A Biography of Edmund Spenser | Page 3

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 Winstanley's time, it may be added, Hughes in 1715, Dr. Birch in 1731, Church in 1758, Upton in that same year, Todd in 1805, Aikin in 1806, Robinson in 1825,