… the plenteous Ouse came far from land
By many a city and by many a towne,
And many rivers taking under hand
Into his waters, as he passeth downe,
The Cle, the Were, the Grant, the Sture, the Rowne.
Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit,
My mother Cambridge, whom as with a Crowne
He doth adorne, and is adorn'd of it
With many a gentle Muse, and many a learned wit.
But he makes no mention of his college. The notorious Gabriel Harvey, an intimate friend of Spenser, who was elected a Fellow of Pembroke Hall the year after the future poet was admitted as a sizar, in a letter written in 1580, asks: 'And wil you needes have my testimoniall of youre old Controllers new behaviour?' and then proceeds to heap abusive words on some person not mentioned by name but evidently only too well known to both the sender and the receiver of the epistle. Having compiled a list of scurrilities worthy of Falstaff, and attacked another matter which was an abomination to him, Harvey vents his wrath in sundry Latin charges, one of which runs: 'C{ae}tera fer{e\}, ut olim: Bellum inter capita et membra continuatum.' 'Other matters are much as they were: war kept up between the heads [the dons] and the members [the men].' Spenser was not elected to a fellowship; he quitted his college, with all its miserable bickerings, after he had taken his master's degree. There can be little doubt, however, that he was most diligent and earnest student during his residence at Cambridge; during that period, for example, he must have gained that knowledge of Plato's works which so distinctly marks his poems, and found in that immortal writer a spirit most truly congenial. But it is conceivable that he pursued his studies after his own manner, and probably enough excited by his independence the strong disapprobation of the master and tutor of the college of his day. Among his contemporaries in his own college were Lancelot Andrews, afterwards Master, and eventually Bishop of Winchester, the famous preacher; Gabriel Harvey, mentioned above, with whom he formed a fast friendship, and Edward Kirke, the 'E.K.' who, as will be seen, introduced to the world Spenser's first work of any pretence. Amongst his contemporaries in the university were Preston, author of Cambyses, and Still, author of Gammer Gurtons Needle, with each of whom he was acquainted. The friend who would seem to have exercised the most influence over him was Gabriel Harvey; but this influence, at least in literary matters, was by no means for the best. Harvey was some three or four years the senior, and of some academic distinction. Probably he may be taken as something more than a fair specimen of the average scholarship and culture given by the universities at that time. He was an extreme classicist; all his admiration was for classical models and works that savoured of them; he it was who headed the attempt made in England to force upon a modern language the metrical system of the Greeks and Latins. What baneful influence he exercised over Spenser in this last respect will be shown presently. Kirke was Spenser's other close friend; he was one year junior academically to the poet. He too, as we shall see, was a profound admirer of Harvey. After leaving the university in 1576, Spenser, then, about twenty-four years of age, returned to his own people in the North. This fact is learnt from his friend 'E.K.'s' glosses to certain lines in the sixth book of the Shepheardes Calendar. E.K. speaks 'of the North countrye where he dwelt,' and 'of his removing out of the North parts and coming into the South.' As E.K. writes in the spring of 1579, and as his writing is evidently some little time subsequent to the migration he speaks of, it may be believed that Spenser quitted his Northern home in 1577, and, as we shall see, there is other evidence for this supposition. About a year then was passed in the North after he left the University. These years were not spent idly. The poetical fruits of them shall be mentioned presently. What made it otherwise a memorable year to the poet was his falling deeply in love with some fair Northern neighbour. Who she was is not known. He who adored her names her Rosalind, 'a feigned name,' notes E.K., 'which being well ordered will bewray the very name of hys love and mistresse, whom by that name he coloureth.' Many solutions of this anagram have been essayed, mostly on the supposition that the lady lived in Kent; but Professor Craik is certainly right in insisting that she was of the North. Dr. Grosart and Mr. Fleay, both authorities of importance, agree in discovering the name Rose Dinle or Dinley; but of a person so Christian-named no record has yet been found, though the surname Dyneley or Dinley occurs in the Whalley registers and elsewhere. In the Eclogue of the Shepheardes Calendar, to which this note is appended, Colin Clout—so the poet designates himself—complains to Hobbinol—that is, Harvey—of the ill success of his passion. Harvey, we may suppose, is paying him a visit in the North; or perhaps the pastoral is merely a versifying of what passed between them in letters. However this may be, Colin is bewailing his hapless fate. His friend, in reply, advises him to
Forsake the soyle that so doth thee bewitch, &c.
