Complete Works of Edmund Spenser

by Edmund Spenser

  CHAPTER IV. 1591-1599.

  It is easy to imagine how intensely Spenser enjoyed his visit to London. It is uncertain to what extent that visit was prolonged. He dates the dedication of his Colin Clouts Come Home Again ‘from my house at Kilcolman, the 27 of December, 1591.’ On the other hand, the dedication of his Daphnaida is dated ‘London this first of Januarie 1591,’ that is 1592 according to our new style. Evidently there is some mistake here. Prof. Craik ‘suspects’ that in the latter instance ‘the date January 1591’ is used in the modern meaning; he quotes nothing to justify such a suspicion; but it would seem to be correct. Todd and others have proposed to alter the ‘1591’ in the former instance to 1595, the year in which Colin Clouts Come Home Again was published, and with which the allusions made in the poem to contemporary writers agree; but this proposal is, as we shall see, scarcely tenable. The manner in which the publisher of the Complaints, 1591, of which publication we shall speak presently, introduces that work to the ‘gentle reader,’ seems to show that the poet was not at the time of the publishing easily accessible. He speaks of having endeavoured ‘by all good meanes (for the better encrease and accomplishment of your delights) to get into my hands such small poems of the same authors, as I heard were disperst abroad in sundrie hands, and not easie to bee come by by himselfe; some of them having been diverslie imbeziled and purloyned from him since his departure ouer sea.’ He says he understands Spenser ‘wrote sundrie others’ besides those now collected, ‘besides some other Pamphlets looselie scattered abroad . . . which when I can either by himselfe or otherwise attaine too I meane likewise for your fauour sake to set foorth.’ It may be supposed with much probability that Spenser returned to his Irish castle some time in 1591, in all likelihood after February, in which month he received the pension mentioned above, and on the other hand so as to have time to write the original draught of Colin Clouts Come Home Again before the close of December.

  The reception of the Faerie Queene had been so favourable that in 1591it would seem, as has been shown, after Spenser’s departurethe publisher of that poem determined to put forth what other poems by the same hand he could gather together. The result was a volume entitled ‘Complaints, containing sundrie small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie, whereof the next page maketh mention. By Ed. Sp.’ ‘The next page’ contains ‘a note of the Sundrie Poemes contained in this volume:’

  1. The Ruines of Time.

  2. The Teares of the Muses.

  3. Virgils Gnat.

  4. Prosopopoia or Mother Hubbards Tale.

  5. The Ruines of Rome, by Bellay.

  6. Muiopotmos or The Tale of the Butterflie.

  7. Visions of the Worlds Vanitie.

  8. Bellayes Visions.

  9. Petrarches Visions.

  In a short notice addressed to the Gentle Reader which followsthe notice just referred tothe publisher of the volume mentions other works by Spenser, and promises to publish them too ‘when he can attain to’ them. These works are Ecclesiastes, The Seven Psalms, and Canticum Canticorumthese three no doubt translations of parts of the Old Testament A Sennight Slumber , The State of Lovers, the Dying Pelicandoubtless the work mentioned, as has been seen, in one of Spenser’s letters to HarveyThe Howers of the Lord, and The Sacrifice of a Sinner. Many of these works had probably been passing from hand to hand in manuscript for many years. That old method of circulation survived the invention of the printing press for many generations. The perils of it may be illustrated from the fate of the works just mentioned. It would seem that the publisher never did attain to them; and they have all perished. With regard to the works which were printed and preserved, the Ruines of Time, as the Dedication shows, was written during Spenser’s memorable visit of 1589-91 to England. It is in fact an elegy dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke, on the death of Sir Philip Sidney, ‘that most brave Knight, your most noble brother deceased.’ ‘Sithens my late cumming into England,’ the poet writes in the Epistle Dedicatorie, ‘some friends of mine (which might much prevaile with me and indeede commaund me) knowing with howe straight bandes of duetie I was tied to him; as also bound unto that noble house (of which the chiefe hope then rested in him) have sought to revive them by upbraiding me; for that I have not shewed anie thankefull remembrance towards him or any of them; but suffer their names to sleepe in silence and forgetfulnesse. Whome chieflie to satisfie, or els to avoide that fowle blot of unthankefulnesse, I have conceived this small Poeme, intituled by a generall name of the Worlds Ruines: yet speciallie intended to the renowming of that noble race from which both you and he sprong, and to the eternizing of some of the chiefe of them late deceased.’ This poem is written in a tone that had been extremely frequent during Spenser’s youth. Its text is that ancient one ‘Vanity of Vanities; all is Vanity’a very obvious text in all ages, but perhaps especially so, as has been hinted, in the sixteenth century, and one very frequently adopted at that time. This text is treated in a manner characteristic of the age. It is exemplified by a series of visions. The poet represents himself as seeing at Verulam an apparition of a woman weeping over the decay of that ancient town. This woman stands for the town itself. Of its whilome glories, she says, after a vain recounting of them,

