Part 2

The old age of Chaucer, like that of too many men of genius, is said to have been stormy, and not unvisited by necessity. We are informed that he went from Woodstock to Donnington Castle, and thence to London, to solicit a continuance of his annuities, in which he found such difficulties as probably hastened his death. It has been said, how could this be? How could a man with lands and a castle be in such necessity? and it has been attributed to the desire of his biographers to excite an undue sympathy for their subject, that they have represented him in his old age as avaricious. Probably, if we knew all the circumstances, the whole would be clear enough. We know so little of Chaucer's real, and especially of his domestic history, that we may pronounce, as falsely as presumptuously, in saying he could not be in need. Who shall say that because Chaucer casually mentions only one son, that he might not have half a dozen? Who shall say what misfortunes may have visited his old age? These were changeable and troublesome times. His biographers have settled his castle and estate on his son Thomas; and if he had other sons to provide for, and his annuities were not paid, these are causes enough for pecuniary difficulty.

The general opinion is, that he died October 25th, in the year 1400, being seventy-two years of age. According to Wood, he never repented of his reflections on the clergy of his times, but upbraided himself bitterly with the licentious portions of his writings, often crying out at the approach of death, "Woe, woe is me, that I can not recall and annul those things; but, alas! they are now continued from man to man, and I can not do what I would desire." He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the great south aisle, but no monument was raised to his memory till a century and a half after his decease, when Nicholas Bingham, a gentleman of Oxford, a poet and great admirer of Chaucer, erected the plain altar, now so well known, having three quatrefoils, and the same number of shields, at the north end of a magnificent recess, formed by four obtuse arched angles. The inscription and figures are now almost obliterated.

Like himself, his great work, the Canterbury Tales, lay buried for upward of seventy years in manuscript. Caxton, the first English printer, selected these tales as one of the earliest productions of his press, and thus gave to the world what it will never again consent to lose. Spite of the rude state of the language when he wrote, the splendor of his genius beams and burns gloriously through its inadequate vehicle. Time, which has destroyed his house at Woodstock, and beaten down his castle at Donnington, has not been able to effect the same ruin on his poems. The language has gone on perfecting and polishing; a host of glorious names and glorious works have succeeded Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales, making England affluent in its literary fame as any nation on earth; but, from his distant position, the father of English poetry beams like a star of the first magnitude in the eternal hemisphere of genius. Like Shakspeare, he has, for the most part, seized on narratives already in existence to employ his art upon, but that art is so exquisite that it has stamped immortal value on the narrative. The life and the characters he has represented to us are a portion of the far past, rescued for us from the oblivion that has overwhelmed all that age besides. We gaze on the living and moving scenes with an interest which the progress of time can only deepen. To the latest ages men will read and say, "Thus, in the days of Wickliffe, of John of Gaunt, and Richard II., did men and women look, and act, and think, and feel; thus did a great poet live among them, and send them down to us, and to all posterity, ten thousand times more faithfully preserved than by all the arts of Egypt and the East." Quaint as they are, they are the very quintessence of human nature. They live yet, fresh and vivid, passionate and strong, as they did on their way to the tomb of St. Thomas, upward of five hundred years ago. They can never die; they can never grow old; and amid them the poet, Englishman every inch, lives, and laughs, and quaffs his cup of wine, and tells his story, and chuckles over his jokes, or listens to the narratives of all those around him, with a relish of life that he only could feel or could communicate. There is an elastic geniality in his spirit, a buoyant music in his numbers, a soul of enjoyment in his whole nature, that mark him at once as a man of a thousand; and we feel in the charm that bears us along a strength that will outlast a thousand years. It is like that of the stream that runs, of the wind that blows, of the sun that comes up, ruddy as with youth, from the bright east on an early summer's morning. It is the strength of nature living in its own joyful life, and mingling with the life of all around in gladdening companionship. For a hundred beautiful pictures of genuine English existence and English character; for a world of persons and things that have snatched us from the present to their society; for a host of wise and experience-fraught maxims; for a many a tear shed, and emotion revived, and laugh of merriment; for many a happy hour and bright remembrance, we thank thee, Dan Chaucer, and just thanks shalt thou receive a thousand years hence.

