Whilome in youth when flowrd my joyfull spring,
Like swallow swift I wandred here and there;
For heate of heedlesse lust me did so sting,
That I oft doubted daunger had no feare:
I went the wastefull woodes and forrest wide
Withouten dread of wolves to bene espide.
I wont to raunge amid the mazie thicket
And gather nuttes to make my Christmas game,
And joyed oft to chace the trembling pricket,
Or hunt the hartlesse hare till she were tame.
What wreaked I of wintrie ages waste?
Tho deemed I my spring would ever last.
How often have I scaled the craggie oke
All to dislodge the raven of her nest?
How have I wearied, with many a stroke,
The stately walnut-tree, the while the rest,
Under the tree fell all for nuttes at strife?
For like to me was libertie and life.
To be sure he is here paraphrasing, and also is writing in the language of pastoral poetry, that is, the language of this passage is metaphorical; but it is equally clear that the writer was intimately and thoroughly acquainted with that life from which the metaphors of his original are drawn. He describes a life he had lived.
It seems probable that he was already an author in some sort when he went up to Cambridge. In the same year in which he became an undergraduate there appeared a work entitled, 'A Theatre wherein be represented as well the Miseries and Calamities that follow the Voluptuous Worldlings as also the greate Joyes and Pleasures which the Faithful do enjoy. An Argument both Profitable and Delectable to all that sincerely loue the Word of God. Deuised by S. John Vander Noodt.' Vander Noodt was a native of Brabant who had sought refuge in England, 'as well for that I would not beholde the abominations of the Romyshe Antechrist as to escape the handes of the bloudthirsty.' 'In the meane space,' he continues, 'for the avoyding of idlenesse (the very mother and nourice of all vices) I have among other my travayles bene occupied aboute thys little Treatyse, wherein is sette forth the vilenesse and basenesse of worldely things whiche commonly withdrawe us from heavenly and spirituall matters.' This work opens with six pieces in the form of sonnets styled epigrams, which are in fact identical with the first six of the Visions of Petrarch subsequently published among Spenser's works, in which publication they are said to have been 'formerly translated'. After these so-called epigrams come fifteen Sonnets, eleven of which are easily recognisable amongst the Visions of Bellay, published along with the Visions of Petrarch. There is indeed as little difference between the two sets of poems as is compatible with the fact that the old series is written in blank verse, the latter in rhyme. The sonnets which appear for the first time in the Visions are those describing the Wolf, the River, the Vessel, the City. There are four pieces of the older series which are not reproduced in the later. It would seem probable that they too may have been written by Spenser in the days of his youth, though at a later period of his life he cancelled and superseded them. They are therefore reprinted in this volume. (See pp. 699-701.)
Vander Noodt, it must be said, makes no mention of Spenser in his volume. It would seem that he did not know English, and that he wrote his Declaration—a sort of commentary in prose on the Visions—in French. At least we are told that this Declaration is translated out of French into English by Theodore Roest. All that is stated of the origin of his Visions is: 'The learned poete M. Francisce Petrarche, gentleman of Florence, did invent and write in Tuscan the six firste . . . . which because they serve wel to our purpose, I have out of the Brabants speache turned them into the English tongue;' and 'The other ten visions next ensuing ar described of one Ioachim du Bellay, gentleman of France, the whiche also, because they serve to our purpose I have translated them out of Dutch into English.' The fact of the Visions being subsequently ascribed to Spenser would not by itself carry much weight. But, as Prof. Craik pertinently asks, 'if this English version was not the work of Spenser, where did Ponsonby [the printer who issued that subsequent publication which has been mentioned] procure the corrections which are not mere typographical errata, and the additions and other variations{3} that are found in his edition?'
In a work called Tragical Tales, published in 1587, there is a letter in verse, dated 1569, addressed to 'Spencer' by George Turberville, then resident in Russia as secretary to the English ambassador, Sir Thomas Randolph. Anthony {a\} Wood says this Spencer was the poet; but it can scarcely have been so. 'Turberville himself,' remarks Prof. Craik, 'is supposed to have been at this time in his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year, which is not the age at which men choose boys of sixteen for their friends. Besides, the verses seem to imply a friendship of some standing, and also in the person addressed the habits and social position of manhood. . . . It has not been commonly noticed that this epistle from Russia is not Turberville's only poetical address to his friend Spencer. Among his "Epitaphs and Sonnets" are two other pieces of verse addressed to the same person.'
To the year 1569 belongs that mention referred to above of payment made one 'Edmund Spenser' for bearing letters from France. As has been already remarked, it is scarcely probable that this can have been the poet, then a youth of some seventeen years on the verge of his undergraduateship.
The one certain event of Spenser's life in the year 1569 is that he was then entered as a sizar at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. He 'proceeded B.A.' in 1573, and 'commenced M.A.' in 1576. There is some reason for believing that his college life was troubled in much the same way as was that of Milton some sixty years later—that there prevailed some misunderstanding between him and the scholastic authorities. He mentions his university with respect in the Faerie Queene, in book iv. canto xi. where, setting forth what various rivers gathered happily together to celebrate the marriage of the Thames and the Medway, he tells how
… the plenteous Ouse came far from land
By many a city and by many a towne,
And many rivers taking under hand
Into his waters, as he passeth downe,
The Cle, the Were, the Grant, the Sture, the Rowne.
Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit,
My mother Cambridge, whom as with a Crowne
He doth adorne, and is adorn'd of it
With many a gentle Muse, and many a learned wit.