Morrell. What ho, thou jolly shepherd's swain, 1 Thilk, the same. A word taken from Chaucer; but Spenser's use of words older than his own time is often no more than the imitation of rustic dialect by use of old forms, then not only to be read in Chaucer but to be heard among the country folk. again makes the eclogue, as in Clement Marot's poems, a pastoral myth touching closely the religious controversies of the time in which he lived. When it is so used shepherds stand for pastors of the Church, and Spenser's zeal for what he looked upon as necessary thoroughness of Church reform leads him, regardless of all private interests at court, not only to make his Puritanism known, but to take part against the Queen herself on a Church question of the day, the question of the relations between her and Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury. In the following eclogue the good Algrind is Grindal, with no more disguise of his name than a transposing of its syllables. But Grindal, when the poem appeared, was Archbishop of Canterbury censured by the Queen, and sequestered by her from the exercise of his authority. Morrell, the goatherd proud, who has allowed his flock to stray, has his name formed in a similar manner by a transposition of the syllables of the name of Elmore, Elmer, or Aylmer. But Aylmer was at this particular time Bishop of London, wielding great part of the authority that had been taken from Grindal. He was greatly disliked by lasting. These held that the outward ceremonial, which had been 2 Come up the hill to me. You, lowly pastor, follow my example; seek to climb to a bishop's seat! But Morrell's flock is said to be astray in the rank grass, in what Barnaby Googe had called the "old corrupted grass of the unreformed faith (see his "Eclogue," on page 64, line 200). Spenser desired root and branch reform in the Church. The Queen and her first archbishop-the learned Matthew Parker, who died in 1575-desired to maintain Unity of the Church, by reforming only what they held to be essential errors, and leaving the outside fashions of worship, if not evil in themselves, untouched. Much, therefore, of old ceremonial was kept, partly because Parker had a scholar's reverence for ancient usages; partly because it seemed to him wise to avoid changes that to the country people, of wit slow to understand a transformation of the forms to which they had been bred, would seem like taking their religion from them. That was the point of view of earnest and religious men whose minds were con servative in tendency. Others, as earnest and religious-but, if we compare, as we should always, the best men of one side with the best men of their opponents, differing only in sense of the way to the wellbeing of England, not in heartiness of labour for it-were disposed by nature to dwell most on the reforms to be effected and made Better is, than the lowly plain, Als for thy flock and thee. Thomalin. Ah! God shield, man, that I should clime, And learn to look aloft: This rede2 is rife, that oftentime Great climbers fall unsoft. In humble dales is footing fast, The trode is not so tickle; 3 And though one fall through heedless haste, Yet is his miss not mickle. And now the sun hath rearéd up His fiery-footed teme, Making his way between the Cup And golden Diademe: The rampant Lion hunts he fast, With dogs of noisome breath, Whose baleful barking brings in haste Against his cruel scorching heat, The wasteful hills unto his threat 10 Morrell. Sicker thou's but a lazy lourd,7 And rekes much of thy swink,8 That with fond terms and witless words St. Michel's Mount who does not know, All Kent can rightly boast: Sain most-what, that they dwell Beside a learned well. 40 But if thee lust to holden chat With seely shepherd's swain, Come down, and learn the little what That Thomalin can sain.5 joined for generations with certain corruptions of the Church, would, if retained, retain, or in time recall, the ills with which it had been so long identified. Elizabethan Puritans, continuing one line of thought from Wiclif's Bible-men to the Ironsides of the Civil War, desired, therefore, that all usage and ceremony founded on tradition should give place to the establishment of a reformed Church only based upon the deep and strong foundation of the Scriptures. This was Spenser's view throughout his life, but blended with a not less resolute upholding of royal authority, and a severe contempt for theorists who undertook the reconstruction of society. John Aylmer, Bishop of London when this pastoral was published, is represented in Morrell as the Puritans saw him. He was a man of fifty-eight: in earlier life the kindly scholar who, as her tutor, made Plato a delight to Lady Jane Grey; under Mary, a Protestant exile at Zurich; under Elizabeth, a divine inclined to carry out the Queen's policy, by repression of extreme opinions on either side, whether of those who opposed all the reforms or of those who demanded many more; and he was, therefore, equally disliked by Catholics and Puritans. He had been made Bishop of London three years before "The Shepherd's Calendar appeared, and at the date of its appearance he was doubly unpopular with men of Spenser's way of thinking, because he had risen to the power that should have been Grindal's, and was, with the Queen, opposed to the disgraced archbishop. The next following argument is, in pastoral dis zuise, a commendation of the simple lives of the first heads of the Churchthe Apostles-as examples to those bishops who sought lordship and the of life. pomps 1 Als, as, also. 2 Rede, counsel. 