GABRIEL HARVEY.--Among the friends of both Sidney and Spenser, was one who had the pleasure of making them acquainted--Gabriel Harvey. He was born, it is believed, in 1545, and lived until 1630. Much may be gathered of the literary character and tendencies of the age by a perusal of the "three proper and wittie familiar letters" which passed between Spenser and himself, and the "four letters and certain sonnets," containing valuable notices of contemporary poets. He also prefixed a poem entitled _Hobbinol_, to the Faery Queene. But Harvey most deserves our notice because he was the champion of the hexameter verse in English, and imbued even Spenser with an enthusiasm for it.
Each language has its own poetic and rhythmic capacities. Actual experiment and public taste have declared their verdict against hexameter verse in English. The genius of the Northern languages refuses this old heroic measure, which the Latins borrowed from the Greeks, and all the scholarship and finish of Longfellow has not been able to establish it in English. Harvey was a pedant so thoroughly tinctured with classical learning, that he would trammel his own language by ancient rules, instead of letting it grow into the assertion of its own rules.
EDMUND SPENSER--THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR.--Having noticed these lesser lights of the age of Spenser, we return to a brief consideration of that poet, who, of all others, is the highest exponent and representative of literature in the age of Queen Elizabeth, and whose works are full of contemporary history.
Spenser was born in the year of the accession of Queen Mary, 1553, at London, and of what he calls "a house of ancient fame." He was educated at Cambridge, where he early displayed poetic taste and power, and he went, after leaving college, to reside as a tutor in the North of England. A love affair with "a skittish female," who jilted him, was the cause of his writing the _Shepherd's Calendar_; which he soon after took with him in manuscript to London, as the first fruits of a genius that promised far nobler things.
Harvey introduced him to Sidney, and a tender friendship sprang up between them: he spent much of his time with Sidney at Pennshurst, and dedicated to him the _Shepherd's Calendar_. He calls it "an olde name for a newe worke." The plan of it is as follows: There are twelve parts, corresponding to twelve months: these he calls _aeglogues_, or goat-herde's songs, (not _eclogues_ or εκλογαι--well-chosen words.) It is a rambling work in varied melody, interspersed and relieved by songs and lays.