The Poetical Works of - OUDL Home

SPENSER'S MARRIAGE (1594) THE AMORETTI xxxv
first work was Colin Clouts Come Home Agatne, 1 in which he recounted his
recent experiences,—Ralegh's visit to him at Kilcolman, their journey
to London, his reception at court, and his impressions of all he saw there
In no other poem are we more keenly sensible of the subtle charm of
Spenser's personality than in this graceful piece of idealized autobiography
The form is pastoral, the manner simple and without ornament, but never
prosaic, touching the most trivial incident with grace, and capable of
rising without violence to express the deepest emotion It is the triumph
of the familiar style in which so few writers have excelled To write thus
is only possible to one who is both artist and gentleman Pope can do it
occasionally, but he is not always a gentleman , so can Cowper, but he
is not always an artist The masters in this kind are Shelley and Spenser
At the same period Spenser collected a small volume of poems commemorative
of Sidney, to which he contributed the first—Astrophel, A Pastor all
Elegie—and probably the second, 2 and he was busy upon the second
instalment of the Faerie Queene, of which three more books, written, it
seems, at the rate of one a year, were practically complete in 1594
On June 11, 1594, after rather more than twelve months' courtship,
he married Elizabeth Boyle, whose home was at Kilcoran, near to the sea
strand of Youghal She was a lady of good family, and kinswoman to
Sit" Richard Boyle, afterwards created first Earl of Cork 3 The inner
history of this courtship and its consummation is recorded, in„ .idealized
form, in the Amoretti and Epthalamion
Modern criticism, which has made so damaging an assault upon the
sincerity of Elizabethan sonneteers, could hardly be expected to leave
this beautiful sequence unassailed, and the view has lately been advanced
that the Amoretti are addressed for the most part to Lady Carey, and
hence were written during Spenser's residence in London 4 But whilst
it is possible that some of the sonnets were in the first place inspired by
Lady Carey, or indeed by Rosalind or some earlier 5 and still more elusive
flame, there is no reason for suspecting the integrity of the series as a whole,
and amid much that is borrowed from the stock-in-trade of the French
sonneteers, and recounts the emotions incident to every courtship, real
1 Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, dated in the dedication to Ralegh, December
1591, was published with Astrophel in 1595, and contains passages which must have
been added in that year
2 The Lay of Clortnda, who laments her lost brother, is commonly attributed to
the Countess of Pembroke But if she did write it, she had studied to some purpose
the peculiarly Spenserian effects of rhythm and melody The poem is, moreover,
like the introductory elegy, woven into the plan of the volume, and not a separate
work, standing by itself, like those that follow It is more natural, therefore, to be­
­ieve that Spenser wrote it in her name For criticism of Astrophel vide supra, p xII
3 Spenser's wife was first identified by Grosart, vide Life, pp 198-201
' 4Mr P W Long, Mod Lang Rev (April 1908), answered by Mr J C Smith
in the same journal (July 1910)
5 Thus e g Sonnet VIlI is Shakespearian form, which at least suggests very early
composition.