fore to suppose that such reflections were added during the first visit. How this is to be reconciled with the good reception Spenser is supposed to have had in England (including the grant of a pension by the Queen), which he himself, after his return to Ireland, acknowledges in Colin Clouts Come Home Again, is not explained. Similarly, the favourable account in the latter poem of the state of letters in England is wholly irreconcilable with that given in the Teares of the Muses. Muiopotmos was first published by itself, in 1590. The remaining pieces included in the Complaints are earlier work. These points will be dealt with more fully in connection with the several poems.

On the occasion of the visit in 1596 the literary work which Spenser is supposed to have done comprises the seeing through the press of the second portion of the Faerie Queene, the composition of at least two out of the Fowre Hymnes, of the Prothalamion (the latest poem), and of the long prose tract written in the form of a dialogue entitled A View of the Present State of Ireland. It is clear from internal evidence (as will be shown) that this is correctly attributed to the year 1596, and also that it was written in London.2

With all this mass of work it will be seen that Spenser cannot have had very much time to give to social intercourse, and in particular for forming an intimate new friendship (for it must have been new) with the Earl of Essex. A still greater difficulty however, to my mind, presents itself in the rivalry for the Queen's favour between Ralegh and Essex. That young nobleman "disdained the competition of love" with such a man, and spoke of him to the Queen as a "wretch" and a "knave,” and "did describe unto her what he had been and what he was." It is surely to the last degree improbable that

1 Entered for publication in the Stationers' Register on 20th January 1596. 2 It has been suggested that this piece was written in Ireland and brought over by Spenser on the occasion of the second visit. It was entered for publication (conditionally) in April 1598, when Spenser was in Ireland, but it was not printed till 1633.

3 1587. Essex was then twenty.

Essex would have formed an intimate friendship (for so it is customary to describe it) with a man who was being pushed at Court by one for whom he entertained these sentiments. It may be said that his interest in letters would overbear such prejudices. But there is nothing to

show that Essex had any great interest in letters. He was the Queen's favourite, and his mind was engrossed by schemes of military adventure. Though the literary pieces of any value which have passed under his name are beyond question, in my opinion, the work of Bacon,1 they may be presumed to reflect, to some extent at any rate, the Earl's personality. In one of these, a letter of advice to Sir Foulke Greville (not Sidney's friend) on his going to Cambridge, Essex is made to say, "For poets, I can commend none, being resolved to be ever a stranger to them." And in a letter written to Bacon in the time of his troubles (1600), in reply to one which contained a poetical figure, the Earl says, "I am a stranger to all poetical conceits, or else I should say somewhat of your poetical example."2 In this connection, however, I think that these sentiments were put in by design, as part of Bacon's scheme for securing for the Earl a reputation for gravity. But, even so, they are hardly compatible with a notorious intimacy with the principal poet of the day. If, however, Essex cared little for poets and poetry, he cared very much for anything which enabled him to outshine his rivals at the Court devices, and a

1 I refer especially to the "Devices" (as to which see Spedding, Life, i. ; Spedding's account of the "Northumberland" MS., "A Conference of Pleasure," 1870; F. J. Burgoyne's edition of the same MS., 1904); also to the Letter of Advice No. 1 to the Earl of Rutland (Spedding, Life, ii. 6), and the letter above mentioned to Sir Foulke Greville (ibid. p. 21). An example of the Earl's own work is his "Apology" of 1598, described as "penned by himselfe." The style of this is entirely different; it is straightforward and sincere, it shows no evidence of much ability on the part of the writer, and is undistinguished by literary art.

2 See Spedding, Life, ii. 191, 192. This letter, in my opinion, is not the Earl's own work, and Spedding evidently had doubts on the subject. It will be noticed that, in spite of the words above quoted, the letter ends with a poetical conceit of unusual magnificence, "I would light no where but at my Sovereign's feet," etc. I take the letter to belong to the correspondence which Francis Bacon "framed" to be shown to the Queen (see Spedding, Life, ii. 196).

poet who had portrayed him (as I shall hope to show Spenser had) under the romantic figure of " Artegall," the lover of "Britomart" (the Queen), would certainly have claims on his bounty, if not on his friendship. But is it likely that Spenser, who professes to have owed his introduction to the Court to Ralegh, would have done this, and have represented his patron, and the rival of Essex, under the relatively mean figure of the squire Timias? These questions may be left for fuller consideration in connection with the poem itself. But my general conclusion is that Spenser's supposed friendship with Essex is most improbable, and the story therefore that the Earl paid for a funeral in Westminster Abbey is a very curious one. But, if true, it is intelligible under my view of the authorship of the poems, because the action of Essex covered up Francis Bacon's secret. Whether he knew it or not is immaterial, for he was always ready to do anything to help Francis Bacon, for whom he entertained feelings of warm regard and admiration. Essex, we are told by a contemporary, was a man of flexible nature to be overruled," and where he liked he was, no doubt, much influenced. I consider it probable that he paid for Spenser's funeral because he was asked to do so, and that the people of his household, among whom were Anthony Bacon and his servants, managed the rest.

