events, revealing too that conflict
between the aesthetic and moral interests that was to run through
well-nigh all his works, and it became immediately famous. He was
rewarded with a place as private secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, Lord
Grey de Wilton, and sent to Ireland, where he spent nearly all the rest
of his life. After a few years there he bought Kilcolman Castle, which
had belonged to the rebel Earl of Desmond, and the rivers and hills
about this castle came much into his poetry. Our Irish Aubeg is 'Mulla
mine, whose waves I taught to weep,' and the Ballyvaughan Hills, it has
its rise among 'old Father Mole.' He never pictured the true countenance
of Irish scenery, for his mind turned constantly to the courts of
Elizabeth and to the umbrageous level lands, where his own race was
already seeding like a great poppy:

'Both heaven and heavenly graces do much more
(Quoth he), abound in that same land then this:
For there all happie peace and plenteous store
Conspire in one to make contented blisse.
No wayling there nor wretchednesse is heard,
No bloodie issues nor no leprosies,
No griesly famine, nor no raging sweard,
No nightly bordrags, nor no hue and cries;
The shepheards there abroad may safely lie
On hills and downes, withouten dread or daunger,
No ravenous wolves the good mans hope destroy,
Nor outlawes fell affray the forest raunger,
The learned arts do florish in great honor,
And Poets wits are had in peerlesse price.'

Nor did he ever understand the people he lived among or the historical
events that were changing all things about him. Lord Grey de Wilton had
been recalled almost immediately, but it was his policy, brought over
ready-made in his ship, that Spenser advocated throughout all his life,
equally in his long prose book _The State of Ireland_ as in the _Faerie
Queene_, where Lord Grey was Artigall and the Iron man the soldiers and
executioners by whose hands he worked. Like an hysterical patient he
drew a complicated web of inhuman logic out of the bowels of an
insufficient premise--there was no right, no law, but that of Elizabeth,
and all that opposed her opposed themselves to God, to civilisation, and
to all inherited wisdom and courtesy, and should be put to death. He
made two visits to England, celebrating one of them in _Colin Clouts
come Home againe_, to publish the first three books and the second three
books of the _Faerie Queene_ respectively, and to tr