6

Pope,“ to mark out the general course of our poetry; deformed by a number of obsolete uncouth phrases Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Dryden, are the great (the Chaucerisms of Spenser, as Dryden designated landmarks for it. We can now add Cowper and them), yet containing traces of a superior original Wordsworth ; but, in Pope's generation, the list he genius. The fable of the Oak and Briar is finely has given was accurate and complete. Spenser was, told; and in verses like the following, we see the like Chaucer, a native of London, and like him, also, germs of that tuneful harmony and pensive reflection he has recorded the circumstance in his poetry :- in which Spenser excelled :Merry London, my most kindly nurse,

You naked buds, whose shady leaves are lost, That to me gare this life's first native source, Wherein the birds were wont to build their bower, Though from another place I take my name, And now are clothed with moss and hoary frost, An house of ancient fame.

Instead of blossoms wherewith your buds did flower : Prothalamion.

I see your tears that from your boughs do rain,
He was born at East Smithfield, near the Tower, Whose drops in dreary icicles remain.

All so my lustful life is dry and sere,
My timely buds with wailing all are wasted;
The blossom which my branch of youth did bear,
With breathed sighs is blown away and blasted,
And from mine eyes the drizzling tears descend,
As on your boughs the icicles depend.

These lines form part of the first eclogue, in which the shepherd boy (Colin Clout) laments the issue of his love for a country lass,' named Rosalinda happy female name, which Thomas Lodge, and, following him, Shakspeare, subsequently connected with love and poetry. Spenser is here supposed to have depicted a real passion of his own for a lady in the north, who at last preferred a rival, though, as Gabriel Harvey says, 'the gentle Mistress Rosalind' once reported the rejected suitor to have all the intelligences at command, and another time christened him Signior Pegaso.' Spenser makes his shepherds discourse of polemics as well as love, and they draw characters of good and bad pastors, and institute comparisons between Popery and Protestantism. Some allusions to Archbishop Grindal (* Algrind' in the poem) and Bishop Aylmer are

said to have given offence to Lord Burleigh ; but the Edmund Spenser.

patronage of Leicester and Essex must have made about the year 1553. The rank of his parents, or Burleigh look with distaste on the new poet. For the degree of his affinity with the ancient house of ten years we hear little of Spenser. He is found Spenser, is not known. Gibbon says truly, that the corresponding with Harvey on a literary innovation noble family of Spenser should consider the Faery contemplated by that learned person, and even by Queen as the most precious jewel in their coronet.* Sir Philip Sidney. This was no less than banishing The poet was entered a sizer (one of the humblest rhymes and introducing the Latin prosody into class of students) of Pembroke College, Cambridge, English verse. Spenser seems to have assented to in May 1569, and continued to attend college for it, fondly overcome with Sidney's charm;' he susseven years, taking his degree of M.A. in June pended the Faery Queen, which he had then begun, 1576. "While Spenser was at Pembroke, Gabriel and tried English hexameters, forgetting, to use the Harvey, the future astrologer, was at Christ's Cold witty words of Nash, that the hexameter, though lege, and an intimacy was formed between them, a gentleman of an ancient house, was not likely to which lasted during the poet's life. Harvey was thrive in this clime of ours, the soil being too craggy learned and pedantic, full of assumption and con- for him to set his plough in.' Fortunately, he did ceit, and in his “Venetian velvet and pantofles of not persevere in the conceit; he could not have pride,' formed a peculiarly happy subject for the gained over his contemporaries to it (for there were satire of Nash, who assailed him with every species then too many poets, and too much real poetry in of coarse and contemptuous ridicule. Harvey, how the land), and if he had made the attempt, Shakever, was of service to Spenser. The latter, on re- speare would soon have blown the whole away. As tiring from the University, lived with some friends a dependent on Leicester, and a suitor for court in the north of England; probably those Spensers favour, Spenser is supposed to have experienced of Hurstwood, to whose family he is said to have many reverses. The following lines in Mother Hubbelonged. Harvey induced the poet to repair to bard's Tale, though not printed till 1581, seem to London, and there he introduced him to Sir Philip belong to this period of his life:Sidney, one of the very diamonds of her majesty's

Full little knowest thou that hast not tried, court.' In 1579, the poet published his Shepherd's

What hell it is in suing long to bide ; Calendar, dedicated to Sidney, who afterwards pa

To lose good days that might be better spent; tronised him, and recommended him to his uncle, the powerful Earl of Leicester. The Shepherd's

To waste long nights in pensive discontent; Calendar is a pastoral poem, in twelve eclogues,

To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow; one for each month, but without strict keeping

To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow;

To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers'; as to natural description or rustic character, and

To have thy asking, yet wait many years ; * It was lately announced, that the family to which the poet's

To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares ; father belonged has been ascertained as one settled at Hurst. To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs; wood, near Burnley, in Lancashire, where it flourished till To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,

To spend, to give, to wait, to be undone !

