Collins* Scfjool atitr College Classics. .GUIDE TO CHAUCER AND SPENSER. BY F. G. F L E A Y, AUTHOR OF 'THE SHAKESPEARE MANUAL.' LONDON AND GLASGOW: WILLIAM COLLINS, SONS, AND CO. 1877. [All rights reserved.] 333 THE ^ [UNIVERSITY, OF' CONTENTS. f~ O PART I, GUIDE TO CHAUCER. PAGE INTRODUCTION, . . . . , . . 9 CHAPTER I. LIFE OF CHAUCER, II CHAPTER II. NOTES ON THE SOURCES OF CHAUCER'S WORKS, l6 CHAPTER III. CHAUCER'S LANGUAGE, 21 CHAPTER IV. CHAUCER'S WORKS AND THEIR CHRONOLOGY, ... 29 CHAPTER V. CHAUCER AND SKOGAN, ....... 43 CHAPTER VI. /3N THE ORDER IN WHICH THE ' CANTERBURY TALES ' WERE WRITTEN, 53 6 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. PAGB ON THE ORDER IN WHICH CHAUCER'S 'CANTERBURY TALES* SHOULD BE ARRANGED, ...... 66 EDITIONS OF CHAUCER'S WORKS, * . . 72 PART II. GUIDE TO SPENSER. INTRODUCTION, ...... 75 CHAPTER I. LIFE OF SPENSER, ..... j 77 CHAPTER II. ON THE CHRONOLOGY, ETC., OF SPENSER'S WORKS, . 82 CHAPTER III. ON POETS CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH SPENSER AND SHAKE- SPEARE, IOO SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES, . . . . . . . 117 LIST OF EDITIONS OF SPENSER'S WORKS, , , I2O AFTER-WORDS ON THE STUDY OF THE OLDER ENGLISH POETS AND DRAMATISTS, 121 iart I. GUIDE TO CHAUCER. GUIDE TO CHAUCER. INTRODUCTION. THE reasons for the publication of this Guide are the fol- lowing : 1. There is no accessible trustworthy work on the subject at a moderate price. 2. The information necessary for a student of Chaucer is scattered through a number of works, some expensive, some of small intrinsic value, some difficult to obtain. 3. The valuable additions to our critical knowledge of Chaucer, made of late years by Messrs Bradshaw, Skeat, Morris, Furnival, Lowell, Ten Brink, and others, have been so overlaid with premature conclusions and insufficiently founded hypotheses, as to rhyme-tests, hopeless early love, and other matters, that it is needful to recall students to a j uster appreciation of the value of the old traditions, and to vindicate the Chaucerian authorship of some of the rejected writings. 4. The received hypotheses as to the chronology of the poems seem capable of improvement in various ways. Of course, in so small a work, it cannot be expected that all these ends have been fully attained. I hope, however, that some advance has been made toward their attainment ; and that a scheme has been laid down for the order of study of these works which is practicable and desirable. It has been in no way my intention to infringe on the duties of the editor or commentator on Chaucer, but to give such infor- mation as can properly be given, apart from the considera- tion of any special poem or particular passages of poems ; so that by the help of a glossary (which can be found in most editions), a sound treatise on English grammar, such as Dr Morris's Historical Accidence, and a good text, such as that 10 INTRODUCTION. in Wright's Canterbury Tales, or Morris's Complete Works of our author, no further aid should be needful for any stu- dent who desires a sound, but not a specially critical acquaint- ance with our earliest and our all but greatest poet. Of the need of such an acquaintance for every one who wishes for a knowledge of English literature, it is useless to say a word ; of the practicability of acquiring it at the age of thirteen or thereabouts, I have had many proofs among my own pupils, from the time when I first introduced English literature as a specific subject of education in our grammar schools, now twenty years ago. The methods I was then almost, if not quite, alone in using, are now in general practice, and I am desirous of continuing to aid their diffusion by the publica- tion of this manual. It is the result (however imperfect) of continued and long study, and if it gives anything like the same advantage to the reader that its production has to the author, it will more than answer its design. u OF THE :VERSITT ; CHAPTER I. LIFE OF CHAUCER.x|\Q GEOFFREY CHAUCER, son of Tpfen Chaucer, vintner, of Thames Street, Londony^n^^^nes his wife, was born, according to Speght, in/1328./ There is no sufficient reason for rejecting this statQQiejitfyet it has been rejected on the ground of a deposition made by Chaucer in 1386, when cited as a witness in a cause of chivalry between Lord Scrope and Sir Richard Grosvenor. He there stated that he was i of xl years and upwards, armed for xxvii years.' But Sir Harris Nicolas has shown that in the ages of other deponents remarkable mistakes have been made, ' some of them being stated to have been ten, and others even twenty years younger than they really were.' Moreover, Gower speaks of - him in 1392 as 'now in his days old.' Occleve calls him * father reverent.' Chaucer says himself that he is ' old and unlusty.' And Leland tells us he * lived to the period of grey hairs, and at length found old age his greatest disease.' The evidence of his portraits in the Harleian MSS. and Royal MSS., confirms this testimony. The wish has, I fear, been father to the thought in this matter. The desire to re- ject as spurious several early poems on insufficient and wrongly interpreted metrical data, has led to a setting aside of -strong external and internal evidence. \ 1357-9. We have, however, no details of Chaucer's life beyond this traditional date of his birth, till we find his name in the Household Book of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, the wife of Lionel, son of Edward III. In what capacity Chaucer formed part of her household is absolutely unknown. But in the autumn of 1359 he was fighting in France in Edward Ill's army, and was taken prisoner. He was ran- somed in 1360 (on ist March Edward III ordered ^i 6 to be paid toward his ransom), and returned to England on the conclusion of the peace of Chartres in that year. The date of his marriage has been doubted, as well as that of his birth, probably to strengthen the hypothesis that Chaitcer's Dream is not authentic. What other poet could have written this thoroughly Chaucerian production does not appear. To 12 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. support this remarkable hypothesis, we are desired to assume that Chaucer married his cousin and namesake. There can be no doubt, however, in any unprejudiced mind that Chaucer's wife was Philippa Roet, daughter of Sir Payne Roet of Hainault, Guienne King of Arms, who came to England in Queen Philippa's retinue in 1328. In 1366 the queen granted Philippa Chaucer a pension of ten marks, which was confirmed by Edward 1 1 1 on the queen's death in 1 369. At that date she passed to the household of Constance, the second wife of John of Gaunt. At this period Philippa's sister, Katherine, widow of Sir Hugh Swynford of Lincoln- shire, was governess to the duke's children- by his first duchess. She became the duke's mistress, and ultimately his wife. Meanwhile Chaucer was appointed in 1367 one of the valets of the king's chamber, and in the same year was granted an annual salary for life of twenty marks till he should be otherwise provided for. In this grant he is called 'dilectus Valettus noster,' which title, says Selden, ' was conferred on young heirs designed to be knighted, or young gentlemen of great descent or quality.' In 1370 (spring) Chaucer was abroad on the king's service, but returned at Michaelmas. On 3oth August 1372, the Duke of Lancaster gave Philippa Chaucer a pension of 10 a year; which is stated by Sir Harris Nicolas to have been commuted in June 1374, for a life annuity to her and her husband. On I2th November in the same year, he, as scutifer regis, was joined in commission with two citizens of Genoa, to treat with the duke, citizens, and merchants of that state, as to choosing some port in England where the Genoese might form a commercial estab- lishment. On ist December he got 66, 133. 4d. advanced on account of his expenses, and left England for Florence and Genoa, on the king's business. He returned before 22d November 1373, having possibly met Petrarch at Padua, in the interim (see the Clerks Tale}. On 23d April 1374 (St George's Day), a writ was issued at Windsor, granting a pitcher of wine daily for life to ( dilecto armigero nostro Galfrido Chaucer.' On 8th June he was appointed comptroller of the customs and subsidy of wools, skins, and tanned hides in the port of London. He was to write the rolls of his office with his own hand, to be con- stantly present, and to perform the duties of his office per- sonally, not by deputy. On the I3th June the pension granted to Philippa Chaucer in 1372 was commuted for one to Chaucer for the good service rendered by him and his wife GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 13 to the Duke of Lancaster, his consort, and his mother the queen. On loth May 1374, he took a lease of a house above the gate of Algate, from Adam de Bury, mayor, the alder- men, and commonalty of the city. In 1375, on 8th November, he obtained a grant of the custody of lands and person of Edmond Staplegate, of Bil- synton, Kent, who three years after paid Chaucer ^104 for his wardship and marriage. On 28th December he had also a grant of the custody of five solidates of rent and marriage of an infant heir, aged one year, William de Solys, of Solys, in Kent. On 23d December 1376, he was paid ten marks for secret service in the retinue (comitiva) of Sir John Burley; and on I2th February 1377, letters of protection were granted him till Michaelmas to go abroad with Sir Thomas Percy on a secret mission to Flanders. He was back by nth April ; and on 2oth April he again had letters of protection granted him till ist August, while in the king's service abroad. On 3oth April he was paid 26 j 123. 4d. for wages for a secret mission, versus paries Francie namely, to negotiate a peace with the French king to Moustrell et Parys. We find also in this year that his daily pitcher of wine, granted in 1374, was commuted for a money payment of about 7d. a day, a large sum at that time. On 2ist June Edward III died. On 1 6th January 1378, Chaucer went to France to nego- tiate a marriage with Mary, the French king's daughter (see Parlament of Foules). We learn this from Froissart's statement, that he accompanied Sir Guichard d'Angle and Sir Richard Sturry on this embassy, together with the entry of payment to him on 6th March 1381, 'per manus proprios per assignationem sibi factam isto die,' as well for his journey in 1377, 'quam tempore domini regis nunc causa locutionis habite de maritagio inter ipsum dominum regem nunc et filiam ejusdem adversarii sui Francie/ Frois- sart's assigning a wrong date (February 1377) does not invalidate his evidence as to the fact. In the year after the accession of Richard II, Chaucer's pension of 20 marks was confirmed (March 23), and 20 marks additional were granted him in lieu of his daily pitcher of wine. On the loth May he was sent with Sir Edward Berkley to Lombardy, on a mission to Bernardo Visconti, Lord of Milan (see Monk's Tale\ and to Sir John Hawkwood, concerning Richard IPs expedition of war. On 2ist May, having to leave two representatives to appear for him in the court, he selected Richard Forester and John Gower, the poet, who was nearly of the same age as himself, and probably his 14 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. friend through the greater part of his career. By 3d Feb- ruary 1379 he had returned to England. On ist May 1380, Cecilia Champagne releases Chaucer ( de raptu meo. 7 The meaning of these words is very doubt- ful. It is, however, certain that as Cecilia Champagne executed the release herself she could not have been a minor. Hence this was not a case of abduction of a ward. Neither was it a criminal charge, for there is no trace in the Calendar of Patent Rolls of a pardon from the Crown, and if Chaucer had been acquitted by a jury, this release would not have been needed ; nor indeed in such a charge would she have stated her parentage as she does in her deed of release. It was a civil suit, involving no felony. On iQth June, in the same year, Geoffrey Chaucer, son of John Chaucer, vintner, released to Henry Herbury all his right to his fathers former house in Thames Street. Nothing more is known of him, except that he received his pensions by assignment or personally, and that his wife received sundry gilt cups from the Duke of Lancaster, until 8th May 1382, when he was appointed comptroller of the petty customs in the port of London, in addition to his former office. He was allowed to perform his duties by deputy. Accordingly on I3th November 1384, he obtained a month's leave of absence from his comptrollership of customs and subsidies on account of his private affairs. A temporary deputy was then sworn in to execute his duties, and on I7th February 1385 a permanent deputy was nominated. In 1386 we find him taking part in politics; he sat in Parliament at Westminster from ist October to ist Novem- ber as one of the knights of the shire for Kent. He no doubt supported the then minister, his patron the Duke of Lancaster. But he was ousted from office by the Duke of Gloster, and probably Chaucer had to share in his patron's downfall. In November a commission was issued to inquire into alleged abuses in the subsidies and customs : on 4th December, Adam Yerdely was appointed comptroller in place of Geoffrey Chaucer dismissed. During Chaucer's sitting in the House, on 1 5th October he gave his evidence as a witness for Lord Scrope already referred to, stating that he saw Sir Richard armed in France before the town of Retters, and during the whole expedition until the said Geoffrey was taken. In June 1387 we find the last payment of Philippa Chaucer's pension. She probably died before December in that year. On i st May 1 388, his pensions, cancelled at his request, were assigned to John Scalby, to whom he had likely sold them. GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 15 On 1 2th July 1389, he was appointed Clerk of the King's Works at Westminster, the Tower, the royal manors of Kennington, Eltham, Clarendon, Sheen, By-fleet, Childern, Langley, and Feckenham ; the lodges at the New Forest, and the royal parks, and at the mews for the king's falcons at Charing Cross. He was allowed two shillings a day, and to execute his office by deputy. The appointment to this im- portant post was no doubt a result of the coming into power of new ministers (one of them the son of the Duke of Lan- caster), in the place of Thomas of Woodstock, Walsingham, etc., in May 1389. Chaucer at once commenced his duties, and in July 1390 was commissioned to procure workmen and materials to repair St George's Chapel at Windsor. On 22d January 1391, Chaucer appointed, and Richard II confirmed the appointment of John Elmhurst as deputy for doing repairs to the Palace of Westminster, and the Tower of London. But by 1 6th September in the same year, we find that Chaucer had ceased to fill this post, and that John Gedney was in possession of it. We lose sight of Chaucer from that date till 28th February 1394, when the king granted him 20 a year for life. But in spite of this we find him continually borrow- ing loans on the security of his new pension, some of them for very small sums, until on 4th May 1398 he got of the king letters to protect him against arrest for two years. On 1 5th October in the same year, he had another grant of wine, one tun yearly from ist December 1397, worth about 4. On 3d October 1398, the new king, Henry IV, son of Chau- cer's former patron now deceased, granted him 40 marks a year in addition to the 20 he held from Richard II. On Christmas Eve 1399, he entered on the lease of a house in Westminster for a term of fifty-three years at 2, 135. 4d. per annum. The tenement was situated in the garden of the Chapel of the Blessed Mary. It was stipulated that if the tenant died during the term of the lease the premises should revert to the custos of the chapel. On the 24th October 1400, they reverted; and Chaucer, aged seventy-two, was buried in Westminster Abbey. He left a son Thomas : his other son Lewis probably died young. The character of our greatest narrative poet is best studied in his works : it needs no comment here. It is enough to say that as no other man has told a story in English verse with equal terseness or humour, the name of Chaucer still holds a place alone in the list of English poets that remain unforgotten and unforgetable. CHAPTER II. NOTES ON THE SOURCES OF CHAUCER'S WORKS. Romaunt of the Rose. Translated from the Roman de la Rose, written by Guil- laume de Lorris (lines 1-4070), and Jean de Meun (the other 1 8,000 lines). Chaucer's version (7699 lines) is confined to lines 1-13,105 of the original, and passes over 5544 of these. Whether we have the whole of Chaucer's work is doubtful. I Death of Blanche (Book of the Duchess]. Partly from the Dit de la Fortune Amoreuse of Machault. Second Nun 1 s Tale (Cecille). Translated from the Legenda Aurea (Treatises on Church Festivals], by Jacobus a Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa in the thirteenth century. Chaucer prefixed the opening address to the Virgin. For the passages in Dante and Boccaccio imitated by Chaucer in this and other works of his second period (1374-1382), see Professor Ten Brink's Studies oj Chaucer. Prioress* Tale (Little Clergeoun and Jews). Compare the ballad of the Jew's Daughter in the Percy Reliques. Man of Law's Tale (Constance). The incidents are traced by Wright to several romances : Emart) Chevalier au Cigne, King Offa, Roman de la Vio- lette, Le Bone Florence de Rome, Vincent de Beauvais, and Gesta Romanorum. It was not taken from Gower's Confessic Amantis, as this was not written till 1392. Clertfs Tale (Grisildis). Boccaccio, Day x, Novel 10. GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 17 Assembly of Fowls (Parliament of Birds). Partly founded on a fabliau that occurs in three versions : Huttine et Eglantine, Le Jugement d* Amour ^ and Florence et Blanche/far* Complaint of Mars. The poem applies in its surface-meaning to the conjunc- tions of the planets Mars and Venus; but in its under application it represents the intrigue between the Lord Huntingdon and the Duchess of York, who was aunt of his wife, Elizabeth. Hence the allusion in it to the brooch of Thebes, which inspired its possessor with incestuous or ill- omened passion. Lydgate distinguishes this poem as made ' Of the broche which that Vulcanus At Thebes wrought' Of Queen Annelyda and False Arcite. Statius and Corinna are quoted by Chaucer as his autho- rities. No poems of Corinna's are extant, and the only part from Statius is the early part relating to Theseus. Opens very like the Knight's Tale. Troylus and Cryseyde. Chaucer refers to Homer, Dares Phrygius, Dictys Cre- tensis, and Lollius as his authorities. The earliest known source of the story is the prose chronicle of Guido de Colonna in the latter part of the thirteenth century. Chaucer was not ignorant of Guido. He mentions him in the House of Fame. So he does Lollius, and assigns him a place on the same pillar as Homer. Lydgate says that Chaucer translated this poem from the Trophe of Lollius. The poem is really taken from the Filostrato of Boccaccio, with great variations, j W. Rosetti has shown that Trophe and Filostrato mean the same thing. Dedicated in F envoy to moral Gower and philosophical Strode. Doctor's Tale (Vlrginius). Other versions (besides Livy's) will be found in the Roman E LJBf de la Rose and Gower's Confessio ji f 1 8 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. Legend of Good Women. Also called the Saints' Legend of Cupid^ contains sketches of ten out of twenty ladies who are proposed as subjects at the beginning of the poem. These ten are taken almost entirely from Ovid's Heroides and Metamorphoses. In the following list the names in the first column are those that Chaucer actually wrote ; those in the second are probably the remaining ten that he intended to write. The prefixed numeral shows their position in Ovid's Heroides; P. after a name indicates that it is mentioned in the prologue to the Man of Law's Talej L. that it is enumerated in the prologue to the Legend. Cleopatra, L. Thisbe, L. 7. Dido, P.L. 6. Hypsipyle, P.L. 12. Medea, P.L. Lucretia, L. 10. Ariadne, P.L. Philomene. 2. Phyllis, P.L. 14. Hypermnestra, P.L. \ I. Penelope, P.L. 13. Laodamia, P.L. 17. Helen, P.L. 19. Hero, P.L. 3. Briseis, P. 8. Hermione, P. 9. Deianeira, P. Polyxena, L. S. CEnone. 13. Alcestis, P. Phaedra, Canace, Sappho, and Cydippe are the other names mentioned by Ovid, which cannot be included in this list. There is also included in this poem an (incomplete) enu- meration of Chaucer's previous work, which it is desirable to put in tabular form for reference : Rornaunt of Rose. House of Fame. Death of Blanche the Duchess. Troylus and Cryseide. Parlement of Fowls. Loves of Palamon and Arcite (Knight's Tale). Translation of Boethius. Life of Saint Cecilia (Second Nun's Tale). Origenes on the Magdalene. Ballads. Roundels. Virelaies. Many a Lay, and Many a Thing. The avowed intention of the Legend is to atone scandal thrown on women in the Rotnaunt of the Rose and Troylus and Cryseyde. GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 19 Squires Tale (Cambynskan). Incomplete. A fuller version seems to have existed in Henry VI Ps time; for Hawes, in his Temple of Glass, says: * And uppermore men depeinten might see How with her ringe goodly Canace Of every fowl the leden and the song Could understand as she them walkt among, And how her brother so often holpen was In his mischefe by the steed of brass* Nurts Priests Tale (Chanticlere). From the Roman de Renart, chap, v, ' Si comme Renart Prist Chantecler le Coc.' Compare Fable 5 1 in the collection translated by Marie from King Alfred. Manciples Tale (Phoebus and White Crow). From Ovid's Metamorphoses 3 book ii. Wife of Baths Tale (Knight and Foul Wife). Compare the story of Florent in Gower and the marriage of Sir Gawaine in the Percy Reliques. Merchants Tale (January and May). From a Latin fable by Adolphus (1315), probably through some French fabliau. *- Shipmarfs Tale (Dan Johan and Merchant). Boccaccio's Decameron, Day viii, Novel r. Reeve's Tale (Miller of Trumpington). From a fabliau pointed out by Mr Wright. Compare Boc- caccio's Decameron, Day ix, Novel 6; and 'De Gombert et des Deux Clercs' in Barbazan. Friar's Tale (Sompnour and Devil). Compare De Advocato et Diabolo (Percy Society's edition), and a similar story in Wright's Archceologia. Pardoner's Tale (Three Rioters). Cento Novelle Antiche, Novel 82. 20 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. Treatise on the Astrolabe. Written for the use of Chaucer's son, Lewis, aged eleven. Tale of Meliboeus. Translated from Le Livre de Melibee et de Dame Prudence in French prose. MonKs Tale (Harm of Them in High Degree). Partly from Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium^ but with these exceptions : Lucifer is from Isaiah, xlv, 1 2- 15; Samson from Judges, xiv-xvi; Hercules from Boethius, lib. iv, met. vii; Nabuchodonosor from Daniel j Zenobia from Boccaccio, De Claris Mulieribus (Chaucer quotes Pet- rarch as his authority) ; Nero from Roman de la Rose and Boethius, lib. ii, met. vi (Chaucer quotes Suetonius as his authority) ; Holofernes from Judith; Antiochus from 2 Mac- cabees, ch. ix; Alexander the Great from the same source; Julius Caesar from Lucan, Suetonius, and Valerius Flaccus ; Croesus from Roman de la Rose and Boethius, b. ii, pro. 2 (in his own translation). Pedro, and other recent characters also, are not in Boccaccio. Chaucer s A. B.C. (La Pri'ere de Nostre Dame). Translated from De Guilleville. Complaint of Venus. Translated ' word for word ' from Graunson. LIST OF WORKS GENERALLY REJECTED AS SPURIOUS, BUT FORMERLY ATTRIBUTED TO CHAUCER. Court of Love (Query by Skogan). Reward of Love. Lamentation of Mary Magdalene. Complaint of Black Knight (Lydgate). Flower and Leaf (by a Lady). Cuckow and Nightingale. Godly Ballad. Praise of Women. Chaucer 1 s Prophecy. * Ledulte vault] etc. Rondel. Virelai. CHAPTER III. CHAUCER'S LANGUAGE. PRONUNCIATION. MR ELLIS'S investigations on this subject are so complete and convincing that it will only be necessary here to give the results he has attained : SHORT VOWELS. 1 (y) was sounded like / in fmny. 2 ,, ,, e in met. & ,, ,, a in cask. 8 ,, o in not (nearly). H ,, ,, u in pull ; rarely like I, LONG VOWELS AND DIPHTHONGS. i was sounded like i in stell (drawled long). ea\ a \ a in father. au (aw) ,, ,, ow in cow (nearly). 00 \ n o in ore. \ ow in J " / oo in b00t. oi (ov) } a i(ay)\ " " *wwig. ui in sw/t (nearly). u(ew) - - ..}/ in s^'t (nearly). " I eu in. JSuroipa. (Italian), 22 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. Final e is elided before vowels, silent Ks, his, he, her, etc. ; not pronounced in hir9 20 21 22 "*6 558+21 Boccaccio, Dante Livy Ovid '286 126 218 H " H(B(orT) in prolog ) 1383 1383 ' J383:6 4i lllfl 23 - 442 24 212 25 3 * 206 26 342 27 167 28 1 68 2Q 162 H 1387 T-jC- 3 1 860 H 1388 J 37 1388 672 H i 388-0 ^ IQ7/4-86 33 3. 