Chapter II: Part 2

"The Ballyhowra Hills, which formed the northern boundary of the poet's retreat, appeared in this new world under the feigned title of the Mountains of Mole; while the highest of them, which, like Parnassus, has a double summit, was dignified by the name of "Father." Sometimes Spenser seems to have extended the name of Mole to the entire range of hills which run along the northern and eastern limits of the county of Cork, and divide it from Limerick and Tipperary. In one place he speaks of a river rising from the Mole, and thence styled by him Molana; which undoubtedly takes its origin from the Tipperary Hills. The plain in which his castle stood was rebaptized in Helicon by the name of Armulla Dale. Of his two streamlets, one was suffered, for a special purpose, to retain its original name of Bregoge, _i. e._, false, or deceitful:

"'Bregog hight
So hight became of his deceitful traine;'

and the other, the Awbeg, was specially appropriated to himself by the name of Mulla:

"'And Mulla mine, whose waves I whilom taught to weep.'

"The rivers here mentioned flowed at some distance on each side of Spenser's castle. The Bregoge on the east, at the distance of a mile; the Mulla on the west, at about two miles. Both rise, as the poet sings, in the Mole Mountain. They spring from wells, in glens about a mile and a half asunder, on the opposite sides of _Corringlass_, the highest mountain in the range. The Bregoge proceeds, in a winding course, to the southwest, and falls into the Mulla a mile above the town of Doneraile. It is a very inconsiderable stream, forcing itself with difficulty among the rocks with which its channel is encumbered; and, like many mountain rivulets, is dry during the summer heats. When we saw it, in the course of the present year, its bed was a mass of dusty sand.

"The Mulla rises on the remote side of the hill from the Castle of Kilcolman, but has a more northerly head in Annagh bog, five miles from Anster's birth-place, Charleville, which perhaps, in strictness, should be deemed its source. Spenser, in the foregoing passage, describes it as springing out of Mole. It proceeds to Buttevant, and receives a branch a little above that town, at Ardskeagh; it then winds away toward Kilcolman, and meets the Bregoge near Doneraile. Directing its course thence, it turns to the south, and flows through a deep romantic glen to Castletown Roche, after which it enters the Blackwater at Bridgetown Abbey. It is now called the Awbeg, in contradistinction to the Awmore or Avonmore, one of the names of the Blackwater."

I have been the more particular in quoting from one well acquainted with the scene the geography of Spenser's domain, because those who have not been on the spot can really form no idea of the proportion of matter drawn hence, and from Ireland generally, in his poems. The Faërie Queene, Colin Clout, and his two cantos on "Mutabilitie," abound with allegorical or actual descriptions of his Irish life, and of the scenery, and especially the rivers, about his estate here. I must now trace my own visit to it.

Starting from Fermoy with a car, I ascended the Valley of the Blackwater, a river which for beauty of scenery is worthy of all its fame. About six miles up, I was told that Spenser had lived at a place called Rennie. I found it a gentleman's house, standing at a field's distance from the highway, and drove up to it. It is the property of Mr. Smith, a merchant and magistrate of Fermoy. He was there with his lady, come out to see their splendid dairy of cows which they kept there, forty in number. They were at luncheon, and would insist on my going in and partaking; after which they both set out, most hospitably, to show me the place. The house stands on a lofty rock, overlooking the valley of the river, but at a field's distance from it. It is one of the places of exuberant vegetation, where vegetation in grass and trees seems perfectly exhaustless. The richest pastures, the most abundant and overshadowing trees, every where. In the little garden close to the house, and lying on the verge of the precipice, all glowing with dahlias, still remains a wall of the castle, which was undoubtedly inhabited by Spenser. There is an old oak on the river bank, at some distance above the house, under the precipice, which is called Spenser's Tree, and where he is said to have written part of the Faërie Queene. This property was inherited by Spenser's eldest son Sylvanus, who married a Miss Nagle, of Monanimy, in Cork, and lived at this Rennie.

In a life of Spenser, the following scanty information, which has been collected relative to his descendants, is given, and may help us to a clearer conception of the matter. Sylvanus had, by the marriage with Miss Nagle, two sons, Edmund and William. Peregrine Spenser, the third son of the poet, the second being Lawrence, is described, in a MS. deposition relative to the rebellion in 1641, as a Protestant resident about the barony of Fermoy, and so impoverished by the troubles as to be unable to pay his debts; and a part of the estate had been assigned to him by his elder brother, Sylvanus; this part of the estate is distinctly stated to have been Rennie. Hugoline, the son of Peregrine, opposed the designs of the Prince of Orange, and after the Revolution was outlawed for treason and rebellion; his cousin, William Spenser, the son of Sylvanus, became a suitor for the forfeited property, and obtained it. Dr. Birch has described him as a man somewhat advanced in years, and as unable to give any account of the works of his ancestor which are missing. His case, as he presented it to Parliament, has been printed by Mr. Todd in his Life of Spenser, from the copy in the British Museum, presented by Mr. George Chalmers. In this document Hugoline is described as "very old and unmarried." Dr. Birch informs us that, in 1751, some of the descendants of Spenser were living in the country of Cork; and Mr. Todd, coming later down, observes, that "a daughter of a Mr. Edmund Spenser, of Mallow, the last lineal descendant of the poet, is now married to a Mr. Burne, of the English custom-house." A Mr. Price, in a MS. in the British Museum, states that he was told by Lord Cartaret, that when he was Lord-lieutenant of Ireland in 1724, a true descendant of Edmund Spenser, who bore his name, had a trial before Baron Hall, and he knew so little of the English tongue that he was forced to have an interpreter.

