wiley or Willey, and who had exhibited some comic power in his masque, The Lady of May, acted before the Queen in 1578. Some scholars, however, take 'Willy' to denote John Lily. Thus the passage at present remains dark. If written in 1590, it certainly cannot mean Sidney, who had been dead some years; just possibly, but not probably, it might in that case mean Shakspere.

Of the remaining works published in his Complaints, the only other one of recent composition is Muiopotmos, which, as Prof. Craik suggests, would seem to be an allegorical narrative of some matter recently transpired. It is dated 1590, but nothing is known of any earlier edition than that which appears in the Complaints. Of the other pieces by far the most interesting is Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubbards Tale, not only because it is in it, as has been said, Spenser most carefully, though far from successfully, imitates his great master Chaucer, but for its intrinsic merit— for its easy style, its various incidents, its social pictures. In the dedication he speaks of it as 'These my idle labours; which having long sithens composed in the raw conceipt of my youth, I lately amongst other papers lighted upon, and was by others, which liked the same, mooved to set them foorth.' However long before its publication the poem in the main was written, possibly some additions were made to it in or about the year 1590; as for instance, the well-known passage describing 'a suitor's state,' which reflects too clearly a bitter personal experience to have been composed before Spenser had grown so familiar with the Court as he became during his visit to England under Raleigh's patronage. But it is conceivable that his experiences in 1578 and 1579 inspired the lines in question.

The remaining pieces in the Complaints consist of translations or imitations, composed probably some years before, though probably in some cases, as has been shown, revised or altogether recast.

Probably in the same year with the Complaints— that is in 1591—was published Daphnaida,{1} 'an Elegie upon the death of the noble and vertuous Douglas Howard, daughter and heire of Henry Lord Howard, Viscount Byndon, and wife of Arthur Georges, Esquire.' This elegy was no doubt written before Spenser returned to Ireland. It is marked by his characteristic diffuseness, abundance, melody.

Certainly before the close of the year 1591 Spenser found himself once more in his old castle of Kilcolman. A life at Court could never have suited him, however irksome at times his isolation in Ireland may have seemed. When his friends wondered at his returning unto

This barrein soyle,
Where cold and care and penury do dwell,
Here to keep sheepe with hunger and with toyle,

he made the answer that he,

Whose former dayes
Had in rude fields bene altogether spent,
Durst not adventure such unknowen wayes,
Nor trust the guile of fortunes blandishment;
But rather chose back to my sheepe to tourne,
Whose utmost hardnesse I before had tryde,
Then, having learnd repentance late, to mourne
Emongst those wretches which I there descryde.

That life, with all its intrigues and self-seekings and scandals, had no charms for him. Once more settled in his home, he wrote an account of his recent absence from it, which he entitled Colin Clouts Come Home Again. This poem was not published till 1595; but, whatever additions were subsequently made to it, there can be no doubt it was originally written immediately after his return to Ireland. Sitting in the quiet to which he was but now restored, he reviewed the splendid scenes he had lately witnessed; he recounted the famous wits he had met, and the fair ladies he had seen in the great London world; and dedicated this exquisite diary to the friend who had introduced him into that brilliant circle. It would seem that Raleigh had accused him of indolence. That ever-restless schemer could not appreciate the poet's dreaminess. 'That you may see,' writes Spenser, 'that I am not alwaies ydle as yee think, though not greatly well occupied, nor altogither undutifull, though not precisely officious, I make you present of this simple pastorall, unworthie of your higher conceipt for the meanesse of the stile, but agreeing with the truth in circumstance and matter. The which I humbly beseech you to accept in part of paiment of the infinite debt in which I acknowledge myselfe bounden unto you for your singular favours and sundrie good turnes shewed to me at my late being in England, &c.'

