Part 9 (1/2)
was an uncohbour to Kilcolman The poet describes it as ruined by a curse pronounced on the lovely land by the offended Goddess of the Chase,--
Which too too true that land's in-dwellers since have found
He was not only living in an insecure part, on the very border of disaffection and disturbance, but like every Englishlish home in Ireland, however fair, was a home on the sides of aetna or Vesuvius: it stood where the lava flood had once passed, and upon not distant fires Spenser has left us his thoughts on the condition of Ireland, in a paper written between the two rebellions, some time between 1595 and 1598, after the twelve or thirteen years of so-called peace which followed the overthrow of Des serious It seeh entered for publication in 1598, it was not printed till long after his death in 1633 A copy of it a the Irish papers of 1598 shows that it had colish Government It is full of curious observations, of shrewd political reraphy; but more than all this, it is a very vivid and ih called ”the common woe of Ireland” It is a picture of a noble realm, which its inhabitants and its masters did not knohat to do with; a picture of hopeless s,on the part of a helpless and yet unta and scornful rigour on the part of their stronger rulers, which yet was absolutely ineffectual to reclaireat wisdom,” Spenser writes, ”have often wished that all that land were a sea-pool”
Everything, people thought, had been tried, and tried in vain
Marry, soe there have beene divers good plottes and wise counsells cast alleready about reformation of that realme; but they say, it is the fatall desteny of that land, that noe purposes, whatsoever are ood effect, which, whether it proceede from the very GENIUS of the soyle, or influence of the starres, or that Allhty God hath not yet appoynted the time of her reformation, or that He reserveth her in this unquiett state still for soland, it is hard to be knowen, but yetfatalities of Ireland appear in Spenser's account in all their well-known for of yesterday Throughout the work there is an honest zeal for order, an honest hatred of falsehood, sloth, treachery, and disorder
But there does not appear a trace of consideration for what the Irish lish ement and vacillation, of the way in which ently enity and detraction which he has figured in the Blatant Beast of the _Faery Queen_: but of English cruelty, of English injustice, of English rapacity, of English prejudice, he is profoundly unconscious He only sees that things are getting worse and h he, like others, has his ”plot” for the subjugation and pacification of the island, and shrinks fro in the way of severity, not even, if necessary, from extermination, his outlook is one of deep despair He calculates the amount of force, of money, of time, necessary to break down all resistance: he ishis garrisons; he is very earnest about the necessity of cutting broad roads through the woods, and building bridges in place of fords; he contemplates restored churches, parish schools, a better order of clergy But where the spirit was to come from of justice, of conciliation, of steady and firht What it comes to is, that with patience, teht be easily reforht into order: but unless he hoped for patience, temper, and public spirit from Lord Essex, to wholand is fixed, and our last hopes now rest,” he too easily took for granted as the real difficulty His picture is exact and forcible, of one side of the truth; it seeht of an honest, well-inforlishht in his estier, and of the i that want of method, want of control, want of confidence, and an unti a fair chance of preparing a platforht in his conviction of the inveterate treachery of the Irish Chiefs, partly the result of ages of , Tyrone, a craftier and bolderup what Deslish authorities which as things then were is al the veterans of Irish government, who knew perfectly hat he was, and yet let him amuse them with false expectations--men like Sir John Norreys, who broke his heart when he found out how Tyrone had baffled and ain time for help from Spain, and to extend the rebellion, he revolted, subranted, fearlessly presented hiuering their posts, led the English forces a chase through s, inflicted heavy losses on the as it suited hiround; it had crept round froht to Leinster, and now froht to the borders of Munster But Munster, with its English landlords and settlers, was still on the whole quiet At the end of 1597, the Council at Dublin reported home that ”Munster was the best teh not long since sundry loose persons” (a them the base sons of Lord Roche, Spenser's adversary in land suits) ”beca scattered in thatched houses and remote places near to woods and fastnesses, yet now they are cut off, and no known disturbers left who are like to o on to add that they ”have intelligence that many are practised withal from the North, to be of combination with the rest, and stir coals in Munster, whereby the whole realeneral uproar” And they repeat their opinion that they must be prepared for a ”universal Irish war, intended to shake off all English government”
