Loathing this sinfull earth and earthlie slime, Yet ere his happie soule to heaven went Unto his heavenlie Maker to present His bodie as a spotles sacrifice, And chose, that guiltie hands of enemies Should powre forth th' offring of his guiltles blood, O noble spirite, live there ever blessed, The world's late wonder, and the heaven's new ioy. Yet whilest the Fates affoord me vitell breath, And into me that sacred breath inspire Which thou there breathest perfect and entire. It is not quite certain in what part of Ireland the poet was living when the news that Sidney was not reached him. Was he still residing at Dublin, or had he transferred his home to that southern region which is so intimately associated with his name? The sonnet to Harvey above mentioned shows that he was at Dublin in July of the year of his friend's death. It has been said already that he did not resign his Chancery clerkship till 1588. We know that he was settled in Cork county, at Kilcolman castle, in 1589, because Raleigh visited him there that year. He may then have left. Dublin in 1588 or 1589. According to Dr. Birch's Life of Spenser, prefixed to the edition of the Faerie Queene in 1751,* and the Biographia Britannica, the grant of land made him in Cork is dated June 27, 1586. But the grant, which is extant, is dated October 26, 1591. Yet certainly, as Dr. Grosart points out, in the 'Articles' for the Undertakers,' which received the royal assent on June 27, 1586, Spenser is set down for 3,028 acres; and that he was at Kilcolman before 1591 seems certain. As he resigned his clerkship in the Court of Chancery in 1588, and was then appointed, as we have seen, clerk of the Council of Munster, he probably went to live somewhere in the province of Munster that same year. He may have lived at Kilcolman before it and the surrounding grounds were secured to him; he may have entered upon possession on the strength of a promise of them, before the formal grant was issued. He has mentioned the scenery which environed his castle twice in his great poem; * Dr. Birch refers in his note to The Ancient and Present State of the County and City of Cork, by Charles Smith, vol. i. book i. c. i. p. 58-63. Edit. Dublin 1750, 8vo. And Fiennes Moryson's Itinerary, part ii. p. 4. but it is worth noticing that both mentions occur, not in the books published, as we shall now very soon see, in 1590, but in the books published six years afterwards. In the famous passage already referred to in the eleventh canto of the fourth book, describing the nuptials of the Thames and the Medway, he recounts in stanzas xl.xliv. the Irish rivers who were present at that great river-gathering, and amongst them Swift Awniduff which of the English man And Mulla mine, whose waves I whilom taught to weep. The other mention occurs in the former of the two cantos Of Mutability. There the poet sings that the place appointed for the trial of the titles and best rights of both 'heavenly powers' and 'earthly wights' was Upon the highest hights Of Arlo-hill (who knowes not Arlo-hill ?) Of my old father Mole, whom shepheards quill Renowmed hath with hymnes fit for a rurall skill. His poem called Colin Clouts Come Home Again, written in 1591, and dedicated to Sir W. Raleigh 'from my house at Kilcolman the 27 of December, 1591' *——-written therefore after a lengthy absence in England-exhibits a full familiarity with the country round about Kilcolman. On the whole then we may suppose that his residence at Kilcolman began not later than 1588. It was to be roughly and terribly ended ten years after. We may suppose he was living there in peace and quiet, not perhaps undisturbed by growing murmurs of discontent, by signs of unrepressed and irrepressible hostility towards his nation, by ill-concealed sympathies with the Spanish invaders amongst the native population, when the Armada came and went. The old castle in which he lived had been one of the residences of the Earls of Desmond. It stood some two miles from Doneraile, on the north side of a lake which was fed by the river Awbeg or Mulla, as the poet christened it. Two miles north-west of Doneraile,' writes Charles Smith in his Natural and Civil History of the County aud City of Cork, 1774, (i. 340, 341)—' is Kilcoleman, a ruined castle of the Earls of Desmond, but more celebrated for being the residence of the immortal Spenser, when he composed his divine poem The Faerie Queene. The castle is now almost level with the ground, and was situated on the north side of a fine lake, in the midst of a vast plain, terminated to the east by the county of Waterford mountains; Bally-howra hills to the north, or, as Spenser terms them, the mountains of Mole, Nagle mountains to the south, and the mountains of Kerry to the west. It commanded a view of above half the breadth of Ireland; and must have been, when the adjacent uplands were wooded, a most pleasant and romantic situation; from whence, no doubt, Spenser drew several parts of the scenery of his poem.' * Todd proposes to regard this date as a printer's error for 1595, quite unnecessarily. Here, then, as in some cool sequestered vale of life, for some ten years, his visits to England excepted, lived Spenser still singing sweetly, still, as he might say, piping, with the woods answering him and his echo ringing. Sitting in the shade he would play many a pleasant fit;' he would sing Some hymne or morall laic, Or carol made to praise his loved lasse ; he would see in the rivers that flowed around his tower beings who lived and loved, and would sing of their mutual passions. It must have sounded strangely to hear the notes of his sweet voice welling forth from his old ruin-to hear music so subtle and refined issuing from that scarred and broken relic of past turbulencies The shepheard swaines that did about him play with greedie listfull eares Did stand astonisht at his curious skill Like hartlesse dearc, dismayed with thunders sound. He presents a picture such as would have delighted his own fancy, though perhaps the actual experience may not have been unalloyed with pain. It is a picture which in many ways resembles that presented by one of a kindred type of genius, who