on this service, for, in a letter written six months afterwards, he makes no allusion to his having been out of the country in the interim. We may suppose, therefore, that his relations to Leicester, whatever was their nature, remained unchanged until August, 1580, at which time he received the appointment of secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, then deputed to the government of Ireland. On the 22d of March following he obtained the perhaps additional office of Clerk of the Decrees and Recognizances in the Irish Court of Chancery, and in the same year the Queen granted him "a lease of the Abbey of Iniscorthy or Enniscorthy, and the attached castle and manor in the county of Wexford, at an annual rent of 3007. 6s. 4d., with the condition that he should keep it in continual repair"; which property he conveyed, by an indenture dated the 9th of December, 1581, to Richard Synot. Lord Grey was recalled in 1582, and "with him," says Todd, "Spenser probably returned to England." But this is an arbitrary assumption, all the little evidence we have upon the subject tending to show that he remained in Ireland. He certainly retained his office in the Court of Chancery until June, 1588, when he was appointed Clerk of the Council

1 Hardiman's Irish Minstrelsy, I. 320.

Cited from Collins's Peerage (Vol. IV. p. 310), by Mr. Craik. * Hardiman's Irish Minstrelsy, I. 320. It is to be observed that another Spenser, mentioned in a letter of Sir William Pelham, Lord Justice of Ireland, was employed in a confidential capacity under the Irish administration. This letter is dated July 14, 1580, and the person spoken of is said to be growing into years. One Master Spenser was also intrusted with a letter from James VI. to Queen Elizabeth, in July, 1583. The conjecture would not be

of Munster. Again, in Lodowick Bryskett's "Discourse of Civil Life," dedicated to Lord Grey, a party of gentlemen is described as having assembled in the author's cottage near Dublin, among whom was "Mr. Edmund Spenser, your lordship's late secretary," and Dr. Long, Primate of Armagh. Dr. Long was raised to the primacy in 1584, and he died in 1589, so that this meeting must have taken place between those two dates. Lastly, we know positively that Spenser was in Dublin on the 18th of July, 1586, from his having then addressed a sonnet to Gabriel Harvey from that place.1

The whole province of Munster having been depopulated in consequence of the severe measures taken under Lord Grey to suppress the rebellion of the Desmonds, the Queen was desirous of repeopling the country with English families. Accordingly the large territories of the Earl of Desmond were divided into seigniories among a number of gentlemen undertakers, as they were termed; persons who bound themselves to cultivate and improve the estates thus granted them. Sir Walter Raleigh received for his share 42,000 acres in the counties of Cork and Waterford; Spenser, 3,028 acres in the county of Cork. The date of his grant is said to be June 27th, 1586,2

altogether unplausible that this latter (and perhaps the former as well) was the same Spenser that was charged with despatches to the Queen from the English Ambassador in Paris, in 1569. There is no reason at all for identifying any of these with the poet. 1 See Vol. V. p. 374.

2 Birch cited by Todd, Life, p. xlix. This is the date of the Queen's articles for the plantation of Munster, an abstract of which is given in Smith's History of Cork, I. 60 – 63. Mr. Har

and we may believe that so poor a man entered into possession immediately.

1

In the summer (or perhaps the autumn) of 1589, Spenser received at Kilcolman a visit from Sir Walter Raleigh, who, being then out of favor with the Queen, may have thought the opportunity a good one for attending to his Irish estates. Spenser had, it is believed, acquired Raleigh's friendship while the one was secretary, and the other a captain in the army, under Lord Grey, and, since the lamented death of Sidney, there was no man at court on whose generous patronage the poet could with such confidence rely. To Raleigh, then, himself a poet and the most accomplished of knights, Spenser determined to submit the three books which he had now finished of