56 888 H 34 35 104 54. Ovid 258 626 H H , 06 866 408 H ' 3 9 07 32 IO2 H ' 38 28 426 H ' 76 666 H ' 40 66 H ' 4 1 40 5 8 H ' 42 3 6 364 H ' 586 H ' 44 176 506 H ' A C 458 H ' -& 47 21 (C) Prose R I39i i39i 48 ' Prose 49 s " '' So 102 {Boccaccio, ? Petrarch, ) Bible, Boethius, > 776 s Si S 2 De Guilleville 184 Prose S J 394 1360-66 Late 53 21 B (or T) 54 H Graunson Boethius - 80 80 28 3T+E 3T+E B + E 1395-7 1392 57 28 B + E 58 r8 B+E ! T 386-7 32 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. I can confirm this conclusion from my own experience as a rhymer. I have written (though fortunately for myself, not published) as much as Chaucer. Now, in my first period up to leaving the university, I used to rhyme -in and -ing in imitation of my then favourite models, especially of Mrs Browning. After this time this assonance became disagree- able to me, and I deliberately made a holocaust of some 10,000 lines of verse, which I then was foolish enough to consider as otherwise valuable. I have never, I believe, rhymed -in and -ing since. Now, comparing small things with great, this is just what I think Chaucer did. Chaucer wrote youthful poems. Among them he began the translation of the Romance of the Rose, with -y -ye rhymes. He suddenly took a dislike to these imperfect assonances, stopped short in his translation, destroyed a lot of his ballads, roundels, and such small fry, and adopted a more perfect system, leaving us of his young work only the Chaucer's Dream and the unfinished translation, with the possible addition of a ballad. Of course if other arguments than the metrical can be convincingly brought against these three poems, I am willing to give them up. I only decline to do so on this sole argument. During this first -y -ye period, and until 1370, in which he / was under French influence, exclusively of Italian, he wrote (his important poems only in four-measure couplets. He *"rfext introduced his seven-lined stanza, known as rhyme- royal, or Chaucer's stanza ; but no other metre than these two did he (in my opinion) use, until he wrote the Legend of Good Women, being all through his second period (1374-1382) 'under Italian influence. A great change then occurred ; he utterly abandoned his four-measure couplets for five-measure, usually called ( heroics,' and exchanged his rhyme-royal for an eight-line stanza, which is what Spenser's stanza would be without the last line. I have called this metre 'short Spenserian/ He retains, however, rhyme-royal for ballads (or terns, if we adopt Mr FurnivaPs nomenclature), where three or more stanzas end with the same rhymes. Thus far all critics will agree with me as far as the great poems are concerned ; they may differ from me as to some short and unimportant ones. There are also, I should notice, two poems written partly in an exceptional metre, which I have called ' long Chaucerian ' namely, the Complaint of Mars and the Complaint of Annelyda. Having thus separated our poems into groups, the next point is to find, if possible, some dates certainly fixed, round GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 33 which to group the rest. We find such in Chaucer's Dream, which, if written by him, must be placed in 1359, at the marriage of John of Gaunt ; in the Death of the Duchess Blanche, which must be put in 1369; in the Assembly of Birds, which, I think, attaches to the putting off the marriage of Richard II with Mary, the daughter of the French king, in 1378; in the general prologue to the Canterbury Tales, and the revised Knight's Tale, which occupy 1387-8; in i the L Envoy to Skogan, which I shall presently try to fix in 1382; and in some small poems written in the last few j years of his life. We also know the House of Fame must be dated between 1374 and 1384, and that the Nun's Tale (St Cecilie) is settled in 1373-4. The rest we must make out as we best may. My arrangement is given in the table, p. 30. The whole of the last batch, 1397-9, are ballads ;* ! such of the dates in the table as have not been noticed as certain, must be looked on at present merely as approxima- tions. We shall, however, see, I hope, that they cannot be far wrong. On the earliest poems I have little to say here. If the Dream of the Duchess be Chaucer's, as I feel sure the Romance of the Rose is, there is a progressive change in metre visible in these early poems, as we might expect ; not only is there the abandonment of the -y -ye rhymes, but there is a gradual introduction from the very first of a marked peculiarity of Chaucer's the ending the first line of a couplet with a full stop. This is found in the Romance, and increases till it attains its maximum in the House of Fame. This latter poem may have been finished later, being written in Chaucer's recognised fragmentary fashion ; but I feel sure it was begun, if not completed, in 1374. His complaints of the drudgery of office work are more suited to an early than a late experience of it : in 1384 (Professor Ten Brink's date), the use of ten years must have become a second nature ; and surely the lines, * In ballads it is necessary that in three consecutive verses at least, the rhymes should be formed on the same sounds. Thus : -all, -end, -ance, are the three rhyme-sounds in the Godly Ballad of Chaiicer. It is a mistake to speak of the Mother of God, or L' Envoy to Skogan, as in any sense being composed in * terns.' It would be as fitting to say that the Troylus and Cryseyde was in terns, if the number of its stanzas happened to be divisible by three. The word ' tern ' is Mr Furnival's nomenclature for what Chaucer calls 'ballades.' C 34 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. ' To study and read alvvay, I purpose to do day by day ' House of Fame, are earlier than : * And thus to read I will not spare' Assembly of Fowls, where the habit seems to have been already acquired. I think, also, the gradual extension of Italian influence is worth notice in these early poems, as an aid in determining the chronology. In the House of Fame and the St Cectlie, we can trace the influence of Dante (see Professor Ten Brink's Studies); but in the Troylus and Cryseyde, in addi- tion to Dante, we find Boccaccio's Filostrato largely drawn on ; and in the Assembly of Fowls, and the Annelyda and Arcite, the use of the Teseide of the same author connects this group with the Palamonand Arcite, the earliest tale of the second period. Other works of his are used in the Legend of Good Women, and the Monk's Tale. That the poems placed in the latter half of 1374, and which very likely may include part of 1375, are closely allied, no one who reads them together can doubt. The connection between the poems of the 1378 group has been well shown by Mr Furnival, though his theory of Chaucer's eight years' heartache has led him to assign a different date to them. The 1382 group I shall treat at length presently. It is very noticeable that a great change in manner of work, specially marked by the introduction of humour as a predominant characteristic of the subject-matter, is immedi- ately subsequent to the death of Chaucer's wife. We should be much better able to form clear ideas of the state of his mind at this period if we could get at some certainty as to his age. Professor Henry Morley, one of the soundest of present Chaucer critics, still adheres to the old date of 1328 for his birth-year. Nor do I feel it practicable to give it up, though I should for many reasons be glad to do so ; it has little evidence of a direct nature in its favour ; but the later date of 1340-5 has none whatever that will bear analysis. The advocates of 1340 seem to have proceeded in this way: In spite of its mere generality of form, and its association with many other date-statements, whose falsity has been fully shown by Sir Harris Nicolas, the statement of Chaucer's being forty years and upwards in 1386 is interpreted liter- ally by way of foundation ; then it is assumed that Chaucer's office in 1357-9 must have been a juvenile one; this is sur- mounted by the theory that Chaucer did not marry Philippa GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 35 Roet, of whose existence we are sure, but some hypothetical cousin or namesake ; and on the summit of this three-storied edifice is erected an imaginary statue of Chaucer as Cupid's slave in chains, suffering from an 'ache' of eight years' duration. It is an artistic and beautiful edifice, but, I fear, only a castle in the air In the second period I am happy to say that for several of the smaller poems I have had little to do but adopt Mr Furnival's conclusions, which appear to me sound and well worked out. The U Envoy a Bukton, however, is fixed by the place I assign to the Wife of Math's Tale; and the A.B.C., in metre, in thinness and poverty of manner, is so like this L Envoy, and still more like the Montfs Tale, that I have no hesitation in dating it 1393-4. I ought, also, to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr Furnival for the names he has given to some of the small poems, which I have adopted. I do not, however, agree with the dates which he assigns to the Complaint of Venus and Fortune. The expression, * Elde that in my spirit dulleth,' seems to me to fix the former of these in the last years of Chaucer's life, and to be quite inconsistent with the time he assigns for its composition in 1392-3. Chaucer would, on his hypothesis, be then only fifty-two years old. And as the Parson's Tale mentions J'ai tout perdu, as a new French song, and a line of this is quoted in the Fortune, I cannot separate these two productions by an interval of more than a few months. The Parson's Tale is admittedly very late. The Fortune cannot be several years earlier. On the other hand, the pointing out 1378 as one of the years suitable for the Complaint of Mars, on the supposition that Phcebus in this poem represents a friend of John of Gaunt, and not that nobleman himself, who was in this year absent on the Con- tinent, is entirely due to Mr Furnival. I now proceed to give a few remarks on each poem separ- ately. The Romance of the Rose, if Chaucer's, was probably writ- ten in 1353. That it was not his appears to be a conjecture founded only on its imperfect rhyming, and cannot for a moment be allowed to outweigh his own definite statement. The notion that two translations of this poem were contempor- aneously made is one of those critical shifts that have in Ger- many become obsolete. Why not in England too ? There is a passage (vii, 141, Bell) not in the original which is pro- bably autobiographical : or THE 30 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. * For I am fallen into hell From paradise and wealth'; the more My torment grieveth ; more and more Annoyeth now the bitterness, That I toforn have felt sweetness. ' But we know nothing of Chaucer's life so early as this, and therefore cannot interpret it. One strong evidence of the authorship is that the parts used by Chaucer in other poems, are all from the omitted portions of the translation viz.. the Wife of Baths Prologue, and the Tales of Virginia, Nero, Croesus, and Hecuba. Another is the manner in which Chaucer has translated : ' Vous en irez ou puis d'enfer ; ' which agrees with the punishment assigned to the friars by the Pardoner. It is not likely that the same coarseness would have been hit on by two minds independently ; and it does not read like a case of copying. But if this poem is his, I can see no reason why the beautiful Chaucer's Dream should not be his too. The argument from the rhyming needs strong confirmation on other grounds to induce its rejection. If it be Chaucer's, it must have been written in 1359, on the marriage of John of Gaunt, but not for him. It was written for Philippa, Chaucer's future wife, whom he probably married in 1360. He says in it that his lady would no pity use ; but this is only the usual conventional court- of-love language. The envoy is possibly not Chaucer's ; the laws of ballad rhyming are not properly observed in it ; and it has no connection with this poem rather than any other. It may, however, be Chaucer's first attempt of this kind, afterwards to be succeeded by more exact work in ballads, as in -y -ye rhymes. The Death of the Duchess was written in 1369 for John of Gaunt. In it occurs the passage : ' A sickeness That I have suffered this eight year, And yet my boot is ne'er the near. For is phisicien but one That may me hele ; but that is done ; Passe we over until eft ; That will not be, mote needs be left. ' This is the record of Chaucer's eight years' hopeless love, according to Mr Furnival. It seems to me to have quite a different meaning. I must first, however, amend the punctua- GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 37 tion. As the passage stands it is nonsense. What is done? The healing or the sickness? Either way the words are inconsistent with what precedes. Read : ' For is physician but one That may me heal. But that is done Pass we over until eft ! ' The sickness is married life, which was, as we shall see in the Canterbury Tales, anything but satisfactory to Chaucer ; he had now been married eight years and a bit. The physician is death ; and the construction of the last lines is : But let us pass over till another time the consideration of what is done and cannot be undone; we cannot interfere with the laws of fate ; what we cannot have, we must leave. 7^/rr^what' in both cases. The Book of Fame was certainly begun, if not finished, in 1374. In metre, in conduct, in style, it is like the Duchess. The beginnings of these two poems especially are similar ; so are the descriptions of the god of sleep's abode (Duchess, vi, 141 (Bell); Fame, vi, 196). The allusions to 'good women/ to Dido, Phyllis, Ariadne, Medea, etc., do not con- nect it any more with the Legend of Good Women than with the preceding poem, where Medea, Phyllis, and Dido are all enumerated (p. 159). The Heroides or Cupid^s Martyrs s^em to have taken early and strong hold on Chaucer. We have in it also a clear allusion to his unhappy married life: * Me mette he thus to me said, Right in the same voice and Steven, That useth one I coulde neven : And with that voice, sooth for to sayn, My minde came to me again. For hit was goodly said to me : So was it never wont to be. ' This must be his wife's voice^What other was ' wont ' to be used to him, that would require so covert an allusion ? We find, directly after, that Chaucer has made books (namely, the Rose and the Dream\ songs, ditties in rhyme or cadence (? ballads), in reverence of Love and his servants : ' And painest thee to praise his art, Although thou haddest never part.' He must have been disappointed. And then we are told 'that he has no tidings of Love's people, if they be glad; 38 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. nor of nought else that God made ; not even of his neigh- bours, that dwell almost at his doors.' He could have seen very little of his wife surely. ' When he has made his reck- onings, instead of rest and news, he goes home and sits at another book till he is dazed.' He takes refuge in his books from the want of sympathy, to say the least, shown him by his wife. And I think this must have been written early in his custom-house life. A man grumbles most when the shoe begins to pinch him ; after ten years (according to Professor Ten Brink's date, 1384) he would have been sufficiently /' oken in to say nothing about what could not be amended. Again, the description of him as * Disesperat of alle bliss, Sith that fortune hath made amiss, The frot of all thine hertes rest Languish and eke in point to brest,' confirming my interpretation of his domestic life as an unhappy mistake, leads us to the final statement that ' To study and read alway I purpose to do day by day ; ' which suits my date, 1374, well, as the commencement of a period of literary activity.^/ , In the Assembly of Fowls (date 1378, as it refers to the embassy concerning the marriage of Richard II to the French king's daughter) we have the first of the Valentine's Day poems rightly grouped together by Mr Furnival. In it Chaucer continues his complaint that ' he knows not Love, indeed ; not how he quits folk their hire.' He still takes refuge in reading : ' On bookes read I oft as I you told.' But when it gets too dark to read, he goes to bed fulfilled of heaviness : ' For both I hadde thing which that I nold, And eke I ne had that thing which I wold.' He dreams ; Affrican tells him in his dream : ' Thou of love hast lost thy taste, I guess, As sick man hath of sweet and bitterness.' He no more is so dull he may not do, but yet he may see, but >re; though this is more than he attains to in the GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 39 House of Fame, where he gets no news of lovers after all Jove's promises; he wakes, and takes then to read other books, and will not spare to do so because he hopes to * fare the bet ' some day. In the Mars, closely connected with this, being another Valentine's Day poem, and of the same date, 1378* (one of the two possible dates given by Mr Furnival), we have an exact parallel in the discovery of the lovers by Phcebus to the passage in Troylus (v, 166). This has been sufficiently dwelt on by others ; I merely notice it here as a confirma- tion of the date. In the Annelyda and Ar cite, which brings this series to an end with an unfinished poem, just as in similar instances in the Canterbury Tales, we have certainly a poem of the same date. It is connected with the Mars by its long-Chaucerian metre; with the Knights Tale by its subject-matter, being taken from Boccaccio's Teseide; with the Legend, as being the first attempt to write of one of Cupid's martyrs ; with Troylus and Cryseyde, as the commencement of a picture meant as a pendant, showing the truth of women and falsity of men in contrast to the true Troilus and false Cressida. It must lie in the midst of these at the date I have given it. In the Troylus (which occupied from 1378 to 1382) we have an almost verbatim repetition of the passage quoted above from the Fame: ' I, that the God of Love's servants serve, Ne dare to love for mine unlikeness.' He begs lovers also to pray ' For them that been in the case of Troylus. For them that ben despaired In love ; that never wil recovered be ; And eke for them that falsely ben appaired Through wicked tongues, be it he or she* A little further on we find (v, 64) that Chaucer writes his tales with a meaning : ' How so it be that some men them delyght With subtle art or talis to endite, Yet, for all that, in their intention Their tale is all for some conclusion.' * 1378 is a year pointed out by Mr Furnival as one suitable for the Complaint of Mars , supposing Phoebus to be a friend, and not John of Gaunt himself, who was absent during this year on the Continent. 40 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. I think we may fairly infer that the Troylus is after the Fame, seeing that the corresponding passages come at the end of the Fame and the beginning of the Troylus, and that all this Troilus story has a hidden meaning. This is con- firmed by the fact that, in the Legend, Alceste defends him for writing the Troylus on the grounds ' that he did it not of malice, and may have been bidden to do itj^ and by the further fact that Chaucer studiously hides the authorship of his original ; saying that he takes his matter from Lollius. Lydgate, who seems to have been in the secret, says the original was a book called Trophe. As to what Trophe means, see above, p. 17; Lollius also seems to refer in some obscure way to the Lolliana clades ; certainly not to Lollius the historian. But it is clear that Chaucer puts forth a pretended original which did not exist, in order to pass off some parts of the poem really written by himself as being merely translation. The only conceivable reason for this is, that they contained in them some record of facts, real, not imaginary; and we can only guess these facts to be connected with Cecilia de Champagne and her raptus. I do not take Lollius to be a name for Boccaccio, but the name of some book written about Lollius. This manner of quoting from AZneidos and Metamorphoseos, as if they were writers, instead of from Virgil and Ovid, is too common in Chaucer to need illustration. It is also remarkable that in the Troylus, Cressida forgives Pandarus for his share in her raptus, while nothing is said of forgiving Troilus, the prin- cipal in the matter. If this, as I guess, shadows forth the story of Cecilia de Champagne, it would exactly agree with Mr Furnival's opinion that Chaucer could only have been an accessory in that matter, inasmuch as a compounding of felony on behalf of the principal could not have been effected by a deed publicly enrolled. It is worth mentioning also that Lollius is referred to in a marginal note in a manuscript of another part of Chaucer's works. This does not look as if it, whether writing or writer, was so unknown in the fifteenth century as we have been in the habit of supposing. But enough on this matter, as, after all, I have only conjecture to offer on it. The poem seems to have been meant for recitation, not reading' from a MS. * Every wight' is called on to listen; 4 all this company ' is appealed to ; and still more strongly : 1 1 have not heard it done or this In story none, ne no man Jure, I wene' V, 132. GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 41 This, to me, confirms its having been written to order. Other reasons for the date which I assign may be found in the following passages : ' Hast thou some remorse of conscience? And art now fallen in some devotion, And wailest for thy sin and thine offence, And hast for ferde caught attrition ' V, 38. This refers to the Mother of God. ' Hit sate me well bete aye in a cave To bide and rede of holy saintes lives ' V, 60. This refers to the Saint Cecilie. Chaucer is 'the clerk of them that serve Venus' (v, 117), but ' cannot say one of the least of their delights or joys ' (v, 161). He speaks under correction of those that 'have feel- ing in Love's art.' Hence again I infer that whatever con- cern Chaucer had in the raptus of Cecilia, was only as an agent, not as a principal ; and this is confirmed by the state- ment of the law on this matter, given by Mr Furnival, and by the similar statement of the law in King Arthur's days, at the beginning of the Wife of Bath's Tale. At any rate, Chaucer's whole soul is in the line : ' Why had I such one with my soule bought ?' Mrs Chaucer seems to have been cold, unsympathising, and shrewish, with probably the same peculiarities that are ascribed to Zenobia in the Monk's Tale. Chaucer takes refuge in his writing. He has already planned the Good Women, will write of 'Penelope's truth and good Alceste,' but prays that ' God, my maker, yet ere that I die, So send me might to make some comedy.' We know how this prayer was answered. The 1 382 group I must treat at greater length, under the head of ' Chaucer and Skogan.' It will, however, be con- venient to mention the Legend in this place. In this poem we find Chaucer still delighting in reading, except in May, when the fowls sing. And here we have Chaucer's declaration of his love for the daisy, his identification of this flower with Alceste, his sovereign lady, the good wife par excellence; and his allusion to the servants of the leaf and the flower. The other poems on this subject are not Chaucer's, and subse- 42 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. quent in date, as I shall presently try to show. He repents of his heresy against Cupid, but still knows nothing of love : * As doon these lovers, as I have heard said.' The prologue dates 1382-3; the tales, 1383-6. Their approximation to the Canterbury Tales is shown in similar phrases : ' Pity renneth soon in gentle heart* (which occurs also in the Knights Tale} ; ' In Thessaly as Ovid telleth us ' (compare the beginnings of several of the Canterbury Tales) ; and in other instances quoted elsewhere. His comedy also begins to develop : * Now ere I find a man thus true and stable, And would for love his death so freely take, I pray God let our heades never ake. ' And of Dido and ^Eneas in the cave : ' I n'ot if with them there went any mo ; The author mak'th of hit no mencioun.' And in his advice to women : ' Beware, ye women, of your subtle foe, And as in love, trusteth no man but me.' The poem was meant for recitation. He speaks thus : * But in this house if any false lover be. ' Its date is fixed by the fact that there are two versions of the prologue, one without the notice of the queen at Eltham, which was therefore probably before 1382, the date of Richard IPs marriage; the other certainly after that same date, as it contains the allusion referred to. I date the poem, therefore, 1382-3, and join it with the cycle of poems we have now to speak ofc CHAPTER V. CHAUCER AND SKOGAN. ONE of Chaucer's minor poems is entitled L? Envoy de Chaucer a Skogan. It consists of seven stanzas of rhyme-royal, written in singularly accurate metre. The contents are to the following purport : The eternal statutes in heaven are broken; for the seven planet-gods are weeping. Whence may this thing proceed ? No drop of tears was formerly permitted by the eternal word (that is, weird, destiny) to escape from the fifth sphere, that of Venus ; now she will drown us with her tears : it is a deluge of pestilence. Skogan, this is for thy offence. Thou saidst thou hadst given up thy lady at Michaelmas, because she saw not thy distress. Cupid will therefore no longer be lord of thee. I fear he will involve in his anger all that be, like us, hoary and round of shape. You may scoff at 'old Grisel,' but I excuse myself; though in poor metre, for my muse is rusty. I mean not to put her forth as when I was young. Do you at court, at Windsor, remember your friend's solitude at Greenwich ? The first thing to find out, is the date of the heavy rains alluded to: not rains and pestilence, but rains ^pestilence rains likely to produce pestilence. Chaucer's poems being written before the rain has ceased, he cannot tell whether pestilence will follow certainly, although, as it was the usual consequence, he might well call the rain a deluge of pesti- lence, in anticipation of the probable result. Now on search- ing for years of heavy rain we find four, any one of which may be the one alluded to : 1348, 1366, 1382, 1393. The last of them is the one advocated by the critics who reject the ordinarily received date of Chaucer's birth in 1328, as, if he were born after 1340 it suits the words 'hoar and round' better than earlier dates. The dates of 1 348 and 1 366, which have been adopted by other critics, not only do not suit these words, even if the early date of his birth be adopted, but are for reasons given above connected with the metre absolutely inadmissible. It seems to me also that the whole tone of 44 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. the poem requires that the rains should have been already explained by some one in some other way ; that Chaucer's mocking explanation is a parody on some serious but absurd solution that had been proposed ; that his poem is a satiric refutation of the doctrine once so universally, still so widely, spread, that there is an indissoluble link between the events of the outer material world, and the good or evil deeds of man. This consideration, along with those of style and metre, leads me to adopt the year 1382, which curiously enough is the only one of the four which does not mention a pestilence as following the rains, an omission which has probably led to the critics fixing on other years. For the allusions, as I have not any of the chroniclers at hand, I will quote the somewhat condensed account given in Kennet's Complete History of England, and founded on Holinshed, for the most part, for the history of the reigns of Richard II and Henry IV: 'John Northampton, fl//Vw Comberton, Mayor of London, observing with sorrow the lewdness and debaucheries of the citizens, set himself with all diligence to suppress them ; and severely punished all such as he found guilty of whoredom, by imprisoning both sexes, and causing the women to be carried through the streets of London with their hair shorn, as thieves were in those days usually exposed to shame, with trumpets and pipes going before them ; nor did he spare the men more. The bishops pretending that the punishment of such immor- alities belonged to their jurisdiction rather than the mayor's, were highly displeased with him and forbade him ; but that did not in the least deter him from proceeding in so good a work, so long as his power lasted, though against the bishops' will, who ought to have encouraged him. Whether this un- even zeal of the churchmen against opinions and doctrines more than vicious practices, were the cause of those fearful judgments which happened at the same time they were carrying on their persecutions, is hard for us peremptorily to determine ; but certain it is that many heavy calamities befell the nation at this time. Such an earthquake was felt, as not only wrought great terrors in the inhabitants, but shook down divers churches and houses in the nation, and principally in Kent/ Chaucer was living in Kent. ' Not many days after happened a water-shake, as it was called, which beat the ships in the havens so violently together that many received no small damage. And about St Thomas' Day there fell such great rains, as caused mighty inundations, which drowned many villages, and carried away divers bridges.' This was GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 45 also the year in which the memorable act was passed ' which began the first persecution that ever was among the Eng- lish for the Christian religion, on the followers of Wickliffe/ as preachers of heresy, by authority of which the bishop" 'cruelly imprisoned them, and punished them as they pleased.' 