A Biography of Edmund Spenser
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6 A BIOGRAPHY OF EDMUND SPENSER, BY JOHN W. HALES
Revised 1896
From the Macmillan Globe edition of
THE WORKS OF EDMUND SPENSER
Please note
Accented, etc. characters are shown thus:
{a\} = a + grave accent
{e\} = e + grave accent
{e"} = e + diaeresis mark
{ae} = ae diphthong
{oe} = oe dipthong
Footnotes for each chapter are enclosed in curly
brackets, e.g. {1}
Regions of italic type are defined by underscores
_E D M U N D S P E N S E R_.
Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim
Credebat libris; neque, si male cesserat, unquam
Decurrens alio, neque si bene; quo fit ut omnis
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella
Vita senis.
Hither, as to their fountain, other stars
Repairing in their urns draw golden light.
The life of Spenser is wrapt in a similar obscurity to
that which hides from us his great predecessor Chaucer,
and his still greater contemporary Shakspere. As in
the case of Chaucer, our principal external authorities
are a few meagre entries in certain official documents,
and such facts as may be gathered from his works. The
birth-year of each poet is determined by inference.
The circumstances in which each died are a matter of
controversy. What sure information we have of the
intervening events of the life of each one is scanty
and interrupted. So far as our knowledge goes, it
shows some slight positive resemblance between their
lives. They were both connected with the highest
society of their times; both enjoyed court favour, and
enjoyed it in the substantial shape of pensions. They
were both men of remarkable learning. They were both
natives of London. They both died in the close
vicinity of Westminster Abbey, and lie buried near each
other in that splendid cemetery. Their geniuses were
eminently different: that of Chaucer was the active
type, Spenser's of the contemplative; Chaucer was
dramatic, Spenser philosophical; Chaucer objective,
Spenser subjective; but in the external circumstances,
so far as we know them, amidst which these great poets
moved, and in the mist which for the most part enfolds
those circumstances, there is considerable likeness.
Spenser is frequently alluded to by his
contemporaries; they most ardently recognised in him,
as we shall see, a great poet, and one that might
justly be associated with the one supreme poet whom
this country had then produced--with Chaucer, and they
paid him constant tributes of respect and admiration;
but these mentions of him do not generally supply any
biographical details.
The earliest notice of him that may in any sense
be termed biographical occurs in a sort of handbook to
the monuments of Westminster Abbey, published by Camden
in 1606. Amongst the 'Reges, Regin{ae}, Nobiles, et alij
in Ecclesia Collegiata B. Petri Westmonasterii sepulti
usque ad annum 1606' is enrolled the name of Spenser,
with the following brief obituary:
'Edmundus Spencer Londinensis, Anglicorum Poetarum
nostri seculi facile princeps, quod ejus poemata
faventibus Musis et victuro genio conscripta
comprobant. Obijt immatura morte anno salutis 1598, et
prope Galfredum Chaucerum conditur qui felicissime
po{e"}sin Anglicis literis primus illustravit. In quem
h{ae}c scripta sunt epitaphia:--
Hic prope Chaucerum situs est Spenserius, illi
Proximus ingenio proximus ut tumulo.
Hic prope Chaucerum, Spensere poeta, poetam
Conderis, et versu quam tumulo propior.
Anglica, te vivo, vixit plausitque po{e"}sis;
Nunc moritura timet, te moriente, mori.'
'Edmund Spencer of London, far the first of the
English Poets of our age, as his poems prove, written
under the smile of the Muses, and with a genius
destined to live. He died prematurely in the year of
salvation 1598, and is buried near Geoffrey Chaucer,
who was the first most happily to set forth poetry in
English writing: and on him were written these
epitaphs:--
Here nigh to Chaucer Spenser lies; to whom
In genius next he was, as now in tomb.
Here nigh to Chaucer, Spenser, stands thy
hearse,{1}
Still nearer standst thou to him in thy verse.
Whilst thou didst live, lived English poetry;
Now thou art dead, it fears that it shall die.'
