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Chivalry in English literature
Chaucer, Malory, Spenser and Shakespeare
William Henry Schofield. 1912
SPENSER
THE era of Edward III and Poictiers is gone; the era of Henry V and Agincourt is gone; come have "the spacious times of great Elizabeth" and the Armada of Spain. Wat Tyler's social revolt is past; Jack Cade's political rebellion is past; cultivated men now strive for Protestantism and educational reform. Legends and fabliaua; are out of date; romances and chansons degeste, even in prose, are out of date; in vogue are sonnets, pastorals, and intellectual conceits; the mighty drama has just begun to stretch its giant limbs. Chaucer and Spenser are roughly two hundred years apart. We have left the Middle Ages and are in the full flush of the English Renaissance. However we may regard Spenser today, it is evident that he was a godsend to English letters in the sixteenth century. No one could question his learn ing, his refinement, his dignity. He was in sympathy with humanism; he was at ease in polite circles; he emulated the noblest masters of poetic art. Still more, natural genius distinguished him "like a pearl among white peas." He was fresh and original while most of his fellows merely retained impressions, or reproduced borrowed thoughts. His astonishing mastery of rhyme, his mellifluousness of phrase, and his rich fecundity of imagination made him rank first among the writers of his time. Where Spenser led, English poetry was likely to go. Had he been disdainful of the literary past of his nation, he might have hindered that precious continuity so remarkable in English verse. Fortunately Spenser felt the conscience of Englishmen in accord with his own, and he did much to establish their purest conceptions of morality, and their highest hopes for the public weal. He attached himself reverentially to English traditions in letters, cementing the old with the new in firm, permanent bonds. Perhaps the very dreaminess of his great allegory made it the more potent in perpetuating love of chivalrous deeds. Systematic arguments would never have overcome the harsh judgements of mediaeval life which men had proudly begun to pass. The Faery Queen where a soft, answer turning away the wrath of reformers. All yielded to its charm, and knighthood was again sheltered from neglect.
Times without number since the day of Lamb, Spenser has been called the poets' poet. This name, however, we must repeat again, because it indicates the chief means of his influence in fixing chivalric ideals in English hearts. Whoever reads any significant amount of modern English verse is sure to imbibe some of Spenser's spirit, since that our best poets still love to cherish and maintain.
For deeds do die, however nobly done,
And thoughts of men do as themselves decay;
But wise words, taught in numbers for to run,
Recorded by the Muses, live for aye.
I
"I NEVER look upon an author," said Montaigne, "be he such as write of virtue and of actions, but I curiously endeavour to find out what he was him self." There are certain aspects of Spenser's career which, for the better understanding of his attitude, it is important to note.
He spent his boyhood in London "merry London," he calls it, "my most kindly nurse." London in the second half of the sixteenth century was a refreshing, stimulating place in which to live, a city not yet given over to Puritanism and business, to the sombre and the dull. Elizabeth, "the fairest princess under sky," dwelt in this "fair Cleopolis," and was surrounded by admirers who believed with the poet himself:
Well beseems all knights of noble name
That covet in th? immortal book of fame
To be eternized, that same to haunt,
And do their service to that sovereign dame,
That glory does to them for guerdon grant:
For she is heavenly born, and heaven may justly vaunt.
Spenser early felt the claim of social gaiety and court liness; he saw them everywhere in public in his youth. He also early learned what it meant for a nation to be grave; he was born in the very year that Bloody Mary ascended the throne; he was nineteen when the dreadful massacre of St. Bartholomew occurred.
Though his immediate family was obscure, Spenser prided himself that he came of "an house of ancient fame," and this incited him to seek personal renown. Though technically a gentleman, he was nevertheless sufficiently apart from men of station to make him brood upon his rank and be anxious for the con sideration of those more favoured in the world's eyes. "The nobility of the Spensers," declared Gibbon, "has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough; but I exhort them to consider the Faery Queen as the most precious jewel of their coronet." No statement by one competent to judge would have given the author of that work more definite delight.
Passing from the Merchant Taylors' School (then newly founded), he went, at about the age of seven teen, to Cambridge, and entered Pembroke Hall. Cambridge was his "mother," but he does not say "benign." There, in any case, he found "many a gentle muse and many a learned wit." There he began to read and love the ancient poets and philosophers, Plato above all. His chief friends were Gabriel Harvey (already a fellow of his college) and a comrade undergraduate, Edward Kirke. The former was a man of dominating personality, but self-satisfied, pedantic, and vain, preaching in season and out of season the humanities, yet with little sympathy for any opinions save his own. He disdained earlier English verse, tried to get Spenser to imitate Latin me tres, and sniffed at his plan for the Faery Queen. Had he had his way, our poet would have been dwarfed. Edward Kirke, a much more amiable person, whose appreciation of his friend was very high, later became his introducer to the public, writing a flatter ing introduction and copious glosses to Spenser's first important poem, the Shepherd's Calendar, evidently with the author's help and approval. This introduction took the form of a letter to Harvey, and con tains an interesting, though not altogether convincing, defence of "the new poet's" use of archaic words. It begins with a quotation from "the old famous poet Chaucer," who is frequently alluded to in the work as Tityrus, being thus compared to Virgil, and for whom both he and the author show genuine esteem. Kirke also quotes Lydgate, " a worthy scholar of so excellent a master," and refers to Skelton. Spenser himself alludes to Langland in "the Pilgrim that the Ploughman played awhile," so that previous English writers were evidently not neglected by this brilliant group of Cambridge clerks. Still, their chief thoughts seem elsewhere. The Shepherds Calendar was a se ries of eclogues an ambitious experiment, to test, we are told, the poet's ability and his models were foreigners old and new. "So flew Virgil; so flew Mantuan ... so Petrarch ... so Boccace ... so Marot, Sanazarus, and also divers other excellent both Italian and French poets, whose footing this author everywhere followeth; yet so as few, but they be well-scented, can trace him out."
The Shepherd's Calendar was dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, "president of noblesse and of chivalry," and with this famous hero Spenser had the good fortune to reside for a while at Penshurst. Sidney presented him to his uncle, the Earl of Leices ter, who also invited the poet to visit him at his house in London, in the Strand. In his Prothalamion, Spenser refers to the "gifts and goodly grace" which he received from this great lord; and praises also his friend, the Earl of Essex, "fair branch of honour, flower of chivalry," for his prowess and victorious arms. While still open to impression, Spenser came into intimate relationship with some of the most distinguished noblemen of the period, who were either writers themselves or patrons of letters. They saw the greatest era of English literature dawn in majesty.
v The effect that association with ShvPhilip Sidney and his group had upon Spenser, especially in his view of chivalry, we have every reason to believe great. Though Sidney died at thirty-one, his is yet a name to conjure with for all who admire virtuous strength. No Englishman has ever impressed his own or later times as a more perfect type of gentleman "in whom the life itself of true worth did (by way of example) far exceed the pictures of it by any moral precepts." "The truth is," wrote Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, "his end was not writing, nor his knowledge moulded for tables nor schools; but both his art and his understanding bent upon his heart to make himself and others, not in words or opinion, but in life and action, good and great." "This was it which, I profess, I loved dearly in him, and still shall be glad to honour in the great men of this time: I mean that his heart and tongue went both one way, and so with everyone that went with the truth, knowing no other kindred, party, or end."
