for Phillisides.
What is said of the _Faerie Queene_ in the above
quotation may be illustrated from the sonnet already
quoted from, addressed to Lord Grey--one of the sonnets
that in our modern editions are prefixed to the great
poem. It speaks of the great poem as

Rude rymes, the which a rustick Muse did weave
In savadge soyle, far from Parnasso mount.

See also the sonnet addressed to the Right Honourable
the Earl of Ormond and Ossory.
A sonnet addressed to Harvey, is dated 'Dublin
this xviij of July, 1586.' Again, in the course of the
decad now under consideration, Spenser received a grant
of land in Cork--of 3,028 acres, out of the forefeited
estates of the Earl of Desmond.
All these circumstances put together make it
probable, and more than probable, that Spenser remained
in Ireland after Lord Grey's recall. How thorough his
familiarity with the country grew to be, appears from
the work concerning it which he at last produced.
The years 1586-7-8 were eventful both for England
and for Spenser. In the first Sidney expired of wounds
received at Zutphen; in the second, Mary Queen of Scots
was executed; in the third, God blew and scattered the
Armada, and also Leicester died. Spenser weeps over
Sidney--there was never, perhaps, more weeping,
poetical and other, over any death than over that of
Sidney--in his _Astrophel_, the poem above mentioned.