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Creating the main section of a photo gallery on the Web Design

Playground
praise for the first edition

“ Outstanding resource, not only for

learning HTML and CSS, but also for
setting you on the path to being a true
web designer.

—Shawn Eion Smith, director of software

engineering,
The Pennsylvania State University

“ Web Design Playground is a wonderful

guided tour of modern web design and
an excellent resource for those just
getting started or looking to upgrade
their skills. The book is replete with
relevant real-world examples.

—Conor Redmond, manager of software

infrastructure,
InComm Product Control
“ My frustration with CSS is now gone
after finding some answers I didn't find
anywhere else.

—Jose San Leandro, software developer,

OSOCO

“ Great resource. Covers all the aspects of

a web page from design to
development to publishing.

—Prabhuti Prakash, solution architect,

Atos India Pvt Ltd

“ A rare book at the juncture of web

design and development that keeps in
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designer/developers.

—Sachin Kumar, programmer/developer

lead, Capgemini America
 Web Design Playground
Second Edition

Paul McFedries

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Development editor: Karen Miller

Technical editor: Brian Daley
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ISBN: 9781633438323
dedication

To Karen and Chase

contents

Front matter
Preface
Acknowledgments
About This Book
About the Author

PART 1. GETTING STARTED WITH HTML AND CSS

Chapter 1. Getting to Know HTML and CSS

What is HTML?
What is CSS?
What Can’t You Do with HTML and CSS?
How HTML and CSS Create the Web
Introducing the Web Design Playground
Chapter 2. Building Your First Web Page
Adding HTML Tag Attributes
Getting Your Web Page Off the Ground
Learning the Most Common Text Elements
Chapter 3. Adding Structure to Your Page
 HTML Elements for Structuring Page Text
Organizing Text into Lists
Chapter 4. Formatting Your Web Page
Styling Text
Working with Text Styles
Styling Paragraphs
Working with Colors
Formatting Your Web Page
Chapter 5. Project: Creating a Personal Home Page
What You’ll Be Building
Sketching the Layout
Choosing Typefaces
Choosing a Color Scheme
Building the Page
From Here

PART 2. WORKING WITH IMAGES AND STYLES

Chapter 6. Adding Images and Other Media

 Understanding Image File Formats
Getting Graphics
Inserting an HTML5 Figure
Setting Up an Image as a Link
Using an Image as a Custom Bullet
Aligning Images and Text
Controlling the Background Repeat
Setting the Background Position
Adding a Hero Image
The Background Shorthand Property
Optimizing Images
Adding Video and Audio to the Page
Chapter 7. Learning More About Styles
Adding Styles to a Page
Units of Measurement in CSS
Chapter 8. Floating and Positioning Elements
 Understanding the Default Page Flow
Clearing Floated Elements
Preventing Container Collapse
Floating a Drop Cap
Floating a Pull Quote
Relative Positioning
Absolute Positioning
Fixed Positioning
Sticky Positioning
Chapter 9. Styling Sizes, Borders, and Margins
The Anatomy of an Element Box
Watch Out for Collapsing Margins!
Chapter 10. Project: Creating a Landing Page
What You’ll Be Building
Sketching the Layout
Choosing Typefaces
Choosing a Color Scheme
Building the Page
From Here

PART 3. LAYING OUT A WEB PAGE

Chapter 11. Learning Page Layout Basics

 The Holy Grail Layout
Understanding Web Page Layout Methods
Learning the HTML5 Semantic Page Elements
Chapter 12. Creating Page Layouts with Flexbox
Understanding Flexbox
Working with Flexbox Containers
Working with Flexbox Items
Chapter 13. Creating Page Layouts with Grid
Understanding CSS Grid Layout
Chapter 14. Designing Responsive Web Pages
Creating a Responsive Layout
Making Images Responsive
Making Typography Responsive
Chapter 15. Project: Creating a Photo Gallery
 What You’ll Be Building
Getting Your Photos Ready
Sketching the Layout
Choosing Typefaces
Choosing the Colors
Building the Page
Adding a Few Tricks
From Here

PART 4. MAKING YOUR WEB PAGES SHINE

Chapter 16. More HTML Elements for Web Designers

More about Links
Inserting Special Characters
Using the HTML5 Entity Browser
More HTML Elements for Web Designers
Adding Comments
Chapter 17. Adding a Splash of Color to Your Web Designs
Understanding Colors
Adding Colors with CSS
Choosing Harmonious Colors
Using the Color Scheme Calculator
Applying a Color Gradient
Chapter 18. Enhancing Page Text with Typography
 Specifying the Typeface
Working with Text Styles
Enhancing Page Text with Typography
Chapter 19. Learning Advanced CSS Selectors
Working with ID Selectors
Web Page Genealogy: Parents, Descendants, and
Siblings
Working with Contextual Selectors
Taking Things Up a Notch by Combining Selectors
Resetting CSS with the Universal Selector
Styles: What a Tangled Web Page They Weave
Chapter 20. Project: Creating a Portfolio Page
What You’ll Be Building
Sketching the Layout
Choosing Typefaces
Choosing a Color Scheme
Building the Page
From Here