The next notice is found in Drummond's account of
Ben Jonson's conversations with him in the year 1618:
'Spencer's stanzas pleased him not, nor his
matter. The meaning of the allegory of his Fairy Queen
he had delivered in writing to Sir Walter Rawleigh,
which was, "that by the Bleating Beast he understood
the Puritans, and by the false Duessa the Queen of
Scots." He told, that Spencer's goods were robbed by
the Irish, and his house and a little child burnt, he
and his wife escaped, and after died for want of bread
in King Street; he refused 20 pieces sent to him by my
lord Essex, and said he was sure he had no time to
spend them.'{2}
The third record occurs in Camden's _History of
Queen Elizabeth (Annales rerum Anglicarum et
Hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha)_, first published in
a complete form in 1628. There the famous antiquary
registering what demises marked the year 1598 (our
March 25, 1598, to March 24, 1599), adds to his list
Edmund Spenser, and thus writes of him: 'Ed. Spenserus,
patria Londinensis, Cantabrigienis autem alumnus, Musis
adeo arridentibus natus ut omnes Anglicos superioris
{ae}vi Poetas, ne Chaucero quidem concive excepto,
superaret. Sed peculiari Poetis fato semper cum
paupertate conflictatus, etsi Greio Hiberni{ae} proregi
fuerit ab epistolis. Vix enim ibi secessum et
scribendi otium nactus, quam a rebellibus {e\} laribus
ejectus et bonis spoliatus, in Angliam inops reversus
statim exspiravit, Westmonasterii prope Chaucerum
impensis comitis Essexi{ae} inhumatus, Po{e"}tis funus
ducentibus flebilibusque carminibus et calamis in
tumulum conjectis.'{3} This is to say: 'Edmund
Spenser, a Londoner by birth, and a scholar also of the
University of Cambridge, born under so favourable an
aspect of the Muses that he surpassed all the English
Poets of former times, not excepting Chaucer himself,
his fellow-citizen. But by a fate which still follows
Poets, he always wrestled with poverty, though he had
been secretary to the Lord Grey, Lord Deputy of
Ireland. For scarce had he there settled himself into
a retired privacy and got leisure to write, when he was
by the rebels thrown out of his dwelling, plundered of
his goods, and returned to England a poor man, where he
shortly after died and was interred at Westminster,
near to Chaucer, at the charge of the Earl of Essex,
his hearse being attended by poets, and mournful
elegies and poems with the pens that wrote them thrown
into his tomb.'{4}
In 1633, Sir James Ware prefaced his edition of
Spenser's prose work on the State of Ireland with these
remarks:--
'How far these collections may conduce to the
knowledge of the antiquities and state of this land,
let the fit reader judge: yet something I may not passe
by touching Mr. Edmund Spenser and the worke it selfe,
lest I should seeme to offer injury to his worth, by
others so much celebrated. Hee was borne in London of
an ancient and noble family, and brought up in the
Universitie of Cambridge, where (as the fruites of his
after labours doe manifest) he mispent not his time.
After this he became secretary to Arthur Lord Grey of
Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland, a valiant and worthy
governour, and shortly after, for his services to the
Crowne, he had bestowed upon him by Queene Elizabeth,
3,000 acres of land in the countie of Corke. There he
finished the latter part of that excellent poem of his
"Faery Queene," which was soone after unfortunately
lost by the disorder and abuse of his servant, whom he
had sent before him into England, being then _a
rebellibus_ (as Camden's words are) _{e\} laribus ejectus
et bonis spoliatus_. He deceased at Westminster in the
year 1599 (others have it wrongly 1598), soon after his
return into England, and was buried according to his
own desire in the collegiat church there, neere unto
Chaucer whom he worthily imitated (at the costes of
Robert Earle of Essex), whereupon this epitaph was
framed.' And then are quoted the epigrams already
given from Camden.
The next passage that can be called an account of
Spenser is found in Fuller's _Worthies of England_,
first published in 1662, and runs as follows:--
'Edmond Spencer, born in this city (London), was
brought up in Pembroke-hall in Cambridge, where he
became an excellent scholar; but especially most happy
in English Poetry; as his works do declare, in which
the many Chaucerisms used (for I will not say affected
by him) are thought by the ignorant to be blemishes,
known by the learned to be beauties, to his book; which
notwithstanding had been more saleable, if more
conformed to our modern language.
'There passeth a story commonly told and believed,
that Spencer presenting his poems to queen Elizabeth,
she, highly affected therewith, commanded the lord
Cecil, her treasurer, to give him an hundred pound; and
when the treasurer (a good steward of the queen's
money) alledged that the sum was too much; "Then give
him," quoth the queen, "What is reason;" to which the
lord consented, but was so busied, belike, about
matters of higher concernment, that Spencer received no
reward, whereupon he presented this petition in a small
piece of paper to the queen in her progress:--
I was promis'd on a time,
To have reason for my rhyme;
From that time unto this season,
I receiv'd nor rhyme nor reason.
'Hereupon the queen gave strict order (not without some
check to her treasurer), for the present payment of the
hundred pounds the first intended unto him.
