The Canterbury tales and Faerie queene &c., &c., &c., ed. for popular perusal with current illustrations and explanatory notes, by D. Laing Purves.

LIFE OF EDMUND SPENSER. 299
good angel put you in a better mind." Providence did not interfere with the impulse of the poet; the nine Comedies christened after the Muses are now preserved
from oblivion only in the futile praise of Harvey; and the scholar's attempts to
induce Spenser to adopt a metrical system founded on that of the ancients, met
with no more attention than a half-amused and half-courteous experimentation, in
letters between the two friends, which reminds us of similar exercises not long
ago put forth by Mr Tennyson. Besides the nine comedies, other poems are mentioned in correspondence about this time, of which no memorial remains, at least
in their original form. Such are "Dreams," "Legends," the "Court of Cupid,"
"The English Poet," "Tie Dying Pelican', "Stemmata Dudleiana,"'"Slumber,'
and "Epithalamium Thamesis." "Stemmata Dudleiana" probably survives in "The
Ruins of Time;" "Slumber" and "Dreams" in the "Visions" formerly mentioned; the "Court of Cupid" and "Epithalamium Thamesis" in "The Faerie
Queen" (cantos x. and xi. of book iv.) "The English Poet" and "The Dying
Pelican" are lost.
In August 1580 Spenser-who seems to have for some time acted as secretary to
the Earl of Leicester-attended Arthur Lord Grey of Wilton, who had been appointed
Lord Deputy of Ireland, in the capacity of private secretary. Raleigh, who had not
long returned from his voyage to Newfoundland with Sir Humphrey Gilbert, his
half-brother, was serving in the English forces; and in all probability the friendship
now began which was destined to bear fruit in the poet's introduction to Queen
Elizabeth. Of this, however, we have no evidence: what we do know is, that in
March 1581 Spenser was appointed to the office of Clerk of Degrees and Recognizances in the Irish Court of Chancery-an office which he held until, in 1588, he
was made Clerk to the Council of Munster. Before the end of 1581, also, he
received a Crown grant of a lease of the manor, castle, and abbey of Enniscorthy, in
Wexford, at a rent of;300, on the condition of his keeping the buildings in repair.
Though Enniscorthy was a pleasant and lovely place, Spenser did not hold it long;
in December 1581, he sold his interest to one Richard Synot, from whom it passed
into the hands of Sir H. Wallop, the ancestor of the present Portsmouth family
We have sufficient proof of the high esteem in which the poet held the chivalrous
and high-minded but somewhat absolute Deputy whom he served, in the character
of Grey drawn under the name of Sir Artegall in the fifth book of " The Faerie
Queen;" and in the recommendatory Sonnet prefixed to that Poem, where Spenser
addresses Grey as the pillar of his life and patron of his Muse's pupilage. When
Grey was recalled, in 1582, Spenser is generally stated to have returned with him;
but there are reasons for believing that the poet remained at his post in Dublin,
and devoted his labour to " The Faerie Queen." He distinctly describes that poem,
in his introductory Sonnet addressed to the Earl of Ormond (page 308), as "the wild
fruit which salvage soil hath bred," and in the Sonnet to Grey as " rude rhymes,
the which a rustic Muse did weave in salvage soil, far from Parnassus Mount."
Moreover, the duties of his Chancery office required him to reside in Ireland;
there are no well-authenticated notices of his presence in England between 1582
and 1590-a thing incomprehensible if he had been within easy reach of Harvey's
letters, Sidney's friendship, or Leicester's good offices; there is evidence, in a work
by his friend Lodowick Briskett, that Spenser lived at or near Dublin, in high repute
for literary judgment, for scholarship, and genius, during those years in which direct
authentic record loses sight of him; while his intimate knowledge of the condition
of Ireland, displayed in his sole prose work, testifies to far more than that cursory
observation which the leisure of two years' official life could afford. Another token
that his Chancery duties detained him in Dublin, is furnished by a Sonnet addressed
to Gabriel Harvey, dated at that city on the 18th of July 1586; while it is not easy