[8] In the late Mr. Heber’s treasures of our vernacular literature there was a copy of “The Arcadia,” with manuscript notes by Gabriel Harvey. He had also divided the work into chapters, enumerating the general contents of each.—“Bib. Heberiana,” part the first. A republication of this copy—omitting the continuations of the Romance by a strange hand, and all the eclogues, and most of the verses—would form a desirable volume, not too voluminous.
[9] This summary of the character of Sidney I wrote nearly thirty years ago, in the “Quarterly Review.”
SPENSER.
Though little is circumstantially related, yet frequent outbreakings, scattered throughout the writings of Spenser, commemorate the main incidents of his existence. His emotions become dates, and no poet has more fully confided to us his “secret sorrows.”
Spenser in the far north was a love-lorn youth when he composed “The Shepherd’s Calendar.” This rustic poem, rustic from an affectation of the Chaucerian style, though it bears the divisions of the twelve months, displays not the course of the seasons so much as the course of the poet’s thoughts; the themes are plaintive or recreative, amatorial or satirical, and even theological, in dialogues between certain interlocutors. To some are prefixed Italian mottoes; for that language then stamped a classical grace on our poetry. In the eclogue of January we perceive that it was still the season of hope and favour with the amatory poet, for the motto is, Anchora Speme (“yet I hope”); but in the eclogue of June we discover Gia Speme Spenta (“already hope is extinguished”). A positive rejection by Rosalind herself had for ever mingled gall with his honey, and he ungenerously inveighs against the more successful arts of a hated rival. Rosalind was indeed not the Cynthia of a poetic hour: deep was the poet’s first love; and that obdurate mistress had called him “her Pegasus,” and laughed at his sighs.
It was when the forlorn poet had thus lost himself in the labyrinth of love, and “The Shepherd’s Calendar” had not yet closed, that his learned friend Harvey, or, in his poetical appellative, Hobbinol, to steal him away from the languor of a country retirement, invited him to southern vales, and with generous warmth introduced “the unknown” to Sir Philip Sidney. This important incident in the destiny of Spenser has been carefully noted by a person who conceals himself under the initials E. K., and who is usually designated as “the old commentator on ‘The Shepherd’s Calendar.’” This E. K. is a mysterious personage, and will remain undiscovered to this day, unless the reader shall participate in my own conviction.
“The Shepherd’s Calendar” was accompanied by a commentary on every separate month; and this singularity of an elaborate commentary in the first edition of the work of a living author was still more remarkable by the intimate acquaintance of the commentator with the author himself. E. K. assures us, and indeed affords ample evidence, that “he was privy to all his (the poet’s) designs.” He furnishes some domestic details which no one could have told so accurately, except he to whom they relate; and we find our commentator also critically conversant with many of the author’s manuscripts which the world has never seen. Rarely has one man known so much of another. The poet and the commentator move together as parts of each other. In the despair of conjecture some ventured to surmise that the poet himself had been his own commentator. But the last editor of Spenser is indignant at a suggestion which would taint with strange egotism the modest nature of our bard. Yet E. K. was no ordinary writer; an excellent scholar he was, whose gloss has preserved much curious knowledge of ancient English terms and phrases. We may be sure that a pen so abundant and so skilfully exercised was not one to have restricted itself to this solitary lucubration of his life and studies. The commentary, moreover, is accompanied by a copious and erudite preface, addressed to Gabriel Harvey, and the style of these pages is too remarkable not to be recognised. At length let me lift the mask from this mysterious personage, by declaring that E. K. is Spenser’s dear and generous friend Gabriel Harvey himself. I have judged by the strong peculiarity of Harvey’s style; one cannot long doubt of a portrait marked by such prominent features. Pedantic but energetic, thought pressed on thought, sparkling with imagery, mottled with learned allusions, and didactic with subtle criticism—this is our Gabriel! The prefacer describes the state of our bardling as that of “young birds that be nearly crept out of their nest, who, by little, first prove their tender wings before they make a greater flight. And yet our new poet flieth as a bird that in time shall be able to keep wing with the best.”