'This act was not passed by the consent of the commons, but was fraudulently procured of the king by the bishops, to gratify their own bloody malice against those whom they pleased to call heretics/ Hence the allusion to * uneven zeal ' above. Now to these proceedings every word of Chaucer's poem is applicable. This is his argument. Some say that these miraculous rains are caused by God's anger at churchmen caring more for heresy than for crime; some say that devotion to Venus has been the cause of them. Absurd ! How could these rains from Venus's own sphere be caused by her being worshipped too much ? How could the high planetary seven be affected by mortal passions ? No : Skogan is the cause ; not too much, but too little worship of Venus causes her to weep : not Lollards' heresy, but Skogan's blasphemy of her, makes her drown us in her tears. Skogan gave up his lady for want of pity ; let him repent and sue to her for pardon. The pungency which this poem would have at that date, the satire of the faults of the clergy, the absence of superstition, the good-humoured kindliness of banter, are thoroughly Chaucerian. Nor is the date 1382 inconsistent with 1340 as the date of Chaucer's birth ; he may have had grey hairs and been fat at forty-two, although I incline to the old date of 1328, as there seems not to be a shadow of argument against it, but a series of hypotheses. But leaving this question of date, we come to another : this poem is a V envoy; but a Venvoy is attached to some- thing. The Penvoy that Chaucer sent to Bukton was ac- companied by the Tale of the Wife of Bath; where is the poem which was forwarded to Skogan ? I have no hesitation in saying it was the Complaint of the Death of Pity ; how Pity is dead and buried in a gentle heart. It is sent to Skogan to show how Chaucer would have addressed his lady if ' she saw not his distress/ instead of giving her up at Michaelmas. I need not point out how this agrees with what I have advanced already, but I may notice how it is supported by what I shall have to add by and by. Before coming to this, however, let us see what we know about Skogan. Speght's Chaucer contains a moral ballad by Henry Skogan, which quotes the Wife of Bath's Tale of 4-6 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. his 'master/ Chaucer. In Henry VI IPs reign, Dr Andrew Borde published Skogarts Jests, in which he is described as king's jester and an Oxford graduate. Henry Skogan could not have been a jester (read his ballad in Speght), and very likely was not of Oxford. In 2 Henry /F, Act III, sc. ii, Shallow says he saw Sir John break Skogan's head at the Court gate, when he was a crack not thus high ; but Shakespeare certainly confounds him with John Skogan, jester to King Edward IV, who was, as we know on the authority of Holinshed, sometime a student in Oxford. Dr Andrew Borde's statements also apply to John Skogan. Of our Skogan, Henry that is, we know that in 1399 he was one of the many who had letters of protection on Richard IPs expedition into Ireland, and he is described as Henricus Skogan, armiger. We also know that in Jonson's Masque of the Fortunate Isles > he appears thus : * Johphiel. Methinks you should inquire now after Skelton, Or Master Skogan. Merefool. Skogan, what was he ? Joh. O, a fine gentleman, and Master of Arts, Of Henry the Fourth's time, that made disguises For the king's sons, and writ in ballad-royal Daintly well. Mere. But wrote he like a gentleman ? Joh. In rhyme, fine tinkling rhyme, and flowing verse, "With now and then some sense j and he was paid for 't, Regarded and rewarded.' It is noticeable, however, that when Skogan and Skelton come in, Skogan talks in four-foot anapaestics and not in bal- lad-royal. Here the 'moral Skogan,' as Jonson afterwards calls him (compare Chaucer's 'moral Gower'), seems to be further confused with a third Skogan, a contemporary of Skelton's referred to by Drayton in his preface to his Eglogues. This seems to be the extent of our knowledge of Henry Skogan. Now among the poems usually assigned to Chaucer, but now proved to be spurious, is one that is inseparably linked in subject to the Complaint of Pity. This poem is the Court of Love. ' Instead of Pity speedeth hot courage. The matters all of court, now she is dead, I me report in this to womanhead. ' And again : * For wail, and weep, and cry, and speak, and pray Women would not have pity on thy plaint ; GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 47 Ne by that mean to ease thine heart convey, But thee receiven for their own talent. And say that pity causeth thee in consent Of routh to take thy service and thy pain, In that thou mayst to please thy sovereign. ' The Complaint of Pity might be inserted here as an episode; and in another passage : ' When that my lady, of her cruelty, Would from her heart exilen all pity,' there is a similar allusion. The poem alludes to the Legend of Good Women, frequently to the * way menting' viAnnelyda, to Troylus, etc. It follows that it must have been written after 1382. The metre is clearly differentiated from Chaucer's of that date by the -y -ye rhymes, and from Chaucer's of any date by not pronouncing e final (though es or en final are pronounced), by its singular, almost modern, regularity of metre, and other minor matters. It is in fact exactly the metre that we should expect from Skogan ; ' written in rhyme- royal, daintily well, in tinkling flowing verse, with now and then some sense.' There is not to my knowledge any other un- assigned poem of this date that fulfils these requisites outside the covers of Speght's Chaucer, and when we consider also the links that unite the Coiirt of Love, the Complaint of Pity, the L Envoy a Skogan together, I feel it is more than prob- able that the Court of Love is Skogan's.* The only point that needs here to be explained is the humour of making the rain proceed from Venus's tears. Saturn, not Venus, was the planet that produced rain and pestilence. Saturn says in u\&Knighfs Tale; ' Mine is the drenching in the sea so wan.' And again : * Mine looking is the father of pestilence/ And once more, we read in the Miller's Tale: ' Now on Monday next at quarter night Shall fall a rain. 1 The sixteenth hour on Monday was dedicated to Saturn. Finally, in Troylus and Cryseyde : f Saturn and Jove in Cancro joined were That maden such a rain from heaven avail.' * Is not, however, this poem too modern for the fourteenth century at all in its present shape ? It seems to me to have been rewritten by the sixteenth century editor. 48 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. So in Piers Plowman (see Skeat's edition of the Astrolabie)\ ' Through floods and through foul weathers fruits shall fall ; And so said Saturn.' But the influence of Venus is astrologically the exact opposite of Saturn's : hence the falling of rain from Venus's sphere is opposed to the laws of Nature : therefore she must be weeping ; which implies some fearful delinquency among her subjects on earth. The ludicrous inadequacy of Skogan's offence for the miraculous portent to be caused by it, is the foundation of the humour and the satire displayed in this poem. Chaucer was so pleased with the conceit, that he uses it again (seriously) in his Palamon and Arcite. Venus's tears fall in the lists for the defeat of her champion. This fixes the date of Palamon and Arcite as immediately subsequent to the U Envoy a Skogan j a position which cannot be assigned it, except on the hypothesis that the latter was written in 1382. It is certain, on an attentive reading of Chaucer's works, that when he repeats himself, he does so at no distant date. I could give detailed proof of this ; but it would re- quire an entire chapter. Here, then, I leave the consideration of Skogan and his relation to Chaucer. I feel little, if any, doubt as to the connection of the Complaint of 'Pity p , the L } Envoy, and the Court of Love; not much as to the authorship of the latter poem, and none whatever as to the date assigned. At any rate, the hypothesis here proposed gives for the first time a plausible account of the Complaint of Pity an account which does not require us to place it at a date when Chaucer's style and metre were much less developed than in that poem, nor to interfere with the received date of his birth, nor to invent startling theories in order to account for events in his life, which all seem to me perfectly explicable without altering any of the received traditions. It is necessary, however, to complete our subject, that I should notice the connection between the cycle of poems arising out of Chaucer's address to Skogan and the Complaint of Pity. The first of these is the Court of Love : that this cannot be Chaucer's is shown by the non-pronunciation of e final in nouns, adjectives, and adverbs ; by its not being in the form of a dream, as all Chaucer's poems of this kind are ; and by its internal evidence. It is written by Philogenet (friend of Genista, dependent on Plantagenet ?), eighteen years old, clerk of Cambridge. It distinctly alludes to the Complaint of Mars, the Annelyda and Arcite^ the Romance GUIDE TO CHAUCEK. 49 of the Rose, the Troylus and Cry^eyde, the Par lenient of Fowls, and the Legend of Good Women. The last is most important, as it fixes the date as 1383 at earliest, long after the giving up of imperfect rhyming by Chaucer. The story shows that Philogenet did not go to Love unsent for, and has therefore difficulty in obtaining mercy. It gives the full account of the Death of Pity and her Resurrection, and is therefore subsequent to Chaucer's Complaint. It contains no allusions to Chaucer's octosyllabic poems, the Dream, Duchess, or House of Fame, and has one curiously un- Chaucerian expression in using ' out of drede ' in its modern meaning. It is certainly an answer to the Death of Pity, and I think there is little doubt that the messenger who sent Philogenet to Love was Chaucer's Envoy a Skogan. Immediately connected with this poem is the Flower and the Leaf, written by a lady, as Tyrwhitt pointed out, filled with allusions to previous poems by Chaucer; but specially linked to the Court of Love by ' the herber,' which plays so con- spicuous a part in it (compare Court of Love, iv, 158, Bell); and by the Songs of the Nightingale, Goldfinch, and Cuckoo, which allude to the matins at the end of the Court of Love. The lady who writes it has very different notions to Skogan 3 who says : c In the Court of Love to dwell for aye, Thy will it is, and done thee sacrifice ; Daily with Dian eke to fight and fray, And holden war as might will me suffice* That goddess chaste I kepen in no wise. To serve ; a fig for all her chastity { Her law is for religiosity, ' The lady, on the contrary, declares her allegiance to the Lady of the Leaf; that is, to Diana herself. The style is (as far as we can tell with a very corrupt text) like that of the Court of Love. Special phrases, a ' world of ladies/ * goddess nature,' ' put in press,' etc., are borrowed from Chaucer; but the running on of the verses without pause, the modern tone, the general structure of the sentences, are from Skogan's poem. I think it was written by his sovereign lady, whoever she might be, Date not far from his poem, probably 1383. From the Flower and Leaf is derived the plan of the Cotnplaint of a Lover's Life, which was certainly by Lydgate, as Shirley says,, Lydgate, in 1384, was a youth of from fourteen to seventeen years old; and this seems to be an exercise in English verse written by him, and sent to his D 50 JDE TO CHAUCER. 'master,' Chauc ;:ism. That it was written by some one with the Fit -af before him is manifest. The sun in Taurus \' poems expressed by 'Phoebus entering the Bull , ^ writer gets up from bed disconsolate, and goes to walk in the meadows, in both poems ; in both does the writer meet with an ' her ber ; ' in both have we the 'goddess Nature.' This last is originally Chaucer's. There are other things showing that Lydgate had Chaucer also in his eye, as well as the lady. He alludes to Palamon and Arcitej he has the phrase used in it and the Legend: * Thus my death shopen ere my shirt ; ' and he has copied the list of trees almost verbatim from Chaucer. He has also imitated Skogan's Death of Pity in his Death of Truth, and done it badly. There can be no doubt of the relation of this poem to the others. Last in the group, the Cuckoo and the Nightingale, I think, is Chaucer's. No one else that I know at that date could have written it. Mr Furnival says it offends against the rhyme laws, and that Professor Ten Brink and Mr Bradshaw agree in affirming that it does so. I cannot find the offending rhymes. It is also said that Chaucer did not use this metre. He did, in the r envoy to his Complaint to his Purse; and I do not know of any one else who uses it. This point tells, then, in my favour. I do not profess, however, to date it, except that it must lie clear of the Canterbury Tales; and belongs to the cycle beginning with the Assembly of Birds, and ending with Lydgate's Complaint of the Black Knight. It may, however, help us in deter- mining its date, to notice that the two first lines in which benedicite is pronounced with five syllables are repeated in the Knighfs Tale. In every other place in the Canterbury Tales where this word occurs, it is pronounced with three (? beridcite}. It is therefore most probable that if Chaucer had not the Cuckoo and Nightingale before him when he wrote the Knight's Tale, he would in this place also have made the word trisyllabic. I think, therefore, the Cuckoo and Nightingale is probably earlier than 1383. On the other hand, compare the allusion to the palace ' at Woodstock or at Shene,' with that in the Legend of Good Women to the palace at Eltham. There is just one more point which I must notice as of use in distinguishing the authentic and spurious poems. Chaucer, in nearly all his poems that concern the events of his own life (in quite all, if the Cuckoo and Nightingale be rejected), or THE TBHSITYJ GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 5 I uses the framework of a dream in which to arrange his plot. None of the spurious poems do this ; even in the Flower and Leaf, and in the Black Knight, where we should certainly have expected it, we do not find it adopted ; nor in the Court of Love, to which it is well suited. This argument will have different value to different minds. To me the fact that all the imitators of Chaucer, whose works have got mixed with his, from being found in his papers at his death or some similar reason, carefully avoid the use of this very obvious expedient, is a strong argument in favour of the authenticity of the Chaucer's Dream. If we take it from him, to whom can we assign it ? Thus I have endeavoured to fulfil my promise made at the beginning of this book, as far as the limits of space would permit. I have yet to give a scheme of the order of writing of the Tales which cannot be wrong in more than two or three instances, inasmuch as in these only is it possible for any other order to fulfil all the conditions required. I have tried to settle the dates as near as may be of other works of his, and to show that they are not inconsistent with either the earlier date of his birth (which I believe in at present) or the later one. I have tried to reclaim for him that exquisite poem, Chaucer 's Dream, and the translation of the Romaunt of the Rose; and finally, I have, I believe, fixed the date of the LEnvoy a Skogan by historical evidence, which not only settles the date of the poem, but introduces Chaucer to us in a new light, as the opponent of persecution for religious matters, and a defender of the Lollards. The errors that have entrapped critics in these poems on all love matters, I believe have their root in one main mis- take. They confuse the earnest real love for a mistress or a wife, with the outward formal gallantry for a * ladie ' or a ' queen,' as constituted by the courts of Love. When Chaucer writes to Skogan, or says that he knows nothing of Love, or indites 'complaints,' he is only speaking in this court of Love language. His real feelings must not be sought for here, but in his dramatic tales.* This is exactly the same mistake that people make as to Shakespeare's Sonnets; they fancy that every expression of love, devotion, etc., bears its modern meaning ; they can- not understand our ancestors playing at being in love, or lord and slave. The child-like element of sport is so squeezed * I do not dwell on this point here, nor is it needful, it has been done by others; see for instance, R. Bell, Chaucer t vol. iv, intro- duction to the Court of Love. 52 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. out of modern life by the struggle for existence, that we can- not enter into the feelings of those who, living in less care- worn if not less busy times, could gambol and enjoy them- selves even when 'hoar and round.' Chivalry has gone; sport has gone; science and commerce have taken their place ; spontaneous art is dead ; self-conscious criticism is alive and very restive. No doubt our time is the better we all agree on that ; but we should not ignore the characteristics, nor even the excellences, of the older times, when laughing and humour held their full share in our literature, and people could work for the same object without quarrelling. This mention of Shakespeare reminds me of a great simi- larity in these two master minds, with the notice of which I must conclude this too long chapter. I mean their fragment- ary way of working. Chaucer left unfinished his greatest work, and the written part of it in many places uncorrected ; he left also several tales in it, the Cook's Tale, the Squirts^ and Sir Thopas, incomplete in themselves ; they are fragments, whether meant to be finished or not. His next great work, the Legend of Good Women, he also left unfinished. His great transla- tion, the Romaunt of the Rose, he wrote only to the extent of three-sevenths. The A nnelyda and A rcite was never brought to an end ; and if I am right, the House of Fame was written at various times, as we know his other great works were. Just in the same way Shakespeare left unfinished Timon, Pericles, the Two Noble Kinsmen, Henry VIII ; and in my opinion wrote several other plays, Troylus and Cressida for example, at different times, piece-meal. I need not here enumerate from the Fairy Queen to the Roman Comique the many master-pieces that have been left us as torsos. But I do urge on critics the consideration that it is always impos- sible for the greatest order of minds to be other than restless ; they cannot be made to complete their work unless tied like Sampson to the mill ; and in all questions of chronology of the greatest works we must always examine first if the work shows signs of suture or welding ; remembering that the man of one idea is so blind to everything else, that he is pretty sure to bring out all its meaning completely; but that the man of many, still more the man of very many, unless compelled by For- tune's spite to wear his motley, and exhibit himself to the crowd, is more likely to remain like Browning's Waring, * With no work done, but great works undone ' to his benefit probably, though to the world's loss. CHAPTER VI. ON THE ORDER IN WHICH THE CANTERBURY TALES WERE WRITTEN. No single question connected with Chaucer's works offers the difficulties of this one. The solution required has several conditions to fulfil ; if it miss any of these, it fails altogether. It must, firstly, be consistent with the order of the tales, in each of Mr Bradshaw's nine groups, which are linked by prologues or chat by the way, although it is indifferent to the order of the groups themselves ; secondly, it must give an intelligible account of the manner in which these prologues were written ; thirdly, it must be consistent with Chaucer's mental development, showing gradual and regular growth up to the culminating point; finally, it must bear the test of metrical examination, which is always the ultimate method to be resorted to ; but which, if used as a primary means of investigation, will lodge its experimenters in the same diffi- culties as a chemist would experience if he applied his quanti- tative analysis before he had qualitatively ascertained what the components were, the amount of which he is endeavour- ing to measure. Any scheme which satisfies all these requisi- tions cannot be far from the truth. Before, however, giving my scheme, I will clear the way on one or two points. The first is important. There are three tales, the Nun's, the Shipmarfs, and the Doctor's, which, unlike all the others, have no prologues. This of itself would make us suspect that they were not originally written for their present position, as indeed, we know, the IVun's Tale was not. It, like the Knighfs Tale, was pub- lished originally as a writing by Chaucer, not as a tale spoken by a woman. Traces of this remain in the tale itself : ' Yet pray I you that reden that I write; ' and again : 'And though that I, unworthy son oj Eve;' as pointed out in Mr Bell's notes. This tale, then, was in- 54 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. serted in the Canterbitry Tales without such revision as the Knights Tale received. The case of the Shipments Tale is somewhat different. It seems, from the use of 'we 3 and 'us' when speaking of women, that it was meant to be spoken by a woman. Tyr- whitt shows this from the passage : ' The silly husband algate muste pay ; He must us clothen in full good array. 