Part 4 (2/2)

[Sidenote: _Edmund Spenser_]

[Sidenote: _The Faerie Queene_]

Edh was a Munster captain But, if the poet be taken literally, they were not acquainted before 1589 His Irish services, as Ralegh's, were rewarded out of the Desmond forfeitures He received 3028 acres in Cork, with Kilcolman Castle, two miles from Doneraile The estate formed part of a wide plain, atered, and, in the sixteenth century, ooded The castle is now a roofless ivy-clad ruin The poet was turning it into a pleasant residence Ralegh came to see it and him Spenser has described the visit in the tenderest and least artificial of his poeain_, printed in 1595, was inscribed to his friend in 1591 The dedication was expressed to be in part payment of an infinite debt The poet declared it unworthy of Sir Walter's higher conceit for the reeable to the truth in circumstance and matter Lines in the poem corroborate the hypothesis that Elizabeth had for a tih:--

His song was all a lae hard, Of Cynthia, the Ladie of the Sea, Which from her presence faultlesse him debard

They equally ireat Cynthia had been induced by his cos to abate her sore displeasure--

And aine

The circumstances of Spenser's own introduction to Court indicate that Ralegh had recovered favour He read or lent to Ralegh during the visit to Kilcol to Ben Jonson he also delivered to hiory in papers' The poem enchanted the visitor, who offered to becoether, if Colin Clout is to be believed, they crossed the sea, and repaired to the Court There--

The Shepheard of the Ocean--quoth he-- Unto that Goddesse grace me first enhanced, And to my oaten pipe enclin'd her eare

The first three books of the _Faerie Queene_ were published early in 1590, with an expository letter froht noble and Valorous Sir Walter Ralegh First of all the copies of coned WR

Spenser, in _Colin Clout_, lauded Ralegh as a poet:--

Full sweetly tehtie hart

[Sidenote:_Cynthia_]

[Sidenote:_Date of the Poeh must have shown him part of a poem addressed to Elizabeth as Cynthia, and estimated to have contained as ious elegy was never published by Ralegh, and no entire o a paper was found in the Hatfield collection, endorsed as 'in Sir Walter's own hand' The handwriting reseether 568 verses Two short poems, of seven and fourteen lines, come first; and the manuscript terminates with an unfinished poem of seven stanzas in a variety of terza riiac verses, described in the manuscript as 'The twenty-first and last book of the Ocean, to Cynthia' Archdeacon Hannah, in his _Courtly Poets froh to Montrose_, concludes, with some hesitation, that the whole was composed as a sequel, between 1603 and 1612, to a much earlier poem He sees in it allusions to the death of the Queen, which would more or less fix the date Mr Edmund Gosse, in the _Athenaeum_, in January, 1886, has contested that hypothesis He thinks, in the first place, that the twenty-one lines which precede, and the twenty-one which follow, the so-called twenty-first book, have no relation to the poem of _Cynthia_ The rest he holds to be not a continuation of _Cynthia_, but an integral portion of the original work

That work, as a whole, he has convinced hirace, between August, 1589, and its end, which may be taken to have been not later than December in the same year That no part of _Cynthia_, as we have it, ritten later than 1603 scarcely adn of Jas and upbraidings are manifestly all pointed at a dead heart, not at a dead queen Mr

Gosse is, however, ument that the main Hatfield poem ritten in the lifetime of Elizabeth, than in his attempt to date it in 1589 He assuh read from it to Spenser It is not likely that it ever was finished Spenser's allusions to it point to a conception fully formed, rather than to a work ready for publication In the latter case it is ih should not have communicated it to his circle An initial objection to the view that the twenty-first book was penned in 1589 is its reference to the--

Twelve years entire I wasted on this war,

that war being his struggle for the affection of Elizabeth This Mr

Gosse ingeniously, but not satisfactorily, appropriates as the nizance Ralegh is set down as of the Court in 1577 On no other evidence Mr Gosse infers that he was laying siege to Elizabeth's heart before he went to Ireland Thus the dozen years of the can would be conveniently over by the autun the rough-hewing of the entire project of _Cynthia_, and its partial accoh's short occultation in 1589 He ht well have disclosed to Spenser his project, and read out passages They would beof former undimmed felicity--

Of all which past the sorrow only stays

They would exaggerate royal unkindness They would hardly have descanted on the tenderness as absolutely extinct Even before Spenser extolled the _Cynthia_ in _Colin Clout_ in 1591, the harshness was softened, and hadat love in which Elizabeth ont to indulge with her courtiers When he resumed the theme on his banishment from Court in 1592, he would feel that he had solid cause for larace seemed definite; the royal kindness won by years of devotion--

Twelve years of er days--

appeared to have been utterly killed; and he was preparing to sail away into space The twenty-first book ht have been written at any tiroans be fairly explicable

Looking back to his regrets in 1589 for an episode of neglect, he could wonder at himself--

At middle day my sun seemed under land, When any little cloud did it obscure

Had Spenser seen the twenty-first book of _Cynthia_ in 1591, with its real or unreal blackness of despair, he would not have spoken of Ralegh as basking in the renewed radiance of happy prospects So _Cynthia_, as far as it was ever composed, may be considered one poes There is not, therefore, necessarily any hope, or fear, that the whole exists, or ever existed, in a perfect shape Ralegh would nurse the idea for all the years in which the Queen's withdrawal of the light of her countenance gave him comparative leisure The twenty-first book itself would be written with the direct purpose of softening histhe Hatfield papers may be that, on the eve of his departure, forsaken, withered, hopeless, for Guiana, it was confided, in 1594 or 1595, to Cecil, then a good friend, for seasonable production to the Queen Viewed as written either in 1589, or in the reign of Ja Its tone is plain and significant for the years 1592 to 1595 If traced to that period, it tells both of the bold co adventure of 1595,