Part 33 (1/2)

For while I ran by the most secret streets, Eschewing still the common haunted track, From me, catif, alas! bereaved was Creusa then, my spouse; I wot not how, Whether by fate, or missing of the way, Or that she was by weariness retain'd; But never sith these eyes might her behold.

Nor did I yet perceive that she was lost, Nor never backward turned I my mind; Till we came to the hill whereon there stood The old temple dedicated to Ceres.

And when that we were there a.s.sembled all, She was only away deceiving us, Her spouse, her son, and all her company.

What G.o.d or man did I not then accuse, Near wode *** for ire? or what more cruel chance Did hap to me in all Troy's overthrow?”

*Companion.

**Bright.

***Mad.

Chapter XLI SPENSER--THE ”SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR”

WHEN Henry signed Surrey's death-warrant he himself was near death, and not many weeks later the proud and violent king met his end. Then followed for England changeful times. After Protestant Edward came for a tragic few days Lady Jane. Then followed the short, sad reign of Catholic Mary, who, dying, left the throne free for her brilliant sister Elizabeth. Those years, from the death of King Henry VIII to the end of the first twenty years of Elizabeth's reign, were years of action rather than of production. They were years of struggle, during which England was swayed to and fro in the fight of religions. They were years during which the fury of the storm of the Reformation worked itself out. But although they were such unquiet years they were also years of growth, and at the end of that time there blossomed forth one of the fairest seasons of our literature.

We call the whole group of authors who sprang up at this time the Elizabethans, after the name of the Queen in whose reign they lived and wrote. And to those of us who know even a very little of the time, the word calls up a brilliant vision. Great names come crowding to our minds, names of poets, dramatists, historians, philosophers, divines. It would be impossible to tell of all in this book, so we must choose the greatest from the n.o.ble array. And foremost among them comes Edmund Spenser, for ”the glory of the new literature broke in England with Edmund Spenser.”*

*J. R. Green, History of English People.

If we could stand aside, as it were, and take a wide view of all our early literature, it would seem as if the names of Chaucer and Spenser stood out above all others like great mountains. The others are valleys between. They are pleasant fields in which to wander, in which to gather flowers, not landmarks for all the world like Chaucer and Spenser. And although it is easier and safer for children to wander in the meadows and gather meadow flowers, they still may look up to the mountains and hope to climb them some day.

Edmund Spenser was born in London in 1552, and was the son of a poor clothworker or tailor. He went to school at the Merchant Taylors' School, which had then been newly founded. That his father was very poor we know, for Edmund Spenser's name appears among ”certain poor scholars of the schools about London” who received money and clothes from a fund left by a rich man to help poor children at school.

When he was about seventeen Edmund went to Cambridge, receiving for his journey a sum of ten s.h.i.+llings from the fund from which he had already received help at school. He entered college as a sizar, that is, in return for doing the work of a servant he received free board and lodging in his college. A sizar's life was not always a happy one, for many of the other scholars or gentlemen commoners looked down upon them because of their poverty. And this poverty they could not hide, for the sizars were obliged to wear a different cap and gown from that of the gentlemen commoners.

But of how Spenser fared at college we know nothing, except that he was often ill and that he made two lifelong friends. That he loved his university, however, we learn from his poems, when he tenderly speaks of ”my mother Cambridge.”* When he left college Spenser was twenty-three. He was poor and, it would seem, ill, so he did not return to London, but went to live with relatives in the country in Lancas.h.i.+re. And there about ”the wasteful woods and forest wide”** he wandered, gathering new life and strength, taking all a poet's joy in the beauty and the freedom of a country life, ”for ylike to me was liberty and life,”** he says. And here among the pleasant woods he met a fair lady named Rosalind, ”the widow's daughter of the glen.”***

*Faery Queen, book IV canto xi.

**Shepherd's Calendar, December ***The same, April.

Who Rosalind really was no one knows. She would never have been heard of had not Spenser taken her for his lady and made songs to her. Spenser's love for Rosalind was, however, more real than the fas.h.i.+onable poet's pa.s.sion. He truly loved Rosalind, but she did not love him, and she soon married some one else. Then all his joy in the summer and the suns.h.i.+ne was made dark.

”Thus is my summer worn away and wasted, Thus is my harvest hastened all too rathe;*

The ear that budded fair is burnt and blasted, And all my hoped gain it turned to scathe: Of all the seed, that in my youth was sown, Was naught but brakes and brambles to be mown.”**

*Early.

**Shepherd's Calendar, December.

At twenty-four life seemed ended, for ”Love is a cureless sorrow.”*

*Shepherd's Calendar, August.

”Winter is come, that blows the baleful breath, And after Winter cometh timely death.”*

*Shepherd's Calendar, December.

And now, when he was feeling miserable, lonely, desolate an old college friend wrote to him begging him to come to London.

Spenser went, and through his friend he came to know Sir Philip Sidney, a true gentleman and a poet like himself, who in turn made him known to the great Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth's favorite.