1 And, as Mr Furnival has rightly pointed out, the only woman it could be meant for is the Wife of Bath. I do not agree with him, however, that it was meant for the return journey. I believe that all notion of a return journey had been aban- doned before this tale was written. I have no doubt, however, that the tale was meant for her. It is more in character with her prologue than that now assigned to her. Chaucer pro- bably found that he had no one in his company to whom he could so well give her present tale ; and transferred this one to the Shipman to make room for the other. And I find confirmation of this in the fact that this story suits the refer- ences made by the Merchant better than the one now al- lotted to the Wife ; and still more in the L? Envoy a Bukton. This L'Envoy, which refers to the Wife of Baths Tale (sent with the prologue of course), on marriage says, that if thou, Bukton, take a wife, * Thou shalt have sorrow on thy flesh thy life, And been thy wife's thrall.' And again : ' It is the chain Of Sathanas on which he gnaweth ever.' ' Sorrow and woe is in marriage.' This does not agree with the present Wife of BatKs Tale: 1 And she obeyed him in everything That might doon him pleasance or liking; And thus they live unto their lives' end In perfect joy.' But it does agree with the Shipman 's Tale: ' This merchant saw none other remedy ; And for to chiden it n'as but folly, Sith that the thing might not amended be.' This surely was the tale circulated as the Wife of Bath's. GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 55 The Doctors Tale was evidently written at the same time with the narratives in the Legend of Good Women; it exactly resembles them in style and treatment, but was inserted in the Canterbury Tales rather than in the Legend^ because Virginia, although 'a martyr and a good woman/ was not *a martyr of Saint Cupid/ All tales without prologues must have been written before the general prologue in 1388, or shifted from the position originally given them. The next point regards the tales of the Reeve and the Miller. These tales, like those of the Friar and the Sunnier, are told against each other ; the Reeve tells a tale against a miller, and the Miller against a reeve. But the reeve in the Miller's Tale is also a carpenter. This, I think, shows that Chaucer, when he wrote this pair of tales, had deter- mined to get rid of the carpenter from his dramatis persona in the main prologue, and to roll his reeve and carpenter into one. But, if this carpenter goes, the four tradesmen, his companions, must go too. This, with the omission of two of the three Nun's Priests, would reduce the company to twenty-four, the number I believe Chaucer ultimately meant to adopt. It is certain that of these five tradesmen no men- tion is made in any of the minor prologues, or any part of the tales subsequent to the general prologue. There is also a similar confusion between xxiv and xxix, in a passage relating to the age of John of Gaunt. Can 'nine and twenty' be a scribe's correction for xxiv, introduced to make the number nearer to that of the characters described, Chaucer having written his descriptions regardless of number, and left the selection of characters to be omitted for that final revision which he never executed? Nine-and-twenty is a strange number to choose; and we seem to have all the tales intended except the Plowman's and the Knight's Yeo- man's. That the Nun's Priests were intended to be reduced from three to one, is clear from the Host's address in the singular : * Then spake our Host with rude speech and bold, And said unto the Nunnes Priest anon ; " Come near, thou priest, come hither, thou Sir John ! " ' Of course it is mere conjecture that Chaucer did thus intend to limit his number to twenty-four. But I cannot believe in the received twenty-nine. I now give a table of my scheme. The tales are numbered chronologically; and arranged in that order. Those verti- cally under one another are in the same group, as determined 56 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. by prologues and other links ; except in the case of the Ship- man's Tale. Reasons for this exception have been given above : i. Nun. 2. Prioress. 3. Man of Law. 4. Clerk. 5. Doctor. 6. Knight. . General Prologue. 7. Squire. ... 8. Franklin. ... 9. Manciple. 10. Nun's Priest. . ii. Wife of Bath. 12. Merchant. 13. Shipman. 14. Miller. 15. Reeve. . 1 6. Cook. 17. Friar. 1 8. Sumner. 19. Pardoner. . 20. Canon's Veoman. 21. Sir Thopas. 22. Melibceus. 23. Monk. 24. Parson. To this scheme I append some general considerations. It would be impossible in a treatise of this nature to notice all the minute critical points that have induced me to adopt this order; I can only hope to give sufficient to show its general consistency. The first four tales are in one metre, and evidently written about the same time; they deal with 'lives of saints' and patience of wives ; the first three of them are the only tales which have a preface or introduction in the tales themselves ; in the first two this preface includes an address to the Virgin ' Mother of God/ which, I think, fixes the date of the separate poem of that name ; it is so exactly similar in tone and matter. This is confirmed by the reference to St Bernard : * And thou, that flower of virgins art all, Of whom that Bernard lust so well to write ;' for the Mother of God is, to the extent of six stanzas, taken GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 57 from his writings. There are similar introductions in the House of Fame > Death of Blanche, Troylus and Cryseyde, etc. Chaucer finally abandoned them on beginning to write in heroic metre : we shall not meet with them again. It is singular that the first of these tales should be about a virgin martyr, whose name, Cecilia, is the same as that of the lady Cecilia de Champagne, who executed a deed of release 'de raptu meo' to Chaucer in May 1380. It is also singular that his first long narrative poem should be con- cerning the 'raptus' of Cressida, in which the circumstances (including a forgiveness of Pandarus by Cressida, which cor- responds to that of Chaucer by Cecilia de Champagne) are of his own introduction, and different from those in the authorities he made use of. The date of this group is certainly the latter half of 1374. We have seen above that the Nun's Tale was inserted without adaptation to the sex of its narrator, and there are expressions in the other tales pointing to a similar conclusion for the other tales. The following expressions look more like those of a writer than a speaker. The Prioress says, 4 Guideth my song^ O blissful queen.' The Clerk says, ' Petrark writeth this story, which with high style he en- diteth.' In the prologue, on the other hand, written after the Canterbury Tales had been planned and the general prologue written in 1388, the Clerk says he * learned it of Petrarch in Padua.' I think the ivriteth of the former pas- sage is conclusive against this being an autobiographical fragment of Chaucer's own life. Of course the end of the tale from ' But oo word, lordes,' onward, and the P envoy were added when Chaucer fitted on the Merchant's Tale much later. In the Man of Law's Tale we find Chaucer's first expres- sions of irony as to wives, which increase in number and vigour as the tales go on : * Husbands ben alle good, and han ben yore, They knowen wives; I dare say no more.' (Certainly not. Mrs Chaucer was alive.) We also find in this tale a passage which seems to imply that at this time Chaucer believed in astrology. After speak- ing of * Infortunate, ascendant, tortuous, Out of his angle into the darkest house,' etc., he goes on : 58 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. ' Imprudent emperour of Rome, alas ! Was there no philosopher in all thy town ? Is no time bet than other in such a case ? Of voyage is there none election ? ' We shall see that by and by he looks on astrology as pagan and fabulous. This tale is not only connected with the preceding by its addressing the Virgin, by its miracles, by its praise of vir- ginity, but with the following by its * emperor's daughter/ and many small points of similarity ; such, for example, as the use of the word * bless ' in the sense of make the sign of the cross; the term in the late tales is ' crouch.' We have also the same irony as to women : ' There can no man in humbless him equit As women can, ne can be half so true As women been, but it be fall of new. ' The next two tales, the Doctor's and the Knight's, were unquestionably written with or just before the Legend of Good Women. This poem mentions a version of the Knight's Tale as Palamon and Ar cite. I date the Legend, for reasons already given, in 1383; it must be placed after 1382. The Knight's Tale retains a bit of its unrevised shape in ' \Vho couthe rhyme in English properly His martyrdom ? ' which clearly indicates a written poem, not a spoken tale. It is closely connected with poems of the date 1382-3 by many allusions : for instance, the word ' martyrdom ' alludes to the martyrs of St Cupid in the Legend. Again : * Shapen was my death erst than my shirt* Compare Legend: * Since first that day that shapen was my shirt, Or by the fatal suster had my doom.' Moreover, Saturn (he still uses astrology as a serious motive) is mentioned as the lord of ' the drenching in the sea so wan,' and as saying : ' Mine looking is the father of pestilence.' We have seen that this connects this poem with the L? Envoy a Skogan; so does the weeping of Venus : * Till that the teares in the listes fall.' GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 59 The description of the tournament is also certainly of the same date as the battle in the Cleopatra story in the Legend; they are too long to quote here, but should be referred to. There is also the same irony as to women, which we have noticed in the preceding tales : * When that their husbands been from them ago That for the more part they sorrowen so, That atte laste certainly they die.' The list of trees (i, 182) may be compared with that in the Assembly of Fowls (iv, 195). It will be noticed that three out of the six tellers of stories up to this point are the three called on by the Host in the general prologue, in order that one of them may tell the first tale. There can be no reasonable doubt that the prologues to these three (the Knight's, the Prioress', and the Clerk's) were written, the Knight's Tale revised, and the general prologue composed at one date. This is fixed by Mr Brae at 1387-8. The Man of Law's Tale must have been introduced at the same time. It will be noticed that these six- tales which precede the main prologue are all head tales of six of the nine groups arranged by Mr Bradshaw. The three other head tales (Squire's, Wife's, Manciple's) must, as we shall see, come later. The next group of tales in order of time is that in which the scene is laid in Faery, or involves some mythological element. In the Squire's we have a positive proof that it was written after the general prologue, since in the tale (not in the pro- logue to it) the Squire says : ' I will not tarien you, for it is pryme.' This must not only have been written after the pilgrimage had been arranged in Chaucer's mind, but also after he had determined to make it a two days' journey, as I shall try to show in the next chapter. In like manner, the interruption of the Host is so linked with the tale of Sir Thopas that this also must have been written after the Host's character had been developed, and therefore after the general prologue. The Squire's Tale is unfinished, and with this fragment the serious tales are brought to a conclusion. We now enter on a series that is concerned with the rela- tion between husband and wife. They -continue the irony /C~ LE A ^N 60 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. already noticed, but grow coarser and coarser till they cul- minate in the Miller and the Reeve. In the Franklin's Tale ' Such lordship as men have o'er their wives,' strikes the key-note, continued in one long, though varied, repetition through the series. < Who couthe tell, but he had wedded be, The joy, the ease, and the prosperity That is betwix a husband and a wife ? ' Again : * For his absence weepeth she and siketh ; As doth those noble wives, when hem liketh.' We must recollect that Mrs Chaucer died in 1387, the year before the main prologue was written, and probably that in which these tales were planned. And now we meet with a distinct declaration that astrology is a humbug. Chaucer speaks of ' Operations Touching the eight and twenty mansions That longen to the moon ; and such folly, As in our dayes n'is not worth a fly. ' He calls it 'a superstitious cursedness,' and speaks of * his other observances As heathen folk used in thilke days. ' I may also note here, once for all, a habit Chaucer has of telling his tales about characters corresponding to those who have already been introduced as reciters. Thus in this tale we have a clerk, a squire, and a knight, and every one of these characters is included in the list of those who have already told tales. This may be accidental, but I do not think so. In the Nttrfs Priesfs Tale we have a continuation of the depreciation of astrology ; for the Cock has his astronomical knowledge by mere instinct : * He knew by kind, and by none other lore.' We have also that delicious bit of irony as to women : ' For all as siker as in principio Mulicr est hominis confusio : (Madam, the sentence of this Latin is. Woman is mannes joy and mannes bliss); ' GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 6 1 which, with the consideration that we are still in the land of Fable or Faery, fixes the date of this tale, or group of tales, to the place I have assigned to it. The irony as to women is continued by the Manciple : ' All these ensamples tell I by these men That been untrue, and nothing by women.' The ensamples being a bird, a cat, and a she-wolf, all pre- sumably feminine. The tales of the Crow and Chanticleer are also linked by the general moral. Compare ' Nay, quod the fox, God give him mischance, That is so undiscreet of governance, That jangeleth when he should hold his peace ;' with ' Keep well thy tongue, and think upon the Crow ! In the Wife of Bath's prologue we meet first with that coarse indecency of language which repels many modern readers from Chaucer, but which is very characteristic of some men in their climacteric. Chaucer himself describes such : ' We olde men, I dreade, so fare we, Till we be rotten, can we not be ripe ; We hoppen alway while the world will pipe, For in our will there sticketh e'er a nail, To have a hoar head and a greene tail, As hath a leek ; for though our might be done, Our will desireth folly e'er in one. For when we may not do, then will we speak : Yet in our ashen old is fire yreke.' Reeve 's Prologue. Chaucer is not the only great poet who has in his old age displayed this tendency. In the Wife's praise of marriage, Chaucer's satire on women reaches its climax. Extracts I have not room for, and it should be read entire. I can only notice one hard hit at Chaucer himself, which confirms what I have said above : * Mercury loveth wisdom and science, And Venus loveth riot and dispense ; And Venus failth where Mercury is raised. Therefor no woman of clerkes is praised : The clerk, when he is old, and may not do Of Venus' workis, is not worth a scho : Then sit he down, and write in his dotage, That women cannot keep their marriage.' 62 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. And also : ' For trusteth well it is an impossible That any clerk shall speke good of wives, But if it be of holy seintes' lives, He of none other wives ne'er the mo, Who peynted the leoun, tell me, who ? ' This must all refer to Chaucer ; the ' seintes' lives ' is con- clusive. Is it possible that this prologue, which, with or without its tale, was circulated as a separate work, can be the book of Leo, spoken of at the end of the Parson's Tale, because in it the women give an account of themselves ? In any case this prologue is the key to much of Chaucer's life. This, however, can only be developed in a monograph. I must pass on. The Wife is made to believe, after her womanly fashion, in astrology ; but only by way of ironical expression of the weakness of woman's intellect. In this tale, by-the-by, we have the first mention of miracle plays by our author : they are again alluded to in the Miller's Tale and prologue. In this Wtfe^s Tale and prologue we have also the commence- ment of the satire on the religious orders, which is henceforth never dropped, but goes on increasing to the end of the series. The Limiter, the Sumner, the Pardoner, all come in for some touches. The Wife's statement of the Limiter ' In every bush, and under every tree, There is none other incubus than he,' is followed up by the Merchant's irony : 1 And followed aye his bodily deligK? On women there as was his appetite, As done these fooles that been secular. 1 And again : * He which hath no wife I hold him shent, He liveth helpless, and is all desolate. I speak of folk in secular estate. ' And so in other passages. The satirical allusion to e old widows,' the obedience of wives merely of courtesy, the 'knowing where the shoe pinches,' the mention of * fayery,' connect this tale with the Wife on the one hand ; while the whole conduct of the story, the 'rising before prime/ and many small coincidences in lan- guage, link it to the Shipman on the other. Of the Shipmaris Tale I have already treated. I have only to notice, in confirmation, that it is impossible that it GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 63 could have been written before the Prioress 9 . Chaucer must therefore have prefixed it to her group, a method of procedure which he never adopted in any other instance. I think that when he determined not to write a return journey, he stuck the Prioress' prologue to the end of this story, and put them in their present position. The Miller and the Reeve need not detain us here they clearly are in their place. The Miller not only satirises astrology, but mentions the ' astrolabie,' which instrument Chaucer was certainly now studying (1389-90), in prepara- tion for his treatise on it in 1391. The satire on the clergy also grows more developed. Absolon, the parish clerk, and therefore in minor orders, has by no means a dignified part assigned him, and the miller's wife is the daughter of a par- son. I must, however, notice here a trait which seems to me to confirm the traditional date of Chaucer's birth in 1328. The miller's daughter is twenty years old, and the infant in the cradle only a few months. The girl in Boccaccio's story is fifteen or sixteen. Why did Chaucer adopt the number twenty ? I think because the difference of age between his own children was the same as that between the miller's. If the traditional dates are true, Chaucer was married in 1360, and his son Thomas was born in 1361. Lewis's birth is fixed 1381 by the address to him in the Astrolabie. They, like the miller's children, are just twenty years apart. He could thus appeal to a known fact in answer to the palpable objec- tion that the incident was improbable. In the same way I take the age of the knight in the Miller's Tale (past sixty) to represent Chaucer's own. If born in 1328, he would be sixty-two in 1390. But to give all my reasons for this would lead to a too long digression. The tales in the remaining group are clearly linked. They treat of the errors and excellences of the clergy, the Parson (in whom the Host smells a Lollard) being the only one selected for praise. The chief point to note for our present purpose is the gradual introduction of the subject of preach- ing in the Friar's, Pardoner's, and Parsoris Tales. The Pardoner is certainly intended for a direct contrast to the Parson in this respect. They thus continue the satire in the preceding group on the clerics, and expand it in full detail. We should also note that the prose style of the Parson is in rhythm, manner, and structure quite other than the Meliboeus, and that these must be separated by some years. I place the Par sorts Tale late say in 1397-9 no other tale being subsequent to the Astrolabie^ the style of JCElTr^/ 64 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. which is intermediate between that of the Meliboeus and that of the Parson. The collection of tales or tragedies called the MonKs Tale was manifestly meant to be a pendant to the Legend of Good Women, bearing the same relation to Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium that the Good Women does to his De Claris Mulieribus. Both collections were probably begun about 1382-3, though this one was not finished till after the Melibaus, c. 1393. With it should be compared the passage on fortune in this latter story (iii, 160). With regard to the prologues, it will suffice to say that, except those to the Man of Law, Clerk, and Knight, which were certainly written in 1388 with the general prologue, they were probably composed each with the tale that follows it, not, except in one or two instances, with the tale preceding. For these and other more minute reasons, I have arranged the tales in the order of my table, not that the grounds here given are exhaustive, or nearly so, but that I -cannot here introduce more detail there is too much already. Let us rather examine the table by a few general considerations, and see if it will stand testing. 1. Does it agree with my metrical rule, deduced from his other works that heroics and royal rhymes (except in bal- lads) must not overlap in chronology? Yes; tales 1-4 are in rhyme-royal, and no others are so. 2. Does it classify the tales as to subject-matter for no one can read Chaucer carefully without seeing that his satiric, humorous, and serious poems fall into such distinct groups that they must have been written at different epochs ? Yes; tales 1-7 are serious ; 8-21 are humorous (satirising married life) ; 22 and 24 are satiric (treating of the clergy). 3. Does there exist a development of dramatic power (so well named by Mr Hales 'power of characterisation ') in our order of the tales? Certainly, with nearly the same divisions as those of subject-matter. It is singular, but very charac- teristic of Chaucer, that these divisions are separated by unfinished tales the Squire's ending the serious, and the Cootfs the humorous division. Just in the same way the unfinished Annelyda and Arcite and the unfinished Legend of Good Women bring to a close sub-periods of this work. 4. Are there overlappings of secondary import connecting these groups? Yes; faery and magic extend through tales 7- 1 1, connecting the two first groups; and satire on the clergy begins incidentally in n, and goes on increasingly to the end, connecting the two last groups. GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 65 5. It is very noticeable that all the tales, from 14 to 20 (except 19, which may have been enlarged from an earlier sketch I think it was), have their scene laid in our own country, even where it is not so in the original tales imitated by Chaucer. None of the others have, but 12 and 13, the next preceding, have their scene in accessible countries and recent times. All before and after these belong in time and space to the distant and the fabulous. I feel, then, tolerably confident, on all grounds, that we have here the true order of composition. That most of the tales were written before 1393 I feel sure, for this among many reasons : There are versions of the Man of Law's , the Wife of Bath's^ and the Doctor's Tales in Gower's Confessio A mantis. The notion that Chaucer took these tales from Gower is to me incredible. It is not Chaucer that addresses Gower as his master, but the converse. Nor can I accept the hypothesis that Chaucer, in 1400, died at the age of sixty or younger. The many allusions to his old age in his poems, as early, at any rate, as 1382, when he would on that hypothesis be only forty-two years old, would far outweigh all adverse considerations were there no evi- dence adducible of other kinds. Note. In this chapter Mr Bradshaw's groups are strictly adhered to with one exception.* The Nun's Pries t's Tale is looked on as an earlier written tale, without prologue, afterwards picked up by Chaucer, and connected with the Monk's Tale by the prologue. Should, however, the Nun's Priesfs Tale be regarded as inseparably linked with the Monk's^ the following alternative arrangement is quite pos- sible ; 10. Wife of Bath. AH -r, / A f 11 - Sir Thopas. All in one | Meliboe s< /-r\~' ~ \ i * -s Monk. (Prioress). (_, Nun - s Priest 15. Merchant. 1 6. Shipman and Wife of Bath's Prologue. The rest following in order as given in the table. In this case the Envoy a Bukton and A. B.C. would probably come with the Monk's Tale, date 1389-90. But on the whole, at present I prefer the arrangement in the text. * The Shipman 1 s position I have explained in the text. E CHAPTER VII. ON THE ORDER IN WHICH CHAUCER'S c CANTERBURY TALES' SHOULD BE ARRANGED. I NOW give a brief statement of this final problem, and a solution which, it is hoped, will be more satisfactory than any as yet proposed. The utmost conciseness will be at- tempted that is consistent with clearness, because very full details are already accessible in the valuable publications of the Chaucer Society. The annexed table gives all the evidence we have on the matter namely, the order of the tales in the ordinary edi- tions, the names of the tellers of them, the groups into which they are divisible, and the marks of place and time contained in the tales or the prologues to them. The links connecting the tales within each group are not noted here, as Mr Bradshaw has conclusively shown that the tales are neces- sarily to be divided into the nine groups here given. To the same investigator we owe the settlement of the order of the five groups headed G., which are fixed by geographical considerations. I may mention that many years ago I at- tempted to solve this problem, and got as far as the division into groups, but not seeing Mr Bradshaw's point that G. 2 group had got shifted from its place between G. I and G. 3, because Rochester lies between Deptford and Sittingbourne, I threw aside the whole investigation as unprofitable. I should also state that all references are made to volume and page of Bell's edition (eight vols.) as most convenient on the whole to the student, and that in the quotations, names, etc., the spelling is modernised, so far as metre will permit (as in Cowden Clarke's Riches of Chaucer\ wherever the sense only of the passage is the question in hand ; but when any critical question is involved, the antique spelling is preserved. This seems the best course, until the text is accurately settled. GUIDE TO CHAUCflRV * 67 TABLE. Prologue. (Southwark.) Group G. I. Group O. 2. II. Squire's. (Prime. ?6A.M.) 12. Franklin's. I. Knight's Tale. 2. Miller's. (Deptford, past prime.) 3. Reeve's. 4. Cook's. Group G. 4. 13. Second Nun's. (Boughton-under-Bla. ) 14. Canon's Yeoman's. Group O. 3. 5. Man of Law's. (10 A.M.) Group O. I. 15. Doctor's. (Before noon. Furnival. ) 1 6. Pardoner's. Group G. 3. 6. Wife of Bath's. (Before Sittingbourne.) 7. Friar's. 8. Summoner's. (Almost at town Sitting- bourne.) Group G. 2. 17. Shipman's. 1 8. Prioress'. 19. Sir Thopas. 20. Meliboeus. 21. Monk's. (Rochester.) 22. Nun's Priest's. Appendix to Group G. 3. 9. Clerk's. 10. Merchant's. (With reference to Wife of Bath's Tale.) Group G. 5. 