  They all are gone and with them is gone,

  Ne ought to me remaines, but to lament

  My long decay.

  No one, she continues, weeps with her, no one remembers her,

  Save one that maugre fortunes injurie

  And times decay, and enuies cruell tort

  Hath writ my record in true seeming sort.

  Cambden the nourice of antiquitie,

  And lanterne unto late succeeding age,

  To see the light of simple veritie

  Buried in ruines, through the great outrage

  Of her owne people, led with warlike rage,

  Cambden, though time all moniments obscure,

  Yet thy just labours ever shall endure.

  Then she rebukes herself for these selfish moanings by calling to mind how far from solitary she is in her desolation. She recalls to mind the great ones of the land who have lately fallenLeicester, and Warwick, and Sidneyand wonders no longer at her own ruin. Is not Transit Gloria the lesson taught everywhere? Then other visions and emblems of instability are seen, some of them not darkly suggesting that what passes away from earth and apparently ends may perhaps be glorified elsewhere. The second of these collected poemsThe Teares of the Musesdedicated, as we have seen, to one of the poet’s fair cousins, the Lady Strange, deplores the general intellectual condition of the time. It is doubtful whether Spenser fully conceived what a brilliant literary age was beginning about the year 1590. Perhaps his long absence in Ireland, the death of Sidney who was the great hope of England Spenser knew, the ecclesiastical controversies raging when he revisited England, may partly account for his despondent tone with reference to literature. He introduces each Muse weeping for the neglect and contempt suffered by her respective province. He who describes these tears was himself destined to dry them; and Shakspere, who, if anyone, was to make the faces of the Muses blithe and bright, was now rapidly approaching his prime. There can be little doubt that at a later time Spenser was acquainted with Shakspere; for Spenser was an intimate friend of the Earl of Essex; Shakspere was an intimate friend of the Earl of Southampton, who was one of the most attached friends of that Earl of Essex. And a personal acquaintance with Shakspere may have been one of the most memorable events of Spenser’s visit to London in 1589. We would gladly think that Thalia in the Teares of the Muses refers in the following passage to Shakspere: the comic stage, she says, is degraded,

  And he the man whom Nature selfe had made

  To mock herselfe and Truth to imitate,

  With kindly counter under Mimick shade,

  Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late;

  With whom all joy and jolly meriment

  Is also deaded and in dolour drent.

  The context shows that by ‘dead’ is not meant physica
l death, but that

  That same gentle spirit, from whose pen

  Large streames of honnie and sweete nectar flowe,

  produces nothing, sits idle-handed and silent, rather than pander to the grosser tastes of the day. But this view, attractive as it is, can perhaps hardly be maintained. Though the Teares of the Muses was not published, as we have seen, till 1591, it was probably written some years earlier, and so before the star of Shakspere had arisen. Possibly by Willy is meant Sir Philip Sidney, a favourite haunt of whose was his sister’s house at Wilton on the river Wiley or Willey, and who had exhibited some comic power in his masque, The Lady of May, acted before the Queen in 1578. Some scholars, however, take ‘Willy’ to denote John Lily. Thus the passage at present remains dark. If written in 1590, it certainly cannot mean Sidney, who had been dead some years; just possibly, but not probably, it might in that case mean Shakspere.

