The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Theophilus Cibber
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23
Thy repentant husband,
for his disloyalty,
ROBERT GREEN.
This author's works are chiefly these,
The Honourable History of Fryar Bacon, and Fryar Bungy; play'd by the
Prince of Palatine's servants. I know not whence our author borrowed
his plot, but this famous fryar Minor lived in the reign of Henry III.
and died in the reign of Edward I. in the year 1284. He joined with
Dr. Lodge in one play, called a Looking Glass for London; he writ also
the Comedies of Fryar Bacon and Fair Enome. His other pieces are, Quip
for an upstart Courtier, and Dorastus and Fawnia. Winstanley imputes
likewise to him the following pieces. Tully's Loves; Philomela, the
Lady Fitzwater's Nightingale; Green's News too Late, first and second
part; Green's Arcadia; Green's Farewel to Folly; Green's Groatsworth
of Wit.
It is said by Wood in his Fasti, p. 137, vol. i. that our author died
in the year 1592, of a surfeit taken by eating pickled herrings, and
drinking with them rhenish wine. At this fatal banquet, Thomas Nash,
his cotemporary at Cambridge was with him, who rallies him in his
Apology of Pierce Pennyless. Thus died Robert Green, whose end may
be looked upon as a kind of punishment for a life spent in riot and
infamy.
* * * * *
EDMUND SPENSER
was born in London, and educated at Pembroke Hall in Cambridge. The
accounts of the birth and family of this great man are but obscure and
imperfect, and at his first setting out into life, his fortune and
interest seem to have been very inconsiderable.
After he had for some time continued at the college, and laid that
foundation of learning, which, joined to his natural genius, qualified
him to rise to so great an excellency, he stood for a fellowship,
in competition with Mr. Andrews, a gentleman in holy orders, and
afterwards lord bishop of Winchester, in which he was unsuccessful.
This disappointment, joined with the narrowness of his circumstances,
forced him to quit the university [1]; and we find him next residing
at the house of a friend in the North, where he fell in love with his
Rosalind, whom he finely celebrates in his pastoral poems, and of
whose cruelty he has written such pathetical complaints.
It is probable that about this time Spenser's genius began first to
distinguish itself; for the Shepherd's Calendar, which is so full of
his unprosperous passion for Rosalind, was amongst the first of
his works of note, and the supposition is strengthened, by the
consideration of Poetry's being frequently the offspring of love
and retirement. This work he addressed by a short dedication to the
Maecenas of his age, the immortal Sir Philip Sidney. This gentleman was
now in the highest reputation, both for wit and gallantry, and the
most popular of all the courtiers of his age, and as he was himself a
writer, and especially excelled in the fabulous or inventive part of
poetry; it is no wonder he was struck with our author's genius, and
became sensible of his merit. A story is told of him by Mr. Hughes,
which I shall present the reader, as it serves to illustrate the great
worth and penetration of Sidney, as well as the excellent genius of
Spenser. It is said that our poet was a stranger to this gentleman,
when he began to write his Fairy Queen, and that he took occasion to
go to Leicester-house, and introduce himself by sending in to Mr.
Sidney a copy of the ninth Canto of the first book of that poem.
Sidney was much surprized with the description of despair in that
Canto, and is said to have shewn an unusual kind of transport on the
discovery of so new and uncommon a genius. After he had read some
stanza's, he turned to his steward, and bid him give the person that
brought those verses fifty pounds; but upon reading the next stanza,
he ordered the sum to be doubled. The steward was no less surprized
than his master, and thought it his duty to make some delay in
executing so sudden and lavish a bounty; but upon reading one stanza
stanza more, Mr. Sidney raised the gratuity to two hundred pounds, and
commanded the steward to give it immediately, lest as he read further
he might be tempted to give away his whole estate. From this time he
admitted the author to his acquaintance and conversation, and prepared
the way for his being known and received at court.
