Therfore do you my rimes keep better measure,
And seek to please, that now is counted wisemens
threasure.
In the _Tears of the Muses_ Calliope says of certain
persons of eminent rank:--
Their great revenues all in sumptuous pride
They spend that nought to learning they may spare;
And the rich fee which Poets wont divide
Now Parasites and Sycophants do share.
Several causes have been suggested to account for this
disfavour. The popular tradition was pleased to
explain it by making Burghley the ideal dullard who has
no soul for poetry--to whom one copy of verses is very
much as good as another, and no copy good for anything.
It delighted to bring this commonplace gross-minded
person into opposition with one of the most spiritual
of geniuses. In this myth Spenser represents mind,
Burghley matter. But there is no justification in
facts for this tradition. It may be that the Lord
Treasurer was not endowed with a high intellectual
nature; but he was far too wise in his generation not
to pretend a virtue if he had it not, when
circumstances called for anything of the sort. When
the Queen patronized literature, we may be sure Lord
Burghley was too discreet to disparage and oppress it.
Another solution refers to Burghley's Puritanism as the
cause of the misunderstanding; but, as Spenser too
inclined that way, this is inadequate.
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