Drummond of Hawthornden considered them improperly ascribed to him. Chalmers supposed them to be addressed to Elizabeth. Some are interesting for the light which they throw. The 71st exhibits the lady at her embroidery. She is the bee; he is the spider. If the poet had known the sensibility to music which spiders are said to exhibit, he might have garnished his sonnet with several pretty conceits. The story told by Sir John Hawkins would have been a treasure. When he suffers the tenderness of his feelings to find utterance, he is always natural and affecting. The 78th Sonnet breathes the thought which is found in a song of Burns. Spenser, we apprehend, like all sonneteers, invented most of his own miseries. They depend on the rhymes required. The pen bestows every grace on the form which it creates. The courtship of Spenser is imagined to have spread over two years. It closed in a swell of triumphant music. Truth speaks in the "Epithalamium:" but it is truth wearing the crown of poetry. Coleridge called it sublime. It has the glow of Shakspeare's youthful love, with more purity. The gold of the dove's feathers is without a stain. The philosophic Hallam outstripped the poetical critics in the admiration of his welcome. He knew no other nuptial song, ancient or modern, of equal beauty, and heard in it a strain redolent of a bridegroom's joy and a poet's fancy.

The "Epithalamium" recalls a remark of the latest editor of Spenser, which we do not venture to quote in any words but his own :"If it were possible to collect together all poet's wives, whether dea or living, we are confident that we should find them, however extolled by their husbands, to be a company of extremely distasteful women." We trust that the editor has no fear of ghosts. A superstitious man might well look to a shaking of his curtains in the dark winter nights, and be scared by all the Loves of the Poets, scowling in white apparel, with Mrs. Jameson at their head. We confess that history is not always flattering. But many pleasing testimonies belong to the other side. What witness more agrecable to our younger readers can we call than the author who sang the "Pleasures of Hope?" He could ask his affections, on oath, if they ever found a match for his wife? and they shouted with one voice-Never! What we read of Mrs. Campbell verifies the statement. Her habit was to leave her husband's study-door a little ajar that she might enjoy a frequent peep without disturbing him. Spenser is believed to have been in England before the end of 1595, and to have brought with him his wife and three new books of the "Faerie Queene." He had business more unpleasing. He was engaged in a lawsuit with Lord Fermoy respecting some lands on which the poet was accused of wasting corn and timber. In the end his opponent was victor, and Spenser was obliged to make compensation for the injury alleged. This troublesome lawsuit, if it did

BEREAVEMENT AND DEATH.

579

not cause the journey, occupied most of his time. The year 1596 was a busy one. Affectionate memory thinks of the different promise with which the spring of 1597 dawned on Spenser and Shakspeare. Tears drop at the contrast. One heard the distant mutter of a gathering tempest; the other was preparing to rest from his London labours in one of the best houses in Stratford, which he repaired and improved. The visits of Shakspeare were hailed by rejoicing townsfolk; Spenser was the most unpopular man in all Ireland. His system for governing Ireland was one of coercion, and the rumour had gone before him; for though the "View" was not printed till 1633, it had considerable circulation in manuscript. According to Disraeli, this State memorial ought to make us regret that Spenser only wrote verses. There is in his "sweet and voluble prose" a charm which has been lost in more artificial splendour. We find no affectation of Chaucerian words. The gold is not spotted with rust. The characteristic of the treatise is sagacity uttered without ornament. We scarcely remember more than one phrase slightly burnished. The minstrel disappears in the practical politician. The long-threatening storm only waited for a spark. The train was laid up to the gate of Kilcolman, and burst with disastrous explosion. The castle was in a blaze. Spenser and his wife escaped from the flames and the rebels, but their "little child, new born," perished. The story is told, on the authority of Ben Jonson, that Spenser died in London "for lack of bread," and refused the twenty pieces of gold which Essex sent, with the observation that "he had no time to spend them."

