plated the utter
extermination of the race,) he merely acted up to the opinions
prevalent in the time and polished court of "Good Queen Bess." The
beings were "mere Irishry,"--a stumbling-block in the path of British
civilization, and therefore to be removed, _per fas et nefas_.

Spenser took up his residence on the forfeit lands in Cork; there
married, and reared a family which inherited his estate; that he
subsequently died in England was as mere a casualty as that by which
Swift was born in Ireland. Certain it is that the greater and the
better portion of his works in prose and verse was composed during
his residence in the land of his adoption. Thus, in the sonnets
appended to the "Faery Queen," the poem on which his celebrity rests,
he addresses this Earl of Ormond:--

"Receive, most noble lord, a single taste
Of the wilde fruit which savage soyle hath bred;
Which, beeing through long wars left almost waste,
With brutish barbarisme is overspred."

Again, addressing himself to his patron, Lord Grey, he says,--

"Rude rimes, the which a rustick nurse did weave
In savage soyle, far from Parnasso Mount."

Several other of the finest productions of his brain owe their birth
to the "savage soyle" of Ireland; his descriptions of the country,
his dialogue on Irish affairs, his "Amoretti" and "Colin Clout's come
home again," belong confessedly to this category.

Having discovered thus much about the poet, we now strike out in a
new direction in search of his better half. Upon this point,
unfortunately, there hangs a mist,--not impenetrable, as we conceive,
but yet impenetrated,--a secret to which the given clue has been
neglected, and which remains to the present day the opprobrium of a
careless biography. The fact and the date of his marriage in Ireland
are obtained from his own writings; but, further than that her name
was Elizabeth,--a fact recorded by himself,--the lady of his choice
remains unknown, her maiden name and family. Mere trifles these, to
be sure,--but interesting in an antiquarian point of view,--and
valuable, perhaps, should the inquiry hereafter lead some more than
usually acute bookworm into the real mystery and meaning, the main
drift of that inexplicable "Faery Queen."

One difficulty in the matter is, that Edmund appears to have been a
"susceptible subject." He was twice attacked with the tender malady,
and records, in glowing numbers, his passion for two mistresses. One
he calls