first work was Colin Clouts Come Home Againe,1 in which he recounted his recent experiences,-Ralegh's visit to him at Kilcolman, their journey to London, his reception at court, and his impressions of all he saw there. In no other poem are we more keenly sensible of the subtle charm of Spenser's personality than in this graceful piece of idealized autobiography. The form is pastoral; the manner simple and without ornament, but never prosaic, touching the most trivial incident with grace, and capable of rising without violence to express the deepest emotion. It is the triumph of the familiar style in which so few writers have excelled. To write thus is only possible to one who is both artist and gentleman: Pope can do it occasionally, but he is not always a gentleman; so can Cowper, but he is not always an artist. The masters in this kind are Shelley and Spenser. At the same period Spenser collected a small volume of poems commemorative of Sidney, to which he contributed the first—Astrophel, A Pastorall Elegie-and probably the second; 2 and he was busy upon the second instalment of the Faerie Queene, of which three more books, written, it seems, at the rate of one a year, were practically complete in 1594.

On June 11, 1594, after rather more than twelve months' courtship, he married Elizabeth Boyle, whose home was at Kilcoran, near to the sea strand of Youghal. She was a lady of good family, and kinswoman to Sir Richard Boyle, afterwards created first Earl of Cork. The inner history of this courtship and its consummation is recorded, in idealized form, in the Amoretti and Epithalamion.

Modern criticism, which has made so damaging an assault upon the sincerity of Elizabethan sonneteers, could hardly be expected to leave this beautiful sequence unassailed; and the view has lately been advanced that the Amoretti are addressed for the most part to Lady Carey, and hence were written during Spenser's residence in London. But whilst it is possible that some of the sonnets were in the first place inspired by Lady Carey, or indeed by Rosalind or some earlier 5 and still more elusive flame, there is no reason for suspecting the integrity of the series as a whole; and amid much that is borrowed from the stock-in-trade of the French sonneteers, and recounts the emotions incident to every courtship, real

1Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, dated in the dedication to Ralegh, December 1591, was published with Astrophel in 1595, and contains passages which must have been added in that year.

2 The Lay of Clorinda, who laments her lost brother, is commonly attributed to the Countess of Pembroke. But if she did write it, she had studied to some purpose the peculiarly Spenserian effects of rhythm and melody. The poem is, moreover, like the introductory elegy, woven into the plan of the volume, and not a separate work, standing by itself, like those that follow. It is more natural, therefore, to believe that Spenser wrote it in her name. For criticism of Astrophel vide supra, p. xiii. Spenser's wife was first identified by Grosart; vide Life, pp. 198–201.

3

'Mr. P. W. Long, Mod. Lang. Rev. (April 1908), answered by Mr. J. C. Smith in the same journal (July 1910).

5 Thus e.g. Sonnet VIII is Shakespearian form, which at least suggests very early composition.

or feigned, there is much also that, to the sympathetic reader at least, seems circumstantial in detail, both in the progress of his suit and in the character of his mistress. Anyhow, it is evident from their publication with the Epithalamion that Spenser intended them to be regarded as addressed to his future wife; and if he had been criticized for incorporating in the sequence poems of earlier date, his reply, like Donne's in his Good Morrow, would have been

But this; all pleasures fancies be.

If any beauty I did see

Which I desired and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

In Astrophel, with more daring poetic licence, he had identified Stella with Sidney's wife, the Lady Francis Walsingham; and it was natural to the Platonist to gather into his present emotion the tribute that he had paid to other women.

The Amoretti are written with an easy and familiar grace, at once clear and melodious, capable of touching into beauty the ordinary changes and chances of the lover's fortune, or of voicing the rarer ecstasy, so typically Spenserian, of the sonnet Most glorious Lord of Lyfe. As a series they are incomplete, for when the lover seems already to have reached the goal venomous tongues cause misunderstanding and separation; and the last four sonnets are in a minor key. The consummation is read in the Epithalamion, the most magnificent lyric ever penned of love triumphant. The Epithalamion seems to concentrate into itself the essence of Spenser's art. Nowhere else is there a more magic union of the lover's passion with deep religious feeling, of a free and ardent joy with a deep and tender reverence. The style ranges from utter simplicity to highly wrought and richly coloured imagery, and draws alike upon the resources of mediaeval superstition and classic myth. And Spenser's unfailing power over music is here unsurpassed. His intricate stanza form was suggested by the canzoni of Petrarch, but it is all his own. The linked melody of the rhymes, the varying rhythms, the relief of the occasional short line, and the lingering refrain of the final Alexandrine unite in a metrical design sustained throughout with marvellous beauty. This song is Spenser's highest poetic achievement.

