lication, entitled "Delia, contayning certayne sonnets, with the complaint of Rosamond," in 1592.

The "last, though not least," in Spenser's enumeration of English poets, is Action; under which name I believe Michael Drayton is designed. Spenser's praise of him as “a gentle shepheard," applies to his "Shepheards Garland, fashioned in nine Eglogs, &c." published in 1593. And the subsequent commendation;

"Whose Muse, full of high thoughts invention,
"Doth like himselfe heroically sound;"

seems to point at his "Matilda, the faire and chaste daughter of the Lord Robert Fitzwater, &c." published in 1594; in the preface to which, Drayton informs "the true favorers of Poesie," that their "kind and favourable acceptance of his late discourse of the life and death of Piers Gaveston, emboldened him to publish this tragicall historie of his Matilda." He pays the following compliment to Spenser, at the exordium of his Matilda, in an address to the Queen :

W

Of the Ladies celebrated in Colin Clouts come home again, Cynthia, the queen, is the most conspicuous object, on account of the praise applied as well to her general conduct as to her particular skill in poetical composition.—“ Urania, sister unto Astrofell," is Mary, Countess of Pembroke. The "not less praiseworthy" Theana is Anne, the third wife of the Earl of Warwick who died in Feb. 1589-90; whose widow she remained till death. Spenser notices her exemplary widowhood in the Ruines of Time, as well as in this Pastoral. Nor has he omitted to mention her authority at Court; of which the reader may see several instances in the Sidney State-Papers, especially in the year 1595.-Her sister Marian is Margaret, Countess of Cumberland. To these Ladies Spenser dedicates his Four Hymns; which circumstance is further noticed in its place.—Mansilia is the Marchioness of Northampton, to whom Daphnaida is inscribed. Galathea and Neæra appear to be Irish beauties, whose names I am not able to unravel. To these succeeds the beautiful Lady Rich, under the poetical name of Stella, which was given her by Sir Philip Sidney; who, for her sake, wrote the poem entitled Astrophel and Stella, which was first published in 1591, and to which Spenser alludes:

The early love of Sir Philip to this Lady is converted into a beautiful fiction, as we shall presently see, in Spenser's elegy on Sir Philip's death.-After the commendation of Stella, the three daughters of Sir John Spenser, of whom an account has been already given, are introduced to the reader's admiration. And the list of beauties concludes with the undiscovered names of Flavia and Candida.

The pastoral Elegy of Astrophel, devoted entirely to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney, and written perhaps on the immediate occasion in 1586, was, with Colin Clouts come home again, first published also in 1595. It is "dedicated to the most beautifull and vertuous Ladie, the Countess of Essex." This Lady had been the wife of Sidney, and was now married to the

See also what has been already stated in regard to Spenser's commendation of Daniel, p. xxxvii.

w See references to the poetical compositions of queen Elizabeth, in the note on Colin Clouts come home again,

ver. 188.

* See the Biograph. Brit. Art. Sydney, (Philip,) and Brydges's edit. of Phillips's Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum, p. 138.

Earl of Essex. She was the daughter of the memorable Sir Francis Walsingham. Sir Philip left by her an only daughter. His affectionate attention to this Lady and to her family, is abundantly shewn in his Will, preserved by Collins in his Memoirs of the Lives and Actions of the Sidneys. It had been first proposed for Sir Philip to marry a daughter of Secretary Cecil, on the recommendation of his uncle, the Earl of Leicester; and his own choice, in earlier days, is said to have been unsuccessfully fixed on Lady Rich. Of this latter circumstance Spenser makes an elegant use. It is necessary first to refute an error of a ludicrous kind, which the author of the Life of Spenser prefixed to Mr. Church's edition of the Faerie Queene has committed, in saying that "the grief of Stella, the Countess of Warwick his aunt, for her Astrophel, (names which Sir Philip himself had rendered immortal,) makes a large part of this tender poem." Stella is Sir Philip's first love. And Spenser could not have been a stranger to this honourable attachment. Surely the poet would never have thus described the interview between a nephew and an aunt!

"They stopt his wound, (too late to stop it was!)
"And in their armes then softly did him reare :
"Then, as he will'd, unto his loved lass,
"His dearest love, him dolefully did beere."

