If in bed, tell hir that my eyes can take no reste;
If at boorde, tell hir that my mouth can eat no
meete;
If at hir virginals, tell her I can beare no mirth.
Asked why? Waking love suffereth no sleepe;
Say that raging love doth appall the weake stomacke,
Say that lamenting love marreth the musicall.
Tell hir that hir pleasures were wonte to lull me
asleepe,
Tell her that hir beauty was wonte to feede mine
eyes,
Tell hir that hir sweete tongue was wonte to make me
mirth.
Now doe I nightly waste, wanting my kindlie rest,
Now doe I dayly starve, wanting my daily food,
Now doe I always dye wanting my timely mirth.
And if I waste who will bewaile my heavy chance?
And if I starve, who will record my cursed end?
And if I dye, who will saye, This was Immerito?
Spenser of the sensitive ear wrote these lines. When the pedantic phantasy which had for a while seduced and corrupted him had gone from him, with what remorse he must have remembered these strange monsters of his creation! Let us conclude our glance at this sad fall from harmony by quoting the excellent words of one who was a bitter opponent of Harvey in this as in other matters. 'The hexameter verse,' says Nash in his Fowre Letters Confuted, 1592, 'I graunt to be a gentleman of an auncient house (so is many an English beggar), yet this clyme of ours hee cannot thrive in; our speech is too craggy for him to set his plough in; hee goes twitching and hopping in our language like a man running upon quagmiers up the hill in one syllable and down the dale in another; retaining no part of that stately smooth gate, which he vaunts himselfe with amongst the Greeks and Latins.' Some three years were spent by Spenser in the enjoyment of Sidney's friendship and the patronage of Sidney's father and uncle. During this time he would seem to have been constantly hoping for some preferment. According to a tradition, first recorded by Fuller, the obstructor of the success of his suit was the Treasurer, Lord Burghley. It is clear that he had enemies at Court—at least at a later time. In 1591, in his dedication of Colin Clouts Come Home Again, he entreats Raleigh, to 'with your good countenance protest against the malice of evil mouthes, which are always wide open to carpe at and misconstrue my simple meaning.' A passage in the Ruines of Time (see the lines beginning 'O grief of griefs! O full of all good hearts!') points to the same conclusion; and so the concluding lines of the Sixth Book of the Faerie Queene, when, having told how the Blatant Beast (not killed as Lord Macaulay says in his essay on Bunyan, but 'supprest and tamed' for a while by Sir Calidore) at last broke his iron chain and ranged again through the world, and raged sore in each degree and state, he adds:—
Ne may this homely verse, of many meanest,
Hope to escape his venemous despite,
More then my former writs, all were they clearest
From blamefull blot, and from all that wite,
With which some wicked tongues did it backebite,
And bring into a mighty Peres displeasure,
That never so deserved to endite.
Therfore do you my rimes keep better measure,
And seek to please, that now is counted wisemens
threasure.
In the Tears of the Muses Calliope says of certain persons of eminent rank:—
Their great revenues all in sumptuous pride
They spend that nought to learning they may spare;
And the rich fee which Poets wont divide
Now Parasites and Sycophants do share.
Several causes have been suggested to account for this disfavour. The popular tradition was pleased to explain it by making Burghley the ideal dullard who has no soul for poetry—to whom one copy of verses is very much as good as another, and no copy good for anything. It delighted to bring this commonplace gross-minded person into opposition with one of the most spiritual of geniuses. In this myth Spenser represents mind, Burghley matter. But there is no justification in facts for this tradition. It may be that the Lord Treasurer was not endowed with a high intellectual nature; but he was far too wise in his generation not to pretend a virtue if he had it not, when circumstances called for anything of the sort. When the Queen patronized literature, we may be sure Lord Burghley was too discreet to disparage and oppress it. Another solution refers to Burghley's Puritanism as the cause of the misunderstanding; but, as Spenser too inclined that way, this is inadequate. Probably, as Todd and others have thought, what alienated his Lordship at first was Spenser's connection with Leicester; what subsequently aggravated the estrangement was his friendship with Essex.