'He afterwards went over into Ireland, secretary
to the lord Gray, lord deputy thereof; and though that
his office under his lord was lucrative, yet he got no
estate; but saith my author "peculiari poetis fato
semper cum paupertate conflictatus est." So that it
fared little better with him than with William Xilander
the German (a most excellent linguist, antiquary,
philosopher and mathematician), who was so poor, that
(as Thuanus saith), he was thought "fami non famae
scribere."
'Returning into England, he was robb'd by the
rebels of what little he had; and dying for grief in
great want, anno 1598, was honourably buried nigh
Chaucer in Westminster, where this distich concludeth
his epitaph on his monument
Anglica, te vivo, vixit plausitque poesis;
Nunc moritura timet, te moriente, mori.'
Whilst thou didst live, liv'd English poetry
Which fears now thou art dead, that she shall die.
'Nor must we forget, that the expence of his funeral
and monument was defrayed at the sole charge of Robert,
first of that name, earl of Essex.'
The next account is given by Edward Phillips in
his _Theatrum Po{e"}tarum Anglicanorum_, first published
in 1675. This Phillips was, as is well known, Milton's
nephew, and according to Warton, in his edition of
Milton's juvenile poems, 'there is good reason to
suppose that Milton threw many additions and
corrections into the _Theatrum Po{e"}tarum_.' Phillips'
words therefore have an additional interest for us.
'Edmund Spenser,' he writes, 'the first of our English
poets that brought heroic poesy to any perfection, his
"Fairy Queen" being for great invention and poetic
heighth, judg'd little inferior, if not equal to the
chief of the ancient Greeks and Latins, or modern
Italians; but the first poem that brought him into
esteem was his "Shepherd's Calendar," which so endeared
him to that noble patron of all vertue and learning Sir
Philip Sydney, that he made him known to Queen
Elizabeth, and by that means got him preferred to be
secretary to his brother{5} Sir Henry Sidney, who was
sent deputy into Ireland, where he is said to have
written his "Faerie Queen;" but upon the return of Sir
Henry, his employment ceasing, he also return'd into
England, and having lost his great friend Sir Philip,
fell into poverty, yet made his last refuge to the
Queen's bounty, and had 500_l_. ordered him for his
support, which nevertheless was abridged to 100_l_. by
Cecil, who, hearing of it, and owing him a grudge for
some reflections in Mother Hubbard's Tale, cry'd out to
the queen, What! all this for a song? This he is said
to have taken so much to heart, that he contracted a
deep melancholy, which soon after brought his life to a
period. So apt is an ingenuous spirit to resent a
slighting, even from the greatest persons; thus much I
must needs say of the merit of so great a poet from so
great a monarch, that as it is incident to the best of
poets sometimes to flatter some royal or noble patron,
never did any do it more to the height, or with greater
art or elegance, if the highest of praises attributed
to so heroic a princess can justly be termed
flattery.'{6}
When Spenser's works were reprinted--the first
three books of the _Faerie Queene_ for the seventh
time--in 1679, there was added an account of his life.
In 1687, Winstanley, in his _Lives of the most famous
English Poets_, wrote a formal biography.
These are the oldest accounts of Spenser that have
been handed down to us. In several of them mythical
features and blunders are clearly discernible. Since
Winstanley's time, it may be added, Hughes in 1715, Dr.
Birch in 1731, Church in 1758, Upton in that same year,
Todd in 1805, Aikin in 1806, Robinson in 1825, Mitford
in 1839, Prof. Craik in 1845, Prof. Child in 1855, Mr.
Collier in 1862, Dr. Grosart in 1884, have re-told what
little there is to tell, with various additions and
subtractions.
Our external sources of information are, then,
extremely scanty. Fortunately our internal sources are
somewhat less meagre. No poet ever more emphatically
lived in his poetry than did Spenser. The Muses were,
so to speak, his own bosom friends, to whom he opened
all his heart. With them he conversed perpetually on
the various events of his life; into their ears he
poured forth constantly the tale of his joys and his
sorrows, of his hopes, his fears, his distresses.
He was not one of those poets who can put off
themselves in their works, who can forego their own
interests and passions, and live for the time an
extraneous life. There is an intense personality about
all his writings, as in those of Milton and of
Wordsworth. In reading them you can never forget the
poet in the poem. They directly and fully reflect the
poet's own nature and his circumstances. They are, as
it were, fine spiritual diaries, refined self-
portraitures. Horace's description of his own famous
fore-runner, quoted at the head of this memoir, applies
excellently to Spenser. On this account the scantiness
of our external means of knowing Spenser is perhaps the
less to be regretted. Of him it is eminently true that
we may know him from his works. His poems are his best
biography. In the sketch of his life to be given here
his poems shall be our one great authority.
