instruct men in the conduct of life, to expound allegorically a system of moral philosophy. But with a lavish hand he shed over his ethical teaching the splendour of great poetry, and it is by virtue of that allurement that his endeavour won its triumph. A suitor VII Spenser was ill content with mere verbal recognition of the eminence of his poetic achievement. His presence in London was not only planned in order to publish for office. the Faerie Queene, and to enjoy the applause of critics near at hand. It was also designed to win official preferment, to gain a more congenial means of livelihood that was open to him in Ireland, a home 'unmeet for man in whom was aught regardful.' To secure this end he spared no effort. He cared little for his self-respect provided he could strengthen his chances of victory. He submitted to all the tedious and degrading routine which was incumbent on suitors for court office; he patiently suffered rebuffs and disappointments, delays and the indecision of patrons. Some measure of success rewarded his persistency. Ralegh, who enjoyed for the time Queen Elizabeth's favour, worked hard in his friend's behalf. The Queen was not indifferent to the compliments Spenser had paid her in his great poem. Great ladies were gratified by the poetic eulogies he offered them in occasional verse. In the exalted ranks of society his reputation as an unapproached master of his art grew steadily. A general willingness manifested itself favourably to respond to the plaintive petitions of a poet so richly endowed. The grant A pension was suggested. The Queen herself, of a pension. the rumour went, accepted the suggestion with alacrity, and calling the attention of her Lord Treasurer, Lord Burghley, to it, bade him be generous. She named a sum which was deemed by her adviser excessive. Finally Spenser was allotted a State-paid income of fifty pounds a year. The amount was large at a time when the purchasing power of money was eight times what it is now, and the bestowal of it gave him such prestige as recognition by the crown invariably confers on a poet, although it did not give Spenser the formal title of poet-laureate. But Spenser was unsatisfied; he resented and never forgave the attitude of Lord Burghley, who, like most practical statesmen, looked with suspicion on poets when The return they sought political posts: he had no enthusiasm to Ireland. for amateurs in political office, nor did he approve of the appropriation of public money to the encouragement of literary genius. The net result left Spenser's position unchanged. The pension was not large enough to justify him in abandoning work in Ireland. England offered him no asylum. He recrossed the Irish Channel to resume his office as Clerk of the Council of Munster. At home in Ireland, Spenser reviewed his fortunes in despair. With feeling he wrote in his poem called His despair Mother Hubberds Tale: 'Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, To lose good days, that might be better spent; That doth his life in so long tendance spend!'' of his fortunes. 1 Spenser's Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubberds Tale, 11. 896-909. On a second poem of the same date and on the same theme he bestowed the ironical title Colin Clouts come home againe (Colin Clout was a nick-name which it amused him to give himself). Colin Clout is as charming and simple an essay in autobiography as fell from any poet's pen. He recalls the details of his recent experience in London with charming naïveté, and dwells with generous enthusiasm on the favours and sundry good turns,' which he owed to his neighbour Sir Walter Ralegh. He sent the manuscript of Colin Clout to Ralegh, and, although it was not printed till 1595, it soon passed from hand to hand. Elsewhere in another occasional poem, The Ruines of Time, which mainly lamented the death of his first patron Leicester and of that patron's brother the Earl of Warwick, he avenged himself in a more strident note on Lord Burghley's cynical indifference to his need. 1590. All the leisure that his official duties left him he now devoted to poetry. He committed to verse all his thought. He was no longer reticent, and sent copies of his poems in all directions. Quickly he came before the public as author of another volume of verse possessing high autoComplaints, biographical attraction. This was a characteristic venture of the publisher Ponsonby, and with its actual preparation for the press the poet was not directly concerned. Scattered poems by Spenser were circulating in manuscript from hand to hand. These the publisher, Ponsonby, brought together under the title of Complaints, without distinct authority from the author. The book seems to have contained compositions of various dates; some belonged to early years, but the majority were very recent. To the recent work belongs one of Spenser's most characteristic, and most mature poetic efforts, the poem of Muiopotmos.' That poem is the airiest of fancies treated with marvellous delicacy and vivacity. It tells the trivial story of a butterfly swept by a gust of wind into a spider's web. But the picturesque portrayal of the butterfly's careless passage through the air, and of his revellings in all the delights of nature, breathes the purest spirit of simple and sensuous poetry. 'Over the fields, in his frank lustiness, And all the champain o'er, he soared light, That none gainsaid and none did him envy.' It is difficult to refuse assent to the interpretation of the poem which detects in the butterfly's joyous career on his aircutting wings,' and his final and fatal entanglement in the grisly tyrant's den, a figurative reflection of the poet's own experiences. VIII A change was imminent in Spenser's private life. Once more he contemplated marriage. He paid his addresses to the daughter of a neighbouring landlord. Her The poet's father, James Boyle, was the kinsman of a great marriage. magnate of the south of Ireland, Richard Boyle, who was to be created at a later period Earl of Cork. It was in accord with the fashion of the time, that Spenser, under the new sway of the winged god, should interrupt the poetic labours on which he had already entered, to pen, in honour of his wished-for bride, a long sequence of sonnets. Spenser's sonnets, which he His entitled Amoretti, do not rank very high among Amoretti. his poetic compositions. Like those of most of his contemporaries, they reflect his wide reading in the similar work of French and Italian contemporaries to a larger extent than his own individuality. Although a personal experience impelled him to the enterprise, it is only with serious qualifications that Spenser's sequence of sonnets can be regarded as autobiographic confessions.1 In his hands, as in the hands of Sidney and Daniel, the sonnet was a poetic instrument whereon he sought to repeat in his mother tongue, with very vague reference to his personal circumstances, the notes of amorous feeling and diction which earlier poets of Italy and France had already made their own. The sonnet, which was a wholly foreign form of poetry, and came direct to Elizabethan England from the Continent of Europe, had an inherent attraction for Spenser throughout his career. His earliest literary efforts were two small collections of sonnets, renderings respectively of French sonnets by Du Bellay and Marot's French translation of an ode of Petrarch. Amoretti prove that in his maturer years he had fully maintained his early affection for French and Italian sonneteers. He had indeed greatly extended his acquaintance among them. The influence of Petrarch and Du Bellay was now rivalled by the influence of Tasso and Desportes.2 At times Spenser is content with literal translation of these two for His 1 Spenser makes only three distinctly autobiographical statements in his sonnets. Sonnet xxxiii. is addressed by name to his friend Lodowick Bryskett, and is an apology for the poet's delay in completing his Faerie Queene. In sonnet lx. Spenser states that he is forty-one years old, and that one year has passed since he came under the influence of the winged god. Sonnet lxxiv. apostrophises the 'happy letters' which comprise the name Elizabeth, which he states was borne alike by his mother, his sovereign, and his wife, Elizabeth Boyle. 'Ye three Elizabeths! for ever live, That three such graces did unto me give.' Here Spenser seems to be following a hint offered him by Tasso, who addressed a sonnet to three benefactresses ('Tre gran donne') all named Leonora. (Tasso, Rime, Venice, 1583, vol. i. p. 39.) 2 See Elizabethan Sonnets, vol. i. pp. xcii.-xcix. (introd.), edited by the |