That dedication was no empty compliment to win favour, and the friendship between Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney gathered strength with time. They had often walked together under the trees at Penshurst, and a sort of club had been established, of which the members were Gabriel Harvey, Edward Dyer, Fulke Greville and others, intended for the formation of a new school of poetry. Philip Sidney was the president, and Spenser, the youngest and most enthusiastic member, while Gabriel Harvey, who was the oldest, was most strict in enforcing the rules laid down, and ready with counsel and encouragement.
The result of all the deliberations of this club were very curious, and the attempt made to force the English tongue into hexameters and iambics signally failed.
Philip Sidney and Spenser were the first to discover that the hexameter could never take its place in English verse, and they had to endure some opposition and even raillery from Gabriel Harvey, who was especially annoyed at Edmund Spenser's desertion; and had bid him farewell till God or some good angel put him in a better mind.
This literary club had broken up three years before this time, but Edmund Spenser and Sir Fulke Greville still corresponded or met at intervals with Sidney to compare their literary efforts and criticise them freely, Spenser's always being pronounced, as doubtless they were, far above the others in beauty of style and poetical conception.
By Philip Sidney's influence Spenser had been sent to Ireland as secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, whose recall was now considered certain. Sir Henry Sidney would have been willing to return as Deputy with his son under him; but, having been badly supported in the past, he stipulated that the Queen should reward his long service by a peerage and a grant of money or lands as a public mark of her confidence.
Philip found Sir Fulke Greville in his room, and with him Edward Dyer, who had come to discuss a letter from Edmund Spenser, which he wished his friends to hear.
'He fears he shall lose his place if Lord Grey be recalled, and beseeches me,' Philip said, 'to do my best that he should remain secretary to whomsoever the Queen may appoint.'
'And that will be an easy matter, methinks,' Dyer said, 'if the rumour is true that your good father is again to be appointed Deputy of Ireland, with you for his helper.'
'Contradict that rumour, good Ned,' Philip said. 'There is but the barest chance of the Queen's reinstating my father, and if, indeed, it happened so, I should not accept the post under him. I will write to our friend Spenser and bid him take courage. His friends will not desert him. But I have here a stanza or two of the Fairie Queene, for which Edmund begs me to seek your approval or condemnation.'
'It will be the first,' Fulke Greville said, 'as he very well knows, and it will not surprise me to find our good friend Harvey at last giving him his meed of praise, albeit he was so rash as to say that hexameters in English are either like a lame gosling that draweth one leg after, or like a lame dog that holdeth one leg up.'