Now Mr. Smith informed me that not only was it the fixed tradition that this house at Rennie was inhabited by Spenser the poet, but that it was also as positively asserted that one of his descendants was murdered in it in a very extraordinary manner. The story was that of two brothers; one, banished for high treason, and the other, who succeeded him, murdered by his housekeeper out of jealousy. That this woman had been led to hope that her master would marry her, but finding that he was going to marry another lady, proposed, one morning as he was shaving, to do it for him, and being permitted, cut his throat with the razor. There seemed, however, some suspicion that the cousin of the murdered man, who was next heir, the elder brother being outlawed, had instigated or urged upon the woman to commit this act; but such was the state of the times, that, notwithstanding this suspicion, his cousin came in for the property.

Wild and terrible as this tradition is, it is there; and what is curious, we see in the above slight tracing of the descent of the Spensers, that Hugoline, a son of Peregrine, was outlawed for treason and rebellion, and that William, a cousin, and the son of Sylvanus, became a suitor for the forfeited property, and obtained it. In O'Flanagan's Guide to the Blackwater, this is stated to have happened to the last descendant of Spenser at Rennie, and that "in the small antique dwelling at Rennie is pointed out the room in which she did the deed." This is very different to the account I received from the present proprietor, which is that given above: nor does the house at Rennie prove to be "a small antique one." It is a good modern mansion. The property of Rennie continued in the family long after it had lost Kilcolman; in fact, till about 1734, when, on the death of Nathaniel Spenser, the then possessor, it was sold; the family became landless, and soon after extinct.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith set out with me to explore the scene. The house is modern; the land on the level of the house of the richest quality, and beautified with fine trees; the views up and down the river, and over it into the woods of Lord Listowell, with the tower of his castle peeping over them, are rich and beautiful. We descended into the meadows below the house, attended by four of the finest greyhounds ever seen, one of them as white as snow, and three or four terriers; and the dogs were soon in full chase of rabbits, up among the rocks and trees. We were soon below the house, and at the foot of the precipice on which it stands. The place was fit for Spenser's Pan, with all his fauns and sylvans. In the meadow, which extended to the banks of the river, grazed the fine herd of cattle, and amid them the sturdy bull; and all around us, above us on the rocks, in the meadow itself, and on the banks and green slopes on the other side of the river, grew the most prodigal trees. The whole scene told of ancient possession and a most affluent nature. At the foot of the precipice under the house, laurels and filberts, which must have been planted long ago, and probably by Spenser himself, had attained the most enormous size; the laurels were as large as forest-trees; they had, some of them, stems, I suppose, half a yard in diameter, and had assumed a shape of sylvan massiveness and woodland rudeness, such as before I had no conception of in laurels. Some had been blown down by the winds and grew half prostrate; others had been sawed off, and had left huge stumps, knit, as it were, into one mass with the foot of the rocks. All was one scene of Arcadian greenness, and excess of growth.

Beneath the rock there was a sort of damp cave, where water stood as if oozing through from the river, and the plants above hung down their long arms, and made a fitting retreat for Spenser's satyrs. Around, seen from the shadow of this spot, lay the deep-green meadow, the swift, broad river, the rich masses of trees, closing in a little world of solitude; and as if to mark it for a spot in which the poet of fairy-land had sojourned, and left the impress of his spirit, in his own words:

"Beside the same a dainty place there lay,
Planted with myrtle-trees and laurels green,
In which the birds sung many a lively lay
Of God's high praise, and of their sweet loves' teene,
As it an earthly paradise had been."

Perhaps Spenser might revel here till his castle was fitted up for his reception; perhaps it might be a retreat at times from the more open perils of the desolate Kilcolman; and a sweet change from moorland wildness to a sort of Italian richness and softness of scenery.

