very serious earnest in his bitter sarcasms on the base and evil arts
which brought success at the Court.

He stayed in England about a year and a half [1590-91], long enough
apparently to make up his mind that he had not much to hope for from his
great friends, Ralegh and perhaps Essex, who were busy on their own
schemes. Ralegh, from whom Spenser might hope most, was just beginning
to plunge into that extraordinary career, in the thread of which, glory
and disgrace, far-sighted and princely public spirit and insatiate
private greed, were to be so strangely intertwined. In 1592 he planned
the great adventure which astonished London by the fabulous plunder of
the Spanish treasure-ships; in the same year he was in the Tower, under
the Queen's displeasure for his secret marriage, affecting the most
ridiculous despair at her going away from the neighbourhood, and pouring
forth his flatteries on this old woman of sixty as if he had no bride of
his own to love:--"I that was wont to behold her riding like Alexander,
hunting like Diana, walking like Venus; the gentle wind blowing her fair
hair about her pure cheeks like a nymph; sometimes, sitting in the shade
like a goddess; sometimes, singing like an angel; sometimes, playing
like Orpheus--behold the sorrow of this world--once amiss, hath bereaved
me of all." Then came the exploration of Guiana, the expedition to
Cadiz, the Island voyage [1595-1597]. Ralegh had something else to do
than to think of Spenser's fortunes.

Spenser turned back once more to Ireland, to his clerkship of the
Council of Munster, which he soon resigned; to be worried with law-suits
about "lands in Shanballymore and Ballingrath," by his time-serving and
oppressive Irish neighbour, Maurice Roche, Lord Fermoy; to brood still
over his lost ideal and hero, Sidney; to write the story of his visit in
the pastoral supplement to the _Shepherd's Calendar_, _Colin Clout's
come home again_; to pursue the story of Gloriana's knights; and to find
among the Irish maidens another Elizabeth, a wife instead of a queen,
whose wooing and winning were to give new themes to his imagination.

FOOTNOTES:

[107:1] _v. Colin Clout_, l. 31. _Astrophel_, l. 175.

CHAPTER V.

THE FAERY QUEEN.

"_Uncouth_ [= unknown], _unkist_," are the words from Chaucer,[118:1]
with which the friend, who introduced Spenser's earliest poetry to the
world, bespeaks forbearance, and promises matter for admiration and
delight in t