The misery of the poet's death is, we think, exaggerated. The statement of Camden that he returned to England in destitution is sufficiently clear and explicit. He had his pension and one appointment at least. He possessed likewise rich and influential friends, with whom there is no just cause for supposing him to have quarrelled. We prefer to account for his melancholy disease by mental sufferings and horrible recollections of his burning house and expiring child. Such agonies might easily destroy a stronger frame. Three months of the suffering were abundant to kill Spenser. He died January 16, 1598-9, an inn or lodging-house in King Street being the appropriate scene. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer. The Earl of Essex paid the expenses. The widow and two sons were, of course, left in want, and unprovided for. A petition in their behalf was presented to the Queen's Council, and eight of the more distinguished members, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, appealed to the President of Munster for assistance. We do not know the result. Before 1603 the widow of Spenser changed her name. She married one Roger Leckerstone, between whom and her eldest son a feud appears soon to have broken out. King Street witnessed the death

of a woman to whom the illustrious memory of a husband was not dear. We allude to her who had borne the name of Hooker. The moral which Izaak Walton draws would have been applicable also to the relict of Spenser:-"She was unlike Jephtha's daughter, that she stayed not a comely time to lament her widowhood, nor lived long enough to bewail her second marriage, for which, doubtless, she would have found cause."

So passed away, with a broken heart, at the comparatively early age of forty-six years, a man for whom, on Lord Bacon's theory, a long life might have been anticipated. For his studies must have filled his mind with splendid objects, and histories, and fables, and the grandest conceptions of life in its most picturesque shapes. If Spenser had enjoyed the prolonged age of his master, Chaucer, or even the green and early autumn of Shakspeare, what fruits we might have hoped to gather! The short supplement of six years would have added a chapter of gold. Think of what Shakspeare accomplished within the same period!

Of the features or manners of Spenser we know even less than of his real personal history. Neither the outer nor inner man is distinctly before us. How did he look? How did he talk? Echo only answers "How!" Several portraits of the poet are in existence, but the degree of their resemblance and authenticity cannot be determined. Mr. Collier mentions a miniature once in the possession of Rodd, the bookseller of Newport Street. The features are described as sharp and delicately formed, and the nose long. The account which Aubrey gives from Beeston, who had often seen Spenser, describes him as "a little man with short hair and cuffs." The conjecture is probable that Beeston refers to the later portion of Spenser's life, when he was nearly connected with the Puritanical party, in whose eyes the broad lace collar would have been frightful. We sigh for any of those individual traits which make the life of biography. Who does not read with interest of the abstracted look and meditative stoop of Chaucer in his gray gown, red stockings, and black shoes; or of the banter of the host of "The Tabard" about his corpulence; of Ben Jonson's eye lower than the other, and his coachman's coat with slits under the armpits; of Waller's forehead full of wrinkles, and his writing like the scratching of a hen; of Milton's pronunciation of R hard; of the eye of Hobbes, when in discourse, shining as if a bright live coal were in it; or of Hooker's face full of pimples, always turned indirectly to the gazer? For any notes of this familiar nature we may not look in the story told of Spenser. After all, we are acquainted best with the inner His poetry is a reflection of his mind, and has always produced a strong and soothing influence over kindred tempers. His solemn strain breathes a shaping magic. The reader remembers the noble

man.

THE FRIENDS OF SPENSER.

581 eulogy of Milton, when he argues that the true wisdom of a man depends on his knowledge of good and evil, and his choice of the good. "Assuredly," are Milton's words, "we bring not innocence into the world; we bring impurity rather. That which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary, which was the reason why our sage, serious poet, Spenser (whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas), describing true temperance under the person of Guyon, brings him with his palmer through the Cave of Mammon and the Bower of Bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain." The passage to which Milton alludes is in the seventh canto of the second book of the "Faerie Queene," and the lover of Comus will understand the interest which he felt.

The friends of Spenser included most of the eminent men of his There seems to be good reason for reckoning Shakspeare in the number. The interchange of praise is conspicuous. Spenser indicates Shakspeare almost by name as one

"Whose full high thoughts' invention

Doth like himself heroically sound."

