Those two be those two great calamities, O griefe of griefes! O gall of all good heartes ! There is no known fact in Spenser's life to justify this complaint; on the contrary, as I have said before, he had been singularly fortunate. Grosart mentions a very curious thing about these lines, that in the edition of 1611 two of them were changed to and For such as now have most the world at will O let not those of whom the Muse is scorned. Robert Cecil was then in power and Solicitor-General. Bacon was Even more unintelligible in Spenser's case is the well-known complaint in Mother Hubberds Tale, in the same collection : Most miserable man, whom wicked fate Hath brought to Court, to sue for had ywist, To loose good dayes, that might be better spent ; A similar complaint occurs in the Prothalamion, which was written and published during Spenser's supposed visit to London in 1596: When I, (whom sullein care, Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay Like empty shaddowes, did afflict my brayne,) Along the shoare of silver streaming Themmes. With these may be compared Hamlet's complaints of a precisely similar character, and the story of Bacon's early "suit," and long failure, in his correspondence, where he describes himself, in a letter to Lord Burghley written early in 1595, as "a tired sea-sick suitor."1 The 33rd and 34th stanzas indicate that the author's early patron was Leicester, "his Colin" being Leicester's Colin. At that point the author begins to find difficulty in saying what he has to say through the feigned character of the "woman," and, by one of those almost imperceptible transpositions to which I have already alluded, he appears to put the speech into his own mouth (st. 35). We are surprised, therefore, to find at the end ("Thus having ended all her piteous plaint") that the "woman" is supposed to have been speaking all the time. But the confusion is evidently intentional, and it enables the author to speak his mind without appearing too clearly to be doing so. The burden of the poem is "mutability," and, in particular, the loss by death of a number of people who had been associated with the author's youth: his early patron, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (d. 1588); Leicester's brother, Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick (d. Feb. 1590); Sir Henry Sidney and his wife (sister of the Earls of Warwick and Leicester), who both died in 1586; Philip Sidney, who died from his wound received at Zutphen later in the same year; Francis Russell, second Earl of Bedford (father of the two sisters, Countess of Warwick 1 Spedding, Life, i. 12, 358-9, etc. and Countess of Cumberland, to whom the Fowre Hymns are addressed), who died in 1585. The lines in the stanza following those about Burghley quoted above Let them behold the piteous fall of mee, -are presumably self-regarding, and allude to some incident in the author's early career, when, from overconfidence and some offence given, he appears to have lost the favour of Leicester, and, not having won that of Burghley, he had found himself without place or prospects. This incident, whatever it was (evidently a critical one in the author's early career), is more specifically alluded to in Virgils Gnat and Muiopotmos, to which I shall come. The Teares of the Muses is written in the same pessimistic vein, and seems to belong to the same period, but perhaps about a year earlier. The dedication, which, from its terms, is evidently written with a view to the publication of the poem, refers to it as "this last slender meanes," etc., and the theme of the poem is the contrast, in the author's mind, between the present and the past. It is, in fact, the theme of disillusionment which comes with the passing of youth, especially for those whose imagination is strong. The picture of the age which the writer draws will hardly be recognised by those who have their ideas of it solely from biographical romances, but it was probably not so bad as he painted it by contrast with the ideal of his imagination. The general features described are perhaps most in evidence in periods of new material prosperity. The poem contains several notable instances of Spenser's aristocratic standpoint to which I have already alluded. The poem is best known for the lines about the theatre, containing the description which every one would like to think was intended for Shakespeare. It seems, however, to be generally agreed that he (ie. Shakespeare of Stratford) must be ruled out, as he is not supposed to have come to London till 1587 at the earliest, and would not therefore have had time to justify this eulogy before 1591, when the piece was published. The lines to which I refer are the lament of the Muse Thalia : Where be the sweete delights of learnings treasure O! all is gone; and all that goodly glee, Is layd abed, and no where now to see; And him beside sits ugly Barbarisme, And brutish Ignorance, ycrept of late Out of dredd darknes of the deepe Abysme, Where being bredd, he light and heaven does hate : And the faire Scene with rudenes foule disguize. All places they with follie have possest, All these, and all that els the Comick Stage Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced; And those sweete wits, which wont the like to frame, And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made In stead thereof scoffing Scurrilitie, But that same gentle Spirit, from whose pen Doth rather choose to sit in idle Cell, So am I made the servant of the manie, And laughing stocke of all that list to scorne; But loath'd of losels as a thing forlorne : Untill my cause of sorrow be redrest. It seems to be supposed by some writers that these lines refer to one and the same person, and they explain that "dead of late" is metaphorical (a strained interpretation at best), because in the following stanza but one retirement only from the world is indicated. But this is to read "that same" in the sense of "the aforesaid," which I feel sure is wrong. I consider that same" is redundant, put in for the metre, and strengthening the demonstrative "that." The sense then is "the gentle spirit, from whose pen," etc., namely, a different personage to "our pleasant Willy," who "is dead of late." I agree with those who think that the first person alluded to, « our pleasant Willy," is Tarlton. The second, the "gentle spirit," who from the language used might well be "Shakespeare," is, in my opinion, the author himself. The self-praise which the lines involve under such an interpretation is one of the peculiar characteristics of this writer, as I have already said. In the line "So am I made the servant of the manie," the writer identifies the "Muse," as he does more or less throughout, with himself, and the description tallies exactly with the circumstances and state of mind of |