The individual just referred to, John Stow, the antiquary, is a most melancholy case in point. A profound scholar in every sense, he devoted his life and substance to the study of English antiquities; oftentimes travelling tremendous distances on foot to save monuments, and rescue rare works from the dispersed libraries of monasteries. His enthusiasm for study was unbounded, and at his death he left stupendous excerpts in his own handwriting. At an advanced age, when worn out by study and travel, and the cares and anxieties of poverty—for he was utterly neglected by the pretended patrons of learning—his other troubles were increased by most acute pains in the feet, which he good-humouredly referred to by saying “his affliction lay in that part which formerly he had made so much use of.” At last he became so necessitous that he petitioned James the First for a licence to collect alms for himself, “as a recompense for his labour and travel of forty-five years, in setting forth the Chronicles of England, and eight years taken up in the Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, towards his relief now in his old age: having left his former means of living, and only employing himself for the service and good of his country”—which petition was granted by letters patent under the Great Seal, permitting him to seek assistance from all well-disposed people within this realm of England. The terms in which this permit was set forth (“to ask, gather, and take the alms of all our loving subjects”) were scarcely correct; that is to say, “to ask, gather, and take the alms of all our loving subjects—who will give” would have been more complete; for though the letters patent were published by the clergy from their pulpits, the result was so trifling that they had to be renewed for another twelvemonth; one entire parish in the city subscribing but seven and sixpence to the poor scholar’s appeal.
Learning in Stow’s time, and for a long time after, was evidently but poorly patronised, for his is by no means an isolated experience. Myles Davies, author of ‘Athenæ Britannicæ,’ &c., published in 1716, suffered similar neglect; his mind, it is alleged, becoming quite confused amidst the loud cries of penury and despair.
Alluding to those who were supposed to support such as himself, he scathingly says, “Some parsons would halloo enough to raise the whole house and home of the domestics to raise a poor crown; at last all that flutter ends in sending Jack or Tom out to change a guinea, and then ’tis reckoned over half-a-dozen times before the fatal crown can be picked out, which must be taken as it is given, with all the parade of almsgiving [Davies, be it remembered, was a Welsh divine], and so to be received with all the active and passive ceremonial of mendication and alms-receiving, as if the books, printing, and paper were worth nothing at all, and as if it were the greatest charity for them to touch them, or let them be in the house. ‘For I shall never read them,’ says one of the five-shilling chaps. ‘I have no time to look into them,’ says a third. ‘’Tis so much money lost,’ says a grave dean. ‘My eyes being so bad,’ said a bishop, ‘that I can scarce read at all.’ ‘What do you want with me?’ said another. ‘Sir, I presented you the other day with my ‘Athenæ Britannicæ,’ being the last part published.’ ‘I don’t want books, take them again; I don’t understand what they mean.’ ‘The title is very plain,’ said I, ‘and they are writ mostly in English.’ ‘I’ll give you a crown for both the volumes.’ ‘They stand me, sir, in more than that, and ’tis for a bare subsistence I present or sell them; how shall I live?’ ‘I care not a farthing for that—live or die, ’tis all one to me.’ ‘Damn my master,’ said Jack, ‘’twas but last night he was commending your books and your learning to the skies, and now he would not care if you were starving before his eyes; nay, he often makes game at your clothes, though he thinks you the greatest scholar in England.’”
So much for the way literature was encouraged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that it was little better in the eighteenth century is only too well-known a fact; for “in those days, a large proportion of working literary men were little better than outcasts;—persons exiled from decent society, partly by their own vices, partly by the fact of their following a profession which had hardly acquired a recognised standing in the world, or found for itself a definite and indisputable sphere of usefulness. The reading public was not sufficient to maintain an extensive fraternity of writers, and the writers consequently often starved, and broke their hearts in wretched garrets, or earned a despicable living by flattering the great.”
These animadversions are especially meant to apply to that class of littérateurs known as “Grub Street pamphleteers,” but not a few notable names in the world of letters can be found to verify the gloomy picture. Nathaniel, or “Nat” Lee, as he is more often called, was one of those who failed to find fortune, but it must be admitted his “own vices” are answerable for his indigence. The son of a clergyman, he was educated at Westminster School, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A.; and, at a very early age, manifested conspicuous ability for dramatic writing; his first effort, ‘Nero, Emperor of Rome,’ produced in 1675, being received with marked success. From that time until his death, which occurred fifteen years later, he brought out eleven plays, not one of which was a failure, but he was so rakishly extravagant as to be frequently plunged into the lowest depths of misery. In November 1684, his excesses, coupled with a naturally excitable temperament, succeeded in fitting him to be an inmate of Bedlam, where he was confined for four years. On his release in April 1688, he resumed his occupation of dramatist, producing ‘The Princess of Cleve’ in 1689, and ‘The Massacre of Paris’ the following year. Notwithstanding the considerable profits arising from these performances he was reduced to so low an ebb, that a weekly stipend of 10s. from the Theatre Royal was his chief dependence. He died the same year, 1690, the result of a drunken frolic in the street; and although the author of eleven plays, all acted with applause, and dedicated, when printed, to the Earls of Dorset, Mulgrave, and Pembroke, and the Duchesses of Portsmouth and Richmond, who were numbered among his patrons, he was buried by the Parish of St. Clement Danes, Strand.
The vicissitudes of Spenser, in contrast to those of the author just referred to, were undoubtedly due to a want of appreciation on the part of those in power; for none of his biographers even hint at want of rectitude in his past life. Created Poet Laureate by Queen Elizabeth, he, for some time, only wore the barren laurel, and possessed the place without the pension; for Lord Treasurer Burleigh, for some motive or other, intercepted the Queen’s intended bounty to him. It is said that Her Majesty, upon Spenser presenting some poems to her, ordered him £100, but that her Lord Treasurer, objecting to it, said with considerable scorn, “What! all this for a song?” Whereupon the Queen replied, “Then give him what is reason.” Some time after, the poet, not having received the promised gift, penned the following poetic petition—
“I was promised on a time,
To have reason for my rime; (sic)
From that time unto this season
I received nor rime nor reason”—
which, when sent to his sovereign, had the desired effect of producing the monetary reward, and also obtained for Lord Burleigh the reprimand he so well deserved. That Spenser felt keenly the neglect to which he was subsequently subjected is pretty clearly shown in the following lines—
“Full little knowest thou, that hast not try’d
What hell it is in suing long to bide:
To lose good days that might be better spent,
To wast long nights in pensive discontent:
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow,
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow:
To have thy Prince’s grace, yet want her peers,
To have thy asking, yet wait many years:
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares,
To eat thy heart with comfortless despairs:
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone”—
which is but one of many bemoanings of hard and undeserved treatment; and though there be some who have accused him of lacking philosophy in thus making known his poverty, I should think it very much too literally poor philosophy that would suffer in silence when it comes to a matter of bread and cheese. There were times, of course, in Spenser’s history, when his genius was fully acknowledged, both before and after the neglect recorded, when, for instance, he made the acquaintance of that chivalrous poet soldier, Sir Philip Sidney—the historically self-denying Sir Philip, who when mortally wounded at the battle of Zutphen, and about to revel in a draught of water that he had called for, denied himself the coveted drink, and gave it away to a poor comrade. He it was who was the first to recognise Spenser’s great claim as a poet. It is stated that when a perfect stranger to Sir Philip, Spenser went to Leicester House, and introduced himself by sending in the ninth canto of ‘The Fairy Queen,’ which he had just completed.