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elder Spenser was not well off, and no special attention was paid his son. The boy's school-days threatened to be short. Happily a merchant had lately left large sums of money to be bestowed on poor London scholars-poor scholars of the schools about London—and under this benefaction Edmund received much-needed assistance. Such charities as that by which Spenser benefited were numerous in Elizabethan England, and charitable funds were largely applied to the noble purpose of assisting poor lads to complete their education. What American merchants are doing now for education in their country more conspicuously than elsewhere, Elizabethan merchants were doing for education in Elizabethan England. It was owing to this enlightened application of wealth that Spenser was enabled to finish his school career.

At Cambridge.

Promising boys of Elizabethan England, whether rich or poor, were encouraged to pursue their studies at the Universities on leaving school, even if their parents could not supply them with means of subsistence. The college endowments would carry a poor student through the greater part of an academic career, and might at need be supplemented by private munificence. Spenser went to Cambridge to Pembroke Hall (or College)-trusting for (or pecuniary support to the college endowments. He was compelled to enter the College in the lowest rank, the rank of a sizar. Sizars were indigent students who, in consideration of their poverty and in exchange for menial service, were given food, drink, and lodging.

At Pembroke Spenser found congenial society. The college had not yet acquired its literary traditions. It was long afterwards that it became the home of the poet Crashaw, and later still of the poet Gray. Spenser himself was the first poet, alike in point of time and of eminence, to associate his name with the foundation. But to contem

porary members of the college he owed much. A young Fellow of the College, Gabriel Harvey, an ardent but pedantic student of literature, took deep interest in him Gabriel and greatly influenced his literary tastes. Harvey Harvey. reinforced in his pupil a passion for classical learning, which the boy had acquired at school, and encouraged him to pursue a study of French and Italian literature, to which on his own initiative he had already devoted his leisure. A young fellow-sizar, Edward Kirke, also became a warm admirer and stimulating friend.

From a lad Spenser was a close student and a wide reader, and gave early promise of poetic eminence. He was attracted not merely by the classics, the orthodox His earliest subject of study at school and college, but by verse. French and Italian literature. Almost as a school-boy he began to translate into English the poetry of France. Before he went to Cambridge he prepared for a London publisher metrical translations of poems by Du Bellay, a scholarly spirit of the Renaissance in France, and he also rendered into seven English sonnets an ode of Petrarch, the great Italian master of the sonnet, from the version of the early French poet Clement Marot. It was through his knowledge of French that the gate to the vast and varied literature of Italy opened to him. Both Petrarch's and Du Bellay's verses described the uncertainties of human life and the fickleness of human fortune. Spenser's renderings were merely inserted by an indulgent publisher as letter-press to be attached to old woodcuts in his possession. Letter-press is a humiliating position for literature to fill, but the youth was content to get his first poetic endeavours into type in any conditions. Spenser's ambition at the time was satisfied when a tedious Dutch treatise of morality appeared in English with his earliest poems irrelevantly introduced as explanations of the pictorial illus

L

trations that adorned the opening pages.

The musical temper

of Spenser's boyish verse augured well for a future, but no critic at the time discerned its potentiality.

While an undergraduate Spenser suffered alike from poverty and ill-health. Small sums of money were granted His love for to him as a poor scholar from the old bequest Cambridge. which had benefited him at school, and he was often disabled by sickness. He remained however at Cambridge for the exceptionally long period of seven years. He took the degree of Master of Arts in 1576, and then left the University. He always speaks of Cambridge-of 'my mother Cambridge'—with respect. He wrote in a well-known passage of the Faerie Queene how the River Ouse which runs near Cambridge

'doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit,-
My mother Cambridge, whom as with a crown
He [i.e. the river] doth adorn and is adorn'd of it
With many a gentle muse and many a learned wit."

Spenser was himself in due time to adorn his Alma Mater 'as with a crown' by virtue of his ' gentle muse' and ‘learned wit.'

III

When Spenser's Cambridge life closed, he was no less than twenty-four years old. That was a mature age in those days for a man to be entering on a career, and Disappointment in even then, owing to his feeble constitution, he seems to have been in no haste to seek a settlement. The omens were none too favourable. In poor health, without money or prospects, he apparently idled away another year with his kinsfolk, his cousins, in Lancashire. There,

love.

1 Faerie Queene, Bk. Iv., canto xi., stanza xxxiv.

having nothing better to do, he fell in love. The object of his affections was, we are told, a gentlewoman, of no mean house, endowed with no vulgar or common gifts of nature or manners.' But the lady disdained the poet's suit, and he sought consolation in verse. Antiquaries have tried to discover the precise name of the lady, but, beyond the fact that she was the daughter of a Lancashire yeoman, nothing more needs saying of her.

Spenser's failure in his amorous adventure was, despite the passing grief it caused him, beneficial. It stirred him to fresh exertions alike in poetry and the affairs Settlement of the world. He resolved to seek in London in London. greater happiness than Lancashire offered him, and the means of earning an honourable livelihood. Gabriel Harvey, his Cambridge friend, strongly urged on him the prudence of seeking employment in the capital. Harvey prided himself on his influence in high circles. His activity at Cambridge made him known to all visitors of distinction to the University. He knew the Queen's favourite, the Earl of Leicester, the uncle of Sir Philip Sidney, who had it in his power to advance any aspirant to fortune. To Leicester Harvey gave Spenser an introduction. That introduction proved the true starting-point of Spenser's adult career.

The patronage of

Leicester.

Like all Queen Elizabeth's courtiers Leicester had literary tastes. He was favourably impressed by the young poet and offered him secretarial employment. Spenser's duties required him to live at Leicester House, the Earl's great London mansion. Literary sympathies overcame, in Elizabethan England, class distinctions, and Spenser the impecunious tailor's son-was suddenly thrown into close relations with fashionable London society. Many poor young men of ability and character owed all their opportunities in life to wealthy noblemen of the day. The

friendly union between patron and poet often bred strong mutual affection and was held to confer honour on both. Spenser's relations with Leicester were of the typical kind. They were easy, amiable. The poet felt pride in the help and favour that the Earl bestowed on him, although he was not backward in pressing his claims to preferment. Spenser describes with ungrudging admiration Leicester's influential place in the State as

"A mighty prince, of most renowned race,
Whom England high in count of honour held,
And greatest ones did sue to gain his grace;
of greatest ones he greatest in his place,

Sate in the bosom of his sovereign,

And "Right and Loyal," did his word maintain.''

Referring to his own relations with his patron, he exclaimed:

'And who so else did goodness by him gain?

And who so else his bounteous mind did try?''

Leicester stands to Spenser in precisely the same relation as the Earl of Southampton stands to Shakespeare.

work.

Spenser had at Leicester House much leisure for study. He wrote poems for his patron. He read largely for himSecretarial self, presenting books to his friend Harvey, who sent him others in return. But his office was no sinecure. He was sent abroad in behalf of his patron, usually as the bearer of despatches. In Leicester's service he paid a first visit to Ireland, and went on official errands to France, Spain, and Italy, notably to Rome, and even further afield. Foreign travel nurtured his imagination, and widened his knowledge of the literary efforts of French and Italian contemporaries.

Spenser's connection with Leicester brought him the ac1 Ruines of Time, II. 184-89. Ibid., 11. 232-33.

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