23. Manciple. (Bob-up-and-down. ) 24. Parson's. (4 P.M. Canterbury.) Of the twenty-four tales it will be seen at once that the mere geographical order of the towns Deptford, Dartford, Rochester, Sittingbourne, Canterbury fixes absolutely the arrangement of seventeen contained in groups marked G. i, G. 2, G. 3, G. 4, G. 5, and the reasons given for the position of the Clerk's and Merchant's Tales as following; G. 3 in the Temporary Preface issued by the Chaucer Society are also quite satisfactory. We have then nineteen tales fixed in position, and five in the three groups marked O. i, 0. 2, O. 3, unfixed and movable. On the positions assigned to these the present paper is written. Mr Furnival's scheme places O. 3 between G. I and G. 2, O. 2 between G. 3 and G. 4, and O. i between G. 2 and G. 3. My scheme places O. i between G. I and G. 2, O. 2 and O. 3 68 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. between G. 2 and G. 3. The amount of alteration is precisely the same in each case. The decision between the schemes must depend solely on the internal probability of the order ultimately attained. Compare then : MY SCHEME. Before 10 A.M. First Day. (12 Tales.) Knight. Miller. Reeve. Cook. Doctor. Pardoner. Shipman. Prioress. Sir Thopas, Meliboeus. Monk. Nun's Priest Before 10 A. M. MR FURNIVAL'S SCHEME. First Day. (4 Tales.) Knight. Miller. Reeve. Cook. Second Day. (7 Tales.) Man of Law. Shipman. Prioress. Sir Thopas. Meliboeus. Monk. Nun's Priest. Third Day. (7 Tales.) Doctor. Pardoner. Wife of Bath. Friar. Summoner. Clerk. Merchant. Fourth Day. (6 Tales. ) Squire. Franklin. Second Nun. Canon's Yeoman. Manciple. Parson. Now consider these arguments : 1. The tales are equally divided between the days in one scheme ; in the other, there are four in the first day, seven in the second, nearly twice as many. 2. The journeys of fifteen miles a day are too short. The instance of King John, adduced in their favour, tells against the hypothesis. He travelled his fifteen miles after dinner. The pilgrims were on the road from prime to four P.M. on the Second Day. ( 1 2 Tales. ) Squire. Franklin. Man of Law. Wife of Bath. Friar. Summoner. Clerk. Merchant. Second Nun. Canon's Yeon:an. Manciple. Parson. GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 69 fourth day to accomplish ten miles ! On the two days' journey scheme they have from six A.M. to four P.M. to do thirty miles in; their rate of travelling on the Canterbury road (a good Roman one) would be five to six miles per hour, as they did not often trot, but pace or amble for the most part. They would thus get four hours for stoppage on the road, for breakfast, dinner, etc., and six hours for actual riding. 3. It is improbable that the pilgrims should start at prime on the first and fourth days, but not till ten A.M. or there- abouts on the second and third. It is much more likely that the only two mentions of 'prime' in the prologues should indicate the only two startings for a two days' journey. 4. In all cases of emendation it is incumbent on us to show how the error we emend may have arisen ; and even in cases where the emendation is certain this is advisable much more where conjecture enters largely. Now, curiously enough, in these groups of tales the G. groups, from G. 2 to G. 4, contain no notes of time ; the O. groups contain no notes of place. But it is in these groups (tales 5-22) that displace- ment has arisen. No one doubts the position of groups G. i and G. 5. Now, on this I base my explanation. Taking my order of the tales as the original one, we can easily see how the tales became confused. Suppose them written at differ- ent times and arranged in groups labelled thus : Group I. Tales 1-4, G. I (prime to 10 A.M.). Group 2. Tales 15-22, O. I, G. 2 (after 10 A.M.). Group 3. Tales II, 12, O. 2 (prime to 10 A.M.). Group 4. Tales 5-10, O. 3, G. 3 (after 10 A.M.). Group 5. Tales 13, 14, G. 4. Group 6. Tales 23, 24, G. .5. Now, from the similarity of their endorsements, suppose group 4 to have been put in the place of group 2, and group 2 put into the second day to replace group 4 ; and further sup- pose group 5 to have slipped, from having no endorsement of time, and the present common arrangement of the tales will be accounted for. It is true, that exactly the same amount of displacement will produce Mr Furnival's scheme ; but I cannot find any reasonable explanation for his displacement having happened. It only now remains to refute an objection that may be made. It may be said that groups O. I and O. 2 certainly are unattached, but that 0. 3 is linked ; that the Man of Law's 70 GUIDE TO CHAUCER. Tale is united to the Shipmarfs by the use of the word ' thrifty. 1 The Man of Law says, before telling his tale : * I can no thrifty tale sain, ' And the Host says after a tale (I think the Pardoner's) : ' This was a thrifty tale. ' The Host also speaks of 'men of lore,' which seems to allude to the Man of Law's learning. But I cannot see why the Doctor's and Pardoner's learning should not be alluded to by the Host as probably as the Man of Law's. Their tales are full of it. And as to the ( thrifty tale,' even if it is the right reading (and the Harleian MS.* is against it), it is poor evidence. The Man of Law may in using it be alluding to a tale of the previous day. ' I can tell no such tale as that you had told yesterday.' And it certainly seems to me that his * I am at present unable to give an opinion as to the relative excellence of the Harleian and Ellesmere MSS. If the reading, however, of the Harleian MS. is adopted in this passage, 'non other ' for * no thrifty, ' we have a clear allusion to what Chaucer says in the prologue to Sir Thopas : * For other tale certes can I non But of a rym I lerned yore agoon.' The parallel passage in the Man of Law's prologue is : ' But natheles certeyn I can right now none other tale seyn That Chaucer, thay he can but lewedly On metres and on ryming craftely Hath seyd hem in such Englisch as he can, Of olde time as knoweth many man.' This looks like one of the * inseparable links ' that have done such good service in this matter in the hands of Professor Ten Brink and Mr Bradshaw. This would confirm my conjecture that the list of good women is meant to allude * sidelings ' to Chaucer. As to the above MSS., compare carefully the following statements, both from Mr Furnival's writings : (i) That the MSS. of the Ellesmere order are called by Mr Bradshaw Edited Texts ; that the marks of an Edited Text or Text C. are, ' Gamelyn cut out, link after Man of Law cut out,' etc., etc.; and that the Harleian MS. is Text B. (2) That the Ellesmere or A. type of MSS. is superior to the B. or Corpus-Lansdowne type, and the better C. type, of which the Harleian is the only representative. These statements are con- densed (l) from Temporary Preface, p. 24 and note ; (2) from Recent Work at Chaucer, p. 10. I shall be very thankful to any one who will give me an explanation of them. GUIDE TO CHAUCER. 71 enumeration of the tales told by Chaucer has more force and humour if introduced after Chaucer has told his two tales incognito than it can have if brought forward before Chaucer's performance. There is something very happy in his enum- erating a list of the Good Women when Chaucer has, un- known to him, been showing the company talents so different in the tales of Sir Thopas and Meliboeus. It may be worth noticing, though I lay no stress on it, that one of the spurious prologues to the Doctor's Tale is in the metre of Gamelyn, and probably by the same hand. This looks as if the writer of Gamely n meant the Doctor to follow the Cook. On the whole, then, I see reason to prefer a two days' arrangement to a four days'. I would take the Pilgrims to Dartford before dinner, and let them sleep at Rochester; then to Sittingbourne or O springe to dinner, and to Canter- bury the same day. This leaves everything in the arrange- ment probable and symmetrical, and with unlinked pauses, in which the Plowman's, the Knight's Yeoman's, and any other tales yet unwritten, might have been inserted ; for in- stance, after the Coo&s Tale or the Pardoner's. But although I feel strongly that this is the right order of the tales, I am bound to acknowledge that I could not have arrived at it without Mr Bradshaw's note as to the geogra- phical evidence. When first I separated the tales into the nine groups, not having taken into account the improbability of the return journey entering into Chaucer's work before he finished the first one, I threw the whole thing aside as hope- lessly confused, and only took it up again on the receipt of Mr Furnival's kind gift of his Temporary Preface. EDITIONS OF CHAUCER'S WORKS. Works by Francis Thynne, . Thomas Godfray, . 1532. F. I. ,, including Plowman's Tale, John Reynes, . . 1542. F. 2. ,, with additions by John Stowe, . John Kingston for John Wight, . | 1561. F. 3. iAdam Islip for Geo. ) by Thomas Speght, . < Bishop and John [ 1598. F.4. Wight, . . ' ) 99 Adam Islip, . 1602. F. 5. 99 J 5 . 1687. F. 6. ,, by John Urry, . . . 1721. F. 7. Canterbury Tales, . William Caxton, . 1475. F . i- . . > 1481-2. F. 2. . Wynken de Worde, . 1495. F. 3. , , ) . 1498. F. 4. . . Richard Pynson, . n. d. F. 5. . 1526. F. 6. W. Caxton, n. d. F. W. de Worde, . 1517- Q.I. 99 R. Pynson, n. d. F. Assembly of Fowls, . . W. de Worde, . 1530. F. Book of Fame, . . . W. Caxton, n. d. F. > R. Pynson, 1526. F. Mars and Venus, . Julianus Notarii, n. d. Q. J^ Caxton or De Worde, n. d. Q. Scipirfs Dream (Parlement of Birds\ . Good Counsel, Annelyda and Arctic, Complaint to his Purse, Envoy, . With poems by Lydgate, etc. Of modern editions, Tyrwhitt's Canterbury Tales (for essays, etc.), Wright's ,, (for numbered lines), Bell's Works (for notes, etc. ), Morris's Works (for text), are the most useful. There is no space in this small work to give a satisfactory account of the MSS. For this see the Chaucer Society's publications. Part M. GUIDE TO SPENSER. GUIDE TO SPENSER. INTRODUCTION. THIS Guide is published for nearly the same reasons as the Guide to Chaucer. There is no satisfactory compendium in existence of the facts connected with the works of Spenser, their chronological arrangement, and the critical questions involved in them. On the other hand, less space is needed than in the case of the earlier poet, for these reasons : 1. There is an excellent cheap edition (the Globe) of Spenser's works, with a life of the poet by Mr Hales, which leaves little to be desired (except in the portions where he speaks of Shakespeare, which are demonstrably erroneous). It is only for completeness' sake that the life of Spenser is in this Guide touched on at all. The text in the Globe edition is admirably edited by Dr Morris, and Spenser's letters, etc., are given in full. 2. Spenser's language requires no special treatment. Where he differs from Shakespeare in grammar and use of words, it is from introducing archaisms and other affecta- tions. His use of the northern dialect in the Shepherd's Calendar \s rather a matter for the English Dialect Society to examine than for a popular treatise ; and his interlarded Chaucerianisms can cause no difficulty that the Guide to Chaucer will not resolve. The glossary to the Shepherd's Calendar, and the general one in the Globe edition, are amply sufficient for the student. On the other hand, his metrical forms have never been sufficiently attended to as a means of chronological arrange- ment ; and the data for identifying the characters introduced in his works under pastoral names have never been tabulated. 76 GUIDE TO SPENSER. But I need not go into details ; the contents of the Guide will speak for themselves. I have now completed introductions to our three greatest poets anterior to the time of the Commonwealth. Some of the lesser ones still require similar elucidations, which I hope (health and leisure permitting) to give in a future work. CHAPTER I. LIFE OF SPENSER. EDMUND, of the ancient and honourable family of the Spensers of East Lancashire, was born in London, in East Smithfield-by-the-Tower, in 1552; was admitted as sizar at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, 2oth May 1569; B.A. i6th January 1572-3; M.A. 6th June 1576. He there became acquainted with Gabriel Harvey, Edward Kirke, Thomas Preston, and John Still. In 1560, were published by Van der Noodt, without acknowledgment, six of his Visions of Petrarch, or Dreams, and fifteen sonnets from the Visions of Bellay, in the Theater for Worldlings; and before 1 579 Spenser wrote his Legends, Court of Cupid, English Poet, Slumber, DyingPellican, Epithalamion Thamesis, and Stem- mata Dudleiana now all lost. On leaving Cambridge, on no good terms with the dons, in 1576, he went to the north of England, where he fell in love with Rosalinde; but before 1579 he had removed to London. In the latter year he pub- lished his Shepherd's Calendar, by the advice of Harvey, who recommended him to Sir Philip Sidney, by whom, in turn, he was introduced to the Earl of Leicester. He visited the seat of the Sidneys at Penshurst, in Kent, and wrote some of his early poems there. His pseudonym at that time was Immerito. He also stayed at Leicester House, Strand, in October 1579. In 1580 he had begun the Fairy Queen, and finished his Nine English Comedies. At this time he was out of favour with Burghley, the antagonist of Leicester and Essex. In July 1580 he went to Ireland, his home for the rest of his life, as secretary to Arthur Lord Grey of Wilton, Lord Lieu- tenant of Ireland. On 27th June 1586, according to Dr Birch, he received a grant * from Queen Elizabeth of 3028 acres in County Cork, taken from the forfeited lands of the Earl of Desmond. He * But the extant grant is dated 26th October 1591. 78 GUIDE TO SPENSER. probably made the acquaintance of Sir Walter Raleigh in Dublin about this time. In 1581 he received a lease of the lands and abbey of Enniscorthy, in Wexford County; and was appointed Clerk of Degrees and Recognisances in the Irish Court of Chancery, which office he held for seven years, till he was made Clerk to the Council of Munster, in 1588. In December 1587, he parted with his Enniscorthy lease to Richard Synot. In 1582 Lord Grey was recalled. Spenser remained in Ireland, and did not probably leave it till 1589, when he seems to have resigned his second clerkship, and visited England. During this interval (1584-9) must be placed Spenser's visiting Ludovick Briskett at his cottage near Dublin, when Spenser expounded the plan of his Fairy Queen. He was certainly at Dublin i8th July 1586. In October Sir P. Sidney died. Spenser probably left Dublin in 1588, and was visited in 1589 by Sir W. Raleigh at Kil- colman, and, encouraged by him, published the Fairy Queen, books i-iii, 23d January 1589-90. With Raleigh he had re- turned to England late in 1589; and in February 1590-1 Elizabeth conferred on him a pension of $o, virtually though not expressly, as poet laureate. He held this till his death. Before 27th December 1591, Spenser returned to Ireland. In the same year his Complaints were published. The printer mentions other poems, now lost namely, Ecclesi- astes, Canticum Canticorum, A Se'nighfs Slumber, The Hell of Lovers, his Purgatory, The Dying Pelican, The Hours of the Lord, The Sacrifice of a Sinner, The Seven Psalms. On ist January 1591,* when Daphnaida was published, Spenser must have been in London. But whether the date of the dedication of Colin Clout's Come Home Again to Sir W. Raleigh, 27th December 1591, be a printer's error for 1594, is a disputed point. I incline to believe that 1591 is the cor- rect date for the dedication, but that Spenser added to the poem afterwards. Whichever date be right, Spenser was in Ireland when he wrote it. The publication of the poem took place in 1595, along with that of Astrophel. The Sonnets and Epithalamion (entered in the Stationers' books, i.9th November 1594) must have been published almost con- temporaneously. These concern Spenser's second love and marriage. In his earlier time, up to 1591 (Colin Clouf), Spenser had celebrated his love for Rosalinde ; but she did not encourage him. He married his second love, Elizabeth, in Ireland, on St Barnabas's Day 1594. * Not 1592. Spenser makes January his first month. See the argument to the Shepherd's Calendar. GUIDE TO SPENSER. 79 We must now recur to 1593. In that year Maurice, Lord Roche, Viscount Fermoy, presented to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland three petitions two against 'one Edmund Spenser, gentleman,' one against Joan Ny Callaghan, as acting 'by supportation and maintenance of Edmund Spenser, gentle- man, a heavy adversary unto your suppliant.' The first petition ran thus : ' Where one Edmund Spenser, gentleman, hath lately exhibited suit against your suppliant for three ploughlands, parcels of Shanballymore (your suppliant's in- heritance), before the Vice-President and Council of Mun- ster, which land hath been heretofore decreed for your sup- pliant against the said Spenser and others, under whom he conveyed ; and nevertheless for that the said Spenser, being Clerk of the Council in the said province, and did assign his office unto one Nicholas Curteys, among other agreements, with covenant that during his life he should be free in the said office for his causes, by occasion of which immunity he doth multiply suits against your suppliant in the said pro- vince, upon pretended title of others/ etc. And the third petition thus : * Edmund Spenser of Kilcolman, gentleman, hath entered into three ploughlands, parcel of Ballingerath, and disseised your suppliant thereof, and continueth by countenance and greatness the possession thereof, and maketh great waste of the wood of the said land, and converteth a great deal of corn growing thereupon to his proper use, to the damage of the complainant of ^200 sterling. Where- unto the said Edmund Spenser appearing in person had several days prefixed unto him peremptorily to answer, which he neglected to do.' After a day of grace given, on I2th February 1594 Lord Roche was decreed possession. Spenser was not then, nor was his memory afterwards, popular at Kilcolman. At the end of 1595 Spenser and his wife probably came to England, and stayed there till 1597. In September 1596 he was living at Greenwich. Soon after his coming from Ireland, on 2oth January 1596, the second part of the Fairy Queen (books iv-vi) was entered for publication, and during the same year he wrote his Hymns to Heavenly Love and Beauty, and the Prothalamion. On 1 7th November 1596, Robert Bowes, English ambas- sador in Scotland, wrote to Lord Burghley from Edinburgh, stating the great offence of King James at parts of the Fairy Queen alluding to him and his mother (as Duessa). And in a letter from George Nicolson to Sir Robert Cecil, dated Edin- burgh, 25th February 1597-8, it is stated that Walter Quin, 8o GUIDE TO SPENSER. an Irishman, was answering Spenser's book, whereat the king was offended. In 1597 he was in Ireland, and in September 1598 Queen Elizabeth wrote to the Irish government recommending him to be Sheriff of Cork. In the next month Tyrone's rebellion broke out, and Spenser fled from Kilcolman with his family, leaving one child behind. The rebels burned his house with this child in it, and Spenser died, in great distress, in England, i6th January 1598-9. His surviving sons were named Sylvanus and Peregrine. A monument was erected to him in West- minster Abbey some twenty years after by the Countess of Dorset. His widow married Roger Seckerstone before 1603. He lies near Chaucer in Westminster Abbey a great poet by a greater. But no other of his predecessors can be compared with him. The student of English literature even now, after all the laborious investigations of the present time, finds no maker of considerable importance anterior to Spenser except Chaucer, and his contemporary the author of Piers the Plow- man. The subjoined tables will be useful for reference. AUTHORITIES FOR SPENSER'S BIOGRAPHY. 1. 1606. Camden on the Monuments of Westminster Abbey. 2. 1619-20.* Drummond's account of Jonson's Conversations. 3. 1628. Camden's History of Queen Elizabeth. 4. 1633. Sir James Ware's preface to Spenser's State of Ireland. 5. 1662. Fuller's Worthies of England. 6. 1675. Edward Phillips' Theatrum Poetarum Anglicorttm. 7. 1679. Life prefixed to Spenser's works. 8. 1687. Winstanley's Lives of the most Famous English Poets. REFERENCES TO SPENSER'S LIFE IN HIS OWN WORKS. 1. Birthplace and family Prothalamion, stanza 8. 2. Age and mother's name (Elizabeth) Sonnets 60, 74. 3. Spensers of Althorpe, his relatives Dedications : (a. ) Mother Ifubbard's Tale ; (b.) Muiopotmos ; (c.) Tears of the Muses. 4. The same Co fin Clout, 1. 535, etc. 5. Early life Shepherd's Calendar, eel. xii, stanzas 4-6. 6. Cambridge Fairy Queen, book iv, canto ii, stanza 34. 7. Rosalinde E. K[irke]'s glosses on Shepherd's Calendar, eclogues i, iv, vi, xi, xii, and the eclogues themselves. 8. Fairy Queen, book vi, canto vii, stanza 35, etc. (Mirabclla = Rosalinde), and canto x, stanza 25, etc. (Elizabeth). 9. Rosalinde Colin Clout, 1. 898 to end. 10. Enemies at Court Dedication to Colin Clout ; Ruins of Time> stanza 65, etc. ; Fairy Queen, book vi, canto xii, stanza 41. * Mr Hales says 1612. GUIDE TO SPENSER. 8 1 11. Gratitude to Lord Grey Sonnet to Lord Grey prefixed to Fairy Queen. 12. Ireland Sonnet to Earl of Ossory prefixed to Fairy Queen. 13. Kilcolman Fairy Queen, book iv, canto xi, stanzas 40-44. 14. Kilcolman Fairy Queen, book vii, canto vi, stanzas 36-37. 15. Raleigh's visit Colin Clout, 1. 57, etc. 1 6. Sidney Ruins of Time, and Astrophel. SUMMARY OF SPENSER'S CHANGES OF RESIDENCE FOR REFERENCE IN CHRONOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION. Cambridge, . . 1569-76. Lancashire, . . I577"7^ Penshurst and London, 1578-80. Dublin, . . Kilcolman, . 1580-88. 1588-89. London,. . . 1589-91. Kilcolman, . . 1591-95^ Greenwich & London, 1595-97. Kilcolman, . . 1597-98. London, . . 1598. Since this chapter was set up in type, I have, I believe, discovered the real name of Rosalinde. E. K. says of her : 6 He (Spenser) calleth Rosalinde the widow's daughter of the glen, that is, of a country hamlet or borough, which, I think, is rather said to colour or conceal the person, than simply spoken; for it is well known, even in spite of Colin and Hobbinol, that she is a gentlewoman of no mean house, nor endowed with any vulgar and common gifts both of nature and manners/ Drayton, in his ninth eclogue, says : * Here might you many a shepherdess have seen, Of which no place as Cotswold such doth yield, Some of it native, some for love, I ween, Thither were come from many a fertile field. There was the widow s daughter of the glen, Dear Rosalynde, that scarcely brookt compare. The moorland maiden, so admired of men ; Bright goldy looks, and Phillida the fair.' As the natives are first mentioned, Rosalynde is probably one of them. In this case the glen must be the Vale of Evesham, and in that vale we must look for her family. But Camden mentions only one family in this vale, that of the Dinleies of Charleton. But E. K. again tells us that the name Rosalinde * being well ordered, will bewray the very name of his (Spenser's) love and mistress.' Now Ros t \linde anagrammatised is Rosa Dinle, or, if spelt Rosalynde, and the y taken as two ?s, Rosa Dinlei, the very name of this family. There can be little doubt that we have here the solution of a riddle that has puzzled all the commentators on and investigators of Elizabethan literature. F CHAPTER II. ON THE CHRONOLOGY, ETC., OF SPENSER'S WORKS. SPENSER'S works naturally fall into the following divisions : 1. Poems written before 1579. 2. Shepherd's Calendar. 3. Poems written in London, 1589-91. 4. ,, ,, Ireland, 1591-5. 5- ,, ,, London, 1596. 6. Fairy Queen. 7 State of Ireland. I shall take them in chronological order, according to the following table : Name of Poem. Metre. Date of Writing-. Date of Publication. Visions of Bellay (first form), . Blank verse, c. 1569. 1569. ,, ,, (second form), Sonnets 1-15 A, c. 1569-72-* 1 59 I - Visions of Petrarch, . Sonnets 1-6 A, 7 B, c. 1569. 1569 & 1591. Ruins of Rome, from Bellay, . -j Sonnets 1-32 and) 1'envoy A, / c. 1569-72. I59I- Virgil's Gnat, .... Ottava rim a, c. 1572-6. 1591- Mother Hubbard's Tale, . Two Hymns in Honour of Love) and Beauty, . . . .) Heroic couplets, Rhyme-royal A, c. 1576-7. C- I577- 1591- 1596. Shepherd's Calendar, Visions of the World's Vanity, Various, Sonnets B, 1577-8. .'1589. 1579. 1591. Ruins of Time, .... Muiopotmos, . Rhyme-royal A, Ottava rima, c. 1589-90. c. 1589-90. I59L I590-L Tears of the Muses, . Six-line heroics, c. 1590. I59L Daphnaida, .... Rhyme-royal B, 1590. I59 r - Astrophel, .... Colin Clout's Come Home Again, Six-line heroics, Elegiacs, c. 1591. i39 r -4- 1595. J 595 (Amoretti, ..... Sonnets B, I 59 2 -4- 1595. 1 Epithalamion, .... Stanza A, 1594-5. 1596. Four Hymns: Heavenly Love) and Beauty, . . . .j Rhyme-royal A, 1596. 1596. Prothalamion, .... Stanza B, 1596. 1596. Fairy Queen, cantos i-iii,^ . | Spenserian and ( 1580-89. 1590. ,, ,, iv-vi, . ) View of the State of Ireland, . sonnets B prefixed, Prose, ' 1591-5- 1596. 1596. 1633- GUIDE TO SPENSER. 83 I. Visions of Be Hay. These were originally written in blank verse, and published in the Theater for Worldlings, as ' devised by S. John van der Noodt,' 25th May 1 569. They were afterwards rewritten in sonnet form, and published in the Complaints as Spenser's in 1591. The blank-verse series contains four from the Revelation (beast, woman, white horse, and New Jerusalem) that are not in the sonnet series, and conversely there are four in the sonnet series (wolf, river, vessel, and city) not in the blank-verse series. They have no dedication prefixed. 2. Visions of Petrarch. These also (except the last sonnet) were published in the Theater for Worldlings, in the same way as the above, with- out any acknowledgment of Spenser's authorship. They were reprinted, with the additional sonnet, in the Complaints. They are all in sonnet form. No dedication is prefixed. In the 1591 edition, ' formerly translated 7 is added in the title. 