succeed in pacifying the country, it was
not for lack of summary measures. Even in his postscript he mentions how
he hanged a captain of Scots, and he thinks "very nere twenty of his
men."

It seems almost needless to add anything to the official descriptions of
Ireland, which have already been given in such detail; but as any remark
from the poet Spenser has a special interest, I shall give some brief
account of his _View of Ireland_. The work which bears this name is
written with considerable prejudice, and abounds in misstatements. Like
all settlers, he was utterly disgusted with the hardships he endured,
though the poet's eye could not refuse its meed of admiration to the
country in which they were suffered. His description of the miseries of
the native Irish can scarcely be surpassed, and his description of the
poverty of the country is epitomized in the well-known lines:--

"Was never so great waste in any place,
Nor so foul outrage done by living men;
For all the cities they shall sack and raze,
And the green grass that groweth they shall burn,
That even the wild beast shall die in starved den."[442]

Yet this misery never touched his heart; for the remedy he proposes
poses for Irish sufferings is to increase them, if possible, a
thousandfold; and he would have troops employed to "tread down all
before them, and lay on the ground all the stiff-necked people of the
land." And this he would have done in winter, with a refinement of
cruelty, that the bitter air may freeze up the half-naked peasant, that
he may have no shelter from the bare trees, and that he may be deprived
of all sustenance by the chasing and driving of his cows.

It is probable that Spenser's "view" of Irish affairs was considerably
embittered by his own sufferings there. He received his property on the
condition of residence, and settled himself at Kilcolman Castle. Here he
spent four years, and wrote the three first books of the _Faerie
Queene_. He went to London with Sir Walter Raleigh to get them
published. On his return he married a country girl, named Elizabeth--an
act which was a disgrace to himself, if the Irish were what he described
them to be. In 1598, during Tyrone's insurrection, his estate was
plundered, his castle burned, and his youngest child perished in the
flames. He then fled to London, where he died a year after in extreme
indigence.

His description of the condition of the Protestant Church co