The way was still enchanting. Now down into the Valley of the Blackwater, among mills and rocks, and resounding waters; now aloft again, overlooking the white house of Rennie on its precipice, and opposite to it spreading out the woods and mountains of Ballynahoolly. Now arose a bare district of hedgerows without trees, and little brown huts, with geese, and goats, and swine. Now, again, passing some gentleman's park, with its ocean of trees, and under a sort of tunnel rather than avenue of beeches, which are planted on banks, so that they meet close above, sometimes for half a mile, and which at night are as dark as a dungeon. Then, again, I passed between hedges of cider-apple, all grown into trees, and giving the country--for the fields right and left were inclosed with the same--a very wild look; and I came out on bare heights, and with view of far-off bleak and brown mountains. Near Doneraile, I saw the ocean of green woods belonging to Lord Doneraile's park and domain lying before me in the valley, and passed through it for a mile or more in highest admiration of the splendid growth and richness of foliage of its beeches, its superb wayside ashes, and its other trees. Surely where it is allowed to produce trees, Ireland does exhibit them in a beauty and prodigality of growth which is almost unrivaled by those of England. To this contributes, not merely the fertility of the soil, but the moisture of the atmosphere.

About two miles beyond Doneraile I found, on a wide plain, the ruins of Kilcolman. These ruins have frequently been drawn and engraved, and the views we have of them are very correct. Indeed, so vividly were the features of the scene impressed on my mind by the views, and by reading of it, that I seemed to know it quite well. Its old black mass of wall catches your eye as soon as you have passed the woody neighborhood of Doneraile, standing up on the wild moorland plain, a solitary object amid its nakedness. A tolerable highway, newly constructed, leads up near to it, along which you advance amid scattered Irish cabins, and their usual potato plots. To reach the castle, you have to turn to the left up one of those stony lanes that threaten to jolt a car to pieces, and then have to scale a gate belonging to the farm on which the ruin stands, and advance on foot, through a farm-yard, and along the lake side. The remains of the castle, which consist only of part of the tower, at the southernmost corner, stand on a green mound of considerable extent, overlooking the lake, or rather a winding sort of pond, overgrown with potamogeton. On one side, masses of limestone rock, on which the castle, too, stands, protrude from the banks, and on the other extends the green marsh, and the black peat bogs, with their piles of peat stacks. To the north, at about a mile's distance, stretch those brown moorland mountains, called by the natives the Ballyhowra Hills, but dignified by Spenser with the name of Mole. Of either of these names the peasants seemed to know nothing, but assured me the one nearest to the castle eastward was called Slieve Ruark. Southward, at a couple of miles' distance, stands another somber-looking tower, the remains of an ancient castle, which they called Castle Pook. On a hill, nearer Doneraile westward, are also the ruins of an abbey; so that, probably, in Spenser's time, this scene might be well wooded; these places inhabited by families of the English settlers; and might form some society for him; but at present, nothing can be more wild, dreary, and naked than this scene, and the whole view around. Turn which way you will, you see nothing but naked moorlands, bare and lonely, or scattered with the cabins and potato plots of the peasantry. To the northeast stands, at perhaps half a mile's distance, a mass of plantations, inclosing the house of a Mr. Barry Harold; and that is the only relieving object, except the distant mass of the woods of Doneraile Park, and the bare ranges of mountains that close in this unpicturesque plain at more or less distance.

As I stood on the top of the massy old keep, whose walls are three yards thick, and its winding stairs of slippery gray marble, I seemed to be rather in a dream of Spenser's castle, than actually at it. The sun was hastening to set, and threw a clear shining light over the whole silent plain, and thousands of pewets and of rooks from Lord Doneraile's woods spread themselves over the green fields near the weedy water, and seemed to enjoy the calm dreamy light and stillness of the scene. The hour and the scene naturally brought to my mind the melodious stanza of Mickle, which has special reference to this solitary memorial of the history both of Ireland and its troubles, and the English poet of fairy-land and his fate:

"Awake, ye west winds, through the lonely dale,
And Fancy, to thy fairy bower betake;
Even now, with balmy sweetness breathes the gale
Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake;
Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake
And evening comes with locks bedipped with dew;
On Desmond's mold'ring turrets slowly shake
The withered rye-grass, and the harebell blue,
And ever and anon sweet Mulla's plaints renew."