Footnotes
---------
{1} Compare 'Underneath this sable _hearse_, &c.'
{2} Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden.
Edinburgh, 1711, p. 225.
{3} _Annales_, ed. _Hearne_, iii. 783.
{4} _History of Elizabeth, Queen of England._ Ed.
1688, pp. 564, 565.
{5} Father
{6} _Theatrum Poet. Anglic._, ed. Brydges, 1800, pp.
148, 149.
CHAPTER I.
1552-1579.
FROM SPENSER'S BIRTH TO THE PUBLICATION OF THE
SHEPHEARD'S CALENDAR.
Edmund Spenser was born in London in the year 1552, or
possibly 1551. For both these statements we have
directly or indirectly his own authority. In his
_Prothalamion_ he sings of certain swans whom in a
vision he saw floating down the river 'Themmes,' that
At length they all to mery London came,
To mery London, my most kyndly nurse,
That to me gave this lifes first native sourse,
Though from another place I take my name,
An house of auncient fame.
A MS. note by Oldys the antiquary in Winstanley's
_Lives of the most famous English Poets_, states that
the precise locality of his birth was East Smithfield.
East Smithfield lies just to the east of the Tower, and
in the middle of the sixteenth century, when the Tower
was still one of the chief centres of London life and
importance, was of course a neighbourhood of far
different rank and degree from its present social
status. The date of his birth is concluded with
sufficient certainty from one of his sonnets, viz.
sonnet 60; which it is pretty well ascertained was
composed in the year 1593. These sonnets are, as well
shall see, of the amorous wooing sort; in the one of
them just mentioned, the sighing poet declares that it
is but a year since he fell in love, but that the year
has seemed to him longer
Then al those fourty which my life out-went.
Hence it is gathered that he was most probably born in
1552. The inscription, then, over his tomb in
Westminster Abbey errs in assigning his birth to 1553;
though the error is less flagrant than that perpetrated
by the inscription that preceded the present one, which
set down as his natal year 1510.
Of his parents the only fact secured is that his
mother's name was Elizabeth. This appears from sonnet
74, where he apostrophizes those
Most happy letters! fram'd by skilfull trade
With which that happy name was first desynd,
The which three times thrise happy hath me made,
With guifts of body, fortune and of mind.
The first my being to me gave by kind
From mothers womb deriv'd by dew descent.
The second is the Queen, the third 'my love, my lives
last ornament.' A careful examination by Mr. Collier
and others of what parish registers there are extant in
such old churches as stand near East Smithfield--the
Great Fire, it will be remembered, broke out some
distance west of the Tower, and raged mainly westward--
has failed to discover any trace of the infant Spenser
or his parents. An 'Edmund Spenser' who is mentioned
in the Books of the Treasurer of the Queen's Chamber in
1569, as paid for bearing letters from Sir Henry
Norris, her Majesty's ambassador in France, to the
Queen,{1} and who with but slight probability has been
surmised to be the poet himself, is scarcely more
plausibly conjectured by Mr. Collier to be the poet's
father. The utter silence about his parents, with the
single exception quoted, in the works of one who, as
has been said above, made poetry the confidante of all
his joys and sorrows, is remarkable.
Whoever they were, he was well connected on his
father's side at least. 'The nobility of the
Spensers,' writes Gibbon, 'has been illustrated and
enriched by the trophies of Marlborough; but I exhort
them to consider the "Faerie Queen" as the most
precious jewel of their coronet.' Spenser was
connected with the then not ennobled, but highly
influential family of the Spencers of Althorpe,
Northamptonshire. Theirs was the 'house of auncient
fame,' or perhaps we should rather say they too
belonged to the 'house of auncient fame' alluded to in
the quotation made above from the _Prothalamion_. He
dedicates various poems to the daughters of Sir John
Spencer, who was the head of that family during the
poet's youth and earlier manhood down to 1580, and in
other places mentions these ladies with many
expressions of regard and references to his affinity.
'Most faire and vertuous Ladie,' he writes to the
'Ladie Compton and Mountegle,' the fifth daughter, in
his dedication to her of his _Mother Hubberds Tale_,
'having often sought opportunitie by some good meanes
to make knowen to your Ladiship the humble affection
and faithfull duetie, which I have alwaies professed
and am bound to beare to that house, from whence yee
spring, I have at length found occasion to remember the
same by making a simple present to you of these my idle
labours, &c.' To another daughter, 'the right worthy
and vertuous ladie the Ladie Carey,' he dedicates his
_Muiopotmos_; to another, 'the right honorable the
Ladie Strange,' his _Teares of the Muses_. In the
latter dedication he speaks of 'your particular
bounties, and also some private bands of affinitie,
which it hath pleased your Ladiship to acknowledge.'
