Page:Works of Edmund Spenser - 1857.djvu/25

Rh career, continued the kind protector of Spenser, and obtained for him the countenance and support of his uncle the Earl of Leicester. By Leicester, Spenser was received into his house, for the furtherance, no doubt, of some literary undertaking; probably to assist in the composition of the “Stemmata Dudleiana,” an account of the Earl’s genealogy, on which, in one of his letters, the Poet states himself to have been employed in 1580. About July in the same year, he was indebted to his patron for an appointment as secretary to Arthur Lord Grey de Wilton, then nominated Lord Deputy of Ireland, which situation he held during the two years of that nobleman’s administration. Lord Grey’s measures with the Irish were energetic and severe,—so much so, as to have induced his recall to England: and to this event Spenser alludes in his Faerie Queene, when describing Artegall returning from the succour of Irene, as leaving his labours incomplete:—

Many years afterwards, he appeared as the advocate of Lord Grey; and in his elaborate “View of the State of Ireland,” has successfully vindicated his measures and his reputation. In 1586, through the combined influence of this nobleman, the Earl of Leicester, and Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser received a grant of 3028 acres of land in the county of Cork, being a portion of the forfeited estates of the rebel earls of Desmond. This was the last kindness which he received from his generous friend and patron Sir Philip Sidney. On the 22d of September of the same year, this accomplished scholar,—this gallant knight,—this “flowre of chivalrie,” received his death-wound before the walls of Zutphen, in Guelderland, while nobly fighting the battles of the Protestant religion. He lingered till the 17th October, when he expired in the arms of his secretary and friend, Mr. William Temple. By the tenor of the grant, our poet was compelled to reside on his newly-acquired property, and accordingly fixed his residence at Kilcolman castle, about two miles distant from Doneraile. Although now presenting a very different aspect, this spot seems to have offered considerable attractions to a man of Spenser’s temperament. The castle was situated on an elevation, on the north side of a fine lake, in the midst of an extensive plain, whose horizon was terminated by the distant mountains of Waterford, Ballyhoura, Nagle, and Kerry. The views from its site are most delightful; and in Spenser’s time, when the adjacent uplands were wooded, it must have been a most pleasant and romantic situation, to which we no doubt are indebted for many of those glowing descriptions of forest and pastoral scenery, with which his writings so richly abound. The river Mulla flowed through his grounds. In this congenial retreat, enlivened by the society of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had succeeded Sidney as his Mæcenas, Spenser finished the first part of his glorious and imperishable Faerie Queene; and having received the critical encomium of the “Shepheard of the Ocean,” accompanied his patron to England, where, in 1590, he gave to the world the fruits of his matured intellect. It was published with the title of “The Faerie Queene; disposed into Twelve Bookes, fashioning XII. Morall Vertues” (although in this first edition only three books were published), and, as appears from a conversation in his friend Ludowick Bryskett’s “Discourse of