He represents himself, while seated under the green alders by the romantic river Mulla meditating his rural minstrelsy, as suddenly addressed by a stranger who calls himself the Shepherd of the Ocean,-describing Raleigh under this fanciful appellation.

"One day (quoth he) I sat, as was my trade,
Under the foot of Mole, that mountain hore,
Keeping my sheep amongst the cooly shade
Of the green alders by the Mulla's shore;
There a strange shepherd chanced to find me out,—
Whether allured with my pipe's delight,
Whose pleasing sound yshrilled far about,

Or thither led by chance, I knew not right,-
Whom, when I asked from what place he came,
And how he hight? himself he did ycleep
The Shepherd of the Ocean by name,

And said, he came far from the main sea deep.
He, sitting me beside in that same shade,
Provoked me to play some pleasant fit;
And when he heard the musick which I made,
He found himself full greatly pleased at it."*

The stranger soon after borrows the pastoral reed of Colin Clout, and in tuneful rivalry displays his cunning in the art :

"Yet, æmuling my pipe, he took in hond

My pipe, before that æmuled of many,
And played thereon, (for well that skill he conn'd,)
Himself as skilful in that art as any.

He piped, I sung; and, when he sung, I piped;
By change of turns, each making other merry;
Neither envying other, nor envied :

So piped we, until we both were weary."+

Thestylis, one of the "swains that did about him play," inquires what was the ditty sung by Raleigh; and Spenser's answer, making allowance for its poetical drapery, corroborates the idea that he was suffering under the temporary displeasure of Elizabeth, whom he styles Cynthia the Lady of the Sea :—

"That shall I eke (quoth he) to you declare,-
His song was all a lamentable lay

Of great unkindness and of usage hard,
Of Cynthia the Lady of the Sea,

Which from her presence, faultless, him debarr'd:

*Todd's Spenser, vol. viii. p. 8.

+ Ibid. p. 9.

And ever and anon with singulfs rife,

He cried out, to make his undersong,

Ah! my love's queen, and goddess of my life!
Who shall me pity when thou dost me wrong?"*

The Shepherd of the Ocean, pitying that luckless lot which had banished Colin into a waste where he was forgotten, persuaded this tuneful wight to wend with him to behold his Cynthia,-in plain prose, Raleigh invited Spenser to court, that he might be introduced to the queen. The voyage to England, the wonders of the deep, and the noble description of the vessel huge "that danced upon the waters back to lond," must be familiar to all the lovers of English poetry in its best days. The description of the happiness of his country under the maiden queen, as contrasted with the miseries which the poet had lately witnessed, is striking and beautiful :

"Both heaven and heavenly graces do much more
(Quoth he) abound in that same land than this;
For there all happy peace and plenteous store
Conspire in one to make contented bliss.
No wailing there-nor wretchedness is heard;
No bloody issues-nor no leprosies;
No griesly famine-nor no raging sweard;
No nightly bordragst nor no hue and cries.
The shepherds there abroad may safely lie

On hills and downs, withouten dread or danger.
No ravenous wolves the good man's hope destroy;
No outlaws fell affray the forest ranger;
There learned arts do flourish in great honour:
And poets' wits are had in peerless price;
Religion hath lay power to rest upon her,
Advancing virtue and suppressing vice.
For end, all good, all grace there freely grows,
Had people grace it gratefully to use;
For God his gifts there plenteously bestows,

But graceless men them greatly do abuse." +

But the visit of Raleigh had more important consequences. During his residence at Kilcolman, Spenser submitted to him the three first cantos of his Fairy Queen, then in an unfinished state. It is a common

*Todd's Spenser, vol. viii. p. 13.

Bordrags, border ravages. Todd's Spenser, vol. viii. p. 20.

opinion that the poet was encouraged to commence this great work by the patronage of Sir Philip Sidney.* It appears to have been the reverse. The knight, with Dyer, a youthful critic of those times, and a fantastic person named Gabriel Harvey, employed every effort to dissuade this great writer from attempting any composition in rhyme; and I strongly suspect that it is to the discernment of Raleigh we owe the first publication of his noble work. There are extant repeated letters from Harvey, in which he congratulates Spenser, who had begun but thrown aside his romantic poem, on becoming a convert to a capricious scheme for the expulsion of rhyme from English literature, and reducing the structure of our versification within the rules of Latin prosody. Of this project Sidney and Dyer were the chief promoters; and, instead of applauding the Knight of Penshurst as the patron of the Fairy Queen, it is difficult, without some indignation, to read his frigid criticism upon its author,t and his good friend Master Gabriel Harvey's ridiculous and tasteless remarks upon the portion which had been submitted to him, without trembling for the probable consequences. Had this delightful poet listened to their pedantic dogmatism, the shades of Penshurst might have become the grave of the Fairy Queen. The reader is perhaps not aware how nearly this catastrophe had happened: "And now," says Spenser, in one of his early letters to Harvey,

66

they (Sidney and Dyer) have proclaimed in their Areopago a general surceasing and silence of bald rhymers, and also of the very best too; instead whereof they have, by authority of their whole senate, prescribed certain laws and rules of quantities of English syllables for English verse, having had thereof already great practice, and drawn me to their faction.” And in the same letter, a little after, he observes, "But I am of late

* Oldys's Life, p. 125. Spenser, p. liii.

Cayley's Life, p. 113. Todd's Life of

+Defence of Poesy, p. 513.

Todd's Life, vol. i. p. xx.