No More Learning

Edmund Bolton, in his Hypercritica
(c. 1620), says: 'Among the lesser late poets George Gascoigne's
Works may be endured'; and Drayton in his epistle Of Poets
and Poesy tells the truth even more bluntly. After speaking of
Surrey and Wyatt, he continues :
Gascoigne and Churchyard after them again
In the beginning of Eliza's reign,
Accounted were great meterers many a day,
But not inspired with brave fire, had they
Livd but a little longer, they had seen
Their works before them to have buried been.
1 Liber IV. De Aulica.
3
3 Harvey's Letter Book, Camden Society.
6 Pierce's Supererogation.
Sloane MSS, British Museum.
4 Foure Letters.
o In Ciprium, 22.


## p. 202 (#224) ############################################

202
George Gascoigne
In his attitude towards his work, Gascoigne further illustrates
this transition spirit. He took up poetry as an amusement, and,
somewhat unwillingly, came to acknowledge it as a profession.
Lack of resolution combined with the unfavourable conditions of
the time to prevent his attaining eminence. Gabriel Harvey, in
his somewhat pedantic fashion, remarks, in a Censura critica
written on a blank half page of Weedes, on the personal defects of
the author.
Sum vanity; and more levity; his special faultes, and the continual canses
of his misfortunes. Many other have maintained themselves gallantly upon
some one of his qualities: nothing fadgeth with him, for want of Resolution,
and Constancy to any one kind. He shall never thrive with any thing that
can brooke no crosses: or hath not learned to make the best of the worst, in
his profession. It is no marvel, though he had cold success in his actions,
that in his studdies, and Looves, thought upon the warres; in the warres,
mused upon his studdies, and Looves. The right floorishing man, in studdy,
is nothing but studdy; in Loove, nothing but Loove; in warr, nothing but
warr.
Gascoigne himself, in the poem on his 'woodmanship’ addressed to
lord Grey of Wilton', admits that he tried without success the
professions of a philosopher, a lawyer, a courtier and a soldier,
He was born of a good Bedfordshire family, and educated at
Trinity College, Cambridge, as appears from his references to the
university in The Steele Glas and the dedication of The Tale of
Hemetes the heremyte, and in Dulce bellum inexpertis? to his
‘master' Nevynson. He left the university without a degree,
entered Gray's Inn in 1555 and represented the county of Bedford
in parliament 1557–9. His youthful extravagances led to debt,
disgrace and disinheritance by his father, Sir John Gascoigne.
'In myddest of his youth'he tells us (1. 62) he determined to abandone
all vaine delightes and to returne unto Greyes Inne, there to undertake againe
the studdie of the common Lawes. And being required by five sundry
Gentlemen to write in verse somewhat worthye to bee remembred, before he
entered into their fellowshippe, hee compiled these five sundrie sortes of metro
uppon five sundrye theames, whiche they delivered unto him. '
Gascoigne's ingenuous use of the word 'compiled' disarms criticism,
but it makes the whole incident only the more significant of the
attitude of himself and his companions towards his verse. It was
occasional and perfunctory, the work neither of an inspired artist
on the one hand, nor of a professional craftsman on the other.
However, Gascoigne not only wrote the versified exercises
* Cambridge edition, ed. Cunliffe, J. W. , vol. I, p. 348.
2 Stanza 199, vol. 1, p. 180 u. 8.
3 Stephen Nevynson was a fellow of Trinity and proceeded M. A. in 1548.


## p. 203 (#225) ############################################

His Life
203
demanded of him: he paid the fines for his neglected terms, was
called 'ancient'in 1565, and translated Supposes and (together with
Francis Kinwelmersh) Jocasta, which were presented at Gray's
Inn in 1566. He took a further step towards reform by marrying
a rich widow, whose children by her first marriage brought a suit
in 1568 for the protection of their interests. The action seems to
have been amicably settled, and he remained on good terms with
his stepson, Nicholas Breton, who was himself a poet of some
note. But it is to be feared that, as 'a man of middle age,'
Gascoigne returned to the evil courses of his youth, if we are to
accept the evidence of his autobiographical poem Dan Bartholmew
of Bathe. The last stanza but three (1, 136) makes the personal
character of the poem obvious, and this is probably one of the
‘glaunderous Pasquelles against divers personnes of greate callinge'
laid to his charge in the following petition, which, in May 1572,
prevented him from taking his seat in parliament:
Firste, he is indebted to a great nomber of personnes for the which cause
he hath absented him selfe from the Citie and hath lurked at Villages neere
unto the same Citie by a longe time, and nowe beinge returned for a Burgesse
of Midehurste in the Countie of Sussex doethe shewe his face openlie in
the despite of all his creditors.
Item he is a defamed person and noted as well for manslaughter as for
other greate cryemes.
Item he is a common Rymer and a deviser of slaunderous Pasquelles
against divers personnes of greate callinge.
Item he is a notorious Ruffianne and especiallie noted to be bothe a Spie,
an Atheist and Godles personne.
The obvious intention of the petition was to prevent Gascoigne
from pleading privilege against his creditors and securing immunity
from arrest, so the charges need not be taken as proving more
against him than he admitted in his autobiographical poems; in
any case, the document interests us only so far as it affected his
literary career. In the Councell given to Master Bartholmew
Withipoll (1, 347), written in 1572, Gascoigne expressed his in-
tention of joining his friend in the Low Countries in the August of
that year; and his Voyage into Hollande (1, 355) shows that he
actually sailed from Gravesend to Brill in March 1573. During
his absence (probably in the same year) there appeared the first
edition of his works, undated, and professedly piratical, though
Gascoigne afterwards acknowledged that it was published with his
knowledge and consent.
Of this edition, very few copies remain, and much interesting
matter which appeared only in it has been but lately put within


