Yet Churchyard was no contemptible bard; he composed a national poem, “The Worthiness of Wales,” which has been reprinted, and will be still dear to his “Fatherland,” as the Hollanders expressively denote their natal spot. He wrote in the “Mirrour of Magistrates,” the Life of Wolsey, which has parts of great dignity; and the Life of Jane Shore, which was much noticed in his day, for a severe critic of the times writes:
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Hath not Shore’s wife, although a light-skirt she, Given him a chaste, long, lasting memorie? |
Churchyard, and the miseries of his poetical life, are alluded to by Spenser. He is old Palemon in “Colin Clout’s come Home again.” Spenser is supposed to describe this laborious writer for half a century, whose melancholy pipe, in his old age, may make the reader “rew:”
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Yet he himself may rewed be more right, That sung so long untill quite hoarse he grew. |
His epitaph, preserved by Camden, is extremely instructive to all poets, could epitaphs instruct them:—
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Poverty and poetry his tomb doth inclose; Wherefore, good neighbours, be merry in prose. |
It appears also by a confession of Tom Nash, that an author would then, pressed by the res angusta domi, when “the bottom of his purse was turned upward,” submit to compose pieces for gentlemen who aspired to authorship. He tells us on some occasion, that he was then in the country composing poetry for some country squire;—and says, “I am faine to let my plow stand still in the midst of a furrow, to follow these Senior Fantasticos, to whose amorous villanellas[21] I prostitute my pen,” and this, too, “twice or thrice in a month;” and he complains that it is “poverty which alone maketh me so unconstant to my determined studies, trudging from place to place to and fro, and prosecuting the means to keep me from idlenesse.” An author was then much like a vagrant.
Even at a later period, in the reign of the literary James, great authors were reduced to a state of mendicity, and lived on alms, although their lives and their fortunes had been consumed in forming national labours. The antiquary Stowe exhibits a striking example of the rewards conferred on such valued authors. Stowe had devoted his life, and exhausted his patrimony, in the study of English antiquities; he had travelled on foot throughout the kingdom, inspecting all monuments of antiquity, and rescuing what he could from the dispersed libraries of the monasteries. His stupendous collections, in his own handwriting, still exist, to provoke the feeble industry of literary loiterers. He felt through life the enthusiasm of study; and seated in his monkish library, living with the dead more than with the living, he was still a student of taste: for Spenser the poet visited the library of Stowe; and the first good edition of Chaucer was made so chiefly by the labours of our author. Late in life, worn-out with study and the cares of poverty, neglected by that proud metropolis of which he had been the historian, his good-humour did not desert him; for being afflicted with sharp pains in his aged feet, he observed that “his affliction lay in that part which formerly he had made so much use of.” 29 Many a mile had he wandered and much had he expended, for those treasures of antiquities which had exhausted his fortune, and with which he had formed works of great public utility. It was in his eightieth year that Stowe at length received a public acknowledgment of his services, which will appear to us of a very extraordinary nature. He was so reduced in his circumstances that he petitioned James I. for a licence to collect alms for himself! “as a recompense for his labours 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.” Letters-patent under the great seal were granted. After no penurious commendations of Stowe’s labours, he is permitted “to gather the benevolence of well-disposed people within this realm of England; to ask, gather, and take the alms of all our loving subjects.” These letters-patent were to be published by the clergy from their pulpits; they produced so little, that they were renewed for another twelvemonth: one entire parish in the city contributed seven shillings and sixpence! Such, then, was the patronage received by Stowe, to be a licensed beggar throughout the kingdom for one twelvemonth! Such was the public remuneration of a man who had been useful to his nation, but not to himself!