Complete Works of Edmund Spenser

by Edmund Spenser

  So I unto my selfe alone will sing,

  The woods shall to me answer, and my echo ring.

  Then, with the sweetest melody and a refinement and grace incomparable, he sings with a most happy heart of various matters of the marriage dayof his love’s waking, of the merry music of the minstrels, of her coming forth in all the pride of her visible loveliness, of that ‘inward beauty of her lively spright’ which no eyes can see, of her standing before the altar, her sad eyes still fastened on the ground, of the bringing her home, of the rising of the evening star, and the fair face of the moon looking down on his bliss not unfavourably, as he would hope. The Amoretti and Epithalamion were registered at the Stationers’ Hall on the 19th of November following the marriage. They were published in 1595, Spenseras appears from the ‘Dedication’ of them to Sir Robert Needham, written by the printer Ponsonbybeing still absent from England.

  Meanwhile the poet had been vexed by other troubles besides those of a slowly requited passion. Mr. Hardiman, in his Irish Minstrelsy, has published three petitions presented in 1593 to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland by Maurice, Lord Roche, Viscount Fermoy, two against ‘one Edmond Spenser, gentleman’, one against one Joan Ny Callaghanwho is said to act ‘by supportation and maintenance of Edmond Spenser, gentleman, a heavy adversary to your suppliant.’ ‘Where,’ runs the first petition, ‘one Edmond Spenser, gentleman, hath lately exhibited suit against your suppliant for three ploughlands, parcels of Shanballymore (your suppliant’s inheritance) before the Vice-President and Council of Munster, which land hath been heretofore decreed for your suppliant against the said Spenser and others under whom he conveyed; and nevertheless for that the said Spenser, being Clerk of the Council in the said province, and did assign his office unto one Nicholas Curteys among other agreements with covenant that during his life he should be free in the said office for his causes, by occasion of which immunity he doth multiply suits against your suppliant in the said province upon pretended title of others &c.’ The third petition averred that ‘Edmond Spenser of Kilcolman, gentleman, hath entered into three ploughlands, parcel of Ballingerath, and disseised your suppliant thereof, and continueth by countenance and greatness the possession thereof, and maketh great waste of the wood of the said land, and converteth a great deal of corn growing thereupon to his proper use, to the damage of the complainant of two hundred pounds sterling. Whereunto,’ continues the document, which is preserved in the Original Rolls Office, ‘the said Edmond Spenser appearing in person had several days prefixed unto him peremptorily to answer, which he neglected to do.’ Therefore ‘after a day of grace given,’ on the 12th of February, 1594, Lord Roche was decreed the possession. Perhaps the absence from his lady love referred to in the concluding sonnets was occasioned by this litigation. Perhaps also the ‘false forged lyes’the malicious reports circulated about himreferred to in Sonnet 85, may have been connected with these appeals against him. It is clear that all his dreams of Faerie did not make him neglectful of his earthly estate. Like Shakspere, like Scott, Spenser did not cease to be a man of the worldwe use the phrase in no unkindly sensebecause he was a poet. He was no mere visionary, helpless in the ordinary affairs of life. In the present case it would appear that he was even too keen in looking after his own interests. Professor Craik charitably suggests that his poverty ‘rather than rapacity may be supposed to have urged whatever of hardness there was in his proceedings.’ It is credible enough that these proceedings made him highly unpopular with the native inhabitants of the district, and that they were not forgotten when the day of reckoning came. ‘His name,’ says Mr. Hardiman, on the authority of Trotter’s Walks in Ireland, ‘is still remembered in the vicinity of Kilcolman; but the people entertain no sentiments of respect or affection for his memory.’

  In the same year with the Amoretti was published Colin Clouts Come Home Again, several additions having been made to the original version.