## p. 204 (#226) ############################################

204
George Gascoigne
6
the reach of the ordinary student- Unusual precautions were
taken, even for that day, to free the real author of the enter-
prise from responsibility. An anonymous H. W. delivers to an
anonymous A. B. to print a written book given to him by his
friend G. T. 'wherin he had collected divers discourses and verses,
invented uppon sundrie occasions, by sundrie gentlemen' (1, 490).
G. T. (who might be Gascoigne's friend George Turbervile, but
is much more likely to be Gascoigne himself) thus takes the place
of the editor of the volume, although he protests that, after having
with no small entreatie obteyned of Master F. J. and sundry other
toward young gentlemen, the sundry copies of these sundry matters,'
he gives them to H. W. for his private recreation only, and not for
publication. G. T. does not even know who wrote the greatest part
of' the verses, for they are unto me but a posie presented out of
sundry gardens' (1, 499). But, when the second edition appears in
1575 under the poet's own name, A. B. , G. T. , H. W. and F. J. all
dissolve into Gascoigne himself. The 'divers discourses and verses
. . . by sundrie gentlemen' all now appear as the ‘Posies of George
Gascoigne,' G. T. 's comment on the verses of Master F. J. is
printed as from Gascoigne's own hand, Gascoigne admits that the
original publication was by his consent and a close examination
of the two editions leads to the conclusion that the first was pre-
pared for the press and written from beginning to end by Gascoigne
himself, printer's preface and all. The following sentence in ‘The
Printer to the Reader' (1, 476)
And as the venemous spider wil sucke poison out of the most holesome
herbe, and the industrious Bee can gather hony out of the most stinking weede
is characteristic of Gascoigne's early euphuistic style, of which
we have several examples inserted by him in his translation of
Ariosto’s Suppositi (I, 197). And when Gascoigne comes to write
in his own name an epistle "To the reverende Divines' for the
second edition, from which the printer's address to the reader is
omitted, he repeats this very simile (1, 6):
I had alledged of late by a right reverende father, that although in deede
out of everie floure the industrious Bee may gather honie, yet by proofe the
Spider thereout also sucks mischeevous poyson.
He also adopts with the slightest possible emendations the intro-
ductory prefaces to the various poems for which G. T. took the
responsibility in the edition of 1573. All this is very characteristic
of the time and of the man. His eagerness for publication belongs
1 Ed. Cunliffe, J. W. , Cambridge English Classics.
6


## p. 205 (#227) ############################################

6
The Posies
205
to the age to come, his anxiety first to disown it and then to
excuse it is of his own and an earlier time.
Even in 1575, Gascoigne is still most anxious to preserve what
a modern athlete would call his 'amateur standing. He protests
that he never receyved of the Printer, or of anye other, one grote
or pennie for the first Copyes of these Posyes' (1, 4) and he describes
himself, not as an author, but as 'George Gascoigne Esquire pro-
fessing armes in the defence of Gods truth. '
In commemoration
of his exploits in the Low Countries, he adopted a new motto,
Tam Marti quam Mercurio, and this double profession of arms
and letters is also indicated in the device which adorns the Steele
Glas portrait of 1576—an arquebuss with powder and shot on one
side, and books with pen and ink on the other. In the frontispiece
to The Tale of Hemetes the heremyte, Gascoigne is pictured with a
pen in his ear and a sword by his side, a book in his right hand
and a spear in his left.
The Hundreth sundrie Flowers gave offence, Gascoigne himself
tells us, first by reason of 'sundrie wanton speeches and lascivious
phrases' and, secondly, by doubtful construction and scandal (1, 3).
The author professed that he had amended these defects in the
edition of 1575. A comparison of the two texts shows that only a
few minor poems were omitted completely (I, 500—2) and some
of these, apparently, by accident; while certain objectionable
passages and phrases in The Adventures of Master F. J. were
struck out. It was evidently this prose tale which gave the chief
offence, on both the grounds stated. Gascoigne protested that
there is no living creature touched or to be noted therby' (1, 7);
but his protest is not convincing. According to G. T. “it was in
the first beginning of his writings, as then he was no writer of any
long continuaunce' (1, 495) and the story apparently recounts an
intrigue of Gascoigne's youth, as Dan Bartholmew of Bathe one of
his 'middle age. In the second edition, the prose story is ascribed
to an unknown Italian writer Bartello, and in some new stanzas
added to Dan Bartholmew at the end the following occurs :
Bartello he which writeth ryding tales,
Bringes in a Knight which cladde was all in greene,
That sighed sore amidde his greevous gales,
And was in hold as Bartholmew hath beene.
But (for a placke) it maye therein be seene,
That, that same Knight which there his griefes begonne,
Is Batts owne Fathers Sisters brothers Sonne.
In this roundabout fashion, quite characteristic of Gascoigne
(cf. I, 405), he lets the reader know that Bartello and Bartholmew


## p. 206 (#228) ############################################

206
George Gascoigne
6
a
>
are the same as the green knight; and the green knight, as we
know from The fruite of Fetters, in which Bartello is again given
as authority, is Gascoigne himself. He did not improve matters
in this respect by the addition to the second issue of marginal
notes, evidently intended rather to heighten curiosity than to allay
it. With reference to his rival in Dan Bartholmew, he notes at
the side ‘These thinges are mistical and not to bee understoode
but by Thaucthour him selfe,' and, after this, the entry "Another
misterie' frequently occurs. Fleay has disregarded the author's
warning, and has endeavoured to identify the persons indicated,
not very satisfactorily. The fact is that by a ‘misterie' Gascoigne
simply means something scandalous. When in his Voyage into
Hollande he casts reflections on the chastity of the Dutch nuns,
he pulls himself up with the remark 'that is a misterie'; and the
husband in The Adventures of Master F. J. , who catches his wife
in flagrante delicto, forbids the handmaid to speak any word 'of
this mistery. '
The edition of 1573 is of further interest because it gives a list
of the author's works up to that date (1, 475) apparently arranged
in chronological order, beginning with Supposes, Jocasta and
The Adventures of Master F. J. , all known to be early works,
and ending with the Voyage into Hollande, written in 1573, and
Dan Bartholmew, which is left unfinished. The edition of 1575
completes this poem, and adds Dulce bellum inexpertis and The
fruite of Fetters, recounting Gascoigne's experiences of war and
imprisonment in Holland. Die groene Hopman, as the Dutch
called him, was not well regarded by the burghers, and the dislike
was mutual. Gascoigne ascribes the distrust of those to whom,
according to his own account, he rendered valiant and repeated
service, to a love affair with a lady in the Spanish camp; but it
was, perhaps, also due to his eagerness to make himself acquainted
with the burghers' affairs and to the ‘Cartes . . . Mappes . . . and
Models' which he offers to lay before lord Grey of Wilton in ex-
planation of 'Hollandes State' (1, 363). Gascoigne's poems on his
adventures in the Low Countries throw some remarkable sidelights
on the relations between the burghers and their English allies.
Certayne notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse
or ryme in English', appended to the edition of 1575, apparently
as an afterthought, for it is lacking in some copies, was, like
many
of Gascoigne's works, the first attempt in English of its kind, and
it was soon followed by the more elaborate treatises of Webbe
· See post, chap. XIV.