Appendix. From Playground to Web: Getting Your Pages Online

 From There to Here: Saving Your Playground Work
Selecting a Text Editor
Setting Up Your Folders
Validating Your Code
Getting a Web Host
Uploading Your Files

Index
front matter

Preface
In today’s world, lots of people crave the experience of
expressing themselves online. They can do that through
fixed-format media such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter),
and Instagram, but for many people, these sites are too
restrictive. Instead, they prefer to build their own presence
on the web, and the way to do that with the maximum
amount of freedom and creativity is to learn HTML and CSS.

In programming circles, many people believe that the best

way to learn how to code is by coding. Reading about the
language is fine and necessary, but if you really want to
learn the language, you must use it. My own belief is that
the best way to learn to code is to play with code. For HTML
and CSS, this means two things:

In standard HTML/CSS teaching, you’re given some

code—a tag, say, or a template—and are told how it
works . In playful HTML/CSS teaching, you’re given
some code and encouraged to play with it: change the
font size, expand the padding, apply colors, and so on.
In standard HTML/CSS teaching, you’re given simple or
trivial examples, such as the classic Hello World!
demonstration . In playful HTML/CSS teaching, you’re
given substantive, useful projects to build from scratch
and customize to suit your needs.
This spirit of playfulness and experimentation pervades Web
Design Playground, and I encourage you to view HTML and
CSS as tools for creativity and expression.

Acknowledgments
The English essayist Joseph Addison once described an
editor as someone who “rides in the whirlwind and directs
the storm.” I don’t know if that’s true for editors in some of
the more sedate publishing nooks (novels, cookbooks, and
such), but I think it applies perfectly to the rigors of
computer-book editing. Why? Well, the computer industry
(and the web in particular) is so exacting that even the
teensiest authorial (or editorial) lapse could result in a book
that sows confusion and consternation rather than certainty
and delight.

The good folks at Manning Publications minimize book

blunders by subjecting each manuscript to a barrage of
reviews, not only by editorial specialists but also by a team
of dedicated outsiders (in a process I call “gang reviewing”).
Instead of a process in which single-digit numbers of
eyeballs look at the manuscript, a Manning book is
scrutinized by dozens, so you get a book that contains
accurate and relevant information and a book that has
passed muster with some of the sharpest eyes and ears in
the business. My name may be the only one on the cover,
but tons of people had a big role in creating what appears
between the covers (be they physical or virtual). Those
reviewers are Adam Wan, Andres Sacco, Boris Egorov, Eder
Andres Avila Niño, Jean-Baptiste Bang Nteme, Matteo
Battista, Mitchell Fox, Srikar Vedantam, Steve Prior, and
Tony Holdroyd. In addition, I’d like to extend warm thanks
to publisher Marjan Bace, development editor Karen Miller,
technical editor Brian Daley, and all the rest of the
production staff at Manning who helped bring this book to
fruition.

The members of the editorial team aren’t the only people

who had their fingers in this publishing pie. There’s a
surprisingly long list of other professionals who worked hard
to produce this book. I tip my authorial hat to all of them.
I’d also like to thank all the people who took the time to
review the early manuscripts of the book and to offer
comments and suggestions. Your couple of cents’ worth was
very much appreciated.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t extend a hearty and heartfelt thanks

to my agent, Carole Jelen, whose hard work made this
project possible and whose breathtaking knowledge of the
technical-publishing industry fills me with awe and makes
me grateful every day to have Carole working on my behalf.

About This Book

In this book, I teach you how to create beautiful web pages
in no time flat. I understand that the very idea of trying to
create something that looks as good as what you see on the
web seems like an intimidating challenge. However, it’s my
goal in this book to show you that it’s quite straightforward
and that anyone can build an attractive and sophisticated
web page with their bare hands. I even try to have—gasp!—
a little irreverent fun as I go along.

You’ll also be happy to know that this book doesn’t assume

that you have any experience in web design, HTML, or CSS.
You start from scratch and slowly build your knowledge
until, before you know it, you have your very

own tract of web real estate. All the information is

presented in short, easy-to-digest chunks that you can skim
to find the information you want. The online Web Design
Playground (https://webdesignplayground.io/2) also offers
instruction and exercises that you can work through to hone
your knowledge.