Tho' this seemed a promising omen, to be thus introduced to court, yet
he did not instantly reap any advantage from it. He was indeed created
poet laureat to Queen Elizabeth, but he for some time wore a barren
laurel, and possessed only the place without the pension [2]. Lord
treasurer Burleigh, under whose displeasure Spenser laboured, took
care to intercept the Queen's favours to this unhappy great man. As
misfortunes have the most influence on elegant and polished minds, so
it was no wonder that Spenser was much depressed by the cold reception
he met with from the great; a circumstance which not a little detracts
from the merit of the ministers then in power: for I know not if
all the political transactions of Burleigh, are sufficient to
counterballance the infamy affixed on his name, by prosecuting
resentment against distressed merit, and keeping him who was the
ornament of the times, as much distant as possible from the approach
of competence. These discouragements greatly sunk our author's spirit,
and accordingly we find him pouring out his heart, in complaints of so
injurious and undeserved a treatment; which probably, would have been
less unfortunate to him, if his noble patron Sir Philip Sidney had not
been so much absent from court, as by his employments abroad, and the
share he had in the Low-Country wars, he was obliged to be. In a poem
called, The Ruins of Time, which was written some time after Sidney's
death, the author seems to allude to the discouragement I have
mentioned in the following stanza.
O grief of griefs, O gall of all good hearts!
To see that virtue should despised be,
Of such as first were raised for virtue's parts,
And now broad-spreading like an aged tree,
Let none shoot up that nigh them planted be;
O let not these, of whom the muse is scorned,
Alive or dead be by the muse adorned.
These lines are certainly meant to reflect on Burleigh for neglecting
him, and the Lord Treasurer afterwards conceived a hatred towards him
for the satire he apprehended was levelled at him in Mother Hubbard's
Tale. In this poem, the author has in the most lively manner, painted
out the misfortune of depending on court favours. The lines which
follow are among others very remarkable.
Full little knowest thou, that hast not try'd,
What Hell it is in suing long to bide,
To dole good days, that nights be better spent,
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to day, to be put back to-morrow,
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow
To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers,
To have thy asking, yet wait many years.
To fret thy soul with crosses, and with care.
To eat thy heart, thro' comfortless despair;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.
As this was very much the author's case, it probably was the
particular passage in that poem which gave offence; for as Hughes very
elegantly observes, even the sighs of a miserable man, are sometimes
resented as an affront, by him who is the occasion of them. There is a
little story, which seems founded on the grievance just now mentioned,
and is related by some as a matter of fact [3] commonly reported at
that time. It is said, that upon his presenting some poems to the
Queen, she ordered him a gratuity of one hundred pounds, but the Lord
Treasurer Burleigh objecting to it, said with some scorn of the poet,
of whose merit he was totally ignorant, "What, all this for a song?"
The queen replied, "Then give him what is reason." Spenser for some
time waited, but had the mortification to find himself disappointed
of her Majesty's bounty. Upon this he took a proper opportunity to
present a paper to Queen Elizabeth in the manner of a petition, in
which he reminded her of the order she had given, in the following
lines.
I was promised on a time
To have reason for my rhime,
From that time, unto this season
I received nor rhime, nor reason.
This paper produced the intended effect, and the Queen, after sharply
reproving the treasurer, immediately directed the payment of the
hundred pounds the had first ordered. In the year 1579 he was sent
abroad by the Earl of Leicester, as appears by a copy of Latin verses
dated from Leicester-house, and addressed to his friend Mr. Harvey;
but Mr. Hughes has not been able to determine in what service we was
employed. When the Lord Grey of Wilton was chosen Deputy of Ireland,
Spenser was recommended to him as secretary. This drew him over to
another kingdom, and settled him in a scene of life very different
from what he had formerly known; but, that he understood, and
discharged his employment with skill and capacity, appears
sufficiently by his discourse on the state of Ireland, in which there
are many solid and judicious remarks, that shew him no less qualified
for the business of the state, than for the entertainment of the
muses. His life was now freed from the difficulties under which it had
hitherto struggled, and his services to the Crown received a reward of
a grant from Queen Elizabeth of 3000 Acres of land in the county of
Cork. His house was in Kilcolman, and the river Mulla, which he has
more than once so finely introduced in his poems, ran through his
grounds. Much about this time, he contracted an intimate friendship
with the great and learned Sir Walter Raleigh, who was then a captain
under the lord Grey. The poem of Spenser's, called Colin Clouts come
home again, in which Sir Walter Raleigh is described under the name of
the Shepherd of the Ocean, is a beautiful memorial of this friendship,
which took its rise from a similarity of taste in the polite arts, and
