Part 4 (2/2)
The allegory bodies forth the trials which beset the life of man in all conditions and at all times. But Spenser could never have seen in England such a strong and perfect image of the allegory itself--with the wild wanderings of its personages, its daily chances of battle and danger, its hairbreadth escapes, its strange encounters, its prevailing anarchy and violence, its normal absence of order and law--as he had continually and customarily before him in Ireland. ”The curse of G.o.d was so great,” writes John Hooker, a contemporary, ”and the land so barren both of man and beast, that whosoever did travel from one end to the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to Smerwick, about six score miles, he should not meet man, woman, or child, saving in cities or towns, nor yet see any beast, save foxes, wolves or other ravening beasts.” It is the desolation through which Spenser's knights pursue their solitary way, or join company as they can. Indeed to read the same writer's account, for instance, of Ralegh's adventures with the Irish chieftains, his challenges and single combats, his escapes at fords and woods, is like reading bits of the _Faery Queen_ in prose. As Spenser chose to write of knight errantry, his picture of it has doubtless gained in truth and strength by his very practical experience of what such life as he describes must be. The _Faery Queen_ might almost be called the Epic of the English wars in Ireland under Elizabeth, as much as the Epic of English virtue and valour at the same period.
At the Dublin meeting described by Bryskett, some time later than 1584, Spenser had already ”well entered into” his work. In 1589, he came to England, bringing with him the first three books; and early in 1590, they were published. Spenser himself has told us the story of this first appearance of the _Faery Queen_. The person who discovered the extraordinary work of genius which was growing up amid the turbulence and misery and despair of Ireland, and who once more brought its author into the centre of English life, was Walter Ralegh. Ralegh had served through much of the Munster war. He had shown in Ireland some of the characteristic points of his nature, which made him at once the glory and shame of English manhood. He had begun to take a prominent place in any business in which he engaged. He had shown his audacity, his self-reliance, his resource, and some signs of that boundless but prudent ambition which marked his career. He had shown that freedom of tongue, that restless and high-reaching inventiveness, and that tenacity of opinion, which made him a difficult person for others to work with.
Like so many of the English captains, he hated Ormond, and saw in his feud with the Desmonds the real cause of the hopeless disorder of Munster. But also he incurred the displeasure and suspicion of Lord Grey, who equally disliked the great Irish Chief, but who saw in the ”plot” which Ralegh sent to Burghley for the pacification of Munster, an adventurer's impracticable and self-seeking scheme. ”I must be plain,”
he writes, ”I like neither his carriage nor his company.” Ralegh had been at Smerwick: he had been in command of one of the bands put in by Lord Grey to do the execution. On Lord Grey's departure he had become one of the leading persons among the undertakers for the planting of Munster. He had secured for himself a large share of the Desmond lands.
In 1587, an agreement among the undertakers a.s.signed to Sir Walter Ralegh, his a.s.sociates and tenants, three seignories of 12,000 acres a-piece, and one of 6000, in Cork and Waterford. But before Lord Grey's departure, Ralegh had left Ireland, and had found the true field for his ambition, in the English court. From 1582 to 1589, he had shared with Leicester and Hatton and afterwards with Ess.e.x, the special favour of the Queen. He had become Warden of the Stannaries and Captain of the Guard. He had undertaken the adventure of founding a new realm in America under the name of Virginia. He had obtained grants of monopolies, farms of wines, Babington's forfeited estates. His own great s.h.i.+p, which he had built, the Ark Ralegh, had carried the flag of the High Admiral of England in the glorious but terrible summer of 1588. He joined in that tremendous sea-chase from Plymouth to the North Sea, when, as Spenser wrote to Lord Howard of Effingham--
Those huge castles of Castilian King, That vainly threatened kingdoms to displace, Like flying doves, ye did before you chase.
