letters patent hour date 26th October, 1591. The castle was a fitting abode for a poet; situated in the midst of romantic scenery—in a plain watered by a lake, bounded by mountains, and traversed by the "gentle Mulla," which his song has made immortal. Thither he repaired, and there, in the solitudes of its woods and by the margin of its waters, he elaborated the wonderful poem that has given him so enduring a fame. A visit from his friend and patron, Sir Walter Raleigh, found him in 1589 thus occupied. To him he showed the work so far as it was then composed, probably the three first books. The poem charmed Raleigh, who induced Spenser to return with him to London, in order that he might present him and his poem to the queen. Accordingly in the autumn of 1589 Raleigh brought Spenser under the personal notice of Elizabeth, to whom he was permitted "at timely hours" to read portions of his song, which "by the measure of her own great mind" she declared to be of "wondrous worth." The plan and object of that work the poet himself states to be "in heroical, to represent all the morall vertues; assigning to every vertue a knight to be the patron and defender of the same, in whose actions and feates of armes and chivalry the operations of that vertue, whereof he is the protector, are to be expressed, and the vices and unruly appetites that oppose themselves against the same to be beaten downe and overcome." The first three books were published in 1590, and were received, we may well believe from the commendatory verses prefixed to it and the eulogies of contemporary writers, with wonder and admiration; and the following year the queen bestowed a pension of £50 a year upon the poet. It is pretty certain that Spenser continued in England for more than a year after the publication of the "Faerie Queene," chiefly near the court, and doubtless much in the society of Raleigh and other literary associates; but of them one, and the brightest, had passed away—Sidney—who had been slain in 1586 before Zutphen, and was mourned over by the poet in his pastoral elegy of "Astrophel." In 1596 a collected volume of miscellaneous pieces, entitled "Complaints," appeared with the poet's initials only. Some of these pieces were the productions of his youth; some of them were of high merit, as "The Ruins of Time," "The Tears of the Muses," "Mother Hubbard's Tale," "Micropotmos," and "The Visions of the World's Vanity." Shortly after he composed "Daphnaida—an elegy on the death of the noble and virtuous Douglas Howard," the wife of his friend, the accomplished Arthur Gorges, designated by the poet Alcyon. It was not, however, printed till 1596. Spenser returned to Ireland about the spring of 1591, and must have set about the composition of "Colin Clout's come home again," under which affected title he has given us an autobiography, Colin Clout being the title which he had assumed in "The Shepheard's Calendar." This work was not published till 1594. In the same year he married an Irish girl. Who she was, when and where he first met her, or what was her social position, are not ascertained. He calls her "a country lass," and if we may give even a moderate amount of credence to the poet-lover's descriptions, she must have been a beautiful girl. The probability is that she was the daughter of some gentleman residing near Kilcolman. Professor Child conjectures, with much ingenuity, that her name was Nagle, an anagram for "Angel," which Spenser constantly designates her; and this gains additional strength from the fact that there was a family of this name in the neighbourhood, subsequently connected with the Spensers and with Edmund Burke, whose christian name Mr. Gilfillan thinks may have thus been acquired through the Spensers. We collect, too, from his "Amoretti" that Spenser met her in 1591 or 1592, and that her christian name was Elizabeth, and that he married her at Cork on the 11th June, 1594. Whether this was the poet's first marriage is a question that has been raised, but not yet satisfactorily answered. Mr. Peter Cunningham discovered in the registry at St. Clement Danes, London, under date of the 26th of August, 1587, an entry of the baptism of "Florence Spenser, the daughter of Edmund." From this Mr. Collier argues that this child was the daughter of the poet, the locality being a likely one for Spenser to reside in, as near the mansion of his friend and patron Essex, and Florence being the name of the wife of his friend Lord Grey; and the legitimate daughter, as the registries generally notified when it was otherwise. Against this presumption there is the total silence of the poet himself, and of his intimate friends Harvey and G. K., on the subject, and the disappearance of wife and child. Other business besides literature and love had