I’m assuming that you have a life away from your computer
screen, so Web Design Playground is set up so that you
don’t have to read it from cover to cover. If you want to
know how to add an image to your web page, for

example, turn to the chapter that covers working with

images (chapter 6). Beginners, however, will want to read
at least chapters 1 through 4 before moving on to more
esoteric topics. To make things easier to find, the following
section gives you a summary of the book’s 20 chapters (and
one appendix).

How this book is organized: A road map

Chapter 1 introduces you to HTML and CSS. You learn
about the benefits and limitations of these essential web
design technologies, and you learn how HTML tags and CSS
properties work. You also get a brief introduction to the
book’s companion website, the Web Design Playground.

Chapter 2 takes you on a journey to build your first web

page. You learn how to set up the basic structure of a page
and then add a title and some text. From there, you learn
how to mark up important and emphasized text, quote text,
add headings, and create links.

Chapter 3 shows you how to add some structure to a web

page by giving you the HTML tags that divide page text into
paragraphs, add line breaks, organize page text into
separate chunks, and create inline containers for styling
words and phrases. You also get the lowdown on building
numbered and bulleted lists.

Chapter 4 shifts back to CSS and shows you how to format

text by applying a typeface, a type size, and bold and italic
styling. You also learn how to align and indent paragraphs
and how to apply colors to the page text and background.

Chapter 5 covers the first project of the book. In this case,

you gather the HTML and CSS knowledge from chapters 1
through 4 and use it to build a personal home page for
yourself.

Chapter 6 shows you how to augment your web pages with

nontext elements. Most of the chapter covers images, such
as photos and illustrations, but you also learn how to add
video and audio files.
Chapter 7 furthers your CSS education by showing you the
three ways you can add styles to a page. You also learn how
to wield class selectors, which are among the most useful
and powerful CSS techniques. I also introduce you to the
various measurement units you can use in your CSS rules.

Chapter 8 gives you the tools you need to take charge of

your page elements by taking them out of the default page
flow used by the web browser. You learn how to float
elements on the page and how to position elements relative
to other elements or to the browser window itself.

Chapter 9 introduces you to one of the most powerful

concepts in all of CSS: the box model. You learn what the
box model is all about, and you use it to set an element’s
width and height, add padding around an element’s content,
and augment an element with a border and a margin.

Chapter 10 takes you through the book’s second project,

which is a landing page for a product or service. You run
through the full page-building process, from sketching the
design to choosing the typefaces and colors to building the
page structure and content.

Chapter 11 gets you started on the all-important topic of

web page layout. I introduce you to HTML5’s semantic page
layout tags—including <header>, <article>, and <footer>—
and show you how to use them to create modern page
layouts.

Chapter 12 gives you a complete tutorial on using the

powerful, popular Flexbox layout technology. You discover
what Flexbox is and what it can do; you learn the
fundamentals of the technology; and then you put Flexbox
to work creating a standard web page layout.

Chapter 13 takes your page layout prowess to the next

level by showing you how to use CSS Grid, which is state of
the art when it comes to page layout. You learn what CSS
Grid can do, and then I take you slowly and carefully
through the basics of setting up a grid and using it to
perform page layout magic.

Chapter 14 introduces responsive web pages, one of the

hottest topics in modern web design. You learn techniques
that enable you to structure your web pages so that they
adapt to changing device screens, from giant desktop
monitors to tiny smartphone screens.

Chapter 15 covers the book’s third project, which is an

attractive, sophisticated photo gallery. You sketch the
layout, choose fonts and colors, and then build the page
step by step.

Chapter 16 takes you on a tour of many more HTML tags

that will come in handy during your web design career. You
also learn how to use more sophisticated linking techniques,
add special characters (ones that aren’t readily accessible
via the keyboard), and make your page source code easier
to understand with comments.

Chapter 17 is all about color, and you learn some color

theory, along with how colors work in CSS and the various
techniques for applying a color. This chapter gives you some
pointers on choosing a harmonious color scheme for your
pages. Finally, you learn how to apply a color gradient to a
page element.

Chapter 18 focuses on web page typography. You learn

more about how to apply a typeface, including using third-
party fonts (such as those from the Google Fonts collection)
and how to host your own fonts. You also learn how to
apply small caps and set the line height for easier reading.

Chapter 19 presents several advanced but vitally important

CSS concepts. You learn lots more about CSS selectors, and
you get some background on three crucial CSS ideas:
inheritance, cascading, and specificity.

Chapter 20 presents the book’s fourth and final project: a

website for showing off your personal portfolio. After
building the basic structure, you learn how to add site
navigation, portfolio images, contact info, and more.

The appendix is devoted to getting your web code online.

