Yet therein now doth lodge a noble peer, Great England's glory, and the world's wide wonder, Whose dreadful name late through all Spaine did thunder, And Hercules' two pillars standing near Did make to quake and feare: Faire branch of honour, flower of chevalrie; That fillest England with thy triumph's fame, Joy have thou of thy noble victorie."
Essex no doubt took the poet at his word, both for his panegyric and his hint: for it was he that gave Spenser his funeral in Westminster, and he was not of a spirit to treat a great poet, as poets have sometimes been treated--with neglect in their lifetime, and self-complacent monuments to them after their death.
We shall close this notice (in which we have endeavoured to concentrate all the interest we could) of the once great and applauded Essex, whose memory long retained its popularity, and gave rise to several tragedies, with a letter of his to the Lord Keeper Egerton, in which there is one of his finest sentiments expressed with his most passionate felicity. Egerton's eldest son had accompanied Essex into Ireland, and died there, which is the subject of the letter. As Spenser's death also happened just before the earl set out for that country, at a moment when he might have been of political as well as poetical use to him (for Spenser was a politician, and had been employed in the affairs of Ireland), Mr. Todd thinks, that among the friends alluded to, part of the regret may have been for him:
"Whatt can you receave from a cursed country butt vnfortunate newes? whatt can be my stile (whom heaven and earth are agreed to make a martyr) butt a stile of mourning? nott for myself thatt I smart, _for I wold I had in my hart the sorow of all my frends_, but I mourn that my destiny is to overlive my deerest frendes. Of yr losse yt is neither good for me to write nor you to reade. But I protest I felt myself sensibly dismembered, when I lost my frend. Shew yr strength in lyfe. Lett me, yf yt be God's will, shew yt in taking leave of the world, and hasting after my frends. Butt I will live and dy
"More yr lp's then any "man's living, "ESSEX."
"_Arbrachan, this last day of August_" [1599].
"Little,"[137] says Mr. Todd, "did the generous but unfortunate Essex then imagine, that the learned statesman, to whom this letter of condolence was addressed, would be directed very soon afterwards to issue an order for his execution. The original warrant, to which the name of Elizabeth is prefixed, is now in the possession of the Marquis of Stafford; and the queen has written her name, not with the firmness observable in numerous documents existing in the same and other collections, but with apparent tremor and hesitation."