CHAPTER I THE SHEPHEARDS CALENDER " 1 THE life of Spenser, like that of his younger contemporary, Shakespeare, is involved in much obscurity. "No poet ever kept a mask over his own features so long and so closely as Spenser." The accounts of him are mainly derived from inferences from his works. Painstaking research, however, appears to have brought to light a few items of information from external sources, but, so far from throwing light on the subject, they only add to its obscurity, as they stand in no natural relation to any impression of the author and his circumstances which can be derived from his works. The accepted facts as to Spenser's life before he settled in Ireland may be briefly stated. Edmund Spenser is supposed to have been born in London in, or about, the year 1552. Nothing for certain is known about his parents, but it has been conjectured that his father was a journeyman clothmaker, residing in East Smithfield. In his poems he claims affinity with the family of the Spencers of Althorpe, and he dedicates several poems to the daughters of Sir John Spencer, the then head of that family. It is supposed that he was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, where he received assistance as a "poor scholler," and that he was admitted as a "sizar" to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, in 1569, where he is again reported as in receipt of relief.2 It is 1 Courthope, cited by Grosart, Works of Edmund Spenser, i. 241. * This identification is an inference from a contemporary document entitled The Spending of the Money of Robert Nowell, which was privately printed by R. B. Knowles in 1877. Mr. Knowles "found three Spensers in the books also supposed that he had begun authorship when he went up to Cambridge, as a work which appeared in 1569 (Vander Noodt's Theatre for Worldlings) contains the Visions of Petrarch and the original material of the Visions of Bellay which are included in Spenser's works. Poor as he was, he is said to have remained at Cambridge till 1576, and from the so-called "Letterbook" of Gabriel Harvey (in which the poet is referred to under the names of "Benevolo" and "Immerito") it would appear that he contracted an intimacy with Gabriel Harvey, who had become a fellow of Pembroke Hall in 1570, the year after Spenser went to that College. Harvey is believed to have introduced Spenser to Sir Philip Sidney, by whom it is conjectured that he was made acquainted with Sidney's uncle, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the favourite of the Queen. Under the signature of "Immerito" a letter (or what appears to be a letter) to Harvey is dated from Leicester House in the Strand in October 1579. In the interval between that time and the date of his leaving Cambridge Spenser is believed to have spent some time in Lancashire, the supposed scene of his love for "Rosalind." It is not related how he supported himself there. It has also been suggested that he may have been employed during that period in carrying despatches for the Earl of Leicester to correspondents in Ireland and abroad.1 The sudden promotion of Spenser from the humble position of a 'sizar "2 to the intimacy of Sir Philip Sidney and the Earl of Leicester, though accepted apparently as a matter of course by modern writers, is of the Merchant Taylors', and concluded that the poorest of them, 'a free journeyman' in the art or mystery of clothmaking,' might be the poet's father, but he afterwards abandoned the theory. Dr. Grosart, however, adhered to it.”—Ency. Brit., art. “Edmund Spenser.” 1 In some playful Latin verses in the letter which purports to have been addressed to Harvey from Leicester House, "Immerito" professes to bid him farewell on setting out for France and the Continent. Harvey in his reply expresses doubts about his going. Two other very commendable Letters, etc., 1580. 2" Sizars or "serving clerks": certain poor scholars at Cambridge, annually elected, who in return for manual services in the college were given meals without charge and paid fees on a lower scale than the ordinary students. They corresponded to "battlers" or "servitors" at Oxford. one of the most unintelligible things in the annals of letters. They were both "men of the sword," and by such men in those days a professional writer would be regarded in the same light as a player or clerk, to be accepted according as he was amusing or serviceable. The story of Spenser, in the language of modern literary biography, "mixing with the most brilliant intellectual society of his time," is, I believe, a fable. Whatever there may have been in that way since, I feel quite certain that in those days there was no such society, and the only authority for the picture are some letters which are supposed to have passed between Spenser and Gabriel Harvey, but which, as I believe, and shall endeavour to show, are fictitious. Moreover, Spenser, at the time he entered Leicester's household, was unknown as a writer, though he was then (on the accepted facts) about twenty-seven years old, a much more seasoned age for a man in those times than it is now. Shakespeare's "Iago," for instance, is represented as twenty-eight. I am aware that it may be said Sidney discovered Spenser's promise, but there is no allusion to him in Sidney's correspondence, or anything in it, so far as has been discovered, to show that Sidney was interested in letters apart from the practical object (in the early stage of his life) of training himself for a public career.2 The Lancashire story has been built up on a "glosse to the Shepheards Calender by one "E. K.," who has been identified, on the strength of the correspondence of the initials, with Edward Kirke, also a sizar of Pembroke Hall, and a contemporary of Spenser. It has, however, 1 "I have looked upon the world for four times seven years."-Othello, i. 3. 2 Compare the following remarks of Dr. Grosart on the subject of Spenser's friendship with Sidney, of which he finds strong evidence in the poems: "That Sir Philip Sidney has left behind him no slightest scrap evidential of all this is not peculiar to the 'friendship' with Spenser. I have read-at Hatfield and elsewhere-sheafs of his letters, but have never come upon a single line on literary matters, or even on Stella. I am not aware that his Sonnets, or Arcadia, or Defence, are mentioned once in all the vast Sidneian correspondence."-Works of Edmund Spenser, i. 455. I do not profess to understand this reference to unpublished correspondence. Sir Philip Sidney's published correspondence, far from being "vast," is singularly meagre. Presumably Sir Henry Sidney's letters are also referred to. |