Looking round over this stripped and lonely landscape, over the "looming flats," over the dark moorland hills that slumber to the north and east, and then far away to more distant but equally sterile mountain ranges, a strange feeling crept over me of the force of events which could compel, nay, make it desirable for the most imaginative spirit of the age, next to Shakspeare, to quit the British capital, the wit and intelligence of Elizabeth's court, to sit down in this wilderness, and in the face of savage and exasperated foes, the poetical eremite, the exile of necessity. But, perhaps, the place then was not so shorn of all embellishment as now. The writer I have quoted seems to imagine that Spenser, by the sheer force of fancy, not only peopled this waste with fauns and nymphs, but clothed it with trees, and other charms of nature. But we must remember that since then, ages of devastation, of desertion, and of an exhausting system, have gone over this country. Then this castle stood fair and complete, and no doubt had its due embellishment and garniture of woodland trees. The green alder not only overhung the Mulla, but this lake very likely, and a pleasure bark might then add its grace and its life to the view from the castle windows. Todd calls it "the _woody_ Kilcolman," on what authority I know not, and supposes that Spenser calls his first-born son Sylvanus on that account, as its heir. Here he spent twelve years, and, from every thing that we can learn from his poetry, to his own great satisfaction. We can not suppose, therefore, that he found the place without some native charms, far less that he left it without those which planting and cultivation could give it. As Sir Walter Raleigh planted and embellished his estate at Youghal with laurels and other evergreens, there is little doubt that Spenser would do the same here. He would naturally feel a lively and active interest in raising that place and estate, which was to be the family seat of his children, to as high a degree of beauty and amenity as possible. Though busily engaged on his great poem, the Faërie Queene, there is evidence that he was also an active and clever man of business; so much so, that Queen Elizabeth, in preference to all those more aristocratic and more largely land-endowed gentlemen, who were settled with him on the plantations of Munster, had, the very year of his expulsion hence by the Irish rebels, named him to fill the office of sheriff of the county of Cork. That he asserted his rights, appears from a document published by Mr. Hardiman, in his Irish Minstrelsy, showing that he had a dispute with his neighbor, Lord Roche, about some lands, in which, by petitions to the Lord-chancellor of Ireland, it appeared that Edmund Spenser had made forcible claim on these plow-lands at Ballingerath, dispossessed the said Lord Roche, had made great waste of the wood, and appropriated the corn growing on the estate. And the decision was given against Spenser. Spenser was, therefore, evidently quite alive to the value of property.

If we look at what Doneraile is, a perfect paradise of glorious woods, we may imagine what Kilcolman would have been if, instead of being laid waste with fire and sword by the Irish kerns, and left to become a mere expanse of Irish rack-rent farms and potato grounds, it had been carefully planted, cultivated, and embellished, as the estate of the descendants of one of the proudest names of England.

As it is, it stands one more lonely and scathed testimony to the evil fortunes of poets:

"The poets who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays!"

yet who, themselves, of all men, are still shown by a wise Providence to be "pilgrims and sojourners on the earth, having no abiding city" in it. Their souls have a heaven-aspiring tendency. They can not grasp the earth; it escapes from their hold, and they leave behind them, not castles and domains, but golden foot-prints, which, whoever follows, finds them ever and ever leading him upward to the immortal regions.

"For a rich guerdon waits on minds that dare,
If aught be in them of immortal seed,
And reason governs that audacious flight
Which heavenward they direct."--_Wordsworth._

In no situations do we so much as in such as these recall the truth uttered by the meditative poet just quoted:

"High is our calling, friend! Creative art--
Whether the instrument of words she use.
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,
Demands the service of a mind and heart,
Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part,
Heroically fashioned--to infuse
Faith in the whispers of the lonely muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And oh! when nature sinks, as oft she may,
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,
Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness--
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard."

Let us, then, at this moment, rather endeavor to look at the happiness which Spenser enjoyed here for ten bright years, than at the melancholy _finale_. Here he worked busily and blissfully at his great poem. Forms of glory, of high valor and virtue, of female beauty and goodness, floated richly through his mind. The imperial Gloriana, the heavenly Una,

"Whose angel face,
As the great eye of Heaven, shinéd bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place;"

the sweet Belphoebe, the gallant Britomart, and the brave troop of knights, Arthur the magnanimous, the Red-Cross Knight, the holy and hardly-tried, the just Artegall, and all their triumphs over Archimagos, false Duessas, and the might of dragon natures. This was a life, a labor which clothed the ground with golden flowers, made heaven look forth from between the clouds and the mountain tops, and songs of glory wake on the winds that swept past his towers. Here he accomplished and saw given to the world half his great work--a whole, and an immortal whole as it regarded his fame and great mission in the world--to breathe lofty and unselfish thoughts into the souls of men; to make truth, purity, and high principle the objects of desire.

Here, too, he married the woman of his heart, chosen on the principle of his poetry, not for her lands, but for her beauty and her goodness. Nothing is known of her, not even her name, except that it was Elizabeth, that she was eminently beautiful, and of low degree. Some conjecture her to be of Cork, and a merchant's daughter, but Spenser himself says she was a country lass. Thus, in the Faërie Queene:

"Such were these goddesses which you did see:
But that _fourth maid_, which there amid them traced
Who can aread what creature may she bee;
Whether a creature, or a goddess graced
With heavenly gifts from heaven first enraced!
But whatso sure she was, she worthy was
To be the fourth with these three other placed:
Yet was she certes but a country lasse;
Yet she all other country lasses far did passe.

So far, as doth the daughter of the day
All other lesser lights in light excell:
So far doth she in beautiful array
Above all other lasses bear the bell:
Ne less in virtue that beseemes her well
Doth she exceede the rest of all her race;
For which the Graces that there wont to dwell
Have for more honor brought her to this place,
And gracéd her so much to be another Grace.

Another Grace she well deserves to be,
In whom so many graces gathered are,
Excelling much the mean of her degree;
Divine resemblance, beauty sovereign rare,
Firm chastity, that spight no blemish dare;
All which she with such courtesie doth grace
That all her peres can not with her compare,
But quite are dimméd when she is in place;
She made me often pipe, and now to pipe apace.

