Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets. William Howitt

the wit and intelligence of Elizabeth's court, to sit down in this wilderness, and in the face of savage and exasperated foes, the poetical eremite, the exile of necessity. But, perhaps, the place then was not so shorn of all embellishment as now. The writer I have quoted seems to imagine that Spenser, by the sheer force of fancy, not only peopled this waste with fauns and nymphs, but clothed it with trees, and other charms of nature. But we must remember that since then, ages of devastation, of desertion, and of an exhausting system, have gone over this country. Then this castle stood fair and complete, and no doubt had its due embellishment and garniture of woodland trees. The green alder not only overhung the Mulla, but this lake very likely, and a pleasure bark might then add its grace and its life to the view from the castle windows. Todd calls it "the woody Kilcolman," on what authority I know not, and supposes that Spenser calls his first-born son Sylvanus on that account, as its heir. Here he spent twelve years, and, from every thing that we can learn from his poetry, to his own great satisfaction. We can not suppose, therefore, that he found the place without some native charms, far less that he left it without those which planting and cultivation could give it. As Sir Walter Raleigh planted and embellished his estate at Youghal with laurels and other evergreens, there is little doubt that Spenser would do the same here. He would naturally feel a lively and active interest in raising that place and estate, which was to be the family seat of his children, to as high a degree of beauty and amenity as possible. Though busily engaged on his great poem, the Faërie Queene, there is evidence that he was also an active and clever man of business; so much so, that Queen Elizabeth, in preference to all those more aristocratic and more largely land-endowed gentlemen, who were settled with him on the plantations of Munster, had, the very year of his expulsion hence by the Irish rebels, named him to fill the office of sheriff of the county of Cork. That he asserted his rights, appears from a document published by Mr. Hardiman, in his Irish Minstrelsy, showing that he had a dispute with his neighbor, Lord Roche, about some lands, in which, by petitions to the Lord-chancellor of Ireland, it appeared that Edmund Spenser had made forcible claim on these plow-lands at Ballingerath, dispossessed the said Lord Roche, had made great waste of the wood, and appropriated the corn growing on the estate. And the decision was given against Spenser. Spenser was, therefore, evidently quite alive to the value of property.

      If we look at what Doneraile is, a perfect paradise of glorious woods, we may imagine what Kilcolman would have been if, instead of being laid waste with fire and sword by the Irish kerns, and left to become a mere expanse of Irish rack-rent farms and potato grounds, it had been carefully planted, cultivated, and embellished, as the estate of the descendants of one of the proudest names of England.

      As it is, it stands one more lonely and scathed testimony to the evil fortunes of poets:

      "The poets who on earth have made us heirs

       Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays!"

      yet who, themselves, of all men, are still shown by a wise Providence to be "pilgrims and sojourners on the earth, having no abiding city" in it. Their souls have a heaven-aspiring tendency. They can not grasp the earth; it escapes from their hold, and they leave behind them, not castles and domains, but golden foot-prints, which, whoever follows, finds them ever and ever leading him upward to the immortal regions.

      "For a rich guerdon waits on minds that dare,

       If aught be in them of immortal seed,

       And reason governs that audacious flight

       Which heavenward they direct."—Wordsworth.

      In no situations do we so much as in such as these recall the truth uttered by the meditative poet just quoted:

      "High is our calling, friend! Creative art—

       Whether the instrument of words she use.

       Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,

       Demands the service of a mind and heart,

       Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part,

       Heroically fashioned—to infuse

       Faith in the whispers of the lonely muse,

       While the whole world seems adverse to desert.

       And oh! when nature sinks, as oft she may,

       Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,

       Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,

       And in the soul admit of no decay,

       Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness—

       Great is the glory, for the strife is hard."

      Let us, then, at this moment, rather endeavor to look at the happiness which Spenser enjoyed here for ten bright years, than at the melancholy finale. Here he worked busily and blissfully at his great poem. Forms of glory, of high valor and virtue, of female beauty and goodness, floated richly through his mind. The imperial Gloriana, the heavenly Una,

      "Whose angel face,

       As the great eye of Heaven, shinéd bright,

       And made a sunshine in the shady place;"

      the sweet Belphœbe, the gallant Britomart, and the brave troop of knights, Arthur the magnanimous, the Red-Cross Knight, the holy and hardly-tried, the just Artegall, and all their triumphs over Archimagos, false Duessas, and the might of dragon natures. This was a life, a labor which clothed the ground with golden flowers, made heaven look forth from between the clouds and the mountain tops, and songs of glory wake on the winds that swept past his towers. Here he accomplished and saw given to the world half his great work—a whole, and an immortal whole as it regarded his fame and great mission in the world—to breathe lofty and unselfish thoughts into the souls of men; to make truth, purity, and high principle the objects of desire.

      Here, too, he married the woman of his heart, chosen on the principle of his poetry, not for her lands, but for her beauty and her goodness. Nothing is known of her, not even her name, except that it was Elizabeth, that she was eminently beautiful, and of low degree. Some conjecture her to be of Cork, and a merchant's daughter, but Spenser himself says she was a country lass. Thus, in the Faërie Queene:

      "Such were these goddesses which you did see:

       But that fourth maid, which there amid them traced Who can aread what creature may she bee; Whether a creature, or a goddess graced With heavenly gifts from heaven first enraced! But whatso sure she was, she worthy was To be the fourth with these three other placed: Yet was she certes but a country lasse; Yet she all other country lasses far did passe.

      So far, as doth the daughter of the day

       All other lesser lights in light excell:

       So far doth she in beautiful array

       Above all other lasses bear the bell:

       Ne less in virtue that beseemes her well

       Doth she exceede the rest of all her race;

       For which the Graces that there wont to dwell

       Have for more honor brought her to this place,

       And gracéd her so much to be another Grace.

      Another Grace she well deserves to be,

       In whom so many graces gathered are,

       Excelling much the mean of her degree;

       Divine resemblance, beauty sovereign rare,

       Firm chastity, that spight no blemish dare;

       All which she with such courtesie doth grace

       That all her peres can not with her compare,

       But quite are dimméd when she is in place;

       She made me often pipe, and now to pipe apace.

      Sunne of the world, great glory of the sky,

       That all the earth doth lighten with thy rayes,

       Great Gloriana, greatest majesty,

       Pardon thy shepherd, 'mongst so many lays

       As he hath sung of