diman (Irish Ministrelsy, I. 320) says: "On the plantation of that province, Queen Elizabeth, by letters patent, dated 26th of October, 1591, granted him the manor and castle of Kylcolman, with other lands, containing 3,028 acres, in the baron of Fermoy, coun ty of Cork, also chief rents, forfeited by the late lord of Thetmore, and the late traitor, Sir John of Desmond.' Orig. Fiant, Rolls Office, Dublin." Sir William Betham, in his pedigree of Spenser (Gentleman's Magazine, Aug. 1842, p. 140), says he had a grant of Kilcolman, and other lands, by patent dated 26th of October, 1591 (3,028 acres English, held by common socage)." This last account may be taken from the former. There is either some mistake about this second date, or, which is more probable, a new patent was issued in 1591, confirming or extending the privileges granted by that of 1586.

1 Sir Walter returned from the Portugal expedition towards the end of June, 1589, and on the 17th of August following Captain Francis Allen writes to Antony Bacon, Esq., that "my lord of Essex hath chased Mr. Raleigh from the court and confined him into Ireland." (See Todd's Life of Spenser, p. lii.)

2 It occurred in October, 1586.- Sidney appears to have en

his great chivalrous tale; and never was author more fortunate in his choice of a judge. Ten years before this he had communicated to Harvey some portion of an heroic poem which he called the Fairy Queen, and solicited his opinion. The reply of this learned Theban was not favorable. "In good faith," says he, "I had once again nigh forgotten your Fairy Queen; howbeit, by good chance, I have now sent her home at the last, neither in better nor worse case than I found her. And must you of necessity have my judgment of her indeed? To be plain, I am void of all judgment, if your Nine Comedies, whereunto, in imitation of Herodotus, you give the names of the Nine Muses, (and in one man's fancy not unworthily,) come not nearer Ariosto's Comedies, either for the fineness of plausible elocution, or the rareness of poetical invention, than that Elvish Queen doth to his Orlando Furioso; which, notwithstanding, you will needs seem to emulate, and hope to overgo, as you flatly professed yourself in one of your last letters. . . . . . But I will not stand greatly with you in your own matters. If so be the Fairy Queen be fairer in your eye than the Nine Muses, and Hob

.....

couraged Spenser to undertake a poem in honor of Elizabeth, if he did not even suggest the theme. See the verses by W. L., post, p. 15:

"And as Ulysses brought faire Thetis sonne
From his retyred life to menage armes,
So Spencer was, by Sidneys speaches, wonne
To blaze Her fame, not fearing future harmes."

1 To judge by the faint praise bestowed in his complimentary verses (post, p. 13), Harvey never heartily liked the Fairy Queen, He evidently preferred the Shepherds' Calendar.

goblin run away with the garland from Apollo, mark what I say,—and yet I will not say that I thought— but there an end for this once, and fare you well till God or some good angel put you in a better mind." Such was not the judgment of Raleigh. Enchanted with this adventurous song, he would not allow the poet to remain any longer buried in the obscurity of an Irish wilderness. He was ambitious of presenting a man of such extraordinary merit to the Queen, and prevailed on Spenser to accompany him to England with that object.1

8

How much of the Fairy Queen was written before 1580, it is impossible to say. It was undoubtedly, in the main, as the author says, "the fruit of savage soil," the product of a long and industrious seclusion in Ireland. After having kept them by him full nine years, Spenser committed the first three books to the press. The volume which contained them was entered in the Stationers' Registers on the 1st of December, 1589, and was published in 1590. Annexed to this volume was the well-known letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, in which the plan of the whole poem is distinctly set forth. It was to portray in the person of Prince Arthur, before he became king, the image of a brave knight perfected in the twelve private Moral Virtues. This was to be accomplished

1 See Colin Clout 's come Home again, v. 178-193.

2" Lately at the College, taking down the wainscot of his chamber, they found an abundance of cards with stanzas of the Fairy Queen written on them." - Aubrey, on the authority of Dryden. See the Sonnets to the Earl of Ormond and to Lord Grey. pp. 22, 24.