Part 8 (2/2)

Spenser knew Ralegh only in the promise of his adventurous prime--so buoyant and fearless, so inexhaustible in project and resource, so unconquerable by checks and reverses The glooues, its grand yet really ga years of prison and authorshi+p, and its not unfitting close, in the English statesh violent, so cerenified;--such a contrast to all other forms of capital punishment, then or since

Spenser has been compared to Pindar, and contrasted with Cervantes The contrast, in point of humour, and the truth that humour implies, is favourable to the Spaniard: in point of lishht ridiculous Spenser used, and not in vain, for a high purpose The ideas of knight-errantry were really more absurd than Spenser allowed hiested, that picture of huer, trial, effort, defeat, recovery, which they lent the on, than the exposure of their folly and extravagance There was nothing to beto be done, but to laugh off what they had left, a Spaniards, of po that they ht be raised so nobler and more real, enterprise, duty, resistance to evil, refineh-reaching es round him he shadowed forth in the _Faery Queen_ He idealized the excellences and the trials of this first generation of English gentlemen, as Bunyan afterwards idealized the piety, the conflicts, and the hopes of Puritan religion Neither were universal types; neither were perfect The hts, with all that was admirable and attractive in it, had still hness: it had noble aienerosity, it had loyalty, it had a very real reverence for purity and religion; but it was young in experience of a neorld, it anting in self-mastery, it was often pedantic and self-conceited; it was an easier prey than it ought to have been to discreditable te interval between any of Spenser's superficial and thin conceptions of character, and such deep and subtle creations as Ha but narrow ideals of religion, true as they are up to a certain point, fall short of the length and breadth and depth of what Christianity has made of man, and may yet make of him

But in the hich Spenser chose, he will always delight and teach us The spectacle of what is heroic and self-devoted, of honour for principle and truth, set before us with so ht and sympathy, and combined with so much just and broad observation on those accidents and conditions of our lish readers in vain, till we have learned a new language, and adopted new canons of art, of taste, and of es which have taken their place a the consecrated hts of all cultivated lish poetry by a great and sustained effort of rich and varied art, in which one main purpose rules, loyalty to what is noble and pure, and in which this main purpose subordinates to itself every feature and every detail, and har with it

FOOTNOTES:

[118:1]

”Unknow, unkyst; and lost, that is unsoght”

_Troylus and Cryseide_, lib i

[128:2] Hales' _Life_, Globe Edition

[132:3] _Vid_ Keble, _Praelect Acad_, xxiv p 479, 480

CHAPTER VI

SECOND PART OF THE FAERY QUEEN--SPENSER'S LAST YEARS (1590-1599)

The publication of the _Faery Queen_ in 1590 had made the new poet of the _Shepherd's Calendar_ a faer merely the favourite of a knot of enthusiastic friends, and outside of thees as Sidney and Ralegh By the coed as the first of living English poets It is not easy for us, who live in these late times and are familiar with so many literary masterpieces, to realize the surprise of a first and novel achieveerly seeking after poetical expression, of the appearance at last of a work of such power, richness, and finished art

It can scarcely be doubted, I think, from the bitter sarcasms interspersed in his later poeht hiland He continued for a while in that rateful and unsatisfactory employment, the service of the State in Ireland; and that he relinquished in 1593[166:1] At the end of 1591 he was again at Kilcolh he did not publish it till 1595, the record already quoted of the last two year's events, _Colin Clout's couidance, to the Court, his thoughts and recollections of its great ladies, his generous criticisms on poets, the people and courtiers whom he had seen and heard of; how he had been dazzled, how he had been disenchanted, and hoas come home to his Irish h in a ”salvage” and ”foreign” land; to find in this peaceful and tranquil retire far better than the heat of aues of envious rivalries; and to contrast with the profanations of the nausted hiher and purer ideal of it which he could honour and pursue in the simplicity of his country life

And in Ireland, the rejected adorer of the Rosalind of the _Shepherd's Calendar_ found another and still h she was at first inclined to repeat the cruelty of the earlier one, in tilory as few poets have bestowed upon their brides It has always appeared strange that Spenser's passion for the first Rosalind should have been so lasting, that in his last pastoral, _Colin Clout's coain_, written so late as 1591, and published after he was -past love passage, defending her on the ground of her incoainst the blauors of his too long dying,” and angry with her hard-heartedness Ithis est but not fully express their antitypes,[168:2] Rosalind here bears the ie of the real mistress of this time, the ”country lass,” the Elizabeth of the sonnets, as, in fact, for a while as unkind as the earlier Rosalind The history of this later wooing, its hopes and anguish, its varying currents, its final unexpected success, is the subject of a collection of Sonnets, which have the disadvantage of provoking comparison with the Sonnets of Shakespere There is no want in theenuine feeling and warh they have of course their share of the conceits then held proper for love poems But they want the power and fire, as well as the perplexing reaterthe three Graces, in a richly-painted passage in the last book of the _Faery Queen_ But theOde, the _Epithalamion_, the finest coe: so i, so orderly and yet so rapid in the onward march of its stately and varied stanzas; so passionate, so flashi+ng with iinative wealth, yet so refined and self-restrained It was always easy for Spenser to open the floodgates of his inexhaustible fancy With hi doth rise