been occupying the poet. He had got into the meshes of the law, and was carrying on a suit in equity with Lord Fermoy, who alleged that Spenser had entered into certain lands of his lordship (claiming them as his own), and had committed waste on the timber and corn. The result of the suit was a decree to put Lord Fermoy into possession. Spenser appears to have returned to London before the end of 1595 with bis wife. The following year he published the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of his "Faerie Queene," and also a new edition of the preceding books, to both of which his name in full was first put on the title-page The new books raised the character of the poet to the highest point in literary estimation. In the same year he published four hymns of "Love," of "Beauty," of "Heavenly Love," and of "Heavenly Beauty." These were the last publications during his lifetime. The additional books of the "Faerie Queene" were not given to the world till 1609, after the poet's death. Besides his poetical productions, Spenser composed in 1596 a "View on the State of Ireland," which, however, did not appear till Sir James Ware published it in Dublin in 1633. It is written in the form of a dialogue, in which Irenæus, having lately come from Ireland, instructs Eudoxus on the condition and prospects of that country. In this tract Spenser displays considerable knowledge of the country, and takes some statesmanlike views of his subject, though disposed to recommend for the government of Ireland measures of too severe a character. Spenser returned to Ireland in 1597, and found the country in a very unsettled state. On the 30th of September, 1598, the queen wrote to the Irish government especially recommending him for the office of sheriff of the county of Cork, to which he was accordingly appointed. Desmond's rebellion now broke out; Kilcolman was assailed in October by an armed band of Irish rebels, who sacked and burned the house. Spenser and his wife escaped with their lives, but their new-born babe was consumed in the flames. In utter destitution they fled to England. Broken in spirit, he made his way to London: when he reached it we know not. The scant traces of him thenceforth are derived from a few casual notices of contemporaries after his death. They are few and sad. "He died for lacke of bread in King Street," says Ben Jonson, "and refused twenty pieces sent to him by my lord of Essex, and said he was sorrye he had no time to spend them." This statement is corroborated by John Lane, and we may assume the earl's bounty found the poet expiring on the 16th January, 1599. At his own desire he was laid beside his illustrious predecessor, Geoffrey Chaucer, in Westminster abbey. Twenty years afterwards the piety of Anne Clifford, countess of Dorset, raised the first tablet to the memory of "Edmund Spenser, the prince of poets in his tyme, whose divine spirrit needs no other witnesse then the works which he left behinde him." Spenser left his wife and two sons, Sylvanus and Peregrine, entirely without provision, his pension having ceased with his life. A petition was presented by the widow to the queen's council, in consequence of which eight distinguished members wrote to Sir George Carew, president of Munster, desiring him to afford such favour and assistance to the widow as the case might require; but with what success is unknown. The widow married one Roger Seckerstone. Sylvanus petitioned the lord chancellor of Ireland in 1603 for recovery of the property, and we find him subsequently the owner of part of the lands.
As a great and original poet Spenser takes his rank with Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Milton—"England's true second son in the muses after Chaucer," as Professor Masson justly observes. Upon the "Faerie Queene" his greatness is based imperishably. For invention and treatment as a marvellous and poetic allegory, well sustained throughout, though not perfect, it has no rival but the noble allegory of Bunyan. The versification, too, is his own; a stanza that has all the dignity of the heroic decasyllabic, and all the sweetness of the lyric—a measure which will bear his name for ever, revivified as the stanza of the immortal Childe Harold. "His ruling faculty," says Mr. Gilfillan, "unquestionably was imagination; of the fertility, the beauty, the glowing warmth, the soft, rich, autumnal colouring which distinguishes his pictures, little need be said." His poetry sparkles with genius, and is replete with imagery the finest and the most picturesque. His fault is that of redundant richness, which occasionally leads to diffuseness and a want of vigour. It is to be lamented too that he is sometimes coarse, and even grotesque; yet his coarseness never defiles, and his grotesqueness
