state which touch us all, will never appeal
to English readers in vain, till we have learned a new language, and
adopted new canons of art, of taste, and of morals. It is not merely
that he has left imperishable images which have taken their place among
the consecrated memorials of poetry and the household thoughts of all
cultivated men. But he has permanently lifted the level of English
poetry by a great and sustained effort of rich and varied art, in which
one main purpose rules, loyalty to what is noble and pure, and in which
this main purpose subordinates to itself every feature and every detail,
and harmonizes some that by themselves seem least in keeping with it.

FOOTNOTES:

[118:1]

"Unknow, unkyst; and lost, that is unsoght."

_Troylus and Cryseide_, lib. i.

[128:2] Hales' _Life_, Globe Edition.

[132:3] _Vid._ Keble, _Praelect. Acad._, xxiv. p. 479, 480.

CHAPTER VI.

SECOND PART OF THE FAERY QUEEN.--SPENSER'S LAST YEARS (1590-1599).

The publication of the _Faery Queen_ in 1590 had made the new poet of
the _Shepherd's Calendar_ a famous man. He was no longer merely the
favourite of a knot of enthusiastic friends, and outside of them only
recognized and valued at his true measure by such judges as Sidney and
Ralegh. By the common voice of all the poets of his time he was now
acknowledged as the first of living English poets. It is not easy for
us, who live in these late times and are familiar with so many literary
masterpieces, to realize the surprise of a first and novel achievement
in literature; the effect on an age, long and eagerly seeking after
poetical expression, of the appearance at last of a work of such power,
richness, and finished art.

It can scarcely be doubted, I think, from the bitter sarcasms
interspersed in his later poems, that Spenser expected more from his
triumph than it brought him. It opened no way of advancement for him in
England. He continued for a while in that most ungrateful and
unsatisfactory employment, the service of the State in Ireland; and that
he relinquished in 1593.[166:1] At the end of 1591 he was again at
Kilcolman. He had written and probably sent to Ralegh, though he did not
publish it till 1595, the record already quoted of the last two year's
events, _Colin Clout's come home again_,--his visit, under Ralegh's
guidance, to the Court, his thoughts and recollections of its great
ladies, his generous critici