with freedom from taxes. The Government, on its part, undertook to maintain soldiers enough for their security. The largest grants for "seignories" were of twelve thousand acres, the smallest four thousand. Spenser's lands were an original grant of four thousand, reduced because conditions of plantation were not fully satisfied. In that respect, indeed, such lands were held subject to forfeiture. There were grants also of manors. Spenser, when he left Dublin in 1588, paid attention to the conditions on which he held the land. In 1589 he reported that he had six English householders settled under him. There was a low rent payable to the Crown, for Kilcolman and its lands, of £8 13s. 4d., which was to be doubled after Michaelmas, 1594. But the cost of bringing over English families, with other outlay upon tracts of land that constant warfare had thrown out of cultivation, was tacitly allowed, at first, to excuse rent-paying. John Hooker, writing of Munster in his supplement to Holinshed's "Chronicle,” says that "the curse of God was so great and the land so barren, both of man and beast, that whosoever did travel from one end to the other of all Munster, from Waterford to Smerwick, about six score miles, he should not meet man, woman, or child, saving in cities or towns, nor yet see any beasts save foxes, wolves, or other ravening beasts." Sir Walter Raleigh had about twelve thousand acres granted to him in the counties of Cork, Waterford, and Tipperary, to which he added, in 1587, as his principal residence, Lismore Castle, rented from the See of Lismore, at 13 6s. 8d. a year. He had also a manor-house at Youghal. Raleigh's lands were, like Spenser's, thickly wooded where there are now no woods to be seen. Raleigh's vigorous mind was active also on his Irish property. He set a hundred and fifty men to work felling woods and making pipe-staves, barrel-boards, and hogsheads from the timber, for export to the wine-growers Raleigh in abroad. He was hindered for years by official interdict, followed by restrictions on the trade he wished to open. He had also an enemy in the Lord-Deputy, Sir William Fitzwilliam, who claimed of Raleigh £400 as rent due to the queen, and caused five hundred milch kine to be seized from his tenants, some of whom had only two or three for their home use. The actual debt, said Raleigh, in representing the wrong done to him, was but fifty marks, which was paid; and it was the first and only rent that hath yet been paid by any Undertaker." When Spenser gave up housekeeping in Dublin, and sold again the Dublin office he had bought of his friend Spenser Bryskett, he bought, also of Bryskett, the succession to the office of Clerk of the Government Council of Munster. It was but a few hours' ride from Kilcolman to Cork, when he was wanted. Spenser was Clerk of the Council of Munster in 1589. He was described in October, 1589, as holding that office when Lord Roche appealed against a decision Spenser had obtained and acted upon touching rights of land, apparently in aid of the claim of a widow. Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1588, was with the fleet at sea in the pursuit of the Armada. The many ships of his Raleigh's engaged in colonising, or in winning profit to himself and to their crews by weakening the enemies of England, caused Spenser to welcome Raleigh as "the Shepherd of the Ocean," when he went to Kilcolman in 1589. For in that year the rivalry at Court between the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh had brought Raleigh into some disfavour with the queen. Sir Francis Allen wrote in August to Anthony Bacon that "My Lord of Essex hath chased Mr. Raleigh from the Court and hath confined him in Ireland." Raleigh in Ireland began serious building works at Lismore Castle, and was battling with official obstacles to the opening of a large market for his timber, when he found his way to Spenser at Kilcolman and became his friend. They talked together, friend with friend, poet with poet. Raleigh read to Spenser his poem on Elizabeth-his Cynthia-of which only fragments have come down to us, an imperfect twenty-first book of "The Ocean's Love to Cynthia," and the beginning of a twenty-second book, of Sorrow. Spenser read to Raleigh what he had written of "The Faerie Queene," and how highly Raleigh thought of it he told thus in a sonnet 66 Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay, Oblivion laid him down on Laura's herse. And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did perse; Raleigh In the same year—1589--Raleigh went back to London, and took Spenser with him. He would introduce him to the queen. Spenser should read to her the three books he had already finished, and they should straightway be published in London. All Eng- Spenser lishmen should now begin to see with the new poet's eyes should have aid from him in shaping an ideal of the life about them, and a high aim for the years to come. to Court. Spenser had in his college days confided to his friend Gabriel Harvey, it may be remembered, that Ariosto's masterpiece was a poem which he not only "must needs seem Ariosto and to emulate," but "hoped to overgo." Of his "Orlando Furioso Ariosto had, after eleven years of the most assiduous and careful labour, in the year 1515, forty cantos ready for the press. There was a second edition in 1516, and a third in 1521, greatly improved. These were printed at Ferrara. In 1526 there was a fourth edition at Milan, there were two more at Venice, with another, still of forty cantos, in 1530; but Ariosto wrote six more cantos before his death in 1533. His patron, the Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, when he presented the first copy of his poem, looked at it slightingly, and asked Ariosto where he had picked up all those fooleries. Pope Leo X., when the poet looked to him for aid, had kissed him on each cheek, but given him only that lipservice. The finest poet, not of Italy only, but of Europe, in the days of our Henry VIII., was left to poverty, until the death of his unworthy patron the Cardinal brought Ariosto, at the close of his life, into kindlier relations with the Duke Alfonso of Modena. But although the greatest poet of his time, and healthily intent upon the careful polish of his work, Ariosto was born to a day in Italy that did not favour earnestness of thought and word. He wrote the best of Charlemagne romances; yet the grace of its tales of chivalry and enchantment, marked everywhere with the touch of a true artist, was a grace worn with an air of playful half-mockery. The poet put none of his deeper life or the deeper life of Italy into his work. Spenser felt this. He knew the difference between a poem that is only a masterpiece of art and a poem using the same forms but planned to express through them the deepest convictions. and the highest aspirations of a living soul or of a striving people, when he whispered to his friend Gabriel Harvey that he "hoped to overgo" the masterpiece that he must seem to emulate. It may be remembered, also, that when Gabriel Harvey was criticising what he had seen of "The Faerie Queene," in 1580, Torquato Tasso was overwhelmed with afflictions. In the following year, 1581, he was in a lunatic asylum, when his "Gerusalemme Liberata was published. There were six editions of it in that year, and Spenser afterwards showed his delight in it by letting its influence upon him appear as he proceeded with the shaping of "The Faerie Queene." Publication Spenser's age was about thirty-seven when William Ponsonbie published a quarto volume, early in the year 1590, containing the first three books of "The Faerie Queene," "Disposed into twelue Books, fashioning XII. Morall Vertues." It had been entered at Stationers' Hall to Master Ponsonbye, on the first of December, 1589, as "Aucthorysed vnder thandes of the Archbishop of Canterbury and bothe the wardens." I.-III. General Queene," Spenser's letter to Raleigh appended to the fragment of "The Faerie Queene," "expounding his whole intention in the course of this work," said only that "he laboured to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected Faerie in the twelve moral vertues, as Aristotle hath devised, the which is the purpose of the first twelve books; which if I finde to be well accepted, I may be perhaps encouraged to frame the other part, of polliticke vertues, in his person after that hee came to be king." It was left for the reader to discover how grand a design was indicated by these unassuming words. Spenser said that by the Faerie Queene whom Arthur sought, "I mean glory in my generall intention, but in my particular I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our soveraine the queene, and her kingdom in Faeryland." The student of "The Faerie Queen" must bear in mind that its "general intention" is its essential plan as a great spiritual allegory; |