  Probably at the close of this year 1595 Spenser a second time crossed to England, accompanied, it may be supposed, by his wife, carrying with him in manuscript the second three books of his Faerie Queene, which, as we have seen, were completed before his marriage, and also a prose work, A View of the Present State of Ireland. Mr. Collier quotes the following entry from the Stationers’ Register:

  20 die Januarii .Mr. Ponsonby. Entred

  &c. The Second Part of the Faerie Queene, cont.

  the 4, 5, and 6 bookes, vjd.

  This second instalmentwhich was to be the lastof his great poem was duly published in that year. The View of the Present State of Ireland was not registered till April 1598, and then only conditionally. It was not actually printed till 1633. During his stay in England he wrote the Hymns to Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beauty, and the Prothalamion, which were to be his last works.

  More than four years had elapsed since Spenser had last visited London. During that period certain memorable works had been produced; the intellectual power of that day had expressed itself in no mean manner. When he arrived in London towards the close of the year 1595, he would find Shakspere splendidly fulfilling the promise of his earlier days; he would find Ben Jonson just becoming known to fame; he would find Bacon already drawing to him the eyes of his time. Spenser probably spent the whole of the year 1596, and part of 1597, in England. In 1597 appeared, as has already been said, the first part of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity, and Bacon’s Essays, and also Jonson’s Every Man in His Own Humour.

  The reigning favourite at this time was the Earl of Essex. In 1596 his successful descent upon Cadiz raised him to the zenith of his fame. With this nobleman Spenser was on terms of intimacy. At his London house in the Stranda house which had previously been inhabited by Spenser’s earlier patron, the Earl of Leicesterit stood where Essex Street now is, and is still represented by the two pillars which stand at the bottom of that streetSpenser no doubt renewed his friendship with Shakspere. This intimacy with Essex, with whatever intellectual advantages it may have been attended, with whatever bright spirits it may have brought Spenser acquainted, probably impeded his prospects of preferment. There can be no doubt that one of the motives that brought him to England was a desire to advance his fortunes. Camden describes him as always poor. His distaste for his residence in Ireland could not but have been aggravated by his recent legal defeat. But he looked in vain for further preferment. He had fame, and to spare, and this was to suffice. It was during this sojourn in England that he spoke of himself, as we have seen, as one

  Whom sullein care

  Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay

  In Princes court and expectation vayne

  Of idle hopes which still doe fly away

  Like empty shaddows, did afflict my brayne.

  The publication of the second three books of the Faerie Queene, with a re-impression of the first three books, placed him on the highest pinnacle of fame. Its plentiful references to passing eventsits adumbrations of the history of the timehowever it might damage the permanent value of the work from an artistic point of view, increased its immediate popularity. How keenly these references were appreciated appears from the anxiety of the Scotch King to have the poet prosecuted for his picture of Duessa, in whom Mary Queen of Scots was generally recognised. ‘Robert Bowes, the English ambassador in Scotland, writing to Lord Burghley from Edinburgh 12th November, 1596, states that great offence was conceived by the King against Edmund Spenser for publishing in print, in the second part of the Faery Queen, ch. 9, some dishonourable effects, as the King deemed, against himself and his mother deceased. Mr. Bowes states that he had satisfied the King as to the privilege under which the book was published, yet he still desired that Edmund Spenser for this fault might be tried and punished. It further appears, from a letter from George Nicolson to Sir Robert Cecil, dated Edinburgh, 25 February, 1597-8, that Walter Quin, an Irishman, was answering Spenser’s book, whereat the King was offended.’

