A Biography of Edmund Spenser

by John W. Hales

Who can aread what creature mote she bee;
Whether a creature or a goddesse graced
With heavenly gifts from heven first enraced?
But what so sure she was, she worthy was
To be the fourth with those three other placed,
Yet she was certes but a countrey lasse;
Yet she all other countrey lasses farre did passe.

So farre, as doth the daughter of the day
All other lesser lights in light excell;
So farre doth she in beautyfull array
Above all other lasses beare the bell;
Ne lesse in vertue that beseems her well
Doth she exceede the rest of all her race.

The phrase 'country lass' in this rapturous passage has been taken to signify that she to whom it applied was of mean origin; but it scarcely bears this construction. Probably all that is meant is that her family was not connected with the Court or the Court circle. She was not high-born; but she was not low- born. The final sonnets refer to some malicious reports circulating about him, and to some local separation between the sonneteer and his mistress. This separation was certainly ended in the June following his acceptance—that is, the June of 1594; for in that month, on St. Barnabas' day, that is, on the 11th, Spenser was married. This event Spenser celebrates in the finest, the most perfect of all his poems, in the most beautiful of all bridal songs—in his Epithalamion. He had many a time sung for others; he now bade the Muses crown their heads with garlands and help him his own love's praises to resound:—

So I unto my selfe alone will sing,
The woods shall to me answer, and my echo ring.

Then, with the sweetest melody and a refinement and grace incomparable, he sings with a most happy heart of various matters of the marriage day—of his love's waking, of the merry music of the minstrels, of her coming forth in all the pride of her visible loveliness, of that 'inward beauty of her lively spright' which no eyes can see, of her standing before the altar, her sad eyes still fastened on the ground, of the bringing her home, of the rising of the evening star, and the fair face of the moon looking down on his bliss not unfavourably, as he would hope. The Amoretti and Epithalamion were registered at the Stationers' Hall on the 19th of November following the marriage. They were published in 1595, Spenser—as appears from the 'Dedication' of them to Sir Robert Needham, written by the printer Ponsonby—being still absent from England. Meanwhile the poet had been vexed by other troubles besides those of a slowly requited passion. Mr. Hardiman,{2} in his Irish Minstrelsy, has published three petitions presented in 1593 to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland by Maurice, Lord Roche, Viscount Fermoy, two against 'one Edmond Spenser, gentleman', one against one Joan Ny Callaghan—who is said to act 'by supportation and maintenance of Edmond Spenser, gentleman, a heavy adversary to your suppliant.' 'Where,' runs the first petition, 'one Edmond Spenser, gentleman, hath lately exhibited suit against your suppliant for three ploughlands, parcels of Shanballymore (your suppliant's inheritance) before the Vice-President and Council of Munster, which land hath been heretofore decreed for your suppliant against the said Spenser and others under whom he conveyed; and nevertheless for that the said Spenser, being Clerk of the Council in the said province, and did assign his office unto one Nicholas Curteys among other agreements with covenant that during his life he should be free in the said office for his causes, by occasion of which immunity he doth multiply suits against your suppliant in the said province upon pretended title of others &c.' The third petition averred that 'Edmond Spenser of Kilcolman, gentleman, hath entered into three ploughlands, parcel of Ballingerath, and disseised your suppliant thereof, and continueth by countenance and greatness the possession thereof, and maketh great waste of the wood of the said land, and converteth a great deal of corn growing thereupon to his proper use, to the damage of the complainant of two hundred pounds sterling. Whereunto,' continues the document, which is preserved in the Original Rolls Office, 'the said Edmond Spenser appearing in person had several days prefixed unto him peremptorily to answer, which he neglected to do.' Therefore 'after a day of grace given,' on the 12th of February, 1594, Lord Roche was decreed the possession. Perhaps the absence from his lady love referred to in the concluding sonnets was occasioned by this litigation. Perhaps also the 'false forged lyes'—the malicious reports circulated about him—referred to in Sonnet 85, may have been connected with these appeals against him. It is clear that all his dreams of Faerie did not make him neglectful of his earthly estate. Like Shakspere, like Scott, Spenser did not cease to be a man of the world—we use the phrase in no unkindly sense—because he was a poet. He was no mere visionary, helpless in the ordinary affairs of life. In the present case it would appear that he was even too keen in looking after his own interests. Professor Craik charitably suggests that his poverty 'rather than rapacity may be supposed to have urged whatever of hardness there was in his proceedings.' It is credible enough that these proceedings made him highly unpopular with the native inhabitants of the district, and that they were not forgotten when the day of reckoning came. 'His name,' says Mr. Hardiman, on the authority of Trotter's Walks in Ireland,{3} 'is still remembered in the vicinity of Kilcolman; but the people entertain no sentiments of respect or affection for his memory.' In the same year with the Amoretti was published Colin Clouts Come Home Again, several additions having been made to the original version. Probably at the close of this year 1595 Spenser a second time crossed to England, accompanied, it may be supposed, by his wife, carrying with him in manuscript the second three books of his Faerie Queene, which, as we have seen, were completed before his marriage, and also a prose work, A View of the Present State of Ireland. Mr. Collier quotes the following entry from the Stationers' Register:—