In April, 1598, Tyrone received a new pardon; in the following August, he surprised an English arh, and shattered it with a defeat, the bloodiest and lish in Ireland Then the storm burst Tyrone sent a force into Munster: and onceof the dispossessed proprietors and the whole native population against the English undertakers; a ”ragged nulish Council describes thereat wood,” and from Arlo, the ”chief fastness of the rebels” Even the chiefs, usually on good terlish, could not resist the stream Even Thomas Norreys, the President, was surprised, and retired to Cork, bringing down on hiht better have resisted than you did, considering the many defensible houses and castles possessed by the undertakers, who, for aught we can hear, were by no means comforted nor supported by you, but either from lack of comfort from you, or out of mere cowardice, fled away from the rebels on the first alarm” ”Whereupon,” says cox, the Irish historian, ”the Munsterians, generally, rebel in October, and kill, murder, ravish and spoil without mercy; and Tyrone made James Fitz-Thomas, Earl of Desmond, on condition to be tributary to him; he was the handsoan_ Earl”
On the last day of the previous Septelish Council had written to the Irish Government to appoint Edentle in the County of Cork, who is so well known unto you all for his good and coe in learning, and not unskilful or without experience in the wars” In October, Munster was in the hands of the insurgents, ere driving Norreys before thelish settlers On December 9th, Norreys wrote home a despatch about the state of the province This despatch was sent to England by Spenser, as we learn from a subsequent despatch of Norreys of December 21[177:3] It was received at Whitehall, as appears from Robert Cecil's endorsee fro one And this is the last original document which remains about Spenser
What happened to hienerally from two sources, from Camden's _History_, and from Drummond of Hawthornden's Recollections of Ben Jonson's conversations with him in 1619 In the Munster insurrection of October, the new Earl of Deset that Kilcolman was an old possession of the Desmonds It was sacked and burnt Jonson related that a little new-born child of Spenser's perished in the flaland, a ruined and heart-broken man He died Jan 16, 1598/9; ”he died,” said Jonson, ”for lack of bread in King Street [Westminster], and refused twenty pieces sent to hi that he had no tirave of Chaucer, and his funeral was at the charge of the Earl of Essex Beyond this we know nothing; nothing about the details of his escape, nothing of the fate of his manuscripts, or the condition in which he left his work, nothing about the suffering he went through in England All conjecture is idle waste of tilish poets perished miserably and prematurely, one of the many heavy sacrifices which the evil fortune of Ireland has cost to England; one of many illustrious victieance of an ill-treated and ill-governed people
One Irish rebellion brought him to Ireland, another drove hiht hies of as then Irish life, with its scenery, its antipathies, its tempers, its chances, and necessities Tyrone's swept hiared and hopeless Ten years after his death, a bookseller, reprinting the six books of the _Faery Queen_, added two cantos and a fragend of Constancy_ Where and how he got thee and soles to the inexorable conditions of change It is strange, with its odd episode and fable which Spenser cannot resist about his neighbouring streas froy with sacred and with Irish scenery, Olympus and Tabor, and his own rivers and ery; and it is quite in a different key fro in the first six books It has an undertone of awe-struck and pathetic sadness
What e, the which all s doth sway, But that thereby doth find and plainly feel How Mutability in them doth play Her cruel sports to hty titaness, sister of Hecate and Bellona, es universal dos in earth and heaven, sun and moon, planets and stars, times and seasons, life and death; and finally over the wills and thoughts and natures of the Gods, even of Jove himself; and who pleads her cause before the awful Mother of all things, figured as Chaucer had already i, yet full of eld; Still , yet unmoved fro on her throne
He iines all the powers of the upper and nether worlds assembled before her on his own familiar hills, instead of Olympus, where she shone like the Vision which ”dazed” those ”three sacred saints” on ”Mount Thabor” Before her pass all things known of men, in rich and picturesque procession; the Seasons pass, and the Months, and the Hours, and Day and Night, Life, as ”a fair young lusty boy,” Death, gri of the breath, Ne ought to see, but like a shade to weene, Unbodied, unsoul'd, unheard, unseene--
and on all of theed Nothing escapes her sway in this present state, except Nature which, while seees her ultimate constituent elements, or her universal laws But when she seemed to have extorted the ade is apparent, and not real; and the tieless change