EDMUND SPENSER.

[1553-1598.]

EDMUND SPENSER was born about 1553, in London, and educated as a sizar at Pembroke-Hall, Cambridge, where he took the degree of B. A. in 1572, and of M. A. in 1576. The accounts of his birth and family* are extremely imperfect, and at his first setting out in life, his fortune and interest seem to have been very inconsiderable. After he had continued some time at college, and made great proficiency in learning, he offered himself as candidate for a fellowship, in which he was unsuccessful. This disappointment, joined with the narrowness of his circumstances, compelled him to quit the University; and we find him subsequently residing at the house of a friend in the North, where he fell in love with the Rosalind,' of whose cruelty he has composed such pathetic complaints. About this time, indeed, his genius probably began first to distinguish itself; for The Shepherd's Calendar,' which is so full of his unprosperous passion,

*That his family, however, was one of the most splendid in modern English history, was asserted by Gibbon, who observes, "the nobility of the Spensers has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough; but I exhort them to consider the Fairy Queen,' as the most precious jewel of their coronet."

was among the first of his works of note.

This work he addressed, in a short dedication, to Sir Philip Sidney,* who for wit and gallantry was the most popular of all the courtiers of his age; and, excelling as he did in the inventive part of poetry, was naturally struck with the powers of the youthful writer. The conversation and intimacy of so distinguished a personage prepared the way for his

*To this distinguished man he was introduced by his friend Mr. Gabriel Hervey, of Trinity-Hall, by whose advice he had removed, in 1578, to London. Sidney's generous and elevating friendship speedily made the poet known to the Earl of Leicester; and from Leicester, in 1579, he received an appointment as agent in France, and other parts, though it proved abortive.

.

A story is related of him by Hughes, which, though disproved by his late biographer Mr. Todd, may be admitted perhaps in a note. Spenser, it is said, was an entire stranger to Sidney, when he began to write his Fairy Queen,' and introduced himself at Leicester-House by sending him a copy of the ninth canto of the first book of that poem. Sidney, surprised by the description of Despair, exhibited an unusual species of transport on the discovery of so new and uncommon a genius. After perusing a few stanzas, he turned to his steward, and bade him 'give the person who brought them fifty pounds;' a sum which, upon reading the next, he ordered to be doubled. The steward, no less surprised than his master, thought it his duty to remonstrate against so sudden and lavish a bounty; but upon reading an additional stanza, Sidney raised the gratuity to two hundred pounds, and commanded the steward to 'bestow it immediately, lest as he proceeded he should be tempted to give away his whole estate.' The following are said to be the stanzas, with which this accomplished scholar was first struck:

From him returning, sad and comfortless,

As on the way together we did fare,

We met that villain (God from him me bless!)

That cursed wight, whom I escaped whilere,

A man of hell that calls himself Despair;

being known, and received, at court. From this promising introduction, however, he did not instantly reap any advantage. He was, indeed, created poet-laureat to Queen Elizabeth, but his accompany

Who first us greets, and after fair areeds
Of tidings strange and of adventures rare,

So creeping close, as snake in hidden weeds,
Inquireth of our states and of our nightly deeds:

Which when he knew, and felt our feeble hearts
Embosed with bole and bitter biting grief,
Which love had lanced with his deadly darts,
With wounding words and terms of foul reprief;
He pluck'd from us all hope of due relief,

That erst us held in love of lingering life:
Then hopeless, heartless, 'gan the cunning thief
Persuade us did to stint all farther strife,
To me he lent this rope, to him a rusty knife.'

The following is the Picture of the Cave of Despair:
• The darksome cave they enter, where they find
That cursed man low-sitting on the ground,
Musing full sadly in his sullen mind:

His greasy locks, long growing and unbound,
Disorder'd hung about his shoulders round,

And hid his face; through which his hollow eyne
Look'd deadly dull, and stared as astound;

His raw-bone cheeks, through penury and pine,
Were shrunk into his jaws, as he did never dine.

• His garment nought, but many ragged clouts,
With thorns together pinn'd and patched was,
The which his naked sides he wrapt abouts;
And him beside there lay upon the grass,
A dreary corse, whose life away did pass,
All wallow'd in his own yet-lukewarm blood,
That from his wound yet well'd afresh, alas!

In which a rusty knife fast fixed stood,
And made an open passage for the gushing flood,

ing pension was only fifty pounds a-year. The LordTreasurer Burghley, who considered the mechanic arts as more important than the polite in a rising state, is accused of having in this instance intercepted the annual hundred pounds of her Majesty's favour. And, as misfortunes have the strongest influence on elegant and cultivated minds, it was no wonder that Spenser was much depressed by the coldness of his reception. Accordingly, we find him pouring out his heart in complaints of his undeserved treatment; which, however, would probably have been less afflictive, if his noble patron by his employments abroad had not necessarily been absent from court. To these discouragements Spenser appears to allude, in a poem entitled The Ruins of Time,' written after Sidney's death, in the following stanza:

6

"O grief of griefs, O gall of all good hearts!
To see that virtue should despised be,
Of such as first were raised for virtue's parts;
And now broad-spreading, like an aged tree,
Let none shoot up that nigh them planted be:
O let not those, of whom the muse is scorn'd,
Alive, or dead, be by the muse adorn'd.'

Burghley afterward, likewise, conceived a dislike against him, for the satire which he apprehended was levelled at himself, in Mother Hubbard's Tale.'* In

6

* Even the sighs of a miserable man, Hughes elegantly observes, are sometimes resented as an affront, by him who is the occasion of them. The following story, related by some as a matter of fact commonly reported at that time, reflects heavily upon the character of Burghley: it is discredited, however, by Dr. Birch. It has been said, that upon Spenser's presenting some poems to the Queen, she ordered him a gratuity of a hundred pounds; but the Lord-Treasurer objecting to it, scornfully

this poem, the author has vividly depicted the misfortune of depending on court-favours, in the following beautiful lines:

• Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried,
What hell it is in suing long to bide,

To lose good days that might be better spent,
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow,
To feed in hope, to pine with fear and sorrow;
To have thy Prince's grace, yet want her peers',
To have thy asking, yet wait many years;
To fret thy soul with crosses and with care,
To eat thy heart through comfortless despair;*
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want to be undone.'

demanded, "What, all this for a song?" The Queen replied,, "Then give him what is reason." Spenser, having for some time expected in vain his remuneration, took an opportunity of presenting a paper to her Majesty, in the manner of a petition, in which he reminded her of her order by the following lines:

'I was promised on a time

To have reason for my rhyme:
From that time, unto this season,
I received nor rhyme nor reason.'

This produced the intended effect: the Queen, after sharply reproving the Treasurer, directed the payment to be instantly made. Mr. Todd, however, has disproved this story too.

* And yet notwithstanding the illiberal opposition of Lord Burghley, whose memory has been devoted to ignominy by every admirer of Spenser, the period during which the poet was condemned to this suffering was not long protracted; since, after a very few years of the servitude of office, at thirty-three he was rewarded by an ample and independent fortune, of which he was only deprived (twelve years afterward) by a general and national calamity. Few candidates for court-favour, with no better pretensions than great literary merit, have been so successful. That his burial was ordered by the Earl of Essex (as