A Biography of Edmund Spenser | Page 3

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 500l. ordered him for his support, which
nevertheless was abridged to 100l. 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