In the letter he says:

For considering she beareth two persons, the one of a most royall Queene or Empresse, the other of a most vertuous and beautifull Lady, this latter part in some places I doe expresse in Belphoebe, fashioning her name according to your more excellent conceipt of Cynthia (Phoebe and Cynthia being both names of Diana).

In the sonnet he addresses Ralegh as—

the sommers Nightingale, Thy soveraine Goddesses most deare delight,

My rimes I know unsavory and sowre,

To taste the streams that, like a golden showre,
Flow from thy fruitfull head, of thy love's praise ;
Fitter, perhaps, to thonder Martiall stowre,
When so thee list thy lofty Muse to raise:

Yet, till that thou thy Poeme wilt make knowne,

Let thy fair Cynthias praises be thus rudely showne.

It will be observed that by this allusion the author of the Faerie Queene disclaims any competition with Ralegh, even in the field of poetry, in doing honour to Queen Elizabeth, though in the poem itself he makes use of the language of love, on his own behalf, in addressing her.

The same attitude is taken up in the introduction to Book III. of the Faerie Queene, where Ralegh's poem is referred to as beyond anything he can do:

that sweete verse, with Nectar sprinckeled,

In which a gracious servaunt pictured

His Cynthia, his heavens fayrest light, etc.

A further reference to Ralegh's mysterious poem occurs in Colin Clouts Come Home Again.

"Harvey" refers to it in 1590 as "a fine and sweet invention," and the anonymous author of the Arte of English Poesie, published in 1589, commends Ralegh as a poet in the following passage:

For ditty and amorous ode I find Sir Walter Raleigh's vein most lofty, insolent and passionate.

In a fantastic piece of writing called " Palladis Tamia,” 1

1 This is another piece by a writer of genius (of the character of the supposed "Puttenham ") who is never heard of in such subjects again,

1598, by one Francis Meres, Sir Walter Ralegh is also mentioned as one of "the most passionate among us to bewail and bemoan the perplexities of love."

The question naturally occurs, how did Spenser become so intimate with Sir Walter Ralegh? For ten years at least (from 1580 to 1590) Spenser, on the accepted facts of his life, was in Ireland. It is assumed by some writers that he made Ralegh's acquaintance there at the time of his first going over with Lord Grey. Such speculations, however, seem superfluous in view of the description in Colin Clouts Come Home Again of what purports to be their first meeting. If we may accept the story of that poem (and it is on such evidence that the whole of Spenser's "biography" 'biography" as a poet has been constructed), Spenser first made Ralegh's acquaintance in Ireland in 1589, just before the publication of the first three books of the Faerie Queene. Now the Squire "Timias" of the poem apparently contains an allusion, under certain aspects, to Ralegh. Presumably the three books were completed when Ralegh visited Kilcolman, as described in Colin Clout. In these circumstances how comes it that a man in Spenser's position, unacquainted with either Ralegh or the Queen, could have had the temerity to write about them in the terms used in Canto v. of Book III. of the Faerie Queene? Still more, why should such a man have gone out of his way to risk the handling of such a delicate subject as the Queen's attachment for Ralegh and the reports which were current about it? (See particularly stanzas 44, 47 and 54.)

On the other hand, in the View of the Present State of Ireland, there is a reference to "Smerwick " by " Irenaeus" (who evidently stands for the author), from which it is inferred that Spenser was present at that action where Ralegh was in command of one of the bands which was put in by Lord Grey's orders to execute the garrison.

although Meres, the reputed author, is said to have lived another fifty years. The treatise, which is largely of the nature of a jeu d'esprit, is, in my judgment, by Bacon.

1 On this subject see further in Chapter XVII.

This was in the autumn of 1580. But the phrase used is so vague, “my selfe being as neere them as any," "1 that we are no more justified in building on it a theory of previous acquaintance with Ralegh (in the face of the story in Colin Clout) than we are entitled to take it for a fact that Spenser was in Ireland under Sir Henry Sidney because, in the same treatise, Irenaeus speaks of what he saw" at the execution of a notable traytour at Limmericke called Murrogh O-Brein," 2 which is said to have occurred in July 1577. Moreover, there is nothing in the defence of Lord Grey's action on that occasion which could not have been derived from subsequent conversation in London.