## p. 207 (#229) ############################################

His Later Works
207
and Puttenham. The Notes have the occasional character
common to much of Gascoigne's work; yet they mark, perhaps,
the division between his amateur and his professional career. He
now directed his literary activities to the two ends of winning
powerful patronage and establishing himself in public esteem. He
was employed by Leicester in this same year, 1575, to furnish com-
plimentary verses to the queen on her famous visit to Kenilworth
castle; his most elaborate effort on this occasion, the 'shew' of
Zabeta, was not presented, perhaps because it pressed on Elizabeth
somewhat too insistently the advantages of marriage. At Wood-
stock, he pronounced' The Tale of Hemetes the heremyte before
her majesty, and, in the following January, presented versions of
it in French, Latin and Italian to her as a New Year's gift, with a
request for employment. The request was evidently granted, for
his next New Year's gift, The Grief of Joye, is offered as witness
"how the interims and vacant hours of those daies which I spent
this somer in your service have byn bestowed. '
Though Gascoigne hardly attained the dignity of a literary
artist, he certainly succeeded in laying aside the frivolity of his
youth and became a portentous moralist. In the dedication of
his last acknowledged publication, A Delicate Diet, for daintie
mouthde Droonkardes, dated 10 August 1576, he contrasted the
wanton poems of his youth with the serious works of his maturity:
When my wanton (and worse smelling) Poesies, presumed fyrst to peark
abroade, they came forth sooner than I wyshed, and much before they
deserved to be lyked. So that (as you maye sithens perceyve) I was more
combred with correction of them, then comforted in the constructions where-
unto they were subject. And too make amendes for the lost time which I
misbestowed in wryting so wantonlie: I have of latter dayes used al my
travaile in matters both serious and Morall. I wrote first a tragicall com-
medie called The Glasse of Government: and now this last spring, I
translated and collected a worthy peece of worke, called The Droomme of
Doomes daie, and dedicated the same to my Lord and Maister: And I
invented a Satyre, and an Ellegie, called The Steele glasse: and The Com-
plaint of Phylomene. Both which I dedicated to your good Lord and myne,
The Lord Greye of Wylton: These works or Pamphlets, I esteeme both
Morall and Godly.
So, indeed, they are, but they are not of great literary im-
portance. The Steele Glas has, perhaps, received more than its
due meed of critical appreciation. It has none of the qualities of
the great Latin satirists imitated a generation later by Hall and
Marston : perhaps its greatest claim to distinction is the sympathy
with the hard lot of the labouring poor, shown also by Gascoigne
in some of his earlier work (cf. A gloze upon this text, Dominus


## p. 208 (#230) ############################################

208
George Gascoigne
iis opus habet). The Droomme of Doomesday is, in part, a trans-
lation of Innocent III's De Contemptu Mundi sive de Miseria
Humanae Conditionis, and A Delicate Diet, for daintie mouthde
Droonkardes has nothing to distinguish it from the religious tracts
of the time.
In the dedication of The Droomme of Doomesday, Gascoigne
wrote (2 May 1576) that he was ‘in weake plight for health as
your good L. well knoweth,' and he was unable, through illness, to
correct the proofs. He was again ill for some months before his
death on 7 October 1577. But, between these two illnesses he
evidently recovered sufficiently to be sent on a mission from the
privy council to the English merchant adventurers in Antwerp. He
wrote to the lord treasurer from Paris on his way on 15 September
1576 and again on 7 October, and in November he received twenty
pounds for 'bringinge of Letters in for her Majesties affaires frome
Andwarpe to Hampton Court. ' In the same month, his printer
issued anonymously, although 'seene and allowed, The Spoyle of
Antwerp Faithfully reported by a true Englishman, who was
present at the same. Recent events in Belgium lend the pamphlet
a special interest, but, apart from these painful associations, it is a
craftsman-like piece of reporting, giving Gascoigne an additional
claim to our attention as the first English war correspondent.
His authorship of the pamphlet, which was for a long time held
doubtful, was recently established beyond question by a com-
parison of the signatures of the letters preserved in the Record
office with that of George Gascoigne in the manuscript of Hemetes
the heremyte ; they are undoubtedly identical".
In many departments of literature Gascoigne wrote the first
work of its kind that has come down to us—the first prose tale of
modern life, the first prose comedy, the first tragedy translated
from the Italian, the first maske, the first regular satire, the first
treatise on poetry in English. He was a pioneer, and, as a pioneer,
,
he must be judged. Two of his contemporaries and immediate
successors passed upon him just and yet considerate verdicts.
Tom Nashe in his prefatory address in Greene's Menaphon, 'to the
Gentlemen Students of both Universities,' writes
i
Maister Gascoigne is not to bee abridged of his deserved esteeme, who first
beate the path to that perfection which our best Poets have aspired to since
his departure; whereto he did ascend by comparing the Italian with the
English as Tully did Graeca cum Latinis 2.
1 See the facsimiles published in Mod. Lang. Rev. vol. vı p. 90 (January 1911).
8 R. B. McKerrow, Works of Thos. Nashe, vol. III, p. 319.