A

It may be asked what was the motive for such secrecy. I have touched on this point in the previous chapter, but I will take the opportunity here of dealing with it more fully. The answer is to be sought in two directions, in the character and habits of thought of the English people of the upper class at that epoch, and in the social position and occupations of the author. writer in those days had a very limited audience, confined, practically, to a certain number of the upper class and a small professional class. The English of those times, if somewhat less than of preceding times, were for the most part of a serious and (in my belief) self-contained habit. They admired gravity, and certainly expected it in men in responsible positions.

Until recently they had been constantly engaged in war, and they had passed through a period of change, accompanied by violence, in matters of religion. The problems which lay in the path of the new Protestant State were were serious and formidable, no man knew whether it could hold its own against the united powers of Catholicism in Europe, and it was held as a cardinal doctrine that there could not be unity in the State where there were divisions in the Church. With these and many other problems calling for solution, the arts had little appeal for men in responsible or leading positions, and those who affected them were liable to be regarded as idle and light-minded. Especially suspect was the "new poetry," which, in form at any rate, was not a native product, but a graft from Italy. Moreover the use of books was still comparatively small and little understood. The personality of the Queen, the absence of any other social centre, and the enormous powers of the Crown, drew the enterprising spirits to the Court, where there were two strata, those who were employed in official positions and who did the work, and those who secured opportunities of enrichment by nearness to the Queen, either through grants or by means of "squeezing" suitors (a regular practice of the times). Among the former were men like Burghley and Walsingham, serious and able men, with Protestant sympathies; the latter were, as a rule, members of the leading families, Catholic or Protestant, or men like Hatton and Ralegh, whom the Queen raised as favourites from a less distinguished position. These represented the intimate inner ring, but Elizabeth seems always to have known how to control them and prevent encroachments on the executive domain which she reserved for her servants trusted in that capacity. The "inner" Court was the circle which gave opportunities to the poet of human intercourse, and which appealed to his artistic sense, and it was to this circle that the Faerie Queene was primarily addressed. But the ambition of the poet on his active side lay in the direction of the

working positions. His problem was how to reconcile the two, and in affecting the former as a man of the world not to prejudice his chances of success as a statesman in the latter.

These are somewhat summary remarks, but they may serve to assist the reader in appreciating the bearings of some passages which I am about to quote, which throw light on the author's motives for secrecy.

The first passage is from the anonymous Arte of English Poesie (1589)1:

:

And peraduenture in this iron and malitious age of ours, Princes are lesse delighted in it [the Art of the Poet], being ouer earnestly bent and affected to the affaires of Empire and ambition, whereby they are as it were inforced to indeuour them selues to armes and practises of hostilitie, or to entend to the right pollicing of their states, and haue not one houre to bestow vpon any other ciuill or delectable Art of natural or morall doctrine nor scarce any leisure to thincke one good thought in perfect and godly contemplation, whereby their troubled mindes might be moderated and brought to tranquillitie. So as, it is hard to find in these dayes of noblemen or gentlemen any good Mathematician, or excellent Musitian, or notable Philosopher, or els a cunning Poet: because we find few great Princes much delighted in the same studies. Now also of such among the Nobilitie or gentrie as be very well seene in many laudable sciences, and especially in making or Poesie, it is so come to passe that they haue no courage to write and if they haue, yet are they loath to be a knowen of their skill. So as I know very many notable Gentlemen in the Court that haue written commendably and suppressed it agayne, or els suffred it to be publisht without their owne names to it: as if it were a discredit for a Gentleman, to seeme learned, and to shew him selfe amorous of any good Art. In other ages it was not so, . . .”

The second passage is from a disagreeable play by Ben Jonson entitled The Silent Woman (whether "Sir John Daw" stands for Sir Francis Bacon, as some suppose, is immaterial to the point under notice):

SIR DAUPHINE EUGENIE. Why, how can you justify your own being of a poet, that so slight all the old poets?

1 Attributed at a subsequent date to "Puttenham.”