The conclusion of this poem commemorates, as we have seen, Spenser's enduring affection for that Rosalind who so many years before had turned away her ears from his suit. It must have been some twelve months after those lines were penned, that the writer conceived an ardent attachment for one Elizabeth. The active research of Dr. Grosart has discovered that this lady belonged to the Boyle family—a family already of importance and destined to be famous. The family seat was at Kilcoran, near Youghal, and so we understand Spenser's singing of 'The sea that neighbours to her near.' Thus she lived in the same county with her poet. The whole course of the wooing and the winning is portrayed in the Amoretti or Sonnets and the Epithalamium. It may be gathered from these biographically and otherwise interesting pieces, that it was at the close of the year 1592 that the poet was made a captive of that beauty he so fondly describes. The first three sonnets would seem to have been written in that year. The fourth celebrates the beginning of the year 1593—the beginning according to our modern way of reckoning. All through that year 1593 the lover sighed, beseeched, adored, despaired, prayed again. Fifty-eight sonnets chronicle the various hopes and fears of that year. The object of his passion remained as steel and flint, while he wept and wailed and pleaded. His life was a long torment.

In vaine I seeke and sew to her for grace
And doe myne humbled hart before her poure;
The whiles her foot she in my necke doth place
And tread my life downe in the lowly floure.

In Lent she is his 'sweet saynt,' and he vows to find some fit service for her.

Her temple fayre is built within my mind
In which her glorious image placed is.

But all his devotion profited nothing, and he thinks it were better 'at once to die.' He marvels at her cruelty. He cannot address himself to further composition of his great poem. The accomplishment of that great work were

Sufficient werke for one man's simple head,
All were it, as the rest, but rudely writ.
How then should I, without another wit,
Thinck ever to endure so tedious toyle?
Sith that this one is tost with troublous fit
Of a proud love that doth my spirit spoyle.

He falls ill in his body too. When the anniversary of his being carried into captivity comes round, he declares, as has already been quoted, that the year just elapsed has appeared longer than all the forty years of his life that had preceded it (sonnet 60). In the beginning of the year 1594,

After long stormes and tempests sad assay
Which hardly I endured hertofore
In dread of death and daungerous dismay
With which my silly bark was tossed sore,

he did 'at length descry the happy shore.' The heart of his mistress softened towards him. The last twenty- five sonnets are for the most part the songs of a lover accepted and happy. It would seem that by this time he had completed three more books of the Faerie Queene, and he asks leave in sonnet 70,

In pleasant mew
To sport my Muse and sing my loves sweet praise,
The contemplation of whose heavenly hew
My spirit to an higher pitch doth raise.

Probably the Sixth Book was concluded in the first part of the year 1594, just after his long wooing had been crowned with success. In the tenth canto of that book he introduces the lady of his love, and himself 'piping' unto her. In a rarely pleasant place on a fair wooded hill-top Calidore sees the Graces dancing, and Colin Clout piping merrily. With these goddesses is a fourth maid; it is to her alone that Colin pipes:—

Pype, jolly shepheard, pype thou now apace
Unto thy love that made thee low to lout;
Thy love is present there with thee in place;
Thy love is there advaunst to be another Grace.

Of this fourth maid the poet, after sweetly praising the daughters of sky-ruling Jove, sings in this wise:—

Who can aread what creature mote she bee;
Whether a creature or a goddesse graced
With heavenly gifts from heven first enraced?
But what so sure she was, she worthy was
To be the fourth with those three other placed,
Yet she was certes but a countrey lasse;
Yet she all other countrey lasses farre did passe.

So farre, as doth the daughter of the day
All other lesser lights in light excell;
So farre doth she in beautyfull array
Above all other lasses beare the bell;
Ne lesse in vertue that beseems her well
Doth she exceede the rest of all her race.

The phrase 'country lass' in this rapturous passage has been taken to signify that she to whom it applied was of mean origin; but it scarcely bears this construction. Probably all that is meant is that her family was not connected with the Court or the Court circle. She was not high-born; but she was not low- born. The final sonnets refer to some malicious reports circulating about him, and to some local separation between the sonneteer and his mistress. This separation was certainly ended in the June following his acceptance—that is, the June of 1594; for in that month, on St. Barnabas' day, that is, on the 11th, Spenser was married. This event Spenser celebrates in the finest, the most perfect of all his poems, in the most beautiful of all bridal songs—in his Epithalamion. He had many a time sung for others; he now bade the Muses crown their heads with garlands and help him his own love's praises to resound:—

So I unto my selfe alone will sing,
The woods shall to me answer, and my echo ring.

