Volume Ii Part 19 (1/2)
[278] In the Elizabethan drama the words ”England” and ”France” we constantly used to signify the kings of those countries.
[279] I say supposed, for the names of his two sons, Sylva.n.u.s and Peregrine, indicate that they were born in Ireland, and that Spenser continued to regard it as a wilderness and his abode there as exile.
The two other children are added on the authority of a pedigree drawn up by Sir W. Betham and cited in Mr. Hales's Life of Spenser prefixed to the Globe edition.
[280] Ben Jonson told Drummond that one child perished in the flames.
But he was speaking after an interval of twenty-one years, and, of course, from hearsay. Spenser's misery was exaggerated by succeeding poets, who used him to point a moral, and from the shelter of his tomb launched many a shaft of sarcasm at an unappreciative public.
Giles Fletcher in his ”Purple Island” (a poem which reminds us of the ”Faery Queen” by the supreme tediousness of its allegory, but in nothing else) set the example in the best verse he ever wrote:--
”Poorly, poor man, he lived; poorly, poor man, he died.”
Gradually this poetical tradition established itself firmly as authentic history. Spenser could never have been poor, except by comparison. The whole story of his later days has a strong savor of legend. He must have had ample warning of Tyrone's rebellion, and would probably have sent away his wife and children to Cork, if he did not go thither himself. I am inclined to think that he did, carrying his papers with him, and among them the two cantos of Mutability, first published in 1611. These, it is most likely, were the only ones he ever completed, for, with all his abundance, he was evidently a laborious finisher. When we remember that ten years were given to the elaboration of the first three books, and that five more elapsed before the next three were ready, we shall waste no vain regrets on the six concluding books supposed to have been lost by the carelessness of an imaginary servant on their way from Ireland.
[281] Sir Philip Sidney did not approve of this. ”That same framing of his style to an old rustic language I dare not allow, since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sannazzaro in Italian did affect it.” (”Defence of Poesy.”) Ben Jonson, on the other hand, said that Guarini ”kept not decorum in making shepherds speak as well as himself could.” (”Conversations with Drummond.”) I think Sidney was right, for the poets' Arcadia is a purely ideal world, and should be treated accordingly. But whoever looks into the glossary appended to the ”Calendar” by E.K., will be satisfied that Spenser's object was to find unhackneyed and poetical words rather than such as should seem more on a level with the speakers. See also the ”Epistle Dedicatory.” I cannot help thinking that E.K. was Spenser himself, with occasional interjections of Harvey. Who else could have written such English as many pa.s.sages in this Epistle?
[282] It was at Penshurst that he wrote the only specimen that has come down to us, and bad enough it is. I have said that some of Sidney's are pleasing.
[283] See ”My Study Windows,” 264 _seqq_.
[284] Of course _dillies_ and _lilies_ must be read with a slight accentuation of the last syllable (permissible then), in order to chime with _delice_. In the first line I have put _here_ instead of _hether_, which (like other words where _th_ comes between two vowels) was then very often a monosyllable, in order to throw the accent back more strongly on _bring_, where it belongs. Spenser's innovation lies in making his verses by ear instead of on the finger-tips, and in valuing the stave more than any of the single verses that compose it. This is the secret of his easy superiority to all others in the stanza which he composed, and which bears his name.
Milton (who got more of his schooling in these matters from Spenser than anywhere else) gave this principle a greater range, and applied it with more various mastery. I have little doubt that the tune of the last stanza cited above was clinging in Shakespeare's ear when he wrote those exquisite verses in ”Midsummer Night's Dream” (”I know a bank”), where our grave pentameter is in like manner surprised into a lyrical movement. See also the pretty song in the eclogue for August.
Ben Jonson, too, evidently caught some cadences from Spenser for his lyrics. I need hardly say that in those eclogues (May, for example) where Spenser thought he was imitating what wiseacres used to call the _riding-rhyme_ of Chaucer, he fails most lamentably. He had evidently learned to scan his master's verses better when he wrote his ”Mother Hubberd's Tale.”
[285] Drummond, it will be remarked, speaking from memory, takes Cuddy to be Colin. In Milton's ”Lycidas” there are reminiscences of this eclogue as well as of that for May. The latter are the more evident, but I think that Spenser's
”Cuddie, the praise is better than the price,”
suggested Milton's
”But not the praise, Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears.”
Shakespeare had read and remembered this pastoral. Compare
”But, ah, Mecaenas is yclad in clay, And great Augustus long ago is dead, And all the worthies liggen wrapt in lead,”
with
”King Pandion, he is dead; All thy friends are lapt in lead.”
It is odd that Shakespeare, in his ”lapt in lead,” is more Spenserian than Spenser himself, from whom he caught this ”hunting of the letter.”