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Wyatt and Surrey.

51 of English poetry dawned in the reign of Henry VIII. Foreign travel was becoming common among the higher classes, and the nobility, headed by a king who valued his learning not the least among his accomplishments, began to pride themselves as much upon their literary taste as upon their proficiency in manly exercises. It was from Italy, then the queen of the intellectual world, that the new school of poets obtained their inspiration—from Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, and Petrarch. Two courtly gentlemen who "had travelled into Italy and thus tasted the sweet and stately measures and style of the Italian poesy,” introduced into England an entirely new fashion of writing, which took root and flourished. These were Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, whose names are generally linked together. Their poems appeared in the collection known as "Tottel's Miscellany," which was published in 1557, and which contained poems by other versifiers. Wyatt (1503-1541), the elder of the two, was a man of grave and sombre genius, prone to look upon the dark side of things. His love-sonnets and songs have none of that lightness and gaiety which we are apt to associate with such verses, but they contain much subtle thought, and bear the appearance of expressing a genuine passion. Surrey (1516-1547) was a personage of different character. Impetuous and headstrong, he led a stirring and adventurous life, holding commands in Scotland and France, and being one of the most prominent figures at Court. He was executed for high treason in 1547. "Compared with Wyatt, Surrey strikes one as having much greater affluence of words the language is more plastic in his hands. When his mind is full of an idea he pours it forth with soft voluble eloquence; he commands such abundance of words that he preserves with ease a uniform measure. Uniformity, indeed, is almost indispensable to such abundance: we read him with the feeling that in a tumbling metre' his fluency would run away with him. Such impetuous affluent natures as his need to be held in with the bit and bridle of uniformity. A calm composed man like Wyatt, with a fine ear for varied melodies, may be trusted to elaborate tranquilly irregular and

subtle rhythms; to men like Surrey there is a danger in any medium between 'correctness' and Skeltonian license." Surrey was a much more lively and gay-hearted singer than Wyatt; we have in his works, instead of the dolorous strains of a lover, the cruelty of whose mistress has really sunk deep in his heart, rather the affected passion of a poet who makes it his business to write love-verses. One of Surrey's best titles to remembrance is his introduction of blank verse. In this metre he translated the second and fourth books of Vergil's "Æneid." His blank verse is neither harmonious nor metrically correct; but the first user of an instrument cannot be expected to employ it with the same facility and precision as those who come after him.

We now come to the second of England's great poetsEdmund Spenser. A greater contrast to Chaucer it would be difficult to imagine. Spenser "dwelt in a world ideal;" the visionary sights and beings which fill the land of Faerie floated round him continually; his imagination rose above the rough practical world in which he lived to take refuge with the allegorical beings who occupied his thoughts. Chaucer, on the other hand, as we have seen, was very well satisfied with this world, enjoying heartily the frolics, the eccentricities, the virtues, nay even the vices of its inhabitants, ready always to laugh with those who laughed, and to weep with those who wept. There is, as will be admitted even by his warmest admirers, a want of human interest about Spenser's works; it is just their deep human interest which makes Chaucer's works so constantly attractive in spite of their antique dialect, and the fact that they refer to a condition of society which can now be conceived only by an effort of the imagination. Like Wyatt and Surrey, Spenser derived his chief impulse. from Italy. He knew and admired Chaucer and the other old English poets, but his real masters were Ariosto and Tasso.

Spenser was born in London about 1552. He was distantly

1 Minto's English Poets, p. 163.

Spenser's "Shepherd's Calendar."

53

connected with the noble family of the Spensers, a fact in which he took not a little pride, and which is referred to by Gibbon, when he says, "The nobility of the Spensers has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough; but I exhort them to consider the 'Faery Queen' as the most precious jewel in their coronet." Spenser was educated at Cambridge, where he graduated M.A. in 1576. After leaving the University he seems to have resided for some time as a tutor in Lancashire. On the advice of his college friend Gabriel Harvey, he returned to London in 1578, and was introduced by Harvey to Sir Philip Sidney and the Earl of Leicester, who took the poet under their patronage. Next year appeared Spenser's first publication, "The Shepherd's Calendar," a collection of twelve pastorals, one for each month of the year. The work is not very easy to criticise. It indubitably proved that Spenser was the greatest English. poet then living; but would his name now have been more familiar to readers in general than that of Wyatt or of Surrey if he had written nothing else? We are inclined to think not. There is a certain artificiality about all pastoral poetry which prevents it from ever being popular, except among cultured readers. "The shepherds of Spenser's 'Calendar,'" says Campbell in his "Specimens of the British Poets," a work containing much sound and excellent criticism, "are parsons in disguise, who converse about heathen divinities and points of Christian theology." The antique language of the pastorals, which was adopted by Spenser of set purpose, was condemned by his patron Sidney, and Ben Jonson went so far as to say that the author in affecting the ancients had written no language at all. The mysterious commentator on the "Shepherds' Calendar," who is generally believed to have been the poet himself, and who, at any rate, certainly was inspired by Spenser, thus refers to the antique phraseology. "And first," he says, "of the words to speak, I grant they be something hard, and of most men unused, yet both English, and also used of most excellent authors and most famous poets. In whom whereas this our poet hath been much travelled and thoroughly read,

