Spenser himself looked on his life in Ireland
as a banishment. In his "Colm Clout's come Home again" he tells us that
Sir Walter Raleigh, who visited him in 1589, and heard what was then
finished of the "Faery Queen,"--
"'Gan to cast great liking to my lore
And great disliking to my luckless lot,
That banisht had myself, like wight forlore,
Into that waste, where I was quite forgot
The which to leave thenceforth he counselled me,
Unmeet for man in whom was aught regardful,
And wend with him his Cynthia to see,
Whose grace was great and bounty most rewardful."
But Spenser was already living at Kilcolman Castle (which, with 3,028
acres of land from the forfeited estates of the Earl of Desmond, was
confirmed to him by grant two years later), amid scenery at once placid
and noble, whose varied charm he felt profoundly. He could not complain,
with Ovid,--
"Non liber hie ullus, non qui mihi commodet aurem,"
for he was within reach of a cultivated society, which gave him the
stimulus of hearty admiration both as poet and scholar. Above all, he
was fortunate in a seclusion that prompted study and deepened meditation,
while it enabled him to converse with his genius disengaged from those
worldly influences which would have disenchanted it of its mystic
enthusiasm, if they did not muddle it ingloriously away.
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