| The sage old Sire, that had to name The kingdom’s care, with a white silver head, That many high regards and reasons ’gainst her read. |
The poet did worse as he advanced in his work, for in the sixth book he absolutely denies that it was his intention in any of his “former writs” to reflect on “this mighty peer.” To what “former writs” Spenser alludes is not clear. The matchless picture of the fruitless days of a court-expectant in “Mother Hubbard’s Tale,” which many of my readers may have by heart, is supposed to have been represented to Lord Burleigh by “backbiters” as a censure on him; it was an immortal one! and the application was easy.
It was after the appearance of the “Faery Queen” that Elizabeth, economical as were her bounties, sealed her delight by a permanent pension. Was it on this occasion that the remonstrance of the prudential Lord Treasurer diminished by half its amount? “All this for a song!” exclaimed Burleigh. “Then give him what is reason,” rejoined the Queen. The words were remembered by the bard, but the royal command lay neglected at the exchequer. On a progress Spenser reminded her Majesty, by a petition, in the smallest space that ever suitor presented one, and in a style of which it was not easy to forget a word.[6] The Lord Treasurer got reprimanded, and the poet present payment. We cannot avoid associating the anecdote with these lines—
| To have thy Prince’s grace, yet want her Peer’s; To have thy asking, yet wait many years. |
We may now close with Burleigh; but much remains to be developed in the fortunes of a court-suitor, as we trace them in the history of our Spenser. The coldness of the Lord Treasurer may not have been the only cause of the poet’s deep and constant laments. The sojourner in the circle of a court may be mortified not only by its repulse or its neglect, but also by the capricious favour of his patron. A devotion of service may provoke offence, whether it be from zeal too improvident, from officiousness too busy, or from an ingenuousness too open. He is thrown into a position in which he must preserve silence, and cannot always hope for pardon.
One incident of this nature deeply affected our poet in his intercourse with Lord Leicester. We only discover it by a remarkable dedicatory sonnet to his translation of Virgil’s “Gnat.” Had the poet not decided that the mysterious tale should reach posterity, he would not have published the sonnet several years after it was composed, for it is dedicated “to the deceased lord!” The poet has energetically described the delicacy and difficulty of the position into which he had been cast.
| Wrong’d, yet not daring to express my pain To you, good lord! the causer of my care, In cloudy tears my case I thus complain Unto yourself, that only privy are. But if that any Œdipus, unware, Shall chance, through power of some divining spright, To read the secret of this riddle rare, And know the purport of my evil plight; Let him rest pleased with his own insight, Ne further seek to gloze upon the text; But grief enough it is to grieved wight, To feel hit fault, and not be further vext. But what so by myself may not be shown, May by this Gnat’s complaint be easily known. |
The Gnat of Virgil, observing a serpent in the act of darting on a sleeping swain, stings the eye of the sleeper; starting at the pain, the disturbed man crushes the gnat, but, thus awakened, he saves himself from the crested serpent. The poem turns on the remonstrance of the ghost of the gnat, which had no other means than by inflicting its friendly sting to warn him of his peril who had thus hastily deprived it of its own innocent existence. What was “the serpent,” and why the poet was hardly used as “the gnat,” and why he was
Wrong’d, yet not daring to express his pain,
and yet “grieved to feel his fault,” is “a riddle rare,” supposed to require some Œdipus of secret history to solve. The moral is obvious. The character of the royal favourite may give rise to many suggestions; but if I may venture a conjecture on what the parties themselves “were only privy to,” Spenser had touched on some high matter, where his affectionate zeal, however sagacious, on this occasion hurt the pride of Leicester—too haughty or too mortified to be lessoned by his familiar dependant, who, like the gnat, found that his timely warning was “his fault.”