Then, with the sweetest melody and a refinement and grace incomparable, he sings with a most happy heart of various matters of the marriage day—of his love's waking, of the merry music of the minstrels, of her coming forth in all the pride of her visible loveliness, of that 'inward beauty of her lively spright' which no eyes can see, of her standing before the altar, her sad eyes still fastened on the ground, of the bringing her home, of the rising of the evening star, and the fair face of the moon looking down on his bliss not unfavourably, as he would hope. The Amoretti and Epithalamion were registered at the Stationers' Hall on the 19th of November following the marriage. They were published in 1595, Spenser—as appears from the 'Dedication' of them to Sir Robert Needham, written by the printer Ponsonby—being still absent from England.

Meanwhile the poet had been vexed by other troubles besides those of a slowly requited passion. Mr. Hardiman,{2} in his Irish Minstrelsy, has published three petitions presented in 1593 to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland by Maurice, Lord Roche, Viscount Fermoy, two against 'one Edmond Spenser, gentleman', one against one Joan Ny Callaghan—who is said to act 'by supportation and maintenance of Edmond Spenser, gentleman, a heavy adversary to your suppliant.' 'Where,' runs the first petition, 'one Edmond Spenser, gentleman, hath lately exhibited suit against your suppliant for three ploughlands, parcels of Shanballymore (your suppliant's inheritance) before the Vice-President and Council of Munster, which land hath been heretofore decreed for your suppliant against the said Spenser and others under whom he conveyed; and nevertheless for that the said Spenser, being Clerk of the Council in the said province, and did assign his office unto one Nicholas Curteys among other agreements with covenant that during his life he should be free in the said office for his causes, by occasion of which immunity he doth multiply suits against your suppliant in the said province upon pretended title of others &c.' The third petition averred that 'Edmond Spenser of Kilcolman, gentleman, hath entered into three ploughlands, parcel of Ballingerath, and disseised your suppliant thereof, and continueth by countenance and greatness the possession thereof, and maketh great waste of the wood of the said land, and converteth a great deal of corn growing thereupon to his proper use, to the damage of the complainant of two hundred pounds sterling. Whereunto,' continues the document, which is preserved in the Original Rolls Office, 'the said Edmond Spenser appearing in person had several days prefixed unto him peremptorily to answer, which he neglected to do.' Therefore 'after a day of grace given,' on the 12th of February, 1594, Lord Roche was decreed the possession. Perhaps the absence from his lady love referred to in the concluding sonnets was occasioned by this litigation. Perhaps also the 'false forged lyes'—the malicious reports circulated about him—referred to in Sonnet 85, may have been connected with these appeals against him. It is clear that all his dreams of Faerie did not make him neglectful of his earthly estate. Like Shakspere, like Scott, Spenser did not cease to be a man of the world—we use the phrase in no unkindly sense—because he was a poet. He was no mere visionary, helpless in the ordinary affairs of life. In the present case it would appear that he was even too keen in looking after his own interests. Professor Craik charitably suggests that his poverty 'rather than rapacity may be supposed to have urged whatever of hardness there was in his proceedings.' It is credible enough that these proceedings made him highly unpopular with the native inhabitants of the district, and that they were not forgotten when the day of reckoning came. 'His name,' says Mr. Hardiman, on the authority of Trotter's Walks in Ireland,{3} 'is still remembered in the vicinity of Kilcolman; but the people entertain no sentiments of respect or affection for his memory.'

In the same year with the Amoretti was published Colin Clouts Come Home Again, several additions having been made to the original version.

Probably at the close of this year 1595 Spenser a second time crossed to England, accompanied, it may be supposed, by his wife, carrying with him in manuscript the second three books of his Faerie Queene, which, as we have seen, were completed before his marriage, and also a prose work, A View of the Present State of Ireland. Mr. Collier quotes the following entry from the Stationers' Register:—

20 die Januarii [1595].—Mr. Ponsonby. Entred &c. The Second Part of the Faerie Queene, cont. the 4, 5, and 6 bookes, vj_d_.

This second instalment—which was to be the last—of his great poem was duly published in that year. The View of the Present State of Ireland was not registered till April 1598, and then only conditionally. It was not actually printed till 1633. During his stay in England he wrote the Hymns to Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beauty, and the Prothalamion, which were to be his last works.

