As men count years, he was still young, for he was only forty-seven.  He had dreamed that he had still time before him to make life a success.  For as men counted success in those days, Spenser was a failure.  He had failed to make a name among the statesmen of the age.  He failed to make a fortune, he lived poor and he died poor.  As a poet he was a sublime success.  He dedicated the Faery Queen to Elizabeth “to live with the eternity of her fame,” and it is not too much to believe that even should the deeds of Elizabeth be forgotten the fame of Spenser will endure.  And the poets of Spenser’s own day knew that in him they had lost a master, and they mourned for him as such.  They buried him in Westminster not far from Chaucer.  His bier was carried by poets, who, as they stood beside his grave, threw into it poems in which they told of his glory and their own grief.  And so they left “The Prince of Poets in his tyme, whose divine spirit needs no other witnesse than the workes which he left behind him."*

The first epitaph engraved on Spenser’s tomb.

BOOKS TO READ

Tales from Spenser (Told to Children Series).  Una and the Red Cross Knight, by N. G. Royde Smith (has many quotations).  Tales from the Faerie Queene, by C. L. Thomson (prose).  The Faerie Queene (verse, sixteenth century spelling).  Faerie Queene, book I, by Professor W. H. Hudson.  Complete Works (Globe Edition), edited by R. Morris.  Britomart, edited by May E. Litchfield, is the story of Britomart taken from scattered portions in books III, IV, and V in original poetry, spelling modernized.

Chapter XLIV ABOUT THE FIRST THEATERS

IN the beginnings of our literature there were two men who, we might say, were the fountain-heads.  These were the gay minstrel abroad in the world singing in hall and market-place, and the patient monk at work in cell or cloister.  And as year by year our literature grew, strengthened and broadened, we might say it flowed on in two streams.  It flowed in two streams which were ever joining, mingling, separating again, for the monk and the minstrel spoke to man each in his own way.  The monk made his appeal to the eye as with patient care he copied, painted and made his manuscript beautiful with gold and colors.  The minstrel made his appeal to the ear with music and with song.  Then after a time the streams seemed to join, and the monk when he played the miracle-plays seemed to be taking the minstrel’s part.  Here was an appeal to both the eye and ear.  Instead of illuminating the silent parchment he made living pictures illustrate spoken words.  Then followed a time when the streams once more divided and church and stage parted.  The strolling players and the trade guilds took the place both of the minstrel and of the monkish actors, the monk went back once more to his quiet cell, and the minstrel gradually disappeared.