"Daphnaida," a beautiful elegy on the death of Douglas Howard, daughter of Henry Lord Howard, and wife of Arthur Georges, Esq., himself a man of literature and genius. A degree of doubt rests on the exact date of his return to Ireland, some asserting that it was in 1591, and others in 1592, some that he remained in England till he had superintended the publication of "The Tears of the Muses," residing a portion of the time in Alton, Hampshire, and writing there "The Ruins of Time," while others think that he departed after collecting the materials of the volume and leaving them with Ponsonby. At all events, we find him in Ireland in 1593, engaged in some quarrels about land with his neighbours, which need not be detailed, as they tend to cast no credit on his character. Indeed, some will have it that he was improvident and rapacious, and that owing to this, the people near Kilcolman entertain no respect for his memory. He had that year disposed of the office of clerk to the Council of Munster, to which he had been appointed in June 1588. In 1594, "Colin Clout 's Come Home Again" was published in a quarto volume by Ponsonby, although, by an address prefixed, it seems to have been written three years previously. In 1595, another volume appeared, containing his "Amoretti,” a series of sonnets, and his "Epithalamium," a marriage ode. From the evidence furnished by these pieces, it seems clear that he had fallen in love, about the year 1592, with an Irish lady, and had wedded her on St Barnabas' Day-i.e., the 11th of June 1594. Much disputation has arisen, as on almost every other point of Spenser's story, about the rank of Spenser's wife. Todd makes her a girl of mean birth, simply because the poet speaks of her as a "country lass," in the same mythical spirit in which he calls himself a "shepherd boy." Cibber, in his "Lives of the Poets," finds out that she was a merchant's daughter. But the most plausible conjecture is one thrown out by the ingenious American writer referred to above, who, assuming the principle of anagram, conjectures from the perpetual application by Spenser in his sonnets of the term "Angel" to his bride, that her real name was Elizabeth Nagle. Nagle is the name of an ancient family in Ireland, divided into two branches, called from the colour of their hair, the Black and the Red Nagles. The lord and chieftain of the latter branch resided at Monganymmy, a seat which stood on the banks of the Mulla, and at no great distance from Spenser's residence. The proprietor of this estate, in the poet's time, was John, whose son David died in Dublin in 1637. It is, therefore, fair to suppose that in 1594, when Spenser was married, David had a sister of a marriageable age. We will not follow the writer into a number of little circumstances which he deems to support this view. We only wonder that no tradition of this connexion of the Nagles with a man so distinguished as Spenser, seems to have lingered in that family. It is worth noticing, what the American journalist omits, that Edmund Burke's mother was a Nagle, born at Castletown Roche, within a few miles of Kilcolman; that her grand-aunt was the wife of Sylvanus Spenser, the poet's eldest son; and that if the foregoing conjecture be true, there may have been a still closer relation between these two pre-eminent men. Burke's Christian name "Edmund" was derived from the Nagles, and was likely handed down from that of the poet. We would respectfully request some of our researching Irish friends to follow out the clue of suggestion thus laid before them. We find Spenser again in London in 1596, bearing this time. along with him the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Books of "The Faerie Queene." These, in the course of the year, were published along with a new impression of the first three, and served to increase, if not the interest of the story, the feeling of admiration and amazement at the boundless riches of the author's language, the melody of his rhythm, and the fertility of his imagination. In the same year he published two quarto volumes, one containing his "Prothalamion," or spousal verses on the marriages of the Ladies Elizabeth and Katharine Somerset, daughters of the Earl of Worcester, accompanied by a reprint of the "Daphnaida;" and the other his four Hymns of "Love," of " Beauty," of " Heavenly Love," and of "Heavenly Beauty," the first two having been early compositions. He dates them from "Greenwich, this first of September 1596." This was the last publication ere his death. The additional cantos of "The Faerie Queene" did not appear till 1609, when the first folio edition of the poem was published. Four short poems were first given in a complete collection of his works in folio, 1611. His prose "View of the State of Ireland," a masterly dialogue, evincing profound knowledge and calm, statesmanlike views, which he is said to have written in England in 1596, did not see the light till 1633. A few sonnets, too, were picked up in old publications, and preserved by Mr Todd in his edition of Spenser's works. He returned to Ireland in 1597, and in the succeeding year we find him recommended by the queen (30th September) to be Sheriff of Cork. But now the end was near. Tyrone's rebellion, which had raged for some time in Ulster, rolled its bloody waves toward Munster and Kilcolman. Spenser, a proprietor, sheriff, agent of the Government, and who held, as his "View of Ireland" shews, that arbitrary government was essential to the peace of that country, was of course a marked man. A recent writer in the Athenæum finds reason to conjecture, from letters in the State Papers, that the poet had become obnoxious to James VI. of Scotland, by a supposed allusion to his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, in the character of "Duessa," and that this king not only demanded his punishment from the English Court, stirred up one Quin to attack him in bad verse, and prejudiced Burleigh against him to such an extent that he stopped his pension, but actually, having influence with the Irish rebels, who regarded James as a Roman Catholic at heart, hounded them on to destroy him. If this be true, then the blood alike of Edmund Spenser and Walter Raleigh must lie at James's door. Be this as it may, in the month of October That James did write Burleigh against Spenser for his supposed attack on his mother, in the Ninth Canto of the Fifth Book, is unquestionable. But that his anger was very strong or sincere, or likely to lead him to use his influence with the Irish rebels against the poet, will not appear very likely to those who remember his trimming, shuffling conduct in reference to his mother's murder; how he sent an ambassador, the Master of Gray, to England, apparently to prevent, but in reality to accelerate it privately; and how his bluster of seeming wrath after Mary's death, subsided so soon into the most abject and cowardly subservience to Queen Elizabeth. James scarcely ever saw his mother, and does not seem to have entertained any great affection for her; nay, at one time, was exceedingly jealous of her as a rival claimant of the crown of Scotland. See Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, ed. 1858, pp. 130, 131. 1598, the armed ruffians of Tyrone invaded the tranquil banks of the Mulla. Spenser and his wife escaped, but their goods were plundered, their house burned, and, alas! alas! a child newly born perished in the flames. The broken-hearted poet hurried to London, and on the 16th January 1599 he died at an inn in King Street, Westminster, in great penury. His body was interred in the Great Abbey, and, at his own desire, was laid beside the dust of Chaucer. He was buried at the charge of the Earl of Essex, poets bearing his pall-Shakspeare, perhaps, among the number-and throwing elegies and poems, along with the pens that wrote them, into his grave. A monument was erected, thirty years afterwards, by Anne, Countess of Dorset, to his memory. His widow remained in Ireland, and was afterwards married to one Roger Seckerstone. He had three sons, Sylvanus, Lawrence, and Peregrine, and one daughter, Catherine, of whom the first and third left descendants. Of his personnel, we know only from Aubrey that he was a "little man, who wore short hair, a little band, and little cuffs." He was fifty-five years of age at the time of his death. Having, we believe, condensed into the foregoing pages every known fact of any importance concerning the author of "The Faerie Queene," we now drop the curtain upon his obscure and chequered life, and intend, in our next paper, to address ourselves to the more pleasing and satisfactory task of examining critically the productions of his genius. |