Sunne of the world, great glory of the sky,
That all the earth doth lighten with thy rayes,
Great Gloriana, greatest majesty,
Pardon thy shepherd, 'mongst so many lays
As he hath sung of thee in all his days,
To make one mencine of thy poor handmaid,
And underneath thy feet to place her praise,
That when thy glory shall be far displayed
In future age, of her this mention may be made."

_Faërie Queene_, b. xii., c. x.

These were known in Spenser's days to be an affectionate monument of immortal verse to his wife, still more nobly erected in his Epithalamion; and to identify it more, in his Amoretti he tells us that his queen, his mother, and his wife were all of the same name.

"The which three times thrice happy hath me made
With gifts of body, fortune, and of minde,
Ye _three Elizabeths_ forever live,
That thus such graces unto me did give."

Here, too, he enjoyed the memorable visit of Sir Walter Raleigh, which he commemorates in Colin Clout. He had now ready for the press the first three books of his Faërie Queene; and these he read to Raleigh during his visit, probably as he has described it in pastoral style, as they sat together under the green alders on the banks of the Mulla.

"I sate, as was my trade,
Under the foot of Mole, that mountain hore,
Keeping my sheep among the coolly 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 know not right,
Whom when I askéd 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 the same shade,
Provoked me to play some pleasant fit," &c.

Raleigh was enchanted with the poem. He was just returned from a voyage to Portugal, and was now bound for England. He was, it appears, himself weary of his own location, for he soon after sold it to the Earl of Cork. He pressed Spenser to accompany him, put his poem to press, and by means of its fame to win the more earnest patronage of Queen Elizabeth.

"When thus our pipes we both had wearied well,
Quoth he, and each an end of singing made,
He 'gan to cast great liking to my lore,
And great disliking to my luckless lot,
That banished had myself, like wight forlore,
Into that waste, where I was quite forgot.
The which to leave, thenceforth he counseled me,
Unmeet for man in whom was aught regardful,
And wend with him, his Cynthia to see;
Where grace was great, and bounty most rewardful.
So what with hope of good, and hate of ill,
He me persuaded forth with him to fare.
So to the sea we came."

Here it comes out that, however much more clothed with trees, and however much better this spot was in Spenser's days, it was still "a waste where he was forgot," a place into which Raleigh considered his friend as banished, and as unfit for any "man in whom was aught regardful." He left it, published his poem, tried court expectation and attendance once more, but found them still more bitter and sterile than his Irish wilderness, and came back.

When we hear Kilcolman described by Spenser's biographers as "romantic and delightful," it is evident that they judged of it from mere fancy; and when all writers about him talk of the Mulla "flowing through his grounds," and "past his castle," they give the reader a most erroneous idea. The castle, it must be remembered, is on a wide plain; the hills are at a couple of miles or more distant; and the Mulla is two miles off. We see nothing at the castle but the wide boggy plain, the distant naked hills, and the weedy pond under the castle walls. Such is Kilcolman.

Here the poet was startled at midnight from his dreams by the sound of horse's hoofs beating in full gallop the stony tracks of the dale, and by a succeeding burst of wild yells from crowding thousands of infuriated Irish. Fire was put to the castle, and it was soon in flames. Spenser, concealed by the gloom of one side of the building, contrived to escape with his wife, and most probably his three boys and girl, as they were saved, and lived after him, but the youngest child in the cradle perished in the flames, with all his property and unpublished poems. On a second visit to England he had published three more books of his Faërie Queene; and there is a story of six more being lost by his servant, by whom they were sent to England. This could not be the fact, as he had himself but recently returned from the publication of the second three. Probably the rumor arose from some other MSS. lost in that manner. Fleeing to England, distracted at the fate of his child and his property, he died there, heart-broken and in poverty, at an inn or lodging-house in King-street, Westminster, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, at the expense of the Earl of Essex, "his hearse attended," says Camben, "by poets, and mournful elegies and poems, with the pens that wrote them, thrown into his tomb."

There is much that we naturally are anxious to know connected with the final fate and family of Spenser. How his children actually escaped. What became of them and their claim on the property? When was the property of Kilcolman lost to the poet's descendants? Of all this next to nothing is known. The literati of that age do not seem to have given themselves any trouble to preserve the facts of the history of their illustrious cotemporaries. Shakspeare and Spenser were left to the cold keeping of careless tradition. The particulars, beyond what we have already given, are very few.

