ith
Leicester; what subsequently aggravated the
estrangement was his friendship with Essex.

Footnotes
---------

{1} See Peter Cunningham's _Introduction to Extracts
from Accounts of the Revels at Court_. (Shakspeare
Society.)
{2} It may be suggested that what are called the
archaisms of Spenser's style may be _in part_ due
to the author's long residence in the country with
one of the older forms of the language spoken all
round him and spoken by him, in fact his
vernacular. I say _in part_, because of course his
much study of Chaucer must be taken into account.
But, as Mr. Richard Morris has remarked to me, he
could not have drawn from Chaucer those forms and
words of a _northern_ dialect which appear in the
_Calendar_.
{3} These are given in the Appendix to the present
work.
{4} This supposed description of his first love was
written probably during the courtship, which ended,
as we shall see, in his marriage. The First Love
is said to be portrayed in cant. vii., the Last in
cant. x. of book vi. of the _Faerie Queene_. But
this identification of Rosalind and Mirabilla is,
after all, but a conjecture, and is not be accepted
as gospel.
{5} See this work amongst Mr. Arber's excellent
_English Reprints_.
{6} _Ancient Critical Essays_, ed. Hazlewood, 1815, pp.
259, 260.

CHAPTER II.

1580-1589.

In the year 1580 Spenser was removed from the society
and circumstances in which, except for his probable
visit to Ireland, he had lived and moved as we have
seen, for some three years. From that year to near the
close of his life his home was to be in Ireland. He
paid at least two visits to London and its environs in
the course of these eighteen years; but it seems clear
that his home was in Ireland. Perhaps his biographers
have hitherto not truly appreciated this residence in
Ireland. We shall see that a liberal grant of land was
presently bestowed upon him in the county of Cork; and
they have reckoned him a successful man, and wondered
at the querulousness that occasionally makes itself
heard in his works. Towards the very end of this life,
Spenser speaks of himself as one

Whom sullein care
Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay
In princes court and expectation vayne
O