  Of the remaining works published in his Complaints, the only other one of recent composition is Muiopotmos, which, as Prof. Craik suggests, would seem to be an allegorical narrative of some matter recently transpired. It is dated 1590, but nothing is known of any earlier edition than that which appears in the Complaints. Of the other pieces by far the most interesting is Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubbards Tale, not only because it is in it, as has been said, Spenser most carefully, though far from successfully, imitates his great master Chaucer, but for its intrinsic merit for its easy style, its various incidents, its social pictures. In the dedication he speaks of it as ‘These my idle labours; which

  having long sithens composed in the raw conceipt of my youth, I lately amongst other papers lighted upon, and was by others, which liked the same, mooved to set them foorth.’ However long before its publication the poem in the main was written, possibly some additions were made to it in or about the year 1590; as for instance, the well-known passage describing ‘a suitor’s state,’ which reflects too clearly a bitter personal experience to have been composed before Spenser had grown so familiar with the Court as he became during his visit to England under Raleigh’s patronage. But it is conceivable that his experiences in 1578 and 1579 inspired the lines in question.

  The remaining pieces in the Complaints consist of translations or imitations, composed probably some years before, though probably in some cases, as has been shown, revised or altogether recast.

  Probably in the same year with the Complaints that is in 1591was published Daphnaida, ‘an Elegie upon the death of the noble and vertuous Douglas Howard, daughter and heire of Henry Lord Howard, Viscount Byndon, and wife of Arthur Georges, Esquire.’ This elegy was no doubt written before Spenser returned to Ireland. It is marked by his characteristic diffuseness, abundance, melody.

  Certainly before the close of the year 1591 Spenser found himself once more in his old castle of Kilcolman. A life at Court could never have suited him, however irksome at times his isolation in Ireland may have seemed. When his friends wondered at his returning unto

  This barrein soyle,

  Where cold and care and penury do dwell,

  Here to keep sheepe with hunger and with toyle,

  he made the answer that he,

  Whose former dayes

  Had in rude fields bene altogether spent,

  Durst not adventure such unknowen wayes,

  Nor trust the guile of fortunes blandishment;

  But rather chose back to my sheepe to tourne,

  Whose utmost hardnesse I before had tryde,

  Then, having learnd repentance late, to mourne

  Emongst those wretches which I there descryde.

  That life, with all its intrigues and self-seekings and scandals, had no charms for him. Once more settled in his home, he wrote an account of his recent absence from it, which he entitled Colin Clouts Come Home Again. This poem was not published till 1595; but, whatever additions were subsequently made to it, there can be no doubt it was originally written immediately after his return to Ireland. Sitting in the quiet to which he was but now restored, he reviewed the splendid scenes he had lately witnessed; he recounted the famous wits he had met, and the fair ladies he had seen in the great London world; and dedicated this exquisite diary to the friend who had introduced him into that brilliant circle. It would seem that Raleigh had accused him of indolence. That ever-restless schemer could not appreciate the poet’s dreaminess. ‘That you may see,’ writes Spenser, ‘that I am not alwaies ydle as yee think, though not greatly well occupied, nor altogither undutifull, though not precisely officious, I make you present of this simple pastorall, unworthie of your higher conceipt for the meanesse of the stile, but agreeing with the truth in circumstance and matter. The which I humbly beseech you to accept in part of paiment of the infinite debt in which I acknowledge myselfe bounden unto you for your singular favours and sundrie good turnes shewed to me at my late being in England, &c.’

  The conclusion of this poem commemorates, as we have seen, Spenser’s enduring affection for that Rosalind who so many years before had turned away her ears from his suit. It must have been some twelve months after those lines were penned, that the writer conceived an ardent attachment for one Elizabeth. The active research of Dr. Grosart has discovered that this lady belonged to the Boyle familya family already of importance and destined to be famous. The family seat was at Kilcoran, near Youghal, and so we understand Spenser’s singing of ‘The sea that neighbours to her near.’ Thus she lived in the same county with her poet. The whole course of the wooing and the winning is portrayed in the Amoretti or Sonnets and the Epithalamium. It may be gathered from these biographically and otherwise interesting pieces, that it was at the close of the year 1592 that the poet was made a captive of that beauty he so fondly describes. The first three sonnets would seem to have been written in that year. The fourth celebrates the beginning of the year 1593the beginning according to our modern way of reckoning. All through that year 1593 the lover sighed, beseeched, adored, despaired, prayed again. Fifty-eight sonnets chronicle the various hopes and fears of that year. The object of his passion remained as steel and flint, while he wept and wailed and pleaded. His life was a long torment.

