Since the winged god his planet clear Began in me to move, one year is spent ; so that it must have been made toward the end of 1592. It is in this sonnet that he informs us that he was forty years of age when his courtship began. The sixty-second was evidently written in January, 1593, and then, or very soon after, the lady seems to have accepted him, for all that follow are in the tone of one who was in joy and triumph. The sixty-eighth was composed on Easter-day. The sonnets afford no more dates, but from the 'Epithalamion' we learn that on the 11th of June, St. Barnabas' day, the lady at length, after a courtship of more than a year and a half, gave him her hand in the cathedral church of Cork.

This lady's Christian name was Elizabeth, the same as that of the poet's mother (Son. 74). Of her family we know nothing, but they were evidently respectable, and their residence was apparently on the coast (Son. 63, 75; Epithal.' v. 39), but whether to the east or west of Cork we know not. I would conjecture to the west, probably near Kinsale, for we are told that two of Spenser's children were afterwards settled at Bandon, which might seem to intimate that their mother's family lived in that part of the country. This fair Elizabeth was, like every poet's mistress, of course, supremely beautiful. He describes her as having a skin of silver or ivory, locks of gold, and eyes of sapphire: hence we might infer that like beauties of this character in general, she must have been a thorough coquette, and probably somewhat heartless withal. And this conjecture is confirmed by all the earlier sonnets, in which he is evermore complaining of her pride and cruelty. In the eighteenth, for instance, we have a curious picture of her ingenious mode of tormenting him; and I really cannot sometimes help thinking that she, and not Rosalind, was the original of Mirabella' in the sixth book of the Faerie Queen, drawn perhaps at a moment when his patience was completely worn out by her coquetry; but of course he kept his own secret. In the forty-sixth sonnet, written pro

bably in the autumn of 1592, we have an amusing instance of the tyranny she used to exercise over him. It seems from this and the fifty-second that he was in the habit of going and spending some days with her family, and on one occasion when the day he had fixed for his departure came, it turned out boisterous and stormy. The lady, however, insisted on his keeping his word, and poor Spenser had to set out and ride in the wind and rain, probably to Cork. It may be that it was on this journey that he conceived the character of Mirabella. To conclude with the good Elizabeth, I may observe that not long after Spenser's death she married again, and then tried to rob his children of his property. There is extant a petition to the Chancellor in 1603, from her eldest son (probably through his uncle and aunt Travers), stating that she and her husband unjustly withheld the lands to which he was heir, and praying remedy.

Elizabeth appears to have proved a fruitful wife. Sir William Betham, late Ulster King of Arms, gave Mr. F. C. Spenser, from the Records of Ireland as he terms them, an account of four of Spenser's children; and Ben Jonson told Drummondand I see no reason to doubt the statement-that when Spenser's house was burnt in October, 1598, a new-born babe perished in the flames. At the very latest, then, Spenser must have been married in 1593; and as, as we have seen, he was by his own account at that time in his forty-second year, he must have been born in 1551 and not 1553: as has been hitherto assumed. I think I may claim the merit, such as it is, of having set this point finally at rest. Five children in five years, unless there were twins, of which we hear nothing, indicates a fecundity not very common; but it is probable that Spenser gave in to the custom of fosterage so common in Ireland even down to our own days, and that his children were nursed by the wives of his Irish tenants. Possibly the story of the babe may not be true, or that Sir William Betham was mistaken as to the daughter. The names of the children were as follows: Silvanus,

1859.]

Lawrence, Peregrine, and an eldest* daughter named Catherine. There are well-known legal documents attesting the existence of Silvanus and Peregrine, and Sir W. Betham states that the will of Lawrence, who lived at Bandon, was proved in 1654. All he says of Catherine is, that she was married to William Wiseman of Bandon, but he refers to no will or any other docu

ment.

There is something peculiar in the names which Spenser gave his sons. Lawrence, as we have seen, may have been a family name, but Silvanus and Peregrine are rather unusual, and have somewhat of a poetic air. I cannot help thinking that the poetic sire gave these names with a reference to his own condition. Silvanus may have denoted the dweller in the woods and wilds; Peregrine, like Moses' son Gershom, the stranger in a strange land;' while in the family name Lawrence (Laurentius) there may have been an allusion to the Laureateship of the poet. This is, no doubt, all a fancy of mine, yet it may not be far from the truth.