3. Ruins of Rome, by Bellay. This series of sonnets is clearly of about the same date as the preceding. It was published in the Complaints in 1591, without dedication. From the style of the translation and the authorship of the original, I infer a close connection in time of production with the second form of the Visions of Bellay. There can be little doubt that all the preceding sonnets (except one) were written during Spenser's undergraduate- ship, 1569-72. The one exception (the last in the Petrarch series) was probably added on the republication of 1591. It is very noticeable that these early sonnets differ in form from all Spenser's later ones. They are written in three independ- ent quatrains and a couplet (rhyme formula, ababcdcdefefgg) ; in the later ones the quatrains are interlinked in the rhyming, and their formula is ababbcbccdcdee. This is an important fact in connection with the theory of metrical tests. The only other sonnet of the earlier form by Spenser is that on the History of George Castriot. I do not know its date, but the work was published in 1562. In 1586 we find in the sonnet to G. Harvey, that Spenser had abandoned this and adopted the later form. 4. VirgiPs Gnat. I have no hesitation in placing this only other translation by Spenser next in date. It is stated in- the 1591 edition of uT 84 GUIDE TO SPENSER. the Complaints, to have been 'long since dedicated to the , Earl of Leicester, since deceased.' This requires an early date, and most poets begin by translations. The metre is ottava rima. Date, circa 1 572-6. 5. Prosopopoia (Mother HubbarcPs Tale). This also is an early work : it is said in the dedication to Lady Compton and Mounteagle, to have been composed ' in the raw conceit of my youth. 5 The general tone of the poem is so like in feeling to that shown by Harvey's letters to have been entertained by Spenser on his leaving the university, that I should date it soon after that event, c. 1577; in no case later than 1580. Compare 1. 665 : ' As if he were some great Magnifico, ' with Harvey's letter, 7th April 1580: ' For life Magnificoes not a beck but glorious in show. ' The metre is heroic couplet. The style is imitated from Chaucer (Tityrus). 6. Two Hymns in Honour of Love and Beauty. These two hymns are stated in the dedication to have been composed ' in the greener times of my youth/ Many copies of them were scattered abroad, but they were not published till 1596. We shall have to recur to them under that date. They can hardly have been written except at the commence- ment of Spenser's passion for Rosalinde in 1577-8. There are allusions to her in the later stanzas of the Beauty. The metre is rhyme-royal or Chaucerian stanza. 7. Shepherds Calendar. This is, next to the Fairy Queen, the most important work of Spenser's in a critical and biographical point of view, though far from being so important, aesthetically, as other poems for instance, the Epithalamion. It was written in the north, 1577-8, published in 1579, dedicated to Master Philip Sidney, with six triplets of eight-syllable lines by Immerito (Spenser), an address to G. Harvey, argument and gloss by E. K[irke], and an epilogue by Spenser in six-measure iambic couplets (Drayton's metre), from which we learn that it is meant as an imitation partly of Chaucer, partly of Piers the Plowman. It is made up of twelve eclogues, one for each month, beginning with January. All the pas- toral names introduced in it undoubtedly belong to real GUIDE TO SPENSER. 85 persons. Some of them are certainly identified ; others are yet unknown. As an aid for the student who cares to investigate these neglected but unjustly-despised questions, I append tables showing the connections between the per- sonages mentioned in the poem. In the first of these the symbol + shows that the character opposite to whose name it is placed, is one of the speakers in the eclogue, indicated by the number vertically above the + . The symbol x , in like manner, shows that the personage is mentioned in the eclogue. The last column gives the historical person with whom the character has been identified. The next table gives, in the first column, the names of the interlocutors in the eclogues, and opposite each name in the second column are given the names of all the other interlocutors with whom he converses in any eclogue. This is an important aid in identification ; thus, for instance, in trying to find out who Thenot is, we must notice that he is a friend of Colin (Spenser), Hobbinol (Harvey), Cuddie, etc. The next table gives the results of the second in one diagrammatic view, a line ( ) between any two characters showing that these two converse together in some eclogue or eclogues. Finally, in the fourth table, I give a classification at once for metre and subject of the eclogues, indicating the order in which, I think, they can be best critically studied. Name of Character. Number of Eclogue. Person designated. Colin,. . . Rosalinde, . 4- X 2 3 4 X 5 6 + X 7 8 9 10 ii + X + 12 + X X X Spenser. Spenser's love, Rosa Dinlei. Harvey. Chaucer. Lyly. Protestant. Catholic. Elmore (Aylmer). Grindal. Elizabeth Dudley. Robert, Earl of Leicester. Hobbinol, Thenot, . . X + + + + X Y Cuddie, . . Phyllis . + + + Willie + + -f + Piers -f + 4- X Morell, . . + X + Diggon Davy, + X X X 86 GUIDE TO SPENSER. Name of Character. Colin, . Hobbinol, Thenot, Diggon Davy, Piers, . Cuddie, Perigot, Willie, Thomalin, . " . Morell, ' . Palinode, Interlocutors with that character in the Shepherd's Calendar. Hobbinol, Thenot. Colin, Thenot, Diggon Davy. Colin, Hobbinol, Piers, Cuddie, Perigot. Hobbinol. Thenot, Cuddie, Palinode. Piers, Thenot, Perigot, Willie. Cuddie, Willie, Thomalin. Cuddie, Perigot. Perigot, Morell. Thomalin. Piers. Colin. I Thenot. Hobbinol. Pit rs. -Cue 1. die. Perigot. i i Diggon. Palinode. Willie. Thomalin. Morell. No. LINE-METRE. STANZA-METRE. SUBJECT. of Eclo Kind of No. of No. of Rhyme Foot. Feet. Lines. Formula. Contempt of Poetry, . Praise of Elizabeth, . 10 5 8 ababbaba. Rosalinde's Cruelty, . u ^- 5 6 ababcc. Shepherd's Contest, . 8 Thesa me, and Ballad, and Sextain. Bad Pastors, { l\ s^ 4,3,4,3 4 abab. Priest's Deceit, . . ^^, 4 2 aa. Reverence for Age, . 2 1 Thomalin's Love, 3 s-^_ 4,4,3,4,4,3 6 aabccb. I have not ventured to put in the table, but yet suggest provisionally, the following additional identifications : i. PIERS AND PALINODE. Piers (Percy) I take to be GUIDE TO SPENSER. 87 William Percy, author of Sonnets to Ccelia. The Percies of Northumberland had recently adopted the Protestant faith. Hence the fitness of William Percy for the discussion in the fifth eclogue. Palinode was probably Henry Constable, the only Roman Catholic poet of the time at all likely to be introduced into a pastoral. He was B.A. 1579, expatriated, and on his return imprisoned on account of his religion, and not released till 1604. 2. THOMALIN. The good, unambitious shepherd (pastor, clergyman) I take to be Thomas Preston, Fellow of King's College, afterwards Master of Trinity Hall, author of Cambyses. Preston was a friend of Spenser's, as we know from his cor- respondence with G. Harvey. 3. DIGGON DAVY (DICKON DAVY), I would suggest, was Thomas Churchyard, who wrote Davy Dickar's Dream, in 1562. Diggon had driven his sheep, in hope of gain, into a far country, and Churchyard had long ' trailed a pike J abroad. In reading this poem care must be taken to distinguish the northern dialect, affected in many parts of it, from the forms adopted by Spenser from Chaucer in his Fairy Queen and many of the minor poems. The form of the pastoral is due to the influence that Guarini and Tasso were at that date exercising on the" English poets. The eclogues were much admired and praised, notably by Abraham Fraunce, Philip Sidney, Francis Meres, and Michael Drayton. The double meaning of shepherd (sometimes poet, some- times clergyman) should be noted. The follower of the Good Shepherd takes his name from his employment, just as in Fletcher's Piscatory Eclogues, so often misunderstood, the fisher for souls does. 8. Visions of the World's Vanity. We now come to a group of poems distinctly written in rivalry of those which Spenser in his earliest time had trans- lated. They may be arranged thus, in parallel columns : Petrarch. Visions of World's Vanity. Ruins of Time. Ruins of Rome. Muiopotmos. Visions of Virgil's Gnat. The Visions of the World's Vanity were published in the Complaints, 1591, without dedication. They should be read with careful comparison with the earlier Visions. They 83 GUIDE TO SPENSER. are written in the second form of sonnet; date probably circa 1589. 9. Ruins of Time ( World's Rums}. Written 'since my coming into England/ 1589-90, in memory of Sir Philip Sidney and his noble race, dedicated to Lady Mary, Countess of Pembroke, his sister, and pub- lished in the Complaints, 1591. Sidney in it is called Phili- sides. The metre is Chaucerian, or rhyme-royal ; but in the vision part of it the stanzas are arranged in pairs, the first line of the second taking up the rhyme of the last line of the first, so as to make a sort of bastard sonnet, of formula ababbcccdcddee. 10. Muiopotmos (Death of the Butterfly}. Published in the Complaints, 1591, but dated 1590; dedi- cated to Lady Carey. Perhaps it allegorises some event of recent occurrence. The metre is ottava rima, the same as Virgins Gnat. 1 1. Tears of the Muses. The last of the poems published in the Complaints, 1591 ; dedicated to Lady Strange. The metre is six-line heroic that is, six-line stanzas of formula ababcc, each line consist- ing of 5 ^- . The most important critical point in it is the identification of Willy, most absurdly supposed by some critics to be Shakespeare. There is no doubt that Malone was right in interpreting him as Lyly. No other writer 'for the comic stage } had attained eminence in 1590, and Lyly left off writing in 1589. That ' dead of late ' means this, and not actual decease, is clear from the subsequent words : ' Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell ; ' and in fact these words prove Lyly to be the person meant, beyond dispute. For at the end of Lyly's Euphues we are told that ' Euphues is musing in the bottom of the mountain Silixsedra ;' and this is applied to the retirement of Lyly from his dramatic work in the title to Greene's Menaphon, 1589, 1 Camilla's alarm to slumbering Euphues in his melancholy CELL at Silexedra;' and again in the title to Lodge's Rosa- lynd, 1590, 'Euphues' golden legacy found after his DEATH in his CELL at Silexedra.' Putting these passages together, there can be no doubt of Spenser's meaning, nor of the date of the poem, 1590-1. GUIDE TO SPENSER. 89 12. Daphnaida. Whether this poem should precede or follow Astrophel is disputed. In my opinion it comes first. I take the date in the dedication (to Helena, Marquesse of Northampton) to mean ist January 1591, not 1592, as I think Spenser made January, and not Easter, the beginning of his year (see the argument to the Shepherd's Calendar, by E. Kirke). The poem is an elegy on the death of Douglas Howard, daughter of Henry, Lord Howard, wife of Arthur Gorges (Alcyon). The metre is a modification of the Chaucerian stanza, with rhyme formula ababcbc. 13. Astrophel. Published in 1595, along with other elegies on the death of Sir Philip^ Sidney, by Mary of Pembroke,. Ludowick Bi*ysktt, Matthe'w Roydon, and others. Probably written in 1591, just after Spenser's return to Ireland certainly after the Ruins of Time (see the dedication to that poem). Astro- phil means lover of the Star, Stella (Lady Rich). The poem is dedicated to the Countess of Essex. The metre is the same as that of the Tears of the Muses. Mary Sidney is in this pastoral elegy called Clorinda ; but this name seems to be of her own selection, not Spenser's. 14. Colin Clout's Come Home Again. Published in 1595, but dated in dedication (to Sir W. Raleigh) 27th December 1591. This has been most gratui- tously assumed to be a misprint. At the same time we must admit that in this and the other instances of Spenser's pubr lishing poems some years after they were written he touched them up, and added to them at the time of publication (see, for instance, the final sonnet in the Visions of Petrarch, noticed above). The metre is elegiac that is, four-line stanzas, of formula abab, each line being 5 ^ . The chief critical question connected with this interesting poem is the identification of the poets adumbrated under pastoral names; I give therefore, as in the case of the Shepherd* s Calendar, tables that will aid in this investigation, followed by a resiime of the arguments of Todd, M alone, and myself, to which I subjoin, as being a convenient place for it, a brief notice of the ladies alluded to in Spenser's dedications, etc. : 9 o GUIDE TO SPENSER. CJ rt rt cj rt cj rt & 8*1111 | U U o u u : : 'r- 3 in in in in m . I cl T5 T3 T3 "T3 T3 ""o "^ C * o a a C ^^ ' rt 1 a, a, a, 0,'a, 2 2 Ai 8 PH C/2 CA3 Ifl C/2 C/3 *^ *^ rt P ^ U ^- . rt c O . ^-T ^ P ^^ P i? i *3 **i ^6 CJ | ^Ts^-l, j-T OJ c o 1 t/2 r*^ O ^ 44 *^ Q-> ^rt^ ^CfS r^ r 2 C/^j-nCJ f3 ^ _M ^^ ^ _ >^ ~ U M > C "^ QJ j^ .-< cJ ^Q 53 .2J .is 5 - l Q- l :> Cr* c^fe (u.ir'o Sc S^o ^ ^3 og T3rt " cd I ~~] rt 15 'c S rt CJ OKHUJ~ - ij - - *4_ g s o . . 'S . c "^ ^ o }_ O Jz; ^ i P^ fe *o *o .. ++ ^ w Hi l^lf* -gag*or CJ A 52 jj w irf yj-ff^i ts'H w M gflw.J ml 'E-Sli* o> c; j> ,S PH S^C/3 rt g ci a; o "^ Countess o rinda in A sin er, daughters u o. 5t *^ * *+ rt ^ i "S K^, ^ s ef'T^ t/2 ^'""' c: rt'^ S "5^ cf^ ^ S^ 1 c ^-~ S I l^l^lll lo&SSlsJ 92 GUIDE TO SPENSER. IDENTIFICATION OF THE POETS MENTIONED IN ' COLIN CLOUT'S COME HOME AGAIN/ CHIEFLY FROM MALONE. 1. HARPALUS. Thomas Churchyard, then seventy years old, was author of many of the miscellaneous verses ap- pended to Surrey's Poems. Among these is one called Harpalus* Complaint. He had been long in the queen's service, and was pensioned by her. Malone. Barnaby Googe was a pensioner of the queen, and was aged. Todd. 2. CORYDON. Abraham Fraunce was author of the La- mentation of Cory don for the Love of Alexis. Malone. 3. ALCYON. Arthur Gorges. The name is formed from that of Alcyone, the faithful wife of Ceyx. See Chaucer; also Spenser's Daphnaida. 4. PALIN. An abbreviation of Palinode, one of the inter- locutors in George Peele's Eulogy on Essex:. Peele had introduced Spenser in his Arraignment of Paris as dead for love, and Hobbinol, Diggon, and Thenot as singing a dirge over him. Malone. Thomas Chaloner is ranked with Spenser by Puttenham, and highly by Meres, for pastoral poetry. Todd. 5. ALCON. The name of a character in the Looking-glass for London, by Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene. Lodge had written many short love-poems. He had written verses in praise of Spenser, and he did take his advice in producing 4 matter of more skill afterwards.' Malone. Thomas Watson had written many madrigals, etc. Todd. 6. PALEMON. Arthur Golding translated Ovid's Meta- morphoses. In book iv is the story of the change of Melicerta into the sea-god Palemon. Golding was sixty years old, a very voluminous writer and translator; moral, and heavy, and ill-paid. Malone. Thomas Churchyard was a laborious writer, who died poor. Todd. In Churchyard's Cherishing, 1596, he says the court is ' The platform where all poets thrive, Save one, whose voice is hoarse, they say. ' This seems decisive. BoswelL 7. WILLIAM ALABASTER. 8. SAMUEL DANIEL. 9. SHEPHERD OF THE OCEAN. Sir Walter Raleigh. 10. AMYNTAS Ferdinand, Earl of Derby. GUIDE TO SPENSER. 93 ii. AETION. The following is mostly taken from a letter of mine to the Athenccum : ' To the subjoined letter on Action I have only to add that Marcus Antoninus uses atriov in the sense in which the Elizabethans used I5ta namely, that of " form without matter ; exemplar." ' Is AETION SHAKESPEARE ? 'The passage in Spenser's Colin Clout's Come Home Again " And there though last not least is Aetion ; A gentler shepherd may nowhere be found ; Whose Muse full of high thought's invention Doth like himself heroically sound," was supposed to allude to Shakespeare by Malone, on the grounds (i) That Shakespeare was called gentle; (2) That his muse was full of high thought's invention ; (3) That the name Shake-spear sounds heroically. Mr Hales has added a fourth argument : "The name was adopted for its own intrinsic significance, as Spenser in- terpreted it. He has in his mind the Greek der6s ; and, seeing in the rising Shakespeare a poet whose imagination was to soar aloft, he styled him The Eaglet." To this another argument may be added : the falcon in Shakespeare's arms might be alluded to as the eaglet, for eagles were ranked as a species of the genus falcon or hawk in Shakespeare's time. Thus in the translation of Forney's Universe in Epitome, by A. Lovell, we find eagle, falcon, and marlin grouped together under the head of Birds for Hawking; and in Ryder's Latin Dictionary, eagle, falcon, and merlin expressly called hawks ; and under Ealco, hawk and falcon are given as synonymous. On the other hand, Todd, and after him Mr Minto, have asserted that Aetion is Drayton. In support of his claim it has been urged that Drayton's assumed poetical name, Rowland, sounds more heroically than Shakespeare ; and that Lodge, in 1596, a year after Colin Clout was published, mentions Drayton, but not Shakespeare, which would be strange if Spenser had already mentioned Shake- speare but not Drayton. To this I add, that in Drayton's Sonnets, published in 1594, he calls one An Allusion to the Eaglet. It begins : " When like an eaglet I first found my love." As these pastoral names were often taken from the writings of the poet alluded to, Aetion may easily have originated from this sonnet. Again, there is no reason why in 1595 Drayton should not have written and circulated in MS. one or more of England's Heroicall Epistles, published in 1598, which would account for "his heroically sounding muse. " But all this depends on the assumption that Colin Clout was written in 1594-5. If, as Professor Morley thinks (and I agree with him), the main part of it was written in 1591, and this verse was part of that early portion, then we have a third claimar', 94 GUIDE TO SPENSER. Marlow; for his name was written Marlen or Marlin oftener than Marlow. He is called Marlin in Beard's Theatre of God^s Judg- ments, 15975 ne was entered at college under this same name in 1580; he took his degree as Marlyn in 1583; and is mentioned as Marly n as late as Latham's Falconry, 1618. By the way, the mention of this book reminds me that Lady Juliana Beraers expressly calls the eagle a kind of hawk. Now that Marlyn and Eaglet were considered as synonymous, there is proof in an allusion in Petow's Hero and Leander (a continuation of Marlow's). He says of Marlow : " Oh had that king of poets breathed longer, Then had fair beauty's forts been much more stronger; His golden pen had closed her so about No bastard eaglet's quill the world throughout Had been of force to mar what he had made." Here Marlyn the true eaglet is distinctly contrasted with the false one ; so that whether Action is Marlow or not, Marlin is certainly an eaglet. That he was a " gentle shepherd" is shown in the quotation by Dyce from the New Metamorphosis, by J. M., 1660, where he is called "kind Kit Marlow." That Marlin, recalling the great Arthurian enchanter, " sounds heroically" is clear enough, and we know how his verse was estimated as far as his plays are concerned by the allusions to his "sounding lines." It may be said that Spenser must have cut out this notice on publishing in 1595, because Marlow was dead : but we do not always do all we ought ; and Spenser may have remembered to alter his verses on Ferdinand, Lord Derby, the poet's patron, and forgotten to do so for the humbler Marlow. I have, I think, fairly stated above the views that can be held on Mr Hales's hypothesis, that Action means eaglet, and shown that it does not follow that Action must mean Shakespeare. I am bound now to give my own view. I believe that Action is not derived from der6s, but from curios, as M alone suggested in a note. For the line " And there, though last, not least is Action," requires us to read ytion* in three syllables, and not Action in four. I know some scansionists may deny this ; but no poet will. And again, who has ever seen the word Action anywhere else in English literature? Is the obscure Greek painter mentioned in English except in classical dictionaries? Or has any author used it for "eaglet?" <^Etion, on the other hand, was so common a word in Elizabethan Latin, that it is given in the Latin dictionaries for schoolboys. In Ryder's Dictionary I find " ^Etion CLLTLOV et setia sctiorum, causa principiumet origo an original!, beginning, or cause. " It is much more likely, then, that Malone's derivation is right, than that the ingenious conjecture made by Mr Hales is. But what can * Mr Hales says that Spenser's system does not admit of Ae (thus printed) being sounded J. I open the Globe edition at random, and find Aegoria, book ii, canto x, stanza 42. GUIDE TO SPENSER. 95 mean as a poet's name ? Is any work of Shakespeare or Dray ton called amo*'? I think there is. Dray ton's pastoral name for his mistress is Idea, idta ; Idea est eorum qua natura fiunt exemplar ceternum. So Dray ton calls his mistress the example or pattern from whom all other women derive their excellence by participating in hers. As Cooper's Thesaurus has it, under Idea, " Pattern of all other sort or kind, as of one seal proceedeth many prints." But Drayton was not content with a mere allusion. Of the three works he had published before 1595, one was called Idea, and another Ideas Mirrour. What, then, more natural than to indicate Drayton by ^Etion, the synonym for Idea? I conclude that the interpretation of Todd and the derivation of Malone are the correct ones, and that the only point they did not see was that ^Etion meant "The original, the exemplar, the first, though here the last men- tioned ; the formal cause." So Giles Fletcher uses.Zi^ldp^C'^7^'^ Victory and Triumph, st. xxxix : f^ OF THE " In midst of this city celestial, \** Where the eternal temple should have rase, ^ . , OF Lightened th' Idea beatifical, ^O End and beginning of each thing that grows" * Carew uses the word "cause " just in the same way : " Ask me no more where Jove bestows, When June is past, the fading rose, For in your beauty's orient deep These flowers, as in their causes, sleep." And so Drummond (sonnet 9) : " Elsewhere saw th' Idea of that face." And Glapthorne (vol. ii, p. 36) : " Th' Idea of all perfection." The word Idea in this sense was becoming fashionable in 1590 as is clear from several passages in Lodge's Rosalynd. ' If any one objects to my supposition that the Heroicall Epistles were in circulation as early as 1595, I would refer him to Dray ton's Address to the Reader " Seeing these Epistles are now to the world made public," etc., which distinctly implies that they had been written, and were known to have been written for some time ; and again, in the Catalogue of the Heroical Loves ^Q says : " Their several loves since I before have shown, Now give me leave at last to sing my own." This implies that the Heroicall Epistles were written before his love- poems to Idea, for in no other poems does he * ' sing his own loves. * feut Idea and Ideas Mirrour were published in 1593 and 1594.' 96 GUIDE TO SPENSKR. ON SOME OF THE LADIES ALLUDED TO IN ' SPENSER.' Sir John Spenser of Althorpe, in Northamptonshire, had five sons and six daughters. Three of the latter are men- tioned by Spenser, namely : 1. ELIZABETH, the second daughter, married Sir George Carey (Carew), who became Lord Hunsdon at his father's death, 1596. 2. ANNE, the fifth daughter, married (a.} Sir William Stanley, Lord Mounteagle ; (b.) Henry, Lord Compton, who died 1589; (c.) Robert Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset. 3. ALICE, the sixth daughter, who married (a.) Ferdinando, Lord Strange, who became Earl of Derby at his father's death in 1593. He died 1 6th April 1594, leaving three daughters. (b.) Sir Thomas Egerton, afterwards Baron of Ellesmere and Viscount Brackley. Henry, Lord Howard, Viscount Byndon, had a daughter, Douglas Howard, who married Arthur Gorges, afterwards knighted. The Lady Helena, Marchioness of Northampton, was aunt to Douglas. Francis, Earl of Bedford, had daughters : 1. ANNE, who married the Earl of Warwick. She was his third wife. He died February 1589-90. She did not marry again. 2. MARGARET, who married the Earl of Cumberland. Sir Francis Walsingham had a daughter, Francis, who married (a.} Sir Philip Sidney, (.) the Earl of Essex, (c.) Richard de Burgh, the great Earl of Clanricarde. Sir Henry Sidney had children : 1. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 2. MARY, who married the Earl of Pembroke. 1 5. Amoretti nnd Epithalamion. Published in 1595. * Written not long since,' that is, in 1592-4. Dedicated by the publisher to Sir Robert Needham, who brought it over (probably with the other poems pub- lished in the same year) from Ireland. The sonnets are all written in the second sonnet metre of Spenser, and contain the story of his wooing Elizabeth, ' the country lass' in Ireland, after he had given up all thought of his first love, Rosalinde, ' the widow's daughter of the glen/ The Epithalamion was written upon his own marriage. The metre is one of complex long stanzas of varying number of lines, and varying rhyme GUIDE TO SPENSER. 97 formulas, the last two lines of each stanza forming a refrain. Lines 6, n, are 3 ~ ; 16, 17, are 4^- ; the rest are 5 ^ . The whole is closed by an envoy; one stanza a third modification of the Chaucerian : formula, ababacc. Between the sonnets and Epithalamion are placed four epi- grams of uncertain date, mere trifles. 