EDMUND SPENSER.

So little is known of the early life of Spenser, that our notice of his haunts will be confined almost wholly to his castle of Kilcolman. He is said to be descended from the ancient family of Spenser; indeed, he says it himself:

"At length they all to mery London came; To mery London, my most kyndly nurse, That to me gave this life's first native sourse, Though from another place I toke my name, An house of ancient fame."

_Prothalamion._

This was the house of Althorpe, and now also of Marlborough; but however this may be, his parentage was obscure enough. He is said by Fenton to have been born in East Smithfield, near the Tower of London, in 1553; but the parish registers of that time are wanting, and we have no clew to trace more accurately the locality. He was admitted as sizer, the lowest order of students, at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, in the year 1569; he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in January, 1572-3, and that of Master of Arts in June, 1576, in which year he was an unsuccessful candidate for a fellowship, according to some of his biographers, though others deny this. On quitting the University, he went to reside with his relations in the north of England, but how he was supported does not appear. These relations, it would appear probable, from the communication of a Mr. F. C. Spenser, in the Gentleman's Magazine of August, 1842, quoted by Craik, in his Spenser and his Poetry, were the Spensers, or Le Spensers, of Huntwood, near Burnley, Lancashire, part of which lay united on a little property, still called Spenser's, at the foot of Pendle Hill. This derives confirmation from the fact of Spenser having a son called Lawrence, and of the names of Edmund and Lawrence abounding in the registries of this Lancashire family, as well as of that family only spelling the name with an "s." Here he fell in love with a lady, whom he celebrates under the name of Rosalind, and who deserted him; this is said to be the cause of his writing the Shepherd's Calendar, in which he complains of this faithless mistress. Others, again, think she was a maiden of Kent, a Rose Lynde, the Lyndes being an old family in that county, where he went on his acquaintance with Sir Philip Sidney while in the south; but this can not at all agree with the letter of his friend, Gabriel Harvey, to him. To Sir Philip he was introduced by this old college friend, Gabriel Harvey, and dedicated to him the Shepherd's Calendar. If it be true that the dedication was the cause of introduction, this must have been solicited and decided upon while the poem was only in progress; for it appears pretty clearly that he wrote part of the Calendar at Penshurst; especially the eleventh eclogue, in which he laments the death of a "maiden of great blood," supposed to have been a daughter of the Earl of Leicester. In the tenth eclogue he lauds the Earl of Leicester as "the worthy whom the queen loves best;" so that he was now got into the very high-road to preferment, and does not appear to have been backward to walk diligently in it. Leicester and Sidney, near kinsmen as they were, were just the two men of the whole kingdom to push the fortunes of a poet. With this early and regular introduction to these two powerful men (powerful in politics and literature, and in favor with the queen), it is difficult to weave in a belief of the fine story of Spenser's pushing his own way with the ninth canto of the first book of the Faërie Queene. It is a pity this should not be true, yet how can it? The story goes thus: One morning Spenser, determined to try his fortune with Sir Philip Sidney, the courtier most celebrated of the time for his intellectual accomplishments, and for his generous disposition, went to Leicester House, an entire stranger, carrying with him this canto of his great poem, in which is contained the fine allegory of Despair. He obtained admission to Sidney, and presented his MS. for his approbation: that great lover and judge of poetry had not read far before he was so much struck with the beauty of a stanza, that he ordered fifty pounds to be given to the author; proceeding to the next stanza, he raised his gift to a hundred, which sum he doubled on reading a third, and commanded his steward to pay instantly, lest he should be induced, by a further delay, to give away his whole estate. Pity so fine a story was not true! some imaginative person must have pleased himself with fancying how such a thing might have been.