All are familiar with the story of the greatness of heart that Sidney showed when wounded at Zutphen. His words when he gave the poor soldier the water he was himself about to drink, "thy necessity is yet greater than mine," have echoed down the centuries. Similarly, Englishmen remember, with ap plause, Sidney's attitude in death. " The last scene in this tragedy," says his biographer, "was the parting between the two brothers, the weaker showing infinite strength in suppressing sorrow, and the stronger infinite weakness in expressing it." As Malory said of Arthur, "he was so full of knighthood that knightly he endured the pain."
What the Earl of Warwick was to Malory, and probably much more, Sir Philip Sidney was to Spenser a visible embodiment of superlatively high knightly conduct, "a sea-mark raised upon [his] native coast" by which he as well as the whole nation might "learn to sail, through the straits of true virtue, into a calm and spacious ocean of humane honour." Matthew Roydon found in him
A sweet attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face,
The lineaments of gospel books.
In this worthy man, this man of virtuous name, love and honour did agree. Like the brave Chevalier Bayard, almost a contemporary, he lived sans peur et sans reproche.
Spenser was in Ireland when Sidney died, and there he wrote an elegy in his friend's praise, bewailing his own grievous loss. The greater part of Spenser's time of poetic composition he lived in Ireland. He went there first as secretary to the "most renowned and valiant" governor, Lord Grey of Wilton, to whom he acknowledged himself "bound by vassalage," and remained after the latter's departure, in one or an other minor official position, with sufficient income for his needs, plenty of opportunity to refresh himself physically and imaginatively amid beautiful scenes, plenty of time to study and write. But Spenser felt himself an exile, and longed for London. Possessed of a querulous nature, he encouraged discontent by brooding over his remoteness from any large centre of civilization. He had begun his Faery Queen before he went abroad. His instinct had led him to romance, and allegory complied with the bent he received from collegiate cultivation. Probably, however, both as pects of his work were strengthened by his solitary residence in a land he found savage and wild, where his life seemed like knight-errantry of old. He was led in isolation to dream dreams of book-worthies and to view facts at home in unreal semblance.
The most sympathetic person whom Spenser saw in his frontier abode was "the right noble and valorous Sir Walter Raleigh, Knight," to whom he was eventually to expound the intention of the Faery Queen in an open letter prefixed to the first edition of that work. Spenser describes Raleigh as his " sovereign goddess's most dear delight," and indeed he was greatly indebted to Raleigh, as he himself declares, for "singular favours and sundry good turns" shown to him when later he visited England, especially his presentation to the queen. It was Raleigh who had persuaded him to revisit London and take his poem there for publication, and his influence helped Spenser greatly ("neither envying other nor envied") in putting him into relations with the great of the metropolis, in association with whom he was ever soothed and caressed. Spenser termed Raleigh " Shepherd of the Ocean," and he must always have been quickened by the conversation of this intrepid traveller, gentle courtier, and highly gifted man of letters.
In early days, just after leaving college, the poet had become enamoured of a lady in Lancashire whom he calls Rosalind, and had taken her as the inspiration of his verse, though we cannot believe that she was a much more real personage, as he describes her, than many another object of sonnet love. But while there is also a good deal that is purely imaginative in the account of his love for the fair Irish lady, Elizabeth Boyle, whom, after years of wooing, he finally won, his affection for her appears profound, and called forth his most exquisite lyric, his marvellously delicate and finely-perfected Epithalamium.
Twice, during his residence in Ireland, Spenser returned home, each time with a garner of poesy to present the world, and each time he heard renewed the compliments that had greeted him as author of the Shepherd's Calendar. Yet he grew increasingly forlorn. He felt that poets were not held in deserved honour, that parasites and sycophants had too great share of official reward. Vain expectations and idle hopes, he himself states, affected his brain. It is to be feared that Spenser was not easy to satisfy, and that he was himself partly to blame for his lack of delight. He was sorely afflicted by "the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation."
Spenser's career was doomed to a tragic end. By his defiant acts and general unsympathetic attitude, he had angered his Irish neighbours. Finally, they burst upon and burned his Kilcolman house, so that he and his family had to flee for their lives. This deed of terrible violence caused his death; in three months the poet passed away poor and wretched, though his loss was a national grief. With fellow poets following him to the grave, he was laid beside his beloved Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, and over him was written:
Here nigh to Chaucer Spenser lies: to whom
In genius next he was, as now in tomb.
It was, it seems, by Spenser's own request that his bones were given a resting-place beside those of his master
Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled,
On Fame's eternal beadroll worthy to be fled.
Spenser's praise for "that renowned poet" is al ways without stint; but in the following stanza he exalts him most openly and finely as unique among his loves:
Then pardon, O most sacred happy spirit!
That I thy labours lost may thus revive,
And steal from thee the meed of thy due merit,
That none durst ever whilst thou wast alive,
And, being dead, in vain yet many strive:
Ne dare I like; but, through infusion sweet
Of thine own spirit, which doth in me survive,
I follow here the footing of thy feet.
That with thy meaning so I may the rather meet.
Chaucer and Spenser had similar careers. Both were Londoners of comparatively humble origin, who, having to make their own way in the world, early sought the society of the great. Their talents commended them; they won favour. They were supported by influential patrons and attracted the at tention of their respective queens. Both received royal pensions and official positions. Both participated somewhat in public affairs. But neither lived a life of tranquil ease, for their offices were no sinecures, and each suffered the vicissitudes of political dispute.
With so much in common, there is nevertheless "a long and large difference" between them in other ways. Chaucer, so far as we know, was not a univer sity man. He picked up his knowledge by the way, unsystematically, as inclination led and opportunity offered. Spenser, on the contrary, lived seven years at Cambridge, and was a careful scholar, well trained in the classics (including Greek, of which few English men knew a word in his predecessor's days), learned in philosophy and the poetic art. He was one of an esoteric group devoted to first-hand studies of the ancients, working together with lordly zeal for the improvement of English letters, evincing the radiant glee, together with the supreme vanity and intemperate vexation, of the haughty Renaissance.
In temperament, as well as in intellectual train ing, the two men were distinctly unlike. They were both gentle, courteous, refined in manner, sensitive, and reserved. But Spenser could be harsh in judge ment of races, cruelly intolerant of sects, and haughtily disdainful of individuals, which it is impossible to imagine of friendly Chaucer, whom all loved. No where does Spenser reveal a trace of Chaucer's gen ial humour. He took himself, his art, everything, in grave earnest.
Furthermore, while Chaucer willingly lived all the time in reality, Spenser, it is evident, preferred to roam musingly in pleasing pastures of fantasy. The one was best in delineating human beings in open day, the other in picturing abstractions in "silver mist." While the Faery Queen exhales a rarefied perfume, which is apt to pall on the robust, Chaucer's verse is eternally fresh, like the spring mornings when he wandered forth at dawn to hear the birds sing blissfully and to see the daisies spread against the sun.
Spenser had a wide mental horizon. He was a sincere devotee of duty and right. His work is permeated with strong patriotism. It is not, however, the poet's intellectuality or morality or pride of race that completely commends him to us, but rather his artistic vitality. His moral seriousness was always tempered by aesthetic gaiety; he liked to abandon grave doctrine for frolics of fancy. He tried to make us believe that he sought only virtue, but we feel that he first worshipped at the shrine of beauty. He gave lip-service to learning, but he adored loveliness.