The Sonnets, by the way, furnish us with a fact which seems to have escaped the notice of the critics. In the eightieth sonnet, written in the spring of 1593, it is stated that six books of the Faerie Queen, that is to say, all that are now extant, were written at that time. This however could only have been in the rough, as it is termed, as Henry IV.'s change of religion, which did not take place till about a fortnight after Spenser's marriage, is noticed in the fifth book. It is a curious question, but one which cannot be answered, how the poet's time was occupied for the next three years. It was partly, I think, devoted to the task of drawing up his View of the State of Ireland.

In the year of his marriage, as we learn from documents published by Mr. Hardiman, Spenser had a suit with Lord Roche of Fermoy respecting some plough-lands, and it appears that Spenser having neglected to answer, as required by the Court of Chancery, Lord Roche was

421

decreed possession on the 12th February, 1594 (-5 ?) Hence, Mr. Hardiman, with that absurd bitterness of party feeling which used to be so prevalent in Ireland, but which is now, I am happy to say, so much on the decline, would infer that the gentle poet was a ruthless spoliator of the rights of others. But as it appears from Lord Roche's petition, that Spenser was in these matters a supporter and maintainer of one Joan Ni Callaghan, an opponent of his Lordship, it seems not unlikely that in reality he had out of generosity espoused the cause of a poor Irishwoman whom Lord Roche was trying to rob of her property.

In 1596, Spenser came again over to England and published the Second Part of the Faerie Queen, with a reprint of the First Part. We are uninformed how long he stayed on this occasion, but the number of his children proves that he could not have been a year out of Ireland; for it is not likely that he brought his family over with him. There is extant a letter of the Queen, recommending him for the office of Sheriff of Cork, dated September 30th, 1598: but in the following month Tyrone's rebellion broke out. The native Irish in Munster immediately rose on the English colonists, and murdered or expelled them; Spenser's goods were plundered and his house burnt, and he and his family fled to England.

Spenser survived this misfortune but a short time, for his death took place in the following month of January. Jonson told Drummond that he died in King-street; and Warton, with his usual temerity, added Dublin, in which Mr. Hardiman, who ought to have known better, has followed him. There in fact was no street of that name in Dublin in Spenser's time; the two now so called being in parts of the city that were not built till long after. Warton might have recollected that Camden's words are, ' in Angliam inops reversus, statim expiravit.' As to the exact date, Todd quotes a manuscript notice in the title-page of a copy of the

Faerie Queen, which had belonged to Henry Capell, but whether by Capell himself or some one else it is not easy to say. It is as follows"Qui obiit apud diversorium in platea Regia apud Westmonasterium juxta London, 16° die Januarii, 1598.' This was 1599, according to our present way of reckoning. I know of no other authority for the exact date. He was buried beside Chaucer

in the Abbey, at the expense of the Earl of Essex. The pall was borne by poets, who flung copies of verses into the grave.

From the earliest times there have been very erroneous ideas respecting Spenser's pecuniary eircumstances. Thus Camden says, Sed peculiari poetis fato semper cum paupertate conflictatus;' and Phineas Fletcher

For my

own part, I should feel inclined to rank Spenser among the most fortunate of poets. For let us just run over his course. His family was in such humble circumstances that he could only go as a sizar to Cambridge; yet he was able apparently to maintain himself there respectably till he had taken his master's degree. Not long after we find him in the service and favour of the great Earl of Leicester; then secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, and obtaining what were probably lucrative situations; and finally, a handsome landed estate. A pension from the Queen was the result of the appearance of a part of his great poem.

What

doubt were a period of distress; but he had his pension, which, though not so large as Mr. Collier estimates it, might in some sort keep the wolf from the door, and he may have been, and probably was, aided by Essex and other friends. His last days no doubt were gloomy, but they were short, and had he had more strength of mind he might have come off victorious in the struggle with Fortune. How different his fate from that of the noble Luis de Camoens,* and so many others!

Here I must end for the present. On a future occasion, as I have said. I propose to offer to the readers of Fraser's Magazine some remarks on the poetry of Spenser, which may have the charm of novelty, and perhaps be founded in truth.

1859.]

I

HAVE already observed that honour, founded in a sense of personal worth, was the ruling principle of the old Spaniard. In this respect, saving duty to the king, which now it is also a point of honour to profess, the cavalier of the seventeenth century resembles his ancestors more nearly, perhaps, than in any other; although the manner has changed with the time. Self-respect, on the one side high and generous, on the other arrogant and boastful, but always punctilious, choleric, and touchy in the extreme, is indeed his true religion; what he calls such, compared with this, sinks into an affair of habit and illusion. Such parts of the system as are common to all the nations of modern Europe need not occupy us here. What is singular in its Spanish fashion may be described as, on the one hand, the relentless rigour with which it acts on certain relations, especially the domestic; and, on the other, the allowance of various practices as compatible with, or at least not altogether irreconcilable to it.

