s shall give me some reliefe
And ease of paine which cannot be recured.
And ye my fellow shepheards, which do see
And heare the languors of my too long dying,
Unto the world for ever witnesse bee
That hers I die, nought to the world denying
This simple trophe of her great conquest.

This residence of Spenser in the North, which
corresponds with that period of Milton's life spent at
his father's house at Horton in Buckinghamshire, ended,
as there has been occasion to state, in the year 1577.
What was the precise cause of Spenser's coming South,
is not known for certain. 'E.K.' says in one of his
glosses, already quoted in part, that the poet 'for
speciall occasion of private affayres (as I have bene
partly of himselfe informed) and for his more
preferment, removing out of the North parts, came into
the South, as Hobbinoll indeede advised him privately.'
It is clear from his being admitted at his college as a
sizar, that his private means were not good. Perhaps
during his residence in the North he may have been
dependent on the bounty of his friends. It was then in
the hope of some advancement of his fortunes that,
bearing with him no doubt in manuscript certain results
of all his life's previous labour, he turned away from
his cold love and her glen, and all her country, and
set his face Town-ward.

It is said that his friend Harvey introduced him
to that famous accomplished gentleman--that mirror of
true knighthood--Sir Philip Sidney, and it would seem
that Penshurst became for some time his home. There
has already been quoted a line describing Spenser as
'the southern shepheardes boye.' This southern
shepherd is probably Sidney. Sidney, it would seem,
introduced him to his father and to his uncle, the Earl
of Leicester. If we are to take Iren{ae}us' words
literally--and there seems no reason why we should
not--Spenser was for a time at least in Ireland, when
Sidney's father was Lord Deputy. Iren{ae}us, in _A View
of the Present State of Ireland_, certainly represents
Spenser himself; and he speaks of what he _said_ at the
execution of a notable traitor at Limerick, called
Murrogh O'Brien; see p. 636 of this volume. However,
he was certainly back in England and in London in 1579,
residing at the Earl of Leicester's house in the
Strand, where Essex Street now stands. He dates one of
his letters to Harvey, 'Leycester House, this 5
October, 1579.' Perhaps at th