Plainly, Spenser cherished books more than men. He revelled in his well-stored library, sipping the sweet wines of poesy with the joy of the connoisseur. The taste lingered on his palate. He refreshed his emotions. He "lulled his senses in slumber of delight."
The ways through which my weary steps I guide
In this delightful land of faery,
Are so exceeding spacious and wide,
And sprinkled with such sweet variety
Of all that pleasant is to ear or eye,
That I, nigh ravished with rare thoughts delight,
My tedious travel do forget thereby.
So the poet confesses himself. He was, it is clear, a "child of fancy," easy to ridicule, like "magnificent" Armado in Loves Labour's Lost, who also strove to tell "in high-born words, the worth of many a knight . . . lost in the world's debate:"
A man in all the world's new fashions planted
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;
One whom the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish like enchanting harmony:
A man of complements, whom right and wrong
Have chose as umpire of their mutiny.
Armado, "plume of feathers," implored his princess in fantastic words to "have commiseration of [her] heroical vassal!" Similarly, Spenser lauds his queen in terms of extravagant praise, while plead ing for her grace. It is a genuine problem of sincerity and taste how Spenser could, without any apparent quiverjtturn out upon Elizabeth such cornucopias of sugared sweets as was his wont. She in her self-satisfaction might receive them undisturbed, but what about him? The fact that Spenser accepted for himself and printed v before the Faery Queen so many elaborate encomiums of his friends shows that he did not balk at much in his own person. He posed, how ever, as only a simple poet, " Immerito," and she was "the image of the heavens,"" without a mortal blemish," "above all her sex that ever yet had been"! " The springs both of good and evil," wrote the author of Utopia, "flow from the prince, over a whole nation, as from a lasting fountain." Elizabeth undoubtedly contributed much to dignify the English nation, and one can understand why idealists in times of stress pictured her as a national Virgin, calling for chivalric loyalty; but to name her "sacred saint" and the like, as Spenser did, was beyond reason as well as truth. Spenser's fawnings and flatteries, common though such were in his day, place both him and his queen in an unfavourable light. We feel that he was degraded by pandering to the vanity of Elizabeth, even as Chaucer was ennobled by association with Philippa the Good. Chaucer sanely desired to perfect nature; Spenser strained himself to improve on her in pride.
Spenser has always the mark of distance. As a poet, his imagination "reigned in the air from earth to highest sky;" his "precious odours" were "fetched from far away;" his ideals of beauty, love, and life transcended mortal reach. As a man, likewise, he held himself apart, exclusive, superior, solemnly am bitious to write what should last to eternity. His chief work he strove to make
The port of rest from troublous toil,
The world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome turmoil.
II
AN interesting record by one Ludowick Bryskett of a meeting of thoughtful men at his house near Dublin, where Spenser was present, shows that the poet was bountifully esteemed by scholars in Ire land and looked up to as an intellectual guide. It reveals also the serious character of the studies with which he and his associates were then occupied, and throws light on the plan of the Faery Queen.
"Herein," said Bryskett to hisguests,"do I greatly envy the happiness of the Italians who have in their mother tongue late writers that have, with a singular easy method, taught all that Plato and Aristotle have confusedly or obscurely left written, of which some I have begun to read with no small delight;
as Alexander Piccolomini, Gio. Baptista Giraldi, and Guazzo; all three having written upon the ethic part of moral philosophy both exactly and perspicuously. And would God that some of our countrymen would show themselves so well affected to the good of their country (whereof one principal and most important part comisteth in the instructing men to virtue), as to set down in English the precepts of those parts of moral philosophy, whereby our youth might, with out spending so much time as the learning of those other languages require, speedily enter into the right course of virtuous life."
Thereupon, Bryskett appealed directly to Spenser to help him and his friends by discoursing to them on that theme; entreating him to vouchsafe to open unto them "the goodly cabinet, in which this excellent treasure of virtues is locked up from the vulgar sort." Spenser courteously acknowledged the compliment, but begged to be excused at that time. " I have already undertaken a work," he said, "tending to the same effect, which is in heroical verse under the title of a Faery Queen, to represent all the moral virtues, assigning to every virtue a knight to be the patron and defender of the same, in whose actions and feats of arms and chivalry the operations of that virtue, whereof he is the protector, are to be expressed, and the vices and unruly appetites that oppose themselves against the same are to be beaten down and overcome. ... I have taken in hand to discourse at large in my poem."
If, then, we view the Faery Queen as primarily a narrative, we neglect the author's avowed intent. He planned it first and foremost as a book of ethical in struction, with Plato and Aristotle, as well as their disciples and exegetes, definitely in mind. He desired through it to show the operations of virtue and vice, in hope to improve the morals of English youth. Already, in the Shepherds Calendar, he had written:
O! what an honour is it to restrain
The lust of lawless youth with good advice,
and even then he aspired to sing of bloody Mars, of wars, of jousts, letting his muse thereby display her fluttering wing. Spenser did not agree with those who "had rather have good discipline delivered by way of precepts or sermoned at large;" he believed that "much more profitable and gracious is doctrine by ensample than by rule." He was a born poet, "trained in chivalry," albeit "noursled up in lore of learned philosophy." Frankly emulating Homer, Virgil, Ariosto, and Tasso, excellent poets, as he recognized, he wished to portray the image of a brave knight in a work of art. He decided, alas! to present his ideas " cloudily enwrapped in allegorical devices;" he failed to achieve unity of plot; he accomplished but meagrely what he set out to perform; yet only because of its artistic setting has his thought lived.
"For that I conceived [this] should be most plausible and pleasing, being coloured with an historical fiction, I chose," says the poet, "the history of King Arthur, as most fit for the excellency of his person, being made famous by many men's former works, and also farthest from the danger of envy and suspicion of present time." There can be no question that the glamour which surrounds tales of Arthur and faery has always strengthened the appeal of Spenser's work. The choice of his fiction was wise. Happily, it also tended to confirm his natural inclination to the sentiments of chivalry. Close consideration of mediaeval books of courtesy and romance deepened his devotion to the ideals there glorified. "Unknown, unkissed," he might properly have said to Harvey and his like. Why should he relinquish the tested good of the Middle Ages because he desired also the proffered good of the Renaissance? "How charming is divine philosophy," he felt with his whole heart; but he also exulted in ancient shews of "honour."
O goodly usage of those antique times
In which the sword was servant unto right;
When not for malice and contentious crimes,
But all for praise, and proof of manly might,
The martial brood accustomed to fight:
Then honour was the meed of victory,
And yet the vanquished had no despight.
The Faery Queen is a very paean of chivalry, whose watchword is honour. " Lo!" the poet exclaims in his opening lines:
[I] sing of knights and ladies gentle deeds;
Whose praises have slept in silence long.
Spenser's knights and ladies appear more "thoroughly instructed" than those of Malory, but they engage in the same pursuits:
Full many countries they did overrun
From the uprising to the setting sun,
And many hard adventures did achieve;
Of all the which they honour ever won.
Seeking the weak oppressed to relieve
And to recover rights from such as wrong did grieve.
The "fierce wars and faithful loves" which were to "moralize" the Faery Queen were animated by the mediaeval spirit.
Nought is more honour abk to a knight
Ne better doth beseem brave chivalry,
Than to defend the feeble in their right.