## p. 209 (#231) ############################################

His Achievements
209
and R. Tofte says 'To the Courteous Reader' of The Blazon of
Jealousie (1615):
>
This nice Age, wherein wee now live, hath brought more neate and teirse
Wits, into the world; yet must not old George Gascoigne, and Turbervill,
with such others, be altogether rejected, since they first brake the Ice for our
quainter Poets, that now write, that they might the more safer swimme in
the maine Ocean of sweet Poesie.
These moderate estimates of Gascoigne's achievements have
stood the test of time, and the recent trend of criticism has been
in his favour. His poems give the impression of a distinct, though
not altogether pleasing, personality. He is the homme moyen
sensuel of the time, with added touches of reckless debauchery in
his youth, and of too insistent puritanism in his later days of ill-
health and repentance; even in his 'middle age' he is too much
inclined to recount his amatory adventures with a suggestive air of
mystery, bound to excite the curiosity of his readers and make
things uncomtortable for the ears of the ladies; his manners in
this respect are as bad as his morals. He was probably a better
soldier than lover, but one has a suspicion that his own account of
his exploits in the Netherlands does not tell the whole truth; he
was obviously intolerant of discipline and little inclined to conciliate
the burghers whose cause he had come to serve. As a writer, he
was distinguished among the men of his own time by his versatility.
N. R. , writing in commendation of the author of The Steele Glas,
after running over a list of the great poets of antiquity, says:
Thus divers men, with divers vaines did write,
But Gascoigne doth, in every vaine indite.
This dissipation of his energies over different fields of literature
prevented him from attaining excellence in any one kind, for he
had only moderate ability: the surprising thing is that he was
able to do many things well—most of them better than they
had been done by his predecessors, though in all he was easily
outstripped by the writers of the age that followed. His prose
style is easy and generally free from affectation, though he
indulges now and again in the curious similes and balanced allite-
ration which, later, became characteristic of euphuism. As a metrist,
he has a facility which extends over a wide range, but his fluency is
mechanical, the regular beat of his verse often giving the effect of
water coming out of a bottle.
His long poems, whether in blank
verse or rimed measures, soon become monotonous and tedious,
The caesura in The Steele Glas occurs almost invariably after the
14
R. L. III.
CH. X.


## p. 210 (#232) ############################################

210
George Gascoigne
fourth syllable, and is regularly marked by Gascoigne with a
comma :
When vintners mix, no water with their wine,
When printers passe, none errours in their bookes,
When hatters use, to bye none olde cast robes? ,
and so on. In Dan Bartholmew of Bathe, in spite of a variety of
stanza forms, some of them elaborate enough, the general effect is
still monotonous. Gascoigne is seen at his best in trifles-short
poems which do not call for great depth of thought or sustained
interest, and in which his excessive fluency is kept within bounds.
Even in these he rarely hit upon a pregnant thought or striking
phrase"; but he succeeded in introducing into English poetry from
the Italian models whom he studied (Ariosto seems to have been his
especial favourite) a greater ease and smoothness than had been
attained by Wyatt and Surrey. The following sonnet is a good
example of his characteristic virtues :
That selfe same tonge which first did thee entreat
To linke thy liking with my lucky love:
That trustie tonge must nowe these wordes repeate,
I love thee still, my fancie cannot move.
That dreadlesse hart which durst attempt the thought
To win thy will with mine for to consent,
Maintaines that vow which love in me first wrought,
I love thee still, and never shall repent.
That happie hande which hardely did touch,
Thy tender body to my deepe delight:
Shall serve with sword to prove my passion such
As loves thee still, much more than it can write.
Thus love I still with tongue, hand, hart and all,
And when I chaunge, let vengeance on me falla.
Next to his love poetry, his verses in compliment to the queen
are perhaps most worthy of attention, especially those which he
wrote for the princely pleasures at Kenelworth Castle. ' He
directed his muse, with amazing ingenuousness, to the goal of
professional advancement, and this combined with other reasons
to prevent any lofty flight or permanent achievement; but, as the
first of the Elizabethan court poets, he is notable as the precursor of
an important movement.
i Cambridge edition, vol. II, p. 171.
· Ibid. , vol. I, p. 92.


## p. 211 (#233) ############################################

CHAPTER XI
THE POETRY OF SPENSER
The life of Spenser extended from the years 1552 to 1599, a
period which experienced a conflict of elementary intellectual
forces more stimulating to the emotions and imagination than,
perhaps, any other in the history of England. Throughout Europe,
the time-honoured system of society which had endured since the
age of Charles the Great was undergoing a complete transforma-
tion. In Christendom, so far as it was still Catholic, the ancient
doctrines of the church and the scholastic methods of interpreting
them held their ground in general education; but the weakening
of the central basis of authority caused them everywhere to be
applied in different ethical senses. A change of equal importance
had been wrought in the feudal order of which the emperor was
the recognised, but now only nominal, chief, since this universal
constitution of things had long been reduced to insignificance by
the rise of great independent nations, and the consequent begin-
ning of wars occasioned by the necessities of the balance of power.
Feudalism, undermined partly by the decay in its own spirit,
partly by its anarchical tendencies, was giving way before the
advancing tide of commercial intercourse, and, in every kingdom
of western Europe, the central authority of the monarch had
suppressed, in different degrees, the action of local liberty. In a
larger measure, perhaps, than any country, English society was the
stage of religious and political conflict. As the leader of the pro-
testant nations, England was surrounded by dangers that presently
culminated in the sending of the Spanish armada. Her ancient
nobility, almost destroyed by the wars of the Roses, had been sup-
planted by a race of statesmen and courtiers called into existence
by the crown, and, though the continuity of Catholic tradition was
still preserved, the sovereign, as head of the church, exerted almost
absolute power in the regulation of public worship. The conscience
of the nation wavered in this struggle between old ecclesiastico-
14-2