However, Spenser was now a regular inmate of Leicester House, and at Penshurst; so that that latter sweet place has the honor of being as well the haunt of our great romantic poet as of the high-hearted Sidney. By Leicester and Sidney Spenser was introduced to Queen Elizabeth, who, it is said, on his presenting some poems to her, conferred on him a gratuity of a hundred pounds. If this be true, it is so unlike Elizabeth's parsimony that we must set it down as a wonder. Yet it is to this fact that Lord Burleigh's dislike to the _rhymer_, as he called Spenser, is attributed. He deemed the grant so extravagant as to neglect its payment till he received a repetition of the order from his mistress, with a reproof for his delay. There were, there is no doubt, plenty of causes for Burleigh's dislike of Spenser. In the first place, he had not a spark of poetry in his constitution. To him it was sheer nonsense, idle and childish nonsense. But, besides this, Spenser was brought forward by the very party of whom Burleigh was most jealous--Leicester. He appeared at court as the particular friend of Leicester and Sidney; and the incautious poet is said to have aggravated the dislike of Burleigh by some satirical rhymes, which were assiduously carried to the clever but cold-blooded minister. There has not been wanting active vindication of Burleigh, and the discovery of a patent granting him a pension of fifty pounds a year, dated 1590-1, which he enjoyed till his death in 1598-9, has been said to be sufficient refutation of all that has been alleged against Burleigh in Spenser's case. But how does this at all remove the statements of Burleigh's dislike of Spenser and reluctance to his promotion? Not in the least. It merely shows that Spenser had friends, and an interest in the queen's good-will, powerful enough to overrule the minister's opposition. It may, and most likely is, just as true, that on the grant of this pension Burleigh declared "the pension was a good example, too great to be given to a ballad-maker;" and that when the queen ordered him a hundred pounds, he replied, "What! all this for a song?" These facts are so entirely in keeping with Burleigh's character that we can by no means doubt them. Indeed, Spenser himself has put the truth past a doubt. What means,

"To have thy prince's grace, yet want his peeres'?"

What those lines at the close of the sixth book of the Faërie Queene?

"Ne may this homely verse, of many meanest, Hope to escape his venomous despite, More than my _former writs_, all were they clearest, From blamefull blot, and free from all that wite With which some wicked tongues did it backbite, And bring into a mighty peere's displeasure That never so deserved to indite."

Again, in the fourth book of the Ruines of Time, written subsequently to the first edition of the Faërie Queene:

"The rugged foremost that with grave foresight Wields kingdom's causes, and affairs of state, My looser verses, I wote, doth sharply wite For praising love," &c.

Thus, whether Spenser, as alleged or not, gave cause of offense by his satire, one thing is clear, that Burleigh was his bitter and unchangeable enemy. That Spenser had suffered at court is fully shown in his oft-cited verses in his "Mother Hubbard's Tale," the most lively picture of court attendance and its consequent chagrins that ever was painted.

"Full little knowest thou that hast not tryd, What hell it is in suing long to byde; To lose good days that might be better spent; To waste long nights in pensive discontent; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow; To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow; To have thy prince's grace, yet want his peers'; To have thy asking, yet wait many years; To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares; To eat thy bread with comfortless despairs; To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To spend, to give, to want, to be undone."

Spenser's sole reliance was on Leicester, Sidney, and Raleigh, with whom he became soon acquainted. He is said to have been employed by the Earl of Leicester on a mission to France in 1579; and though this has been questioned, yet his own assertion, in a letter to Gabriel Harvey, confirms it. In 1580 he accompanied Arthur, lord Grey of Wilton, who went as lord-lieutenant to Ireland, as his private secretary. In this post he is said to have displayed great talents for business. He wrote a "Discourse on the State of Ireland," containing many decided plans for the improvement of that country.