And wrong defend in such as wend awry;
Whilom those great heroes got thereby
Their greatest glory for their rightful deeds,
And place deserved with the gods on high.
The Red Cross Knight, who wore "the dear remembrance of his dying Lord," was "right, faithful, true, in deed and word," bent on great adventure, "to win him worship." Another noble warlike knight with well-deserved name
had filled far lands with glory of his might:
Plain, faithful, true, and enemy of shame,
And ever loved to fight for ladies' right.
Truly chivalric are such remarks as: "mercy not withstand;" "all wrongs have mends, but no amends of shame;" "falsehood's foul attaint ... all his other honour overthrew."
Fie on . . . forgery! . . .
Under one hood to shadow faces twain!
Knights ought be true, and truth is one in all,
Of all things to dissemble, foully may befall.
And here, as in many other places, is the principle of fair play:
No knight so rude, I ween,
As to do outrage to a sleeping ghost;
Ne was there ever noble courage seen,
That in advantage would his puissance boast:
Honour is least where odds appeareth most.
Spenser exalts the same knightly qualities as Malory, the same goodly temperance, stedfastness, and golden mean as are lauded in the Order of Chivalry. "Chivalry maketh thee to love wisdom," we read in the book just named; and "without temperance a knight may not maintain the order of chivalry, he may not be in place where virtue dwelleth." By "wisdom's power and temperance's might," wrote Spenser, "the mightiest things enforced be." Wisdom and temperance, however, on Spenser's lips undoubtedly meant more than earlier met the ear. Old times had changed. The order of chivalry was rapidly giving way to what More called the order of the learned.
The more one studies Spenser's genius, the more one feels that, while he fully acknowledged the claims of the Renaissance, his instinct persistently led him to the Middle Ages. Mediaeval chivalric ideals were fundamental to his system of conduct: he deliberately united them with metaphysical conceptions of moral principle, in association with which they sometimes seem oppressed.
III
"IN the person of Prince Arthur," the poet explains, "I set forth magnificence in particular, which vir tue, according to Aristotle, is the perfection of all the rest." He conceives Arthur, "after his long edu cation by Timon, to whom he was by Merlin deliv ered to be brought up, so soon as he was born of the Lady Igrayne, to have seen in a vision the Faery Queen, with whose excellent beauty ravished, he awaking resolved to seek her out; and so, being by Merlin armed, and by Timon thoroughly instructed, he went to seek her forth in faeryland."
Arthur then is magnificence, the Faery Queen, glory. The other virtues have other patrons " for the more variety of the history." The first book tells of the Red Cross Knight, expressing holiness; the second of Sir Guy on, setting forth temperance;' the third of Britomart, a lady knight, in whom is pictured chastity. The ensuing books exemplify friendship (Cambel and Triamond), justice (Sir Artegall), and courtesy (Sir Calidore). There is also an unfinished section on constancy. Here is certainly an elaborate work, systematic, studied a lordly, intellectual venture. The author himself terms it "a dark conceit."
Chaucer wrote tales for the sake primarily of the tales, and his teaching is almost surreptitious. Malory wrote a corpus of romance which did not pretend to be anything else; his personal remarks are rare and incidental; one can almost pass them by unobserved. But Spenser proclaims his mental purpose, as it were, with a trumpet from the house-top. No one, he is determined, shall mistake his ambitious aim. He was not learned, cultivated, well-read, for nothing. His goal, like Prince Arthur's, was the kingdom of Gloriana. "Is aught on earth," asks one of his heroes, "so precious or dear as praise and honour? Or is aught so bright and beautiful as glory's beams appear?" Spenser's way to honour is by the high road, not the obscure paths, of rightful deeds, conspicuous for men to applaud. To deserve a place, with the gods on high it beseems one, he tells us, to be virtuous; it behooves one to do well. He esteemed virtue the best policy, public blame is his great deterrent from idleness or vice.
Such sentiments are, indeed, far removed from those of the Imitation of Christ. Read, by way of contrast, what Thomas a Kempis says: "It is vanity to hunt after honours." "Whoso knoweth himself well, groweth more mean in his own conceit, and delighteth not in the praises of men." "If thou wilt know or learn anything profitably, desire to be unknown, and to be little esteemed." We recognize that we have come jnto a new age, away from that of humble impersonality to that of superb individualism. We are considering a man who devoted himself to teaching posterity how to reach worldly fame, with the immediate object of increasing his own! Beside Spenser, Malory seems ingenuous, almost naif, like Thomas a Kempis in the presence of Cardinal Wolsey, or Froissart before Machiavelli. Not self-suppression, but self-affirmation, animated Spenser's life. He was aware that he had
The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought,
And is with child of glorious great intent.
He could never rest until he brought forth "the eternal brood of glory excellent" in this world!
Evidently Milton was questioning Spenserian ideas when, in Lyddas, he wrote:
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. . . .
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.
Spenser had said: "Nothing is sure that grows on earthly ground;" but " broad blazed fame," to be enjoyed here below, dazzled his eyes. He loved the sight of men "glistering in arms and battailous array," and loudly applauded those who sought the guerdon of glory on earth.
IV
"THE general end of all the [Faery Queen]," Spenser himself declared, was "to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline." Such words would never have proceeded from the mouth of Chaucer or Malory. "Discipline" is a word that Chaucer uses but once, in his translation of the Parson's Tale, and there of physical hardships only (like wearing a hair-shirt). Malory does not seem to use it at all. "Discipline " here signifies more than the outward precept or expert usage of earlier days: it insists on mental comprehension of underlying motive. "Virtue," moreover, has been impregnated with new intellectual significance in England since the fourteenth century. It resembles more the Italian virtu. "Virtue gives herself light through darkness for to wade."The seat of this "virtue rare, "Spenser affirms, is "deep within the mind." The word "mind," in truth, echoes and reechoes throughout the Faery Queen. To the author assuredly, as to courtly Dyer, his mind a kingdom was, and there reason reigned in "due regality." Strong reason, Spenser declares, is what we must rely on to master frail passion. We should learn "lawless lust to rule with reason's lore." The fort of reason should be defended against the sore siege of strong affections. Even great grief should not make us forget "the reins to hold of reason's rule." To be virtuous according to reason, we are in structed, demands constant self-consideration. A man must not be lesser than himself. "Strive your excellent self to excel," writes the poet, "that shall ye evermore renowned make." The means is self-development, the end is renown! "Your acts are churlish" would have been Chaucer's keenest re proach; "You are no gentleman" would have been Malory's severest condemnation;" That is unworthy of you" epitomizes Spenser's blame.
The noble courage never weeneih aught
That may unworthy of itself be thought.
Virtue is "not in outward shows, but inward thoughts defined."
Spenser, who was inclined to be vague, and to see the past in "faint shadows of uncertain light," perhaps did not realize clearly that his emphasis on mental force in chivalry was new. Apostrophizing the "goodly, golden chain, wherewith yfere the virtues linked are in lovely wise," he found them conspicuous in "noble minds of yore [who] allied were in brave pursuit of chivalrous emprise." In his antique age men "held virtue for herself in sovereign awe."
