Spenser, EDMUND, one of the chief Elizabethan poets, was, as we learn from the Prothalamion (one of his minor poems), born in London, probably in East Smithfield near the Tower. From one of his Amoretti the date of his birth can with fair certainty be concluded to be 1552. As to his family, there are many indications that he was well connected, though his circumstances were poor. He speaks of himself as taking his name from 'an house of ancient fame,' and also of 'the noble familie, of which I meanest boast myself to be.' This noble family was that of the Spencers of Althorp. With the ladies of it he associates several of his poems. Thus in the dedication of The Teares of the Muses to the Lady Strange (in honour of whom in her old age it is interesting to notice Milton's Arcades was composed) he writes: 'The causes for which ye have thus deserved of me to be honoured (if honour it be at all) are both your particular bounties, and also some private bands of affinity, which it hath pleased your Ladiship to acknowledge.' But in what degree he was connected with the Althorp Spencers has not yet been ascertained; it seems clear it was not a close relationship. What is fairly certain is that the poet's branch of the family belonged to the neighbourhood of Burnley in east Lancashire. Possibly his father came from Hurstwood, near Burnley. Gabriel Harvey, an intimate friend of Spenser's, speaks of Laneashire as Spenser's county; and there is much corroborative evidence of that statement to be drawn from the poet's own works as well as from the Burnley parish registers. But, however 'good' his family, Spenser's father was by no means well-to-do. It is conjectured that he was at one time 'a free journeyman' in the 'arte or mysterie of clothmakyng.' It is certain that his pecuniary means were so limited that in the education of his son, or sons, he was glad of assistance, and that even with assistance the poet went up to the university as a 'sizar.' So from the beginning Spenser did not enjoy worldly prosperity; from the beginning the saying of one of his admirers applies: 'Poorly, poor man, he lived; poorly, poor man, he died.' Of his mother nothing whatever is at present known, except that her Christian name was Elizabeth (Amoretti, lxxiv.).
His life appears to have been spent in London till his going up to Cambridge in 1569. The publication of 'The Spending of the Money of Robert Nowell of Reade Hall, Lancashire, brother of Dean Alexander Powell, 1568-1580,' has informed us that he was sent to the Merchant Taylors' School, then newly founded. He is first mentioned in those accounts as one of six 'poor scholars' of the Merchant Taylors' School, to whom the generous squire gave stuff for gowns. Thus Spenser would be a pupil of Mulcaster, though it was certainly not from him he learned to write English—unless indeed Mulcaster's theory was a great deal better than his practice, the style of his Positions being singularly affected and discommendable.
The Merchant Taylors' School was directly associated with Pembroke Hall (now College) at Cambridge; and in May 1569 Spenser duly proceeded from one to the other. Nowell's beneficence still attended him. Both at 'his going to Pembroke Hall' and twice at least while there he received presents. And these with the benefits of a sizarship must have reduced his university expenses to an amount which can have been no great burden to his father and family. As a scholar he does not seem to have specially distinguished himself at Cambridge. Perhaps, like Wordsworth two centuries later, he did not feel himself 'of that hour or that place.' There are traces of some friction between him and the authorities. But it is evident from his works that by the time he quitted the university in 1576 he had obtained a considerable acquaintance with both Latin and Greek literature. And he had made friends of note, who highly appreciated his genius; amongst them Gabriel Harvey and Edward Kirke.
And now what to do? He seems to have had no definite programme or prospect. He stayed for some months at least—perhaps for some two years—with his relations near Burnley, probably waiting on fortune. But this time was not all wasted; he had the experience of an unsuccessful love-suit; he pondered many questions of the day; and he perfected his metrical skill. The Shepeards Calendar was the result. And its publication in 1579 made an epoch in English literature. It was the first clear note of the great Elizabethan poetry. His contemporaries heard it with delight, and at once acknowledged its freshness and its charm.
