a work full of shrewd observation and practical statesmanship.  In 1594 he was m. to Elizabeth Boyle, whom he had courted in Amoretti, and his union with whom he now celebrated in the magnificent Epithalamion, by many regarded as his most perfect poem.  In 1595 he returned to England, taking with him the second part of the Faerie Queen, pub. in 1596.  In 1598 he was made Sheriff of Cork, and in the same year his fortunes suffered a final eclipse.  The rebellion of Tyrone broke out, his castle was burned, and in the conflagration his youngest child, an infant, perished, he himself with his wife and remaining children escaping with difficulty.  He joined the President, Sir T. Norris, who sent him with despatches to London, where he suddenly d. on January 16, 1599, as was long believed in extreme destitution.  This, however, happily appears to be at least doubtful.  He was buried in Westminster Abbey near Chaucer, and a monument was erected to his memory in 1620 by the Countess of Dorset.

The position of S. in English poetry is below Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton only.  The first far excels him in narrative and constructive power and in humour, and the last in austere grandeur of conception; but for richness and beauty of imagination and exquisite sweetness of music he is unsurpassed except by Shakespeare.  He has been called the poets’ poet, a title which he well merits, not only by virtue of the homage which all the more imaginative poets have yielded him, but because of the almost unequalled influence he has exercised upon the whole subsequent course and expression of English poetry, which he enriched with the stanza which bears his name, and which none since him have used with more perfect mastery.  His faults are prolixity, indirectness, and want of constructive power, and consequently the sustained sweetness and sumptuousness of his verse are apt to cloy.  His great work, the Faerie Queen, is but a gorgeous fragment, six books out of a projected twelve; but probably few or none of its readers have regretted its incompleteness.  In it Protestantism and Puritanism receive their most poetic and imaginative presentation and vindication.

SUMMARY.—­B. 1552, ed. Merchant Taylor’s School and Camb., became known to Leicester and Sir P. Sidney 1578, pub. Shepheard’s Calendar 1579, appointed sec. to Lord Deputy of Ireland 1580, and began Faerie Queen, receives various appointments and grants 1581-6, pub. Astrophel in memory of Sidney 1586, visited by Raleigh and by him presented to Queen Elizabeth, who pensioned him 1590, and in same year pub. first three books of Faerie Queen, Teares of Muses, etc., writes Colin Clout, pub. 1595, and in 1596 pub. Four Hymns and Prothalamion, m. E. Boyle 1594, whom he had courted in Amoretti, and now celebrated in the Epithalamion, returned to England 1595, Sheriff of Cork 1598, in which year the rebellion broke out and ruined his fortunes, returned to London and d. 1599.