The poet's avowal that "gentle or noble persons" were those whom he aimed to fashion by his lessons in the Faery Queen, points the way to Italy as the chief source of what is new in his ideal of dis tinction. Spenser had evidently read with zest Castiglione's appealing Book of the Courtier, and had fully assimilated its thought. First printed in 1528, the Courtier "became an Englishman" through the efforts of Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561, and was regarded then, as later by Dr. Johnson, as "the best book that ever was written upon good breeding." Sidney carried it always with him when he went abroad.
"Peradventure in all Italy," wrote the author, "a man shall have much ado to find out so many gentlemen and noble personages that are so worthy and, beside the principal profession of chivalry, so excellent in sundry things as are presently here," at the court of Urbino. It was to entertain and instruct similar persons at the court of London that Spenser composed the Faery Queen; and, like Castiglione, he began with the assumption that the "principal profession" of courtly gentlemen was chivalry.
It is curious to see how definitely the new Italian figure is a counterpart of Chaucer's Knight and Squire-son. He joins at different ages the sober virtues of the one with the brilliant accomplishments of the other. If to these we were also to add the intellectual attainments of the Clerk a devotee of Aristotle and his philosophy, who spent his substance on books and learning, and had "moral virtue" ever on his lips we should have the main essentials of the character. But vhile Chaucer outlined separate figures of a perfect Knight, Squire and Clerk (as well as Parson), he did not attempt to picture what, in his time at least, did not exist, a perfect man, combining all the good qualities of each. Men of the Renaissance were more ambitious, if not more wise.
Castiglione, reflecting that Plato conceived in imagination a perfect commonweal, Xenophon a perfect king, and Cicero a perfect orator, undertook to describe a perfect gentle and noble person," who in in his day it was reasonable to call a courtier. Before, no one had elaborately portrayed a "complete" man. Before, no one had thought of the courtier as the most likely individual to be ideally all-round.
Conditions, however, had so changed in England under Elizabeth that then the court was actually a focus of the highest aspiration. The Wars of the Roses had played havoc with the old nobility. New governmental policies had brought men of a new sort into the forefront of public life, men of talent rather than of birth, shrewd statesmen rather than bold warriors. One had come to applaud the endowments of nature and the ennoblements of the mind and genius, which should be, but were not necessarily, inherent in the blood and lineage.
Nor should we forget that like Sidney, Raleigh, Bacon, and other prominent writers of his time Spenser was himself a courtier. Court life was what he long desired for himself. But worldly fortune did not smile on him with the same benignity as the heavenly muse. He lived to be thoroughly disillusioned, and grew disgusted with the unchivalrous conduct of those in power. In his corrupted days, he felt, unlike "the antique use which was of yore," justice was "for meed outhired;" simple truth no longer reigned; "sunbright honour" was "penned in shameful coop." Though much went wrong at the English court, especially in Elizabeth's later years, it is prob able that some of Spenser's bitterness was due to dis appointment at his own failure to be exalted there.
In his satire entitled Mother Hubberds Tale, pointing his shafts particularly at his foe, Lord Burleigh, the poet draws a long and acute contrast between the common courtier and the brave courtier. What the former loves and the latter loathes are clearly set forth. The rightful courtier, the courtly gentleman, among other things,
Will not creep, nor crouch with feigned face,
But walks upright with comely stedfast pace,
And unto all doth yield due courtesy. . . .
He hates foul leasings and vile flattery,
Two filthy blots in noble gentry;
And loathful idleness he doth detest,
The canker worm of every gentle breast.
He devises daily fair exercise, refreshes himself with music, and in quiet withdraws his mind unto the muses, "delights of life and ornaments of light." All his mind is fixed on honour. He spends his days in his prince's service, "to win worthy place through due deserts and comely carriage." At court, it is emphasized in the Faery Queen, vain shows are wont to bewitch young knights; being is better than seem ing. The god Mammon is there with "idle offers of his golden fee;" one should not covet "eye-glutting gain."
Fie on the pelf for which good name is sold,
And honour with indignity debased,
Dearer is love than life, and fame than gold;
But dearer than them both your faith once plighted hold.
Such passages as these (and they might be multiplied) show the preoccupations of Spenser's mind. He had enveloped himself with the refined atmosphere of Italian humanists and poets; yet, as an anxious Protestant, sympathizing at bottom with insular Anglo-Saxon moralists like Ascham and Cheke, he felt that his Italianate countrymen, of the Oxford-Ormond-Hatton type, were open to the reproach of effeminacy and corruption. They had listened to the siren songs of "Circe's court." They sought too much their own advantage, not the welfare of the state. And he wrote with conviction the following manly lines:
Who-so in pomp of proud estate . . .
Does swim and bathes himself in courtly bliss,
Does waste his days in dark obscurity,
And in oblivion ever buried is;
Where ease abounds V is eath to do amiss:
But who his limbs with labours, and his mind
Behaves with cares, cannot so easy miss.
Abroad in arms, at home in studious hind,
Who seeks with painful toil shall honour soonest Jind.
In woods, in waves, in wars, she wonts to dwell,
And will be found with peril and with pain;
Ne can the man that moulds in idle cell
Unto her happy mansion attain:
Before her gate high God did sweat ordain,
And wakeful watches ever to abide;
But easy is the way and passage plain
To pleasured palace: it may soon be spied,
And day and night her doors to all stand open wide.
In such a passage we hear rather the voice of Dante or Brunetto Latini than of any Italian of the six teenth century.
There was, however, another side to the story, which Spenser, quite as eagerly, wished no one to forget.
Of court, it seems, men courtesy do call,
For that it there most useth to abound,
And well beseemeth that in prince's hall
I That virtue should be plentifully found,
Which of all goodly manners is the ground,
And root of civil conversation.
Goodly manners and civil conversation, it was the object of the Courtier to promote. Before Spenser, Castiglione perchance had heard the whispers of the Graces, "handmaids of Venus?" "daughters of delight.-
These three on men all gracious gifts bestow,
Which deck the body or adorn the mind,
To make them lovely or well-favoured show;
As comely carriage, entertainment kind,
Sweet semblaunt, friendly offices that bind,
And all the complements of courtesy:
They teach us how to each degree and kind
We should ourselves demean, to low, to high,
To friends, to foes; which skill men call civility.
Milton ruminated with pleasure on Spenser's Graces "daughters of sky-ruling Jove, . . . the first of them hight mild Euphrosyne" and honoured him as "a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas," but he openly demurs at the narrowness of Spenser's attitude, and in Comus commends
honest offered courtesy,
Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds
With smoky rafters than in tapestry halls
And courts of princes, where it first was named,
And yet is most pretended.
The recital of "wars, heroic deemed," was well enough, but there remained still, he thought, "the better fortitude of patience and heroic martyrdom unsung."
Spenser naturally believed that "peerless poesy" had its only fit home "in prince's palace." He wrote chiefly for a restricted circle. When at work in Ireland, he persistently yearned for the court of England, where, he deemed, were "happy peace and plenteous store, contented bliss" as if these were calculated to quicken imaginative fire. In England, he then conceived:
The learned arts do flourish in great honour',
And poets'" wits are had in peerless price.
Spenser was at his wit's end to see any merit in arts unlearned, in poetry unbidden or untaught such was the short tether of his wit! He failed to confess to so great barbarousness as human Sidney, who never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that he found not his heart moved more than with a trumpet. Spenser was not the poet of the careless brook or wayward mountain stream. He praised above all the springs of Helicon, while admitting the value of a moral mill-race and a gentle moat.