In the summer of 1589, Ralegh had been busy, as men of the sea were then, half Queen's servants, half buccaneers, in gathering the abundant spoils to be found on the high seas; and he had been with Sir John Norreys and Sir Francis Drake in a bootless but not unprofitable expedition to Lisbon. On his return from the Portugal voyage his court fortunes underwent a change. Ess.e.x, who had long scorned ”that knave Ralegh,” was in the ascendant. Ralegh found the Queen, for some reason or another, and reasons were not hard to find, offended and dangerous.
He bent before the storm. In the end of the summer of 1589, he was in Ireland, looking after his large seignories, his law-suits with the old proprietors, his castle at Lismore, and his schemes for turning to account his woods for the manufacture of pipe staves for the French and Spanish wine trade.
He visited Spenser, who was his neighbour, at Kilcolman, and the visit led to important consequences. The record of it and of the events which followed, is preserved in a curious poem of Spenser's written two or three years later, and of much interest in regard to Spenser's personal history. Taking up the old pastoral form of the _Shepherd's Calendar_, with the familiar rustic names of the swains who figured in its dialogues,--Hobbinol, Cuddie, Rosalind, and his own Colin Clout,--he described under the usual poetical disguise, the circ.u.mstances which once more took him back from Ireland to the court. The court was the place to which all persons wis.h.i.+ng to push their way in the world were attracted. It was not only the centre of all power, the source of favours and honours, the seat of all that swayed the destiny of the nation. It was the home of refinement, and wit, and cultivation, the place where eminence of all kinds was supposed to be collected, and to which all ambitions, literary as much as political, aspired. It was not only a royal court; it was also a great club. Spenser's poem shows us how he had sped there, and the impressions made on his mind by a closer view of the persons and the ways of that awful and dazzling scene, which exercised such a spell upon Englishmen, and which seemed to combine or concentrate in itself the glory and the goodness of heaven, and all the baseness and malignity of earth. The occasion deserved a full celebration; it was indeed a turning-point in his life, for it led to the publication of the _Faery Queen_, and to the immediate and enthusiastic recognition by the Englishmen of the time of his unrivalled pre-eminence as a poet. In this poetical record, _Colin Clout's come home again_, containing in it history, criticism, satire, personal recollections, love pa.s.sages, we have the picture of his recollections of the flush and excitement of those months which saw the first appearance of the _Faery Queen_. He describes the interruption of his retired and, as he paints it, peaceful and pastoral life in his Irish home, by the appearance of Ralegh, the ”Shepherd of the Ocean,” from ”the main sea deep.” They may have been thrown together before. Both had been patronized by Leicester. Both had been together at Smerwick, and probably in other pa.s.sages of the Munster war; both had served under Lord Grey, Spenser's master, though he had been no lover of Ralegh. In their different degrees, Ralegh with his two or three Seignories of half a county, and Spenser with his more modest estate, they were embarked in the same enterprise, the plantation of Munster. But Ralegh now appeared before Spenser in all the glory of a brilliant favourite, the soldier, the explorer, the daring sea-captain, the founder of plantations across the ocean, and withal, the poet, the ready and eloquent discourser, the true judge and measurer of what was great or beautiful.
The time, too, was one at once of excitement and repose. Men felt as they feel after a great peril, a great effort, a great relief; as the Greeks did after Salamis and Plataea, as our fathers did after Waterloo.
In the struggle in the Channel with the might of Spain, England had recognized its force and its prospects. One of those solemn moments had just pa.s.sed when men see before them the course of the world turned one way, when it might have been turned another. All the world had been looking out to see what would come to pa.s.s; and nowhere more eagerly than in Ireland. Every one, English and Irish alike, stood agaze to ”see how the game would be played.” The great fleet, as it drew near, ”worked wonderfully uncertain yet calm humours in the people, not daring to disclose their real intention.” When all was decided, and the distressed s.h.i.+ps were cast away on the western coast, the Irish showed as much zeal as the English in fulfilling the orders of the Irish council, to ”apprehend and execute all Spaniards found there of what quality soever.” These were the impressions under which the two men met. Ralegh, at the moment, was under a cloud. In the poetical fancy picture set before us--
His song was all a lamentable lay Of great unkindnesse, and of usage hard, Of Cynthia the Ladie of the Sea, Which from her presence faultlesse him debard.
