present time, it is a case in which investigation vindicates itself as a process by which we successfully arrive at indecision; and it is judicious to keep back an expression of opinion which must be in great part capricious. This most brilliant of the scattered family of the fatherless can well afford to owe nothing to ancestry. The clamour for its appropriation will, it is hoped, excuse the length of a notice which, wherever it may tend to fix or to unfix probability, is at least in the direction of truth. THE LIE; OR, THE SOUL'S ERRAND. Say to the Court, it glows, Tell Potentates they live, Not loved, unless they give, Not strong but by their factions: Give Potentates the lie. Tell men of high condition Their purpose is ambition, Tell them that brave it most, Give them likewise the lie. Tell time it is but motion; Tell flesh it is but dust: And wish them not reply, For thou must give the lie. Tell age it daily wasteth; Tell Wit how much she wrangles Tell Physic of her boldness; Tell Fortune of her blindness; Tell Friendship of unkindness; Tell Justice of delay: And if they will reply, Then give them all the lie. Tell Arts they have no soundness, Tell Schools they want profoundness, EDMUND SPENSER is the second great landmark, to adopt the figure of Pope, "in the general course of our poetry." Of his pedigree nothing is known further than that he claimed consanguinity with the noble family of his name, whose members so frequently illustrate the county archives of Northamptonshire, and who were themselves descended from a younger branch of the Despensers, anciently Earls of Gloucester and Winchester. His degree of affinity is, however, unknown, and the links of the connection severed or untraceable. Spenser was born in East Smithfield, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Tower of London, about 1553; and his early years, it has been reasonably surmised, were passed in the cold shade of poverty and dependence. He entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, as a sizar, on the 20th of May, 1569; and the "Theatre for Worldings," a collection of fugitive pieces published in the same year, contains some poems which, upon internal evidence, have been referred to him. On the 16th of January, 1573, he took his degree of B.A., and proceeded M.A. in June, 1576. It has been stated that Spenser was a defeated candidate for a fellowship which Andrews, afterwards successively Bishop of Chester, Ely, and Winchester, more fortunately disputed with him. But, in fact, the rival of Andrews was Thomas Dove, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough; and Spenser's prospects of a fellowship were ruined, as we learn from a letter of his friend, Gabriel Harvey, by an unlucky misunderstanding with persons of academical position and influence so powerful as to make their enmity fatal to his chances of advancement at Cambridge. In these circumstances he availed himself of a home offered him by some friends in the north of England, amongst whom he either resided as a guest, or, as is more probable, turned his learning to account in the performance of the duties of a tutor. It was during his retirement here that he was called upon to prove the anguish of tricked and insulted affection. His mistress had perception enough to discover that he had "all the intelligences at command," and taste enough to transfer her worthless love to some booby-ancestor, it is to be charitably hoped, of the husband of the fickle heroine of "Locksley Hall." After a time, when the paroxysmal had subsided and softened into the tuneful phase of sorrow, Spenser, in several eclogues of the "Shepherd's Calendar," published in 1579, and dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, laments his hopeless passion and his blasted life. Whilst he personified himself as Colin Clout-a designation which would severely test the erotic indifference even of a Juliet to nominal peculiarities— Spenser is magnanimous enough to bestow upon his heartless fair one the fresh, blushingly beautiful name of Rosalind-a name which Lodge, appropriating for the heroine of his "Euphues Golden Legacie" (1590), handed down, along with incidents of which the original or the germ is to be found in "The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn," to be immortalized by Shakespere in “As You Like It.” Pastoral poetry is very liable to collapse at the first. rude breath of realism. In these days it is simply a "thing which is not;" unless, indeed, by the banks of some trickling tributary of the Yarra Yarra, competitive lyres are sounded for the guerdon of a kangaroo ham, which erst were strung by the Cam or the Isis. Perhaps, therefore, it is not much to object to any pastorals that they are not in strictest conformity with Nature. Spenser's shepherds are skilled in the art dialectic, and his folds are little less abstruse and learned than the councilhall of Milton's Pandæmonium. In an evil hour for the poet--for their animadversions gave lasting offence to Lord Burleigh*-his pastoral and polemical creations discussed the relative merits of Popery and Protestantism; and judged, ultra crepidam, beyond the literal crook, the characters of Bishop Aylmer and Archbishop Grindal. Harvey, the Hobbinol of the "Shepherd's Calendar," persuaded Spenser to London, and procured for him an *The following anecdote, though not authentic enough for the text, may be sufficiently amusing for a note. It is quoted from Fuller. "There passeth a story commonly told and believed, that Spenser 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 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 Spenser received no reward; whereupon he presented this petition in a small piece of paper to the queen in her progress 'I was promised on a time, To have reason for my rhyme; Hereupon the queen gave strict order (not without some check to her treasurer) for the present payment of the hundred pounds she first intended unto him." |