No. The poet, with inimitable pathos, thus relates a feigned event,

"To prove that death their hearts cannot divide,

"Which living were in love so firmly tide: "

He relates, that Stella, after many fruitless offices of tenderest love, barely witnessed the last pains of the wounded Astrophel, and followed him "like turtle chaste;" and then he most poetically adds:

"Transformed them there lying on the field

"Into one flowre that is both red and blew:

"It first growes red, and then to blew doth fade,
"Like Astrophel, which thereinto was made.
"And in the midst thereof a star appeares,

"As fairly formd as any star in skyes;
"Resembling Stella in her freshest yeares,
"Forth darting beames of beautie from her eyes:

"And all the day it standeth full of deow,

"Which is the teares that from her eyes did flow."

To this Elegy by Spenser are added the lamentations of Sir Philip's sister, the Countess of Pembroke, under the name of Clarinda; and also a collection of "flowers, that decked the herse" of Sidney, by Lodowick Bryskett and others.

Adhering to the chronological order in which Spenser's poems were published, I am now to mention the Amoretti or Sonnets. These are dated by Mr. Ball in 1592, who also represents the poet as married in 1593. But he is mistaken, I think, in both respects. The Sonnets were certainly not published before the year 1595, but were written most probably in the years 1592 and 1593; and appear to have been sent from Ireland, for publication, to Ponsonby his former bookseller. The dedication of them " to the right worshipfull Robart Needham, Knight, ascertains this point.

"Sir,-To gratulate your safe return from Ireland, I had nothing so ready, nor thought any thing so meet, as these sweete-conceited Sonnets, the deede of that wel deserving gentleman, maister Edmonde Spenser; whose name sufficiently warranting the worthinesse of the work, I do more confidently presume to publish in his absence. This gentle Muse for her former perfection long wished for in Englande, now at the length crossing the seas in your happy

y Collins's Mem. of the Lives and Actions of the Sidneys, p. 113.

z Church's Spenser, vol. i. p. xxx.

See Chalmers's Supplemental Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare-Papers, p. 28. "On the 19th of November 1594, was entered for William Ponsonbye in the Stationers' Registers, a poem, entitled Amoretti and Epithalamion, written not long since by Edmond Spencer." d

companye, (tho' to yourself unknowne,) seemeth to make choyse of you &c. Yours in all dutiful affection.

"W. P."

In these Sonnets the poet gives us the history of his courtship, not of a second Rosalind, but of a mistress eventually less obdurate though not less beautiful; whom, I conclude, he afterwards married. The Sonnets indeed often breathe the conceited as well as the delicate complaints of Petrarch. Still, however, they are verses addressed to the object of an honourable passion; verses dictated by the hopes of a wooer, who, testifying the most unbounded regard for his mistress, is anxious to obtain her approval of his own axiom,

"Sweet is the love that comes with willingness."

In the sixtieth Sonnet he informs us that he had then attained his fortieth year, and that one year had elapsed since the commencement of his love, which, referring to the date of his birth, was therefore in 1592. The sixty-second Sonnet presents us with an allusion to the year that was gone, and with the poet's expectation of smiling days in regard to the progress of his love. That expectation reaches almost to reality in the next Sonnet; and, in the sixty-fourth expands itself into rapture, in enumerating the various charms of the lady, with whom "he had found such grace" as to be indulged with "a kiss." The sixty-fifth Sonnet is an elegant specimen of amatory persuasion; an invitation to wedlock, in over-ruling the scruples of the lady who "fondly fears to lose her liberty." From this Sonnet to the eighty-third, the affection of the lady seems no longer doubtful, and the poet is eloquent in gratitude. The eighty-third Sonnet implies the delicacy of his sentiments in respect to some writing, or expression, with which the lady might have been offended; a composition, as Mr. Walker has observed, in the very spirit of Petrarch. In the eighty-fourth Sonnet, the praises of the lady are resumed. In the eightyfifth, the indignation of the poet appears to be roused at the "forged lies," with which some officious babbler "had stirred up coals of ire in his true Love." With the three subsequent Sonnets the collection closes; and these three uniformly deplore the absence of the poet from his mistress.

