so much in courts, and in companionship with the rich and highborn. Mountains on all sides shut in the retreat, and in the midst of the long and level plain between them stood a strong fortalice of the Earl of Desmond, which was to be the poet's residence, Kilcolman castle. Hard by the castle was a small lake, and a mile or two distant, on either side, a river descended from the hills. In position, likewise, it was insecure, forming as it did the frontier of the English line in the south, and the contiguous hills affording lurking-places for the Irish kerns, whence they could pour down in multitudes to plunder. In the insurrectionary warfare that shortly succeeded, these mountain-passes became the scene of many a skirmish; and the first object of the commander of the English forces, when he heard of any partial outbreak, was to send off a detachment of light-armed troops to occupy them in the name of the queen."

66

But overlooking all these hazards, Spenser came hither full of bright views of the future. "The sunshine of the years to come," says the author we have been quoting, were to atone for the darkness and the gloom of life's morning. His poetry, which had been previously of a pastoral cast, became now imbued with the wildness of the sylvan solitude around him: woodnymphs and fairies were inhabitants he could summon up at will, and with them the hill-tops about him were peopled. Such names of places and things, as his musical ear pronounced inharmonious, were exchanged for others which quaint fancy suggested, and which read more sweetly in his tender verse. He sang sweet strains of the bridal or separation of his rivers; told how their stern sires, the mountains, ofttimes forced their unwilling inclinations, and brought about a union which the water-nymph detested; and how sometimes she, in her faithful attachment to the one she loved, effected her wish by a circuitous course, or even sought beneath the earth's surface the waters dear to her bosom. Before an imagination so vivid the iron desolateness of Kilcolman vanished; and in its stead a fairy world arose to gladden the eyes of the dreamer with its bowers of bliss, and enchanted palaces, and magnificence more gorgeous than the luxuries of Ind.

"The Ballyhowra hills, which formed the northern boundary

of the poet's retreat, appeared in this new world under the feigned title of the Mountains of Mole; while the highest of them, which, like Parnassus, has a double summit, was dignified by the name of "Father." Sometimes Spenser seems to have extended the name of Mole to the entire range of hills which run along the northern and eastern limits of the county of Cork, and divide it from Limerick and Tipperary. In one place he speaks of a river rising from the Mole, and thence styled by him Molana; which undoubtedly takes its origin from the Tipperary hills. The plain in which his castle stood was rebaptized in Helicon by the name of Armulla Dale. Of his two streamlets, one was suffered, for a special purpose, to retain its original name of Bregoge, i. e. false, or deceitful

"Bregog hight

So hight became of his deceitful traine;"

and the other, the Awbeg, was specially appropriated to himself by the name of Mulla

"And Mulla mine, whose waves I whilom taught to weep."

"The rivers here mentioned flowed at some distance on each side of Spenser's castle. The Bregoge on the east, at the distance of a mile; the Mulla on the west, at about two miles. Both rise, as the poet sings, in the Mole Mountain. They spring from wells, in glens about a mile and a half asunder, on the opposite sides of Corringlas, the highest mountain in the range. The Bregoge proceeds, in a winding course, to the south-west, and falls into the Mulla a mile above the town of Doneraile. It is a very inconsiderable stream, forcing itself with difficulty amongst the rocks with which its channel is encumbered; and, like many mountain rivulets, is dry during the summer heats. When we saw it, in the course of the present year, its bed was a mass of dusty sand.

"The Mulla rises on the remote side of the hill from the Castle of Kilcolman, but has a more northerly head in Annagh bog, five miles from Anster's birth-place, Charleville, which perhaps in strictness should be deemed its source. Spenser, in the foregoing passage, describes it as springing out of Mole. It

proceeds to Buttevant, and receives a branch a little above that town, at Ardskeagh; it then winds away towards Kilcolman, and meets the Bregoge near Doneraile. Directing its course thence, it turns to the south, and flows through a deep romantic glen to Castletown Roche, after which it enters the Blackwater at Bridgetown Abbey. It is now called the Awbeg, in contradistinction to the Awmore or Avonmore, one of the names of the Blackwater."

I have been the more particular in quoting from one well acquainted with the scene the geography of Spenser's domain, because those who have not been on the spot can really form no idea of the proportion of matter drawn hence, and from Ireland generally, in his poems. The Faerie Queene, Colin Clout, and his two cantos on "Mutabilitie," abound with allegorical or actual descriptions of his Irish life, and of the scenery, and especially the rivers, about his estate here. I must now trace my own

visit to it.

