To the year 1569 belongs that mention referred to above of payment made one ‘Edmund Spenser’ for bearing letters from France. As has been already remarked, it is scarcely probable that this can have been the poet, then a youth of some seventeen years on the verge of his undergraduateship.
The one certain event of Spenser’s life in the year 1569 is that he was then entered as a sizar at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. He ‘proceeded B.A.’ in 1573, and ‘commenced M.A.’ in 1576. There is some reason for believing that his college life was troubled in much the same way as was that of Milton some sixty years laterthat there prevailed some
misunderstanding between him and the scholastic authorities. He mentions his university with respect in the Faerie Queene, in book iv. canto xi. where, setting forth what various rivers gathered happily together to celebrate the marriage of the Thames and the Medway, he tells how
... 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 Cloutso the poet designates himselfcomplains to Hobbinolthat is, Harveyof 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 otherhe is called Menalacas in one of his rival’s pastoralswho 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. 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,
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 visionthough there may have been fleeting fits of passiontill 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. 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 himmost 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.
Lucid however would defend her on the ground that love may not be compelled:
‘Beware therefore, ye groomes, I read betimes
How rashly blame of Rosalind ye raise.’
This caution Colin eagerly and ardently reinforces, and with additions. His heart was still all tender towards her, and he would not have one harsh word thrown at her:
Ah! Shepheards, then said Colin, ye ne weet
How great a guilt upon your heads ye draw
To make so bold a doome, with words unmeet,
Of thing celestiall which ye never saw.
For she is not like as the other crew
Of shepheards daughters which emongst you bee,
But of divine regard and heavenly hew,
Excelling all that ever ye did see;
Not then to her that scorned thing so base,
But to myselfe the blame that lookt so hie,
So hie her thoughts as she herselfe have place
And loath each lowly thing with lofty eie;
Yet so much grace let her vouchsafe to grant
To simple swaine, sith her I may not love,
Yet that I may her honour paravant
And praise her worth, though far my wit above.
Such grace shall be some guerdon for the griefe
And long affliction which I have endured;
Such grace sometimes shall give me some reliefe
And ease of paine which cannot be recured.
And ye my fellow shepheards, which do see
And heare the languors of my too long dying,
Unto the world for ever witnesse bee
That hers I die, nought to the world denying
This simple trophe of her great conquest.
This residence of Spenser in the North, which corresponds with that period of Milton’s life spent at his father’s house at Horton in Buckinghamshire, ended, as there has been occasion to state, in the year 1577. What was the precise cause of Spenser’s coming South, is not known for certain. ‘E.K.’ says in one of his glosses, already quoted in part, that the poet ‘for speciall occasion of private affayres (as I have bene partly of himselfe informed) and for his more preferment, removing out of the North parts, came into the South, as Hobbinoll indeede advised him privately.’ It is clear from his being admitted at his college as a sizar, that his private means were not good. Perhaps during his residence in the North he may have been dependent on the bounty of his friends. It was then in the hope of some advancement of his fortunes that, bearing with him no doubt in manuscript certain results of all his life’s previous labour, he turned away from his cold love and her glen, and all her country, and set his face Town-ward.
It is said that his friend Harvey introduced him to that famous accomplished gentlemanthat mirror of true knighthood Sir Philip Sidney, and it would seem that Penshurst became for some time his home. There has already been quoted a line describing Spenser as ‘the southern shepheardes boye.’ This southern shepherd is probably Sidney. Sidney, it would seem, introduced him to his father and to his uncle, the Earl of Leicester. If we are to take Iren{ae}us’ words literallyand there seems no reason why we should notSpenser was for a time at least in Ireland, when Sidney’s father was Lord Deputy. Iren{ae}us, in A View of the Present State of Ireland, certainly represents Spenser himself; and he speaks of what he said at the execution of a notable traitor at Limerick, called Murrogh O’Brien; see p. 636 of this volume. However, he was certainly back in England and in London in 1579, residing at the Earl of Leicester’s house in the Strand, where Essex Street now stands. He dates one of his letters to Harvey, ‘Leycester House, this 5 October, 1579.’ Perhaps at this time he commenced, or renewed, or continued his acquaintance with his distinguished relatives at Althorpe. During the time he spent now at Penshurst and in London, he mixed probably with the most brilliant intellectual society of his time. Sidney was himself endowed with no mean genius. He, Lord Leicester, Lord Strange, and others, with whom Spenser was certainly, or in all probability, acquainted, were all eminent patrons and protectors of genius.