Spenser's widow returned to Ireland, and there brought up her children. Of these, Sylvanus, as eldest son, inherited Rennie and Kilcolman. It appears that he found some difficulty with his mother, Spenser's widow, who married again, to a Roger Seckerstone, and was obliged to petition the Lord-chancellor of Ireland, to obtain from his mother and her new husband documents belonging to his estate, which they withheld. He married, as already stated, Ellen Nagle, of Monanimy, south of Kilcolman, of a Catholic family, a circumstance which had a great effect on the fortunes of their descendants, as connecting them with the unsuccessful party in the troubles of Ireland. His eldest son died without issue, and his second son, William, succeeded to Kilcolman. The property of William, being seized on by the Commonwealth party, was ordered to be restored to him by Cromwell, but is supposed to have only been regained at the Restoration. He had three other grants of land in the counties of Galway and Roscommon, in the latter, the estate of Ballinasloe. At the Revolution he joined King William, who for his services granted him the estate of his cousin Hugoline, of Rennie. This Hugoline was the son of Peregrine, the poet's youngest son, who had Rennie made over to him by his eldest brother, Sylvanus. Hugoline took part with his Catholic relatives, and, siding with King James at the Revolution, was outlawed, and his property at Rennie made over to his cousin William. Thus the descendants of Sylvanus, or the eldest son of the poet, became the only known posterity of the poet. The descendants of William, and therefore of Sylvanus Spenser, the elder male line, possessed Rennie till 1734, soon after which this line became extinct. There are still in Ireland persons claiming to be descendants, by the mother's side, from Spenser; and the Travers, of Clifton, near Cork, are lineal descendants of Spenser's sister Sarah and John Travers, a friend of the poet's, who accompanied him to Ireland, and had the town lands of Ardenbone and Knocknacaple given to him by Spenser as his sister's marriage dowry. The descendants of this sister number among many distinguished families of Ireland, those of the Earls of Cork and Ossary, Earl Shannon, Lord Doneraile, Earl of Clanwilliam, &c.

The fame of Spenser is not quite rooted out of the minds of the neighboring peasantry. I inquired of an old man and his family, who live close by the castle, whom that castle formerly belonged to, and they replied, "To one Spenser."

"Who was he?"

"They could not tell: they only knew that many officers from Fermoy, and others, came to see the place."

"Ay, I have heard of him," I added. "He was an Englishman, and the Irish burned him out of the castle, and he fled to England."

"Oh no! nothing of the kind. He lived and died there, and was buried just below the castle, which used to be a church-yard. Bones are often dug up, and on the western side of the mound there had been a nunnery."

In fact, they knew nothing accurately, but, like the people at Lissoy, by Goldsmith, would insist on his death and burial on the spot.

But the desolated spot possesses an interest stronger than the possession of the poet's dust. It was the scene of his happiest hours--hours of love and of inspiration. Here the Faërie Queene grew in heavenly zeal, and here it was suddenly arrested by the howl of savage vengeance, and the flames which wrapped the poet's heart in ruin.

"Ah! what a warning for a thoughtless man,
Could field or grove, or any spot of earth,
Show to his eye an image of the pangs
Which it hath witnessed; render back the echo
Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod."

_Wordsworth._

SHAKSPEARE.

There are two reasons why I proposed to omit the homes and haunts of Shakspeare from the present volumes; the first, because I have found it impossible to include the dramatic poets in the compass of these two, and must reserve them for a third; and the second, because I have already, in my Visits to Remarkable Places (vol. i.), devoted a considerable article to almost the only place where his homes and haunts still remain, Stratford-upon-Avon. A very little reflection, however, convinced me that an entire omission of the haunts of this great national poet from these first two volumes would be received as a disappointment by a numerous class of readers. Shakspeare is not merely a dramatic poet. Great and peerless as is his dramatic fame, the very elements, not of dramatic art and fame alone, but of universal poetry, and that of the highest order, are so diffused throughout all his works, that the character of poet soars above the character of dramatist in him, like some heaven-climbing tower above a glorious church. Every line, almost every word, is a living mass of poetry; these are scattered through the works of all authors as such exponents of their deepest sentiments as they can not command themselves. They are like the branches, the buds, the flowers and leaves of a great tree of poetry, making a magnificent whole, and rich and beautiful as nature itself, down to its minutest portions. To leave out Shakspeare were, indeed, to play Hamlet with the part of Hamlet himself omitted; it were to invite guests, and get the host to absent himself. In the Walhalla of British poetry, the statue of Shakspeare must be first admitted and placed in the center, before gradations and classifications are thought of. He is the universal genius, whose presence and spirit must and will pervade the whole place.

And yet, where are the homes and haunts of Shakspeare in London? Like those of a thousand other remarkable men, in the accidents and the growth of this great city they are swept away. Fires and renovation have carried every thing before them. If the fame of men depended on bricks and mortar, what reputations would have been extinguished within the last two centuries in London! In no place in the world have the violent necessities of a rapid and immense development paid so little respect to the "local habitations" of great names. The very resting-places and tombs of many are destroyed, and their bones, like those of Chatterton, have been scattered by the spades of the unlettered laborer.

