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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SOU-STE |
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SPENSER, EDMUND (c. 1552-1599) , English poet, author of the Faery Queen, was born in London about the year 1552. The received date of his birth rests on a passage in sonnet lx. of the Amoretti. He speaks there of having lived forty-one years; the Amoretti was published in 1595, and described on the title-page as " written not long since "; this would make the year of his birth 1552 or 1553. We know from the Prothalamion that London was his birthplace. This at least seems the most natural interpretation of the words " Merry London, my most kindly nurse, That to me gave this life's first native source." In the same poem he speaks of himself as taking his name from " an house of ancient fame." Several of his pieces are addressed to the daughters of Sir John Spencer
" The honour of the noble family Of which I meanest boast myself to be." Mr R. B. Knowles, however, is of the opinion (see the Spending of the Money of Robert Nowell, privately printed, 1877) that the poet's kinsmen must be sought among the humbler Spencers of north-east Lancashire. Robert Nowell, a London citizen, left a sum of money to be distributed in various charities, and in the account-books of his executors among the names of other beneficiaries has been discovered that of " Edmund Spensore, scholar of the Merchant Taylor School, at his going to Pembroke Hall
Cambridge ." The date of this benefaction is the 28th of April 1569. As the poet is known to have been a sizar of Pembroke, the identification is beyond dispute. Till this discovery it was not known where Spenser received his school education. The speculations as to the poet's parentage, started by the Nowell MS., are naturally more uncertain. Mr Knowles found three Spensers in the books of the Merchant Taylors, and concluded that the poorest of them, John Spenser, a " free journeyman " in the "art or mystery of clothmaking," might have been the poet's father, but he afterwards abandoned this theory. Dr Grosart, however, adhered to it, and it is now pretty generally accepted. The connexion of Spenser with Lancashire is also supported by the Nowell MS.several Spensers of that county appear among the " poor kinsfolk " who profited by Nowell's bounty . The name of the poet's mother was Elisabeth, and he notes as a happy coincidence that it was borne by the three women of most consequence to himwife, queen and mother (Amoretti, lxxiv.).It is natural that a poet so steeped in poetry as Spenser should show his faculty at a very early age; and there is strong reason to believe that verses from his pen were published just as he left school at the age of sixteen or seventeen. Certain pieces, translations from Du Bellay and Petrarch, afterwards included in a volume of poems by Spenser published in 1591, are found in a miscellany, Theatre for Worldings, issued by a Flemish Protestant refugee, John van der Noodt, on the 25th of May 1569. The translations from Du Bellay appear in blank verse in the miscellany, and are rhymed in sonnet form in the later publication, but the diction is substantially the same; the translations from Petrarch are republished with slight variations. Poets were so careless of their rights in those days and publishers took such liberties that we cannot draw for certain the conclusion that would be inevitable if the facts were of more modern date; but the probabilities are that these passages in Van der Noodt's Theatre, although the editor makes no acknowledgment, were contributed by the schoolboy Spenser.' As the exercises of a schoolboy writing before our poetic diction was enriched by the great Elizabethans, they are remarkable for a sustained command of expression which many schoolboys might exhibit in translation now, but which was a rarer and more significant accomplishment when Surrey and Sackville were the highest models in post-Chaucerian English. Little is known of Spenser's Cambridge career, except that he was a sizar of Pembroke Hall
Three years after leaving Cambridge, in 1579, Spenser issued his first volume of poetry, the Shepherd's Calendar. Where and how he spent the interval have formed subjects for elaborate speculation. That most of it was spent in the study of his art we may take for granted. That he lived for a time in the " north parts " of England; that there or elsewhere he fell in love with a lady whom he celebrates under the anagram of " Rosalind," and who was most likely Rose, a daughter of a yeoman named Dyneley, near Clitheroe; that his friend Harvey urged him to return south, and introduced him to Sir Philip Sidney; that Sidney took to him, discussed poetry with him, introduced him at court, 'put him in the way of prefermentare ascertained facts in his personal history. Dr Grosart conjectures with considerable plausibility that he was in Ireland in 1577. The words " for long time far estranged " in E.K.'s preface to the Shepherd's Calendar point that way. Spenser undoubtedly entered the service of the earl
The interest
pastoral
' The first versions of the Visions of Petrarch and Du Bella}, are reproduced by Dr Grosart in his Complete Works of Spenser, vol. iv. (London, 1882). The translations of Petrarch are imitated from Marot. Koeppel (Englische Studien, vol. xv.), questions whether they are by Spenser (see also J. B. Fletcher, Modern Language Notes, vol. xxii.). 