V
IN his day, the poet tells us, the very walls and windows of the English court were writ "all full of love, and love, my dear." The courtiers' whole talk and study was of love. Though this love was in the use of many only an "idle name," "a compliment for court ing vain," not keeping them from lewd speeches and licentious deeds, it was nevertheless the result of new acquaintance with philosophic thought on the subject developed in the south. The following words would have seemed strained to Chaucer, and they would never have entered Malory's head at all:
Most sacred fire, that burnest mightily
In living breasts, kindled first above
Amongst in eternal spheres and lamping sky,
And thence poured into men, which men call Love.
Not that same, which doth base affections move
In brutish minds, and filthy lust inflame,
But that sweet fit that doth true beauty love,
And chooseth virtue for his dearest dame,
Whence spring all noble deeds and never dying fame.
According to Spenser, three kinds of love often together trouble the heart to wit:
The dear affection unto kindred sweet,
Or raging fire of love to womankind,
Or zeal of friends combined with virtues meet.
Yet of them all
the band of virtuous mind . . .
. . . the gentle heart should most assured bind.
For natural affection soon doth cease,
And quenched is with Cupid's greater fiame:
But faithful friendship doth them both suppress,
And them with mastering discipline doth tame;
For as the soul doth rule the earthly mass,
And all the service of the body frame,
So love of soul doth love of body pass,
No less than perfect gold surmounts the meanest brass.
The subject of Platonism in Spenser might occupy us long. Ideas of Platonic love, drawn in part from Bembo's oration in the Courtier, are to be found throughout his work, most notably in Epithalamium, and the noble Hymns to Love and Beauty. These ideas are obviously not a natural fruit of French chivalry, but a graft from Greek philosophy. Spenser, however, either failed to observe or deliberately obscured the difference. "Throughout all ages" he says, "with the praise of arms and chivalry the praise of beauty has been joined," and that reasonably, "for either doth on other much rely." To him love was "the crown of knighthood," and he lingered joyfully over ancient tales in which, though simply, it was exhibited as such.
We have already seen how the poet repeated Chaucer's words on mastery in love. False Duessa seems to have had them in mind too when she says:
For love is free, and led with self delight,
Ne will enforced be with masterdom or might.
But her counsel to Sir Scudamour is so turned as to resemble that of the goose in the "Fowls Parley," at which the gentle birds took such offence:
"Nay, Godforbede a lover shulde chaunge!" The turtel
seyde, and wex for shame al reed;
"Thogh that his lady ever more be straunge,
Let him serve hir ever, til he be deed! "
In mediaeval mood, Spenser also emphasized that it was better for a knight to die than to be false to his betrothed.
Unto knight there is no greater shame
Than lightness and inconstancy in love.
And ye, fair ladies, that your kingdom make,
In thh hearts of men, them govern wisely well,
of fair Britomart ensample take,
was as true in love as turtle to her make.
love despiseth shame when life is called in dread.
Like Chaucer, Spenser applauded stedfast loy alty and "faithful love, t' abide for evermore." Both poets exalted women full of grace and goodly mod esty, who could wear such a magic girdle as that of Florimel, which gave to her it fitted "the virtue of chaste love and wifehood true;" both believed in wedlock's loyal bond. Continuing the Squire's Tale, Spenser makes fair Canacee and Triamond spend their days
In perfect love, devoid of hateful strife,
Allied with bands of mutual complement.
Like Dorigen to Arviragus, so Britomart to Artegall;
she yielded her consent
To be his love, and take him for her lord.
Love that two hearts make one, makes eek one will;
Each strove to please, and other's pleasure to fulfil.
The sort of love-relationship that Spenser thought wrong appears in his account of the Castle Joyous, with its marvellous Chamber of Ease.
And all was full of damsels and of squires.
Dancing and revelling both day and night.
And swimming deep in sensual desires;
And Cupid still amongst them kindled lustful fires.
The Red Cross Knight and Britomart, when they beheld the scene,
with scornful eye
They disdained such lascivious disport,
And loathed the loose demeanour of that wanton sort.
They, like Spenser, abhorred such an one as Malecasta, the Lady of Delight. Though a creature of rare beauty, she had "wanton eyes, ill sign of woman hood." And Acrasia, who led many a knight by false enchantment to her Bower of Bliss, is termed vile. "Light ladies' love . . . soon is lost," says the poet. "As for loose loves, they 're vain and vanish into naught." On the other hand, we have only to think of faithful Una, gracious Belphoebe, valiant Britomart, chaste Florimel, sweet Serena, gentle Amoret, affectionate Priscilla, or lovely Pastorella all of them "fair" to the poet's eyes to learn what ladies he would fain commend. Those fittest for their love were " wise, warlike, personable, courteous, and kind." Evidently there was nothing Italianate in Spen ser's view of passion. Idealistically he exalted Womanhood, and by her side in the Temple of Venus he placed goodly Shamefastness, sweet Cheerfulness, sober Modesty, comely Courtesy, soft Silence, and submissive Obedience "in seemly rate." Spenser was thoroughly English in handling the problems of sex; but, beyond most of his countrymen, he proved able to disclose the gladdening power of sensuous charm; he succeeded in raising physical rapture without disquieting vile lust.
To unite pagan philosophy with Puritan morality, as Spenser did in his treatment of love, many view as a triumph of combination. They rejoice at the subtlety, the glory of his new teaching sublimate and sublime. But others are stirred more deeply by the old winsome, unaffected emotion, true love, of which Spenser also felt the force, and delight most when he is inclined with simplicity to sing:
Love does always bring forth bounteous deeds,
And in each gentle heart desire of honour breeds.
Sweet is the love that comes alone with willingness.
Truth is strong and true love most of might.
VI
WHEN reading Spenser we think more of the sentiments the characters utter than of the characters themselves. Spenser's heroes and heroines are often too manifestly abstractions or allegorical figures to leave a distinct impression of personality. As one might expect, the despicable are more memorable than the virtuous: it seems much easier to individualize a sinner than a saint.
One of the best-remembered persons in the Faery Queen is the great boaster Braggadochio, who shows by contrast what a good knight should be.
Knight lie was not, but a boastful swain,
That deeds of arms had ever in despair,
Proud Braggadochio, that in vaunting vain
His glory did repose, and credit did maintain.
Braggadochio was a "losell" peasant, who, purloining noble Guyon's steed and spear, thought to go to court and easily gain fame. "Vainglorious man!"
The scorn of knighthood and true chivalry,
To think without desert of gentle deed
And noble worth, to be advanced high.
Never did he cast his mind to bounty; never did thought of honour assay his base breast.. He was given to lust; he indulged in boastful vain pretence; he "left his love to loss."
There is much in this character that reminds one of Malory's King Mark. He too was false, mendacious, mean, a "self-loved personage" with a flowing tongue, a contemptible coward, who ran away from opponents with whom he feared to joust, one of whom all the world spoke shame so unchivalric that he was finally dismissed from court in disgrace, stamped infamous yet the subject of jest.
When we see Braggadochio described as a peacock, a scarecrow, and consider his servant Trompart, a faithful and wily-witted knave, who upholds the boaster's idle humour with flattery, and "blows the bellows of his swelling vanity," a materialistic creature fond of gold, who declares, whenever asked, that he followed "a great adventurer, whose war like name is far renowned through many bold emprise," yet was fully aware of his master's folly Don Quixote and Sancho Panza come to mind.