which he agreeably describes with a softness and delicacy peculiar to
him. Sir Walter afterwards promoted him in Queen Elizabeth's esteem,
thro' whose recommendation she read his writings. He now fell in love
a second time with a merchant's daughter, in which, says Mrs. Cooper,
author of the muses library, he was more successful than in his first
amour. He wrote upon this occasion a beautiful epithalamium, with
which he presented the lady on the bridal-day, and has consigned that
day, and her, to immortality. In this pleasant easy situation our
excellent poet finished the celebrated poem of The Fairy Queen, which
was begun and continued at different intervals of time, and of which
he at first published only the three first books; to these were added
three more in a following edition, but the six last books (excepting
the two canto's of mutability) were unfortunately lost by his servant
whom he had in haste sent before him into England; for tho' he passed
his life for some time very serenely here, yet a train of misfortunes
still pursued him, and in the rebellion of the Earl of Desmond he was
plundered and deprived of his estate. This distress forced him to
return to England, where for want of his noble patron Sir Philip
Sidney, he was plunged into new calamities, as that gallant Hero died
of the wounds he received at Zutphen. It is said by Mr. Hughes, that
Spenser survived his patron about twelve years, and died the same year
with his powerful enemy the Lord Burleigh, 1598. He was buried, says
he, in Westminster-Abbey, near the famous Geoffery Chaucer, as he had
desired; his obsequies were attended by the poets of that time, and
others, who paid the last honours to his memory. Several copies of
verses were thrown after him into his grave, and his monument was
erected at the charge of the famous Robert Devereux, the unfortunate
Earl of Essex. This is the account given by his editor, of the death
of Spenser, but there is some reason to believe that he spoke only
upon imagination, as he has produced no authority to support his
opinion, especially as I find in a book of great reputation, another
opinion, delivered upon probable grounds. The ingenious Mr.
Drummond of Hawthronden, a noble wit of Scotland, had an intimate
correspondence with all the genius's of his time who resided at
London, particularly the famous Ben Johnson, who had so high an
opinion of Mr. Drummond's abilities, that he took a journey into
Scotland in order to converse with him, and stayed some time at his
house at Hawthronden. After Ben Johnson departed, Mr. Drummond,
careful to retain what past betwixt them, wrote down the heads of
their conversation; which is published amongst his poems and history
of the five James's Kings of Scotland. Amongst other particulars there
is this. "Ben Johnson told me that Spenser's goods were robbed by the
Irish in Desmond's rebellion, his house and a little child of his
burnt, and he and his wife nearly escaped; that he afterwards died in
King-street [4] by absolute want of bread; and that he refused twenty
pieces sent him by the Earl of Essex [5], and gave this answer to the
person who brought them, that he was sure he had no time to spend
them."
Mr. Drummond's works, from whence I have extracted the above, are
printed in a thin quarto, and may be seen at Mr. Wilson's at Plato's
Head in the Strand. I have been thus particular in the quotation, that
no one may suspect such extraordinary circumstances to be advanced
upon imagination. In the inscription on his tomb in Westminster Abbey,
it is said he was born in the year 1510, and died 1596; Cambden says
1598, but in regard to his birth they must both be mistaken, for it is
by no means probable he was born so early as 1510, if we judge by
the remarkable circumstance of his standing for a fellowship in
competition with Mr. Andrews, who was not born according to Hughes
till 1555. Besides, if this account of his birth be true, he must have
been sixty years old when he first published his Shepherd's Calendar,
an age not very proper for love; and in this case it is no wonder,
that the beautiful Rosalind slighted his addresses; and he must have
been seventy years old when he entered into business under lord Grey,
who was created deputy in Ireland 1580: for which reasons we may
fairly conclude, that the inscription is false, either by the error of
the carver, or perhaps it was put on when the monument was repaired.
There are very few particulars of this great poet, and it must be a
mortification to all lovers of the Muses, that no more can be found
concerning the life of one who was the greatest ornament of his
profession. No writer ever found a nearer way to the heart than he,
and his verses have a peculiar happiness of recommending the author to
our friendship as well as raising our admiration; one cannot read
him without fancying oneself transported into Fairy Land, and there
conversing with the Graces, in that enchanted region: In elegance of
thinking and fertility of imagination, few of our English authors have
approached him, and no writers have such power as he to awake the
spirit of poetry in others. Cowley owns that he derived inspiration
from him; and I have heard the celebrated Mr. James Thomson, the
author of the Seasons, and justly esteemed one of our best descriptive
poets, say, that he formed himself upon Spenser; and how closely he
pursued the model, and how nobly he has imitated him, whoever reads
his Castle of Indolence with taste, will readily confess.
Mr. Addison, in his characters of the English Poets, addressed to Mr.