Probably the year before its publication, or even in 1577—if, as words of his own seem certainly to prove, he was in Ireland that year—Spenser had gone south again, and had won the friendship of Sir Philip Sidney, to whom it was dedicated. How exactly he passed into the Sidney circle and became at home at Penshurst has not yet been made out. Possibly Gabriel Harvey was able to introduce him to the Earl of Leicester, who was Sir Philip's uncle. However this may be, Leicester and Sidney proved good patrons, and his friendship with the latter was one of the great events of his life (see Astrophel, Ruins of Time, &c.). And no doubt it was through Leicester's influence that in 1580 Spenser, long anxious for some employment or 'place,' was appointed private secretary to Arthur Lord Grey de Wilton, himself just appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland.
Ireland was thenceforward to be his home, little probably as such an issue of his secretaryship was expected, and eager as were his hopes and efforts to obtain some preferment in England. We cannot wonder that Spenser was ill content with his lot. The country was in rebellion when he arrived in it. The special mission of Lord Grey was to suppress the combined insurrection of the O'Neils in the north and the Fitzgeralds in the south, assisted by certain Spaniards who had lately fortified themselves at Smerwick in Kerry, a mission executed with a severity so merciless as to lead to his recall in 1582. Strange and fearful sights were presented to the young poet's eyes, of massacre, of desolation, of utter misery. The evil condition of things is vividly illustrated in Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland—a work of ripe, however bitter, experience, and inspired by long and shrewd observation, written probably in the second decade of his Irish residence, and largely circulated in MS., though not printed till 1633. He strongly advocated the policy of strict repression and suppression. No wonder the natives loved Spenser as little as Spenser loved them. To this day, it is said, the peasants of Cork county remember him with detestation. However, it was in Ireland the unfortunate man was to pass his life, except for some two visits and a terror-stricken flight to England. Before his patron's recall he was already forming fresh connections with the country. In 1581 he was appointed Clerk of Degrees and Recognisances in the Irish Court of Chancery. In 1588 he became Clerk to the Council in Munster. Probably in this latter year he took up his abode at Kilcolman Castle near Doneraile, County Cork, though the grant of it and adjacent lands is dated October 26, 1591. He was certainly settled there in 1589, as we learn from himself in his Colin Clout's Come
Home Again. His occupancy of a part of the forfeited estates of the Earl of Desmond must have stimulated the native hatred towards him; and it was probably already keen. Certainly he did much to further excite it by the rigour with which he pressed his rights or supposed rights. In one case at least it would seem that he pressed them too far. 'Edmond Spenser of Kilcolman, gentleman,' was ordered by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland to retire from 'three ploughlands, parcel of Ballingerath,' which he had 'entered,' disseising Lord Roche, Viscount Fermoy, thereof, and making 'great waste of the wood of the said land,' and converting 'a great deal of corn growing thereupon to his proper use, to the damage of the complainant of two hundred pounds sterling' (some £900 of our money).
But all this time, amidst all these enmities and horrors, Spenser was going on with his great poem, which, as we know from a letter of Gabriel Harvey's, had been begun before he crossed St George's Channel. The ninth canto of the second book is the first passage that pretty certainly points to his being in Ireland; and all the rest of it that was written was written in Ireland. In his sonnet to Lord Grey he describes his great work as
Rude rymes the which a rustick Muse did weave
In savage soil far from Parnasso Mount,
And roughly wrought in an unlearned loome.