This passage of Spenser’s life is of high interest, because in the course of it that splendid era of our literature commonly called the Elizabethan Period may be said to have begun. Spenser is the foremost chronologically of those great spirits who towards the close of the sixteenth century lifted up their immortal voices, and spoke words to be heard for all time. In the course of this present passage of his life, he published his first important worka work which secured him at once the hearty recognition of his contemporaries as a true poet risen up amongst them. This work was the Shepheardes Calendar, to which so many references have already been made.
It consists of twelve eclogues, one for each month of the year. Of these, three (i., vi., and xii.), as we have seen, treat specially of his own disappointment in love. Three (ii., viii., and x.) are of a more general character, having old age, a poetry combat, ‘the perfect pattern of a poet’ for their subjects. One other (iii.) deals with love-matters. One (iv.) celebrates the Queen, three (v., vii, and ix.) discuss ‘Protestant and Catholic,’ Anglican and Puritan questions. One (xi.) is an elegy upon ‘the death of some maiden of great blood, whom he calleth Dido.’ These poems were ushered into the world by Spenser’s college friend Edward Kirke, for such no doubt is the true interpretation of the initials E.K. This gentleman performed his duty in a somewhat copious manner. He addressed ‘to the most excellent and learned both orator and poet Mayster Gabriell Harvey’ a letter warmly commending ‘the new poet’ to his patronage, and defending the antique verbiage of the eclogues; he prefixed to the whole work a general argument, a particular one to each part; he appended to every poem a ‘glosse’ explaining words and allusions. The work is dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. It was published in the winter of 1579-80.
More than once in the course of it, Spenser refers to Tityrus as his great master. The twelfth eclogue op
ens thus:
The gentle shepheard sat beside a springe
All in the shadow of a bushye brere,
That Colin height, which well could pype and singe,
For hee of Tityrus his songs did lere.
Tityrus, on E.K.’s authority, was Chaucer. It is evident from the languageboth the words and verbal formsused in this poem that Spenser had zealously studied Chaucer, whose greatest work had appeared just about two centuries before Spenser’s first important publication. The work, however, in which he imitates Chaucer’s manner is not the Shepheardes Calendar, but his Prosopopoia or Mother Hubberds Tale, which he says, writing in a later year, he had ‘long sithens composed in the raw conceipt of my youth.’ The form and manner of the Shepheardes Calendar reflected not Chaucer’s influence upon the writer, but the influence of a vast event which had changed the face of literature since the out- coming of the Canterbury Talesof the revival of learning. That event had put fresh models before men, had greatly modified old literary forms, had originated new. The classical influence impressed upon Europe was by no means an unmixed good; in some respects it retarded the natural development of the modern mind by overpowering it with its prestige and stupefying it with a sense of inferiority; while it raised the ideal of perfection, it tended to give rise to mere imitations and affectations. Amongst these new forms was the Pastoral. When Virgil, Theocritus, ‘Daphnis and Chloe,’ and other writers and works of the ancient pastoral literature once more gained the ascendancy, then a modern pastoral poetry began to be. This poetry flourished greatly in Italy in the sixteenth century. It had been cultivated by Sannazaro, Guarini, Tasso. Arcadia had been adopted by the poets for their country. In England numerous Eclogues made their appearance. Amongst the earliest and the best of these were Spenser’s. It would perhaps be unjust to treat this modern pastoral literature as altogether an affectation. However unreal, the pastoral world had its charmsa pleasant feeling imparted of emancipation, a deep quietude, a sweet tranquillity. If vulgar men discovered their new worlds, and trafficked and bustled there, why should not the poet discover his Arcadia, and repose at his ease in it, secure from the noises of feet coming and going over the roads of the earth?
Complete Works of Edmund Spenser Page 186