You learn the various ways you can get your code from the
Web Design Playground to your computer. From there, I talk
about how to choose a web hosting provider and how to
obtain a domain name. I close by showing you how to
upload and validate your files.

About the code

To encourage play and experimentation, the book has a
companion website called the Web Design Playground
(located at https://webdesignplayground.io/2). The site lets
you type your HTML and CSS code in the editors provided,
and the browser’s rendering of that code appears with the
click of a button in the Results window.

The Web Design Playground also gives you access to all the
book’s example files, which you can customize and play
with as your creativity moves you. To facilitate
experimentation and to reinforce the overall sense of play,
the book’s tutorial chapters also offer numerous hands-on
exercises that direct you to use the Playground to modify
the provided code in various ways. This helps you not only
learn the material but also see the range of what’s possible.
If you want to download all the book’s example files, go to
the book’s GitHub repository at
https://github.com/paulmcfe/wdpg2-example-files, click the
green Code button, and then click Download ZIP.

The Playground has an extensive help system to show you

how everything works, but you can find the basics in
chapter 1. Instructions for getting the code from the
Playground to your computer are provided for you in the
appendix.

You can get executable snippets of code from the liveBook

(online) version of this book at
https://livebook.manning.com/book/web-design-
playground-second-edition. The complete code for the
examples in the book is available for download from the
Manning website at https://www.manning.com/books/web-
design-playground-second-edition, and from GitHub at
https://github.com/paulmcfe/wdpg2-example-files.
liveBook discussion forum
Purchase of Web Design Playground, Second Edition,
includes free access to liveBook, Manning’s online reading
platform. Using liveBook’s exclusive discussion features, you
can attach comments to the book globally or to specific
sections or paragraphs. It’s a snap to make notes for
yourself, ask and answer technical questions, and receive
help from the author and other users. To access the forum,
go to https://livebook.manning.com/book/web-design-
playground-second-edition/discussion. You can also learn
more about Manning's forums and the rules of conduct at
https://livebook.manning.com/discussion.

Manning’s commitment to our readers is to provide a venue

where a meaningful dialogue between individual readers
and between readers and the author can take place. It is
not a commitment to any specific amount of participation on
the part of the author, whose contribution to the forum
remains voluntary (and unpaid). We suggest you try asking
the author some challenging questions lest his interest
stray! The forum and the archives of previous discussions
will be accessible from the publisher’s website as long as
the book is in print.

About the Author

Paul McFedries has been a professional technical writer for
more than 30 years. He has more than 100 books to his
credit, which collectively have sold more than 4 million
copies worldwide. When he’s not writing books, Paul is
building web pages, which he’s been doing since 1996. Paul
has hand-coded many sites, including his web home
(https://paulmcfedries.com); Word Spy
(https://wordspy.com); WebDev Workshop
(https://webdevworkshop.io); and this book’s companion
site, Web Design Playground
(https://webdesignplayground.io/2).
Part 1. Getting Started with HTML and
CSS
This book begins at the beginning by defining HTML and
CSS, introducing you to tags and properties, and showing
you what you can (and can’t) do with these web-design
technologies. With Chapter 1’s brief but necessary
introduction out of the way, in Chapter 2, you dive in and
create your first web page, complete with formatted text,
headings, and links. The rest of Part 1 builds on this
foundation by showing you how to add structure to your
page (Chapter 3) and how to style typefaces, paragraphs,
and colors (Chapter 4). Chapter 5 brings everything
together with a project that shows you how to build a
personal home page to show off to the world.
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
 EDMUND SPENSER.
So little is known of the early life of Spenser, that our notice of his
haunts will be confined almost wholly to his castle of Kilcolman. He is
said to be descended from the ancient family of Spenser; indeed, he
says it himself:

"At length they all to mery London came;

To mery London, my most kyndly nurse,
That to me gave this life's first native sourse,
Though from another place I toke my name,
An house of ancient fame."

Prothalamion.