20 die Januarii [1595].—Mr. Ponsonby. Entred &c. The Second Part of the Faerie Queene, cont. the 4, 5, and 6 bookes, vj_d_.

This second instalment—which was to be the last—of his great poem was duly published in that year. The View of the Present State of Ireland was not registered till April 1598, and then only conditionally. It was not actually printed till 1633. During his stay in England he wrote the Hymns to Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beauty, and the Prothalamion, which were to be his last works. More than four years had elapsed since Spenser had last visited London. During that period certain memorable works had been produced; the intellectual power of that day had expressed itself in no mean manner. When he arrived in London towards the close of the year 1595, he would find Shakspere splendidly fulfilling the promise of his earlier days; he would find Ben Jonson just becoming known to fame; he would find Bacon already drawing to him the eyes of his time. Spenser probably spent the whole of the year 1596, and part of 1597, in England. In 1597 appeared, as has already been said, the first part of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, and Bacon's Essays, and also Jonson's Every Man in His Own Humour. The reigning favourite at this time was the Earl of Essex. In 1596 his successful descent upon Cadiz raised him to the zenith of his fame. With this nobleman Spenser was on terms of intimacy. At his London house in the Strand—a house which had previously been inhabited by Spenser's earlier patron, the Earl of Leicester—it stood where Essex Street now is, and is still represented by the two pillars which stand at the bottom of that street—Spenser no doubt renewed his friendship with Shakspere. This intimacy with Essex, with whatever intellectual advantages it may have been attended, with whatever bright spirits it may have brought Spenser acquainted, probably impeded his prospects of preferment. There can be no doubt that one of the motives that brought him to England was a desire to advance his fortunes. Camden describes him as always poor. His distaste for his residence in Ireland could not but have been aggravated by his recent legal defeat. But he looked in vain for further preferment. He had fame, and to spare, and this was to suffice. It was during this sojourn in England that he spoke of himself, as we have seen, as one

Whom sullein care
Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay
In Princes court and expectation vayne
Of idle hopes which still doe fly away
Like empty shaddows, did afflict my brayne.

