* * * * *
Her long loose yellow locks, like golden wire,
Sprinkled with pearl, and pearling flow’rs atween,
Do, like a golden mantle, her attire.”
He probably dwells the more on this latter circumstance, because the Queen’s hair was yellow. But even if the marriage took place in 1593, his term of domestic happiness was very short. In the Earl of Tyrone’s rebellion, in 1598, he was plundered and deprived of his estate. No direct or authentic account of the circumstances attending this calamity has come down to us; but among the heads of a conversation between Ben Jonson and Drummond at Hawthornden, given in the works of the latter, Jonson, after saying that neither Spenser’s stanzas pleased him, nor his matter, is stated to have given the following appalling description of his misfortune: that “his goods were robbed by the Irish, and his house and a little child burnt: he and his wife escaped, and after died for want of bread in King Street, Westminster.” Jonson however adds a circumstance, the strangeness of which throws suspicion over the former part of the story: “He refused twenty pieces sent him by my Lord Essex, and said he was sure he had no time to spend them.” But whether these particulars be true or not, it is certain that he died in London, ruined, and a victim to despair, according to Camden, in 1598, but according to Sir James Ware, who wrote the preface to the ‘View of the State of Ireland,’ in 1599. Sir James, after having given a high character of his poetry, says, “With a fate peculiar to poets, Spenser lived in a continual struggle with poverty: he was driven away from his house and plundered by the rebels: soon after his return in penury to England he died. He was buried in Westminster Abbey near Chaucer, at the expense of the Earl of Essex; the poets of the time, who attended his funeral, threw verses into his grave.” In order to account for the inaccuracy of the dates on the monument, it is alleged that the inscription had been defaced, perhaps by the Puritans in revenge for the descriptions of the Blatant Beast; and that on its renewal, the carver (the year of birth being illegible) put ten at a venture, and ninety-six instead of ninety-eight or ninety-nine.
Respecting Spenser’s private character, conversation and manners, his contemporaries leave us nearly in the dark. We know that Burleigh was his enemy, that Sidney and Raleigh were his friends: and from the dignity of sentiment and moral tendency prevailing throughout his works, we may reasonably infer that his virtue was not unworthy of his genius. Milton speaks of him as “our sage and serious poet, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas.” ‘The Shepherd’s Calendar,’ the first of Spenser’s works in print, is generally said to have come out in 1579. It is a series of pastorals, formed on no uniform plan, but lowered to the standard supposed to be appropriate to that style of composition. But the rustic language of these pieces renders them so utterly untunable to a modern ear, that what obtained the applause of Sidney would not have saved the author’s name from oblivion, had it not been borne up to imperishable fame by the splendour of the ‘Faery Queene,’ the three first books of which were published in 1590. Six years afterwards three other books came out; and after his death two other cantos, and the beginning of a third. The poem, therefore, exists as a fragment: there is a traditionary story that he had completed his design in twelve books, as was his avowed intention; but that the last six books were lost by a servant who had the charge of bringing them over to England. Yet, unfinished as the poem is, any one canto has merit and beauties enough to have secured its author’s fame. In 1591 a quarto volume was published, containing the following nine pieces:—‘The Ruines of Time;’ ‘The Tears of the Muses;’ ‘Virgil’s Gnat;’ ‘Mother Hubbard’s Tale;’ ‘Ruines of Rome;’ ‘Muiopotmos;’ ‘Visions of the World’s Vanitie;’ ‘Bellay’s Visions;’ ‘Petrarche’s Visions.’ ‘Daphnaida,’ published in 1592, was dedicated to the Marchioness of Northampton, on the death of her niece, Douglas Howard. The pastoral elegy of ‘Astrophel’ was devoted wholly to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney, and inscribed to Lady Essex. To enter on the subject of his Sonnets, &c. &c. would carry us far beyond our prescribed limits.