This was the house of Althorpe, and now also of Marlborough; but
however this may be, his parentage was obscure enough. He is said by
Fenton to have been born in East Smithfield, near the Tower of
London, in 1553; but the parish registers of that time are wanting, and
we have no clew to trace more accurately the locality. He was admitted
as sizer, the lowest order of students, at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, in
the year 1569; he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in January, 1572-
3, and that of Master of Arts in June, 1576, in which year he was an
unsuccessful candidate for a fellowship, according to some of his
biographers, though others deny this. On quitting the University, he
went to reside with his relations in the north of England, but how he
was supported does not appear. These relations, it would appear
probable, from the communication of a Mr. F. C. Spenser, in the
Gentleman's Magazine of August, 1842, quoted by Craik, in his Spenser
and his Poetry, were the Spensers, or Le Spensers, of Huntwood, near
Burnley, Lancashire, part of which lay united on a little property, still
called Spenser's, at the foot of Pendle Hill. This derives confirmation
from the fact of Spenser having a son called Lawrence, and of the
names of Edmund and Lawrence abounding in the registries of this
Lancashire family, as well as of that family only spelling the name with
an "s." Here he fell in love with a lady, whom he celebrates under the
name of Rosalind, and who deserted him; this is said to be the cause
of his writing the Shepherd's Calendar, in which he complains of this
faithless mistress. Others, again, think she was a maiden of Kent, a
Rose Lynde, the Lyndes being an old family in that county, where he
went on his acquaintance with Sir Philip Sidney while in the south; but
this can not at all agree with the letter of his friend, Gabriel Harvey, to
him. To Sir Philip he was introduced by this old college friend, Gabriel
Harvey, and dedicated to him the Shepherd's Calendar. If it be true that
the dedication was the cause of introduction, this must have been
solicited and decided upon while the poem was only in progress; for it
appears pretty clearly that he wrote part of the Calendar at Penshurst;
especially the eleventh eclogue, in which he laments the death of a
"maiden of great blood," supposed to have been a daughter of the Earl
of Leicester. In the tenth eclogue he lauds the Earl of Leicester as "the
worthy whom the queen loves best;" so that he was now got into the
very high-road to preferment, and does not appear to have been
backward to walk diligently in it. Leicester and Sidney, near kinsmen as
they were, were just the two men of the whole kingdom to push the
fortunes of a poet. With this early and regular introduction to these two
powerful men (powerful in politics and literature, and in favor with the
queen), it is difficult to weave in a belief of the fine story of Spenser's
pushing his own way with the ninth canto of the first book of the Faërie
Queene. It is a pity this should not be true, yet how can it? The story
goes thus: One morning Spenser, determined to try his fortune with Sir
Philip Sidney, the courtier most celebrated of the time for his
intellectual accomplishments, and for his generous disposition, went to
Leicester House, an entire stranger, carrying with him this canto of his
great poem, in which is contained the fine allegory of Despair. He
obtained admission to Sidney, and presented his MS. for his
approbation: that great lover and judge of poetry had not read far
before he was so much struck with the beauty of a stanza, that he
ordered fifty pounds to be given to the author; proceeding to the next
stanza, he raised his gift to a hundred, which sum he doubled on
reading a third, and commanded his steward to pay instantly, lest he
should be induced, by a further delay, to give away his whole estate.
Pity so fine a story was not true! some imaginative person must have
pleased himself with fancying how such a thing might have been.
However, Spenser was now a regular inmate of Leicester House, and at
Penshurst; so that that latter sweet place has the honor of being as
well the haunt of our great romantic poet as of the high-hearted
Sidney. By Leicester and Sidney Spenser was introduced to Queen
Elizabeth, who, it is said, on his presenting some poems to her,
conferred on him a gratuity of a hundred pounds. If this be true, it is
so unlike Elizabeth's parsimony that we must set it down as a wonder.
Yet it is to this fact that Lord Burleigh's dislike to the rhymer, as he
called Spenser, is attributed. He deemed the grant so extravagant as to
neglect its payment till he received a repetition of the order from his
mistress, with a reproof for his delay. There were, there is no doubt,
plenty of causes for Burleigh's dislike of Spenser. In the first place, he
had not a spark of poetry in his constitution. To him it was sheer
nonsense, idle and childish nonsense. But, besides this, Spenser was
brought forward by the very party of whom Burleigh was most jealous
—Leicester. He appeared at court as the particular friend of Leicester
and Sidney; and the incautious poet is said to have aggravated the
dislike of Burleigh by some satirical rhymes, which were assiduously
carried to the clever but cold-blooded minister. There has not been
wanting active vindication of Burleigh, and the discovery of a patent
granting him a pension of fifty pounds a year, dated 1590-1, which he
enjoyed till his death in 1598-9, has been said to be sufficient
refutation of all that has been alleged against Burleigh in Spenser's
case. But how does this at all remove the statements of Burleigh's
dislike of Spenser and reluctance to his promotion? Not in the least. It
merely shows that Spenser had friends, and an interest in the queen's
good-will, powerful enough to overrule the minister's opposition. It
may, and most likely is, just as true, that on the grant of this pension
Burleigh declared "the pension was a good example, too great to be
given to a ballad-maker;" and that when the queen ordered him a
hundred pounds, he replied, "What! all this for a song?" These facts
are so entirely in keeping with Burleigh's character that we can by no
means doubt them. Indeed, Spenser himself has put the truth past a
doubt. What means,
 "To have thy prince's grace, yet want his peeres'?"

What those lines at the close of the sixth book of the Faërie Queene?