In 1581, the first year of his being in Ireland, he was also made clerk to the Irish Court of Chancery, and Mr. Craik has pointed out the fact given in Collins's Peerage, in the account of the Earls of Portsmouth, that in this same year, too, he received from the queen a grant of a lease of the Abbey of Iniscorthy, or Enniscorthy, and the attached castle and manor, in the county of Wexford, at an annual rent of £300, 6_s._, 8_d._; and that he conveyed this property, on the 9th of December of the same year, to Richard Synot. This leasehold, by another sale, came into the hands of the family of the Earls of Portsmouth, and is rated by G. Wakefield, in his "Account of Ireland," at £8000 a year.

Lord Grey was recalled in 1582, and Spenser returned with him. But his fate was bound up with Ireland. After hanging about court for four years, during which time there can be little doubt that he experienced much of the bitterness expressed in the lines just quoted, he obtained, through the interest of his friends, Lords Grey and Leicester, and Sir Philip Sidney, a grant of 3026 acres of land in the county of Cork, part of the forfeited estate of the great Earl of Desmond. Scarcely was his patent made out, when his best friend and patron, Sidney, was killed at the battle of Zutphen. This was the death of his hopes in England, and he set out to reside on and cultivate his newly-acquired estate in Ireland; having lamented Sir Philip's death in the pastoral elegy of Astrophel. This was in 1586. In three or four years, 1590 or 1591, Spenser returned to England with Raleigh, published his first three books of the Faërie Queene, and was presented by Raleigh to Elizabeth, who at this time conferred on him his pension. Spenser, it seems, now returned to Ireland, wrote his second three cantos, and bringing them over in 1596, published them; and also printed and published his Discourse on the State of Ireland, as a defense of his patron Lord Grey's policy there. From the condition of Ireland at that time, and the sense of insecurity which Spenser felt at his lonely castle of Kilcolman, it is not to be wondered at that his plan abounds with earnest recommendations of a coercive nature, and especially for the stationing of strong garrisons numerously. In 1597, he returned to Ireland, where almost immediately the great rebellion of Tyrone breaking out, he was chased from his castle, and, retiring to London, died there, heart-broken, in 1598.

Such is a brief outline of the life of Spenser. Let us now take a nearer view of his Irish home. One of the best accounts of it is contained in the Dublin University Magazine of November, 1843. The writer, evidently not only a genuine lover of the poetry of Spenser, but well acquainted with the scene he describes, goes at much length into the characters and allusions of the poem of the Faërie Queene. He shows us that Spenser draws a noble portrait of his benefactor, Lord Grey, in the second book of that poem. It is the warrior seen by Britomart in the mirror of Merlin, as her future husband.

"A comely knight, all armed in complete wize, Through whose bright ventayle lifted up on hye His manly face, that did his foes agrize, And friends to termes of gentle truce entize, Looked forth, as, Phoebus' face out of the east Betwixt two shady mountaynes doth arise," &c.

The portrait is certainly a noble one, and limned with the colors of divine poetry. The anonymous but able author leads us justly to notice that, in the Legend of Artegall, the thirteen stanzas opening the first canto of the fifth book "relate to the hapless condition of the Ladye Irena--her tears and her troubles; tears that, alas! have not yet ceased to flow down, and troubles that to the present hour are convulsing her bosom. For Irena is Ireland; and she sends her supplications across the ocean to Gloriana, the Queen of Faërie, the great and good Elizabeth of England, beseeching her to come over and help her. Artegall is the personification of equity and justice; and this is the boon which poor Irena looks for, and hopes to receive at her sister's hand."

