As Spenser
chose to write of knight errantry, his picture of it has doubtless
gained in truth and strength by his very practical experience of what
such life as he describes must be. The _Faery Queen_ might almost be
called the Epic of the English wars in Ireland under Elizabeth, as much
as the Epic of English virtue and valour at the same period.

At the Dublin meeting described by Bryskett, some time later than 1584,
Spenser had already "well entered into" his work. In 1589, he came to
England, bringing with him the first three books; and early in 1590,
they were published. Spenser himself has told us the story of this first
appearance of the _Faery Queen_. The person who discovered the
extraordinary work of genius which was growing up amid the turbulence
and misery and despair of Ireland, and who once more brought its author
into the centre of English life, was Walter Ralegh. Ralegh had served
through much of the Munster war. He had shown in Ireland some of the
characteristic points of his nature, which made him at once the glory
and shame of English manhood. He had begun to take a prominent place in
any business in which he engaged. He had shown his audacity, his
self-reliance, his resource, and some signs of that boundless but
prudent ambition which marked his career. He had shown that freedom of
tongue, that restless and high-reaching inventiveness, and that tenacity
of opinion, which made him a difficult person for others to work with.
Like so many of the English captains, he hated Ormond, and saw in his
feud with the Desmonds the real cause of the hopeless disorder of
Munster. But also he incurred the displeasure and suspicion of Lord
Grey, who equally disliked the great Irish Chief, but who saw in the
"plot" which Ralegh sent to Burghley for the pacification of Munster, an
adventurer's impracticable and self-seeking scheme. "I must be plain,"
he writes, "I like neither his carriage nor his company." Ralegh had
been at Smerwick: he had been in command of one of the bands put in by
Lord Grey to do the execution. On Lord Grey's departure he had become
one of the leading persons among the undertakers for the planting of
Munster. He had secured for himself a large share of the Desmond lands.
In 1587, an agreement among the undertakers assigned to Sir Walter
Ralegh, his associates and tenants, three seignories of 12,000 acres
a-piece, and one of 6000, in Cork and Waterford. But before Lord Grey's
departure, Ralegh ha