"Ne may this homely verse, of many meanest,

Hope to escape his venomous despite,
More than my former writs, all were they clearest,
From blamefull blot, and free from all that wite
With which some wicked tongues did it backbite,
And bring into a mighty peere's displeasure
That never so deserved to indite."

Again, in the fourth book of the Ruines of Time, written subsequently

to the first edition of the Faërie Queene:

"The rugged foremost that with grave foresight

Wields kingdom's causes, and affairs of state,
My looser verses, I wote, doth sharply wite
For praising love," &c.

Thus, whether Spenser, as alleged or not, gave cause of offense by his

satire, one thing is clear, that Burleigh was his bitter and unchangeable
enemy. That Spenser had suffered at court is fully shown in his oft-
cited verses in his "Mother Hubbard's Tale," the most lively picture of
court attendance and its consequent chagrins that ever was painted.

"Full little knowest thou that hast not tryd,

What hell it is in suing long to byde;
To lose good days that might be better spent;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow;
To have thy prince's grace, yet want his peers';
To have thy asking, yet wait many years;
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares;
To eat thy bread with comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone."
Spenser's sole reliance was on Leicester, Sidney, and Raleigh, with
whom he became soon acquainted. He is said to have been employed
by the Earl of Leicester on a mission to France in 1579; and though this
has been questioned, yet his own assertion, in a letter to Gabriel
Harvey, confirms it. In 1580 he accompanied Arthur, lord Grey of
Wilton, who went as lord-lieutenant to Ireland, as his private secretary.
In this post he is said to have displayed great talents for business. He
wrote a "Discourse on the State of Ireland," containing many decided
plans for the improvement of that country.
In 1581, the first year of his being in Ireland, he was also made clerk
to the Irish Court of Chancery, and Mr. Craik has pointed out the fact
given in Collins's Peerage, in the account of the Earls of Portsmouth,
that in this same year, too, he received from the queen a grant of a
lease of the Abbey of Iniscorthy, or Enniscorthy, and the attached
castle and manor, in the county of Wexford, at an annual rent of £300,
6s., 8d.; and that he conveyed this property, on the 9th of December of
the same year, to Richard Synot. This leasehold, by another sale, came
into the hands of the family of the Earls of Portsmouth, and is rated by
G. Wakefield, in his "Account of Ireland," at £8000 a year.
Lord Grey was recalled in 1582, and Spenser returned with him. But his
fate was bound up with Ireland. After hanging about court for four
years, during which time there can be little doubt that he experienced
much of the bitterness expressed in the lines just quoted, he obtained,
through the interest of his friends, Lords Grey and Leicester, and Sir
Philip Sidney, a grant of 3026 acres of land in the county of Cork, part
of the forfeited estate of the great Earl of Desmond. Scarcely was his
patent made out, when his best friend and patron, Sidney, was killed at
the battle of Zutphen. This was the death of his hopes in England, and
he set out to reside on and cultivate his newly-acquired estate in
Ireland; having lamented Sir Philip's death in the pastoral elegy of
Astrophel. This was in 1586. In three or four years, 1590 or 1591,
Spenser returned to England with Raleigh, published his first three
books of the Faërie Queene, and was presented by Raleigh to
Elizabeth, who at this time conferred on him his pension. Spenser, it
seems, now returned to Ireland, wrote his second three cantos, and
bringing them over in 1596, published them; and also printed and
published his Discourse on the State of Ireland, as a defense of his
patron Lord Grey's policy there. From the condition of Ireland at that
time, and the sense of insecurity which Spenser felt at his lonely castle
of Kilcolman, it is not to be wondered at that his plan abounds with
earnest recommendations of a coercive nature, and especially for the
stationing of strong garrisons numerously. In 1597, he returned to
Ireland, where almost immediately the great rebellion of Tyrone
breaking out, he was chased from his castle, and, retiring to London,
died there, heart-broken, in 1598.
Such is a brief outline of the life of Spenser. Let us now take a nearer
view of his Irish home. One of the best accounts of it is contained in
the Dublin University Magazine of November, 1843. The writer,
evidently not only a genuine lover of the poetry of Spenser, but well
acquainted with the scene he describes, goes at much length into the
characters and allusions of the poem of the Faërie Queene. He shows
us that Spenser draws a noble portrait of his benefactor, Lord Grey, in
the second book of that poem. It is the warrior seen by Britomart in
the mirror of Merlin, as her future husband.

"A comely knight, all armed in complete wize,

Through whose bright ventayle lifted up on hye
His manly face, that did his foes agrize,
And friends to termes of gentle truce entize,
Looked forth, as, Phœbus' face out of the east
Betwixt two shady mountaynes doth arise," &c.

