Spenser once more visited England, bringing with him three more books of
the "Faery Queen," in 1595. He is supposed to have remained there during
the two following years.[279]
In 1594 he had been married to the lady celebrated in his somewhat
artificial _amoretti_. By her he had four children. He was now at the
height of his felicity; by universal acclaim the first poet of his age,
and the one obstacle to his material advancement (if obstacle it was) had
been put out of the way by the death of Lord Burleigh, August, 1598. In
the next month he was recommended in a letter from Queen Elizabeth for
the shrievalty of the county of Cork. But alas for Polycrates! In October
the wild kerns and gallowglasses rose in no mood for sparing the house of
Pindarus. They sacked and burned his castle, from which he with his wife
and children barely escaped.[280] He sought shelter in London and died
there on the 16th January, 1599, at a tavern in King Street, Westminster.
He was buried in the neighboring Abbey next to Chaucer, at the cost of
the Earl of Essex, poets bearing his pall and casting verses into his
grave. He died poor, but not in want. On the whole, his life may be
reckoned a happy one, as in the main the lives of the great poets must
have commonly been. If they feel more passionately the pang of the
moment, so also the compensations are incalculable, and not the least of
them this very capacity of passionate emotion.
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