But here he has thrown into his coeht and ie and measure and rhythrandest lyrics in English poetry We have learned to think the subject unfit for such free poetical treate did not

Of the lady of whom all this was said, and for whoht worth preserving We know that by her Christian nareat queen, and of Spenser's mother She is called a country lass, which e appears to have been solemnized in Cork, on as then Midsuht,” the day when ”the sun is in his cheerful height,” June 11/22, 1594 Except that she survived Spenser, that she al quarrels with one of her own sons about his lands, we know nothing ht him, the names have been preserved, and they indicate that in spite of love and poetry, and the charlishmen feel in Australia or in India To call one of therine_, reveals to us that Ireland was still to hier in it; as Moses called his firstborn Gershoer in a strange land”

In the year after his e, he sent over these memorials of it to be published in London, and they were entered at Stationers' Hall in Nove with him the second instalment of the _Faery Queen_, which was entered for publication the following January, 1595/6 Thus the half of the projected as finished; and finished, as we know fro ”race through Fairy land,” he asks leave to rest, and solace himself with his ”love's sweet praise;” and then ”as a steed refreshed after toil,” he will ”stoutly that second worke assoyle” The first six books were published together in 1596 He re which _The Four Hymns on Love and Beauty, Earthly and Heavenly_, were published; and also a Dirge (_Daphnaida_) on Douglas Howard, the wife of Arthur Gorges, the spirited narrator of the Island Voyage of Essex and Ralegh, written in 1591; and a ”spousal verse” (_Prothalahters of the Earl of Worcester, late in 1596 But he was only a visitor in London The _Prothalaland

I, (who fruitlesse stay In Princes Court, and expectation vayne Of idle hopes, which still doe fly away, Like empty shaddowes, did afflictthe shoare of silver streaht to have hest enjoyment in the quiet and retirement of country life He was in the prime of life, successful beyond all his fellows in his special work, and apparently with unabated interest in what reh he could not but feel hiland, and socially at disadvantage compared to those whose lines had fallen to them in its pleasant places, yet nature, which he loved so well, was still friendly to hierous He is never weary of praising the natural advantages of Ireland Speaking of the North, he says,--

And sure it is yet a most beautifull and sweet countrey as any is under heaven, seaoodly rivers, replenished with all sortes of fish, oodly lakes, like litle Inland Seas, that will carry even shi+ps upon theyr waters, adorned with goodly woodes fitt for building of howses and shi+ppes, soe comodiously, as that yf some princes in the world had them, they would soone hope to be lordes of all the seas, and ere long of all the world; also full of good portes and havens opening upon England and Scotland, as inviting us to come to them, to see what excellent comodityes that countrey can affoord, besides the soyle it self most fertile, fitt to yeeld all kind of fruite that shal be comitted therunto And lastly, the heavens h somewhat more moyst then the part toward the West

His own hohted him It was not his fault that its trout streams, its Mulla and Fanchin, are not as famous as Walter Scott's Teviot and Tweed, or Wordsworth's Yarrow and Duddon, or that its hills, Old Mole, and Arlo Hill, have not kept a poetic naht” They have failed to become familiar names to us But the beauties of his home inspired more than one sweet pastoral picture in the _Faery Queen_; and in the last frag to us of it, he celebrates his mountains and woods and valleys as once the fabled resort of the Divine Huntress and her Ny-place of the Gods

There was one drawback to the enjoyment of his Irish country life, and of the natural attractiveness of Kilcolman ”Who knows not Arlo Hill?”

he exclaiment on _Mutability_ ”Arlo, the best and fairest hill in all the holy island's heights” It ell known to all Englishmen who had to do with the South of Ireland Hoell it was known in the Irish history of the time, may be seen in the numerous references to it, under various forms, such as Aharlo, Harlow, in the Index to the Irish Calendar of Papers of this troublesome date, and to continual encounters and aerous woods He e, belohich to the north, through a glen or defile, runs the ”river Aherlow” Galtyully, more than 3000 feet, above the plains of Tipperary, and is seen far and wide It was connected with the ”great wood,” the wild region of forest,which stretched half across Munster from the Suir to the Shannon It was the haunt and fastness of Irish outlawry and rebellion in the South, which so long sheltered Desmond and his followers Arlo and its ”fair forests,” harbouring ”thieves and wolves,”