3 The trode is not so tickle. The footing is not so unsure. "Tickle" was frequently used in the sense of unstable, tottering, overthrown by a slight touch. The word "tick," meaning a slight touch, is well known in boy's play. ♦ Cup.. Diademe . . . Lion. "The Cup and Diadem be two signs in the firmament through which the sun maketh his course in the month of July," says "E. K.," who supplied notes to the first editions of the "Shepherd's Calendar." He is supposed to have been Edward Kirke, a college friend of Spenser's. Leo, the constellation of the month, appears in the woodcut at the head of the poem. Each of the twelve pictures was, in like manner, fitted to its month by having one of the twelve constellations in its sky. This passage represents July astronomically, and the reign of the Dog-star, Sirius, with the pestilences then abroad, and turns the season to account by adding the suggestion that Morrell being on the "wasteful hills," the overture, cr open space of the hills with waste land on their tops, offers no shelter against the perils from above. Sain, say. Which did himself beget? Thomalin. O blessed sheep! O Shepherd great! Jusques à quand, ô Pan grand et sublime, Et faux pasteurs parjures et meschans, "One tribe is put for the whole nation per synecdochen" (E. K.). Synecdoche is the name in rhetoric for a form of speec which puts a part for the whole, as "hands," for "workmen; "* *** for ships. 14" Where Titan, the sun; which story is to be read in Diodorus Siculus of the hill Ida; from whence, he saith, all night time is te be seen a mighty fire as if the sky burned, which toward m beginneth to gather into a round form, and thereof riseth the whom the poets call Titan." (E. K.) 15"The shepherd is Endymion, whom the poets feign to have His brackish waves be meynt.5 Here grows melampode every where, As well can prove the piercing levin,s 30 beloved of Phoebe, that is to say, the Moon, that he was by her kept asleep in a cave by the space of thirty years for to enjoy his company. (E. K.) 1 "There, that is, in Paradise, where through error of the shepherd's understanding, he saith, that all shepherds did use to feed their flocks, till one (that is Adam) by his folly and disobedience made all the rest of his offspring be debarred and shut out from thence." (E. K.) But there is distinctly Mount Ida, where Paris, the son of Priam and Hecuba, brought up as a shepherd's son, gave the golden apple to Venus and forsook Enone, to bring about, by the carrying away of the wife of his host Menelaus, the utter destruction of Troy. The allusion is designedly so worded as to suggest a transition of thought to the fall of Adam. 2 Our Lady's bower. "A place of pleasure so called," says E. K., who is by no means an infallible informant. How should a mere "place of pleasure" be paired with Sinai? The reference is to Mount Zion. This was described by Sir John Mandeville as "Mount Zion, where there is a fair church of Our Lady, where she dwelt and died. From thence she was carried by the apostles to the valley of Jehoshaphat, and there is the stone which the angel brought to Our Lady from Mount Sinai." 3 This hill of our; the supremacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, which Aylmer practically had after Grindal, though left with the nominal rank, had been suspended from the exercise of his authority. In the manner of pastoral poets Spenser represents by rivers the region to which he refers. So Milton in the "Epitaphium Damonis" (Cowper's Translation), when he speaks of content with fame among his own countrymen for a British song: "A British ?-even so-the pow'rs of man If Alain bending o'er his chrystal urn, Swift whirling Abra, Trent's o'ershadowed stream, "Fauns or sylvans be of poets feigned to be gods of the wood." (E. K.) 5 Ment, mingled. 