kinds. Spenser, accordingly, alluded to his
friends, Sidney and Harvey, as the shepherds Astrophel and Hobbinol;
paid court to Queen Elizabeth as Cynthia; and introduced, in the form of
anagrams, names of the High-Church Bishop of London, Aylmer, and the
Low-Church Archbishop Grindal. The conventional pastoral is a somewhat
delicate exotic in English poetry, and represents a very unreal Arcadia.
Before the end of the 17th century the squeak of the oaten pipe had
become a burden, and the only poem of the kind which it is easy to read
without some impatience is Milton's wonderful _Lycidas_. The
_Shepheard's Calendar_, however, though it belonged to an artificial
order of literature, had the unmistakable stamp of genius in its style.
There was a broad, easy mastery of the resources of language, a grace,
fluency, and music which were new to English poetry. It was written
while Spenser was in service with the Earl of Leicester, and enjoying
the friendship of his nephew, the all-accomplished Sidney and it was,
perhaps, composed at the latter's country seat of Penshurst. In the
following year Spenser went to Ireland as private secretary to Arthur,
Lord Grey of Wilton, who had just been appointed Lord Deputy of that
kingdom. After filling several clerkships in the Irish government,
Spenser received a grant of the castle and estate of Kilcolman, a part
of the forfeited lands of the rebel Earl of Desmond. Here, among
landscapes richly wooded, like the scenery of his own fairy land, "under
the cooly shades of the green alders by the Mulla's shore," Sir Walter
Raleigh found him, in 1589, busy upon his _Faerie Queene_. In his poem,
_Colin Clout's Come Home Again_, Spenser tells, in pastoral language,
how "the shepherd of the ocean" persuaded him to go to London, where he
presented him to the queen, under whose patronage the first three books
of his great poem were printed, in 1590. A volume of minor poems,
entitled _Complaints_, followed in 1591, and the three remaining books
of the _Faerie Queene_ in 1596. In 1595-1596 he published also his
_Daphnaida, Prothalamion,_ and the four hymns on _Love_ and _Beauty_,
and on _Heavenly Love_ and _Heavenly Beauty_. In 1598, in Tyrone's
rebellion, Kilcolman Castle was sacked and burned, and Spenser, with his
family, fled to London, where he died in January, 1599.

The _Faerie Queene_ reflects, perhaps, more fully than any other English
work, the many-sided literary influences of the Renascence