A Biography of Edmund Spenser

by John W. Hales

This hymn is one of high refined rapture. Before the close of the year 1596 Spenser wrote and published the Prothalamion or 'A spousall verse made in honour of the double marriage of the two honourable and vertuous ladies, the ladie Elizabeth, and the ladie Katherine Somerset, daughters to the right honourable the Earle of Worcester, and espoused to the two worthie gentlemen, M. Henry Gilford and M. William Peter Esquyers.' It was composed after the return of Essex from Spain, for he is introduced in the poem as then residing at his house in the Strand. It is a poem full of grace and beauty, and of matchless melodiousness. This is the last complete poem Spenser wrote. No doubt he entertained the idea of completing his Faerie Queene; and perhaps it was after 1596 that he composed the two additional cantos, which are all, so far as is known, that he actually wrote. But the last poem completed and published in his lifetime was the Prothalamion. This second visit to England at last came to an end. It was probably in 1597 that he returned once more to Kilcolman. In the following year he was recommended by her Majesty for Sheriff of Cork. But his residence in Ireland was now to be rudely terminated. The Irishry had, ever since the suppression of Desmond's rebellion in 1582, been but waiting for another opportunity to rise, that suppression not having brought pacification in its train. In the autumn of 1598 broke out another of these fearful insurrections, of which the history of English rule in· Ireland is mainly composed. In the September of that year Spenser was at the zenith of his prosperity. In that month arrived the letter recommending his appointment to be Sheriff of Cork. It seems legitimate to connect this mark of royal favour with the fact that at the beginning of the preceding month Lord Burghley had deceased. The great obstructor of the Queen's bounty was removed, and Spenser might hope that now, at last, the hour of his prosperity was come. So far as is known, his domestic life was serene and happy. The joys of the husband had been crowned with those of the father. Two sons, as may be gathered from the names given to them—they were christened Sylvanus and Peregrine—had been by this time born to him; according to Sir William Betham, who drew up a pedigree of Spenser's family, another son and a daughter had been born between the birth of Sylvanus and that of Peregrine. Then he was at this time the recognised prince of living poets. The early autumn of 1598 saw him in the culminating enjoyment of all these happinesses. In October the insurgents burst roughly in upon his peace. No doubt his occupation of the old castle of Desmond had ever been regarded with fierce jealousy. While he had dreamed his dreams and sung his songs in the valley, there had been curses muttered against him from the hills around. At last the day of vengeance came. The outraged natives rushed down upon Kilcolman; the poet and his family barely made their escape; his home was plundered and burned. According to Ben Jonson, in the conversation with Drummond, quoted above, not all his family escaped; one little child, new born, perished in the flames. But, indeed, the fearfulness of this event needs no exaggeration. In profound distress Spenser arrived once more in London, bearing a despatch from Sir Thomas Norreys, President of Munster, to the Secretary of State, and of course himself full of direct and precise information as to the Irish tumult, having also drawn up an address to the Queen on the subject. Probably, the hardships and horrors he had undergone completely prostrated him. On January 16, 1599, he died in Westminster. As to the exact place, a manuscript note found by Brand, the well-known antiquary, on the title-page of a copy of the second edition of the Faerie Queene, though not of indisputable value, may probably enough be accepted, and it names King Street. Ben Jonson says, 'he died for lack of bread;' but this must certainly be an exaggeration. No doubt he returned to England 'inops'—in a state of poverty—as Camden says; but it is impossible to believe that he died of starvation. His friend Essex and many another were ready to minister to his necessities if he needed their ministry. Jonson's story is that he 'refused twenty pieces sent him by my lord Essex, and said he was sure he had no time to spend them.' This story, if it is anything more than a mere vulgar rumour, so far as it shows anything, shows that he was in no such very extreme need of succour. Had his destitution been so complete, he would have accepted the pieces for his family, even though 'he had no time to spend them himself.' It must be remembered that he was still in receipt of a pension from the crown; a pension of no very considerable amount, perhaps, but still large enough to satisfy the pangs of hunger. But numerous passages might be quoted to show that he died in somewhat straitened circumstances. It was said, some thirty-four years after Spenser's death, that in his hurried flight from Ireland the remaining six books of the Faerie Queene were lost. But it is very unlikely that those books were ever completed.{6} Perhaps some fragments of them may have perished in the flames at Kilcolman—certainly only two cantos have reached us. These were first printed in 1611, when the first six books were republished. The general testimony of his contemporaries is that his song was broken off in the midst. Says Browne in his Britannia's Pastorals (Book ii. s. 1):—

But ere he ended his melodious song,
An host of angels flew the cloud among,
And rapt this swan from his attentive mates
To make him one of their associates
In heaven's faire choir.

One S. A. Cokain writes:—

If, honour'd Colin, thou hadst lived so long
As to have finished thy Fairy song,
Not only mine but all tongues would confess,
Thou hadst exceeded old M{ae}onides.

He was buried near Chaucer—by his own wish, it is said—in Westminster Abbey, 'poetis funus ducentibus,' with poets following him to the grave—bearing the pall, as we might say—the Earl of Essex furnishing the funeral expenses, according to Camden. It would seem from a passage in Browne's Britannia's Pastorals 'that the Queen ordered a monument to be erected over him, but that the money was otherwise appropriated by one of her agents.' The present monument, restored in 1778, was erected by Anne, Countess of Dorset, in 1620. His widow married again before 1603, as we learn from a petition presented to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland in that year, in which Sylvanus sues to recover from her and her husband Roger Seckerstone certain documents relating to the paternal estate. She was again a widow in 1606. Till a very recent time there were descendants of Spenser living in the south of Ireland.

1869 JOHN W. HALES.
Revised 1896.

Footnotes
————-

{1} This poem is in this volume reprinted from the
edition of 1591. Mr. Morris thinks that Todd was
not aware of this edition. Mr. Collier reprinted
from the 2nd edition—that of 1593.
{2} Irish Minstrelsy; or, Bardic Remains of Ireland,
by J. Hardiman. London, 1831.
{3} 'The name and occupation of Spenser is handed down
traditionally among them (the Irish); but they seem
to entertain no sentiments of respect or affection
for his memory; the bard came in rather ungracious
times, and the keen recollections of this untutored
people are wonderful.'—Trotter's Walks through
Ireland in the Years 1812, 1814, and 1817.
London, 1819, p. 302.
{4} Cooper's Athen. Cantab.
{5} See Mr. Edwards's Life of Raleigh, vol. i. p.
128.
{6} No doubt he intended to complete his work. See
book vi. canto v. st. 2:

'When time shall be to tell the same;'

but this time never was.