In a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, Spenser sets forth the general design of the ‘Faery Queene,’ and settles the scheme of the whole twelve books. But the following passage proves that he contemplated twelve more. “I labour to pourtraict in Arthur, before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve Moral Vertues, as Aristotle devised, the which is the purport of these first twelve books: which if I find to be well accepted, I may perhaps be encouraged to frame the other part of Politic Vertues in his person, after that he came to be king.” He also says, “In the person of Prince Arthur I set forth Magnificence in particular.” By magnificence Dryden understands him to mean magnanimity, in succouring the representatives of the particular moral virtues when in distress, and considers his interposition in each legend as the only bond of uniformity in a design, which in all other respects insulates his allegorical heroes, without subordination or preference. This plan gave him much opportunity of drawing flattering portraits of individual courtiers, though few of the likenesses have been recognized, and the originals seem to have shown but little gratitude for the compliment. It is generally allowed that Prince Arthur was meant for Sir Philip Sidney, who was the poet’s chief patron. The prevailing beauty of this great poem consists in its vein of fabulous invention, set off by a power of description and force of imagination, so various and inexhaustible, that the reader is too much pleased and distracted to be sensible of the faults into which his judgment is betrayed by occasional excess. It is remarked by Sir William Temple, in his ‘Essay on Poetry,’ that “the religion of the Gentiles had been woven into the contexture of all the ancient poetry with an agreeable mixture, which made the moderns affect to give that of Christianity a place in their poems; but the true religion was not found to become fictions so well as the false one had done, and all their attempts of this kind seemed rather to debase religion than heighten poetry.” Critics in general, and common sense itself, have confirmed Temple’s remark as to the hazard, which it required such a mind as Milton’s successfully to face, of giving a poetical colouring to the solemn truths of religion. To a feeling of this difficulty we probably owe the peculiarity of Spenser’s epic, if so it may be called. In other epics, instruction is subordinate to story, and conveyed through it; in the ‘Faery Queene,’ morality is the avowed object, to be illustrated by the actions of such shadowy personages, that but a thin veil is thrown over the bare design. Whatever may be thought of allegorical poetry as a system, the execution in this instance is excellent, the flights of fancy brilliant, and often sublime. Rymer finds fault with Spenser for having suffered himself to be “misled by Ariosto;” and says that “his poem is perfect Fairyland.” The readers of poetry in the present day will probably receive that censure as praise: marvels and adventures, even if probability be not made matter of conscience, may have more attraction than classic regularity and strict adherence to the unities. But though Spenser frequently imitated both Tasso and Ariosto in descriptions of battles, and his general delineation of knight-errantry, the plan and conduct of his poem deviated widely from Ariosto’s model, and, it is generally thought, not on the side of improvement. Ariosto narrates adventures as real, however extravagant, and only occasionally intermixes portions of pure allegory. But allegory is the staple of Spenser’s design; and his legendary tales are interwoven with it so far only as they are connected with his one human hero. With the exception of Prince Arthur, his heroes are abstractions; they bear the names of knights, but are in reality Virtues personified. Dryden finds fault with Spenser’s obsolete language, and the ill choice of his stanza. The poems of the Elizabethan age, now considered as the golden age of poetry, are so much more read and better understood in these later times, than they were in Dryden’s days, that the language is no longer felt as a serious obstacle to the pleasures of perusal. With respect to the form of stanza, it was natural for Dryden, the mighty master of the couplet, to condemn it; and it may be in itself objectionable as favouring redundancy of style, not only in respect of expletives and tautology, but of ideas. Its fulness of melody however, and sonorous majesty, have of late brought it into favour both with writers and readers.
Of all critics, none can be better worth hearing, on such a subject as that of the Faery Queene, than the historian of English poetry. Warton writes thus:—“If the Faery Queene be destitute of that arrangement and economy which epic severity requires, yet we scarcely regret the loss of these, while their place is so amply supplied by something which more powerfully attracts us; something which engages the affections, the feelings of the heart, rather than the cold approbation of the head. If there be any poem whose graces please, because they are situated beyond the reach of art; and where the force and faculties of creative imagination delight, because they are unassisted and unrestrained by those of deliberate judgment, it is this: in reading Spenser, if the critic is not satisfied, yet the reader is transported.”
The principal editions of Spenser are Upton’s ‘Faery Queene, with a Glossary and Notes,’ London, 1751; and Mr. Todd’s Variorum Edition of his Works, 8 vols. 8vo. 1805.
