A Biography of Edmund Spenser | Page 6

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.
How often have I scaled the craggie oke All to dislodge the raven of
her nest? How have I wearied, with many a stroke, The stately
walnut-tree, the while the rest, Under the tree fell all for nuttes at strife?
For like to me was libertie and life.
To be sure he is here paraphrasing, and also is writing in the language
of pastoral poetry, that is, the language of this passage is metaphorical;
but it is equally clear that the writer was intimately and thoroughly
acquainted with that life from which the metaphors of his original are

drawn. He describes a life he had lived. It seems probable that he was
already an author in some sort when he went up to Cambridge. In the
same year in which he became an undergraduate there appeared a work
entitled, 'A Theatre wherein be represented as well the Miseries and
Calamities that follow the Voluptuous Worldlings as also the greate
Joyes and Pleasures which the Faithful do enjoy. An Argument both
Profitable and Delectable to all that sincerely loue the Word of God.
Deuised by S. John Vander Noodt.' Vander Noodt was a native of
Brabant who had sought refuge in England, 'as well for that I would not
beholde the abominations of the Romyshe Antechrist as to escape the
handes of the bloudthirsty.' 'In the meane space,' he continues, 'for the
avoyding of idlenesse (the very mother and nourice of all vices) I have
among other my travayles bene occupied aboute thys little Treatyse,
wherein is sette forth the vilenesse and basenesse of worldely things
whiche commonly withdrawe us from heavenly and spirituall matters.'
This work opens with six pieces in the form of sonnets styled epigrams,
which are in fact identical with the first six of the Visions of Petrarch
subsequently published among Spenser's works, in which publication
they are said to have been 'formerly translated'. After these so-called
epigrams come fifteen Sonnets, eleven of which are easily recognisable
amongst the Visions of Bellay, published along with the Visions of
Petrarch. There is indeed as little difference between the two sets of
poems as is compatible with the fact that the old series is written in
blank verse, the latter in rhyme. The sonnets which appear for the first
time in the Visions are those describing the Wolf, the River, the Vessel,
the City. There are four pieces of the older series which are not
reproduced in the later. It would seem probable that they too may have
been written by Spenser in the days