## p. 212 (#234) ############################################

2 12
The Poetry of Spenser
feudal forms and the infant ideas of civil life; and confusion was
itself confounded by the influence of art and letters imported from
the more advanced, but corrupt, culture of modern Italy. To the
difficulty of forming a reasonable view of life out of these chaotic
conditions was added the problem of expressing it in a language
as yet hardly mature enough to be the vehicle of philosophical
thought Wyatt and Surrey had, indeed, accomplished a remark-
able feat in adapting to Italian models the metrical inheritance
transmitted to them by Chaucer; but a loftier and larger imagina-
tion than theirs was required to create poetic forms for national
aspirations which had so little in common as those of England with
the spirit of Italy in the sixteenth century.
The poet whose name is rightly taken as representative of the
general movement of literature in the first half of Elizabeth's
reign was well fitted by nature to reflect the character of this
spiritual conflict. A modest and sympathetic disposition, an in-
telligence philosophic and acute, learned industry, a brilliant
fancy, an exquisite ear, enabled Spenser's genius to respond like
a musical instrument to each of the separate influences by which
it was stirred. His mind was rather receptive than creative. All
the great movements of the time are mirrored in his work. In
it is to be found a reverence for Catholic tradition modified by
the moral earnestness of the reforming protestant. His imagina-
tion is full of feudal ideas, warmed into life by his association with
men of action like Sidney, Grey, Ralegh and Essex, but coloured
by a contrary stream of thought derived from the philosophers of
the Italian renascence. Theological conceptions, originating with
the Christian Fathers, lie side by side in his poetry with images
drawn from pagan mythology, and with incidents of magic copied
from the medieval chroniclers. These imaginative materials are,
with him, not fused and assimilated in a form of direct poetic
action, as is the case in the poetry of Chaucer, Shakespeare and
Milton ; but, rather, are given an appearance of unity by an
allegory, proceeding from the mind of the poet himself, in a
mould of metrical language which combines native words, fallen
out of common use, with a syntax imitated from the great authors
of Greece and Rome. An attempt will be made in the following
pages to trace the correspondence in the work of Spenser be-
tween this conflict of external elements and his own poetic
genius, reflecting the spirit of his age.
In respect of what was contributed to the art of Spenser by
his personal life and character, it is often difficult to penetrate to


## p. 213 (#235) ############################################

213
Spenser's Family. Gabriel Harvey
the reality of things beneath the veil of allegory with which he
chooses to conceal his thoughts. We know that he was born in
London in (probably) 1552, the son of a clothier whose descent
was derived from the same stock as the Spencers of Althorp. To
this connection the poet alludes in his pastoral poem Colin Clout's
Come Home Again, when, praising the three daughters of Sir John
Spencer, he speaks of
1
The honor of the noble familie:
Of which I meanest boast my selfe to be.
We know, also, that he was one of the first scholars of the recently
founded Merchant Taylors' school, from which he passed as a sizar
to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, on 20 May 1569. Furthermore,
it is evident, from the sonnets contributed, in 1569, to A Theatre
for Worldlings? , that he must have begun early to write poetry.
At Cambridge, he came under three influences, each of which
powerfully affected his opinions and imagination. The first was
his friendship with Gabriel Harvey. This man, the son of a rope-
maker at Saffron Walden, was a person of considerable intellectual
force, but intolerably arrogant and conceited, and with a taste
vitiated by all the affectations of the decadent Italian humanism.
He entered Pembroke Hall as Fellow the year after Spenser
matriculated, and soon secured a strong hold over the modest and
diffident mind of the young undergraduate. His tone in the
published correspondence with Spenser is that of an intellectual
bully; and so much did the poet defer to the elder man's judg-
ment, that, at one time, he not only attempted to follow Harvey's
foolish experiment of anglicising the hexameter, but was in danger
of being discouraged by him from proceeding with The Faerie
Queene.
Again, Spenser was strongly influenced by the religious atmos-
phere of his college. Cambridge protestantism was, at this time,
sharply divided by the dispute between the strict disciplinarians in
the matter of church ritual, headed by Whitgift, master of Trinity,
afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, and those followers of Cart-
wright, Lady Margaret professor of Divinity, from whom, in course
of time, came forth the Martin Marprelate faction. Pembroke
Hall seems to have occupied a middle position in this conflict.
Its traditions were emphatically Calvinistic. Ridley, bishop of
London, one of the most conspicuous of the Marian martyrs, had
been master of the college; he was succeeded by his pupil Grindal,
1 Soe post, chap. XII.
7


## p. 214 (#236) ############################################

214
The Poetry of Spenser
afterwards archbishop of Canterbury; and the headship, when
Spenser matriculated, had passed to Young, at a later date bishop
of Rochester, whose Calvinism was no less marked than that of
his predecessors. Spenser, moved by the esprit de corps of his
college, eulogised both his old master and Grindal, when their
mild treatment of the nonconformists brought them into discredit
with the queen. It may, perhaps, be inferred from a letter of
Gabriel Harvey to Spenser, that the college did not side with
Cartwright in opposing the prescribed ritual; but many allusions in
The Shepheards Calender show that Spenser himself disapproved
of the relics of the Roman system that disguised themselves under
the garb of conformity.
But, however staunchly he held to the principles of the reformed
faith, his protestantism was modified and softened by anot
powerful movement of the time, namely, the study of Platonic
philosophy. The revival of Platonism which began with the
renascence was, of course, the natural antithesis to the system
of Aristotelian logic, as caricatured by the late schoolmen; but
it was also distinct from the Christianised Neo-Platonism which
culminated in the ninth century, when Joannes Scotus (Erigena)
popularised the doctrines of the so-called Dionysius the Areopagite,
embodied in his book The Celestial Hierarchy. Modern
Platonism implied an interpretation of the Scriptures in the
light of Plato's philosophy studied, generally, at the fountain head,
and particularly in the dialogues of The Republic, Timaeus
and the Symposium. Originated in the Platonic academy at
Florence by Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, it was taken up
by the reforming party throughout Europe, and was especially
favoured in the universities of Paris and Cambridge. To the
imagination of Spenser, it proved exceedingly congenial, and con-
firmed him in that allegorical habit of conception and expression
which characterises alike his love poems, his pastoral poems and
his romance.
Among these, Platonism, as was natural, shows itself most
crudely in his youthful love poetry. After taking his B. A.
degree in 1573, and proceeding to his M. A. degree in 1576,
he seems to have left the university, and to have paid a visit of
some length to his relatives in Lancashire. There, he probably
made the acquaintance of the unknown lady who, in his cor-
respondence with Gabriel Harvey, in The Shepheards Calender
and in Colin Clout's Come Home Again, is celebrated under the
name of Rosalind. There is nothing in the pastoral allusions to