More than four years had elapsed since Spenser had last visited London. During that period certain memorable works had been produced; the intellectual power of that day had expressed itself in no mean manner. When he arrived in London towards the close of the year 1595, he would find Shakspere splendidly fulfilling the promise of his earlier days; he would find Ben Jonson just becoming known to fame; he would find Bacon already drawing to him the eyes of his time. Spenser probably spent the whole of the year 1596, and part of 1597, in England. In 1597 appeared, as has already been said, the first part of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, and Bacon's Essays, and also Jonson's Every Man in His Own Humour.

The reigning favourite at this time was the Earl of Essex. In 1596 his successful descent upon Cadiz raised him to the zenith of his fame. With this nobleman Spenser was on terms of intimacy. At his London house in the Strand—a house which had previously been inhabited by Spenser's earlier patron, the Earl of Leicester—it stood where Essex Street now is, and is still represented by the two pillars which stand at the bottom of that street—Spenser no doubt renewed his friendship with Shakspere. This intimacy with Essex, with whatever intellectual advantages it may have been attended, with whatever bright spirits it may have brought Spenser acquainted, probably impeded his prospects of preferment. There can be no doubt that one of the motives that brought him to England was a desire to advance his fortunes. Camden describes him as always poor. His distaste for his residence in Ireland could not but have been aggravated by his recent legal defeat. But he looked in vain for further preferment. He had fame, and to spare, and this was to suffice. It was during this sojourn in England that he spoke of himself, as we have seen, as one

Whom sullein care
Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay
In Princes court and expectation vayne
Of idle hopes which still doe fly away
Like empty shaddows, did afflict my brayne.

The publication of the second three books of the Faerie Queene, with a re-impression of the first three books, placed him on the highest pinnacle of fame. Its plentiful references to passing events—its adumbrations of the history of the time—however it might damage the permanent value of the work from an artistic point of view, increased its immediate popularity. How keenly these references were appreciated appears from the anxiety of the Scotch King to have the poet prosecuted for his picture of Duessa, in whom Mary Queen of Scots was generally recognised. 'Robert Bowes, the English ambassador in Scotland, writing to Lord Burghley from Edinburgh 12th November, 1596, states that great offence was conceived by the King against Edmund Spenser for publishing in print, in the second part of the Faery Queen, ch. 9, some dishonourable effects, as the King deemed, against himself and his mother deceased. Mr. Bowes states that he had satisfied the King as to the privilege under which the book was published, yet he still desired that Edmund Spenser for this fault might be tried and punished. It further appears, from a letter from George Nicolson to Sir Robert Cecil, dated Edinburgh, 25 February, 1597-8, that Walter Quin, an Irishman, was answering Spenser's book, whereat the King was offended.'{4}

The View of the Present State of Ireland, written dialogue-wise between Eudoxus and Iren{ae}us, though not printed, as has been said, till 1633, seems to have enjoyed a considerable circulation in a manuscript form. There are manuscript copies of this tractate at Cambridge, at Dublin, at Lambeth, and in the British Museum. It is partly antiquarian, partly descriptive, partly political. It exhibits a profound sense of the unsatisfactory state of the country—a sense which was presently to be justified in a frightful manner. Spenser had not been deaf to the ever-growing murmurs of discontent by which he and his countrymen had been surrounded. He was not in advance of his time in the policy he advocates for the administration of Ireland. He was far from anticipating that policy of conciliation whose triumphant application it may perhaps be the signal honour of our own day to achieve. The measures he proposes are all of a vigorously repressive kind; they are such measures as belong to a military occupancy, not to a statesmanly administration. He urges the stationing numerous garrisons; he is for the abolishing native customs. Such proposals won a not unfavourable hearing at that time. They have been admired many a time since.

It is to this work of Spenser's that Protector Cromwell alludes in a letter to his council in Ireland, in favour of William Spenser, grandson of Edmund Spenser, from whom an estate of lands in the barony of Fermoy, in the county of Cork, descended on him. 'His grandfather,' he writes, 'was that Spenser who, by his writings touching the reduction of the Irish to civility, brought on him the odium of that nation; and for those works and his other good services Queen Elizabeth conferred on him that estate which the said William Spenser now claims.'{5} This latter statement is evidently inaccurate. Spenser, as we have seen, had already held his estate for some years when he brought his View to England.