2 Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey (Camden Society).;EDM The Shepherd's Calendar was published at Gabriel Harvey's instance, and was dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. It was one out of many poetical schemes on which the young poet was busy in the flush of conscious power and high hopes excited by the admiration of the literary authorities whose approval was then most to 'lie coveted. His ; letters to Harvey and Harvey's letters to him furnish hints fora very engaging fancy picture of Spenser at this stage of his lifelooking at the world through rose-coloured, spectacles, high in favour with Sidney and Leicester, dating his letters from Leicester House, gaily and energetically discussing the technicalities of his. art, with some provision from his powerful friendscertain, but the form of it delightfully uncertaingoing to court in the train of Leicester, growing pointed beard and mustachios of fashionable shape, and frightening his ever-vigilant friend and mentor Harvey by the light courtier-like tone of his references to wol41en. The studious pastoral poet from north parts " had blossomed with surprising rapidity in the image of the gay fortune-seeking adventurers who crowded the court of the virgin queen in those stirring times. Some of the poems which he mentions to Harvey as then completed or on the anvilhis Dreams, his Nine Comedies, his Dying Pelican and his Stemmata dudleiana (singing the praises of the noble family. which was befriending him)have not been preserved, at least in any form that can be certainly identified. Among the lost works. was his English Poeta contribution to literary criticism., He had sent Harvey a portion of the Faery Queen, which he was eager to continue; but Harvey did not think much of ita judgment for which Harvey is often ridiculed as a dull pedant, as if we knew for certain that what was submitted to him was identical with what was published ten years later.; Spenser was appointed secretary to the lord-deputy of Ireland in 158o, and was one of the band of adventurers who, with mixed motives of love of excitement, patriotism, piety and hopes of forfeited estates, accompanied Lord Arthur Grey of Wilton to Ireland to aid in the suppression of Desmond's rebellion. Regret is sometimes expressed that the author of the ' Faery Queen, who ought to have been dreamy, meditative, gentle and refined, should have been found in such company, arid should have taken part in the violent and bloody scenes of Lord Grey's two years' attempt at " pacification." But such things must be judged with reference to the circumstances and the spirit of the time, and it must be remembered that England was then See Dr Grosart's Complete Works of Spenser, vol. i. engaged in a fierce struggle for existence against the Catholic powers of the Continent. Of Lord Grey's character his secretary was an enthusiastic admirer, exhibiting him in the Faery Queen as Arthegal, the personification of justice; and we know exactly what were his own views of Irish policy, and how strongly he deplored that Lord Grey was not permitted to carry them out. Spenser's View of the State of Ireland drawn up after fourteen years' experience, but first printed in 1633 by Sir James Ware, who complains of Spenser's harshness and inadequate know-ledge (History of Ireland, appendix), is not the work of a gentle dreamer, but of an energetic and shrewd public official. The View is not a descriptive work; there,is nothing in the style to indicate that it was written by a poet; it is an elaborate state paper, the exposition in the form of a dialogue of a minutely considered plan for the pacification of Ireland. written out of zeal for the public service for the eyes of the government of the day. A very thoroughgoing plan it is. After passing in review the history and character of the Irish, their laws, customs, religion, habits of life, armour, dress, social institutions and finding ' evil usages " in every department, he propounds his plan of reformation." Reformation can be effected only by the sword, by the strong hand. The interlocutor in the dialogue holds up his hands in horror. Does he propose extermination? By no means; but he would give the Irish a choice between submission and extermination. The government had vacillated too long, and, fearing the cost of a thorough operation, had spent twice as much without in any way mending matters. Let them send into Ireland io,000 font and woo horse, disperse them in garrisonsa complete scheme of localities is submittedgive the Irish twenty days to come in; if they did not come in then, give no quarter afterwards, but hunt them down like wild beasts in the winter time when the covert is thin; " if they be well followed one winter, ye shall have little work to do with them the next summer "; famine would complete the work of the sword; and in eighteen months' time peace would be restored and the ground cleared for plantation by English colonists. There must be no flinching in the execution of this plan" no remorse or drawing back for the sight of any such rueful object as must thereupon follow, nor for compassion of their calamities, seeing that by no other means it is possible to recover them, and that these are not of will but of very urgent necessity." The government had out of foolish compassion drawn back before when Lord Grey had brought the recalcitrant Irish to the necessary extremity of famine; the gentle poet warns them earnestly against a repetition of the blunder.Such was Spenser's plan for the pacification of Ireland, pro-pounded not on his own authority, but as having support in " the consultations and actions of very wise governors and counsellors whom he had sometimes heard treat thereof." He knew that it was " bloody and cruel "; but he contended passionately that it was necessary for the maintenance of English power and the Protestant religion. The method was repugnant to the kindly nature of average Englishmen; from the time of Lord Grey no English authority had the heart to go through with it till another remorseless zealot appeared in the person of Cromwell. That Cromwell knew the treatise of " the sage-and serious Spenser," perhaps through Milton, is probable from the fact that the poet's Irish estates were secured to his grandson by the Protector's intervention in 1657. These estates had been granted to Spenser as his share in the redistribution of Munster -3000 acres of land and Kilcolman Castle, an ancient seat of the Desmonds, in the north of the county of Cork. The elaborate and business-like character of the View shows that the poet was no sinecurist, but received his reward for substantial political services. He ceased to be secretary to the lord-deputy when Lord Grey was recalled in 1582; but he continued in the public service, and in 1586 was promoted to the onerous position of clerk to the council of Munster. Amidst all the distractions of his public life in Ireland Spenser kept up his interest in literature, and among proper subjects for reforn included Irish poetry, of which he could judge only through the medium of translations. He allows it some merit" sweet wit," " good invention," " some pretty flowers
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