## p. 215 (#237) ############################################

Platonism in Spenser's Love Poems 215
6
her indicating that Spenser's attachment involved feelings deeper
than were required for literary panegyric. Since the time of
Petrarch, every woman commemorated by Italian or English poets
had been of one type, beautiful as Laura, and 'cruel enough to
satisfy the standing regulations prescribed by the old courts of
love. In the lyrics of the troubadours, and even in the sonnets
of Petrarch, there is genuine ardour, but these were the fruit of
days when it was still possible to breathe in society the chivalrous
atmosphere of the crusades. The fall in the temperature of love
poetry in the sixteenth century reveals itself unmistakably in
the art of Spenser. His Amoretti or sonnets, written in praise of
the lady whom he married towards the close of his life, are no
better than the average compositions of the class then fashionable?
The 'cruelty' of Rosalind, probably not much more really painful
to the poet than that caused in his later years by 'Elisabeth,
was recorded in a more original form, in so far as it gave him
an opportunity of turning his training in Platonic philosophy
to the purposes of poetical composition. His two Hymnes in
honour of Love and Beautie, though not published till 1596, were,
he tells us, the product of his green youth,' and it may reasonably
be concluded that they were among the earliest of his surviving
works. They show no novelty of invention, being, from first to
last, merely the versification of ideas taken from Plato's Sym-
posium, read in the light of Ficino's commentary. The poet,
however, by showing how truly he himself comprehended the
philosophy of Love and felt his power, conveyed an ingenious
compliment to his mistress :
Love, that long since hast to thy mighty powre
Perforce subdude my poor captivëd hart,
And, raging now therein with restlesse stowre,
Doest tyrannize in everie weaker part;
Faine would I seeke to ease my bitter smart
By any service I might do to thee,
Or ought that else might to thee pleasing bee.
Love, he thinks, would doubtless be best pleased with an exposition
of the doctrines of true love: hence his elaborate analysis of the
passion, in which he follows, step by step, the Symposium of Plato,
or, rather, Ficino's commentary on that dialogue. Ficino himself
had not sought originality any more than Spenser. Like all the
men of the early renascence, he submitted his own opinions to those
of the authors of antiquity as if these were inspired. Whatever
See post, chap. XII.


## p. 216 (#238) ############################################

216
The Poetry of Spenser
was written in the Symposium he accepted as revealed truth;
and, since the views of Plato's imaginary speakers were often at
variance with each other, he took pains to reconcile them. He
had studied Plato in the light of ideas propagated through the
teaching of the Neo-Platonists, who had absorbed into their philo-
sophy many elements of oriental magic: accordingly, the process
of reconciliation ended in a new development of Plato's original
theory by Ficino, whom Spenser followed, with as little desire
to question his authority as the Italian philosopher had shown
in his interpretation of the Greek text. In the Symposium,
for example, where the whole texture of the dialogue is
humorous and dramatic, Phaedrus, whose theory is, of course,
quite opposed to that of Socrates, speaks of Love as the eldest
of the gods, and is contradicted by Agathon, who calls Love the
youngest god. Ficino tries to harmonise these two ideas by in-
troducing into the theory a Christian element derived from the
Neo-Platonism of the pseudo-Dionysius. He says that the Love,
guiding the Creator, was, indeed, older than the creation of the
universe; but that God afterwards created the order of angels,
and that Love turned the angelic intelligences towards God; so
that Love may be called at once the youngest, and the eldest, of
the divine powers? . Spenser, taking up Ficino's reasoning about
the two ages of Love, combines it with the mythological account
of Love's birth reported by Socrates from Diotima in the Sym-
posium.
Great God of Might, that reignest in the mynd,
And all the bodie to thy hest doest frame,
Victor of gods, subduer of mankynd,
That doest the Lions and fell Tigers tame,
Making their cruell rage thy scornefull ganie,
And in their roring taking great delight;
Who can express the glorie of thy might?
Or who alive can perfectly declare
The wondrous cradle of thine infancie,
When thy great inother Venus first thee bare,
Begot of Plentie and of Penurie,
Though elder then thine owne nativitie,
And yet a chyld, renewing still thy yeares,
And yet the eldest of the heavenly Peares ?
Ficino is followed with equal closeness in the Hymne in honour
of Beautie. Like him, Spenser describes the blending of the soul with
corporeal matter, and, like him, refutes the doctrine that beauty is
1 Ficino, In Platonis Libros Argumenta et Commentaria. Symposium. Oratio
Quinta, 10.