1 6. Four Hymns. Published, and no doubt written, in 1596. The dedication to Lady Margaret of Cumberland and Lady Mary of War- wick is dated Greenwich, ist September 1596. The first two hymns have already been noticed. The last two are written in the same metre (Chaucerian), so as to correspond with the first. These heavenly hymns are as inferior to the earthly as continuations usually are. 17. Prothalamion. Published and written in 1596, in honour of the marriages of Elizabeth and Katherine, daughters of the Earl of Somer- set : a fine poem, but not comparable to the unequalled Epithalamion. The stanza is of formula abbaa \ ' > d < ' > - ddeefcffgg; lines 5, 10, 15, 16, being 3 ^ , the rest 5 ^ . The last two lines in each stanza form a refrain. 1 8. Fairy Queen. Books i-iii were published in 1590. We learn from Har- vey's letters that Spenser began this poem as early as 1580. He probably spent most of his leisure time on it from 1579 to 1589. In these ten years he wrote three books, and no doubt planned and wrote portions of the rest. It was pub- lished with verses to the author prefixed, by W. Raleigh (W. R., Ignoto), G. Harvey (Hobynoll), R. Stanyhurst (?) (R. S.), and others ; also with a series of sonnets to various noblemen, etc., a list of whom is given below. The metre is Spenserian, the rhyme formula being is. an_Alexan^rinp. r >vih j)r without casura^6 ^ ; the .jLJines^are 5__^mr- I n J 59^ books iv-vi were published. These were written from 1590 to 1595, in about half the time of the first three ; but Spenser had then resigned his clerk- ships, and had more leisure. Moreover, these latter books are far inferior to the earlier ones. There is no more of the 98 GUIDE TO SPENSER," original design completed, except cantos 6, 7, of book vii. There were to have been twelve books. It forms no part of my plan to discuss the nature of the allegory of this poem. In spite of the many beauties in special passages, I believe that, aesthetically, this, like all lengthy allegories, is a failure, and that it is in virtue of its many excellences in detail, and in spite of its general plan, that it survives. I may point out, however, that it is mostly in the earlier books that t h^ per SQnagca are abstract qualities r and in the later books that they veil historical individualities. I subjoin a list of a few that ' can be tolerably well identified, merely as examples, not as in ' any way complete : ALLEGORICAL PERSONAGES. 'J*f George, . . . IJoliness. ' Sans/ay, . . . Unbelief. Una, .... TruthJEnglish Church). -~i?[rcnimagO) . . . Hypocrisy. -' Duessa, . . . Deceit (Romish Church). Orpoelio. . . . Esi4e. Abissa^. . . . Ignorance. Corecca, . . . Superstition. .. i Guy on, . . . TemperanceT Mordant. . . ) -r- * i i lAmasia, . . . j Excess itf drink. ^-Medina, . . . Enough. . Perissa, . . . Too much. Elissa, .... Too little. ' Pyrochles, . . . Fiery passion. ' Cymochles, . . . Impetuous passion, Britomart, . . . Chastity. * Malecasta, . . . Incontinence. r Phtzdria, . . . Immodest mirth. Malbecco, . . . Jealo'usy. Blatant Beast, , . ' Slander. Crudor, . . . Discourtesy. Etc. Etc. HISTORICAL PERSONAGES. - Gloriana, . . . Elizabeth as queen. Belphcebe, . . . Elizabeth as woman. jBraggadochio, . . Duke of Anjou. Timias, . . .Sir W. Raleigh. .Marine/, . . . Howard. Blandamour, . . Northumberland. Artegal, . . . Arthur, Lord Grey. Bourbon, . . . Henry IV. GUIDE TO SPENSER. 99 Fleur de Us, . France. Beige, .... Netherlands. Geryoneo, Spain. Geryoneo 's Seneschal, Duke of Alva. Jerna, .... Ireland. Gergis, .... Walsingham. Arthur, , Leicester (?). Pollente, Charles IX. Guizor, .... Duke of Guise. Calidor, Sir P. Sidney. Paridel, Westmoreland. Palmer, Df Whitgift. Babe with bloody hand, . O'Neil. Satyrane, . . Sir John Perrot. Amoretta, r Elizabeth Throckmorton. Serena, . . , Florimel, . . . ] [ Mary, Queen of Scots. Busirdne, L. Burleigh. Trompart, Simier. Belgarde, Belvoir Castle. Mercilla, Q. Elizabeth. Etc. Etc. The sonnets prefixed to the Fairy Queen are addressed to : 1. Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord High Chancellor. 2. Lord Burleigh, Lord High Treasurer. 3. Earl of Oxenford, Lord High Chamberlain. 4. Earl of Northumberland. 5. Earl of Cumberland. 6. Earl of Essex, Great Master of the Horse. 7. Earl of Ormond and Ossory. 8. Lord Charles Howard, Lord High Admiral. 9. Lord of Hunsdon, High Chamberlain. 10. Lord Grey of Wilton. 11. Lord of Buckhurst, of the Privy Council. 12. Sir Francis Walsingham, Principal Secretary to her Majesty. 13. Sir John Norris, Lord President of Mounster. 14. Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Garden of the Stanneryes, and Lieutenant of Cornwall. 15. Countess of Pembroke. 1 6. Lady Carew. 17. Ladies in the Court. CHAPTER III. ON POETS CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH SPENSER AND SHAKESPEARE. IT is extremely desirable for the student that he should be able to refer to some tolerably complete catalogue of the poetical literature during the Elizabethan age. At present the only one known to me at all suiting his purpose is that contained in Nathan Drake's Shakespeare and his Times (2 vols. quarto), an expensive work difficult of access, and containing, with some very valuable matters, much that has been superseded. At the suggestion of Mr Samuel Neil of Edinburgh (a Shakespearian critic and editor, who has, by his Life of Shakespeare, and issues of his plays, done great service to the investigation of critical questions connected with seventeenth-century literature) this chapter is inserted. It is based on Drake's book, with such additions and cor- rections as I am able to give for the lesser poets, of whose works merely a catalogue is given. Of the greater ones who are worth study in their entirety, and are (thanks to Mr Grosart's and other reprints) accessible to students, I give here merely a list, hoping hereafter to publish a full account of them containing a large amount of new facts and critical conclusions, gathered in some years of study of the finest, although too often neglected, literary epoch in the world's history. I begin, then, with the catalogue of the minor men, A.D. 1565-1616, among whom (with the exception of Fulke Greville (Lord Brooke), Richard Barnefield, Barnaby Googe, Alex- ander Montgomery, and Abraham Fraunce) I know of none worth study for their intrinsic merit. They are, however, valuable for the light they often shed on their greater con- temporaries in minor points. Names with an * are not given by Drake. A few names, for reasons not worth dwell- ing on, but sufficiently manifest, are repeated from this, table in pp. 108, 109. GUIDE TO SPENSER. flame of Poet. Aclieley, Thomas, Alabaster, William,* . Alexander, William, Earl of Stirling,* . Anderson, James, Andrewe, Thomas, Annerson, James, Arthington, Henry, . Aske, James, Avale, Lemeke, . Balnevis, Henry, Barclay, Jo.,* Barnefield, Richard, . Works. Novel from Bandello, On the Saviour (Malone, Shake- j speare, vol. ii), Date of Publica- tion. , 1576 c. 1590 Aurora, . 1604 Barnes, Barnaby, > Bastard, Thomas, Batman, Stephen, Beverley, Peter, . Bieston, Roger, . Blenner Hasset, Thomas, Bourcher, Arthur, Bourman, Nicholas, . Bradshaw, Thomas, . Brice, Thomas, . Broughton, Rowland, . Brooke, Thomas, Bryskett, Ludowick, . Buc, Sir George, Campion, Thomas,* . Carew, Richard, Carpenter, John, Chaloner, Sir Thomas,* Chester, Robert, Chettle, Henry, . . j > ,, ... Chute, Anthony, Clapham, Henoch, Second Coming of Christ, . . 1595 Feminine Machiavel, . . . 1604 Carolana, . . . . .1614 Holy Profession, . . . . 1607 Elizabeths, Triumphans (blank ) , -oo verse), \ * Dirge of Edmund Boner, . . 1569 Confession of Faith, . . . 1584 Poematum, Libri duo, . . 1615 Cynthia; Sonnets; Cassandra, . 1594 Affectionate Shepherd, . . 1595 Lady Pecunia, .... 1598 Parthenophil and Parthenope, . 1593 Spiritual Sonnets, . . . 1595 Chrestoleros (epigrams), . . 1595 Travelled Pilgrim, . . .1569 Ariodante and Genevra (Ariosto), 1600 Bait and Snare of Fortune, . n. d. Mirror for Magistrates, part 2, . 1578 Fable of yEsop, . . . .1566 Friendly Well-wishing, . . 1581 Shepherd's Star, . . .1591 Court of Venus ; Songs; Sonnets, 1567 Sir W. Pawlett 1572 Certain verses in prison, . . 1570 Mourning Muses on Sir P. Sidney, 1587 Daphnis Polystefanos, . . 1605 Masques (see Nicholl's Progresses). Godfrey of Bulloigne (Tasso, i-v), 1594 Sorrowful Song, , 1586 Poemata, 1579 Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Com- 1 plaint (from Torquato Caeli- > 1601 ano) ; King Arthur, . . \ Pope's Lamentation for Don John of Austria, . Forest of Fancy, . . Doleful Ditty of Lord Darnley, . 1579 Shore's Wife, . . . .1593 Procris and Cephalus, . . . 1593 Bible History, . 1596 GUIDE TO SPENSER. Name of Poet. Copley, Anthony, Cottesford, Thomas, Cotton, Roger, . Culrose, Elizabeth, Cutwode, T., Davidstone, John, Davies, John, Davison, Francis and Walter, Delone, Thomas, Derricke, John, . Dowrick, Ann, . iDrant, Thomas, . Edwardes, C., . ,Elderton, William, Elviden, Edinond, Evans, Lewes, . Evans, William, . Fenner, Dudley, . Fennor, William, Ferrers, George, . Fetherstone, Christopher, Fleming, Abraham, Fletcher, Robert, Fraunce, Abraham, . ] Date of Works. Publica- tion. , Love's Owl, .... 1595 Fig for Fortune, . *596 Prayer to Daniel, . . .1570 Armor of Proof, .... 1596 Spiritual Song, . . . . 1596 Ane Godly Dream, . . . 1603 Caltha Poetarum (Bumble Bee), . 1599 Commendation of Uprightness, . 1573 Two Worthy Christians, . . 1595 Mirum in Modum, . . . 1602 Microcosmos, .... 1603 Humours Heaven on Earth, . 1605 Scourge of Folly, . . . 1611 Muse's Sacrifice,. . . . 1612 ( Select Second Husband for Sir T. ) /- /- I Overbury's Wife, . . . } I( Wit's Pilgrimage, . . . 16 Sonnets; Odes; Elegies; Madri- ) ^ gals ; Epigrams, . . . j Strange Histories, . . . 1612 Image of Ireland, . . . 1581 French History, . . . .1589 Medicin able Moral(Horace's Satires), 1566 Horace's Art of Poetry, . . 1567 Greg. Nazianzen (epigrams, etc.), 1568 Mansion of Mirth, . . . 1581 Elderton's Solace, . . . 1598 Ballads, ..... 1590 Closet of Counsels (translation), . 1569 Pisistratus and Catanea, . . n. d. Horace, Satires i, ii, . Thamesiades (Chastity's Triumph), Song of Songs, .... Fennor 's Description, . Mirror for Magistrates (part), Lamentations of Jeremiah, . Virgil's Bucolics, Virgil's Georgics (Rurals), . Epitaph on Queen Elizabeth, Lamentations of Amintas for Phillis (translation), Arcadian Rhetorick, . Countess of Pembroke's Emanuel, ,, Ivy Church (Phillis and Amyntas, from Tasso), .... 1602 1587 1616 1578 1587 1575 1589 1603 | 1588 ' 1588 i 1591 GUIDE TO SPENSER. 103 Name of Poet. Fraimce, Abraham, j> Freeman, Thomas, Fulwel, Ulpian, . Gale, Dunstan, . Gamage, William, Garter, Barnard, Gifford, Humfrey, Golding, Arthur, Googe, Barnaby, Gordon, Patrick, Gorges, Sir Arthur, Gosson, Stephen, Grange, John, Greene, Thomas, Greepe, Thomas, Greville, Sir Fulke, , Griffin, B., Griffith, William, Grove, Matthew, Grimeston, Elizabeth, Hake, Edward, . Hall, Arthur, Hall, John, Harbert, Sir William, Harbert, William, Harvey, Gabriel, Hawes, Edward, Heath, John, ., Herbert, Mary, . Hey wood, Jasper, Works. ( Countess of Pembroke's Ivy Church ) ( part 3, Amintas Dale, . . Heliodoms's Ethiopics, Rub and a Great Cast, Flower of Fame (Henry VIII), . Pyramus and Thisbe, . Linsie Woolsie (epigrams), . Two English Lovers, . Posy of Gillyflowers, . Ovid's Metamorphoses, Zodiac of Life (translation from Marcellus Pallingenius Stel- latus), Popish Kingdom (from Thomas Naogeorgus), Overthrow of Gowt (from Chr. Balista), .... History of Bruce, ( Olympian Catastrophe (on Prince { Henry), .... Lucan's Pharsalia, Speculum Humanum, . His Garden, .... Poet's Vision and Prince's Glory, On Sir Francis Drake, JCcelica; Human Learning; Fame and Honour; Wars; Remains; Poems in England's Helicon, Fidessa (sonnets), Epitaph on Sir H. Sidney, . Pelopsand Hippodamia, etc., etc., Miscellanea; Memoratives, . Commemoration of Elizabeth, Touchstone for the Time, . Gold's Kingdom, i Homer's Iliads, i-x (from French of Hugues Salel), Court of Virtue, .... Baripenthes (Sir Philip Sidney), . Prophecy of Cadwallader, . Four Letters and Sonnets, . Percy's and Catesby's Prosopopeia, Epigrams, ..... i Dialogue between Two Shepherds ) in Praise of Astrea, . . . ) Poems and Devises, . Date of Publica- tion. 1592 iS9i 1614 1575 1597 1613 1565 1580 1567 1565 1570 1577 l6l5 1612 1614 1580 1577 1603 1587, 1600-* 1620 . 1596 1591 1587 1604 I575 jl 1574 1604 1581* 1565' 1586 1604 1592 1606 1610 1602 1576 104 GUIDE TO SPENSER. Name of Poet. Hey wood, Thomas, Higgins, John, . Holland, Robert, Howell, Thomas, Hubbard, William, Hudson, Thomas, Hume, Alexander, Hunnis, William, Jackson, Richard, Jeney, Thomas, . Jenynges, Edward, Johnson, Richard, Kelly, Edmund, . Kempe, William, Kendall, Timothy, Knell, Thomas, . Kyffin, Maurice, Leighton, Sir William, Lever, Christopher, Linche, Richard, Lisle, William, . Lloyd, Lodowick, Lok, Henry, Lovell, Thomas, Marbeck, John, . Markham, Gervase, Works. Date of Publica- tion. 1609 1575 1594 1568 1581 1569 1584 Troia Britannica, Mirror for Magistrates, part I, History of our Lord, . , Arbor of Amitie, Howell's Devises, , Ceyx and Alcione, Judith (from Du Bartas), Hymns, 1599 Hive Full of Honey (Genesis), . 1578 Handfull of Honeysuckles, . . 1578 Seven Sobs, etc., . 1585 Battle of Flodden, . . .1564 Troubles in France (from Ronsard), 1568 Alfagus and Archelaus (Friendship), 1 5 74 Nine Worthies of London, . ; J 592 Anglorum Lachrymae(on Elizabeth), 1603 1591 1587 1577 1569 1570 1587 1613 1607 1599 1596 Maxwell, James, Middleton, Christopher, On Alchemy, etc., Invective against Ballard and Babington, .... Epigrams and Trifles, . Epitaph on Bonner, Answer to Papistical Bill, etc., . Blessedness of Britain, Tears or Lamentations, etc., Queen Elizabeth's Tears, Fountain of Ancient Fiction, Babylon (from Du Bartas), . Colonies of Bartas (notes by S. G. S.), 1597 Pilgrimage of Queens, . . 1573 Hilaria (for 5th Aug.), . . 1607 Ecclesiastes ; Christian Passions, . 1597 Custom and Verity (on dancing, etc.), 1581 King David, . . . .1579 Song of King Solomon, . . 1595 Tragedy of Sir Richard Grenvill, 1595 Virtue's Tears for Henri III and ) Walter Devoreux (from Mdme. G. P. Maulette), . Tears of the Beloved (St John on Christ's Death), . Mary Magdalen's Lamentations, . Ariosto's Satires, Noble Curtizan (Paulina, Mrs. to Card. Hypolito of Est), On Life and Death of Prince Henry, 1612 History of Heaven (on Stars), . 1596 '597 1600 i 1601 1608 1609 Name of Poet. GUIDE TO SPENSER. Works. Middleton, Christopher, j Middleton, Thomas, . Wisdom of Solomon, . Montgomery, Alexander, The Cherry and the Slae, Duke of io 5 Date of Publica- tion. Muncaster, Richard, Munday, Anthony, Murray, David, . Newton, Thomas, Nicholson, Samuel, Nixon, Antony, . Norden, John, . Overbury, Sir Thomas, Parkes, William, Parrot, Henry, . Partridge, John, . " Payne, Christopher, . Peacham, Henry, Peele, George, . Peend, Thomas de la, Percy, William, . Petowe, Henry, . 1597 1595 1603 Noenia Consolans, Mirror of Mutability (from Scrip- ) tures), j X 579 Pain of Pleasure, . . . 1580 Fountain of Fame, . . . 1580 ! Sweet Sobs and Amorous Com- ) plaints, . \ '5S3 Munday's Strangest Adventure, . 1601 Death of Sophonisba; Ccelia (Son- ) A nets), j IC A tropoion Delion (Death of Delia), 1 603 ( Pleasant New History (Rosa, Rosa- ' ( lynde, and Rosemary), Acolastus his Afterwit, Christian Navy, . Storehouse of Varieties, Pensive Soul's Delight, Labyrinth of Man's Life, A Wife : now the Widow of Sir ) T. O. (Choice of a Wife), . j Curtain Drawer of the World, Mouse-trap (Epigrams), More the Merrier (Epigrams), Epigrams, 5 Laquei Ridiculosi (Springes for ) \ Woodcocks), Lady Pandavola, Knight Plasidas, . Astianax and Polixona Christmas Carols, Minerva Britanna, Farewell to Norris 1604 1600 1602 1601 1603 1614 1614 1612 1606 1608 1608 1613 ". ' 1566 . 1566 . 1566 1569 . 1612 Drake) ~ (with Tale of Troy), . . j I5 9 Polyhymnia, .... 1590 Honour of the Garter, . . 1593 Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, . 1565 John Lord Mandozze (from Spanish), 1565 Sonnets to Coelia, . . . 1594 Hero and Leander, part 2, . . 1598 Philochasander and Elanira, . 1599 Elizabetha quasi Vivans [JzV], . 1603 Whipping of Runaways, . . 1603 and lo6 GUIDE TO SPENSER. Name of Poet. Pett, Peter, Phillip, John, . Phiston, William, Plat, Hugh, Powell, Thomas, Preston, Thomas, Pricket, Robert, . Proctor, Thomas, Puttenham, George, Ramsey, Laurence, Rankins, William, Raynolds, John, . Rice, Richard, . Robinson, Richard, Rolland, John, . Rosse, J.,' . Rous, Francis, Rowland, Samuel, Sabie, Francis, . Saker, Aug., Sampson, Thomas, Sandford, James, Works. Time's Journey to Seek Truth, etc., Cleomenes and Sophonisba (sur- named Juliet), Commemoration of Lady Margaret Douglas, .... Lamentation for John Ivele, Wellspring of Witty Conceits, Flowers of Philosophy, etc., Passionate Poet, .... Gillyflower, etc., Soldier's Wish to King James, Pretty Pamphlets, Partheniades, .... Farewell to Earl of Leicester, Seven Satires, etc., Dolarny's Primrose, . Invective against Vices, Reward of Wickedness, Dial of Daily Contemplation, Court of Venus, .... Seven Sieges, .... Tears for Sir William Sackville, . Thule ; or, Virtue's History, Betraying of Christ, Guy, Earl of Warwick, Letting of Humour's Blood, Look to it, for I'll stab ye, . Democritus, .... Humour's Looking-glass, Hell Broke Loose, Doctor Merryman, J Martin Markal (Beadle of Bride- ) I well), \ ( Knave of Clubs ('Tis Merry when j ( Knaves Meet), . . . ( Knave of Hearts, Knaves of Spades and Diamonds, Melancholy Knight, . . . 'Tis Merry when Gossips Meet, . Pan his Pipe (hexameters), . Fisherman's Tale (Cassander), Flora's Fortune (Cassander, part 2), Labyrinth of Liberty, . Fortune's Fashion (Elizabeth Gray, ) Queen to Edward IV), . \ Poems Dedicated to Queen, Date of Publica- tion. 1599 1577 1578 1571 1584 1572 1601 1569 1603 1578 1579 1588 1596 1606 1581 1574 1578 1575 1578 1592 1598 1598 1600 1604 1607 1608 1609 1610 1611 1613 1615 1595 1595 1595 1579 1613 1576 GUIDE TO SPENSER. 107 Name of Poet. Scoloker, Antony, Scot, Gregory, . Scot, Thomas, . " Smith, Jud, Smith, William, . Soothern, John, . Stanyhurst, Richard, Storer, Thomas, . Stuart, James I, . Stubbs, Philip, . Tarlton, Richard, Taylor, John, Tofte, Robert, Treego, William, Tudor, Queen Elizabeth Turner, Richard, Twyne, Thomas, Phaer, Thomas, . Tye, Christopher, Underdo wn, Thomas, . Vallans, William, ! Vennard, Richard, Verstegan, Richard, . Warren, William, Webbe, William, Webster, William, Wedderburn, , Weever, John, . Song, Date of Publica- tion. 1604 1570 1602 1616 1575 1596 1584 1583 1599 1584 1582 1576 1577 1589 1613 1614 1597 1597 1598 1598 1610 1615 1577 1578 1607 . , I573 ( Nastagio and Traversari (from Italian), . . . . j '^ Ovid's Invective against Ibis, . 1569 Theseus and Ariadne, . . . 1566 Tale of Two Swans, . . . 1590 Miracle of Nature, . . . 1601 Odes (devotional), . . . 1601 .Nursery of Names, . ... 1581 Virgil's Eclogues, i, ii (hexameters), 1586 Curan of Danske and Argentill, . Godly Songs, . ^^rl- , EpigLns/.' S^&^U^ TJNIVE iTTT' Works. Daiphantus ; or Passions of Love, Brief Treatise against Rome, Four Paradoxes (of Art, Law, War, Service), Phylomythie, Solomon's So Chloris, Pandora (Diana), Virgil's yEneid, i-iv, etc., . Aspiring, Triumph, Death of Wol- i sey (3 parts), . . . I Essays of a Prentise, . Poetical Exercises, View of Vanity, and Alarum to j England, . . . . j Toys, Tragical Treatises, Tarlton's Repentance, Heaven's Blessing, etc. (On Mar- j riage of Princess Elizabeth), . j Nipping of Abuses, Two Tales (from Ariosto), . Laura (3 parts), .... Orlando Inamorato, i-iii (transla- j tion), j Alba (Melancholy Lover), . Honour's Academy (Julietta), Fruits of Jealousy (Two English \ Lovers), . . . . | Dainty Nosegay, . . . Two Little Anthems, . Nosce te (Humors), Virgil's yEneid, io8 GUIDE TO SPENSER. Name of Poet. Weever, John, . Wenman, Thomas, Wharton, John, . Whetstone, George, Whitney, Geoffrey, I* Wilkinson, Edward, Willet, Andrew,. Willymot, William, Wyrley, William, > Yates, James, Yong, Bartholomew, Zouche, Richard, Works. Mirror of Martyrs (Sir John Old- castle), .... Mary, Queen of Scots, Wharton's Dream, . . . Rock of Regard, Virtues of Francis Lord Russell, . Emblems, ..... Fables or Epigrams, . Isaac's Inheritance due to James VI of Scotland, . Sacrorum Emblematum Centura, . Prince's Looking-glass, Lord Chandos, .... Capitall de Buz, .... Castle of Courtesy, Diana of George of Montemayer (from Spanish ; partly prose), The Dove (Passages of Cosmo- graphy), Date of Publica- tion. | 1601 1601 1578 1576 1585 1586 1586 | 1603 1603 1592 1592 1582 | 1598 j 1613 The titles of the poems are abbreviated in this table, for convenience in printing. They will be found in fuller form in Drake, and unabbreviated in Hazlitt's Handbook. The above list is meant, not as a bibliographical account, but as a means of easy reference to the poets' names. I next give a list of the greater poets who wrote anything before 1616, with the dates of their lives and deaths, and a table showing the periods during which they were contem- poraneous. More than this cannot be given here ; nor would it be of any use to give mere catalogues of their works, without critical notes as to date, etc. This must be left for a future opportunity. The names with an * affixed are either added by me to Drake's list, or transferred by me from his list of minor poets to this one. Poet's Name. Beaumont, Sir John, Breton, Nicholas, Braithwaite, Richard Brooke, Arthur,* Browne, William, Chalkhill, John, Chapman, George, Churchyard, Thomas, Born. 1582 ?I554 1588 1590 9 1559 Died. 1628 June 22, 1624 Mar. 4, 1673 1628 ? 1634 April 4, 1604 GUIDE TO SPENSER. I0 9 Poet's Name. Born. Died. Constable, Henry, . ? 1563 ? Daniel, Samuel, 1562 Oct. 14, 1619 Davies, Sir John, 1570 . Dec. 7, 1626 Davors, John, . ? ? Donne, John, 1573 Mar. 1631 Drayton, Michael, 1563 - Dec. 23, 1631 Drummond, William, Dec 13, 1585 . Dec. 4, 1649 Dyer, Sir Edward,* . 9 ? Fairfax, Edward, .- ? 1572 ... c. 1632 Fitzgeffery, Charles, . .. c. 1574 . ... 1636-7 Fletcher, Giles,* sen., .. ?i55<5 . 1610 Fletcher, Giles, Jim., . .. 1588 . 1623 Fletcher, Phineas, .. 1585 1650 Gascoigne, George, . 1537 Oct. 7, 1577 Greene, Robert, .. ?is6i . 1592 Greville, Fulke, Lord Brook e,* .. 1564 1628 Hall, Joseph, . July I, 1574 . Sept. 8, 1656 Harington, Sir John, 1559 1612 Jonson, Benjamin, 1573 - 1637 Lodge, Thomas, ... ?i 5 56 . 1625 Marlow, Christopher, 1564 . 1593 Marston, John, . ... ?i57S ... ?i6u Niccols Richard, ... 1584 . 9 Raleigh, Sir Walter, . ... 1552 . !!! 1618 Sackville, Thomas, . 1527 . April 19, 1608 Shakespeare, William ... 1564 . 1616 Sidney, Sir Philip, Nov. 29, 1554 Oct. 17, 1586 Southwell, Robert, 1560 Feb. 21, 1595 Spenser, Edmund, ... 1552 . Jan. 1 6, 1598 Stirling, William Alexander Earl of, . | ... 1580 . Feb. 12, 1640 Sylvester, Joshua, ... 1563 - Sept. 28, 1618 Turberville, George, ... ?I53<> ... c. 1594 Tusser, Thomas, ... c. 1515 . ... c. 1580 Warner, William, ... c. 1558 . Mar. 9, 1608-9 Watson, Thomas, 1560 1592 Willobie, Henry, ... c. 1565 . ? Wither, George, 1588 . 1667 Wotton, Sir Henry, 1568 . Dec. 1639. GUIDE TO SPENSER. Poet. Born. Died. 155 156 157 Phaer, . Tusser, Churchyard, Sackville, Turberville, . Gascoigne, . Stanyhurst, . Raleigh, Spenser, Sidney, Greville, Lodge, Fletcher, Dr G., . Warner, Breton, Chapman, . Harrington, . Watson, Constable, . Greene, Southwell, . Daniel, Drayton, Sylvester, . Marlow, Shakespeare, Willobie, . Wotton, Davies, Sir John, Fairfax, Donne, Jonson, Hall, . Marston, Davison, Fitzgeffery, . Sandys, . Ancrum, Taylor, ? 1510 ? 1516 ? 1520 1527 ? *53 1537 ?i545 1552 1552 1554 1554 ?i556 1556 1558 1558 1559 1559 1560 1560 ?i56i 1562 1562 1563 1563 ^64 ^64 ?i565 1568 ?I 57 11572 1573 1573 J 574 ? 1575 1575 ? J 575 1577 1578 ?i58o 1580 1560 1580 1604 1608 ? 1594 1577 1618 1618 1599 1586 1628 1625 1610 1609 1624 1634 1612 1592 1612 1592 1592 1619 1627 1618 1593 1616 1608 1639 1626 ? 1632 1631 1637 1627 ?i6 34 1618 1637 1644 1652 1654 024680246802468 i 2 3 4 I 7 8 9 10 ii 12 T 3 J 4 \l 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 2 4 % 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 H 11 39 40 4i 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 5 1 52 53 _ Corbet, Beaumont, J., Fletcher, P., Niccols, Drummond, Fletcher, G., 1582 1582 1582 1584 1585 ? 1588 i6 3 5 1628 1650 after 1615 1649 Wither, Carew, Browne, . . King, . Herrick, . Quarles, , Herbert, ? 1588 ? 1590 159 i59i i59i *592 1593 1667 1639 1645 1669 1674 1644 1633 GUIDE TO SPENSER. Ill 9 10 14 15 16 17 18 19 23 24 26 29 3 3i 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 4i 42 43 44 47 48 49 50 Si 52 53 158 159 160 161 162 163 024680246802468024680246802468 112 GUIDE TO SPENSER. In addition to the works of individuals mentioned above, there are various composite works, on which the undergiven particulars will be found useful by the student. The Mirror for Magistrates was published (edited by W. Baldwin) in 1558 (ist edition); eight new legends were added in 1563 (2d edition); it was reprinted in 1571 (3d edition), 1575 (4th edition), 1578 (5th edition), with two new legends, and a second part of twelve new stories, added by Thomas Blenner- H asset. But the first issue was also distinguished by the title of the last part after 1575, in which year Higgins published his so-called first part (this name being assumed on account of its treating of themes historically earlier). A second edi- tion of Higgins's first part appeared in 1578. In 1587 the two works were united, including altogether 73 legends ; and finally, in 1610, Niccols further enlarged it to 90 legends, and added England's Eliza. The contributors to the original book were Sackville, Earl of Dorset, Richard Baldwyne, George Ferrers, Churchyard, Phayer, Skelton, Dolman, Seagers, and Cavyl. Of collections of shorter poems the following are note- worthy : 1. Songs and Sonnets (TotleVs Miscellany}. The dates of the editions are: (i) 5th June 1557 ; (2) with 39 new poems, 3ist July 1557; (3) 1559; (4) 1565; (5) 1567; (6) 1574, all printed by R. Tottel; (7) 1585, by J. Windet; (8) 1587, by R. Robinson. The contributors were: Earl of Surrey (40 poems), Sir Thomas Wyatt (96), Nicholas Grimald (40), Thomas Church- yard, Thomas Lord Vaux (2), Edward Somerset (i), John Heywood (i), and Sir Francis Brian. 