importance and destined to be famous. The family seat was at Kilcoran, near Youghal, and so we understand Spenser's singing of 'The sea that neighbours to her near.' Thus she lived in the same county with her poet. The whole course of the wooing and the winning is portrayed in the _Amoretti or Sonnets_ and the _Epithalamium_. It may be gathered from these biographically and otherwise interesting pieces, that it was at the close of the year 1592 that the poet was made a captive of that beauty he so fondly describes. The first three sonnets would seem to have been written in that year. The fourth celebrates the beginning of the year 1593--the beginning according to our modern way of reckoning. All through that year 1593 the lover sighed, beseeched, adored, despaired, prayed again. Fifty-eight sonnets chronicle the various hopes and fears of that year. The object of his passion remained· as steel and flint, while he wept and wailed and pleaded. His life was a long torment. In vaine I seeke and sew to her for grace And doe myne humbled hart before her poure; The whiles her foot she in my necke doth place And tread my life downe in the lowly floure. In Lent she is his 'sweet saynt,' and he vows to find some fit service for her. Her temple fayre is built within my mind In which her glorious image placed is. But all his devotion profited nothing, and he thinks it were better 'at once to die.' He marvels at her cruelty. He cannot address himself to further composition of his great poem. The accomplishment of that great work were Sufficient werke for one man's simple head, All were it, as the rest, but rudely writ. How then should I, without another wit, Thinck ever to endure so tedious toyle? Sith that this one is tost with troublous fit Of a proud love that doth my spirit spoyle. He falls ill in his body too. When the anniversary of his being carried into captivity comes round, he declares, as has already been quoted, that the year just elapsed has appeared longer than all the forty years of his life that had preceded it (sonnet 60). In the beginning of the year 1594, After long stormes and tempests sad assay Which hardly I endured hertofore In dread of death and daungerous dismay With which my silly bark was tossed sore, he did 'at length descry the happy shore.' The heart of his mistress softened towards him. The last twenty- five sonnets are for the most part the songs of a lover accepted and happy. It would seem that by this time he had completed three more books of the _Faerie Queene_, and he asks leave in sonnet 70, In pleasant mew To sport my Muse and sing my loves sweet praise, The contemplation of whose heavenly hew My spirit to an higher pitch doth raise.