3

Let us now take the Ralegh dates so far as they are known. Ralegh is believed to have been born in 1552, the same year, it will be observed, as the date inferred from Sonnet lx. of the Amoretti for Spenser's birth. What little is known of Ralegh's origin and career before he attracted the notice of the Queen in 1581 may be stated in a few sentences. Of his parents and his early life hardly any particulars are known. He is stated by Anthony Wood to have gone to Oxford "in or about the year 1568." But, as regards Wood's further statement that he stayed there three years, Edwards' says that it is an established fact that he was in France in September 1569. It is stated that he went there to serve in the Huguenot army as one of a body of volunteers raised by his relative Henry Champernoune, and that he remained there five or six years. Naunton, however, states that his first service was in Ireland. Some verses bearing the name of Walter Ralegh in commendation of Gascoigne's Steele Glas, published in the spring of 1576, have led to the supposition that he was then in London. All that is subsequently known of him from that time to his becoming the favourite of the Queen (1581) has been collected in

1 See the passage 2 "Globe" edition, p. 636. Fragmentia Regalia.

quoted in Chapter XIX.
3 Ibid. p. 656. 4 Life of Ralegh.
6 On this see Chapter IX. p. 243.

the article in the Dictionary of National Biography, from which I take the following: "In December 1577 he appears to have had a residence at Islington, and been known as a hanger-on of the Court (Gosse, p. 6). It is possible that in 1577 or 1578 he was in the Low Countries under Sir John Norris. . . . In April 1578 he was in England (Trans. of the Devonshire Assocn. xv. 174) and in September he was at Dartmouth, where he joined his half brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert in fitting out a fleet of eleven ships for a so-called voyage of discovery. . . . After an indecisive engagement with some Spaniards, the expedition was back at Dartmouth in the spring of 1579."

Thereafter Ralegh appears to have been about the Court as a retainer of the Earl of Leicester, until, in June 1580, he took service in Ireland as captain of a company of soldiers employed in Munster against the Earl of Desmond. The Deputy was Lord Grey of Wilton, who made Spenser his Secretary on his appointment in 1580. Ralegh did not get on with Lord Grey, who suspected him of intriguing for his own ends. In December 1581 Ralegh was sent to England with dispatches, and on coming to the Court at Greenwich he appears then to have taken the fancy of the Queen, and he thenceforward rose into a position of power as the Queen's favourite.

Comparing these dates and incidents I can see no point of contact between Spenser and Ralegh which could, under the accepted facts of Spenser's life, reasonably be held to account for a literary intimacy between them anterior to the supposed visit by Ralegh to Kilcolman in 1589,and Spenser's visit to England of 1590. Their several occupations in Ireland, and the arduous nature of them, during the short time they were there together at the earlier period, and the fact that Lord Grey, whose servant Spenser was, disliked Ralegh, would not naturally give them many opportunities of meeting, still less of leisure for the discussion of literary projects. On the other hand, the fact that Spenser continued to obtain grants from the Crown in Munster after Lord Grey's recall in

1582 suggests that he was in some way one of Ralegh's 'men," Ralegh being, by gift of the Crown, the greatest landowner in Munster, and the Queen's adviser in Irish matters.1

What, then, is the real connection between Ralegh and the author of these poems ? I think the answer to this question will emerge from the Amoretti and the Epithalamion, which we may now proceed to consider. The accepted view is that these sonnets are a chronicle of Spenser's courtship, and that in the Epithalamion the poet celebrates his own marriage. The poems were published in 1595, and it is inferred from this that they were begun at the end of 1592, and completed before June 1594, when the marriage is held to have taken place (" Barnaby the bright," Epithal.). The lady is supposed to have been one Elizabeth Boyle, of the neighbourhood of Cork (Sonnet lxxiv. and Dr. Grosart's researches). My own belief, however, is that the motive of these compositions is something quite different, as I shall proceed to explain.

In the first place, Grosart's identification of Elizabeth Boyle as Spenser's wife, though now generally accepted, clearly cannot be regarded as proved. It rests on an indenture discovered among the records of the town of Youghal, dated 3rd May 1606, between "Sir Richard Boyle, ffermore [stated to be "farmer"] .. and Elizabeth Boyle als Seckerstone of Kilcoran, in the countie of Corcke, widow." 2 It is found also that Spenser's widow married in 1603 a Roger Seckerstone. This comes from a petition of that year from Sylvanus Spenser (Edmund Spenser's eldest son) to the Chancellor of Ireland, praying for remedy as follows:

Whereas your Petitioner's father Edmund Spenser was seized in his demesne in fee of Kyllcollman and divers other lands and tenements in the county of Corke, which descended to your petitioner by the death of his said father, so it is right honorable, the evidences of the sayd inheritance did after the decease of the petitioner's father cum to the hands of Roger Seckerstone and

1 Cf. p. 36 above.

2 Grosart, Works of Spenser, i. 198.