to have been not later than December in the same year. That
no part of _Cynthia_, as we have it, was written later than 1603
scarcely admits of doubt. Ralegh would not have sat down in the reign of
James to write love ditties to Elizabeth. His repinings and upbraidings
are manifestly all pointed at a dead heart, not at a dead queen. Mr.
Gosse is, however, more successful in his argument that the main
Hatfield poem was written in the lifetime of Elizabeth, than in his
attempt to date it in 1589. He assumes that the poem was a finished
composition when Ralegh 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 improbable, to the verge of impossibility, that Ralegh 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 main
support of his chronology. In the Paunsford recognizance 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 campaign would be conveniently over by the autumn
of 1589. A simpler solution seems to be to assign the rough-hewing
of the entire project of _Cynthia_, and its partial accomplishment, to
the term of Ralegh's short occultation in 1589. He might well have
disclosed to Spenser his project, and read out passages. They would be
melancholy for their sorrow's crown of sorrow, their recalling of 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
had melted back to the playing at love in which Elizabeth was wont 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
lamentation. By 1594 his disgrace seemed definite; the royal kindness
won by years of devotion--

Twelve years of my most happy younger days--

appeared to have been utter