## p. 217 (#239) ############################################

Spenser and Ficino
217
merely proportion of parts and harmony of colour! ; he imitates the
Italian in describing the descent of the soul from heaven to form
the body, and the correspondence between the beautiful soul and
the beautiful body’; the reason why a beautiful soul sometimes
forms only an ugly bodys; the attraction of one beautiful soul to
another by means of celestial influences*; the mode in which the
passion of love begins. To show that the whole is intended as
a compliment to Rosalind, he breathes the hope:
It may so please, that she at length will streame
Some deaw of grace into my withered hart,
After long sorrow and consuming smart.
As the foundations of Spenser's imaginative thought were thus
laid in Platonic philosophy, it was almost inevitable that, when
his genius expanded, he should also look to Plato for his instrument
of poetic expression, and should illustrate his abstract doctrine by
the aid of concrete myths.
After spending some time in Lancashire, he was brought
south, through the influence of his friend Harvey, and employed in
the service of the earl of Leicester. In this capacity, he made
the acquaintance of Leicester's nephew, Philip Sidney, whose
ardent imagination and lofty spirit greatly stimulated him in the
prosecution of his poetical designs. The poet's correspondence
with Gabriel Harvey, at this period, throws much light on the
ambiguities and fluctuations of his literary motives. He tells
Harvey, whom he knew to be likely to sympathise with him, how
he has become one of an 'Areopagus,' in which Sidney and Dyer
were the leading spirits, and the prime object of which was to
naturalise in the language a system of versification based on
quantity. He himself ventures on some experiments in this
direction, so wretched in execution as to remove all grounds for
wonder at the poor quality of his compositions in Latin verse.
At the same time, his letters make it evident that he was engaged
in writing, in metres constructed with accent and rime, on subjects
much better suited to the turn of his genius. Feeling that the
power of poetry lay chiefly in imagery, he began, after his philo-
sophical exposition of Platonic doctrine in the Hymnes in honour
of Love and Beautie, to consider under what artistic forms he
might make his thought more intelligible to the general reader.
1 Ficino, Symposium, Argumenta. Oratio Quinta, 3. 6; Hymne in Honour of Beautie,
67–73.
? Ficino, ibid. 6; Hymne, 109—136. 3 Ficino, ibid. 5; Hymine, 144-150.
4 Ficino, Oratio Sexta, 6; Hymne, 200-213.
5 Ficino, ibid. 6; Hymne, 214-234


## p. 218 (#240) ############################################

218
The Poetry of Spenser
Two images were at once ready to his hand in the shepherd and
the knight-the heroes, so to speak, of two widely popular forms
of poetry, pastoralism and romance. Both of these seem to have
suggested themselves to him about the same time as fitting subjects
for poetical allegory, for, before the publication of The Shepheards
Calender, he had forwarded to Harvey specimens of his work-
manship in The Faerie Queene. The pastoral, however, as a
style more easy of execution for a poet wanting in experience,
attracted him first, as may be inferred from the quaintly conceited
account of his motives prefixed by his commentator E. K. to The
Shepheards Calender:
And also appeareth by the basenesse of the name, wherein it semeth he
chose rat to unfold great matter of argument covertly then, professing it,
not suffice thereto accordingly. Which moved him rather in Æglogues
then other wise to write, doubting perhaps his habilitie, which he little
needed, or mynding to furnish our tongue with this kinde, wherein it faulteth;
or following the example of the best and most auncient Poetes, which devised
this kind of wryting, being both so base for the matter, and homely for the
manner, at the first to trye theyr habilities; and as young birdes, that be newly
crept out of the nest, by little first to prove theyr tender wyngs, before they
make a greater flyght.
Whatever were the precise reasons that determined Spenser
to make his first poetical venture in the region of pastoral poetry,
there can be no doubt that he must have perceived the op-
portunities afforded to invention by the practice of his literary
predecessors. In the first place, the eclogue gave great scope for
allegory. Even in Theocritus, the poet is presented under the
guise of a shepherd, and in Moschus's lament for Bion this dress takes
a distinctly personal character. From such a beginning it was but
a step for Vergil to make the shepherd a mouthpiece for compli-
ments addressed to statesmen in the city; and, with equal readiness,
the eclogue, in the Middle Ages, passed from civil into ecclesiastical
allegory for the purposes of flattery or satire. A certain con-
venient obscurity thus began to cover all pastoral utterances, so
that, to quote the words of Petrarch, 'it is the nature of this class
of literature that, if the author does not provide a commentary,
its meaning may, perhaps, be guessed, but can never be fully
understood. '
The eclogue, again, recommended itself to Spenser on account
of the great variety of matter that had come to be treated in it.
In its most elementary conditions, it was used to represent either
a contest in singing between two shepherds, a lover's complaint,
or a dirge for some dead acquaintance. Transported into the


## p. 219 (#241) ############################################

The Shepheards Calender
219
region of allegory, the singing dialogue might be turned into a
channel for discoursing on the contemporary state of poetry; love
might be treated in its Platonic character; the dirge might be
developed into a court panegyric. All these modes of application
.
were of use to a poet in Spenser's position. He also saw that it
was possible for him to invest the eclogue with a certain novelty
of appearance. Till the dawn of the renascence, all pastoral poetry
had been written in Latin, the last author of this kind being
Baptista Mantuanus, a Carmelite friar (1448—1516); but Jacopo
Sanazzaro, of Naples, in 1490, broke new ground in his Arcadia,
a kind of romance, interspersed with eclogues, written in Italian.
Clément Marot, in France, before the middle of the sixteenth
century, naturalised the form of the Latin eclogue in the French
vernacular. His Complaincte d'un Pastoureau Chrestien, his
Eglogue au Roy and his Elegie sur Mme Loise de Savoye,
furnished models of which Spenser freely availed himself. In
England, Barnabe Googe moved along the same protestant
and humanist lines as Marot, importing, also, into his pastoral
dialogues, romantic elements borrowed from Diana, which he had
probably read during his travels in Spain. Traces of acquaintance
with all these compositions are visible in The Shepheards Calender,
lightly imprinted on a form of the eclogue which is the invention
of Spenser himself.
The Shepheards Calender was published in 1579. It was
dedicated to The Noble and Vertuous Gentleman, worthy of all
titles both of Learning and Chevalrie, M. Philip Sidney. ' With
characteristic diffidence, the poet hesitated in giving his work to
the world, partly from the fear, as he confesses in a letter to
Harvey, of 'cloying the noble ears' of his patron, and thus
ing his contempt, partly because the poem itself was written
in honour of a private person, and so might be thought too base
for his excellent Lordship. ' Sidney hastened to show that these
apprehensions were groundless, by bestowing high praise on The
Shepheards Calender, in his Defence of Poesie, qualified, indeed,
by one important censure: "That same framing of his style to
an olde rusticke language, I dare not allow : since neither
Theocritus in Greeke, Virgill in Latine, nor Sanazara in Italian, did
affect it. ' The objection is of historical interest, as illustrating
the extent to which the men of the early renascence in England
submitted themselves to the authority of the ancients, and to the
Aristotelian criticism of the Italian academies : the remark itself
touches merely the superficial question of style, and does not
6
>