6" Melampode and terebinth be herbs good to cure diseased goats: of the one speaketh Mantuan, and of the other Theocritus." (E. K.) 7 Eath. The First-English word for "easy." 8 Levin, lightning. Or with the weeds be glutted. The hills, where dwelléd holy saints, I reverence and adore; Not for themself, but for the saints, Which han been dead of yore. go; 14 And now they been to heaven forewent, Their good is with them And lived in lowly leas, And sith 16 their souls be now at rest, Why doen we them disease? Such one he was (as I have heard Old Algrind often sain) And liv'd with little gain: A sacrifice to bring; Now with a kid, now with a sheep, So louted 18 he unto the Lord, 120 130 140 Yode late on pilgrimage To Rome (if such be Rome) and then He saw thilk misusage. For shepherds (said he) there doen lead, As lords doen otherwhere; 1 Thilk shepherd . . . whom Ida hill did bear. Paris. 2 "Argus was of the poets devised to be full of eyes, and therefore to him was committed the keeping of the transformed cow Io; so called, because that, in the print of a cow's foot, there is figured an I in the middest of an O." (E. K.) Extremely keen. The discoverer of that had eyes of Argus for an etymology. Fable said that the hundred eyes of Argus were transferred to the peacock's tail. 10" In purple, spoken of the popes and cardinals, which use such tyrannical colours and pompous painting." (E. K.) 11" Their Pan, that is, the Pope, whom they account their God and greatest shepherd." (E. K.) 12" Palinode, a shepherd of whose report he seemeth to speak all this." (E. K.) The word Palinode means a recantation, and in the fifth eclogue, where Palinode and Piers were the speakers, Piers had quoted Algrind's doctrine against Palinode's hankerings Romeward-"Ah, Palinodie, thou art a world's child! Who touches pitch, mought needs be defiled; But shepherds (as Algrind used to say) Mought not live ylike as men of the lay." That is so oft bynempt ?20 Thomalin. He is a shepherd great in gree,21 13 File, soil. 14 Wisards, great, learned heads." (E. K.) 15 To welter is to roll. First English "waltan," to roll or tumble about. 16 Of the same root is "waltz." Kern, a churl or farmer." (E. K.) 19 To witen, to blame. First English "wftan," to blame, past "witode," is to be distinguished from "witan," to know, past "wiste." Morrell tells Thomalin he will do himself no good by meddling with these matters. So in the September eclogue, Hobbinol (Gabriel Harvey) says to Diggon, who is expressing Spenser's thoughts of the Church "Now, Diggon, I see thou speakest too plain; And cleanly cover that cannot be cured; 20 Bynempt, named. 21 A shepherd great in gree, great in degree, or rank. Edmund Grindal, who was sixty years old in 1579, had been chaplain to Ridley, and was an exile under Mary. After the accession of Elizabeth he became Master of Spenser's own college at Cambridge, Pembroke Hall, and Bishop of London. In 1570 he became Archbishop of York, and in 1575 Archbishop of Canterbury. He obeyed the admonition "Search the Scriptures," and encouraged to the utmost of his power such obedience in others. Especially he encouraged among the reformed clergy what were called (after the "schools of the prophets" named in the Old Testament) prophesyings or meetings for the free discussion and solution of difficulties in the sacred text. The divine, he held, should seek fully to understand himself what he explained to his people, and should boldly face whatever doubts arose. The custom of the prophesyings was that the ministers within a precinct met on a week day in some principal town where there was some ancient and grave minister that was president, and a lay auditory was admitted. Then the ministers, beginning at the youngest, discussed some passage of Scripture that contained a difficulty, each speaking for about a quarter of an hour. The whole meeting, which opened and closed with prayer, lasted for about two hours. Before the assembly dissolved, the president gave out the passage that was to be discussed on the next occasion. Grindal, and all who were of Spenser's way of thought, followed Latimer in dwelling much upon the need of faithful preaching as a foremost office of the Church. Others, among whom was the Queen, held that free preaching led to the multiplication of diversities of doctrine, the encouragement of doubts and heresies, and loss of peace by the weakening of Unity within the Church. For that reason Elizabeth, who had also the strongest political reason for desiring to abate religious feuds, would have liked even the restriction of all preaching to the Homilies appointed by the Church, for thus there would be assured the preaching of the same opinions to all the people. She called upon the Archbishop of Canterbury to issue an injunction against the prophesyings. In reply to this requirement Grindal, as archbishop, addressed to her in 1576 a letter of expostulation, and said in it, "Surely I cannot marvel enough how this strange opinion should once enter your mind, that it should be good for the Church to have few preachers." He maintained in the letter his opposite opinion from Scripture and from the daily experience of their time; then he described and justified the prophesyings, and said, "I am forced with all humility, and yet plainly, to profess, that I cannot with safe