In an interesting account given by his friend Lodovick Brisket of a party assembled at his cottage near Dublin in or about the year 1586, Spenser is reported as mentioning that he had already undertaken a work of ethical purpose 'which is in heroical verse under the title of a Faerie Queene,' and that he has 'already well entered into' it. By the year 1589 the first three books were finished, and in that year were shown to Sir Walter Raleigh, whose acquaintance Spenser had probably made some years before (they had certainly met at Smerwick in 1580, if not earlier), and who at this time was in some sort a neighbour, he too having a share (a large one) in the Desmond forfeiture and residing just then at Youghal. Of Raleigh's visit to Kilcolman in 1589 and its result in a journey to England and the English court Spenser gives a charming account in his Colin Clout's Come Home Again, written immediately after his return in 1591, though not published till 1595, and then slightly revised that it might be in its allusions more nearly 'up to date.' He and his poem were warmly welcomed. In 1590 the three books were published, and there arose a demand for other works of his, which was presently met by the publication of Sundry Poems, nine in number, some probably of early composition (as Prosopopoeia or Mother Hubberds Tale, and in the main Bellay's Visions and Petrarch's), others written quite recently (as The Ruins of Time and The Tears of the Muses). But no place was found for him at the court or in London. Lord Leicester and Sir Philip Sidney were no longer on the scene to support him; and so once more to Ireland.
However, immense fame was his, if nothing of official or pecuniary advantage; and he devoted himself anew to his great work. Its course was interrupted by another great love-passion, of which he describes the various stages from despair to hope and to triumph in his Amoretti and his Epithalamion. The lady's Christian name was Elizabeth, as we learn from one of the courtship sonnets; her surname is very plausibly conjectured to have been Boyle. His happiness overflows even into the Faerie Queene. In book vi. canto x. his lady-love is introduced as a fourth Grace, and is described with much rapture. Finishing now the second three books, and perhaps proudly accompanied by his bride, he paid another visit to England. In 1596 was published the second and last instalment of the Faerie Queene, except a fragment consisting of two cantos and two stanzas. For a time he was the guest of Lord Essex; and under his roof, once that of Lord Leicester, he composed what is probably his last complete poem, The Prothalamion, or a Spousal Verse. Even in this song of congratulation and joy his anxiety and distress find expression. He speaks of himself as one
Whom sullen care,
Through discontent of my long fruitless stay
In Prince's Court, and expectation vain
Of idle hopes which still do fly away
Like empty shadows, did afflict my brain
(his emotion overpowering his grammar), and of his 'friendless case.' But again his suit obtained no success; and again he turned his face to the country, not of his choice, but of his necessity.
Meanwhile in that unhappy island a fresh storm had been gathering, and in 1598 burst furiously on the head of the unpopular occupant of Kilecolman. One of the first exploits of the new insurrection (that under Hugh O'Neil) was to fire Spenser's castle; and he and his had to flee for their lives. About the close of 1598 or the beginning of 1599 he reached London homeless, destitute, exhausted. On January the 13th (not the 16th, as is usually said; see John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carlton, January 17, 1599) he died at a tavern in King Street, Westminster, certainly in distressed circumstances, if not, as Ben Jonson stated to Drummond, and we would fain not believe, 'for lack of bread.' At least in his last resting-place he was happy; he was laid by Chaucer—by him who taught him his songs, as he was proud to say—in the south transept of Westminster Abbey. And, if admiration and fame were or are any compensation for his adverse fortunes, such compensation was and is in no slight measure. His wealth of language, his fine sense of melody, his abundance of fancy, his ardent patriotism, his profound sympathy with all things lovely and of good report gave him at once and have retained for him a foremost position in English literature. It is his special and his supreme distinction to be known, and with good reason, as the 'Poet's Poet.'
See editions by Todd (8 vols. 1805) and A. B. Grosart (10 vols. 1882-84); of the Poems, the Aldine edition, with Life by Collier, and the Globe edition, with Memoir by the present writer; Dean Church's Spenser and J. A. Symonds' Sidney in 'English Men of Letters'; Craik's Spenser and his Poetry (1845); Sir J. Pope Hennessy's Raleigh in Ireland (1883); Dean Kitchin's Faerie Queene (books i. and ii.); Arber's Spenser Anthology (1900).—The 'Spenser Society,' founded 1867-68, has printed works of Heywood, Wither, Drayton, &c.