his lifetime, and that his poetry raised him to a height which hitherto had been occupied by Chaucer alone, our ignorance about him may be accounted extraordinary. There is probably no English poet save Shakespeare who has exercised so wide a sway in his own country. Many a noble poet, and many a writer of high impulses, has acknowledged Spenser as his master. "The 'Faerie Queene,'" says Mr. Stopford Brooke, " has never ceased to make poets," and the men who have borne witness to its power are among the most honoured names in our literature. It was by reading the "Faerie Queene" that Cowley became "irrecoverably a poet." The author of this incomparable poem was the poetical guide of Milton, the admiration of Dryden, who styles him "inimitable," the delight of the youthful Pope, the inspirer of Gray, the constant companion of Scott and Southey, of Shelley and Keats, and the favourite poet of Charles Kingsley. "Spenser," said Sir Walter, "I could have read for ever." Southey read the great allegory through thirty times, and regarded Spenser as the greatest master of versification in our language. "Do you love Spenser ?" writes Landor. "I have him in my heart of hearts." * Keats, at seventeen, in the expressive words of Cowden Clarke, "ramped through the scenes of the romance like a young horse turned into a * Elsewhere, however, he utters a different opinion. Addressing ing Wordsworth, he says "Thee gentle Spenser fondly led, But me he mostly sent to bed." spring meadow;" and Lord Houghton adds, "He could talk of nothing else; his countenance would light up at each rich expression, and his strong frame would tremble with emotion as he read. The lines in imitation of Spenser' are the earliest. known verses of his composition, and to the very last the traces of this main impulse of his life are visible." Spenser, then, lives for us in his works. Of the man himself, so little is known with certainty that it may be stated in two or three pages. He was born in London, in 1552, and was therefore about six years old when Elizabeth came to the throne. His school education was acquired at Merchant Taylors', and from thence he went as a sizar to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. There seems to be evidence that his poetical genius blossomed early, and that he had written verses before entering the university, which he left in 1576, after taking his Master's degree. Meanwhile he had won two warm friends, Edward Kirke and Gabriel Harvey, the latter of whom was destined to influence, not always wisely, the genius of the poet. Some time was spent in the north of England, * Spenser has not been the delight of poets alone. Lord Somers, one of the most accomplished men of his age, was passionately fond of the "Faerie Queene," and in the last picture which he sat for to Sir Godfrey Kneller, he desired to be painted with Spenser in his hand. Lord Chatham is said to have been always reading this poet, who also won the admiration of Fox and of Burke. "The nobility of the Spensers," said Gibbon, "has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough, but I exhort them to consider the 'Faerie Queene' as the most precious jewel of their coronet." and there Spenser fell vainly in love with Rosalind, the "widow's daughter of the glen," who, according to Kirke, "was a gentlewoman of no mean house, nor endowed with any vulgar and common gifts both of nature and manners.' The passion was not returned, and the poet found vent for his grief, and, no doubt, large compensation also, in the composition of eclogues. In 1579 Spenser was in London, and it seems to have been at the same time, or a little earlier, that he gained the acquaintance and friendship of Sir Philip Sidney, his junior by two years. It was in the closing month of that year that the poet published, anonymously, his "Shepherd's Calendar." The letters between Harvey and Spenser at this period upon literary matters contain also a fact for the biographers, since we read of a new sweetheart, another "little Rosalind," who appears for a moment, to pass away for ever. And now we hear for the first time of the "Faerie Queene," and that it did not suit the taste of Gabriel Harvey, a pedantic critic, who tried to form our English verse after classical models, and for a while infected Spenser with his folly. The intimacy with Sidney, and his acquaintance with Sidney's uncle, the Earl of Leicester, failed to lead, as Spenser hoped it would have done, to promotion at court. It was probably well for the poet that it did not. He needed an "ampler ether" in which to breathe his poetic life, and found it in Ireland, whither he went as secretary to the Lord Deputy, Lord Grey of Wilton, in 1580. The country was at that time in a state of anarchy, which demanded vigorous action. Grey is said to have governed justly but severely, and the terrible scenes Spenser must have witnessed left, no doubt, their mark upon his character and genius. He found himself, in the words of Dean Church, "transplanted into a wild and turbulent savagery, where the elements of civil society hardly existed, and which had the fatal power of drawing into its own evil and lawless ways the English who came into contact with it." A poet's life is best nurtured by conflict, but the position in which the conquering race stood at that time to the conquered was not likely to encourage the noblest virtues of chivalry, courtesy, and forbearance. The Spartan rigour of Lord Grey's administration was afterwards praised in no niggard terms by his secretary, in his remarkable tractate, "A View of the Present State of Ireland," and we gather from it that the poet of the "Faerie Queene," gentle and lovable though his nature on its poetical side may seem, was not free from sternness or, from what on a modern estimate might be deemed, a strain of cruelty. The posts accepted by Spenser in Ireland have been recorded. One was that of Clerk of Decrees and Recognizances in the Irish Court of Chancery, and another which he took up several years later was the appointment of Clerk to the Council of Munster. In a worldly point of view he seems to have prospered. We know that he had a lease. of the Abbey and Manor of Inniscorthy, and that Lord Grey presented him with some of the property forfeited by the rebels. Sir Walter Raleigh, it may be remembered, had taken part in the struggle in Ireland under Lord Grey, and it was then in all probability that he and Spenser became acquainted. A warm friendship followed, and when Spenser settled with a large grant of land at Kilcolman, we know-for the visit has been recorded in the poet's verse-that he welcomed Raleigh under his castle roof. On this occasion it appears that Spenser read to his friend some portion of his unfinished poem, "The Faerie Queene." Raleigh, unlike Harvey, was quick to discern its merits, and the sonnet in which he praised it—a sonnet which, according to Archbishop Trench, is "about the finest compliment which was ever paid by poet to poet "should be known to all readers; * and it *"Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept ; This sonnet, says Leigh Hunt, "flows with such nerve and will, and is so dashing and sounding in the rest of its modulation, that no impression remains upon the mind but that of triumphant force. But Archbishop Trench concludes his generous estimate of the poem |