And ever and anon, with singults rife, He cryed out, to make his undersong; Ah! my loves queene, and G.o.ddesse of my life, Who shall me pittie, when thou doest me wrong?
At Kilcolman, Ralegh became acquainted with what Spenser had done of the _Faery Queen_. His rapid and clear judgment showed him how immeasurably it rose above all that had yet been produced under the name of poetry in England. That alone is sufficient to account for his eager desire that it should be known in England. But Ralegh always had an eye to his own affairs, marred as they so often were by ill-fortune and his own mistakes; and he may have thought of making his peace with Cynthia, by reintroducing at Court the friend of Philip Sidney, now ripened into a poet not unworthy of Gloriana's greatness. This is Colin Clout's account:--
When thus our pipes we both had wearied well, (Quoth he) and each an end of singing made, He gan to cast great lyking to my lore, And great dislyking to my lucklesse lot, That banisht had my selfe, like wight forlore, Into that waste, where I was quite forgot.
The which to leave, thenceforth he counseld mee, Unmeet for man, in whom was ought regardfull, And wend with him, his Cynthia to see: Whose grace was great, and bounty most rewardfull; Besides her peerlesse skill in making well, And all the ornaments of wondrous wit, Such as all womankynd did far excell, Such as the world admyr'd, and praised it.
So what with hope of good, and hate of ill, He me perswaded forth with him to fare.
Nought tooke I with me, but mine oaten quill: Small needments else need shepheard to prepare.
So to the sea we came; the sea, that is A world of waters heaped up on hie, Rolling like mountaines in wide wildernesse, Horrible, hideous, roaring with hoa.r.s.e crie.
This is followed by a spirited description of a sea-voyage, and of that empire of the seas in which, since the overthrow of the Armada, England and England's mistress were now claiming to be supreme, and of which Ralegh was one of the most active and distinguished officers:--
And yet as ghastly dreadfull, as it seemes, Bold men, presuming life for gaine to sell, Dare tempt that gulf, and in those wandring stremes Seek waies unknowne, waies leading down to h.e.l.l.
For, as we stood there waiting on the strond, Behold! an huge great vessell to us came, Dauncing upon the waters back to lond, As if it scornd the daunger of the same; Yet was it but a wooden frame and fraile, Glewed togither with some subtile matter.
Yet had it armes and wings, and head and taile, And life to move it selfe upon the water.
Strange thing! how bold and swift the monster was, That neither car'd for wind, nor haile, nor raine, Nor swelling waves, but thorough them did pa.s.se So proudly, that she made them roare againe.
The same aboord us gently did receave, And without harme us farre away did beare, So farre that land, our mother, us did leave, And nought but sea and heaven to us appeare.
Then hartlesse quite, and full of inward feare, That shepheard I besought to me to tell, Under what skie, or in what world we were, In which I saw no living people dwell.
Who, me recomforting all that he might, Told me that that same was the Regiment Of a great Shepheardesse, that Cynthia hight, His liege, his Ladie, and his lifes Regent.
This is the poetical version of Ralegh's appreciation of the treasure which he had lighted on in Ireland, and of what he did to make it known to the admiration and delight of England. He returned to the Court, and Spenser with him. Again, for what reason we know not, he was received into favour. The poet, who accompanied him, was brought to the presence of the lady, who saw herself in ”various mirrors,”--Cynthia, Gloriana, Belphoebe, as she heard him read portions of the great poem which was to add a new glory to her reign.
”The Shepheard of the Ocean (quoth he) Unto that G.o.ddesse grace me first enhanced, And to mine oaten pipe enclin'd her eare, That she thenceforth therein gan take delight; And it desir'd at timely houres to heare, All were my notes but rude and roughly dight; For not by measure of her owne great mynde, And wondrous worth, she mott my simple song, But joyd that country shepheard ought could fynd Worth harkening to, emongst the learned throng.”
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