Ireland; and on his following this nobleman to England,
their difference was brought to a hearing before the privy-council, when
the great talents and uncommon flow of eloquence exhibited by Raleigh in
pleading his own cause, by raising the admiration of all present, proved
the means of introducing him to the presence of the queen. His comely
person, fine address, and prompt proficiency in the arts of a courtier,
did all the rest; and he rapidly rose to such a height of royal favor as
to inspire with jealousy even him who had long stood foremost in the
good graces of his sovereign.

It is recorded of Raleigh during the early days of his court attendance,
when a few handsome suits of clothes formed almost the sum total of his
worldly wealth, that as he was accompanying the queen in one of her
daily walks,--during which she was fond of giving audience, because she
imagined that the open air produced a favorable effect on her
complexion,--she arrived at a miry spot, and stood in perplexity how to
pass. With an adroit presence of mind, the courtier pulled off his rich
plush cloak and threw it on the ground to serve her for a footcloth. She
accepted with pleasure an attention which flattered her, and it was
afterwards quaintly said that the spoiling of a cloak had gained him
many _good suits_.

It was in Ireland too that Edmund Spenser, one of our first genuine
poets, whose rich and melodious strains will find delighted audience as
long as inexhaustible fertility of invention, truth, fluency and
vivacity of description, copious learning, and a pure, amiable and
heart-ennobling morality shall be prized among the students of English
verse, was now tuning his enchanting lyre; and the ear of Raleigh was
the first to catch its strains. This eminent person was probably of
obscure parentage and slender means, for it was as a sizer, the lowest
order of students, that he was entered at Cambridge; but that his humble
merit early attracted the notice of men of learning and virtue is
apparent from his intimacy with Stubbs, already commemorated, and from
his friendship with that noted literary character Gabriel Hervey, by
whom he was introduced to the acquaintance of Philip Sidney. His leaning
towards puritanical principles, clearly manifested by various passages
in the Shepherd's Calendar, had probably betrayed itself to his
superiors at the university, by his choice of associates, or other
circumstances, previously to the publication