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1690

and story' had probably, as Mr Campbell conjec- | 16th January 1599. He was buried near the tomb tures, made him lean towards words of the olden of Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, the Earl of time,' and his antiquated expression, as the same Essex defraying the expense of the funeral, and his critic finely remarks, 'is beautiful in its antiquity, hearse attended (as Camden relates) by his brother and, like the moss and ivy on some majestic build- poets, who threw 'mournful elegies' into his grave. ing, covers the fabric of his language with romantic A monument was erected over his remains thirty and venerable associations.' The Faery Queen was years afterwards by Anne, countess of Dorset. His enthusiastically received. It could scarcely, indeed, widow, the fair Elizabeth, whose bridal bower at be otherwise, considering how well it was adapted Kılcolman he had decked with such 'gay garlands' to the court and times of the Virgin Queen, where of song, probably remained in Ireland, where two gallantry and chivalry were so strangely mingled sons of the unfortunate poet long resided. with the religious gravity and earnestness induced Spenser is the most luxuriant and melodious of by the Reformation, and considering the intrinsic all our descriptive poets. His creation of scenes beauty and excellence of the poem. The few first and objects is infinite, and in free and sonorous stanzas, descriptive of Una, were of themselves suf- versification he has not yet been surpassed. His ficient to place Spenser above the whole hundred lofty rhyme' has a swell and cadence, and a conpoets that then offered incense to Elizabeth.

tinuous sweetness, that we can find nowhere else. The queen settled a pension of £50 per annum on In richness of fancy and invention he can scarcely Spenser, and he returned to Ireland. His smaller be ranked below Shakspeare, and he is fully as oripoems were next published— The Tears of the Muses, ginal. His obligations to the Italian poets (Ariosto Mother Hubbard, &c., in 1591; Daphnaida, 1592; and supplying a wild Gothic and chivalrous model for Amoretti and the Epithalamium (relating his court- the Faery Queen, and Tasso furnishing the texture ship and marriage) in 1595. His Elegy of Astrophel, of some of its most delicious embellishments) still on the death of the lamented Sidney, appeared leave him the merit of his great moral design-the about this time. In 1596, Spenser was again in conception of his allegorical characters-his exubeLondon to publish the fourth, fifth, and sixth books rance of language and illustration-and that original of the Faery Queen. These contain the legend of structure of verse, powerful and harmonious, which Cambel and Triamond, or Friendship; Artegal, or he was the first to adopt, and which must ever bear Justice; and Sir Caledore, or Courtesy. The double his name. His faults arose out of the fulness of his allegory is continued in these cantos as in the pre- riches. His inexhaustible powers of circumstantial vious ones: Artegal is the poet's friend and patron, description betrayed him into a tedious minuteness, Lord Grey; and various historical events are re- which sometimes, in the delineation of his personified lated in the knight's adventures. Half of the ori- passions, becomes repulsive, and in the painting of ginal design was thus finished; six of the twelve natural objects led him to group together trees and adventures and moral virtues were produced; but plants, and assemble sounds and instruments, which unfortunately the world saw only some fragments were never seen or heard in unison out of Faery more of the work. It has been said that the remain- Land. The ingenuity and subtlety of his intellect ing half was lost, through the disorder and abuse' tempted him to sow dark meanings and obscure of a servant sent forward with it to England. This allusions across the bright and obvious path of his is highly improbable. Spenser, who came to London allegory. This peculiarity of his genius was early himself with each of the former portions, would not displayed in his Shepherd's Calendar; and if Bur. have ventured the largest part with a careless ser- leigh's displeasure could have cured the poet of the vant. But he had not time to complete his poetical habit, the statesman might be half forgiven his illiand moral gallery. There was an interval of six berality. His command of musical language led years between his two publications, and he lived him to protract his narrative to too great a length, only three years after the second. During that till the attention becomes exhausted, even with its period, too, Ireland was convulsed with rebellion. very melody, and indifference succeeds to languor. The English settlers, or undertakers,' of the crown Had Spenser lived to finish his poem, it is doubtful lands, were unpopular with the conquered natives whether he would not have diminished the number of Ireland. They were often harsh and oppressive; of his readers. His own fancy had evidently begun and even Spenser is accused, on the authority of to give way, for the last three books have not the existing legal documents, of having sought unjustly same rich unity of design, or plenitude of imaginato add to his possessions. He was also in office over tion, which fills the earlier cantos with so many inthe Irish (clerk of the council of Munster); he had teresting, lofty, and ethereal conceptions, and steeps been recommended by the queen (1598) for the them in such a flood of ideal and poetical beauty. office of sheriff of Cork; and he was a strenuous The two first books (of Holiness and Temperance) advocate for arbitrary power, as is proved by a poli-are, like the two first of Paradise Lost, works of contical treatise on the state of Ireland, written by him summate taste and genius, and superior to all the in 1596 for the government of Elizabeth, but not others. We agree with Mr Hazlitt, that the alleprinted till the reign of Charles I. The poet was, gory of Spenser is in reality no bar to the enjoyinent therefore, a conspicuous object for the fury of the of the poem. The reader may safely disregard the irritated and barbarous natives, with whom . revenge symbolical applications. We may allow the poet, was virtue.' The storm soon burst forth. In Oc- like his own Archimago, to divide his characters tober 1598, an insurrection was organised in Mun into double parts,' while one only is visible at a ster, following Tyrone's rebellion, which had raged time. While we see Una, with her heavenly looks, for some years in the province of Ulster. The in

That made a sunshine in the shady place, surgents attacked Kilcolman, and having robbed and plundered, set fire to the castle. Spenser and his or Belphæbe flying through the woods, or Britomart wife escaped ; but either in the confusion incidental seated amidst the young warriors, we need not stop to such a calamity, or from inability to render as- to recollect that the first is designed to represent the sistance, an infant child of the poet ('new-born,' | true church, the second Queen Elizabeth, or the third according to Ben Jonson) was left behind, and an abstract personification of Chastity. They are experished in the flames. The poet, impoverished and quisite representations of female loveliness and truth, broken-hearted, reached London, and died in about unmatched save in the dramas of Shakspearc. The three months, in King Street, Westminster, on the allegory of Spenser leaves his wild enchantments,