ser finished the
first three books of the _Faery Queen_. In 1589 Raleigh visited him, heard
the poem with enthusiasm, hurried the poet off to London, and presented him
to Elizabeth. The first three books met with instant success when published
and were acclaimed as the greatest work in the English language. A yearly
pension of fifty pounds was conferred by Elizabeth, but rarely paid, and
the poet turned back to exile, that is, to Ireland again.

Soon after his return, Spenser fell in love with his beautiful Elizabeth,
an Irish girl; wrote his _Amoretti_, or sonnets, in her honor; and
afterwards represented her, in the _Faery Queen_, as the beautiful woman
dancing among the Graces. In 1594 he married Elizabeth, celebrating his
wedding with his "Epithalamion," one of the most beautiful wedding hymns in
any language.

Spenser's next visit to London was in 1595, when he published "Astrophel,"
an elegy on the death of his friend Sidney, and three more books of the
_Faery Queen_. On this visit he lived again at Leicester House, now
occupied by the new favorite Essex, where he probably met Shakespeare and
the other literary lights of the Elizabethan Age. Soon after his return to
Ireland, Spenser was appointed Sheriff of Cork, a queer office for a poet,
which probably brought about his undoing. The same year Tyrone's Rebellion
broke out in Munster. Kilcolman, the ancient house of Desmond, was one of
the first places attacked by the rebels, and Spenser barely escaped with
his wife and two children. It is supposed that some unfinished parts of the
_Faery Queen_ were burned in the castle.

From the shock of this frightful experience Spenser never recovered. He
returned to England heartbroken, and in the following year (1599) he died
in an inn at Westminster. According to Ben Jonson he died "for want of
bread"; but whether that is a poetic way of saying that he had lost his
property or that he actually died of destitution, will probably never be
known. He was buried beside his master Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, the
poets of that age thronging to his funeral and, according to Camden,
"casting their elegies and the pens that had written them into his tomb."

SPENSER'S WORKS. _The Faery Queen_ is the great work upon which the poet's
fame chiefly rests. The original plan of the poem included twenty-four
books, each of which was to recount the adventure and triumph of a knight
who represented a moral virtue. Spenser's purpose, as in