him two works in prose, which abound in beauty and pathos, Mary Magdalene's Funeral Tears, and the Triumphs over Death. TIMES GO BY TURNS. The lopped tree in time may grow again, Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower; The driest soil suck in some moistening shower: The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow; She draws her favours to the lowest ebb: Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web: Not always fall of leaf, nor ever spring; The roughest storm a calm may soon allay. A chance may win that by mischance was lost; Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all. SCORN NOT THE LEAST. Where words are weak, and foes encount'ring strong, And silent sees that speech could not amend: While pike doth range, the silly tench doth fly, These fleet afloat, while those do fill the dish; The merlin cannot ever soar on high, EDMOND SPENSER. [Born 1553-died 1599.] EDMOND SPENSER, descended from the ancient family of that name, was born in London about the year 1553. In 1569 he entered Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was the intimate friend of two of the greatest men who distinguished the Elizabethan age, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh. He was a frequent guest of the former, at Penshurst; and the latter visited him at Kilcolman, his Irish home. Both of them are recorded in his verse. Spenser accompanied Lord Grey of Wilton to Ireland, as his secretary, and obtained, in the county of Cork, a grant of 3026 acres out of the forfeited lands of Desmond. He married, in the year 1594, a lady whom he has celebrated in many of his sonnets, as well as in his "Epithalamion." The next three years of his life were spent apparently in domestic happiness and literary labour; and in his Fairy Queen, much of which was composed during that period, we have many records of the delight with which he regarded the beautiful scenery, at that time for the most part a forest, in the neighbourhood of which his castle was placed. This period of repose was followed by a calamity in which his fortunes were wrecked. In the war consequent upon the rising of Tyrone, Spenser's house was burned by a party of the Irish. The poet with his wife escaped; but one of his children perished in the flames. His former friend and patron, Essex, would doubtless have restored his fortunes; nor is it likely that he would have been neglected by the Queen, who had, several years previously, conferred upon him a pension of 50l., and to whom he had, in 1596, presented his remarkable tract on the government of Ireland: but his heart was broken. He died in January 1599, and was buried, at the expense of Essex, in Westminster Abbey, not far from the grave of Chaucer. All the poets of the age attended his funeral, and threw verses into his grave. His great poem, long as it is, carries out but half of the author's design. It has been believed by some that the remaining portion of it was burned with his castle; while others have asserted that it had been sent to England, but was lost through the carelessness of a servant. We possess, however, no conclusive evidence that the work was completed. The poetry of Spenser belongs to the first order. There is a salutary purity and nobleness about it. He is a connecting link between Chaucer and Milton; resembling the former in his de scriptive power, his tenderness, and his sense of beauty, though inferior to him in homely vigour and dramatic insight into character. In ideality and imagination he has an affinity with Milton, but with Milton rather as represented by his "Comus," and other early poems, than at that later period when his genius had submitted to the chains of Puritanism. The Fairy Queen is the chief representative in English poetry of the romance which once delighted hall and bower. In this respect Spenser is in British verse what Ariosto is in Italian; except that in the northern poet there exists, with a more serious mind, a far deeper appreciation of what was best and truest in the spirit of chivalry. In his freshness of moral, and warmth of religious sentiment, Spenser reminds us yet more of Tasso than of Ariosto. Notwithstanding his polemical allegory of Duessa, a sorry tribute to the age, nothing is more striking than the Catholic tone that belongs to Spenser's poetry. The religion and the chivalry of the Middle Ages were alike the inspirers of his song. He belongs to the order of poets who are rather the monument of a time gone by than an illustration of their own. He was admirable in his appreciation of classical mythology, as well as in his use of the chivalrous legend; and merits, in a peculiar sense, those epithets of "learned" and "sage," which he applies to poets. In the legend of Irena (or Ierne), the distressed and captive lady whom Artegal (Fairy Queen, book v. canto 1) was sent to deliver from thrall, Spenser has been said to have alluded to the condition of Ireland. If so, the difference of his views, as poet, from those indicated in his political tract is remarkable. THE HOUSE OF HOLINESS. [From the Fairy Queen, book i. canto x.] Her faithfull knight faire Una brings What man is he, that boasts of fleshly might Which, all so soone as it doth come to fight 'Gainst spirítuall foes, yields by and by, Or from the fielde most cowardly doth fly! But all the good is Gods, both power and eke will. There was an auncient house not far away, Through wisedome of a matrone grave and hore; The eldest two, most sober, chast, and wise, Though spousd, yet wanting wedlocks solemnize; Was lincked, and by him had many pledges dere. With lookes full lowly cast, and gate full slow, Hight Humilta. They passe in, stouping low; For streight and narrow was the way which he did show. Each goodly thing is hardest to begin; But, entred in, a spatious court they see, Both plaine and pleasaunt to be walked in; Where them does meete a francklin2 faire and free, And entertaines with comely courteous glee; His name was Zele, that him right well became: And gladly did them guide, till to the hall they came. 1 companion. 2 freeman, or gentleman. There fayrely them receives a gentle squyre, But simple, trew, and eke unfained sweet, What grace hath thee now hether brought this way? Or doen thy feeble feet unweeting3 hether stray? Straunge thing it is an errant knight to see Here in this place; or any other wight, That hether turnes his steps: so few there bee, That chose the narrow path, or seeke the right! All keepe the broad high way, and take delight With many rather for to goe astray, And be partakers of their evill plight, Then with a few to walke the rightest way: O matrone sage," quoth she, "I hether came; 3 unawares. |