Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/88

66 Sidney aided him with money and influence, and brought him into the notice of his uncle, the Earl of Leicester, who was the favorite knight of the capricious Queen. But Leicester was not so fine a gentleman as Sidney, and I fancy that the change of patrons did not benefit our poet. He read some of his verses to the Queen, and he was long a hanger-on at the court. If his own lines may be trusted, he tasted to its bitter dregs the cup of servility and waiting for favors, and came to hate the very name of court and patron.

After a long time he went to Ireland as secretary to the lord-deputy, and soon after this he had a grant of land in Ireland made him by the Queen, and a castle given him for his dwelling-place. This land of which he had a share was part of a grant made by the crown to Sir Walter Raleigh, in his days of prosperity, and I always like to believe that Raleigh himself was interested in apportioning the poet with some of these broad acres. I remember Raleigh once visited him there on his estates, where he lived with his wife and children, and that there, by the little River Mulla, which flowed through his fields, these two rare spirits held sweet converse, and Spenser read aloud to his friend some extracts from “The Faery Queen.”

These were his peaceful days. They were not long, for in one of the insurrections of the