The stance, more or less connected with those studies. In spite of his youth, 1569 was the year in which Spenser's earliest effort in versification was printed. It is to be ranked among the oldest specimens of blank verse in English; and we shall see ere long that Spenser, with the example of several friends, was an innovator, as regards English poetry, in other respects. John Vander Noodt published his "Theatre, &c., for Voluptuous Worldings" in the year last above named, the dedication being dated 25th May, 1569. work is, in a manner, introduced by certain emblems (miscalled "epigrams") and visions, accompanied by woodcuts, translated by Spenser from Petrarch and Bellay they are his, as it seems to us, upon the clearest evidence, because he afterwards published them with many alterations (one of those alterations being the substitution of rhyme for blank verse) as his own productions. The differences are as small as, under the circumstances, could be at all expected, and the original wording is preserved by Spenser in nearly all cases where it was possible to do so. At Cambridge Spenser formed an intimacy with a considerable scholar, but pedantic, vain, conceited, and of peculiar habits and temper-Gabriel Harvey; who afterwards became notorious, among other things, for his pen and pamphlet war with a man much his superior in wit and general abilities, Thomas Nash. Harvey became a fellow of Pembroke Hall the year after Spenser had been entered a sizar there.1 Harvey's taste was unquestionably bad, and there is no doubt that he influenced Spenser in his early attempts, not to adapt the classical measures to our language, but to torture our language into some conformity with the classical measures. The en For this fact we are indebted to Messrs. C. H. and Thompson Cooper, who discovered it while making researches for their excellent Athena Cantabrigienses. deavour to carry out this design must have been subsequent to Spenser's adoption of heroic blank verse in the emblems and visions he had produced for Vander Noodt in 1569; and to these, among other pieces, Harvey seems to allude in a printed letter to Spenser, which we shall have frequent occasion to mention it, however, did not come from the press until eleven years after the emblems and visions had been originally given to the world.1 Another of Spenser's college friends was Edward Kirke, who became a sizar of Pembroke Hall about a year and a half after Spenser had been entered there. Of Kirke we shall have an opportunity of saying more by-and-bye, and it has been plausibly conjectured that Harvey was, in fact, college tutor to both Spenser and Kirke. Two of our very earliest dramatic poets were also acquainted with Spenser, viz., John Still, of Christ's College, subsequently Bishop of Bath and Wells, author of the famous old comedy, "Gammer Gurton's Needle" (first printed in 1575), and Thomas Preston, subsequently Master of Trinity Hall, author of the notorious tragedy "Cambyses, King of Persia," which came from the press still earlier.2 It has been repeatedly stated, on the authority solely of a note by E. K. to Spenser's Eclogue for June where he speaks of Spenser "removing out of the Northparts," that, after leaving Cambridge in 1576, he went for some time into the north of England, where he had friends and relations, and that he there fell in love with a young lady, whom, in various 1 Namely, in 1580, in a publication entitled by Harvey "Three proper and wittie familiar Letters, lately passed betweene two Universitie men, touching the Earthquake in Aprill last, and our English refourmed Versifying." 2 Spencer mentions both Still and Preston in a Letter to Gabriel Harvey, dated "Leycester House this 5 of October 2579" (for 1579). works, but especially in "The Shepheardes Calender," he has celebrated by the name of Rosalind. In his first Eclogue he represents himself as deeply in love, but disappointed and rejected; and in the Eclogue for April, Hobbinol (the pastoral name given to Gabriel Harvey) laments that Colin Clout had abandoned him, and employed all his time in courting "fair Rosalind:" "But now from me hys madding mynd is starte, And woes the Widdowes daughter of the glenne; Meaning that Spenser had forsaken his friend for a stranger. In June the cause of Colin's melancholy is explained; for, after expressing an earnest wish that he had the poetic power of Tityrus, he exclaims,—— "Then should my plaints, causde of discurtesee, And pierce her heart with poynt of worthy wight, Didst underfong my lasse to wexe so light, Thus we see that some favoured swain, here called Menalcas, whose real name has never been ascertained any more than the surname of Rosalind, had by treachery deprived Spenser of the lady; and in the Eclogue for August we meet with a song in which he resigns all hope of her. This passion and its disappointment must, of course, have been prior to the publication, and indeed to the writing, of "The Shepheardes Calender ;" and if the author, as conjectured, really took up his abode for some time anterior with friends and relations in the north, it is not unlikely, as has been recently alleged, that it was at Hurstwood in Lancashire, and that in that neighbourhood the cruel Rosalind, "the widow's daughter of the glen," resided. Spenser affects the northern dialect in his pastoral effusions, and it is more than probable that he penned some of them in Lancashire. In that from which we have just made a citation Hobbinol asks Thenot if he does not know "Colin, the southerne shepheardes boy," as if Spenser had come from the south, and had written in the north. Having taken his Master's degree in 1576,1 it seems certain that, if Spenser had visited the north of England in the interval, he came to London in 1578, the year before his " Shepheardes Calender" issued from the press. On his own evidence, in one of his letters to Harvey, dated from Leicester House, 5th October, 1579, we learn that he was then, in some unexplained capacity, in the service of the Earl, and that, probably on his Lordship's behalf, he had had an interview with, or at all events had seen, the Queen. He also speaks of being about to visit the continent on Leicester's business. Whether he ever performed this duty is doubtful; but he was no sooner emancipated from College than he appears to have been actuated by a truant disposition, and talked freely to his friend Harvey of travelling in various parts of the world. Upon this point the reader must draw his own conclusions, and we have elsewhere furnished the few existing materials for arriving at a decision. "The Shepheardes Calender," which came out with the date of 1579 at the bottom of the title-page, was anonymously dedicated, at the back of that title While still at Pembroke Hall, it has been stated, by some of Spenser's earlier biographers, that he unsuccessfully stood for a fellowship against no less an antagonist than Bishop Lancelot Andrews. This seems to be a mistake, for the competition was between Thomas Dove (afterwards Bishop of Peterborough) and Andrews. page, in eighteen short lines, to Sir Philip Sidney, who, however, is not there named, but indicated as To him, it is generally allowed, Spenser was introduced by Gabriel Harvey,1 who certainly had advised lim to come to London. Spenser merely subscribed his poetical dedication of "The Shepheardes Calender" Immerito; and his young patron, speaking of the work in his " Defence of Poesie" (first published eight or nine years after the death of its author) says nothing to disturb the poet's incognito, while he thus timidly does justice to the merits of the pastorals:- "The Shepheards Kalender hath much poetrie in his Eclogues, indeed worthy the reading, if I be not deceived. That same framing of his stile to an old rusticke language I dare not allow, since neither Theocritus in Greeke, Virgil in Latine, nor Sanazara in Italian did affect it."2 Perhaps Sidney felt some reserve in applauding too highly a work dedicated to himself, as stated in large type on the title-page; but, on the other hand, it was Sidney's own error to be too imitative of existing examples, and therefore to be afraid of "Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." He did not trust enough to his own powers; and had he lived, with all his grace and purity of style and thought, he could never have risen to the rank of a great, bold, and original writer. Spenser adopted “rustic language" with the strictest dramatic propriety, for he at once saw the unfitness of making herdsmen and clowns talk like kings and courtiers. See Todd's "Life of Spenser," vol. i. p. ix. Cooper's Athena Cantabrigienses, vol. ii. p. 259, &c. 2 Edit. folio 1598, p. 513. It came out originally in 4to. 1595, when it was called "An Apologie of Poetrie." |