find him in London, beginning his Prothalamion with the old complaint, "long fruitless stay In princes court, and expectation vain This poem, which was made in honor of the marriage of two daughters of the Earl of Worcester, was written and printed in 1596. In September of the same year, Spenser dedicated to the Countesses of Cumberland and Warwick, his Four Hymns. The first two of these, those in praise of Love and of Beauty, were, he says, written in the greener times of his youth, and so many copies were scattered abroad, that, when one of these two ladies (a precisian she must have been) advised that they should be suppressed, as being too warm in their tone, it was found impracticable to call them in. To amend the mischief which might have been done by these hymns of earthly Love and Beauty, the author resolved therefore to write two others, of heavenly and celestial, and then very oddly published all four together. More splendid examples of the power of verbal harmony than these compositions afford can nowhere be found in Spenser or any other poet. Both the passionate and the religious sentiment are to a certain degree unreal; the one is blended with metaphysics, the other is too ascetic; but the soul of the reader is taken captive by the concord of sweet sounds, and thought is dissolved into rapturous feeling by long-drawn strains of deep, rich music : — "Ne from thenceforth doth any fleshly sense, Or idle thought of earthly things, remaine; And all that pompe to which proud minds aspyre Seemes to them basenesse, and all riches drosse, The condition of the unhappy country which Spenser had adopted for his home, and with the government of which he had been in several capacities connected, would necessarily incite a thoughtful mind to inquire into the cause, and to seek for a remedy, of the enormous evils by which it was overrun. The poet gave no little time to these investigations, and had his sympathies been more heartily engaged on the side of the miserable natives, and his attention less exclusively directed to the interest of their foreign masters, his opportunities for observation and his natural sagacity were such as would have enabled him to do both the state and humanity some service, and to have greatly assisted, perhaps, in the solution of a practical problem, the difficulties of which still remain nearly as great as ever.1 The "View of the State of Ireland, written dialogue-wise between Eudoxus and Irenæus," exhibits the fruits of his inquiries and reflections. It is a very interesting discourse, and admirably written. The evils and abuses which 1 "But they say it is the fatal destiny of that land, that no purposes whatsoever which are meant for her good will prosper or take good effect; which, whether it proceed from the very genius of the soil, or influence of the stars, or that Almighty God hath not yet appointed the time of her reformation, or that he reserveth her in this unquiet state still for some secret scourge which shall by her come unto England, it is hard to be known, but yet much to be feared." — - Extracted from the Introduction to the View of the State of Ireland, Todd, VIII. 299. require redress are exposed with great power and clearness; the remedy proposed is the same which Lord Grey had employed, and which Spenser had sanctioned in the Legend of Justice, unsparing, thorough-going force; "a strong hand," and a free use of the sword. This treatise was probably composed in Ireland, and, receiving afterwards a few finishing strokes in England, presented in the earlier part of 1596 to the Queen and the most considerable persons of the court.1 It was first published in 1633, at Dublin, by Sir James Ware. The author doubtless looked to have some reward for the zeal he had displayed for the English government; nor were his claims entirely passed over, for in a letter from the Queen, dated the 30th of September, 1598, he is recommended to the Irish administration to be sheriff of Cork. There can be no question that Spenser had returned to Kilcolman before this time. He was living on his estates in October, 1598, when the insurrection in Munster broke out. None of the English undertakers could expect mercy of the rebels, and Spenser least of all. They pillaged his goods and burnt his house. He escaped with his wife, but an infant 1 The date of the manuscripts, of which not a few remain, is said to be uniformly 1596; but the work is too elaborate to have been written, as Todd supposes, in the first half of that year. The various copies were perhaps adapted to the more or less ferocious tastes, and to the private enmities, of the parties to whom they were submitted. "In some manuscripts I have seen," says Todd, "the severity of Spenser, as well in respect to certain families as to the nation in general, is considerably amplified.”(!) — Life of Spenser, p. cxxvi. child, so says Ben Jonson,1 perished in the flames. Thus stripped of all his means of living except his pension, Spenser naturally took refuge in England. But he survived his misfortunes only three months. He died at an inn in King Street, Westminster, on the 16th of January (O. S.), 1599.2 He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and, as was most fit, next to Chaucer. The Earl of Essex undertook the charge of his funeral; poets attended upon his hearse, and mournful elegies, with the pens that wrote them, were thrown into his tomb. We are informed by Browne in his Britannia's Pastorals, that Queen Elizabeth had ordered a splendid monument to her laureate, 3 4 1 Conversations with Drummond, (Shakespeare Society,) p. 12. 2 "He died for lack of bread, in King Street, and refused twenty pieces sent to him by my Lord of Essex, and said, 'He was sorry he had no time to spend them.'” Jonson's Conversations with Drummond, p. 12. This absurd and calumnious piece of gossip (now generally rejected as such) is confuted at length by Todd, who, however, also exceeds his authority when he states that Spenser's heart was broken by his misfortunes. 3 Todd's Life, pp. cxxix., cxxx. 4 The passage, which was first cited in Craik's Spenser and his Poetry, occurs at the end of the first Song of the Second Book. "Mighty Nereus' queen, In memory of what was heard and seen, Of richest gems, refined Indian ore, To raise, in honor of his worthy name, A Pyramis, whose head, like winged Fame; Should pierce the clouds, yea, seem the stars to kiss, And Mausolus' great tomb might shroud in his. The will had been performance, had not Fate, That never knew how to commiserate, Suborned curst Avarice to lie in wait For that rich prey (gold is a taking bait): but that her design was frustrated through the avarice of some person whom he does not mention. The monument which actually stands over the poet's remains was erected by Anne, Countess of Dorset, about thirty years after his death, and restored in 1778 at the expense of Pembroke College. The pedigree of Spenser, as compiled by Sir William Betham from the Records of Ireland, assigns to him four children, Sylvanus, Catherine, Lawrence, and Peregrine. All of these are said to have attained to adult years, and the oldest and youngest sons are known to have left offspring of their own. To these four we are to add, if we accept Ben Jonson's authority, the infant child that was lost at the destruction of Kilcolman, making in all the highly improbable number of five. Persons still survive who claim to be lineally derived from this illustrious source; but a satisfactory case cannot be made out, and, in the opinion of Mr. Hardiman, the family long since became extinct. Undoubted descendants of the poet's sister Sarah were existing in 1845, under the name of Travers.1 His wife was remarried, shortly after his death, to one Roger Seckerstone. Besides the pieces already mentioned, there will Who, closely lurking like a subtle snake And robbed our Colin of his monument." 1 An interesting investigation of all the known facts respecting Spenser's descendants and family connections is given further on in an Appendix, which has been extracted from Craik's Spenser and his Poetry, Vol. III. p. 243. |