The Epithalamion, published together with the Sonnets, bespeaks the happy termination of this courtship. It was written, Spenser says, "his owne Love's prayses to resound." He was married, as I suppose, in 1594; and though, at the close of Colin Clouts come home again, he calls on the shepherds to consider him then as the dying victim of Rosalind's tyranny; I consider it only as a poetical fiction, adapted to the subject of the colloquy. His strains, no doubt, were melancholy even in Ireland, till he met with the fair Elizabeth, the principal subject of his Sonnets and of his Epithalamion. That the marriage took place in Ireland, is evident by the address to the nymphs of Mulla in the Epithalamion; that it was celebrated at Cork, near which his castle of Kilcolman was situated, may be gathered by his appeal, in the same poem, to the "merchants daughters of the town" in behalf of his spouse's beauty; and that the mistress and the bride are one and the same person, may be asserted on the comparison, almost identical, of personal accomplishments in the sixty-fourth Sonnet and in the 171st and following verses in the Epithalamion.

To those, who would deny that the Sonnets of Spenser are not addressed to the object of his love, I can only recommend the separation of the Epithalamion from the Sonnets; requesting, however, at the same time a satisfactory answer, why the poet should have thus transmitted them to posterity, united.

The marriage is described to have taken place on St. Barnabas's day; which I suppose to be that of 1594. Of the estimation in which Spenser held the charms of his beautiful Elizabeth,

b That the name of his mistress was Elizabeth is evident by the discrimination which he makes, in his seventy-fourth Sonnet, between his love, his mother, and his queen; all bearing that "happy name:'

"The which three times thrise happy hath me made

"With guifts of body, fortune, and of mind.

"Ye three Elizabeths for ever live,

"That three such graces did unto me give."

an eminent proof, besides those apparent in the Sonnets, occurs in the second part of the Faerie Queene, which was published in 1596, but had been written before the eightieth Sonnet was composed. He ranks her with the three Graces; at the same time not concealing the lowliness of her origin:

"Such were those goddesses which ye did see:

But that fourth Mayd, which there amidst them traced,
"Who can aread what creature mote she bee,
"Whether a creature, or a goddesse graced
"With heavenly gifts from heven first enraced!
"But whatso sure she was, she worthy was

To be the Fourth with those Three other placed :
"Yet was she certes but a countrey lasse;

"Yet she all other countrey lasses far did passe."-Faer. Qu. vi. x. 25.

These lines had been written during the period of courtship; for, in his eightieth Sonnet, he alleges that, tired with his long race through Faery land which his six books compile, he wishes to refresh himself; and, in his retirement, to divert his muse with the subject of his own Love's praise, adapted to strains of suitable humility :

"But let her prayses yet be low and meane,

"Fit for the handmayd of the Faery Queene."

с

That Spenser was a batchelor, before he was married to this person, I am persuaded by the circumstance of no love-verses having been addressed by him, in the interval between the faithlessness of Rosalind and his introduction to Elizabeth, to any other lady. Some biographers, it seems, have asserted, without authority, that, having lost his first wife, the courtship of a second gave rise to the Amoretti.

The absence, which the three concluding Sonnets mention, is believed by the author of the Life prefixed to Mr. Church's edition of the Faerie Queene to allude to Spenser's visit to England, in July or August 1596, soon after his marriage, which he dates in that year; in order to print the second part of his Faerie Queene, and the other Poems which remain to be noticed. But to this supposition I cannot accede. Spenser must have been married at least as soon as at the period I have mentioned; as the account of children which he left, and the interference of the Privy Council in behalf of them and of their mother, presently cited, will justify me in believing.

d

e

The Four Hymns on Love and Beauty, which prove the author's zealous attachment to the Platonick school, are dated at Greenwich, Sep. 1. 1596, and are dedicated to the Countesses of Cumberland and Warwick; the name of the latter, however, being mistaken by the printer or the poet; as the Countess of Warwick was certainly a Anne, the daughter of Francis Earl of Bedford. These sisters were also addressed by Henry Constable in a Sonnet, descriptive of their uncommon accomplishments. The Hymns, as the poet informs us, were written in the greener times of his youth;" and are intended as a warning to thoughtless lovers, in the repeated reference which he makes in them to his own distress and disappointment in respect to Rosalind.

