ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS.—SPENSER.*

OF Spenser, the "poet's poet," our knowledge is so slight, that the assured facts of his biography may be recorded in a page or two. lie was accounted a divine poet by his contemporaries, he was the friend of great men, like Sidney and Raleigh, the Queen made him her Laureate, and when he died he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Yet we know not who were the parents of this splendid poet, or whether he was an only child ; the date even of his birth is not absolutely certain, and the writer who undertakes to tell the story of his life is forced to feel his way, by the help of probabilities and conjectures, and by references to his poetry. Mr. Hales, the editor of the Globe Spenser, states, indeed, that the poems are his one great authority for the biography prefixed to that edition. Dean Church, while admitting that our knowledge is imperfect and inaccurate, observes that more is known about the circumstances of Spenser's life than about the lives of many men of letters of that time. This may be so. Biography was not encouraged in the Elizabethan ago, but considering what Spenser's fame was in his life-time, considering the publicity of his career in Ireland, and how, after the comparative silence of two cen- turies, his poetry raised him to the height which hitherto had been occupied by Chaucer alone, a height which he still retains—our ignorance about this great poet may be accounted extraordinary. We may know a little more of Spenser than of some of his poetical contemporaries, but re- membering how honoured the man was in his own time, and how, with one grand exception, he towered above them all, our knowledge is strangely limited. "His hearse," writes Dean Stanley, in a passage which Spenser's latest biographer Might have quoted with advantage, "was attended by poets, and mournful elegies and poems, with the pens that wrote them, were thrown into his tomb. What a funeral was that at which Beaumont, Fletcher, Jenson, and in all probability Shakespeare EnrgiSh Nell of Laters—Spenser. By B. W. Church, Dean of St. Fauna. London: kluetudian and 00.

attended. What a grave in which the pen of Shakespeare may be mouldering away 1" What a pity, we may add, that instead of throwing elegies into Spenser's tomb, one of these brother- poets had not told the world what they knew of the man who ranks third, according to Hallam, some readers may be inclined to say sixth, in the poetical literature of England. There is probably no English poet save Shakespeare who has

exerted a wider sway. Many a noble poet and many a writer of high impulses has acknowledged Spenser as his master. " The Faerie Queene," says Mr. Stopford Brooke, "has never ceased to make poets," and the poets and men of letters who have borne witness to its power are among the most honoured names in our literature. It was by reading the Faerie Queene that Cowley became "irrecoverably a poet." The sage and serious author of this incomparable poem was the poetical guide of Milton, the delight of the youthful Pope, the dearest friend of Scott and Southey, of Landor and Leigh Hunt. 4' Spenser,"- said Scott, "I could have read for ever," Southey -read the great allegory through thirty times, and regarded Spenser as incomparably the greatest master of versification in our language. "Do you love Spenser P" writes Lander,—" I have him in my heart of hearts ;" and it may be safely said

that there is no living English poet of eminence who will not acknowledge his indebtedness to this richly-endowed poet.

There is, perhaps, no pleasanter task in literature than to write the biography of a poet when ample materials exist for the purpose ; there is no harder task than to write the life of a poet of whom, as in the case of Spenser, scarcely anything is known. Dean Church, however, has accomplished his task with admirable skill. If he has not discovered fresh facts in the poet's history, he has enabled us to understand more clearly than we have understood before the kind of life led by Spenser in Ireland, the lawless scenes of which he was a witness, the recklessness and insubordination of the Irish, and the cruel

punishments inflicted on them by their conquerors. Spenser is the poet of the beautiful, and in reading his Faerie Queene we

dwell for a while in a bower of bliss, far removed from the irri- tating cares which pursue us in this work-a-day world. There is no doubt plenty of fighting in the poem, but the adventures .of Spenser's knights, like the imaginary encounters of Don Quixote, excite no feeling but what is pleasurable. We live in 'dreamland, and surrender ourselves to the irresistible charm of the poet's verse ; and so complete is the illusion, that the fiercest encounter between Christian knights and bloodthirsty Paynims reminds us more of a lively tournament than of a struggle between living men. Nevertheless, Spenser appears in these war pictures to have represented what he himself had witnessed :—