130 poems are still unassigned. The total number is 310. 2. Paradise of Dainty Devises, collected by R. Edwards. Editions: (i) Printed by Henry Disle, 1576; (2) 1577; (3) with poem by G. Whetstone, 1578; (4) with eighteen new poems substituted for others, 1580; (5) 1585; (6) with seven new poems in place of four old ones, 1596; (7) 1600. The last two editions were printed for Ed. White. There is also an edition without date, by E. A[llde], for Ed. White. The contributors were: R. Edwards (14 poems), S. Bar- narde, Earl of Oxford (7), Lord Vaux (14), D. Sand (5), Jasper Heywood (8), F. Kinwelmarsh (10), M. Bew (5), R. Hill (7), A. Yloop [Pooly] (2), W. Hunnis (13), A. Bourcher (i), M. Candish (i), T. Churchyard (i), G. Gaske (i),L. Lloyd (i), T. Marshall (2), B. Riche (i), M. Thorn (2), My Luck is GUIDE TO SPENSER. 113 Loss [G. Gascoigne] (5); with initials, H. D. (i), R. D. (i), M. D. (i), F. G[revil!e] (i), R. L. (i), F. M. (5), E. S. (5), M. S. (i) ; anonymous (7) total, 129. 3. Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions. Printed for Rich. Jones, 1578. Edited by [Owen Royden and] T[homas] P[roctor]. Contributed to by Antony Munday. Only two copies known. There are 74 poems in all. 4. Handful of Pleasant Delights. Printed by Rich. Jones, 1584. Edited by Clement Robinson. Other contri- butors: Leonard Gibson (i poem), J. Tomson (2), Peter Picks (2), Thomas Richardson (i), George Mannington (i). , Only one copy known ; it contains 32 poems. 5. Phoenix Nest. Printed by John Jackson, 1593. Edited by R. S. Only two copies known. 79 poems. 6. England's Helicon. Printed by I. R., for John Flasket, 1600 (containing 150 poems); and for Rich. More, 1614 (with 159 poems). [Edited by J. Bodenham.] 7. Lovers Martyr; or, Rosalinds Complaint. Translated by Robert Chester from Torquato Cseliano, with the Legend of King Arthur ; and Essays on the Turtle and Phoenix by Shakespeare, Jonson, Marston, and Chapman, 1601. 8. Poetical Rhapsody. Edited by Francis and William Davison. Editions: 1602, 1608, 1611, 1621. To these may be added two collections of poetical quota- tions. 9. England'' s Parnassus. 1 600. Collected by Robert Allott. Printed for N. L., C. B., and T. H. 10. Belvedere; or. The Garden of the Muses. Printed by F. K. for Hugh Astley, 1600. Edited by John Boden- ham. There was another edition in 1610. Besides these there were collections of madrigals, songs, etc., by William Boyd, 1587; Thomas Morley, 1598, 1601; John Wilbye, Thomas Weekes, John Dowland, Robert Jones, 1609, 1610; Nicholas Young, 1588, 1597; and Orlando Gib- bons, 1612. The contributors to 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10 can be given most succinctly in tabular form as in the next page. A star (*) indicates the collection to which the writer contributed; a numeral the number of poems contributed by him; and initial letters, a signature which may be probably assigned to the author opposite to whose name it occurs. H GUIDE TO SPENSER. POET. 8 x 8 fi Helicon (189 poems, 16 anon.). Parnassus. Belvidere. Rhapsody. Achelly, Thomas, Barnefield, Richard, . 2 * Bastard, Thomas, iT. B. * Best, Charles, .... . Bolton, Edmund, 5E. B. Breton, Nicholas, . . . N'.B. 8 * Brooke, Christopher, . i i< Browne, William, . . . i Campion, Thomas, . Chapman, George, , x Churchyard, Thomas, * ^ Constable, Henry, VH. c. * H.C. Daniel, Samuel, a Davies, Sir John, Vl.D. u jj Davison, Francis, Dekkar, Thomas, - Derby, Ferdinand, Earl of, _ Drayton, Michael, . Dyer, Sir Edward, 6S.E.D. * * Fairfax, Edmund (F.'s Godfrey), * F.'G. Fitzgeffery, Charles, . t Ford, John, .... V I. F. Fraunce, Abraham, . ^ Gascoigne, George, . B * Gilpin, Edward, ,1 Greene, Robert, . . . 7 * * R'G. Greville, Fulke (?), . 2M.F.G Gough, John, .... i Harrington, Sir John, Herbert, Sir William, SirW. H. * * Higgins, John, .... m Hindlemarsh, Francis, K- Howard, Earl of Surrey, . 2 B * Howell, M. N. [NowcllJ, . I Hudson, Thomas, ^ * Hunnis, William, 2' W. H. James, King of Scots, * Jonson, Benjamin, # * Kyd, Thomas, .... * Locke, Henry, .... Q . . Lodge, Thomas, . . 16 IO * Markham, Gervase, . 2 I. M. Marlow, Christopher, I # Marston, John, .... Middleton, Christopher, . -X- Nash, Thomas Norton, .Thomas, V Oxford, Earl of, ' . E.'O. I *E.O Peele, George, .... G. P. 3 t * Pembroke, Mary, Countess of, . Raleigh, Sir Walter (? Ignoto), . Roy don, Matthew, . 14? f . W.*R. Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, N- GUIDE TO SPENSER. POET. Phoenix Nest. Helicon. Parnassus. Belvidere. 1 Shakespeare, William, Sidney, Sir Philip, Smith, William Spelman, Thomas, . Spenser, Edmund, Storer, Thomas, Sylvester, Joshua, w'.'s. 2 14 iW.S. 3 7 # * # * * Turberville, George, . Warner, William, Watson, Thomas, T. W. 5 * ^ n Weever, William, . Whetstone, George, . Willet, Andrew, * A.'W. ' Winchester, Marquis of, . Wotton, Henry, 2 * H.W. Wyatt, Sir Thomas, . Young, Bartholomew, 25 Sir Th. W. The following final table gives a rough classification of the chief poets as to the subject-matter of their best writings (chiefly from Drake). Narrative. Sonnets. Pastoral. 1 1 'C .5 Didactic. Translations. Allegoric. Sackville, * Warner, . Shakespeare, . Daniel * * * * * Fitzgeffery, . . * Willobie, Beaumont J * Fletcher, G., sen., . Spenser, . . . * I * b n6 GUIDE TO SPENSER. Narrative. Sennets. Pastoral , Satires. o 'C r*> hJ Didactic. Translations. Allegoric. Stirling v> ' Chalkhill, Fairfax, . Fletcher, P., . * * Hall Wither, * Raleigh, . Jonson, . Wotton * * * Fletcher, G., . * Chapman, SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. DURING the passing of the foregoing chapters through the press, I have succeeded in obtaining additional illustrations and results of research, which I here append : i. Note on p. 18. The following table of five lists of 'heroines' from Chaucer and Lydgate will be useful for reference. NAME OF HEROINE. d *o g v> frg iJ o Ballad in Pro- logue to Good Women. s-l u . 31-4 4) n *l Ovid's Heroides. -IS** 3fc bX) lea Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle Medea, Lucretia, . Ariadne, Philomela Phyllis, Hypermnestra, I 2 3 4 4 i 8 9 9 10 12 16 18 H 17 i [18] 3 4 9 H 2 8 [19] 5 15 7 6 12 10 2 H 4 17 15 18 12 II H 6 2 16 I i'? Marcia Catonis, . Ysoude, .... 3 4 9 Lavinia, .... 6 8 ... i Laodamia, Helen, .... 13 c 13 1 1 i 2 Hero, .... 1 i 10 17 TC * II 16 Hermione, . Deianeira, Briseis, ... 6 12 8 9 c Alcestis, Alcyone, Antiochus daughter, Phcedra, Sappho, Cydippe, Dorigen, [19] 17 I 4 15 18 8 -2 Grissel, IO Antigone, 5 Judith, 7 CEnone, ... ... 5 IlS GUIDE TO SPENSER. 2. Note on p. 44. The following extract from Holinshed will confirm the conclusion in the text, and illustrate the Miller's Tale: ' 1382. A lewd fellow that took upon him to be skilful in physic and astronomy, caused it to be published through the city of London, that upon the Ascension Even there would rise such a pestilent planet that all those which came abroad forth of their chambers, before they had said five times the Lord's Prayer, commonly called the Pater Noster, and did not eat somewhat that morning before their going forth, should be taken with sickness and suddenly die thereof. 5 3. Note on the Pastoral Names, pp. 85, 90. CUDDIE (Cutty) is an abbreviation of Christopher, not of Cuthbert, as commonly supposed. The Cutty of William Brown is Christopher Brooke ; but who Spenser's Cuddy is, is very doubtful. On negative grounds, Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, is most likely the man, for it is not probable that Spenser would omit him altogether in his shepherd list, and there is no other character that can be identified with him. PALINODE and PALIN. No doubt these are identical. Malone's idea that the name is taken from George Peele's Eclogue, 1589, is refuted by the fact of Spenser's using the name ten years before Peele's poem was written. Moreover, Piers, and not Palinode (or Palin ; both forms are used by Peele), is Peele himself in his eclogue. No doubt, however, Peele did take the names from Spenser, but assigned them to different persons. CORYDON. With all deference to Malone, Todd, and Mr Grosart, who says ' we all agree ' that Corydon is Abraham Fraunce, Corydon is Edward Dyer. It was his own self- chosen pastoral name (see Mr Grosart's valuable edition of his works). The Corydon of A. Fraunce, on whom the com- mentators rely, is only the Corydon of Virgil's Eclogue, which Fraunce translated, and not an Elizabethan at all. Dyer was not knighted till 1596; hence there is no ground for supposing him to be other than ' meanly waged ; 5 and the notion of Spenser calling Fraunce 'the tallest wit of most I know this day, 5 is too absurd even for a joke. The name of Corydon was also assumed by Richard Barnefield and Nicholas Breton. In one of Barnaby Googe's eclogues, a Corydon complains of a later Corydon, sprung 'from the cart, 5 starting up in his place. But Googe's Corydons are, I think, ecclesiastics, and not pastoral writers. HARPALUS. Certainly the Harpalus of the pastoral re- GUIDE TO SPENSER. 119 ferred to by M alone. That poem occurs in Tottel's Miscel- lany anonymously, but also in England's Helicon, followed by another, * written in answer' on the samp subject, by Shepherd Tonie. These answers were usually written by the same persons as the original" poems. Tonie has been identified with Antony Munday, chiefly because no other known Antony is likely to have written so well. In any case the story of Harpalus fits well with Googe's life. Before he married Mary Darrell, he was rejected by a Mrs A., to whom he wrote some verses on the occasion. This Mrs A. is Phyllida if Googe be Harpalus. ALCON. Surely not Lodge. Drayton's pastoral name for James, King of England, is Olcon (as is clear on comparison of his eighth Eclogue, with his letter to George Sandys). Alcon is only another and more accurate spelling of Olcon. I take Alcon, then, to be James VI, King of Scots, author of the Essays of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesy. AMYNTAS. Mr Arber, in one of his valuable reprints, claims this name for Watson. But Malone is right. Wat- son's Amyntas is in love with Phyllis. Spenser's Amyntas is bewailed by Amaryllis, who is certainly Alice, wife of Ferdinand, Lord Derby. Moreover, Watson's poem is only a translation or adaptation of Tasso's Aminta. Pastoral names are not given on ground of translation. ALEXIS. It appears from Drummond's poems that Alexis, as a pastoral name, is used as an abbreviation of Alexander. Whether Alexander Neville is here indicated, I am uncertain. Note on p. 62 of * Introduction to Shakespearian Study? There is an error in this page, caused by my following the introduction to Chapman's Works (three vols., Chatto and Windus). The author of that able essay has, no doubt, used the translation of Raumer's Briefe aus Paris, in which the ambassador's letter is given, with date 1606; or else has referred to some other authority who has used it. I find in the original work the date rightly given as 1608. Again, Mr Grosart states that Jonson was accused of popery and treason by Northampton before the council, on account of his Se- janus. That would be then his ' former error/ and his im- prisonment for Eastward Ho his second one. The statement in my text must therefore be modified. Read 1608 for 1605, and delete paragraph ' It is difficult ... in that year.' LIST OF EDITIONS OF SPENSER'S WORKS. Work. Printer. Publisher. Date. T ^ 5 r t f0rmM } Henry Bynneman, ..... 1569. S **^ S C ^ n ~} Hugh Singleton, ...... 1579- Q- Thomas East, . John Harrison, . . 1581. Q. John Wolfe, . . . 1586. Q. 3. John Windet, . ,, . 1591- Q- 4 ,, Thomas Creede, . . . 1597. Q. 5. Complaints, ...... William Ponsonby, . 1591. '" Dapknaida, ...... . i;,9i- Colin Clout, ...... . 1595- Amoretti, etc., . P. S., . ,, . 1595- Prothalamion, ..... ts . 159^- Q- Four Hymns, ..... . 1596. Q. i. Fairy Queen (i-iii), (Entd. Dec. i, 1589), Jan. 23, 1590. Q. i. (i-vi), .... . 1596. Q. 2. . H. L., . . . Matthew Lowndes, . 1609. F. i. Works, ....... . 1611. F. 2. ..... ,, . 1617. F. 3. . . H. Hills, . . Jonathan Edwin, . 1679. F. 4. S^&lSvey);} 11 -^"-^" ....... ^8c. Q. !. ^hfs^e), :\ ' ....... I580 - Q ' 1 - MJta -Dublin,). . . I63 3.F., AFTER-WORDS ON THE STUDY OF THE OLDER ENGLISH POETS AND DRAMATISTS. THE publishers having kindly placed a few extra pages at my disposal, I seize the opportunity of stating my views on the desirability of the introduction of more extended studies of English literature into the ordinary course of education in our secondary schools. It is somewhat strange that one whose chief efforts during the period of twenty years have been devoted to the introduction of physical science into our grammar schools, should now be an advocate of a somewhat opposite method, but it must be remembered that since 1856 circumstances have greatly changed. The natural sciences at that date were almost entirely neglected. No tolerable text-books fit for school purposes existed in the English lan- guage ; no reasonable methods of conveying instruction were in use ; mathematics and classics formed the whole practical curriculum, and the usual result of some eight to ten years' education was that a pupil left school with a capability of writing intolerably bad Latin verse, a disgust with the great authors of pagan antiquity, and an incapability of taking up seriously any of, the scientific subjects of investigation that are rendered imperatively necessary by the needs of modern civilisation. At present the danger is that the sciences con- cerned with material nature may become all-absorbing ; that the higher culture concerned with man's artistic faculties may be entirely neglected ; and that, in our search for truth, we may lose our perception of beauty. The study of the masterpieces of Greece and Rome will undoubtedly fall into increasing neglect except in our higher or first grade schools, and even in them will only be pursued with advantage by the few who are looking forward to an extended course of study at the universities. It will become more and more a speciality, as the study of the masterpieces of the Sanscrit literature has always been. But then for the many (and I speak here only of and for them, I say nothing as to exceptional instances) this will involve a serious loss. However the teaching of classics may have been abused (and it has been greatly abused) in our secondary instruction^ it 122 GUIDE TO SPENSER. must not be forgotten that it was the only artistic culture that we have hitherto possessed ; that losing it we shall lose all that tended to excite in us a love of the beautiful, unless we replace it by an equivalent ; and, moreover, that in it we sac- rifice the only thoroughly organised means of training that we had attained. For, in spite of the well-directed efforts of the last few years, the methods used in teaching the natural sciences are still far behind those of the older subjects in ex- actness, in largeness of grasp, and in power of enforcing a general recognition of any one systematised plan. Since, then, the study of the ancients must be replaced by some equivalent, where shall we find any other study so fit to re- place them as that of our own elder literature ? That literature is of an extent and value inferior to none ; it contains in it as excellent material for fostering the imagination and develop- ing the reason as any in the world ; it is of sufficient extent to occupy those who can give a lifetime to its study, and it has a sufficiency of acknowledged masterpieces to allow a selection to be made, small enough for the most limited cur- riculum that can be afforded by those who are pressed by the business exactions of our feverish times. It has also the advantage that boys (and girls too) like it as a study ; it never induces the lassitude and disgust with study in general that the classical authors too often caused in young pupils. But then it must be taken up as a serious part of our train- ing. Just as twenty years since some half-dozen lectures on chemistry used to be given in schools as a yearly course, in order that the managers might allege that scientific studies were not neglected ; so now it is a fashion to take a book of Paradise Lost, or a play of Shakespeare, to cram the pupil with the notes of some special edition with a few extra annota- tions from the teacher, and to call this a course of English literature. This will, of course, mend in time ; and it is to urge on this amendment that the present series of text-books has been entered on. The points specially kept in view, be- cause they are often neglected, are the following : 1. If possible, a period of literature should be studied as a whole, along with contemporary politics, manners, and his- torical events. 2. Not only the life of the special author whom we are studying, but also those of his friends, rivals, and otherwise connected contemporaries, should be carefully examined. 3. The works of any author should be read in the order in which they were written, and with reference to his contem- poraries. GUIDE TO SPENSER. 123 4. No doubtful critical point should ever be set before the student as ascertained. One great advantage of these studies is the acquirement of a power of forming a judgment in cases of conflicting evidence. Give the "student the evidence ; state your own opinion if you like, but let him judge for him- self. 5. No extracts or incomplete works should be used. The capability of appreciating a whole work as a whole, is one of the principal aims in aesthetic culture. 6. It is better to read thoroughly one simple play or poem, than to know details about all the dramatists and poets. The former trains the brain to judge of other plays or poems. The latter only loads the memory with details that can at any time be found when required, in books of reference. Hence sketches of universal history and summary views of a country's literature, are inevitably failures if they aspire to be more than tables of reference. This kind of surface knowledge is much encouraged by our present methods of teaching and examination, and I regret to see that many text- books written by men of no small ability are fostering the evil. 7. It is highly desirable that along with the study of any great work, some secondary contemporary work on the same or a similar subject, should be combined. Our present prac- tice of confining our pupils to the very highest authors, is a mistake. It gives them no data for comparison, and pre- vents their forming a sufficiently high estimate of our best men. 8. It is not desirable to do too much for our pupils. No man likes to be treated as a child, and no boy likes to have done for him what he can readily do for himself. I have seen in some text-books long quotations from the Old Testament given in full. Better give a reference and let the boy turn it up. Similarly in other matters. 9. For these studies to completely succeed, they must be as thorough as our classical studies used to be. No difficult point in syntax, prosody, accidence, or pronunciation ; no variation in manners or customs, no historical or geographical allusion, must be passed over without explanation. This training in exactness will not interfere with, but aid the higher aims of literary training. Leaving these specialities on one side, let us now look a little to higher matters. If it is necessary that literary cul- ture should be given in all schools, which point we may, I trust, take for granted, and if it is advisable that this culture 124 GUIDE TO SPENSER. should be derived from our English literature, which I hope few will deny, why dwell on poets and dramatists, rather than on essayists and historians? Are not Bacon and Macaulay better reading for the young, than Shakespeare and Spenser ? I venture to think not. One great aim we should have in view in selecting authors for this purpose, is to produce by their perusal in the minds of our pupils as vivid a picture of some historical period as we can. For this purpose nothing can compare with dramatic productions. No descriptive or narrative writing will ever equal in vivid- ness and power of impression a really good play. Not only is it more lifelike, from the very nature of its form, bringing before us actual men and women, instead of talk about them; but it is always the exultant expression of the most charac- teristic forces that at any given period have been acting on humanity. The baseness of the later Stuart age is as clearly shown in the comedies then fashionable, as the nobleness of the time of Pericles in the great Athenian tragedies. From Sakontala and Solomon's Song down to Rabagas and La Grande Duchesse^ there is no time worth studying at all, which cannot be best studied in its plays. If all other literature were destroyed, the most important facts in the history of a people could be restored from them, and in many instances from them only. Directly in the historical drama, indirectly in every turn of thought and allusion to passing event or changing custom, they are the best preparative for the highest study of mankind the history of itself. They are also the best training for thinking and for expressing our thoughts. The condensation necessitated by stage requirements, which will not tolerate long speeches or monopoly of scenes by single characters, supply an admirable corrective to the idle volubility of the modern novel, and the empty rhetoric of the newspaper leader. Novels and periodicals, however useful both may be, in many respects are corrupting our modern style, even to our letter-writing. Where the professed object is to fill a certain number of pages, regardless of the amount of matter to be expressed in them, the result must be pad- ding, and padding is injurious to author and reader alike. Early habits of concise expression are absolutely necessary if the next generation is to avoid this crying evil ; and these habits will be, I am convinced, strongly encouraged by care- ful study of our best dramas. If, on the other hand, we wish not so much to ascertain the general character of any particular age, as to see what was the highest point to which humanity attained in it, then GUIDE TO SPENSER. 12$ we must extend our studies so as to include all poets, drama- tic or other. Of all the arts, poetry is the one which most accurately furnishes us with a test of individual greatness. Take for instance the following names : Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher, Massinger, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning ; think of the history of the times before, during, and after their careers, and I think it will be manifest, not only that the poet is the measure of his age, but also that he is the outcome of a time of stirring action, and the precursor or prophet of a general change in the method of man's thought. And this holds good in exact proportion to his greatness. Armadas and revolutions are contemporaneous with Spen- sers and Miltons, while new philosophies are preceded by Shakespeares and Shelleys. But I am going beyond my subject, and entering one unfit for these narrow limits. I will conclude with one practical reflection which has been strongly impressed on me in the course of my own teaching. When I was a schoolboy, a great delight was felt by school- boys generally in reading our poetical literature. I know we read it too cursorily to feel all its beauty, and too indiscrim- inately to avoid a large amount of trash. Still we did read it. The boys I have known of late years do not read it at all. The modern sensational novel has taken its place. Not that we did not read novels, but somehow Scott, Marryat, and Dickens did not absorb us and prevent our reading any- thing else : whereas I find that boys who read Jules Verne, Mayne Reid, and the innumerable writers for boys, who deal in thrilling narrative, seem to lose their taste for any whole- some literature, as much as the brandy-drinker or opium- smoker does for his daily food. And besides this, they in many cases lose their sense of humour ; they get into the habit of reading merely for the plot ; this is nearly always of the most exciting kind in the books they read ; hence they are anxious for the denouement, and read hurriedly : all beauties of style or construction are consequently lost on them. I might show how the multiplication of cheap books and the establishment of numerous libraries has aided to increase this tendency, but I trust I have said enough, if not to convince my readers that it is desirable to encourage the reading of our poetic and dramatic literature by the young as a study, as well as for diversion, at any rate to in- duce them to think the matter over for themselves. If they will do this I feel convinced that innumerable other considera- tions will arise in their minds, for which I cannot here give 126 GUIDE TO SPENSER. room, and many more which have not occurred to me at all, but all tending in the same direction, and that they will con- clude, as I have done (after many years' practical work in this matter as a teacher), that there is no need more urgent at the present moment in our education, than the encourag- ing in every way we can of the study of literature (especially of our own) before it is entirely supplanted and destroyed by the equally, but not more than equally, important study of the exacter, and, therefore, more material and less human ' natural ' sciences. OF THE UNIVERSITY WILLIAM COLLINS AND CO., PRINTERS, GLASGOW. 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED j LOAN DEPT. I This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. TTi in MI iH'*wth iUfi iSilH**'* to immediate recall. FTErCT-TVETD I* DEC 11 1368 5ft .QAN DEPT. --SEP 3196848 LOAN DEFT. ( T 2 MAY 1 1.Q7R LD 21A-60m-7,'66 (G4427slO)476B Sift fl.FR i 7 78 General Library University of California Berkeley YA U3DUH U.C.BERKELEY LIBRARIES I UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY