The Queen was the earliest and the latest object of our poet’s musings. “The Maiden Queen” enters into almost every poem. Shortly after the publication of “The Shepherd’s Calendar,” wherein her Majesty occupies the month of April, Spenser, in writing to Harvey, has this remarkable passage:—“Your desire to hear of my late being with her Majesty must die in itself.” By this ambiguous reply, it is, however, evident that Harvey, and probably Spenser himself, had looked forwards, by the intervention of his great patrons, that “the unknown poet,” as he is called by “the old commentator,” would have been honoured by an interview with the royal poetess. Elizabeth, among her princely infirmities, had the ambition of verse. She was afterwards saluted as
| A peerless prince and peerless poetess, |
by Spenser, who must, however, have closed his ear at her harsher numbers.[3] We may regret that we know so little of our Spenser’s intercourse with the Queen. If Sidney made him known to her Majesty, as Philips has told, the poet might have read to the Queen the earlier cantos of his romantic epic. The poet himself has only recorded that “The Shepherd of the Ocean,” Sir Walter Raleigh, brought him into the presence of Cynthia, “The Queen of the Ocean,” who
| To his oaten pipe inclined her ear, And it desired, at timely hours, to hear. |
The Lord Treasurer Burleigh seems to have marred those “timely hours.” Spenser had lingered before the fountain of court favour; and how often the dark shadow of the political minister intervened between the poet and the throne we are reminded by the deep sensitiveness of the victim, the murmurs, and even the scorn of the indignant bard.
Under the patronage of Leicester, the poet’s services were transferred to Lord Arthur Grey, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who appointed Spenser his secretary. He has vindicated this viceroy’s administration in the “Faery Queen,” by shadowing forth his severe justice in Arthegal, accompanied by his “Iron Man,” whose iron flail “threshed out falsehood” in their quest of Ierne, in that “Land of Ire” where justice and the executioner were ever erratic.
Of the brief life of the poet, his better years were consumed in Ireland, where he filled several appointments more honourable than lucrative. His slender revenue seems not to have flourished under a grant of land from the crown, on the conditions attached to it in 1585.[4] Cast into active service, the musings of the “Faery Queen” were assuredly often thrown aside; its fate was still dubious, for Ireland was not a land of the muses, as he himself declared, when a chance occurrence, the visit of Rawleigh to that country, gave Spenser another Sidney. The “Faery Queen” once more opened its mystical leaves on the banks of the Mulla, before a judge, whose voice was fame.
| And when he heard the music that I made, He found himself full greatly pleased at it; He gan to cast great liking to my lore, And great disliking to my luckless lot, That banish’d had myself, like wight forlore, Into that waste where I was quite forgot. |
Spenser has here disclosed involuntarily “the secret sorrow.”
The acres of Kilcolman offered no delights to “the wight forlore, forgotten in that waste.” Our tender and melancholy poet was not blessed with that fortitude which, even in a barren solitude, can muse on its own glory, as Petrarch and Rousseau were wont, and which knows also to value a repose freed from spiteful rivalries and mordacious malignity. And now opened his tedious suings at court, for what, but to obtain some situation in his native home, which offered repose of mind, and carelessness of the future? We know of his restless wanderings to England, and his constant returns to Ireland. We find the poet, in 1590, wearied by solicitations, throwing out the immortal lines so painfully descriptive of