Says Irenæus, "Even by the sword." Thereby he hoped "to settle an eternal peace," which "must be brought in by a strong hand, and so continued until it grow into a steadfast course of government." But Spenser knew and felt the horrors of the struggle. Murrough O'Bryan was executed at Limerick in July, 1577. It is not at all necessary to suppose -though it is not impossible-that Spenser had been in Ireland, on some unknown business, three years before he went as secretary with Lord Grey, because in a dialogue between imagined characters he makes one of them say that he saw how "an old woman, which was Murrough's foster mother, took up his head whilst he was quartered, and sucked up all the blood running thereout, saying that the earth was not worthy to drink it, and therewith also steeped her face and breast, and tore her hair, crying and shrieking out most terribly." He speaks, however, from within years of his own experience when he tells what he saw of the starvation of the Irish "in those late wars in Munster," so that "any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the wood and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death, they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat of the carrions, happy when they could find them, yea, and one another soon after, insomuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves: and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue therewithal; that in a short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man or beast."

Spenser wrote of the state of Ireland in his time with a full sense of the gravity of the subject. His prose memoir was that of a poet who dealt always with realities; and, when it touched on the outward accidents of life, it

did so without idleness of mind. The long sleeve of the Irishwoman's smock suggested to Spenser the fashion of the manche in Armoury, and sleeves of ladies worn by 'knights of old upon their arms. On the uses of the Irish mantle he has a memorable passage. When he would repair the ruined churches of Ireland, and "have them built in some better form according to the churches of England,” he, who was Puritan in his regard for faithful study of the Bible, was not Puritan in his regard towards Church furniture; "for the outward show," he said, "doth greatly draw the rude people to the reverencing and frequenting thereof; whatever some of our late too nice fools say there is nothing in the seemly form and comely order of the Church."

End of the

Life of

Spenser's marriage, on the eleventh of June, 1594,* had been followed by the birth of a child in each of the four succeeding years. The names of the children were Sylvanus, Lawrence, Peregrine, and Catherine. In 1597 he returned from London Spenser. to his wife and his three little ones. In the next year the fourth child was born; and on the thirtieth of September, 1598, Spenser was appointed Sheriff of Cork by the Queen's letters, which described him as "a gentleman dwelling in the County of Cork, who is so well

* Spenser's wedding day, St. Barnabas' day, the eleventh of June, is described in his "Epithalamion" as "the longest day in all the year." He says of it,

"This day the sun is in his chiefest height
With Barnaby the bright."

This we may take in passing as example of the need of noting change of style in day-dates. (See note on p. 232.) The added twelve days -which become thirteen after March, 1900-show that the astronomical place of the old eleventh of June was that of the day now called the twenty-third, and in fact so nearly our twenty-fourth that it will be reckoned as the twenty-fourth after another seven or eight years.

D D-VOL. IX.

known unto you all for 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 not been Sheriff for a month when all Munster rose at the call of Tyrone. Fire was set to Kilcolman Castle, and Spenser fled with his family to Cork. Among many idle traditions one is that a fifth child, an infant, perished in the flames. On the ninth of December, 1598, Sir Thomas Norreys, President of Munster, wrote a despatch containing details of the rising, and in another, written on the twenty-first of the same month, he said that his despatch of the ninth had been "sent by M. Spenser." It reached Whitehall on the twenty-fourth of December; and Spenser, who had written a paper of his own upon the state of Munster, and the need of a strong force to quell rebellion, died within the next four weeks. John Chamberlain, writing on Sunday, the seventeenth of January, 1599, a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, said in it :"Lady Cope is dead, and Spenser the Poet, who lately came from Ireland, died at Westminster last Saturday."