Sacheverel, thus speaks of Spenser:
Old Spenser next, warm'd with poetic rage,
In ancient tales amus'd a barb'rous age;
An age, that yet uncultivate and rude,
Where-e'er the poet's fancy led, pursued
Thro' pathless fields, and unfrequented floods,
To dens of dragons, and enchanted woods.
But now the mystic tale, that pleas'd of yore,
Can charm an understanding age no more;
The long spun allegories, fulsome grow,
While the dull moral lyes too plain below.
We view well pleased at distance, all the sights,
Of arms, and palfries, battles, fields, and fights,
And damsels in distress, and courteous knights.
But when we look too near, the shades decay,
And all the pleasing landscape fades away.
It is agreed on all hands, that the distresses of our author helped
to shorten his days, and indeed, when his extraordinary merit is
considered, he had the hardest measure of any of our poets. It appears
from different accounts, that he was of an amiable sweet disposition,
humane and generous in his nature. Besides the Fairy Queen, we find he
had written several other pieces, of which we can only trace out the
titles. Among these, the most considerable were nine comedies, in
imitation of the comedies of his admired Ariosto, inscribed with the
names of the Nine Muses. The rest which are mentioned in his letters,
and those of his friends, are his Dying Pelicane, his Pageants,
Stemmata Dudleyana, the Canticles paraphrazed, Ecclesiastes, Seven
Psalms, Hours of our Lord, Sacrifice of a Sinner, Purgatory, a
S'ennight Slumber, the Court of Cupid, and Hell of Lovers. It is
likewise said, he had written a treatise in prose called the English
Poet: as for the Epithalamion Thamesis, and his Dreams, both mentioned
by himself in one of his letters, Mr. Hughes thinks they are still
preserved, tho' under different names. It appears from what is said of
the Dreams by his friend Mr. Harvey, that they were in imitation of
Petrarch's Visions.
To produce authorities in favour of Spenser, as a poet. I should
reckon an affront to his memory; that is a tribute which I shall only
pay to inferior wits, whose highest honour it is to be mentioned with
respect, by genius's of a superior class. The works of Spenser will
never perish, tho' he has introduced unnecessarily many obsolete terms
into them; there is a flow of poetry, an elegance of sentiment, a fund
of imagination, and an enchanting enthusiasm which will ever secure
him the applauses of posterity while any lovers of poetry remain.
We find little account of the family which Spenser left behind him,
only that in a few particulars of his life prefixed to the last folio
edition of his works, it is said that his great grandson Hugolin
Spenser, after the restoration of king Charles II. was restored by the
court of claims to so much of the lands as could be found to have been
his ancestors; there is another remarkable passage of which (says
Hughes) I can give the reader much better assurance: that a person
came over from Ireland, in King William's time, to sollicit the same
affair, and brought with him letters of recommendation, as a defendant
of Spenser. His name procured him a favourable reception, and
he applied himself particularly to Mr. Congreve, by whom he was
generously recommended to the favour of the earl of Hallifax, who was
then at the head of the treasury; and by that means he obtained his
suit. This man was somewhat advanced in years, and might be the same
mentioned before, who had possibly recovered only some part of his
estate at first, or had been disturbed in the possession of it. He
could give no account of the works of his ancestor, which are wanting,
and which are therefore in all probability irrecoverably lost.
The following stanzas are said to be those with which Sir Philip
Sidney was first struck.
From him returning, sad and comfortless,
As on the way together we did fare,
We met that villain (God from him me bless)
That cursed wight, from whom I 'scaped whylear,
A man of hell that calls himself despair;
Who first us greets, and after fair areeds
Of tidings strange, and of adventures rare:
So creeping close, as snake in hidden weeds,
Inquireth of our states, and of our Knight'y deeds.
Which when he knew, and felt our feeble hearts
Emboss'd with bale, and bitter-biting grief,
Which love had launced with his deadly darts,
With wounding words, and terms of foul reprief,
He plucked from us all hope of due relief;
That erst us held in love of ling'ring life;
Then hopeless, heartless, 'gan the cunning thief
Persuade us die, to stint all further strife:
To me he lent this rope, to him a rusty knife.
The following is the picture.
The darksome cave they enter, where they find,
That cursed man, low sitting on the ground,
Musing full sadly in his sullen mind;
His greasy locks, long growing and unbound,
Disordered hung about his shoulders round,
And hid his face; through which his hollow eyne,
Look'd deadly dull, and stared as astound;
His raw bone cheeks thro' penury and pine,
Were shrunk into his jaws, as he did never dine,
His garments nought, but many ragged clouts,
With thorns together pinn'd and patched was,
The which his naked sides he wrapt abouts;
And him beside, there lay upon the grass
A dreary corse, whose life away did pass,
All wallowed in his own, yet luke-warm blood,
That from his wound yet welled fresh alas;
In which a rusty knife fast fixed stood,
And made an open passage for the gushing flood.
