pled in
these late wars of Munster; for notwithstanding that the same
was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle
that you would have thought they should have been able to
stand long, yet ere one year and a half they were brought to
such wretchedness as that any stony heart would have rued the
same. Out of every corner of the woods and glynnes 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 the dead
carrions, happy where they could find them, yea and one
another soon after, insomuch that the very carcases 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 a time, yet not able long to continue there withal;
that in a short space there were none almost left, and a most
populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man and
beast; yet sure in all that war there perished not many by the
sword, but all by the extremity of famine which they
themselves had wrought.

It is hardly surprising that Lord Grey's Secretary should share the
opinions and the feelings of his master and patron. Certainly in his
company and service, Spenser learned to look upon Ireland and the Irish
with the impatience and loathing which filled most Englishmen; and it
must be added with the same greedy eyes. In this new atmosphere, in
which his life was henceforth spent, amid the daily talk of ravage and
death, the daily scramble for the spoils of rebels and traitors, the
daily alarms of treachery and insurrection, a man naturally learns
hardness. Under Spenser's imaginative richness, and poetic delicacy of
feeling, there appeared two features. There was a shrewd sense of the
practical side of things: and there was a full share of that sternness
of temper which belonged to the time. He came to Ireland for no romantic
purpose: he came to make his fortune as well as he could: and he
accepted the conditions of the place and scene, and entered at once into
the game of adventure and gain which was the natural one for all English
comers, and of which the prizes were lucrative offices and forfeited
manors and abbeys. And in the native population and native interests, he
saw nothing but what called forth not merely antipathy, b