Of the severity of the household law of honour, enough has already been said. I will only add, with regard to its effect on the stage, that it was far from being felt by the spectators of the time as we now feel it. The rights and obligations of the cavalier being taken for granted by all, to the fullest extent, the result of acting on them might be pitied as unfortunate, but was nevertheless assented to as necessary. There was nothing in the tragedies which it caused that would offend, however they might touch, the audience.

Nor would its harshest effects produce in that quarter the same impression as on us. The national character is not merciful.* Prone to be cruel himself, the Spaniard is little moved by the sight of cruelty in others; nay, in all that partakes of a retributive nature -whether in self-redress or by authority-his leaning is towards the rigorous side. This may be seen in his practical reading of the term Justice, as exercised by law. To him it means, not equity, nor even rightful punishment,in the first place, but primarily, if not solely, the severity of penal action, irrespective of merits; something, in fact, beyond Virgil's type of justice without mercy in the Gnossian Rhadamanthus. I have already observed that cruelty in the sovereign is viewed as an attribute not only natural and common, but on the whole more worthy and becoming than its opposite; a persuasion full of meaning, both in regard to the temper of the people and their institutions, and to the manners which are their compound result. Nor, further, is cruelty any stain on the bravery of a soldier: indeed, wherever it appears, you find it regarded more as a sign of vigour and heat of temper, than as a quality in any way ungentlemanly, or even odious, except to those who may be its immediate victims. It was the nobles whom he crushed, that cried out on the severities of King Pedro, to which he owes his title of 'the Cruel.' The people, as I have observed, admired his ferocity and rigour, as right kingly qualities; and by them he is still remembered as the 'Valient Justiciar.'†

This hardness of the national

heart prevails not in regard to cases of domestic honour only. It affects every other in which human life is concerned. In common affairs of honour, or chance encounters between man and man, homicide appears to count for nothing, except to the relations of the slain person; and these seem to feel the affront of the proceeding more than anything else. In comedy, accidents of this class are in constant requisition, either as points of departure for the story, or as the readiest means of a turn in its progress. There is, one may say, hardly a single play of cloak and sword,' without a gallant in trouble for having just killed his man, or in search of one whom he means to kill; to say nothing of the frequent fatalities that occur in the course of

these pieces. All pass without remorse on the part of the survivor, or disturbance of spirits in the spectators. The sympathy of good society is decidedly with the manslayer; whose first resource, if he cannot at once take sanctuary, is to rush into the nearest gentleman's house. Here, if the owner is a man of honour, he will be sheltered until he can depart safely, no questions, in the meanwhile, being asked. Nor is it necessary to this sympathy that he should have shed blood with sufficient reason, in equal duel, or in self-defence: it is well thus; but hardly less so to have taken life for the merest trifle of punctilio, or even without such provocation, in a sudden fit of rage. In either case he has only shown the spirit (brios) becoming a man of quality.

*

This is not merely the taste of the ruder sex. The gentlest lady

will receive a cavalier on whose hand the life-blood of another is still warm, with as little emotion as if he had come from a game at tennis. She admires the courage and address that have brought him off safely ;* and will expose herself to risks of all kinds in keeping out of harm's way a mere stranger, whose only claim to her compassion is that he has just committed an act of manslaughter.

With the connexions of the sufferer, it is a point of honour, quite as much as of feeling, to pursue the slayer to the death; and to them the pursuit of homicides of a certain class seems to have been in a great measure left by the police of the time. Alguazils and other peace-officers, if they fall upon a cavalier with the red hand,' will of course hale him to prison: but even then the prosecution of the offence is mainly the business of the victim's family; as it is theirs to raise the hue and cry if the offender succeeds in escaping. The rule of honour here is life for life. If it can be fulfilled by putting the law in motion, it is well. But as that is often a precarious course,-Spanish justice being neither blind nor deaf to a culprit who is rich and wellconnected-the better way, especially in the opinion of the choicest gallants, is to take the matter into your own hands.‡ If the conditions of the case allow it, challenge, and do your best to kill the man in open duel; but where this will not suit or serve, there is nothing repugnant to honour in your taking

ROJAS, No ay amigo para amigo.