The portrait is certainly a noble one, and limned with the colors of
divine poetry. The anonymous but able author leads us justly to notice
that, in the Legend of Artegall, the thirteen stanzas opening the first
canto of the fifth book "relate to the hapless condition of the Ladye
Irena—her tears and her troubles; tears that, alas! have not yet ceased
to flow down, and troubles that to the present hour are convulsing her
bosom. For Irena is Ireland; and she sends her supplications across the
ocean to Gloriana, the Queen of Faërie, the great and good Elizabeth of
England, beseeching her to come over and help her. Artegall is the
personification of equity and justice; and this is the boon which poor
Irena looks for, and hopes to receive at her sister's hand."
Artegall, or, in other words, Lord Grey, passes over to Ireland, and
encounters Pollentè, or Gerald, earl of Desmond, "who was in rebellion
against Elizabeth at the time of Lord Grey's appointment to the chief
authority in Ireland, and perished miserably in consequence. His
prodigious wealth and power would amply bear out such an
appellation. His lands extended one hundred and fifty miles in the
south of the kingdom, stretching from sea to sea, and comprising the
greater portion of the counties of Waterford, Cork, Kerry, and Limerick.
We read of his being able to bring together, by his summons, six
hundred cavalry and two thousand footmen; and of these, nearly five
hundred were gentlemen of his own kindred and surname. His castles
were numerous, and scattered over this large tract of country in well-
chosen places, for its defense and protection; and it is curious that
attached to one of them is a tale of blood not unlike what you will find
Spenser describing. A few miles above the sea, on a bold cliff
overhanging one of the deepest parts of the beautiful River Blackwater,
stand the battered remains of the earl's Castle of Strancally. Attached
to this strong-hold is a murderous device, which we had often
previously heard of, but never till then beheld. The solid rock had been
pierced with a large well-like aperture, communicating with the river;
and the neighboring peasants will tell you, that the unwary, when
decoyed within the castle, were tied hand and foot, and flung down the
murder-hole: the rapid river hurried by, and soon carried away their
gasping shrieks, and the dead told no tales. We have every respect for
these local traditions, and esteem them in a thousand instances
valuable guides; notwithstanding, we place no faith in the present
horrible legend, which is wholly at variance with the received character
of the Earl of Desmond. It may be that such things were told to him,
even in Spenser's days; and it is certain that, about the close of the
year 1579, his Castle of Strancally was taken by the Earl of Ormond,
the president of Munster; a capture which could be easily transferred to
the poet's hero, Artegall."
Lord Grey was recalled, in consequence of representations of cruelty
and oppression in his administration. "The queen was persuaded by
these insinuations, and his recall took place when he had scarcely
completed his second year. With this event the fifth book of the Faërie
Queene concludes: and the poet there enters at large into the facts of
the case. Artegall is summoned away to Faërie Court, and on his way
thither meets with two ill-favored hags—'superannuated vipers,' as
Lord Brougham would term them—whom he knows to be Envy and
Detraction. These are painted in language that makes the grisly
creatures live before you. Every hue and feature of their vile
countenances is preserved—their slavering lips, their tireless tongues,
their foul and claw-like hands. We remember nothing in Milton or Dante
that surpasses this powerful personification."
Spenser, as we have already stated, accompanied Lord Grey home, and
here came in for a share in the partition of the vast estates of the
vanquished Earl of Desmond. The plan now devised for more securely
attaching Ireland to the British crown was called the Plantation of
Munster. The scheme, which was first put in operation on this vast
confiscated territory of the Earl of Desmond, is thus described in
Smith's History of Cork:
"All forfeited lands to be divided into manors and seigniories,
containing 12,000, 8000, 6000, and 4000 acres each, according to a
plot laid down. The undertakers (those who got these grants) to have
an estate in fee-farm, yielding for each seigniory of 12,000 acres, for
the first three years, £33, 6s., 8d. sterling, viz., from 1590 to 1593, and
from Michaelmas, 1593, £66, 13s., 4d. sterling, and ratably for every
inferior seigniory, yielding upon the death of the undertaker the best
beast as an heriot; to be discharged of all taxes whatsoever, except
subsidies levied by Parliament. Bogs, mountains, &c., not to be
included till improved, and then to pay a half-penny for each English
acre. License to the undertakers to transport all commodities, duty
free, into England for five years. That none be admitted to have more
than 12,000 acres. No English planter to be permitted to convey to any
mere Irish. The head of each plantation to be English; and the heirs
female to marry none but of English birth; and none of the mere Irish
to be maintained in any family there.
"Each freeholder, from the year 1590, to furnish one horse and
horseman, armed; each principal undertaker for 12,000 acres, to
supply three horsemen and six footmen, armed; and so ratably for the
