olbion, or Spenser's Faerie Queene, the magnitude of which would have daunted a less vigorous generation, Nothing wearied, nothing fatigued them; like Raleigh, they could "toil terribly." The young Francis Bacon -lawyer, philosopher, and courtier-wrote to Cecil with an inimitable audacity: "I have taken all knowledge to be my province."

National Pride.

And all this young life, with its varied spheres of action, was still further quickened by a deep national pride in the growing greatness of England, and by a feeling of chivalric loyalty to the Queen. Religious differences gave way before a common bond of patriotism. The men that faced "the Great Armada " were united by a common hatred of Spain, a common devotion to England and to her Queen. The destruction of this huge armament made every English heart beat with a new pride of country, that became a moving power in the literature of the time. We feel the exultant thrill of this triumph in those stirring words in Shakespeare's King John:

"This England never did nor never shall

Lie at the proud feet of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.

Now these her princes are come home again,

Come with three corners of the world in arms.

And we shall shock them, naught shall make us rue,

If England to herself do but rest true."

And the centre of this new nationality was the Queen. Capricious, vain, and fickle as Elizabeth was, she awakened a devoted loyalty denied to the gloomy and relentless Mary, or to the timorous and ungainly James. She had a quick and practical sympathy with the new intellectual and literary activities of her time. The first regular tragedy was

Loyalty to the Queen.

* King John," act v. sc. 7.

produced before her, and her interest helped the development of the struggling drama.

"The versatility and many-sidedness of her mind enabled her to understand every phase of the intellectual movement about her, and to fix by a sort of instinct on its highest representative."*

Summary.

As we review the achievements of Elizabethan England, we can see that the same magnificent energy which makes England prosperous at home and triumphant upon. the seas, is the motive power back of the greatest creative period of her literature. Looking at this great time as a whole, we must see England as "a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks —as an eagle mewing her mighty youth and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam."+ Elizabethan literature is but one outlet for this imperious energy; it is the new feeling for life that creates the drama as well as discovers kingdoms far away. This is indeed the Renaissance-the re-birth.

EDMUND SPENSER.

Edmund Spenser was born in London about 1552. There is some dispute as to his parentage, but he appears to have belonged to a respectable Lancashire family. After attending the Merchant Taylor's school in London, he went to Pembroke College, Cambridge, as a sizar, or free scholar, in 1569. His first published poems, translations from Du Bellay and Petrarch, appeared in the same year in a poetical miscellany called The Theatre for Worldlings. The work is smooth and creditable, but the especial value of the poem is its indication of Spenser's early interest in the French and Italian literature.

* Green's "History of the English People," ii. p. 319.

+ Milton's "Areopagitica.”

While at college Spenser became acquainted with Gabriel Harvey, who figures in the literary history of the time as a learned, if somewhat formal and narrow-minded critic, deeply interested in the development of English poetry. Spenser left Cambridge after taking his master's degree, in 1576, and spent two years in the north, probably with his kinsfolk in Lancashire. Shortly before 1579 he became acquainted with Sir Philip Sidney, the mirror and pattern of the English gentleman of the time, then a young man of about Spenser's age. Tradition has it that Spenser wrote his Shepherd's Calendar during a stay at Penshurst, Sidney's country place. The poem received immediate recognition as a work which marked the coming of a new and original poet. It is an Eclogue, or pastoral poem, in twelve books, one for each month. Spenser weaves into its dialogue some of his recent country experiences, including his unsuccessful suit of a lady he calls "Rosalind." He asserts his Puritanism, condemns the laziness of the clergy, and pays the customary tribute to the vanity of the Queen. In Elizabeth's time the great avenue to success was through the royal favor, and Spenser tried to push his fortunes at court through his friend Sidney and the Earl of Leicester. Sidney was out of the Queen's good graces, and had left in disgust to weave the airy tissue of his Arcadia.

Leicester had Spenser appointed secretary to Lord Grey, the new deputy to Ireland, and in 1580 the young poet left the brilliant England of Elizabeth, with its gathering intellectual forces, for a barbarous and rebellious colony. In this lawless and miserable country he spent the rest of his life, except for brief visits to England; "banished," as he bitterly writes, "like wight forlorn, into that waste where he was quite forgot."

Lord Grey was recalled in 1582, but Spenser remained in Dublin about six years longer as clerk in the Chancery

Court. We find an unintentional irony in the fact that the former incumbent, from whom Spenser purchased the post, a certain Ludovic Briskett, wished to "retire to the quietness of study." Spenser was rewarded for his services by a gift of the castle of Kilcolman, part of the forfeited estate of the Desmonds. There Sir Walter Raleigh found him

"Amongst the cooly shade.

Of the green alders of the Mullae's shore," *

and heard from the poet's own lips the first three books of his masterpiece, the Faerie Queene. Raleigh, with great and generous admiration, prevailed upon Spenser to accompany him to London, where the first installment of the Faerie Queene appeared in the same year (1590). Spenser remained in London about a year, learning the miseries of a suitor for princes' favors, and then returned in bitter indignation to his provincial seclusion. Here, in 1594, he married Elizabeth Boyer, "an Irish country lass," and paid her a poet's tribute in his Amoretti, or love sonnets, and in the splendid Epithalamion, or marriage hymn, a poem filled with a rich and noble music. Here also, besides writing certain minor poems, he completed six of the twelve books that were to make up the first part of the Faerie Queene. About 1595 Spenser again visited London, and in the following year published his Prothalamion, or song before marriage. Apart from its poetical value, this poem has a personal interest. Through it we are able to determine Spenser's birthplace, for he speaks of London as

"My most kindly nurse,

That to me gave this life's first native source."

From it, too, it would appear that he was again an unsuccessful suitor at court. Spenser returned to Ireland

*"Colin Clout Come Home Again,"-read this entire passage, beginning line 56.

in 1598, having been appointed sheriff of Cork. Shortly after, his house was burned and plundered in the rebellion of Tyrone. Spenser barely escaped with his wife and children. He soon afterward went to London as bearer of dispatches. Here he died a few weeks later (January 16, 1599) in a lodging house, a ruined and broken-hearted man. Ben Jonson wrote: "He died for lack of bread in King Street, and refused twenty pieces sent to him by my Lord of Essex, saying that he had no time to spend them."

Poet.

a

Spenser stands alone, the one supremely great undramatic poet of a play-writing time. In his youth he had, indeed, composed nine comedies, now lost, but the quality Spenser as of his genius was apart from the dramatic temper of his greatest poetical contemporaries. With a wonderful richness and fluency of poetic utterance, with the painter's feeling for color, and the musician's ear for melody, Spenser lacked the sense of humor, the firm grasp of actual life, indispensable to the successful dramatist. From one aspect, Spenser's work expresses the spirit and deals with the problems of his time. In the Faerie Queene, the struggle of the Church of England with the Church of Rome, a vital issue for Elizabeth and her people, is imaged by the opposing figures of the saintly Una and the foul and dissembling Duessa: what Spenser deemed the righteous severity of Lord Grey's Irish administration is symbolized by Artegal, the knightly personification of Justice. But while current events or questions are thus introduced under the thin veil of allegory, while from time to time we catch the more or less distorted image of some great contemporary, Mary Queen of Scots or Sir Philip Sidney, from another aspect the Faerie Queene impresses us as remote from the substantial world of fact, enveloped in an enchanted atmosphere peculiarly its own. In its visionary pages