| What hell it is in suing long to bide. |
It was in this year that the first three books of the romantic epic were published, which was followed by the grant of a pension in February, 1591. But five years afterwards the poet still remains the same querulous court-suitor; the miserable man wasting his days and his nights; for then he tells us in his “Prothalamion,” how on a summer’s day he
| Walk’d forth to ease his pain, Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames. ————————I whose sullen care, Through discontent of my long fruitless stay In princes’ court, and expectation vain Of idle hopes which still do fly away, Like empty shadows, to afflict my brain. |
When this was written Spenser had possessed the lands of Kilcolman more than ten years, and held his pension. Were the lands profitless, and the pension still to be solicited? The poet has only perpetuated his “secret sorrows;” his pride or his delicacy has thrown a veil over them. He has sent down to posterity his disappointments, without alluding to the nature of his claims.
It was in 1597 that Spenser laid before the Queen his memorable “View of the State of Ireland.” This state-memorial still makes us regret that our poet only wrote verse; there is a charm in his sweet and voluble prose, a virgin grace which we have long lost in the artificial splendour of English diction. Here is no affectation of Chaucerian words; the gold is not spotted with rust. The vivid pictures of the poet; the curiosity of the antiquary; and above all, a new model of policy of the practical politician, combine in this inestimable tract. Spenser suggested that the popular hero of that day, his noble friend the Earl of Essex, would be more able to conciliate popular favour in Ireland. By an alternate policy, from that day to the present, has our government tried to rule that fair “Land of Ire,” either by a Lord Grey’s severity of justice—the Arthegal, accompanied by his “iron man,” with his “iron flail;” or by the generous graciousness of an Earl of Essex, courting popularity: but neither would serve; the more quiet wisdom lay in colonization, happily begun, and so fatally neglected. The powerful eloquence of the poet and the secretary attracted the Queen’s attention. She recommended Spenser to the Irish Council to be Sheriff of Cork; again was “the wight forlore” sent back to his undesired locality; yet now, perhaps, honours and promotion were awaiting the “miserable man.” The royal letter was dated in September, and in the following month, suddenly, the Irish insurrection broke out. The flight of Spenser and his family from the Castle of Kilcolman was momentous—perhaps they witnessed the flames annihilating their small wealth. Spenser himself lost more than wealth; for the father beheld the sacrifice of his child, and the author was bereaved of all his manuscripts, now lost or scattered—his hopes, his pride, and his fame! He flew to England, not to live, but to experience how this last stroke of fortune went beyond the force of his own passionate descriptions, or of his nature to endure. In an obscure lodging, and within three short months, the most sensitive of men, broken-hearted, closed his eyes in mute grief, and in a premature death; Spenser perished at the zenith of human life.
Curiosity has been excited to learn the occasion of the inveterate prejudice of an insensible Lord Treasurer against a tender poet, who had courted his favour. This hostility of “the mighty peer” seems not to have broken forth openly till the publication of the first three books of the “Faery Queen;” for all the poet’s personal allusions to Burleigh were written shortly after that event.
Can so small a creature as a poet when it creeps into the sphere of a jealous statesman’s policy draw on itself his hateful attention? Are crafty politicians in office like richly-laden travellers who start at a crossing shadow? Burleigh possessed the full confidence of his sovereign from her youth; but she was a woman subject to caprices, and would call her ancient friend and servant “an old fool.” Burleigh was fearfully jealous of two potent rivals—the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Essex; these “men of arms,” the patrons of Spenser, were each subsequently the head of the opposition to the pacific administration of the Lord Treasurer.
“The sage old sire,” moreover, well knew the romantic self-idolatry of his royal mistress; her infirmity of poetical susceptibility; her avidity of poignant flatteries on her beauty, her chastity, and even on her verse. Her Majesty was now in the ascension of that glorified beatitude, the “Faery Queen;” and this transfiguration was the work of him whom he held to be a creature of his great rivals!
We are interested to detect the vacillating conduct of the poet to the implacable statesman. Spenser accompanied his presentation copy of the “Faery Queen” to the Lord-Treasurer with a sonnet, in which he humiliated the muse before his great court-enemy—