"'It cannot be doubted,' writes Dean Church, that his life in Ireland added to the force and vividness with which Spenaer wrote. In Ireland he had before his eyes continually the dreary world which the poet of Knight-errantry imagines. There, men might in good truth travel long through wildernesses and groat woods, given over to the outlaw and the ruffian. There, the avenger of wrong need seldom want for perilous adventure, and the occasion for quelling the oppressor. There the armed and unrelenting hand of right was but too truly the only substitute for law. There might be found in most certain and prosaic reality the ambushes, the disguises, the treacheries, the deceits and temptations, even the supposed witch. crafts and enchantments, against which the fairy champions of the virtues have to be on their guard There, in actual flesh and blood, were enemies to be fought with by the good and true. There, in visible fact, were the vices and falsehoods which Arthur and his companions were to quell and punish. There, in living truth, were Sansfoy, and Salt-sioy, and &nide?! ; there were Orgoglio and Gramtorto, the witcheries of Aorasia and Phindria, the insol- cnee of Briana and Cruder. And there, too, were real Knights of goodness and the Gospel—Grey, and Ormond, and Ralegh, tho

orreyses, St. Leger, and Maltby—on a real mission from Gloriana's noble realm to destroy the enemies of truth and virtue. The allegory bodies forth the trials which besot the life of man in all con. ditions, and at all times. But Spenser could never have seen in England such a strong and perfect imago of the allegory itself—with the wild wanderings of its personages, its daily chances of battle and clanger, 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 author adds that to read the account written by a contem- porary of Raleigh's adventures with the Irish chieftains, his challenges and single combats, hie escapes at fords and woods is like reading bits of the Faerie Queene in prose. No doubt experience of every sort, painful RS well as pleasant, is of ser- vice to the poet; but a very little experience of such hand-to- hand fights as are recorded in the Faerie Queens would suffice for a great poet's imaginative uses. One might think, from the exhaustless flow of Spenser's fancy and imagination, the

wealth of his language, the splendour and variety of his imagery, that he must have lived entirely for poetry, and no doubt in a sense it may be accounted his life-work. But Spenser, though his art may well have occupied his beat thoughts, was a man of affairs, and possessed the sagacity and common-sense valued by business men. And there was, it is to be feared, a stern aide to his nature. His position. probably made a certain amount of harshness inevitable, for the Irish hated, as well they might, the domination of the conquering race ; and hard words and harder blows were thought necessary, in order to uphold authority. Spenser was a strong Protestant, and felt it his duty to war against Popery ; he was a thorough Englishman, and the iron rule of Lord Grey was regarded with

the heartiest approval by his Secretary "Sponsor came to Ireland," writes his biographer, "for no ro- mantic purpose,—ho came to make his fortune, as well SS he could.

And in the native population and native interests he saw nothing but what called forth not merely antipathy, but deep moral condemnation. It was not merely that the Irish were ignorant, thrift- less, filthy, debased, and loathsome, in their pitiable misery and do. spair ; it was that, in his view, justice, truth, honesty had utterly perished among them, and therefore were not due to them. Of any other side to the picture, he, like other good Englishmen, was entirely unconscious."

Dean Church's chapter entitled "Spenser in Ireland" is perhaps the most interesting in the volume, and will enable the reader to picture the poet's uncertain position in the lonely spot he had selected for a residence. In Ireland, Spenser produced his great poem ; there, at the mature age of forty, he married his wife, Elizabeth; and there, too, he wrote a nuptial-song, which for charm of versification, for glow of passion, for wealth of fancy, and splendour of imagery has never been surpassed. Even Hallam, the least impulsive of critics, writes of the " Epithala- mium " in a fervour of delight, and Dean Church does but ex- press the opinion of all competent judges when he terms it

"unquestionably one of the grandest lyrics in English poetry." The Faerie Queene is an inexhaustible theme, upon which we do not propose to enter. We may observe, however, in passing

that if Mr. Stopford Brooke be correct in calling it the source of all our modern poetry, the potent influence of Spenser cannot be said to have been wholly good. A great poem, it has been said again and again, should possess a great action. The design of the work is of the first importance, the beautiful thoughts which it contains are of secondary value. Spenser had, no doubt, a design, but it was one too vast for execution.

His prose description, or rather explanation, shows how impos- sible it was that he should carry it out ; and the reader forgets it altogether, while listening to the enchanting music of the verse, or gazing on the lovely pictures called forth by the won- derful imagination of the poet, To Spenser any fault may be

forgiven, but no amount of admiration for his incomparable work should blind us to the fact that he has failed in it to some extent as an artist, and that his example has served to lead astray many a smaller poet. Dean Church allows that, as a whole, the Faerie QUCC27•13 bears on its face a great fault of construction, and nothing can be more apposite than his remark that the poem is the work of an un- formed literature, and that even genius must wait for the gifts of time, since "it cannot forerun the limitations of its day, nor anticipate the conquests and common possessions of the future."

We had marked passages for quotation, and subjects for com- ment, while reading this suggestive volume ; but our space is exhausted, and additional remarks are perhaps unnecessary, since every one who cares for Spenser, that is to say, for poetry, will be sure to read and form his own judgment of this ably- written book.