In the same year his Prothalamion was printed; a poem, or spousal verse, in honour of the double marriage of the Ladies Elizabeth and Catherine Somerset to H. Gilford and W. Peter, Esquires. And here he again notices, with commendable pride, his honourable descent :

e See Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, p. 30.

d See the note on the Ruines of Time, ver. 244. And Collins's Mem. of the Lives and Actions of the Sidneys, p. 40.

⚫ I cite the close of this Sonnet, from a manuscript of Constable's poetry in my possession: It is the third of seven Sonnets written "to celebrate the memory of perticular ladies whom the author most honoureth."

"At length they all to mery London came,
"To mery London, my most kyndly nurse,
"That to me gave this lifes first native sourse,
Though from another place I take my name,

"An house of auncient fame."

The exertions of the Earl of Essex in the expedition to Cadiz, are also ingeniously introduced into this elegant little Poem.

f

In the same year likewise, the second part of the Faerie Queene appeared; which had been entered for the same bookseller in the Stationers' Registers on the 20th January, 1595-6. And a new edition of the former part accompanied it. Of the remaining six books, which would have completed Spenser's original design, two imperfect Cantos Of Mutabilitie are the only parts with which the publick has been gratified; and which were first inserted in the folio edition of the Faerie Queene in 1609, as a part of the lost Book, entitled The Legend of Constancy. Sir James Ware informs us, in his Preface to Spenser's View of the State of Ireland, which he printed at Dublin in 1633, that the poet finished THE LATTER PART of the Faerie Queene in Ireland; "which was soone after unfortunately lost by the disorder and abuse of his servant, whom he had sent before him into England" being then à rebellibus, as Camden's words are, è laribus ejectus et bonis spoliatus. Fenton, in his notes on Waller's poems, considers the assertion of Sir James Ware as entitled to no credit. "Instead of deploring," he says, "the fate of those six books which are supposed to be lost, I am entirely of opinion with Mr. Dryden, that, upon Sir Philip Sidney's death, Spenser was deprived both of means and spirit to accomplish his design. The story of their being lost in his voyage from Ireland, seems to be a fiction borrowed from the fate of Terence's Comedies, which itself has the air of a fiction, or at best is but a hearsay that passed upon the biographers without due examination." Dr. Birch contends, "that this ingenious poet and commentator will scarce convince his readers, that the death of Sir Philip Sidney was an event sufficient to prevent Spenser from finishing his Poem, when it is evident that he gave the world, after the loss of his patron, six books of it; at the same time promising the rest, of which we actually have remaining two Cantos upon Mutability, equal, if not superiour, to any of the rest; and two stanzas of another Canto. And the authority of so considerable a writer as Sir James Ware, who lived near the time and was in a situation of informing himself about the fact, cannot justly be rejected as a mere unsupported hearsay, propagated without due examination. It is true in the 33d Sonnet of his Amoretti, written about the year 1592, [and addressed to his friend Lodowick Bryskett,] he speaks of the finishing of his Faerie Queene as prevented by the cruelty of his mistress; and in the 80th he desires a little refreshment after so long a task, as that of compiling the first six books of that Poem, and leisure to sing his 'love's sweet praise ;' the contemplation of whose beauty would raise his spirit,' and enable him to undertake his second Work

With strong endevour and attention dew.'

But these Sonnets, allowing the subjects of them to have been real facts and not poetical fiction, were composed at least five or six years before the last six books of the Faerie Queene are supposed to have been lost; an interval long enough for so ready and inexhaustible a genius as our author's to complete them, whose years bore no proportion to the number and perfection of his works. For the loss of those books could not have happened till after 1596, because he mentions, in the title-page of the edition of that year, that the Poem would contain Twelve Books. But they must have perished, as Sir James Ware intimates, when he sent his servant to England in 1598, before his own last journey thither from Ireland, upon the plundering of his estate by the rebels there."

To these observations the author of the Life of Spenser in the Biographia Britannica makes the following reply. "I believe the reader is beforehand with me in his censure of Dr. Birch's reasoning, which is so notoriously inconsistent with the fact. The Faerie Queene was begun in 1579 at latest; the first three books were finished in 1590; and the next three in 1596. This

f Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, &c. ut supr.

See before, p. xx.