  In vaine I seeke and sew to her for grace

  And doe myne humbled hart before her poure;

  The whiles her foot she in my necke doth place

  And tread my life downe in the lowly floure.

  In Lent she is his ‘sweet saynt,’ and he vows to find some fit service for her.

  Her temple fayre is built within my mind

  In which her glorious image placed is.

  But all his devotion profited nothing, and he thinks it were better ‘at once to die.’ He marvels at her cruelty. He cannot address himself to further composition of his great poem. The accomplishment of that great work were

  Sufficient werke for one man’s simple head,

  All were it, as the rest, but rudely writ.

  How then should I, without another wit,

  Thinck ever to endure so tedious toyle?

  Sith that this one is tost with troublous fit

  Of a proud love that doth my spirit spoyle.

  He falls ill in his body too. When the anniversary of his being carried into captivity comes round, he declares, as has already been quoted, that the year just elapsed has appeared longer than all the forty years of his life that had preceded it (sonnet 60). In the beginning of the year 1594,

  After long stormes and tempests sad assay

  Which hardly I endured hertofore

  In dread of death and daungerous dismay

  With which my silly bark was tossed sore,

  he did ‘at length descry the happy shore.’ The heart of his mistress softened towards him. The last twenty- five sonnets are for the most part the songs of a lover accepted and happy. It would seem that by this time he had completed three more books of the Faerie Queene, and he asks leave in sonnet 70,

  In pleasant mew

  To sport my Muse and sing my loves sweet praise,

  The contemplat
ion of whose heavenly hew

  My spirit to an higher pitch doth raise.

  Probably the Sixth Book was concluded in the first part of the year 1594, just after his long wooing had been crowned with success. In the tenth canto of that book he introduces the lady of his love, and himself ‘piping’ unto her. In a rarely pleasant place on a fair wooded hill-top Calidore sees the Graces dancing, and Colin Clout piping merrily. With these goddesses is a fourth maid; it is to her alone that Colin pipes:

  Pype, jolly shepheard, pype thou now apace

  Unto thy love that made thee low to lout;

  Thy love is present there with thee in place;

  Thy love is there advaunst to be another Grace.

  Of this fourth maid the poet, after sweetly praising the daughters of sky-ruling Jove, sings in this wise:

  Who can aread what creature mote she bee;

  Whether a creature or a goddesse graced

  With heavenly gifts from heven first enraced?

  But what so sure she was, she worthy was

  To be the fourth with those three other placed,

  Yet she was certes but a countrey lasse;

  Yet she all other countrey lasses farre did passe.

  So farre, as doth the daughter of the day

  All other lesser lights in light excell;

  So farre doth she in beautyfull array

  Above all other lasses beare the bell;

  Ne lesse in vertue that beseems her well

  Doth she exceede the rest of all her race.

  The phrase ‘country lass’ in this rapturous passage has been taken to signify that she to whom it applied was of mean origin; but it scarcely bears this construction. Probably all that is meant is that her family was not connected with the Court or the Court circle. She was not high-born; but she was not low- born. The final sonnets refer to some malicious reports circulating about him, and to some local separation between the sonneteer and his mistress. This separation was certainly ended in the June following his acceptancethat is, the June of 1594; for in that month, on St. Barnabas’ day, that is, on the 11th, Spenser was married. This event Spenser celebrates in the finest, the most perfect of all his poems, in the most beautiful of all bridal songsin his Epithalamion. He had many a time sung for others; he now bade the Muses crown their heads with garlands and help him his own love’s praises to resound: