In the same year with the Amoretti was published Colin Clouts Come Home Again, several additions having been made to the original version.
Probably at the close of this year 1595 Spenser a second time crossed to England, accompanied, it may be supposed, by his wife, carrying with him in manuscript the second three books of his Faerie Queene, which, as we have seen, were completed before his marriage, and also a prose work, A View of the Present State of Ireland. Mr. Collier quotes the following entry from the Stationers' Register:—
20 die Januarii [1595].—Mr. Ponsonby. Entred &c. The Second Part of the Faerie Queene, cont. the 4, 5, and 6 bookes, vj_d_.
This second instalment—which was to be the last—of his great poem was duly published in that year. The View of the Present State of Ireland was not registered till April 1598, and then only conditionally. It was not actually printed till 1633. During his stay in England he wrote the Hymns to Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beauty, and the Prothalamion, which were to be his last works.
More than four years had elapsed since Spenser had last visited London. During that period certain memorable works had been produced; the intellectual power of that day had expressed itself in no mean manner. When he arrived in London towards the close of the year 1595, he would find Shakspere splendidly fulfilling the promise of his earlier days; he would find Ben Jonson just becoming known to fame; he would find Bacon already drawing to him the eyes of his time. Spenser probably spent the whole of the year 1596, and part of 1597, in England. In 1597 appeared, as has already been said, the first part of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, and Bacon's Essays, and also Jonson's Every Man in His Own Humour.
The reigning favourite at this time was the Earl of Essex. In 1596 his successful descent upon Cadiz raised him to the zenith of his fame. With this nobleman Spenser was on terms of intimacy. At his London house in the Strand—a house which had previously been inhabited by Spenser's earlier patron, the Earl of Leicester—it stood where Essex Street now is, and is still represented by the two pillars which stand at the bottom of that street—Spenser no doubt renewed his friendship with Shakspere. This intimacy with Essex, with whatever intellectual advantages it may have been attended, with whatever bright spirits it may have brought Spenser acquainted, probably impeded his prospects of preferment. There can be no doubt that one of the motives that brought him to England was a desire to advance his fortunes. Camden describes him as always poor. His distaste for his residence in Ireland could not but have been aggravated by his recent legal defeat. But he looked in vain for further preferment. He had fame, and to spare, and this was to suffice. It was during this sojourn in England that he spoke of himself, as we have seen, as one
Whom sullein care
Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay
In Princes court and expectation vayne
Of idle hopes which still doe fly away
Like empty shaddows, did afflict my brayne.
The publication of the second three books of the Faerie Queene, with a re-impression of the first three books, placed him on the highest pinnacle of fame. Its plentiful references to passing events—its adumbrations of the history of the time—however it might damage the permanent value of the work from an artistic point of view, increased its immediate popularity. How keenly these references were appreciated appears from the anxiety of the Scotch King to have the poet prosecuted for his picture of Duessa, in whom Mary Queen of Scots was generally recognised. 'Robert Bowes, the English ambassador in Scotland, writing to Lord Burghley from Edinburgh 12th November, 1596, states that great offence was conceived by the King against Edmund Spenser for publishing in print, in the second part of the Faery Queen, ch. 9, some dishonourable effects, as the King deemed, against himself and his mother deceased. Mr. Bowes states that he had satisfied the King as to the privilege under which the book was published, yet he still desired that Edmund Spenser for this fault might be tried and punished. It further appears, from a letter from George Nicolson to Sir Robert Cecil, dated Edinburgh, 25 February, 1597-8, that Walter Quin, an Irishman, was answering Spenser's book, whereat the King was offended.'{4}
The View of the Present State of Ireland, written dialogue-wise between Eudoxus and Iren{ae}us, though not printed, as has been said, till 1633, seems to have enjoyed a considerable circulation in a manuscript form. There are manuscript copies of this tractate at Cambridge, at Dublin, at Lambeth, and in the British Museum. It is partly antiquarian, partly descriptive, partly political. It exhibits a profound sense of the unsatisfactory state of the country—a sense which was presently to be justified in a frightful manner. Spenser had not been deaf to the ever-growing murmurs of discontent by which he and his countrymen had been surrounded. He was not in advance of his time in the policy he advocates for the administration of Ireland. He was far from anticipating that policy of conciliation whose triumphant application it may perhaps be the signal honour of our own day to achieve. The measures he proposes are all of a vigorously repressive kind; they are such measures as belong to a military occupancy, not to a statesmanly administration. He urges the stationing numerous garrisons; he is for the abolishing native customs. Such proposals won a not unfavourable hearing at that time. They have been admired many a time since.
It is to this work of Spenser's that Protector Cromwell alludes in a letter to his council in Ireland, in favour of William Spenser, grandson of Edmund Spenser, from whom an estate of lands in the barony of Fermoy, in the county of Cork, descended on him. 'His grandfather,' he writes, 'was that Spenser who, by his writings touching the reduction of the Irish to civility, brought on him the odium of that nation; and for those works and his other good services Queen Elizabeth conferred on him that estate which the said William Spenser now claims.'{5} This latter statement is evidently inaccurate. Spenser, as we have seen, had already held his estate for some years when he brought his View to England.