  The View of the Present State of Ireland, written dialogue-wise between Eud
oxus and Iren{ae}us, though not printed, as has been said, till 1633, seems to have enjoyed a considerable circulation in a manuscript form. There are manuscript copies of this tractate at Cambridge, at Dublin, at Lambeth, and in the British Museum. It is partly antiquarian, partly descriptive, partly political. It exhibits a profound sense of the unsatisfactory state of the countrya sense which was presently to be justified in a frightful manner. Spenser had not been deaf to the ever-growing murmurs of discontent by which he and his countrymen had been surrounded. He was not in advance of his time in the policy he advocates for the administration of Ireland. He was far from anticipating that policy of conciliation whose triumphant application it may perhaps be the signal honour of our own day to achieve. The measures he proposes are all of a vigorously repressive kind; they are such measures as belong to a military occupancy, not to a statesmanly administration. He urges the stationing numerous garrisons; he is for the abolishing native customs. Such proposals won a not unfavourable hearing at that time. They have been admired many a time since.

  It is to this work of Spenser’s that Protector Cromwell alludes in a letter to his council in Ireland, in favour of William Spenser, grandson of Edmund Spenser, from whom an estate of lands in the barony of Fermoy, in the county of Cork, descended on him. ‘His grandfather,’ he writes, ‘was that Spenser who, by his writings touching the reduction of the Irish to civility, brought on him the odium of that nation; and for those works and his other good services Queen Elizabeth conferred on him that estate which the said William Spenser now claims.’ This latter statement is evidently inaccurate. Spenser, as we have seen, had already held his estate for some years when he brought his View to England.

  Spenser dates the dedication of his Hymns from Greenwich, September 1, 1596. Of these four hymns, two had been in circulation for some years, though now for the first time printed; the other two now first appeared. ‘Having in the greener times of my youth,’ he writes, ‘composed these former two hymnes in the praise of love and beautie, and finding that the same too much pleased those of like age and disposition, which being too vehemently caried with that kind of affection, do rather sucke out poyson to their strong passion than hony to their honest delight, I was moved by one of you two most excellent ladies [the ladies Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, Mary, Countess of Warwick] to call in the same; but unable so to doe, by reason that many copies thereof were formerly scattered abroad, I resolved at least to amend, and by way of retraction to reforme them, making (instead of those two hymnes of earthly or naturall love and beautie) two others of heavenly and celestiall.’ This passage is interesting for the illustration it provides of Spenser’s popularity. It is also highly interesting, if the poems themselves be read in the light of it, as showing the sensitive purity of the poet’s nature. It is difficult to conceive how those ‘former hymns’ should in any moral respect need amending. The moralising and corrective purpose with which the two latter were written perhaps diminished their poetical beauty; but the themes they celebrate are such as Spenser could not but ever descant upon with delight; they were such as were entirely congenial to his spirit. He here set forth special teachings of his great master Plato, and abandoned himself to the high spiritual contemplations he loved. But perhaps the finest of these four hymns is the secondthat in honour of Beauty. Beauty was indeed the one worship of Spenser’s lifenot mere material beautynot ‘the goodly hew of white and red with which the cheekes are sprinkled,’ or ‘the sweete rosy leaves so fairly spred upon the lips,’ or ‘that golden wyre,’ or ‘those sparckling stars so bright,’ but that inner spiritual beauty, of which fair hair and bright eyes are but external expressions.

  So every spirit, as it is most pure

  And hath in it the more of heavenly light,

  So it the fairer bodie doth procure

  To habit in, and it more fairely dight

  With chearfull grace and amiable sight;

  For of the soule the bodie forme doth take,

  For soule is forme and doth the bodie make.

  This hymn is one of high refined rapture.

  Before the close of the year 1596 Spenser wrote and published the Prothalamion or ‘A spousall verse made in honour of the double marriage of the two honourable and vertuous ladies, the ladie Elizabeth, and the ladie Katherine Somerset, daughters to the right honourable the Earle of Worcester, and espoused to the two worthie gentlemen, M. Henry Gilford and M. William Peter Esquyers.’ It was composed after the return of Essex from Spain, for he is introduced in the poem as then residing at his house in the Strand. It is a poem full of grace and beauty, and of matchless melodiousness.