Spenser dates the dedication of his Hymns from Greenwich, September 1, 1596. Of these four hymns, two had been in circulation for some years, though now for the first time printed; the other two now first appeared. 'Having in the greener times of my youth,' he writes, 'composed these former two hymnes in the praise of love and beautie, and finding that the same too much pleased those of like age and disposition, which being too vehemently caried with that kind of affection, do rather sucke out poyson to their strong passion than hony to their honest delight, I was moved by one of you two most excellent ladies [the ladies Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, Mary, Countess of Warwick] to call in the same; but unable so to doe, by reason that many copies thereof were formerly scattered abroad, I resolved at least to amend, and by way of retraction to reforme them, making (instead of those two hymnes of earthly or naturall love and beautie) two others of heavenly and celestiall.' This passage is interesting for the illustration it provides of Spenser's popularity. It is also highly interesting, if the poems themselves be read in the light of it, as showing the sensitive purity of the poet's nature. It is difficult to conceive how those 'former hymns' should in any moral respect need amending. The moralising and corrective purpose with which the two latter were written perhaps diminished their poetical beauty; but the themes they celebrate are such as Spenser could not but ever descant upon with delight; they were such as were entirely congenial to his spirit. He here set forth special teachings of his great master Plato, and abandoned himself to the high spiritual contemplations he loved. But perhaps the finest of these four hymns is the second—that in honour of Beauty. Beauty was indeed the one worship of Spenser's life—not mere material beauty—not 'the goodly hew of white and red with which the cheekes are sprinkled,' or 'the sweete rosy leaves so fairly spred upon the lips,' or 'that golden wyre,' or 'those sparckling stars so bright,' but that inner spiritual beauty, of which fair hair and bright eyes are but external expressions.

So every spirit, as it is most pure
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer bodie doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairely dight
With chearfull grace and amiable sight;
For of the soule the bodie forme doth take,
For soule is forme and doth the bodie make.

This hymn is one of high refined rapture.

Before the close of the year 1596 Spenser wrote and published the Prothalamion or 'A spousall verse made in honour of the double marriage of the two honourable and vertuous ladies, the ladie Elizabeth, and the ladie Katherine Somerset, daughters to the right honourable the Earle of Worcester, and espoused to the two worthie gentlemen, M. Henry Gilford and M. William Peter Esquyers.' It was composed after the return of Essex from Spain, for he is introduced in the poem as then residing at his house in the Strand. It is a poem full of grace and beauty, and of matchless melodiousness.

This is the last complete poem Spenser wrote. No doubt he entertained the idea of completing his Faerie Queene; and perhaps it was after 1596 that he composed the two additional cantos, which are all, so far as is known, that he actually wrote. But the last poem completed and published in his lifetime was the Prothalamion.

This second visit to England at last came to an end. It was probably in 1597 that he returned once more to Kilcolman. In the following year he was recommended by her Majesty for Sheriff of Cork. But his residence in Ireland was now to be rudely terminated.

The Irishry had, ever since the suppression of Desmond's rebellion in 1582, been but waiting for another opportunity to rise, that suppression not having brought pacification in its train. In the autumn of 1598 broke out another of these fearful insurrections, of which the history of English rule in Ireland is mainly composed.

In the September of that year Spenser was at the zenith of his prosperity. In that month arrived the letter recommending his appointment to be Sheriff of Cork. It seems legitimate to connect this mark of royal favour with the fact that at the beginning of the preceding month Lord Burghley had deceased. The great obstructor of the Queen's bounty was removed, and Spenser might hope that now, at last, the hour of his prosperity was come. So far as is known, his domestic life was serene and happy. The joys of the husband had been crowned with those of the father. Two sons, as may be gathered from the names given to them—they were christened Sylvanus and Peregrine—had been by this time born to him; according to Sir William Betham, who drew up a pedigree of Spenser's family, another son and a daughter had been born between the birth of Sylvanus and that of Peregrine. Then he was at this time the recognised prince of living poets. The early autumn of 1598 saw him in the culminating enjoyment of all these happinesses.