has already been mentioned as of affinity with him-by Wordsworth. Wordsworth too sang in a certain sense from the shade, far away from the vanity of courts, and the uproar of cities; sang from a still place, remote from men;' sang, like his own Highland girl, all alone with the 'vale profound''overflowing with the sound;' finding, too, objects of friendship and love in the forms of nature which surrounded his tranquil home. 6 Of these two poets in their various lonelinesses one may perhaps quote those exquisite lines written by one of them of a somewhat differently caused isolation: each one of them too lacked Here now and then he was visited, it may be supposed, by old friends. Perhaps that distinguished son of the University of Cambridge, Gabriel Harvey, may for a while have been his guest; he is introduced under his pastoral name of Hobbinol, as present at the poet's house on his return to Ireland. The most memorable of these visits was that already alluded to-that paid him in 1589 by Sir Walter Raleigh, with whom it will be remembered he had become acquainted some nine years before. Raleigh, too, had received a grant from the same huge forfeited estate, a fragment of which had been given to Spenser. The granting of these, and other shares of the Desmond estates, formed part of a policy then vigorously entertained by the English Government—the colonising of the so lately disordered and still restless districts of Southern Ireland. The recipients were termed 'undertakers; it was one of their duties to repair the ravages inflicted during the recent tumults and bring the lands committed to them into some state of cultivation and order. The wars had been followed by a famine. Even in the history of Ireland,' writes a recent biographer of Sir Walter Raleigh, 'there are not many scenes more full of horror than those which the historians of that period rapidly sketch when showing us the condition of almost the whole province of Munster in the year 1584, and the years immediately succeeding.'* The claims of his duties as an 'undertaker,' in addition perhaps to certain troubles at court, where his rival Essex was at this timewhat superseding him in the royal favour, and making a temporary absence not undesirable, brought Raleigh into Cork County in 1589. A full account of this visit and its important results is given us in Colin Clouts Come Home Again, which ives us at the same time a charming picture of the poet's life at Kilcolman. Col: himself, lately returned home from England, tells his brother shepherds, at their urgent request, of his 'passed fortunes.' He begins with Raleigh's visit. One day, he tells them, as he sat a strange shepherd, who styled himself the Shepherd of the Ocean Whether allured with my pipes delight, Or thither led by chaunce, I know not right found him out, and Provoked me to plaie some pleasant fit. He sang, he tells us, a song of Mulla old father Mole's daughter, and of another river called Bregog who loved her. Then his guest sang in turn :— His song was all a lamentable lay Of great unkindnesse and of usage hard, Of Cynthia the ladie of the sea, Which from her presence faultlesse him debard, And ever and anon, with singults rife, He cryed out, to make his undersong: Ah! my loves queene and goddesse of my life, Who shall me pittie when thou doest me wrong? *Mr. Edward Edwards, 1868, I. c. vi. ; see also Colin Clouts Come Home Again, vv. 312-319. My lord of Essex hath chased Mr. Raleigh from the court and confined him in Ireland.'-Letter, dated August 17, 1589, from Captain Francis Allen to Antony Bacon, Esq.-Quoted by Todd from Dr. Birch's Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth.See Mr. Edwards's Life of Raleigh, I. c. viii. After they had made an end of singing, the shepherd of the ocean Gan to cast great lyking to my lore, And great dislyking to my lucklesse lot That banisht had my se fe, like wight forlore, Into that waste where I was quite forgot, and presently persuaded him to accompany him his Cinthia to sec.' It has been seen from one of Harvey's letters that the Faerie Queene was already begun in 1580; and from what Bryskett says, and what Spenser says himself in his sonnets to Lord Grey, and to Lord Ormond, that it was proceeded with after the poet had passed over to Ireland. By the close of the year 1589 at least three books were completely finished. Probably enough parts of other books had been written; but only three were entirely ready for publication. No doubt part of the conversation that passed between Spenser and Raleigh related to Spenser's work. It may be believed that what was finished w submitted to Raleigh's judgment, and certainly concluded that it elited his warmest approval. One great object that Spenser proposed to himself when he assented to Raleigh's persuasion to visit England, was the publication of the first three books of his Faerie Quaine. · fro CHAPTER III. 1590. THUS after an absence of about nine years, Spenser returned for a time to England; he returned bringing his sheaves with him.' Whatever shadow of misunderstanding had previously come between his introducer-or perhaps re-introducer-and her Majesty seems to have been speedily dissipated. Raleigh presented him to the Queen, who, it would appear, quickly recognised his merits. 'That goddess' To mine oaten pipe enclin'd her eare Al were my notes but rude and roughly dight. In the Registers of the Stationers' Company for 1589 occurs the following entry, quoted here from Mr. Arber's invaluable edition of them : Primo Die Decembris.-Master Ponsonbye. Entered for his Copye a book intituled the fayre Queene, dysposed into xii bookes &c. Aucthorysed vnder thandes of the Archb. of Canterbery & bothe the Wardens, vjd. The letter of the author's prefixed to his poem 'expounding his whole intention in the course of this worke, which for that it giveth great light to the reader, for the better understanding is hereunto annexed,' addressed to 'Sir Walter Raleigh, Knight, Lord Wardein of the Stanneryes and her Maiesties liefetenaunt of the county of * See Raleigh's lines entitled 'A Vision upon this Conceipt of the Faery Queene,' prefixed to the Fairie Queene. |