following, his friend and patron, Sir Philip Sidney, died abroad, and Spenser lamented his death in the pastoral Elegy called Astrophel. He repaired again to Ireland, being obliged by the royal patent to cultivate the lands assigned him. The persons to whom forfeited lands were granted were termed undertakers. The residence of Spenser was at Kilcolman, in the county of Cork, two miles north-west of Doneraile, which was a ruined castle of the Earl of Desmond.+ From this pleasant and romantic situation, as it is described, Spenser is said to have drawn several parts of the scenery of his Poem. The river Mulla ran through his grounds, on whose banks, according to his pastoral imagery, he kept his sheep, and charmed with his oaten pipe his fellow swains.‡

Lord Grey in his Discourse of the State of Ireland, and see his Sonnet to him, prefixed to the Fairy Queen,

"Most noble Lord, the pillar of my life,

And patron of my muse's pupillage," &c.

"These conditions implied a residence on the ground, and their chief object seems to have been the peopling Munster with English families, a favourite project of Queen Elizabeth's. It is supposed that this castle was the principal residence of Spenser for about ten years." V. Crofton Croker's Res. in South of Ireland, p. 110.

+ See Smith's Nat. and Civ. Hist. of the County of Cork, vol. i. p. 333.

On this subject, v. Colin Clouts Come Home Again, Mr. Todd has given some manuscript Latin verses of Mr. Thomas Warton; but they are hardly finished enough for publication. V. Todd's Life, p. 71, note. In the fourth line, "Inter Silvas," would be more correct than " Sylvis," and some of the last lines are in imitation of Gray's Elegy.

Here he was visited by Sir Walter Raleigh, then a captain in the Queen's army, with whom Spenser had formed an intimacy on his first arrival in Ireland. Raleigh had, as a reward of his services in assisting to suppress the rebellion of Desmond, a considerable portion of the forfeited property assigned to him.* Spenser found in Raleigh, that accomplished and instructed mind which he would desire as the judge of his great Poem. He tells us, that Raleigh, sitting beside him under the shady alders, on the banks of Mulla, often provoked him to play some pleasant fit,

"And when he heard the musicke which I made, He found himselfe full greatly pleased at it," &c. Encouraged by his judgment, as he had been by that of Sir Philip Sidney,+ Spenser soon after committed his Faerie Queene to the press: for at

The forfeited property of Desmond amounted, it is said, to nearly 580,000 acres. The Biographia Britannica asserts Raleigh's share at 30,000 acres, but Cox's, and from him Leland's History of Ireland, sets it down at 12,000 acres, in the Counties of Waterford and Cork: on the Geraldines, consult Sir W. Betham's Irish Antiquarian Researches, Part I. p. 221 to 235.

and

+ "So Spenser was by Sidney's speeches won
To blaze her fame," &c.

"What though his task exceed a humane wit,
He is excused, sith Sidney thought it fit."

W. L. VERSES TO THE AUTHOR OF THE FAERIE QUEENE.

The Fairy Queen was quoted while yet in manuscript by Ab. Fraunce, in his Arcadian Rhetoricke, 1588. See Malone's Life of Shakespeare, p. 244.

с

the end of the Third Booke (which was the conclusion of the first edition), he explains the nature of his Poem, in a letter to Sir Walter, dated Jan. 23, 1589-90, in which he informs us, "that the Faerie Queene was to have been disposed into Twelve Bookes, fashioning Twelve Moral Vertues.*" To the end of the third Book, the poetical commendations of friends to whom the Poem had been submitted, were added: two copies of verses of Raleigh's appeared under the signature of W. R. Gabriel Harvey took the name of Hobbinol; but it is impossible at this distance of time to detect the names of the rest, under the initial letters. These were followed by Spenser's Sonnets to various persons of distinction, the number of which, in the next edition, was increased.

Mr. Todd considers that Spenser completed the first Three Books of the Faerie Queene in Ireland: this he thinks may be presumed from the visit of Raleigh, from the Sonnets to the Earl of Ormond and the Lord Grey, and from some passages in his friend Lodowick Bryskett's Discourse of Civill Life, containing the Ethike part of Moral Philosophie, a book published in 1606, but written, as Malone supposes, between 1584 and 1589.† The

* Mr. Todd mentions a rare and curious work in French: "Le Livre de droit d' Armes, Paris, 1408," which contains "En abrégé Les XII Vertues que doit avoir un homme pour etre noble et de noble courage:" this is in verse, see De Bure, Bibliog. Inst. No. 2130.

+ "The party consists of Dr. Long, Primate of Ardmagh; Sir Robert Dillon, knt.; Mr. Dormer, the Queen's solicitor;

discourse is dedicated to Arthur, late Lord Grey of Wilton, and the introduction describes a party assembled at the author's cottage near Dublin, among whom is Spenser, who is made to describe the moral intention of his poem. He is said by one of the speakers to be " a gentleman not only perfect in the Greek tongue, but also very well read in philosophie, both naturall and morall." Spenser excuses himself from the request made to him to "declare to them the great benefits obtained by the knowledge of morall philosophie,+ and what are the parts by which vertues are distin

Capt. Christopher Carlial; Capt. Thomas Norries; Capt. Newham St. Leger; Capt. Nicholas Dawtrey; and Mr. Edmund Spenser, late your Lordship's secretary; and Thomas Smith, Apothecary." Dr. Birch mentions this book at the end of his Life of Spenser, prefixed to the edition of Faerie Queene, 1757. Mr. Bryskett, it appears, succeeded Master John Chaloner, as her Majesty's Secretary of State for Ireland; he also held the office of Clerk to the Council of Munster after Spenser.

+ Plato," says Mr. Thomas Warton, was a great favourite of those masters whom Spenser chiefly studied and copied, the Italian poets, particularly Petrarch. The sixth canto of the third book, together with his hymns of Heavenly love and Heavenly beauty, are evident proofs of our author's attachment to the Platonic school." V. Obs. I. p. 88. "We hear of the Platonic studies of Sir Philip Sidney, and traits of Platonism are sometimes beautifully visible in the poetry of Surrey and Spenser;" v. Campbell's Essay on English Poetry, p. 110. Again, "Hurd observes that the Platonic doctrines had a deep influence on the sentiments and character of Spenser's age; they certainly form a very poetical creed of philosophy." Ibid. p. 111.

guished from vices," by saying, "Sure I am that it is not unknown to you that I have already undertaken a work tending to the same effect, which is in heroical verse, under the title of a Fairy Queene, to represent all the Morall Vertues, assigning to every virtue a knight, to be the patron and defender of the same; in whose actions and feates of armes and chivalrie, 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; which work, as I have already well entered into, if God shall please to spare me life, that I may finish it according to my mind, your wish, Mr. Bryskett, will be in sort accomplished, though perhaps not so effectually as you could desire," &c. The Author goes on to say, with this answer of Mr. Spenser's," it seemed that all the company were well satisfied: for after some few speeches, whereby they had shewed an extreme longing after his work of the Faerie Queene, whereof some parcels had been by some of them seene, and they began to presse me to produce my translation mentioned by Mr. Spenser," &c.

Having prepared the first edition of the Fairy Queene for the press, it is probable that Spenser

* "The Ottava rima of the Italians, in which both Dumel and Drayton wrote their historical poems, and Fairfax produced his fine version of the Jerusalem, was the prevailing stanza in Spenser's time. There are two defects in it. It pauses too regularly at the end of the first quatrain, (so re