## p. 220 (#242) ############################################

220
The Poetry of Spenser
attempt to penetrate the deeper question how far the traditional
form of the pastoral can be taken as a proper vehicle for modern
thought and feeling. For the age of Elizabeth it bore immediate
fruit. On the one hand, Sidney's praise gave a vogue to the
pastoral style; on the other, his censure of rusticity in language
warned those who attempted the pastoral manner off Spenser's
example. Drayton, in his Eclogues, while preserving the clownish
nomenclature of The Shepheards Calender, takes care to make
his speakers discourse in the language of polished literature.
The Shepheards Calender was introduced to the notice of
the public by a commentator signing himself E. K. , who is
conjectured, with every probability, to have been Spenser's
fellow-collegian and contemporary, Edward Kirke. E. K. 's preface,
addressed to Gabriel Harvey, and written in the contorted style
approved by him, was divided into two portions, one being a
defence of Spenser's practice in respect of diction, the other a
description of his design. Of the latter, E. K. says:
Now, as touching the generall dryft and purpose of his glogues, I mind
not to say much, him selfe labouring to conceale it. Onely this appeareth, that.
his unstayed yougth had long wandred in the common Labyrinth of Love, in
which time to mitigate and allay the heate of his passion, or els to warne (as
he sayth) the young shepheards, his equalls and companions, of his unfor.
tunate folly, he compiled these xii Æglogues, which, for that they be propor-
tioned to the state of the xii monethes, he termeth the Shepheards Calendar,
applying an olde name to a new worke.
Had the design of The Shepheards Calender been so simple
as E. K. suggests, the work would have had unity, but little
variety. Spenser would have confined himself to a rendering of
the traditional idea of pastoral love adapted to the changes of
the different seasons; but, as a matter of fact, the unity of the
design lies solely in an allegorical calendar, treated ethically, in
agreement with the physical characteristics of the different months.
The idea of love is presented prominently only in four of the
eclogues, viz. those for January, March, June and December: of
the rest, four, those for February, May, July and September, deal
with matters relating to morality or religion; two are compli-
mentary or elegiac; those for April and November; one, that for
August, describes a singing match pure and simple ; and one, that
for October, is devoted to a lament for the neglect of poetry.
Hence, it appears that Spenser, without making much account of
the singleness of purpose ascribed to him by his commentator,
contrives to include within the plan of the pastoral calendar a


## p. 221 (#243) ############################################

Allegory in The Shepheards Calender 221
large number of those traditional motives which had been employed
by his predecessors in this class of poetry. And, from this fact,
we may safely make two inferences, which apply to all Spenser's
allegories, philosophical, pastoral, or romantic. In the first place,
it is misleading to gather the sense of the allegory from the
apparent nature of his theme. His mind did not energise within
its professed subject, like that of Bunyan in The Pilgrim's Pro-
gress, where the plan, action and characters of the story are
plainly evolved directly from the inherent spiritual thought. In
the second place, the true significance of Spenser's allegorical
matter can only be discovered by tracking the sources of his
allegorical forms. His motives are artistic rather than ethical,
and he is concerned less with matter of thought than manner
of expression. This is the case even with those classes of
his compositions in which his motive appears to be primarily
philosophical. If, for example, the Platonism in his Hymnes be
compared with that of Wordsworth in the Ode on the Intimations
of Immortality, a striking difference of conception is at once
observable Wordsworth's poetical inspiration comes immediately
from within: the speculations of Plato, no doubt, set his imagina-
tion to work, but his imaginative reasoning is his own; whereas,
in the Hymnes, as has been already shown, Spenser merely ex-
pounds, without alteration, the theory of beauty which he has
derived from the commentary of Ficino on Plato's Symposium;
his sole original contribution to the poetry is the beautiful and
harmonious form of English verse which he makes the vehicle of
the thought.
If we look away from the authorised account of Spenser's
design in The Shepheards Calender to the actual gestation of
the poem in his imagination, it is plain that, before constructing
his general idea, he had carefully studied the pastoral practice of
Theocritus, Bion, Vergil, Mantuan and Marot. His sympathetic
intelligence had been impressed by many imaginative passages in
these authors, and he desired to reproduce them in a novel form.
For this purpose, he chose, as the basis of his entire work, an
allegory founded on the widely popular Kalendrier des Bergers
-an almanac describing the tasks of shepherds in the different
months of the year—and resolved to include within his poetical
edifice the various subjects hitherto handled in the eclogue. In
dealing with the subject of love, he naturally took as his models
the Greek and Latin idyllists, who had preceded him with
many complaints of shepherds unfortunate in their wooing. But


## p. 222 (#244) ############################################

2 22
The Poetry of Spenser
6
the direct expression of passion by these pagan poets had to be
harmonised with the sub-tone of Platonism imported into amorous
verse by the troubadours and Petrarch. Colin Clout, the love-lorn
shepherd, whose lamentations run, more or less, through all seasons
of the year, has been treated by Rosalind, the widowe's daughter
,
of the glenne,' with the 'cruelty' prescribed to ladies in the
conventional rules of the courts of love and utters his despair in
the winter months of January and December. His feelings are
much more complex than those ascribed, for example, by Theocritus
to the lover of Amaryllis, and, in the following stanza, it is plain
that the pastoral sentiment has been transferred from the fields
to the artificial atmosphere of court life:
A thousand sithes I curse that carefull hower
Wherein I longd the neighbour towne to see,
And eke tenne thousand sithes I blesse the stoure
Wherein I sawe so fayre a sight as shee:
Yet all for naught: such sight hath bred my bane.
Ah, God!