Braggadochio, however, unlike brave Don Quixote, cannot be regarded as a burlesque of knightly excess, for the poet insists that he was merely a peasant counterfeit. Even if Spenser had so desired, he had not humour enough to write a good burlesque. In truth, there is ground to suspect that he took Sir Thopas seriously. In his State of Ireland, the poet gravely discussed Sir Thopas' apparel and armour "when he went to fight against the giant," and compared it with that of Irish horsemen. The horse manship of the Irish was one of the few attributes of that people which he praised, and to judge by the following passage, apropos of Braggadochio, his praise was not lightly given:
In brave pursuit of honourable deed.
There is I know not what great difference
Between the vulgar and the noble seed.
Which unto things of valorous pretence
Seems to be borne by native influence;
As feats of arms, and love to entertain:
But chiefly skill to ride seems a science
Proper to gentle blood: some other feign
To manage steeds, as did this vaunter, but in vain.
"Proper to gentle blood!" There were many other things besides skill to ride which Spenser felt that a gentleman should possess, and these he made plain, not only by indicating their absence in the vulgar, but also by applauding their presence in the noble seed.
Sir Calidore, than whom there is no more pleasing hero in the Faery Queen, perhaps best illustrates Spenser's view as to what qualities gentlemen ought to show. Sir Calidore was beloved over-all,
In whom, it seems that gentleness of spirit
And manners mild were planted natural;
To which he adding comely guise withal
And gracious speech, did steal men's hearts away:
He loathed leasing and base Jlattery,
And loved simple truth and stedfast honesty.
This description recalls Malory's praise of Sir Gareth, though comely is a new adjective, and hatred of flattery a new attribute for him. Calidore in his travel meets Tristram, now an innocent youth, "Child Tristram," roaming the forests, clad like a woodman in Lincoln green, and sees him slay a proud discourteous knight, to save a lady from brutality. He remarks that the boy's speech is "tempered" well, and that he made answer with "poignant wit,"
That sure he weened him born of gentle blood
With whom those graces did so goodly wit.
From his face and "gracious goodlihed," the knight concluded that Tristram was "surely born of some heroic seed." He had won his battle worthily "by his worth." Tristram is represented here, as in Malory, as a great lover of hunting, among his peers; but it is new to learn of his tempered speech, his poignant wit, his worthy worth.
Going on with his narrative, Spenser presently quotes as true what "that good poet" Chaucer said, but in another form: "The gentle mind by gentle deeds is known," adding that "a man by nothing is so well bewrayed as by his manners, in which plain is shown of what degree and what race he is grown. . . . Gentle blood will gentle manners breed." The alteration of Chaucer's words is significant. Instead of "he is gentle who doth gentle deeds," we read: " The gentle mind by gentle deeds is known." But the difference is more obvious in the remark: "Gentle blood will gentle manners breed." Once again, when Spenser returns to the same theme, he exclaims: " O what an easy thing is to descry the gentle blood," for no matter how foully deformed by misfortune, "yet will it show some sparks of gentle mind, and at last break forth in his own kind." Spenser lays the em phasis on gentle manners and gentle mind rather than on gentle deeds as the chief witnesses of gentle blood. He comes nearest Chaucer when he says:
The gentle heart itself bewrays
In doing gentle deeds .with frank delight.
But he immediately shifts back to his more characteristic attitude when he adds:
Even so the baser mind itself displays
In cancred malice and revengeful spite:
For to malign, t' envy, f use shifting slight,
Be arguments of a vile, dunghill mind.
Not without reason did Dr. Grosart dedicate his edition of Spenser to Lord Tennyson, "true child of that high race." The latter 's words regarding Hallam betray at the end a like disposition to superiority:
So wore his outward best, and joined
Each office of the social hour
To noble manners, as the flower
And native growth of noble mind;
Nor ever narrowness or spite,
Or villain fancy fleeting by,
Drew in the expression of an eye,
Where God and Nature met in light,
And thus he bore without abuse
The grand old name of gentleman,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soiled with all ignoble use.
It was natural, Spenser thought, that "wild woods should far expel all civil usage and gentility and gentle sprite deform with rude rusticity." He assumed that court and royal citadel were the "great school mistress of all courtesy," that, therefore, one who had no skill of court nor courtesy was " a cancred crabbed carl." He wasted no sympathy on "the simple clown that doth despise the dainties of the town." He disdained rude churls, "brutishly brought up, that ne'er did fashions see." He contrasted the fair crew of brave knights and dainty dames with the baser crew, the rascal many, rude rablement, rustic rout, uncivil peasants, lewd fools, vile cowherd dogs. "Unto the vulgar," he declared, "forged things do fairest show" "so feeble skill of perfect things the vulgar has! " Our thoughts wander back to Armado, Shakespeare's burlesque of men of Spenser's group. He too disdained the rude multitude. "O base and obscure vulgar !" he exclaimed: "we will be singled from the barbarous!" Spenser had admiration for his contemporaries who wrote plays, like Lyly, of a seemly sort; but he found repugnant those who were beginning to disguise "the fair scene with rudeness foul." They consorted, he thought, with "ugly barbarism and brutish ignorance," and with vain toys did "the vulgar entertain."
Spenser's considerations have regularly to do with what is fitting, what are one's duties to men of de gree, what may keep one from courtly reproof of being rude, vulgar, barbarous, base or (equally bad, perhaps) obscure ! We are not surprised to have him begin one canto of the Faery Queen with this apostrophe:
Redoubted Knights and honourable dames,
To whom I level all my labour's end.
He believed that the "nobility" were "the realm's chief strength and garland of the crown."
But who, we may ask, formed this "nobility"? Evidently, "noble and gentle persons," persons of quality, measured by the standards of the Courtier. Though Spenser agreed with Castiglione that it was a condition of a perfect noble person "to be well born and of a good stock," he too was willing to admit exceptions to the rule:
Certes, it hath oftentimes been seen,
That of the like, whose lineage was unknown,
More brave and noble knights have raised been
{As their victorious deeds have often shown,
Being with fame through many nations blown)
Than those which have been dandled in the lap:
Therefore some thought that those brave imps were sown
Here by the gods, and fed with heavenly sap,
That made them grow so light all honourable hap.
These last sound very much like Castiglione's words: "Truth it is, whether it be thought the favour of the stars or of nature, some there are born endowed with such graces, that they seem not to have been born, but rather fashioned with the very hand of some god, and abound in all goodness both of body and mind."
Castiglione briefly states his views of nobility as follows: "It is a great deal less dispraise for him that is not born a gentleman to fail in the acts of virtue than for a gentleman. If he swerve from the steps of his ancestors, he staineth the name of his family, and doth not only not get, but loseth that is already gotten. For nobleness of birth is, as it were, a clear lamp that sheweth forth and bringeth into light works both good and bad, and enflameth and provoketh unto virtue, as well with the fear of slander, as also with the hope of praise."