It was for this lady Strange, who became subsequently
the wife of Sir Thomas Egerton, that one who came after
Spenser--Milton--wrote the _Arcades_. Of these three
kinswomen, under the names of Phyllis, Charillis, and
sweet Amaryllis, Spenser speaks once more in his _Colin
Clouts Come Home Again_; he speaks of them as
The honour of the noble familie
Of which I meanest boast myself to be.
For the particular branch of the Spencer or Spenser
family--one branch wrote the name with _s_, another
with _c_--to which the poet belonged, it has been well
suggested that it was that settled in East Lancashire
in the neighbourhood of Pendle Forest. It is known on
the authority of his friend Kirke, whom we shall
mention again presently, that Spenser retired to the
North after leaving Cambridge; traces of a Northern
dialect appear in the _Shepheardes Calendar_; the
Christian name Edmund is shown by the parish registers
to have been a favourite with one part of the
Lancashire branch--with that located near Filley Close,
three miles north of Hurstwood, near Burnley.
Spenser then was born in London, probably in East
Smithfield, about a year before those hideous Marian
fires began to blaze in West Smithfield. He had at
least one sister, and probably at least one brother.
His memory would begin to be retentive about the time
of Queen Elizabeth's accession. Of his great
contemporaries, with most of whom he was to be brought
eventually into contact, Raleigh was born at Hayes in
Devonshire in the same year with him, Camden in Old
Bailey in 1551, Hooker near Exeter in or about 1553,
Sidney at Penshurst in 1554, Bacon at York House in the
West Strand, 1561, Shakspere at Stratford-on-Avon in
1564, Robert Devereux, afterwards second earl of Essex,
in 1567.
The next assured fact concerning Spenser is that
he was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School, then
just founded. This we learn from an entry in 'The
Spending of the Money of Robert Nowell, Esq.,' of Reade
Hall, Lancashire, brother of Alexander Nowell, Dean of
St. Paul's. In an accompt of sums 'geven to poor
schollers of dyvers gramare scholles' we find Xs.
given, April 28, 1569, to 'Edmond Spensore Scholler of
the Merchante Tayler Scholl;' and the identification is
established by the occasion being described as 'his
gowinge to Penbrocke Hall in Chambridge,' for we know
that the future poet was admitted a Sizar of Pembroke
College, then styled Hall, Cambridge, in 1569. Thus we
may fairly conclude that Spenser was not only London
born but London bred, though he may have from time to
time sojourned with relatives and connections in
Lancashire{2} before his undergraduateship, as well as
after. Thus a conjecture of Mr. Collier's may
confidently be discarded, who in the muster-book of a
hundred in Warwickshire has noted the record of one
Edmund Spenser as living in 1569 at Kingsbury, and
conjectures that this was the poet's father, and that
perhaps the poet spent his youth in the same county
with Shakspere. It may be much doubted whether it is a
just assumption that every Edmund Spenser that is in
any way or anywhere mentioned in the Elizabethan era
was either the poet or his father. Nor, should it be
allowed that the Spenser of Kingsbury was indeed the
poet's father, could we reasonably indulge in any
pretty picture of a fine friendship between the future
authors of _Hamlet_ and of the _Faerie Queene_.
Shakspere was a mere child, not yet passed into the
second of his Seven Ages, when Spenser, being then
about seventeen years old, went up to the University.
However, this matter need not be further considered, as
there is no evidence whatever to connect Spenser with
Warwickshire.
But in picturing to ourselves Spenser's youth we
must not think of London as it now is, or of East
Smithfield as now cut off from the country by
innumerable acres of bricks and mortar. The green
fields at that time were not far away from Spenser's
birthplace. And thus, not without knowledge and
symnpathy, but with appreciative variations, Spenser
could re-echo Marot's 'Eglogue au Roy sous les noms de
Pan et Robin,' and its descriptions of a boy's rural
wanderings and delights. See his _Shepheardes
Calendar_, December:--
Whilome in youth when flowrd my joyfull spring,
Like swallow swift I wandred here and there;
For heate of heedlesse lust me did so sting,
That I oft doubted daunger had no feare:
I went the wastefull woodes and forrest wide
Withouten dread of wolves to bene espide.
I wont to raunge amid the mazie thicket
And gather nuttes to make my Christmas game,
And joyed oft to chace the trembling pricket,
Or hunt the hartlesse hare till she were tame.
What wreaked I of wintrie ages waste?
Tho deemed I my spring would ever last.
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