We may suppose that Shakspeare, on his coming up to London, would reside near the theaters where he sought his livelihood. The first appears to have been that of Blackfriars. It has long been clean gone, and its locality is now occupied by Play-house-yard, near Apothecaries' Hall, and the dense buildings around. Play-house-yard derives its name from the old play-house. In Knight's London, it is suggested that this theater might be pulled down soon after the permanent close of the theaters during the Commonwealth, by the Puritans; but the real old theater of Shakspeare must, had that not been the case, have perished entirely in the fire of London, which cleared all this ground, from Tower-street to the Temple. If Shakspeare ever held horses at the theater door on his first coming to town, it would be here, for here he seems to have been first engaged. The idea of his holding horses at a theater door, bold and active fellow as he had shown himself in his deer-stealing exploits, and with friends and acquaintances in town, has been scouted, especially as he was then a full-grown man of twenty-three. The thing, however, is by no means improbable. Shakspeare was most likely as independent as he was clever and active. On arriving in town, and seeing an old acquaintance, Thomas Green, at this theater, he might, like other remarkable men who have made their way to eminence in London, be ready to turn his hand to any thing till something better turned up. Green, who was a player, might be quite willing to introduce Shakspeare into that character and the theater; but it had yet to be proved that Shakspeare could make an actor of himself, and, till opportunity offered, what so likely to seize the attention of a hanger about the theater as the want of a careful horse-holder for those who came there in such style, which appears was then common enough. We have the statement from Sir William Davenant, and therefore from a cotemporary, admirer, and assumed relative. We are told that the speculation was not a bad one. Shakspeare, by his superior age and carefulness, soon engrossed all this business, and had to employ those boys, who had before been acting on their own account, as his subordinates; whence they acquired and retained, long after he had mounted into an actor himself, within the theater, the name of Shakspeare's boys. That he became "an actor at one of the play-houses, and did act exceedingly well," Aubrey tells us. He is supposed to have acted Old Knowell in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humor;" and Oldys tells us that a relative of Shakspeare, then in advanced age, but who in his youth had been in the habit of visiting London for the purpose of seeing him act in some of his own plays, told Mr. Jones, of Tarbeck, that "he had a faint recollection of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported, and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of them sang a song." This is supposed to have been in the character of Adam, in "As You Like It," and hence it has been inferred, in connection with his acting the Ghost in Hamlet, and Old Knowell, that he took chiefly old or elderly characters.

Every glimpse of this extraordinary man, who, however much he might have been acknowledged and estimated in his own day, certainly lived long before his time, is deeply interesting. That he was estimated highly we know from Jonson himself:

"Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That did so take Eliza and our James."

When the two monarchs under whom Shakspeare lived admired and patronized him, we may be sure that Shakspeare's great merits were perceived, and that vividly, though the age had not that intellectual expansion which could enable it to rise above its prejudices against a player, and comprehend that Shakspeare's dramas were not merely the most wonderful dramas, but the most wonderful expositions of human life and nature that had ever appeared. People were too busy enjoying the splendid scenes presented to them by this great genius, to note down for the gratification of posterity the dayly doings, connections, and whereabouts of the man with whom they were so familiar. He grew rich, however, by their flocking to his theater, and disappeared from among them.

In this theater of Blackfriars he rose to great popularity both as an actor and dramatic author, and became a proprietor. It was under the management of Richard Burbage, who was also a shareholder in the Globe Theater at Bankside. To the theater at Bankside Shakspeare also transferred himself, and there he became, in 1603, the lessee. There he seems to have continued about ten years, or till 1613; having, however, so early as 1597, purchased one of the best houses in his native town of Stratford, repaired and improved it, and that so much that he named it New Place. To this, as his proper home, he yearly retired when the theatrical season closed; and having made a comfortable fortune, when the theater was burned down in 1613, retired from public life altogether.

Bankside is a spot of interest, because Shakspeare lived there many years during the time he was in London. It is that portion of Southwark lying on the river side between the bridges of Blackfriars and Southwark. This ground was then wholly devoted to public amusements, such as they were. It was a place of public gardens, play-houses, and worse places. Paris Garden was one of the most famous resorts of the metropolis. There were the bear-gardens, where Elizabeth, her nobles, and ladies used to go and solace themselves with that elegant sport, bear-baiting. There, also, was the Globe Theater, of which Shakspeare became licensed proprietor, and near which he lived. The theater was an octagon wooden building, which has been made familiar by many engravings of it. In Henry the Fifth, Shakspeare alludes to its shape and material:

"Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this _wooden_ O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?"

It was not much to be wondered at that this wooden globe should get consumed with fire, which it did, as I have already stated, in 1613. Shakspeare's play of Henry VIII. was acting, a crowded and brilliant company was present, and among the rest Ben Jonson, when in the very first act, where, according to the stage directions, "drums and trumpets, chambers discharged," cannons were fired, the ignited wadding flew into the thatch of the building, and the whole place was soon in flames. Sir Henry Wotton thus describes the scene in a letter to his nephew: "Now, to let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at present with what happened this week at the Bankside. The king's players had a new play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces from the reign of Henry VIII., which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the knights of the order, with their Georges and garters; the guards, with their embroidered coats, and the like; sufficient, in truth, within a while, to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now, King Henry making a mask at Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where, being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly and ran round like a train, consuming within an hour the whole house to the very ground. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that perhaps had broiled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with bottle ale."

