A Biography of Edmund SpenserHales, John W. (John Wesley)
General
A Biography of Edmund Spenser
Hales, John W. (John Wesley)
Poets, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography; Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599
speache turned them into the English tongue;' and 'The
other ten visions next ensuing ar described of one
Ioachim du Bellay, gentleman of France, the whiche·
also, because they serve to our purpose I have
translated them out of Dutch into English.' The fact
of the _Visions_ being subsequently ascribed to Spenser
would not by itself carry much weight. But, as Prof.
Craik pertinently asks, 'if this English version was
not the work of Spenser, where did Ponsonby [the
printer who issued that subsequent publication which
has been mentioned] procure the corrections which are
not mere typographical errata, and the additions and
other variations{3} that are found in his edition?'
In a work called _Tragical Tales_, published in
1587, there is a letter in verse, dated 1569, addressed
to 'Spencer' by George Turberville, then resident in
Russia as secretary to the English ambassador, Sir
Thomas Randolph. Anthony {a\} Wood says this Spencer was
the poet; but it can scarcely have been so.
'Turberville himself,' remarks Prof. Craik, 'is
supposed to have been at this time in his twenty-ninth
or thirtieth year, which is not the age at which men
choose boys of sixteen for their friends. Besides, the
verses seem to imply a friendship of some standing, and
also in the person addressed the habits and social
position of manhood. . . . It has not been commonly
noticed that this epistle from Russia is not
Turberville's only poetical address to his friend
Spencer. Among his "Epitaphs and Sonnets" are two
other pieces of verse addressed to the same person.'
To the year 1569 belongs that mention referred to
above of payment made one 'Edmund Spenser' for bearing
letters from France. As has been already remarked, it
is scarcely probable that this can have been the poet,
then a youth of some seventeen years on the verge of
his undergraduateship.
The one certain event of Spenser's life in the
year 1569 is that he was then entered as a sizar at
Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. He 'proceeded B.A.' in 1573,
and 'commenced M.A.' in 1576. There is some reason for
believing that his college life was troubled in much
the same way as was that of Milton some sixty years
later--that there prevailed some misunderstanding
between him and the scholastic authorities. He
mentions his university with respect in the _Faerie
Queene_, in book iv. canto xi. where, setting forth
what various rivers gathered happily together to
celebrate the marriage of the Thames and the Medway, he
tells how
... the plenteous Ouse came far from land
By many a city and by many a towne,
And many rivers taking under hand
Into his waters, as he passeth downe,
The Cle, the Were, the Grant, the Sture, the Rowne.
Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit,
My mother Cambridge, whom as with a Crowne
He doth adorne, and is adorn'd of it
With many a gentle Muse, and many a learned wit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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