fficient
means, and to receive more blame where he failed than thanks where he
succeeded. He had every one, English and Irish, against him in Ireland,
and no one for him in England. He was driven to violence because he
wanted strength; he took liberties with forfeitures belonging to the
Queen because he had no other means of rewarding public services. It is
not easy to feel much sympathy for a man who, brave and public spirited
as he was, could think of no remedy for the miseries of Ireland but
wholesale bloodshed. Yet, compared with the resident officials who
caballed against him, and who got rich on these miseries, the Wallops
and Fentons of the Irish Council, this stern Puritan, so remorseless in
what he believed to be his duty to his Queen and his faith, stands out
as an honest and faithful public servant of a Government which seemed
hardly to know its own mind, which vacillated between indulgence and
severity, and which hampered its officers by contradictory policies,
ignorant of their difficulties, and incapable of controlling the
supplies for a costly and wasteful war. Lord Grey's strong hand, though
incapable of reaching the real causes of Irish evils, undoubtedly saved
the country at a moment of serious peril, and once more taught lawless
Geraldines, and Eustaces, and Burkes the terrible lesson of English
power. The work which he had half done in crushing Desmond was soon
finished by Desmond's hereditary rival, Ormond; and under the milder,
but not more popular, rule of his successor, the proud and irritable
Sir John Perrot, Ireland had for a few years the peace which consisted
in the absence of a definite rebellion, till Tyrone began to stir in
1595, and Perrot went back a disgraced man, to die a prisoner in the
Tower.

Lord Grey left behind him unappeasable animosities, and returned to meet
jealous rivals and an ill-satisfied mistress. But he had left behind one
whose admiration and reverence he had won, and who was not afraid to
take care of his reputation. Whether Spenser went back with his patron
or not in 1582, he was from henceforth mainly resident in Ireland. Lord
Grey's administration, and the principles on which it had been carried
on, had made a deep impression on Spenser's mind. His first ideal had
been Philip Sidney, the attractive and all-accomplished gentleman,--

The President
Of noblesse and of chevalrie,--

And to the end the pastoral Colin Clout, for he ever retained