re
sprinkled,' or 'the sweete rosy leaves so fairly spred
upon the lips,' or 'that golden wyre,' or 'those
sparckling stars so bright,' but that inner spiritual
beauty, of which fair hair and bright eyes are but
external expressions.

So every spirit, as it is most pure
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer bodie doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairely dight
With chearfull grace and amiable sight;
For of the soule the bodie forme doth take,
For soule is forme and doth the bodie make.

This hymn is one of high refined rapture.

Before the close of the year 1596 Spenser wrote
and published the _Prothalamion_ or 'A spousall verse
made in honour of the double marriage of the two
honourable and vertuous ladies, the ladie Elizabeth,
and the ladie Katherine Somerset, daughters to the
right honourable the Earle of Worcester, and espoused
to the two worthie gentlemen, M. Henry Gilford and M.
William Peter Esquyers.' It was composed after the
return of Essex from Spain, for he is introduced in the
poem as then residing at his house in the Strand. It
is a poem full of grace and beauty, and of matchless
melodiousness.

This is the last complete poem Spenser wrote. No
doubt he entertained the idea of completing his _Faerie
Queene_; and perhaps it was after 1596 that he composed
the two additional cantos, which are all, so far as is
known, that he actually wrote. But the last poem
completed and published in his lifetime was the
_Prothalamion_.

This second visit to England at last came to an
end. It was probably in 1597 that he returned once
more to Kilcolman. In the following year he was
recommended by her Majesty for Sheriff of Cork. But
his residence in Ireland was now to be rudely
terminated.

The Irishry had, ever since the suppression of
Desmond's rebellion in 1582, been but waiting for
another opportunity to rise, that suppression not
having brought pacification in its train. In the
autumn of 1598 broke out another of these fearful
insurrections, of which the history of English rule in
Ireland is mainly composed.

In the September of that year Spenser was at the
zenith of his prosperity. In that month arrived the
letter recommending his appointment to be Sheriff of
Cork. It seems legitimate to connect this mark of
royal favour with the fact that at the beginning of the
preceding month Lord Burghley had decease