good angel put him in a better mind.

This literary club had broken up three years before this time, but Edmund
Spenser and Sir Fulke Greville still corresponded or met at intervals with
Sidney to compare their literary efforts and criticise them freely,
Spenser's always being pronounced, as doubtless they were, far above the
others in beauty of style and poetical conception.

By Philip Sidney's influence Spenser had been sent to Ireland as secretary
to Lord Grey of Wilton, whose recall was now considered certain. Sir Henry
Sidney would have been willing to return as Deputy with his son under him;
but, having been badly supported in the past, he stipulated that the Queen
should reward his long service by a peerage and a grant of money or lands
as a public mark of her confidence.

Philip found Sir Fulke Greville in his room, and with him Edward Dyer, who
had come to discuss a letter from Edmund Spenser, which he wished his
friends to hear.

'He fears he shall lose his place if Lord Grey be recalled, and beseeches
me,' Philip said, 'to do my best that he should remain secretary to
whomsoever the Queen may appoint.'

'And that will be an easy matter, methinks,' Dyer said, 'if the rumour is
true that your good father is again to be appointed Deputy of Ireland, with
you for his helper.'

'Contradict that rumour, good Ned,' Philip said. 'There is but the barest
chance of the Queen's reinstating my father, and if, indeed, it happened
so, I should not accept the post under him. I will write to our friend
Spenser and bid him take courage. His friends will not desert him. But I
have here a stanza or two of the _Fairie Queene_, for which Edmund begs me
to seek your approval or condemnation.'

'It will be the first,' Fulke Greville said, 'as he very well knows, and it
will not surprise me to find our good friend Harvey at last giving him his
meed of praise, albeit he was so rash as to say that hexameters in English
are either like a lame gosling that draweth one leg after, or like a lame
dog that holdeth one leg up.'

Fulke Greville laughed, saying,--

'A very apt simile; at least, for any attempt I was bold enow to make; but
read on, Philip. I see a whole page of Edmund's somewhat cramped writing.'

'It is but a fragment,' Philip said, 'but Edmund makes a note below that he
had in his mind a fair morning, when we walked together at Penshurst, and
that the sounds and sights he here describes in verse are wafted to him
fr