  This is the last complete poem Spenser wrote. No doubt he entertained the idea of completing his Faerie Queene; and perhaps it was after 1596 that he composed the two additional cantos, which are all, so far as is known, that he actually wrote. But the last poem completed and published in his lifetime was the Prothalamion.

  This second visit to England at last came to an end. It was probably in 1597 that he returned once more to Kilcolman. In the following year he was recommended by her Majesty for Sheriff of Cork. But his residence in Ireland was now to be rudely terminated.

  The Irishry had, ever since the suppression of Desmond’s rebellion in 1582, been but waiting for another opportunity to rise, that suppression not having brought pacification in its train. In the autumn of 1598 broke out another of these fearful insurrections, of which the history of English rule in Ireland is mainly composed.

  In the September of that year Spenser was at the zenith of his prosperity. In that month arrived the letter recommending his appointment to be Sheriff of Cork. It seems legitimate to connect this mark of royal favour with the fact that at the beginning of the preceding month Lord Burghley had deceased. The great obstructor of the Queen’s bounty was removed, and Spenser might hope that now, at last, the hour of his prosperity was come. So far as is known, his domestic life was serene and happy. The joys of the husband had been crowned with those of the father. Two sons, as may be gathered from the names given to themthey were christened Sylvanus and Peregrinehad been by this time born to him; according to Sir William Betham, who drew up a pedigree of Spenser’s family, another son and a daughter had been born between the birth of Sylvanus and that of Peregrine. Then he was at this time the recognised prince of living poets. The early autumn of 1598 saw him in the culminating enjoyment of all these happinesses.

  In October the insurgents burst roughly in upon his peace. No doubt his occupation of the old castle of Desmond had ever been regarded with fierce jealousy. While he had dreamed his dreams and sung his songs in the valley, there had been curses muttered against him from the hills around. At last the day of vengeance came. The outraged natives rushed down upon Kilcolman; the poet and his family barely made their escape; his home was plundered and burned. According to Ben Jonson, in the conversation with Drummond, quoted above, not all his family escaped; one little child, new born, perished in the flames. But, indeed, the fearfulness of this event needs no exaggeration. In profound distress Spenser arrived once more in London, bearing a despatch from Sir Thomas Norreys, President of Munster, to the Secretary of State, and of course himself full of direct and precise information as to the Irish tumult, having also drawn up an address to the Queen on the subject. Probably, the hardships and horrors he had undergone completely prostrated him. On January 16, 1599, he died in Westminster. As to the exact place, a manuscript note found by Brand, the well-known antiquary, on the title-page of a copy of the second edition of the Faerie Queene, though not of indisputable value, may probably enough be accepted, and it names King Street. Ben Jonson says, ‘he died for lack of bread;’ but this must certainly be an exaggeration. No doubt he returned to England ‘inops’in a state of povertyas Camden says; but it is impossible to believe that he died of starvation. His friend Essex and many another were ready to minister to his necessities if he needed their ministry. Jonson’s story is that he ‘refused twenty pieces sent him by my lord
Essex, and said he was sure he had no time to spend them.’ This story, if it is anything more than a mere vulgar rumour, so far as it shows anything, shows that he was in no such very extreme need of succour. Had his destitution been so complete, he would have accepted the pieces for his family, even though ‘he had no time to spend them himself.’ It must be remembered that he was still in receipt of a pension from the crown; a pension of no very considerable amount, perhaps, but still large enough to satisfy the pangs of hunger. But numerous passages might be quoted to show that he died in somewhat straitened circumstances.

  It was said, some thirty-four years after Spenser’s death, that in his hurried flight from Ireland the remaining six books of the Faerie Queene were lost. But it is very unlikely that those books were ever completed. Perhaps some fragments of them may have perished in the flames at Kilcolmancertainly only two cantos have reached us. These were first printed in 1611, when the first six books were republished. The general testimony of his contemporaries is that his song was broken off in the midst. Says Browne in his Britannia’s Pastorals (Book ii. s. 1):