DMUND SPENSER, the author of "The Faerie Queene" and of the other poetical works contained in the ensuing volumes, was born in 1552, twelve years earlier than Shakespeare. It has been usual to fix this event in 1553; but Spenser himself tells us, in the sixtieth sonnet of his "Amoretti," printed in 1595, entered at Stationers' Hall in 1594, and, in all probability, written at the close of 1593, that he had already completed his fortieth year. His birth is thus carried back to 1552.1 Although he was unquestionably born in London, a point to which we shall more particularly advert presently, there is some reason to think that he may have spent his youth in Warwickshire, and that his father was resident in that county in 1569: an Edmund Spenser, who may have been the poet's father, For Spenser's sixtieth sonnet, see vol. v. p. 185. He tells the lady whom he was then addressing, that the year of his courtship, just ended, appeared to him longer "Than all those forty which my life outwent." "This was in the end of the year 1593, so that he would appear to have been born in 1552."-Professor Craik. b is mentioned, in the muster-book of the Hundred, as an inhabitant of Kingsbury. We do not at that date find the name of Edmund, in connection with Spenser, in any other family of the same name; and, since it is not at all known where the poet received his early education, we trust we may be allowed to conjecture that it was in the county which gave birth to Shakespeare. In his seventeenth year Spenser was sent to the University of Cambridge, having been admitted, as the College records testify, a sizar of Pembroke Hall on 20th May, 1569. Wherever Spenser may have passed his youth, and been educated, whether at Kingsbury, in London, or elsewhere, we have it on his own assertion, in one of the last separate poems he ever wrote, that he was born in the metropolis, though he does not inform us in what part of it : "At length they all to mery London came, This passage has, necessarily, been cited or referred to by all the biographers of Spenser; and they have justly considered it so decided and unequivocal, that some of them have passed over, without due notice, the testimony of Camden, who, giving an account of the unhappy death of the author of "The Faerie Queene," twice over states that he was "a Londoner."2 1 "Prothalamion," printed in 1596, and probably written early in that year. See vol. v. p. 281. 2 See "History of England," by Kennett, vol. ii. p. 612, edit. 1719. Camden, having spoken of the deaths of Doctors Stapleton and Cozens, thus proceeds : "The last was Edmund Spenser, born at London, and a student in Cambridge, who had so happy a genius for poetry that he outwent all the poets before him, not excepting his fellow-Londoner, Chaucer himself; but, through a fate common to that fraternity, he was always poor, though he had Camden was himself born in the Old Bailey, the year before Spenser, and may have felt some pride in recording that he was a townsman. We subjoin, in a note, the whole of what he says of the poet in his "Life and Reign of Queen Elizabeth," in the obituary for the year 1598-9, although it anticipates various points requiring future notice: to these we shall recur at the proper time. Camden says nothing of the poet's immediate family, nor of the "house of ancient fame," from which, in other places and at earlier dates, Spenser (perhaps more frequently and vauntingly than became his own pre-eminence) claimed to have been descended. This "house" was that of Sir John Spencer of Althorp, and our poet alludes to it again in his "Muiopotmos," specially dated 1590, though published in a collection called " Complaints" in 1591; in his "Tears of the Muses," of the later year; and in his Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubberd's Tale," also of 1591. These three productions are severally dedicated to as many of the daughters of Sir John; and there Spenser mentions his "kindred" and affinity to the "house of ancient fame" of which they were ornaments,1 and we have no reason to believe that they in any way disowned or slighted the relationship. On the contrary, we may hope and believe that they were proud of a connection with the author of the then just published “Faerie Queene,” the best, 66 been secretary to the Lord Grey, Lord Deputy of Ireland. For he had scarce fixed himself in his new retirement, and had got a little leisure to pursue his studies, but the rebels rifled and threw him out of house and home, so that he returned to England in a bare condition, where he died not long after, and was interred in Westminster, not far from Chaucer, at the Earl of Essex's charge. His hearse was attended by the gentlemen of his faculty, who cast into his tomb some funeral elegies, and the pens they were wrote with." See vol. iv. p. 314; vol. v. pp. 2, 56. if not the most popular, production of the kind that had appeared in any language. By his Colin Clout's come Home again" (which was not printed until 1595, although the inscription of it to Sir Walter Raleigh bears date at the close of 1591) it is clear that these ladies, Carey, Compton, and Strange, had shown no indisposition to welcome the tribute of their poet; and he especially praises them under the names of Phillis, Charillis, and sweet Amarillis," at the same time repeating his assertion that he was a member of their family.! This relationship, however distant, and although Spenser did not spell his name precisely in the same way, makes it singular that we should know so little about his immediate origin. We can do no more than conjecture the Christian name of his father, and of his mother the surname has never been ascertained; that her first name was Elizabeth, we learn from the seventy-fourth sonnet of his "Amoretti;” but to what rank of life she belonged, or where her family resided, not the slightest hint is given. In the sonnet referred to, Spenser rejoices that the Christian name of the lady who, we apprehend, became his second wife (he did not marry her until the first three books of the "Faerie Queene" had been about four years published) was the same as that of the Queen, and of his mother: he is speaking of the "most happy letters" forming "Elizabeth,” and belonging to three persons especially dear to him :— "The first my being to me gave by kind, From mother's womb deriv'd by dew descent; The whole passage, laudatory of the three sisters, may be seen in vol. v. p. 103, where he terms them— "The honor of the noble familie, Of which I meanest boast my selfe to be." The third my love, my lives last ornament, By whom my spirit out of dust was raysed,' &c. Presuming, as there is some reason to believe, that his father's names were like his own, and his mother's Christian name certainly Elizabeth, we may likewise presume that after their marriage they settled in London in the first instance, where their son Edmund Spenser was born in 1552. It has generally been too positively affirmed that this event took place in East Smithfield, near the Tower, then by no means a part of the metropolis uninhabited by persons of rank and respectability; but this fact depends solely upon a manuscript note, by a distinguished biographical antiquary of the last century, in a copy of a work in itself of little authority. In opposition to this statement, we may mention that all search hitherto made, for an entry of the birth of Spenser, in parish registers in that district of the town, has failed to obtain the required information. In the hope of procuring some clue to the marriage of the elder Edmund Spenser, with his wife Elizabeth, or to the birth of their children, we carried our investigations farther west; but, although we traced nothing, on those points, that we thought might possibly have escaped a hasty examination, we were surprised to meet with a memorandum which, we have some reason to think, establishes a fact in the poet's history that has never before been suspected. Todd, and other biographers have argued that, when Edmund Spenser married, about five years before his death, he was a bachelor. Of this we entertain grave doubts, not merely because it is unlikely that a man of such a delicate and susceptible mind would remain single until he was more than forty, but because, in 1 Oldys' MS. notes, in a copy of Winstanley's "Lives of the most famous English Poets," 8vo. 1687. |