other seigniories; and each copyholder one footman, armed. That, for
seven years to come, they shall not be obliged to travel out of Munster
upon any service; and after that time, no more than ten horsemen and
twenty footmen out of one seigniory of 12,000 acres, and so ratably;
and such as serve out of Munster to be paid by the queen.
"That the queen will protect and defend the said seigniories, at her
own charge, for seven years to come. All commodities brought from
England for the use of the same seigniories to be duty free for seven
years."
There was to be a complete English population established on these
lands in this manner: "For any seigniory containing 12,000 acres, the
gentleman was to have for his own domain 2100 acres; six farmers,
400 acres each; six freeholders, 100 acres each; and lands to be
appropriated for mean tenures of 50, 25, and 10 acres, to the amount
of 1500 acres; whereon thirty-six families, at least, must be
established. The other seigniories to be laid out in like proportion. Each
undertaker was to people his seigniory in seven years." These articles
received the royal signature on the 27th of June, 1586. The following
list of undertakers presents some curious particulars. In the first place,
Sir Walter Raleigh and Arthur Robbins by some means managed at
once to overleap the grand provision, that no undertaker should be
permitted to have more than 12,000 acres: Sir Walter Raleigh getting
42,000, and poor Spenser, poet-like, only 3029! He is just tacked on at
the end like an after-thought.
Acres.
Sir Walter Raleigh 42,000
Arthur Robbins, Esq. 18,000
Fane Beecher, Esq. 12,000
Hugh Worth, Esq. 12,000
Arthur Hyde, Esq. 11,766
Sir Thomas Norris 6,000
Sir Richard Beacon 6,000
Sir Warham St. Leger 6,000
Hugh Cuff, Esq. 6,000
Thomas Jay, Esq. 5,775
 Sir Arthur Hyde 5,774
Edmund Spenser, Esq. 3,029
The difference did not consist merely in the quantity either. Some of
their lands, like Sir Walter's at Youghal, on the Blackwater, were
splendid lands; those of Spenser were wild moorlands, facing the
wilder mountains, where the Irish, yet smarting under defeat and
expulsion, the destruction of their great chief, and this plan, which was
to continue that expulsion forever, and plant on their own soil the
hated Saxon, were looking down, ready to descend and take
sanguinary vengeance. Such was the lot which Spenser chose in
preference to the degrading slavery of court dependence. No doubt he
pleased himself with the idea of a new English state, established in this
newly-conquered region; where, surrounded by English gentlemen, and
one of the lords of the soil, he should live a life of content and
happiness, and hand down to his children a fair estate. But in this fond
belief how much of the poet's self-delusive property was mixed! Hear
what the authority I have already made such use of, because I know it
to be good, says: "It was a wild and lonesome banishment at best, for
one who had lived so much in courts, and in companionship with the
rich and high-born. Mountains on all sides shut in the retreat, and in
the midst of the long and level plain between them stood a strong
fortalice of the Earl of Desmond, which was to be the poet's residence,
Kilcolman Castle. Hard by the castle was a small lake, and a mile or
two distant, on either side, a river descended from the hills. In position,
likewise, it was insecure, forming, as it did, the frontier of the English
line in the south, and the contiguous hills affording lurking-places for
the Irish kerns, whence they could pour down in multitudes to plunder.
In the insurrectionary warfare that shortly succeeded, these mountain
passes became the scene of many a skirmish; and the first object of
the commander of the English forces, when he heard of any partial
outbreak, was to send off a detachment of light-armed troops to
occupy them in the name of the queen."
But, overlooking all these hazards, Spenser came hither full of bright
views of the future. "The sunshine of the years to come," says the
author we have been quoting, "were to atone for the darkness and the
gloom of life's morning." His poetry, which had been previously of a
pastoral cast, became now imbued with the wildness of the sylvan
solitude around him: wood-nymphs and fairies were inhabitants he
could summon up at will, and with them the hill-tops about him were
peopled. Such names of places and things as his musical ear
pronounced inharmonious were exchanged for others which quaint
fancy suggested, and which read more sweetly in his tender verse. He
sang sweet strains of the bridal or separation of his rivers; told how
their stern sires, the mountains, ofttimes forced their unwilling
inclinations, and brought about a union which the water-nymph
detested; and how sometimes she, in her faithful attachment to the
one she loved, effected her wish by a circuitous course, or even sought
beneath the earth's surface the waters dear to her bosom. Before an
imagination so vivid the iron desolateness of Kilcolman vanished; and
in its stead a fairy world arose to gladden the eyes of the dreamer with
its bowers of bliss, and enchanted palaces, and magnificence more
gorgeous than the luxuries of Ind.
"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 Belphœbe, 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 Phœbian 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.
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