In the winter of 1595-6, Spenser was again in London; for the second instalment of the Faerie Queene was entered at the Stationers' Hall on the 20th of January. What hopes of personal advancement he had were now centred in the Earl of Essex, but they can hardly have been sanguine. The influence of Burghley was still unshaken; and Spenser, as walking 'beside the silver-streaming Themmes', he looked up at Essex House, and praised the Spanish victories of the noble peer who was lodged therein, thought less of what he might secure through his new friend than of the gifts and goodly grace' that he had gained from Leicester its former owner, the patron of his youth. During

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this visit he wrote little poetry. From Greenwich, this first of September 1596' he dated the publication of Fowre Hymnes, the first two the work of the greener times of his youth' and expressive of his Platonic conception of Love and Beauty, the other two added at this time to satisfy the religious scruples of the most vertuous ladies, the Ladie Margaret Countesse of Cumberland, and the Ladie Marie Countesse of Warwick'. It is unnecessary to accept literally Spenser's apology for the earlier two Hymnes. The third and fourth books of the Faerie Queene show clearly enough that their Platonism was still a vital part of his creed; and the addition that he now made to them only extends their scope so as to embrace, in a manner perfectly natural to Spenser, the central ideas of Christianity. His deepening experience had taught him that Love and Beauty spiritually conceived are the consummation alike of the Platonic and the Christian faith.

Now also he wrote the Prothalamion, a spousal verse made in honour of the two daughters of the Earl of Worcester. Metrically this poem is, perhaps, as beautiful as his own marriage ode, but it has not a like concentration upon its avowed theme, nor does it voice the same ecstasy of passion. His main energies were probably directed to the composition of his Veue of the Present State of Ireland, for which he had long been collecting materials. In this masterly tract he defends and justifies the character and policy of Grey against his detractors, exposes what seem to him the inevitable results which will follow from the weak and vacillating rule of his successor, Sir John Perrot, and outlines to the home government that method of dealing with the Irish problem which alone could save the English supremacy. Finally, he urges the creation of a Lord Lieutenantship for Ireland; and in suggesting for the office that man on whom the eye of England is fixed, and our last hopes now rest', he points clearly to Essex as the only person equal to coping with the situation. Written with a wide knowledge both of the antiquities of the country and its laws and customs, and a full appreciation of its present condition, this pamphlet is as able a plea as could well be penned for a policy of resolute and remorseless suppression. In its lack of sympathy with the Irish, and its failure to understand the real causes of their disaffection, it is typical of the view held by all Elizabethans and by most English statesmen since. It is not surprising that the tract was not sanctioned by the government; it was not entered at the Stationers' Hall till 1598, and then with the proviso uppon condicion that hee gett further aucthoritie before yt be prynted'. It did not actually appear till 1633.

Spenser was back again at Kilcolman in the next year (1597). He had resigned his clerkship to the Council of Munster three years before, in favour of Sir Richard Boyle,1 and was without office until, in September 1598, he was recommended by Elizabeth to be Sheriff

1

Grosart suggests with some plausibility that this resignation may have been a family arrangement made at the time of his marriage. (Life, p. 203.)

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of Cork, being described in the royal letters as a gentleman dwelling ⚫in the county of Cork, who is so well known unto you for all his good and commendable parts, being a man endowed with good knowledge in learning, and not unskilful or without experience in the wars. Spenser had now four children, and his home was becoming increasingly dear to him. In his Veue of the Present State of Ireland he had dwelt upon the natural beauty of the country; in the fragment of a seventh book of the Faerie Queene, all that is left us of his composition at this time, his delight in it finds intimate and characteristic expression. For he lays his scene at Arlo Hill, and the 'mountaines and rivers and faire forests' that surround Kilcolman are celebrated in a charming myth as the ancient haunt of Diana and her nymphs. But while he feels its beauty, he is conscious, more than ever before, of the 'heavy hapless curse' that now lies upon the country; and his imagination gains sublimity as it broods over the instability of things on earth. The theme had been recurrent, as a faint undertone, throughout his poetry, in tune to that reflective melancholy which often served to heighten by contrast his keen sense of the joy and the splendour of life; now it became the dominant note of his work. Throughout his life he had escaped from it to the contemplation of an ideal and golden past, now with sure foreboding of the gathering storm that was to overwhelm him he looked forward to the stedfast rest of all things, firmely stayd

Upon the pillours of eternity.