Fires seem to have menaced Shakspeare on all sides, and he had narrow escapes. As there is no mention of his name in the accounts of the Globe Theater in 1613, nor any in his will, it is pretty clear that he had retired from the proprietorship of the Globe before, and escaped that loss; but in the very year after it was burned down, there was a dreadful fire in Stratford, which consumed a good part of the town, and put his own house into extreme danger.

These were the scenes where Shakspeare acted, for which he wrote his dramas, and where, like a careful and thriving man as he was, he made a fortune before he was forty, calculated to be equal to £1000 a year at present. He had a brother, also, on the stage at the same time with himself, who died in 1607, and was buried in St. Savior's Church, Southwark, where his name is entered in the parish register as "Edmund Shakspeare, a player."

The place where he was accustomed particularly to resort for social recreation was the Mermaid Tavern, Friday street, Cheapside. This was the wits' house for a long period. There a club for _beaux esprits_ was established by Sir Walter Raleigh, and here came, in their several days and times, Spenser, Shakspeare, Philip Sidney, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Marlowe, Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne, Wotton, and all the brave spirits of those ages. Here Jonson and Shakspeare used to shine out by the brilliancy of their powers, and in their "wit combats," in which Fuller describes Jonson as a _Spanish great galleon_, and Shakspeare as the _English man-of-war_. "Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakspeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and his invention." Enough has been said of this celebrated club by a variety of writers. There can be no doubt that there wit and merriment abounded to that degree, that, as Beaumont has said in his epistle to Jonson, one of their meetings was enough to make up for all the stupidity of the city for three days past, and supply it for long to come; to make the worst companions right witty, and "downright fools more wise." There is as little doubt, however, that, with Jonson in the chair, drinking would be as pre-eminent as the wit. The verses which he had inscribed over the door of the Apollo room, at the Devil Tavern, another of their resorts, are, spite of all vindications by ingenious pens, too indicative of that.

"Welcome all who lead or follow
To the oracle of Apollo:
Here he speaks out of his pottle,
Or the tin-pot, his tower bottle:
All his answers are divine;
Truth itself doth flow like wine.
Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers,
Cries old Sam, the king of skinkers.
He the half of life abuses
That sits watering with the Muses,
Those dull gods no good can mean us:
Wine--it is the cream of Venus,
And the poet's horse accounted:
Ply it, and you all are mounted.
'Tis the true Phoebian liquor,
Cheers the brain, makes it the quicker;
Pays all debts, cures all diseases,
And at once the senses pleases.
Welcome all who lead or follow
To the oracle of Apollo."

There is not any reason to believe that Shakspeare, lover of wit and jollity as he was, was a practical upholder of this pernicious doctrine. He may often make his characters speak in this manner, but personally he retired as soon as he could from this bacchanal life to his own quiet hearth at Stratford; and if we are to believe his sonnets addressed to his wife, and they possess the tone of a deep and real sentiment, he seriously rued the orgies in which he had participated.

"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds:
Hence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand;
Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed.
While, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eysell,[1] 'gainst my strong infection.
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
No double penance to correct correction.
Pity me, then, dear friend, and I assure ye
Even that your pity is enough to cure me."

We can not read these and many other portions of his sonnets, we can not see Shakspeare retiring every year, and as soon as able, altogether from the bacchanalian and dissipated habits of the literary men of the day, to the peaceful place of his birth, and the purity of his wedded home, without respecting his moral character as much as we admire his genius. The praises and the practice of drunkenness by literary men, and poets especially, have entailed infinite mischief on themselves and on their followers. What woes and degradations are connected with the history of brilliant men about town, which have tended to stamp the general literary character with the brand of improvidence and disrespect--jails, deaths, picking out of gutters, sponging-houses, and domestic misery--how thickly do all these rise on our view as we look back through the history of men of genius, the direct result of the absurd rant about drinking and debauch! With what a beautiful purity do the names of the greatest geniuses of all rise above these details, like the calm spires of churches through the fogs and smokes of London! How cheering is it to see the number of these grow with the growth of years! Shakspeare, Spenser, Sidney, Milton, Cowper, Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, Shelley, have all been sober and domestic men; and the sanction which they have given by their practice to the proprieties of life, will confer on all future ages blessings as ample as the public truths of their teaching. The Mermaid Tavern, like the other haunts of Shakspeare, has disappeared. It was swept away by the fire. If any traces of his haunts remain, they must be in the houses of the great, where he was accustomed to visit, as those of the Lords Southampton, Leicester, Pembroke, Montgomery, and others. These are, however, now all either gone, or so cut up and metamorphosed that it were vain to look for them as abodes hallowed by the footsteps of Shakspeare. If it be true that he was commanded to read his play of Falstaff in love--the Merry Wives of Windsor--to Queen Elizabeth, it would probably be at Whitehall or St. James's, for Somerset House was comparatively little occupied by her.