In October the insurgents burst roughly in upon his peace. No doubt his occupation of the old castle of Desmond had ever been regarded with fierce jealousy. While he had dreamed his dreams and sung his songs in the valley, there had been curses muttered against him from the hills around. At last the day of vengeance came. The outraged natives rushed down upon Kilcolman; the poet and his family barely made their escape; his home was plundered and burned. According to Ben Jonson, in the conversation with Drummond, quoted above, not all his family escaped; one little child, new born, perished in the flames. But, indeed, the fearfulness of this event needs no exaggeration. In profound distress Spenser arrived once more in London, bearing a despatch from Sir Thomas Norreys, President of Munster, to the Secretary of State, and of course himself full of direct and precise information as to the Irish tumult, having also drawn up an address to the Queen on the subject. Probably, the hardships and horrors he had undergone completely prostrated him. On January 16, 1599, he died in Westminster. As to the exact place, a manuscript note found by Brand, the well-known antiquary, on the title-page of a copy of the second edition of the Faerie Queene, though not of indisputable value, may probably enough be accepted, and it names King Street. Ben Jonson says, 'he died for lack of bread;' but this must certainly be an exaggeration. No doubt he returned to England 'inops'—in a state of poverty—as Camden says; but it is impossible to believe that he died of starvation. His friend Essex and many another were ready to minister to his necessities if he needed their ministry. Jonson's story is that he 'refused twenty pieces sent him by my lord Essex, and said he was sure he had no time to spend them.' This story, if it is anything more than a mere vulgar rumour, so far as it shows anything, shows that he was in no such very extreme need of succour. Had his destitution been so complete, he would have accepted the pieces for his family, even though 'he had no time to spend them himself.' It must be remembered that he was still in receipt of a pension from the crown; a pension of no very considerable amount, perhaps, but still large enough to satisfy the pangs of hunger. But numerous passages might be quoted to show that he died in somewhat straitened circumstances.

It was said, some thirty-four years after Spenser's death, that in his hurried flight from Ireland the remaining six books of the Faerie Queene were lost. But it is very unlikely that those books were ever completed.{6} Perhaps some fragments of them may have perished in the flames at Kilcolman—certainly only two cantos have reached us. These were first printed in 1611, when the first six books were republished. The general testimony of his contemporaries is that his song was broken off in the midst. Says Browne in his Britannia's Pastorals (Book ii. s. 1):—

But ere he ended his melodious song,
An host of angels flew the cloud among,
And rapt this swan from his attentive mates
To make him one of their associates
In heaven's faire choir.

One S. A. Cokain writes:—

If, honour'd Colin, thou hadst lived so long
As to have finished thy Fairy song,
Not only mine but all tongues would confess,
Thou hadst exceeded old M{ae}onides.

He was buried near Chaucer—by his own wish, it is said—in Westminster Abbey, 'poetis funus ducentibus,' with poets following him to the grave—bearing the pall, as we might say—the Earl of Essex furnishing the funeral expenses, according to Camden. It would seem from a passage in Browne's Britannia's Pastorals 'that the Queen ordered a monument to be erected over him, but that the money was otherwise appropriated by one of her agents.' The present monument, restored in 1778, was erected by Anne, Countess of Dorset, in 1620.

His widow married again before 1603, as we learn from a petition presented to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland in that year, in which Sylvanus sues to recover from her and her husband Roger Seckerstone certain documents relating to the paternal estate. She was again a widow in 1606. Till a very recent time there were descendants of Spenser living in the south of Ireland.

1869 JOHN W. HALES.
Revised 1896.

Footnotes
————-

{1} This poem is in this volume reprinted from the
edition of 1591. Mr. Morris thinks that Todd was
not aware of this edition. Mr. Collier reprinted
from the 2nd edition—that of 1593.
{2} Irish Minstrelsy; or, Bardic Remains of Ireland,
by J. Hardiman. London, 1831.
{3} 'The name and occupation of Spenser is handed down
traditionally among them (the Irish); but they seem
to entertain no sentiments of respect or affection
for his memory; the bard came in rather ungracious
times, and the keen recollections of this untutored
people are wonderful.'—Trotter's Walks through
Ireland in the Years 1812, 1814, and 1817.
London, 1819, p. 302.
{4} Cooper's Athen. Cantab.
{5} See Mr. Edwards's Life of Raleigh, vol. i. p.
128.
{6} No doubt he intended to complete his work. See
book vi. canto v. st. 2:

'When time shall be to tell the same;'

but this time never was.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Faerie Queene Volume 1, by Edmund Spenser