It would perhaps be an injury to Spenser to dismiss his Life without a
few remarks on that great work of his which has placed him among
the foremost of our poets, and discovered so elevated and sublime a
genius. The work I mean is his allegorical poem of the Fairy Queen.
Sir William Temple in his essay on poetry, says, "that the religion of
the Gentiles had been woven into the contexture of all the ancient
poetry with an agreeable mixture, which made the moderns affect to
give that of christianity a place also in their poems; but the true
religion was not found to become fictitious so well as the false one
had done, and all their attempts of this kind seemed, rather to debase
religion than heighten poetry. Spenser endeavoured to supply this with
morality, and to make instruction, instead of story the subject of an
epic poem. His execution was excellent, and his flights of fancy very
noble and high. But his design was poor; and his moral lay so bare,
that it lost the effect. It is true, the pill was gilded, but so thin
that the colour and the taste were easily discovered.--Mr. Rymer
asserts, that Spenser may be reckoned the first of our heroic poets.
He had a large spirit, a sharp judgment, and a genius for heroic
poetry, perhaps above any that ever wrote since Virgil, but our
misfortune is, he wanted a true idea, and lost himself by following an
unfaithful guide. Tho' besides Homer and Virgil he had read Tasso, yet
he rather suffered himself to be misled by Ariosto, with whom blindly
rambling on marvels and adventures, he makes no conscience of
probability; all is fanciful and chimerical, without any uniformity,
or without any foundation in truth; in a word his poem is perfect
Fairy-Land. Thus far Sir William Temple, and Mr. Rymer; let us now
attend to the opinion of a greater name. Mr. Dryden in his dedication
of Juvenal, thus proceeds: The English have only to boast of Spenser
and Milton in heroic poetry, who neither of them wanted either genius
or learning to have been perfect poets, and yet both of them are
liable to many censures; for there is no uniformity in the design of
Spenser; he aims at the accomplishment of no one action; he raises up
a hero for every one of his adventures, and endows each of them with
some particular moral virtue, which renders them all equal, without
subordination or preference: Every one is valiant in his own legend;
only we must do him the justice to observe, that magnanimity, which is
the character of prince Arthur, shines throughout the whole poem, and
succours the rest when they are in distress. The original of every
knight was then living in the court of Queen Elizabeth; and he
attributed to each of them that virtue which he thought was most
conspicuous in them; an ingenious piece of flattery, tho' it turned
not much to his account. Had he lived to finish his poem in the
remaining legends, it had certainly been more of a piece; but could
not have been perfect because the model was not true. But prince
Arthur, or his chief patron Sir Philip Sidney, dying before him,
deprived the poet both of means and spirit to accomplish his design.
For the rest, his obsolete language, and ill choice of his stanza, are
faults both of the second magnitude; for notwithstanding the first, he
is still intelligible, at least after a little practice, and for
the last he is more to be admired, that labouring under such
disadvantages, his verses are so numerous, so various, and so
harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he has professedly imitated, has
surpassed him among the Romans, and only Waller among the English."
Mr. Hughes in his essay on allegorical poetry prefixed to Spenser's
works, tells us, that this poem is conceived, wrought up, and coloured
with stronger fancy, and discovers more the particular genius of
Spenser, than any of his other writings; and having observed that
Spenser in a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh calls it, a continued
allegory, or dark conceit, he gives us some remarks on allegorical
poetry in general, defining allegory to be a fable or story, in which,
under imaginary persons or things, is shadowed some real action or
instructive moral, or as I think, says he, it is somewhere very
shortly defined by. Plutarch; it is that, in which one thing is,
related, and another thing understood; it is a kind of poetical
picture, or hieroglyphick, which by its apt resemblance, conveys
instruction to the mind, by an analogy to the senses, and so amuses
the fancy while it informs the understanding. Every allegory has
therefore two senses, the literal and mystical, the literal sense
is like a dream or vision, of which the mystical sense is the true
meaning, or interpretation. This will be more clearly apprehended
by considering, that as a simile is a more extended metaphor, so
an allegory is a kind of continued simile, or an assemblage of
similitudes drawn out at full length.