And now Spenser (perhaps in mere melancholy wilfulness and want of purpose, for he had just been jilted by a fair maid of Kent) was wasting his mighty genius upon doggerel which he fancied antique;and some piratical publisher (bitter Tom Nash swears, and with likelihood that Harvey did it himself) had just given to the world,--"Three proper wittie and familiar Letters, lately past between two University men, touching the Earthquake in April last, and our English reformed Versifying," which had set all town wits a-buzzing like a swarm of flies, being none other than a correspondence between Spenser and Harvey, which was to prove to the world forever the correctness and melody of such lines as, "For like magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show, In deede most frivolous, not a looke but Tuscanish always."Let them pass--Alma Mater has seen as bad hexameters since.But then the matter was serious.There is a story (I know not how true) that Spenser was half bullied into re-writing the "Faerie Queene" in hexameters, had not Raleigh, a true romanticist, "whose vein for ditty or amorous ode was most lofty, insolent, and passionate," persuaded him to follow his better genius.The great dramatists had not yet arisen, to form completely that truly English school, of which Spenser, unconscious of his own vast powers, was laying the foundation.And, indeed, it was not till Daniel, twenty years after, in his admirable apology for rhyme, had smashed Mr.Campian and his "eight several kinds of classical numbers," that the matter was finally settled, and the English tongue left to go the road on which Heaven had started it.So that we may excuse Raleigh's answering somewhat waspish to some quotation of Spenser's from the three letters of "Immerito and G.H.""Tut, tut, Colin Clout, much learning has made thee mad.A good old fishwives' ballad jingle is worth all your sapphics and trimeters, and 'riff-raff thurlery bouncing.' Hey? have I you there, old lad? Do you mind that precious verse?""But, dear Wat, Homer and Virgil--"
"But, dear Ned, Petrarch and Ovid--"
"But, Wat, what have we that we do not owe to the ancients?""Ancients, quotha? Why, the legend of King Arthur, and Chevy Chase too, of which even your fellow-sinner Sidney cannot deny that every time he hears it even from a blind fiddler it stirs his heart like a trumpet-blast.Speak well of the bridge that carries you over, man! Did you find your Redcross Knight in Virgil, or such a dame as Una in old Ovid? No more than you did your Pater and Credo, you renegado baptized heathen, you!""Yet, surely, our younger and more barbarous taste must bow before divine antiquity, and imitate afar--""As dottrels do fowlers.If Homer was blind, lad, why dost not poke out thine eye? Ay, this hexameter is of an ancient house, truly, Ned Spenser, and so is many a rogue: but he cannot make way on our rough English roads.He goes hopping and twitching in our language like a three-legged terrier over a pebble-bank, tumble and up again, rattle and crash.""Nay, hear, now--
'See ye the blindfolded pretty god that feathered archer, Of lovers' miseries which maketh his bloody game?'*True, the accent gapes in places, as I have often confessed to Harvey, but--"* Strange as it may seem, this distich is Spenser's own; and the other hexameters are all authentic.
Harvey be hanged for a pedant, and the whole crew of versifiers, from Lord Dorset (but he, poor man, has been past hanging some time since) to yourself! Why delude you into playing Procrustes as he does with the queen's English, racking one word till its joints be pulled asunder, and squeezing the next all a-heap as the Inquisitors do heretics in their banca cava? Out upon him and you, and Sidney, and the whole kin.You have not made a verse among you, and never will, which is not as lame a gosling as Harvey's own--'Oh thou weathercocke, that stands on the top of Allhallows, Come thy ways down, if thou dar'st for thy crown, and take the wall on us.'
Hark, now! There is our young giant comforting his soul with a ballad.You will hear rhyme and reason together here, now.He will not miscall 'blind-folded,' 'blind-fold-ed, I warrant; or make an 'of' and a 'which' and a 'his' carry a whole verse on their wretched little backs."And as he spoke, Amyas, who had been grumbling to himself some Christmas carol, broke out full-mouthed:--"As Joseph was a-walking He heard an angel sing--'This night shall be the birth night Of Christ, our heavenly King.
His birthbed shall be neither In housen nor in hall, Nor in the place of paradise, But in the oxen's stall.
He neither shall be rocked In silver nor in gold, But in the wooden manger That lieth on the mould.
He neither shall be washen With white wine nor with red, But with the fair spring water That on you shall be shed.
He neither shall be clothed In purple nor in pall, But in the fair white linen That usen babies all.'
As Joseph was a-walking Thus did the angel sing, And Mary's Son at midnight Was born to be our King.
Then be you glad, good people, At this time of the year;And light you up your candles, For His star it shineth clear.""There, Edmunde Classicaster," said Raleigh, "does not that simple strain go nearer to the heart of him who wrote 'The Shepherd's Calendar,' than all artificial and outlandish 'Wote ye why his mother with a veil hath covered his face?'
Why dost not answer, man?"
But Spenser was silent awhile, and then,--"Because I was thinking rather of the rhymer than the rhyme.Good heaven! how that brave lad shames me, singing here the hymns which his mother taught him, before the very muzzles of Spanish guns;instead of bewailing unmanly, as I have done, the love which he held, I doubt not, as dear as I did even my Rosalind.This is his welcome to the winter's storm; while I, who dream, forsooth, of heavenly inspiration, can but see therein an image of mine own cowardly despair.
