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Rh even querulous complaints with which his works are studded, indicate some deficiency of moral power, and are no assurance of the writer's gentleness or sensibility. Such laments spring usually from a deep selfishness, which precludes the possibility of a keen sensitiveness to the rights of others, or a generous sympathy with suffering. Thus Spenser encroached upon his neighbours, and never made way in the affections of the surrounding poor, and his memory was long held in detestation. In life he was eminently fortunate. Starting from obscure circumstances, he gained the affection and patronage of the noblest in the land. The Queen was munificent in rewarding his merit. His works were highly popular, and he escaped all annoyance from the irritating shafts of satire, yet in one poem he terms himself "the wofullest man alive." He was always complaining and always poor. So assiduous was he in soliciting the favour of the great, as apparently to be oblivious of the obligation and dignity of self-reliance, and his comparative failure as a courtier overwhelmed him with mortification.

So wrote Phineas Fletcher; summing up his history in a line.

In 1595, Ponsonby published a quarto in London, containing, with other poems, "Colin Clout's come home again." Colin Clout is Spenser himself, and the poem, which is dedicated to Raleigh, is most interesting as refering to contemporary circumstances and persons. Here we meet with the last allusion to his false but not yet forgotten Rosalind. In the same year appeared a small duodecimo, containing the "Amoretti," a series of eighty-eight sonnets relating the progress of a new affection, with the "Epithalamium; or, Bridal Song." After so long an interval he again had wooed, and this time with success, as he was married at Cork, June 11, 1594.