Surely E.K.'s gloss is scarcely necessary to tell us what these words mean. 'Come down,' they say, 'from your bleak North country hills where she dwells who binds you with her spell, and be at peace far away from her in the genial South land.' In another Eclogue (April) the subduing beauty is described as 'the Widdowes daughter of the Glen,' surely a Northern address. On these words the well-informed E.K. remarks: 'He calleth Rosalind the Widowes daughter of the glenne, that is, of a country hamlet or borough, which I thinke is rather sayde to coloure and concele the person, than simply spoken. For it is well known, even in spighte of Colin and Hobbinol, that she is a gentlewoman of no meane house, nor endowed with anye vulgare and common gifts, both of nature and manners: but suche indeede, as neede neither Colin be ashamed to have her made known by his verses, nor Hobbinol be greved that so she should be commended to immortalitie for her rare and singular virtues.' Whoever this charming lady was, and whatever glen she made bright with her presence, it appears that she did not reciprocate the devoted affection of the studious young Cambridge graduate who, with probably no apparent occupation, was loitering for a while in her vicinity. It was some other—he is called Menalacas in one of his rival's pastorals—who found favour in her eyes. The poet could only wail and beat his breast. Eclogues I. and VI. are all sighs and tears. Perhaps in the course of time a copy of the Faerie Queene might reach the region where Menalcas and Rosalind were growing old together; and she, with a certain ruth perhaps mixed with her anger, might recognise in Mirabella an image of her fair young disdainful self{4}. The poet's attachment was no transient flame that flashed and was gone. When at the instance of his friend he travelled southward away from the scene of his discomfiture, he went weeping and inconsolable. In the Fourth Eclogue Hobbinol is discovered by Thenot deeply mourning, and, asked the reason, replies that his grief is because
. . . the ladde whome long I loved so deare
Nowe loves a lasse that all his love doth scorne;
He plongd in payne, his tressed locks dooth teare.
Shepheards delights he dooth them all forsweare;
Hys pleasant pipe, whych made us meriment,·
He wylfully hath broke, and doth forbeare
His wonted songs, wherein he all outwent.
. . . . .
Colin thou kenst, the Southerne shepheardes boye;
Him Love hath wounded with a deadly darte. &c.
The memory of Rosalind, in spite of her unkindness, seems to have been fondly cherished by the poet, and yielded to no rival vision—though there may have been fleeting fits of passion—till some fourteen years after he and she had parted—till the year 1592, when, as we shall see, Spenser, then living in the south of Ireland, met that Elizabeth who is mentioned in the sonnet quoted above, and who some year and a half after that meeting became his wife. On the strength of an entry found in the register of St. Clement Danes Church in the Strand—'26 Aug. [1587] Florenc Spenser, the daughter of Edmond'—it has been conjectured that the poet was married before 1587. This conjecture seems entirely unacceptable. There is nothing to justify the theory that the Edmund Spenser of the register was the poet. It is simply incredible that Spenser, one who, as has been said, poured out all his soul in his poems, should have wooed and won some fair lady to his wife, without ever a poetical allusion to his courtship and his triumph. It is not at all likely, as far as one can judge from their titles, that any one of his lost works was devoted to the celebration of any such successful passion. Lastly, besides this important negative evidence, there is distinct positive testimony that long after 1587 the image of Rosalind had not been displaced in his fancy by any other loveliness. In Colin Clouts Come Home Again, written, as will be seen, in 1591, though not published until 1595, after the poet has 'full deeply divined of love and beauty,' one Melissa in admiration avers that all true lovers are greatly bound to him—most especially women. The faithful Hobbinol says that women have but ill requited their poet:—
'He is repayd with scorne and foule despite,
That yrkes each gentle heart which it doth heare.'
'Indeed,' says Lucid, 'I have often heard
Faire Rosalind of divers fowly blamed
For being to that swaine too cruell hard.