Artegall, or, in other words, Lord Grey, passes over to Ireland, and encounters Pollentè, or Gerald, earl of Desmond, "who was in rebellion against Elizabeth at the time of Lord Grey's appointment to the chief authority in Ireland, and perished miserably in consequence. His prodigious wealth and power would amply bear out such an appellation. His lands extended one hundred and fifty miles in the south of the kingdom, stretching from sea to sea, and comprising the greater portion of the counties of Waterford, Cork, Kerry, and Limerick. We read of his being able to bring together, by his summons, six hundred cavalry and two thousand footmen; and of these, nearly five hundred were gentlemen of his own kindred and surname. His castles were numerous, and scattered over this large tract of country in well-chosen places, for its defense and protection; and it is curious that attached to one of them is a tale of blood not unlike what you will find Spenser describing. A few miles above the sea, on a bold cliff overhanging one of the deepest parts of the beautiful River Blackwater, stand the battered remains of the earl's Castle of Strancally. Attached to this strong-hold is a murderous device, which we had often previously heard of, but never till then beheld. The solid rock had been pierced with a large well-like aperture, communicating with the river; and the neighboring peasants will tell you, that the unwary, when decoyed within the castle, were tied hand and foot, and flung down the _murder-hole_: the rapid river hurried by, and soon carried away their gasping shrieks, and the dead told no tales. We have every respect for these local traditions, and esteem them in a thousand instances valuable guides; notwithstanding, we place no faith in the present horrible legend, which is wholly at variance with the received character of the Earl of Desmond. It may be that such things were told to him, even in Spenser's days; and it is certain that, about the close of the year 1579, his Castle of Strancally was taken by the Earl of Ormond, the president of Munster; a capture which could be easily transferred to the poet's hero, Artegall."

Lord Grey was recalled, in consequence of representations of cruelty and oppression in his administration. "The queen was persuaded by these insinuations, and his recall took place when he had scarcely completed his second year. With this event the fifth book of the Faërie Queene concludes: and the poet there enters at large into the facts of the case. Artegall is summoned away to Faërie Court, and on his way thither meets with two ill-favored hags--'superannuated vipers,' as Lord Brougham would term them--whom he knows to be Envy and Detraction. These are painted in language that makes the grisly creatures live before you. Every hue and feature of their vile countenances is preserved--their slavering lips, their tireless tongues, their foul and claw-like hands. We remember nothing in Milton or Dante that surpasses this powerful personification."

Spenser, as we have already stated, accompanied Lord Grey home, and here came in for a share in the partition of the vast estates of the vanquished Earl of Desmond. The plan now devised for more securely attaching Ireland to the British crown was called the Plantation of Munster. The scheme, which was first put in operation on this vast confiscated territory of the Earl of Desmond, is thus described in Smith's History of Cork:

"All forfeited lands to be divided into manors and seigniories, containing 12,000, 8000, 6000, and 4000 acres each, according to a plot laid down. The undertakers (those who got these grants) to have an estate in fee-farm, yielding for each seigniory of 12,000 acres, for the first three years, £33, 6_s._, 8_d._ sterling, viz., from 1590 to 1593, and from Michaelmas, 1593, £66, 13_s._, 4_d._ sterling, and ratably for every inferior seigniory, yielding upon the death of the undertaker the best beast as an heriot; to be discharged of all taxes whatsoever, except subsidies levied by Parliament. Bogs, mountains, &c., not to be included till improved, and then to pay a half-penny for each English acre. License to the undertakers to transport all commodities, duty free, into England for five years. That none be admitted to have more than 12,000 acres. No English planter to be permitted to convey to any mere Irish. The head of each plantation to be English; and the heirs female to marry none but of English birth; and none of the mere Irish to be maintained in any family there.

"Each freeholder, from the year 1590, to furnish one horse and horseman, armed; each principal undertaker for 12,000 acres, to supply three horsemen and six footmen, armed; and so ratably for the other seigniories; and each copyholder one footman, armed. That, for seven years to come, they shall not be obliged to travel out of Munster upon any service; and after that time, no more than ten horsemen and twenty footmen out of one seigniory of 12,000 acres, and so ratably; and such as serve out of Munster to be paid by the queen.

"That the queen will protect and defend the said seigniories, at her own charge, for seven years to come. All commodities brought from England for the use of the same seigniories to be duty free for seven years."