V. THE PICTORIAL ELEMENTS IN THE "FAIRY AND ITS CONNECTION WITH THE PICTURE

SHOWS, PAGEANTS and MasQUES OF TH

VI. THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE "FAIRY QUEE WHOLE.

SPENSER

CHAPTER I

SPENSER'S CHARACTER

We have a vivid glimpse of Spenser's personal appearance among the recollections of the poet gathered together by John Aubrey. According to his informant, the actor Christopher Beeston, of the Queen's company, the poets' poet, the author of the Fairy Queen, was "a little man, who wore short haire, little bands and little cuffs."

A slight figure, surmounted by a fine head, if we judge from the portraits of Spenser that have been preserved, particularly from the elegant one in the possession of Lord Kinnoul. His face bore every mark of refinement, with its lofty backward-sloping forehead, its thin mobile lips, grey-blue eyes, auburn hair and pointed beard. The whole conveys an idea of delicacy and distinction rather than of breadth and geniality. A striking contrast with the famous though crude Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare, the characteristics of which are the fullness and roundness of the face, the placid good-humour of the looks, the stoutness of the bust. Surely Spenser had more in him of the dainty idealist than of the hearty "bon vivant."

I

We catch another glimpse of him at twenty-seven, when, after being secretary to a bishop, he passed into the household of the Earl of Leicester. His change in appearance struck his College friend, Gabriel Harvey. Spenser has suddenly become the perfect courtier, halfgallant, half-soldier. Harvey cracks jokes on his "thrice honourable mustachios and subboscos (chin-beard).' He calls him "my young Italianate signior and French monsieur," "your monsieurship" or "your gallantship” or "Il magnifico Signor Immerito Benevolo."

But we have other means of conjuring up the living man. We may almost hear him speak. In a well-known passage, another friend of the poet, Lodovick Bryskett, describes Spenser addressing a select audience in Dublin when he was about thirty-two. Surely Bryskett, who was something of a poet himself, strove to the best of his dramatic faculties to put appropriate words and phrases into Spenser's mouth, and more especially convey that mode of delivery which was habitual to him. Unless he utterly failed, we may infer from the passage that Spenser's way of speaking was at times somewhat refined and solemn, a little pompous and heavy. Let us hear his speech, or part of it, for it is too long to be given entire. Spenser has been asked to unlock to the company "the goodly cabinet" of moral philosophy, and this is his answer:

"Though it may seeme hard for me to refuse the request made by you all, whom every one alone I should for many respects be willing to gratifie; yet, as the case standeth, I doubt not but with the consent of the most part of you, I shall be excused at this time of the taske

very probably, was his manner in a assembly, when he was careful of his lan more familiar style of talk we have good his letters to Harvey. His fluent, equable ably compares with the vehemence and p correspondent. Here Spenser never see his voice. A sort of sober cheerfulness a pervade his epistles. In them, with their of themes, scraps of tentative verse, an we gain an idea of how he would chat Thus did the young men discourse a Cambridge. Thus did they bandy their witticisms, Harvey with more of the heaviness of a Rabelaisian scholar, Spe easier grace of the courtier. But the cheer seems to have been occasional with him, a In health he was as delicate as in stature it was at least while he was a Cambridge: in two years he was couched on the sick lis less than sixteen weeks in all. Great sensiti and soul was the consequence of that si ment. Spenser was much like the

young c