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.