He mentions him also in the "Tears of the Muses" and "Colin Clout." Todd, indeed, assumes "our pleasant Willy" to refer to Sidney, who had been dead for some years. The "sitting in idle cell" could not, therefore, apply to him. When the "Midsummer Night's Dream" was printed, Spenser's eyes were closed, but the evident application to him of a couplet (act v., scene 1) may have been one of the additions made by Shakspeare to the drama before its publication. A slight anecdote adds another honoured name to the list of Spenser's admirers. When "Gondibert" came out, Sir John Denham asked Archbishop Usher if he had seen it. "Out upon him," was the reply, "with his vaunting preface. He speaks against my old friend, Edmund Spenser." Perhaps Usher's exception was rather captious and hasty. Davenant cannot be fairly charged with speaking "against" Spenser. His chief censure is of the "unlikely" choice of the stanza, and the use of "exploded" words. In one sense, the poetry of Spenser would give a careless student an incorrect notion of his, tone of feeling. He never suggests the picture drawn by Burton of a lover of solitariness walking by a brookside in meditation, or building castles in the air. He seems to have ended his saunter whenever he chose, or found a gate in the enchanted palace which opened into the bustle and throng of the street. Disraeli had formed a judgment entirely erroneous when he wrote: "Of the tuneful train Spenser was the most poetical in the gentlest attributes of the poet. That robust force, which the enterprise of active life demands, was not lodged in that soul of tenderness." Why, it never lodged in any soul with more healthful development.

Spenser appears to have been pre-eminently fitted for active life, in which he spent his most vigorous years. We regard capacity for action as the distinguishing feature of the highest genius. It does not pertain to any lower class, but stops at the first. Pope said that Addison had too beautiful a mind to make a man of business. What a mistake! He suffered from a debility of purpose, as when the gale of "Hear him!" greeted his rising in the house, and quite blew his selfconfidence over. Spenser fulfilled without knowing it the requirement of Selden-" "Tis ridiculous for a man to dance when he should go." Read his "View of the State of Ireland." How perfectly the singing robe is laid aside! We might bring many examples of our business theory. Take the very greatest. Think of Shakspeare as a theatrical manager. What jarring tempers he had to reconcile! what rivalries to pacify! what roughnesses to smooth down! Hartley Coleridge avowed a belief that Shakspeare's worldly avocations were as little poetical as those of any broker on 'Change. The author of "Ivanhoe" was an effective Clerk of Session. Chaucer was not a drowsy member of Parliament, and looked sharply after the interests of the county which returned him. Cromwell would never have snatched the pen from the hand of Milton, as he sat "boggling" over a Latin letter to a foreign court.

Some poetry demands retirement for its production; Wordsworth would never have been able to write his "Excursion," if utterly withdrawn from the copses and thickets of Grasmere. And, doubtless, large portions of the "Faerie Queene" were composed in the shady stillness of Kilcolman. But we believe Spenser,

"Sole-sitting by the shores of old Romance,"

to have been independent of outward circumstances.

Elliot, the thoughts of

It is difficult to define, within moderate limits, the poetical powers of Spenser, but an estimate of their truth is easy. He had, in large measure, the qualities which, as Hobbes told Davenant, impart a natural colour to a poem. He knew well, i. e., he had in his memory images distinct and clear; and he knew much, i. e., his circuit of acquirement was wide. He trailed his net over antiquity. His learning, like the muscular action of health, obeyed the will. Corn Law rhymer, confessed,-"I am not a poet; the genuine poets flow without effort as from a fountain." conceive a Spenser pumping for a supply. Why, then, lovers of poetry be indifferent to his masterpiece? Why does the reader grow heavy over the "Faerie Queene?" Mrs. Montague has divined the reason. Sympathy is impossible with imaginary beings. Our esteem of Sir Guyon, our love of Sir Calidore, our veneration of Arthur, are faint and uncertain. We question their existence. People

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