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SPENSER IN LONDON (1590) xxix
slow to recognize that the promise of the ' newe poete' was more 'than
fulfilled For more than a year London seems to have been his headquarters,
and here he could enjoy his triumph to the full It was in the
summer of 1590, perhaps, that he paid a prolonged visit to the neighbourhood
of Alton in Hampshire, for Aubrey was informed that ' Mr Spenser
lived sometime in these parts, in this delicate sweete aire, where he
enjoyed his Muse, and wntt good part of his verses ', 1 but in the autumn
he would be back again at the centre of culture, on easy terms with all
lovers of the arts Among the ladies of the court he had many friends,
and some of them he honoured with the dedication of poems For the
Countess of Pembroke he wrote the Rumes of Time ' to the renowning
of the race of the Dudleys and to the eternizing of the chiefe of them
late deceased ', in particular Sir Philip Sidney To the Marquesse of
Northampton he dedicates Dapbnaida, and to each of his cousins, Lady
Strange, Lady Compton and Montegle, and Lady Carey, he dedicates
a poem, addressing Lady Carey in terms which suggest a special intimacy
There can be no doubt that Spenser anticipated substantial recognition
of his poetic fame in the shape of a post of responsibility under the crown
He had too great a sympathy with the national ideals of Sidney and of
Ralegh to desire a mere sinecure, and his bitterest scorn was always
directed against those who spent their lives hanging about the court in
idleness, but it is clear that he aspired to some office which would give
his ambitions a fuller scope than his Munster clerkship Yet this was
not to be The queen might be personally attracted to Ralegh, as she had
been before to Leicester, but she still trusted Burghley, and from Burghley
that man had little to hope who appeared at court under the patronage
of Leicester, Ralegh, and later of Essex, whilst his unswerving loyalty
to his friends, when they were dead or out of favour, did not mark him
as the likely recipient of worldly honours Rather more than a year after
his great poem had appeared he received a pension of fifty pounds a year,
and with this he had to rest content His impressions of the darker side
of court life, which had disgusted him ten years before, were now intensified
It was probably when he saw that all his hopes were frustrate
and that nothing could be gained by a silence intolerable to his impulsive
nature, that he collected his volume of Complaints, in which he voices his
despair at the neglect of the arts and the degeneracy of the times, and
continually attributes them to the sinister influence of Burghley Among
these poems he included his early satire of Mother Hubberds Tale, adding
to it that magnificently scornful exposure of the pitiful state of the
suitor at court
Spenser's inability to obtain court preferment has been the cause of many
1 We have no means of determining accurately at what period of Spenser's life
this visit was paid, but it is difficult to fit it in to the crowded years before he left
for Ireland, and on his second visit to England (1595-6) he wrote little poetry
Hence the summer of 1590 seems the most probable dates