how could it be (as that worthy orator said) but that, walking in the sun, although for other causes he walked, yet needs he mought be sun-burnt; and, having the sound of these ancient poets still ringing in his ears, he mought needs in singing hit out some of their tunes." He then goes on at considerable length to defend this practice of the poet, but his defence is not very convincing.

In 1580 Spenser went to Ireland, as secretary to the Viceroy, Lord Grey of Wilton. There he remained, with the exception of two visits to England, for eighteen years, holding various offices and writing the "Faerie Queen," which had been begun ere he quitted England. In 1586 he obtained, by the intercession of his friends, a grant of three thousand acres of land from the forfeited estates of the Earl of Desmond at Kilcolman, near Cork In this beautiful and romantic district, through which flowed the river Mulla which has obtained an eternity of poetic fame by its frequent mention in Spenser's works, he was visited in 1589 by Sir Walter Raleigh, who listened with admiration to the portion of the "Faerie Queen" already written. This visit is thus, in figurative language,

commemorated by Spenser:

"One day,' quoth he, 'I sate (as was my trade)
Under the foot of Mole, that mountain hoar,
Keeping my sheep amongst the cooly shade
Of the green alders by the Mulla's shore;
There a strange shepherd chanced to find me out,
Whether allured with my pipe's delight,
Whose pleasing sound yshrilled far about,

Or thither led by chance, I know not right;
Whom when I asked from what place he came,
And how he hight, himself he did ycleepe

The Shepherd of the ocean by name,

And said he came far from the main-sea deep,"

In 1590 Spenser accompanied Raleigh to England, carrying with him the three first books of the "Faerie Queen." They were published in that year, and at once received with favour. Elizabeth bestowed on the poet an annual pension of £50,

Spenser's Personal Characteristics.

55

no mean sum in the sixteenth century. In 1591 Spenser returned to Ireland, and in the same year appeared a volume of minor poems from his pen, of which the most noticeable is "Mother Hubbard's Tale," a pleasing imitation of Chaucer. In 1595 appeared at different times his "Colin Clout's Come Home Again," from which the verse above cited is taken, and which describes his voyage to England and his reception there; his "Amoretti," love-sonnets which do not add materially to his fame; and his "Epithalamion," that magnificent marriage. song, in which he celebrates in triumphant and richly jewelled verse the successful termination of his wooing. It has been called "the most glorious love-song in the English language," nor is this praise too high. In the following year, Spenser returned to London and published the last three books of the "Faerie Queen," and certain minor poems. In 1598 the Irish Rebellion took place; Spenser's castle was sacked and burned, and he and his household had to fly to England for their lives. He died in London in January 1599, in very destitute circumstances if tradition may be trusted. His only

prose work (if we accept the lucubrations of "E. K.," the commentator on the "Shepherds' Calendar") was a dialogue entitled "A View of the State of Ireland," written in 1596, but not published till 1633.

Of Spenser's personal characteristics much cannot be said. with certainty. It is difficult to believe that he was a happy man; he had none of Chaucer's broad geniality, and could never have described the Canterbury Pilgrims with any approach to dramatic impartiality. That he was vain is proved by the remarks on him put in the mouth of his alter ego, "E. K.," and it is probable that he was proud also. He was an extremely learned poet, acquainted with the best models not only in English, but in Greek, Latin, Italian, and French. His appearance is thus described by Mr. Kitchin in the Clarendon Press edition of the "Faerie Queen:" "Short curling hair, a full moustache, cut after the pattern of Lord Leicester's, close-clipped beard, heavy eyebrows, and under them thoughtful brown eyes, whose upper eyelids weigh them

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