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Munster appeared quiet enough, but the Council at Dublin seems fully to have anticipated a combination of Munster with the insurgent North, such as would lead to an universal Irish war, intended to shake off all English government'; and what was seen by the Dublin Council is not likely to have escaped the acute observation of Spenser. In his Veue he had noted how' all have theyr eares upright, wayting when the watchwoord shall come that they should all rise generally into rebellion, and cast away the English subjection. To which there nowe litle wanteth'. And he had commented thus upon the present lull: when they are brought downe to extreme wretchedness, then they creepe a litle perhaps, and sue for grace, till they have gotten some breath and recovered their strength agayne.' In October 1598 these worst fears were realized. Tyrone, who, two months before, had routed the English army near Armagh, sent an expedition into Munster. The whole province rose in insurrection, and in the general destruction Kilcolman was sacked and burnt to the ground. Spenser escaped with his family to Cork, and there was entrusted by Sir John Norreys, the President of the province, with despatches to be delivered to the home government. He left Cork upon the 9th of December, and before the 24th he was in London. With the despatch of Sir John Norreys he presented to the queen a statement drawn up by himself, written mostly before his departure, containing certayne poynts to be

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considered of in the recovery of the Realme of Ireland'. The policy that he urges and the tone in which he voices it is the same in this, his last work, as in his longer tract. He must have felt that the present outbreak was only another vindication of the policy of Grey against the weaker efforts at conciliation which had merely courted disaster, and he was doubtless chosen as the messenger to the government at home that he might advise them upon immediate and resolute action. But soon after his arrival at Westminster, Spenser was taken ill. He died on January 16, 1599.

This sudden and dramatic close to the career of a poet who was associated in the public mind with the visionary and the ideal offered an irresistible temptation to the popular imagination, and the legend grew up that Spenser lost a child in the flames at Kilcolman and died in a garret in Westminster, starving and broken-hearted. Ben Jonson, who loved to dilate upon the hard lot that the world meted out to the artist, and warned Drummond from cultivating Poetrie, for that she had beggared him, when he might have been a rich lawer, physitian, or marchant', gave his support to the story. But it is probably apocryphal. Spenser's calm and reasoned statement to the queen, penned when the first shock of disaster was upon him, shows little sign of a broken spirit. His friend Camden, indeed, speaks of him as 'inops'. He had never been a rich man; and after his hurried departure from Kilcolman and the burning of his real property he may well have been in temporary want of money. But that the bearer of an important state missive, one who, moreover, had a pension to fall back upon, should have died for lack of bread is inconceivable; and the statement, if it be true, that he refused twenty pieces from my lord of Essex, saying that he was sorrie he had no time to spend them', is capable of a very different interpretation. The offer shows clearly that he still had powerful friends able and ready to help him, its refusal that gallant lightness of heart with which an Elizabethan gentleman paid his last debt to nature.

His body was laid in Westminster Abbey, near to Chaucer. His funeral, of which Essex defrayed the cost, was attended by many noblemen and poets, who threw into the open grave elegies written to his memory and the pens with which they wrote them. The queen, in a burst of unwonted generosity, ordered him a monument; but either her own financial prudence, or the peculation of a subordinate, stepped in between her intention and its fulfilment. In 1620 Anne, Countess of Dorset, corrected the oversight. But the true memorial to Spenser is to be read in the work of his successors. He is among the very greatest of our poets, but the significance of his poetry in the history of our literature is even greater than its intrinsic value. He recreated English prosody, giving back to our verse the fluidity and the grace that it had lost since the days of Chaucer, and extending the range of its achievement; he created Quoted in full, Grosart, Life, pp. 537-55.

1