Such considerations had evoked others similar in England before Spenser wrote. In an interesting chapter of his Book named the Governor (1531), Sir Thomas Elyot discusses "what very nobility is" and who are "noble persons," and emphasizes that noble "signifieth excellent, and in the analogy or signification it is more ample than gentle, for it containeth as well all that which is in gentleness, as also the honour or dignity therefore received, which be so annexed the one to the other that they cannot be separate." "It would be moreover declared," he adds, "that where virtue joined with great possessions or dignity hath long continued in the blood or house of a gentleman, as it were an inheritance, there no bility is most shewed, and these noble men be most to be honoured; forasmuch as continuance in all thing that is good hath ever preeminence in praise and comparison. But yet shall it be necessary to advertise [warn] those persons that do think that nobility may in no wise be but only where men can avaunt them of ancient lineage, an ancient robe, or great possessions, at this day very noble men do suppose to be much error and folly. . . . Nobility is not after the vulgar opinion of men, but is only the praise and surname of virtue; which, the longer it continueth in a name or lineage, the more is nobility extolled and marvelled at."
In sixteenth-century England, scholars concerned themselves more with the principles of nobility than with the laws of chivalry; but with men of action it was the reverse. Spenser, happily, had before him as a pattern of manhood one who was "president" (precedent) of both "noblesse and chivalry," and in the Faery Queen he entered all his thoughts on virtue, wherever derived.
Spenser's living ideal was Sir Philip Sidney, and that noble and virtuous gentleman he describes as "most worthy of all titles both of learning and chivalry." In the combination of learning and chivalry lay the Italian ideal which stirred these friends to their distinction. "Beside goodness," wrote Castiglione, "the true and principal ornament of the mind in every man are letters. The Frenchmen know only the nobleness of arms, and pass for nothing be side. So that they do not only not set by letters, but they rather abhor them, and all learned men they count very rascals and think it is a great villainy when any of them is called a clerk." Perhaps with this pas sage before him, Peacham, in the seventeenth cen tury, remarked again: "They [the French nobility] delight for the most part in horsemanship, fencing, hunting, dancing, and little esteem of learning and gifts of the mind." If this was really the case, it was not because efforts had not been made earlier in France herself to alter it. Alain Chartier protests in his poem Esperance: "Fol langage court aujourd hui que noble homme ne doit savoir les lettres." And Christine de Pisan (if, indeed, she is the author) thus opens her admirable Life of Boucicaut: "Two things are, by the will of God, established in the world, like two pillars to sustain the orders of divine and human laws, which give rule to human weakness to live in peace, and duly under the terms of reason, and which increase and multiply human sense in know ledge and virtue and remove its ignorance. . . . These two pillars are chivalry and learning, which very well agree together." Most noteworthy is Christine's de scription of her admirable hero: "Lequel dit chevalier fut moult pr end omme et de grand savoir." St. Louis was more than content to be a preudomme alone. With others like-minded and like-trained, Christine strove in France to effect a union of learning and chivalry, but plainly with less success than was achieved beyond the Alps. The same situation con fronts us in England. Despite all the urgings of Spen ser and his group, the majority of English knights seem to have remained as undisturbed by their in completeness as the French. Skelton had said in Colin Clout:
Noble men born,
To learn they have scorn,
But hunt and blow an horn.
Leap over lakes and dikes,
Set nothing by polytykes.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert closes his plea for the institution to be called "Queen Elizabeth's Academy," with equal frankness: "By erecting this Academy, there shall be hereafter in effect no gentleman within this realm but is good for somewhat, whereas now the most part of them are good for nothing. And yet thereby the court shall not only be greatly increased with gallant gentlemen, but also with men of virtue, whereby Your Majesty's and successors' courts shall be forever, instead of a nursery of idleness, a most noble academy of chivalric policy and philosophy, to your great fame."
In Queen Elizabeth's age chivalry was still a name to conjure with. When Peacham wrote, in 1634 he naturally substituted for it "the fear of God;" but the Renaissance plea for learning he proudly renewed: "Since learning joined with the fear of God is so faithful a guide that without it princes undergo but lamely (as Chrysostom saith) their greatest affairs they are rude in discretion, ignorant in know ledge, rude and barbarous in manners and living the necessity of it in princes and nobility may easily be gathered, who, howsoever they flatter themselves with the favourable sunshine of their great estates and fortunes, are indeed of no other account and reckoning with men of wisdom and understanding than glowworms that only shine in the dark of ignorance and are admired of idiots and the vulgar for the outside, statues or huge colossos full of lead and rubbish within."
This lack of learning among men of rank has been steadily bewailed by scholars to our own day. Their laments might have been more effective (they would certainly have been more worthy) had they not exhibited so often the superciliousness of bookish snobs ugly "vileinye" of a sort that no perfect, gentle knight would address to any fellow man. From grievous words of disdain Spenser was not free. He states his own attitude thus: "The better please, the worse despise, I ask no more."
It is very gratifying, on the contrary, to find the poet hesitate to use the word "scorn" of Sir Philip Sidney, because, he said, it was not "in the good ness of that nature to scorn." Sidney's character was grounded on the very noble, but very difficult, ideal of Christian chivalry, which demanded that a man should strive to make himself beloved. The most marvellous thing, indeed, about that gentle knight is that from all sorts of persons, high and low, as his father witnessed, he won love. He must have been, as Shelley thought, "sublimely mild."
He grew up fast in goodness and in grace,
And doubly fair wox both in mind and face,
Which daily more and more he did augment,
With gentle usage and demeanour mud:
That all mens hearts with secret ravishment
He stole away, and wittingly beguiled.
Ne spite herself, that all good things doth spill,
Found aught in him that she could say was ill.
Sidney, as Fulke Greville wrote, was "a true model of worth; a man fit for conquest, plantation, reformation, or what action soever is greatest and hardest among men; withal such a lover of mankind and goodness, that whosoever had any real parts, in him found comfort, participation and protection to the uttermost of his power. . . . [He was] the common rendez-vous of worth in his time." "True worth," which meant to Sidney "esteeming fame more than riches, and noble actions far above nobil ity itself," is the finest note of the conception of chivalry that Spenser presents. Great, heroic, noble, wondrous, famous, knightly, are all adjectives he joins to worth. Chaucer admired the Black Prince, "the flower of chivalry;" Malory, the Earl of War wick, "father of courtesy;" Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, "worthy of all titles both of learning and chivalry," apostle and mirror of worth. Sir Philip Sidney, we can all acclaim without reserve true "lover of mankind."
Spenser was a poet of "liberal" education and culture. Of the four writers here particularly considered, he was the only one who was a university man, or had the ideals, as well as the prejudices, that still prevail at Oxford and Cambridge, comparatively little changed from the poet's time. Graduates of these colleges "England's goodly beams" have long cherished the idea that they formed a select body of "noble or gentle persons," preeminently fitted by reason of their "virtuous and gentle discipline" to set standards in the nation and direct its affairs. Most have been zealous "to join learning with comely exercises," and many have sought in public life to enhance their country's honour. When true to them selves as "gentlemen and scholars," they have acted with dignity and self-control; they have spoken with well-tempered speech, and rebuked unseemly demeanour. Recognizing that intellectual as well as hereditary noblesse has obligations, the best have laboured to confirm the old belief: Abeunt studia in mores. Because "manners, "thus founded, still make men, Englishmen are still deeply indebted to all who advanced the lofty ideals of conduct elaborated in the Renaissance, to none more, despite his faults, than to Edmund Spenser, who joined "seraphic intellect . . . and manhood fused with female grace," a
High nature, amorous of the good,
But touched with no ascetic gloom.