Starting from Fermoy with a car, I ascended the valley of the Blackwater, a river which for beauty of scenery is worthy of all its fame. About six miles up, I was told that Spenser had lived at a place called Rennie. I found it a gentleman's house, standing at a field's distance from the highway; and drove up to it. It is the property of Mr. Smith, a merchant and magistrate of Fermoy. He was there with his lady, come out to see their splendid dairy of cows which they keep there, forty in number. They were at luncheon, and would insist on my going in and partaking; after which they both set out, most hospitably, to show me the place. The house stands on a lofty rock, overlooking the valley of the river, but at a field's distance from it. It is one of the places of exuberant vegetation, where vegetation in grass and trees seems perfectly exhaustless. The richest pastures, the most abundant and overshadowing trees, everywhere. In the little garden close to the house, and lying on the verge of the precipice, all glowing with dahlias, still remains a wall of the castle which was undoubtedly inhabited by Spenser. There is an old oak on the river bank, at some distance above the house, under the precipice, which is called Spenser's tree; and where he is said to have written part of the Faerie Queene.

him. But his fate was bound up with Ireland. After hanging about court for four years, during which time there can be little doubt that he experienced much of the bitterness expressed in the lines just quoted, he obtained, through the interest of his friends, Lords Grey and Leicester, and Sir Philip Sidney, a grant of 3,026 acres of land in the county of Cork, part of the forfeited estate of the great Earl of Desmond. Scarcely was his patent made out, when his best friend and patron, Sidney, was killed at the battle of Zutphen. This was the death of his hopes in England, and he set out to reside on and cultivate his newly acquired estate in Ireland; having lamented Sir Philip's death in the pastoral elegy of Astrophel. This was in 1586. In three or four years, 1590 or 1591, Spenser returned to England with Raleigh, published his first three books of the Faerie Queene, and was presented by Raleigh to Elizabeth, who at this time conferred on him his pension. Spenser, it seems, now returned to Ireland, wrote his second three cantos, and bringing them over in 1596, published them; and also printed and published his Discourse on the State of Ireland, as a defence of his patron Lord Grey's policy there. From the condition of Ireland at that time, and the sense of insecurity which Spenser felt at his lonely castle of Kilcolman, it is not to be wondered at that his plan abounds with earnest recommendations of a coercive nature, and especially for the stationing of strong garrisons numerously. In 1597, he returned to Ireland, where almost immediately the great rebellion of Tyrone breaking out, he was chased from his castle, and retiring to London, died there heart-broken in 1598.

Such is a brief outline of the life of Spenser. Let us now take a nearer view of his Irish home. One of the best accounts of it is contained in the Dublin University Magazine of November 1843. The writer, evidently not only a genuine lover of the poetry of Spenser, but well acquainted with the scene he describes, goes at much length into the characters and allusions of the poem of the Faerie Queene. He shows us that Spenser draws a noble portrait of his benefactor, Lord Grey, in the second book of that poem. It is the warrior seen by Britomart in the mirror of Merlin, as her future husband.

"A comely knight, all armed in complete wize,
Through whose bright ventayle lifted up on hye
His manly face, that did his foes agrize,
And friends to termes of gentle truce entize,

Looked forth, as Phoebus' face out of the east
Betwixt two shady mountaynes doth arise," &c.

The portrait is certainly a noble one, and limned with the colours of divine poetry. The anonymous but able author leads us justly to notice that, in the Legend of Artegall, the thirteen stanzas opening the first canto of the fifth book "relate to the hapless condition of the Ladye Irena-her tears and her troubles; tears that, alas! have not yet ceased to flow down, and troubles that to the present hour are convulsing her bosom. For Irena is Ireland; and she sends her supplications across the ocean to Gloriana, the Queen of Faerie, the great and good Elizabeth of England, beseeching her to come over and help her. Artegall is the personification of equity and justice; and this is the boon which poor Irena looks for, and hopes to receive at her sister's hand."

Artegall, or, in other words, Lord Grey, passes over to Ireland, and encounters Pollentè, or Gerald, Earl of Desmond, "who was in rebellion against Elizabeth at the time of Lord Grey's appointment to the chief authority in Ireland, and perished miserably in consequence. His prodigious wealth and power would amply bear out such an appellation. His lands extended one hundred and fifty miles in the south of the kingdom, stretching from sea to sea, and comprising the greater portion of the counties of Waterford, Cork, Kerry, and Limerick. We read of his being able to bring together, by his summons, six hundred cavalry, and two thousand footmen; and of these, nearly five hundred were gentlemen of his own kindred and surname. His castles were numerous, and scattered over this large tract of country in well-chosen places, for its defence and protection; and it is curious that attached to one of them is a tale of blood not unlike what you will find Spenser describing. A few miles above the sea, on a bold cliff overhanging one of the deepest parts of the beautiful river Blackwater, stand the battered remains of the earl's castle of Strancally. Attached to this stronghold is a murderous device, which we had often previously heard of, but