conscience, and without the offence of the Majesty of God, give my assent to the suppressing of the said exercises; much less can I send out any injunction for the utter and universal subversion of the same. I say with Saint Paul, I have no power to destroy, but only to edify;' and with the same apostle, 'I can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.' If it be your Majesty's pleasure, for this or any other cause, to remove me out of this place, I will with all humility yield thereunto, and render again to your Majesty that I received of the same. I consider with myself Quod horrendum est incidere in manus dei viventis" [That it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God]. "I consider also, Quod qui facit contra conscientiam (divinis juribus nixam) ædificat ad Gehennam" [That he who acts against conscience (resting on God's laws) builds for Gehenna.Quoted from Cyprian]. "And what should I win, if I gained' (I will not say a bishopric, but) 'the whole world, and lose mine own soul?' Bear with me, I beseech you, Madam, if I choose rather to offend your earthly Majesty than offend the heavenly Majesty of God." The Queen held by her resolution, and sent her own command by her letters to the rest of the bishops wholly to put down the exercises. In June, 1577, Grindal was, by order of the Privy Council, confined to his house and sequestered for six months. In the following January, since, "still esteeming himself not to have done amiss, he would not ask pardon which supposed a fault," there was a question of depriving him; but he remained under sequestration only, and in 1580-the year after the publication of this poem of Spenser's-Archbishop Grindal being still under sequestration, Aylmer, Bishop of London, presided at the Convocation of the Clergy. In 1582, writs were again issued in the archbishop's own name, but Grindal had been losing his eyesight, and was by that time permanently blind, besides being still distasteful to the Queen. He offered resignation of his see. As Thomas Fuller afterwards described his position, "being really blind more with grief than age, he was willing to put off lothes before he went to bed, and in his lifetime to resign hace to Dr. Whitgift; who refused such acceptance thereof. And the Queen, commiserating his condition, was graciously pleased to say, that as she had made him so he should die an archbishop; as he did, July 6th, 1583." 1 Ypent, pent up, confined. 2 An eagle, &c. The royal eagle, who gave a fatal blow to the good Algrind by not understanding what his head was for, represents, of In the next year (1580) Spenser went to Ireland as secretary to the new Lord Deputy, Lord Grey of Wilton, the friend and patron to whom George Gascoigne addressed his "Steel Glass." Spenser took with him the "Faerie Queene," already for some time begun. In Ireland, before the end of the year 1580, Edmund Spenser, who had been with Sidney in London, first came into contact with Walter Raleigh; Spenser, not yet housed at Kilcolman, was then acting as secretary to Lord Grey, who was crushing a hostile settlement of Spaniards and Italians in a fort upon the coast, and Walter Raleigh was there as a captain employed in the enterprise. Raleigh was of like age with Spenser. At seventeen he had left Oxford to fight in France as a volunteer with the Huguenots. He had come home and was in the Middle Temple, twenty-four years old, when he wrote the lines we read lately in praise of George Gascoigne's "Steel Glass," his earliest known verse. Then Walter Raleigh fought against Spain, side by side with the Reformers in the Netherlands; made a venture at sea with his half brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert; and in 1580 went with a captain's commission into Ireland, where Gilbert also was serving. In 1583 Gilbert and Raleigh were off again to found a colony beyond the Again they were without good fortune, and it was on his way home from Newfoundland that Sir Humphrey Gilbert was lost in his little ship, the seas. course, Elizabeth; and Spenser contrives to utter his opinion by making an old story of the manner of the death of Eschylus serve for a parable. The original story was thus told by the writer of the short life of Eschylus in the Medicean MS. of his Tragedies, at Florence:-Eschylus having left Athens for Sicily, was there "held in high honour by the tyrant Hiero and the people of Gela, but survived only three years, and died at an advanced age in the following manner:-An eagle having picked up a tortoise, and not being able to get at its prey, dropped it down on the rocks by way of smashing the shell, when it fell on the poet and killed him. He had been forewarned by the oracle, A stroke from Heaven shall slay thee." Thomalin, as "E. K." would put it, "lest his remembrance and skill in zoology should seem to exceed the meanness of the person," describes the tortoise as a shell-fish, |