volume of 1591, into the rhymed form used by Spenser for all sonnets that he wrote-three four-lined stanzas of alternate rhyme, with addition of a final couplet. For illustration, let us take the first of these Visions of Bellay, as Spenser translated it without rhyme in his boyhood, and as he rhymed it afterwards before he claimed it as his own-- "It was the time when rest, the gift of gods, So I, knowing the world's unsteadfastness, These lines of 1569 became in 1591— "It was the time when rest, soft sliding down In the forgetfulness of sleep doth drown The careful thoughts of mortal miseries: "Then did a ghost before mine eyes appear On that great river's bank that runs by Rome, My looks to Heaven, whence all good gifts do come. "And crying loud, Lo now, behold (quoth he) What under this great Temple placéd is: So I, that know this world's inconstancies, "Sith only God surmounts all times decay, In this way, Spenser revised all his translations from Bellay; but the translations from Petrarch, when he republished them as "formerly translated," remained absolutely as they were first written, with only a few acts of revision to extend to fourteen lines those "Epigrams' that were at first written in twelve. After the poems in van der Noodt's book came the prose text, entitled "A Brief Declaration of the Authour vpon his Visions, taken out of the Holy Scripture and dyuers Orators, Poetes, Philosophers and true histories. Translated out of French into English by Theodore Roest.” The running title used as page-heading is "The Theatre for Worldlings," and that is the name by which the book was known. College. Friendship with van der Noodt, and work of this kind. done for him, implied sympathy with the spirit of the refugees from the Low Countries. Such feeling Spenser at we shall find to be intense in Spenser's manhood, and it is thus shown to have been strong also in his youth. That he wrote much verse at school and college is not merely to be inferred from the fact that he was born to be one of the four greatest of our English poets. A letter of Gabriel Harvey's that names unpublished poems written by Spenser in his student days includes, among other work, not fewer than nine comedies. Having entered Pembroke Hall, on the twentieth of May, 1569, as a sizar, there is evidence, a year and a half later, of the want of outward means implied in such a form of studentship. In the Spending of the Money of Robert Nowell there is this entry, dated the seventh of November, 1570: "To Richard Lougher* and Edmond Spenser towe poor scholars of Pembrock haule vi a peace, in the whole xijs by the handes of Mr. Thomas Newce felow of the same howse . . . xij." It will be remembered that six * Langherne. shillings at that time would be equal to about three pounds in present buying power. Spenser's wealth was within him. The Master of Pembroke Hall in Spenser's time of residence at Cambridge was Dr. John Young, who in 1578 was made Bishop of Rochester-Roffensis. He is the faithful Roffy of one of the eclogues of Spenser's "Shepherd's Calendar." Evidence furnished to Dr. Grosart, from the college books, of old allowances to men when ill, shows that Spenser was ill for more than a fortnight in 1571; for two periods, each of a month, in 1572 ; for six weeks in 1573; for a month, and for a second period of a fortnight, in 1574; from which we may assume that the young poet's health was not robust. He graduated as B.A. in 1573, and as M.A. in 1576. Then, after seven years' residence, he left the university without having obtained a fellowship, and went to his friends in Lancashire, at Hurstwood and elsewhere among the barren hills and the vales of Pendle Forest. Gabriel Harvey. One of the friends whom Spenser left at Cambridge, Gabriel Harvey, loved him well, and in his own way, and according to his own lights, also loved good literature. When Spenser had finished his course at the university, and his age was about four-and-twenty, that friend and fellow-student of his at Pembroke Hall, Gabriel Harvey, was lecturing on rhetoric at Cambridge. The introductory lecture of Harvey's course in 1577, apparently his second course, was published under the name of “ Ciceronianus "; and his two first lectures of the course for 1578 were also published, under the name of "Rhetor." He had then advanced from a close following of Bembo and other Italians, who exalted above all things the Ciceronian style. He had received an impulse to the appreciation of individuality in other authors from the reading of Jean Sambuc's "Ciceronianus." He had learnt within that year to look for the whole man in a writer as a source of style, and, still exalting C--VOL. IX. Cicero, to attend first to the life and power of the man, and not to the mere surface polish of his language, "Let every man," he said, "learn to be, not a Roman, but himself." Gabriel Harvey, then, the friend of Spenser and of Sidney, was no pedant. He was the eldest of four sons of a prosperous ropemaker and maltster, who also kept cows, at Saffron Walden. Two other brothers, Richard and John, followed him after a while to Cambridge; Richard, the elder, coming to Pembroke Hall as a boy of fourteen, in 1575, found in his brother Gabriel a guide and tutor. Spenser in An obscure book of Gabriel Harvey's enables us to understand the way of Spenser's introduction into life. In July, 1578, Queen Elizabeth visited Audley End, where the buildings of the suppressed abbey, used as a residence, had the place of the great house afterwards built in the neighbourhood of Saffron Walden. Cambridge being close by, the university paid homage to the queen on that occasion. Gabriel Harvey, being a Saffron Walden man, made much of the event. When the great scholar, Sir Thomas Smith who was of Saffron Walden and a kinsman, who had become a Secretary of State under Elizabeth and Chancellor of the Order of the Garter, and had written a Latin book upon England, De Republicâ Anglorum-died, in 1579, Harvey wrote his lament called Smithus. A series of Latin poems celebrating notabilities of the queen's visit to Saffron Walden was written by Gabriel Harvey, and published under the name of Gratulationes Valdinenses ("Walden Gratulations"). Two were upon words spoken by the queen concerning Gabriel himself. He pressed forward with his homage, and the queen said, "Who is this? Is it Leicester's man that we were speaking of?" Being told that it was, she said, "I'll not deny you my hand, Harvey." Again, as the subject of another set of verses, "Tell me," the queen said to Leicester, "is it settled that you send this man to "That's well," she Italy and France?" "It is," said he. "And to the dales resort, where shepheards rich, The common friend of Harvey and Spenser who wrote the original gloss on "The Shepheardes Calender," says: "This is no poetical fiction, but unfeignedly spoken of the poet self, who for special occasion of private affairs (as I have been partly of himself informed) and for his more preferment, removing out of the north parts came into the south, as Hobbinol" (that is the name given in "The Shepheardes Calender" to Gabriel Harvey) “advised him privately." Now, the advancement was by introduction to the Earl of Leicester, and by Leicester-either in place of Harvey, or as well as Harvey-Spenser was sent abroad. In October, 1579, there were addressed to Gabriel Harvey some affectionate hexameters by Edmund Spenser, then on the point of travelling into France. "Despatched by my lord, I go thither," Spenser said, in the postscript dated from Leicester House, "as sent by him and maintained, most-what, of him; and there am to employ my time, my mind, to his honour's service." Clearly, then, the introduction to Leicester, which determined the whole future of Spenser's life, he had obtained from his friend Harvey. As "Leicester's man' |