The publication of the second three books of the Faerie Queene, with a re-impression of the first three books, placed him on the highest pinnacle of fame. Its plentiful references to passing events—its adumbrations of the history of the time—however it might damage the permanent value of the work from an artistic point of view, increased its immediate popularity. How keenly these references were appreciated appears from the anxiety of the Scotch King to have the poet prosecuted for his picture of Duessa, in whom Mary Queen of Scots was generally recognised. 'Robert Bowes, the English ambassador in Scotland, writing to Lord Burghley from Edinburgh 12th November, 1596, states that great offence was conceived by the King against Edmund Spenser for publishing in print, in the second part of the Faery Queen, ch. 9, some dishonourable effects, as the King deemed, against himself and his mother deceased. Mr. Bowes states that he had satisfied the King as to the privilege under which the book was published, yet he still desired that Edmund Spenser for this fault might be tried and punished. It further appears, from a letter from George Nicolson to Sir Robert Cecil, dated Edinburgh, 25 February, 1597-8, that Walter Quin, an Irishman, was answering Spenser's book, whereat the King was offended.'{4} The View of the Present State of Ireland, written dialogue-wise between Eudoxus and Iren{ae}us, though not printed, as has been said, till 1633, seems to have enjoyed a considerable circulation in a manuscript form. There are manuscript copies of this tractate at Cambridge, at Dublin, at Lambeth, and in the British Museum. It is partly antiquarian, partly descriptive, partly political. It exhibits a profound sense of the unsatisfactory state of the country—a sense which was presently to be justified in a frightful manner. Spenser had not been deaf to the ever-growing murmurs of discontent by which he and his countrymen had been surrounded. He was not in advance of his time in the policy he advocates for the administration of Ireland. He was far from anticipating that policy of conciliation whose triumphant application it may perhaps be the signal honour of our own day to achieve. The measures he proposes are all of a vigorously repressive kind; they are such measures as belong to a military occupancy, not to a statesmanly administration. He urges the stationing numerous garrisons; he is for the abolishing native customs. Such proposals won a not unfavourable hearing at that time. They have been admired many a time since. It is to this work of Spenser's that Protector Cromwell alludes in a letter to his council in Ireland, in favour of William Spenser, grandson of Edmund Spenser, from whom an estate of lands in the barony of Fermoy, in the county of Cork, descended on him. 'His grandfather,' he writes, 'was that Spenser who, by his writings touching the reduction of the Irish to civility, brought on him the odium of that nation; and for those works and his other good services Queen Elizabeth conferred on him that estate which the said William Spenser now claims.'{5} This latter statement is evidently inaccurate. Spenser, as we have seen, had already held his estate for some years when he brought his View to England. Spenser dates the dedication of his Hymns from Greenwich, September 1, 1596. Of these four hymns, two had been in circulation for some years, though now for the first time printed; the other two now first appeared. 'Having in the greener times of my youth,' he writes, 'composed these former two hymnes in the praise of love and beautie, and finding that the same too much pleased those of like age and disposition, which being too vehemently caried with that kind of affection, do rather sucke out poyson to their strong passion than hony to their honest delight, I was moved by one of you two most excellent ladies [the ladies Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, Mary, Countess of Warwick] to call in the same; but unable so to doe, by reason that many copies thereof were formerly scattered abroad, I resolved at least to amend, and by way of retraction to reforme them, making (instead of those two hymnes of earthly or naturall love and beautie) two others of heavenly and celestiall.' This passage is interesting for the illustration it provides of Spenser's popularity. It is also highly interesting, if the poems themselves be read in the light of it, as showing the sensitive purity of the poet's nature. It is difficult to conceive how those 'former hymns' should in any moral respect need amending. The moralising and corrective purpose with which the two latter were written perhaps diminished their poetical beauty; but the themes they celebrate are such as Spenser could not but ever descant upon with delight; they were such as were entirely congenial to his spirit. He here set forth special teachings of his great master Plato, and abandoned himself to the high spiritual contemplations he loved. But perhaps the finest of these four hymns is the second—that in honour of Beauty. Beauty was indeed the one worship of Spenser's life—not mere material beauty—not 'the goodly hew of white and red with which the cheekes are sprinkled,' or 'the sweete rosy leaves so fairly spred upon the lips,' or 'that golden wyre,' or 'those sparckling stars so bright,' but that inner spiritual beauty, of which fair hair and bright eyes are but external expressions.

So every spirit, as it is most pure
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer bodie doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairely dight
With chearfull grace and amiable sight;
For of the soule the bodie forme doth take,
For soule is forme and doth the bodie make.