The publication of the second three books of the _Faerie Queene_, with a re-impression of the first three books, placed him on the highest pinnacle of fame. Its plentiful references to passing events--its adumbrations of the history of the time--however it might damage the permanent value of the work from an artistic point of view, increased its immediate popularity. How keenly these references were appreciated appears from the anxiety of the Scotch King to have the poet prosecuted for his picture of Duessa, in whom Mary Queen of Scots was generally recognised. 'Robert Bowes, the English ambassador in Scotland, writing to Lord Burghley from Edinburgh 12th November, 1596, states that great offence was conceived by the King against Edmund Spenser for publishing in print, in the second part of the _Faery Queen_, ch. 9, some dishonourable effects, as the King deemed, against himself and his mother deceased. Mr. Bowes states that he had satisfied the King as to the privilege under which the book was published, yet he still desired that Edmund Spenser for this fault might be tried and punished. It further appears, from a letter from George Nicolson to Sir Robert Cecil, dated Edinburgh, 25 February, 1597-8, that Walter Quin, an Irishman, was answering Spenser's book, whereat the King was offended.'{4} The _View of the Present State of Ireland_, written dialogue-wise between Eudoxus and Iren{ae}us, though not printed, as has been said, till 1633, seems to have enjoyed a considerable circulation in a manuscript form. There are manuscript copies of this tractate at Cambridge, at Dublin, at Lambeth, and in the British Museum. It is partly antiquarian, partly descriptive, partly political. It exhibits a profound sense of the unsatisfactory state of the country--a sense which was presently to be justified in a frightful manner. Spenser had not been deaf to the ever-growing murmurs of discontent by which he and his countrymen had been surrounded. He was not in advance of his time in the policy he advocates for the administration of Ireland. He was far from anticipating that policy of conciliation whose triumphant application it may perhaps be the signal honour of our own day to achieve. The measures he proposes are all of a vigorously repressive kind; they are such measures as belong to a military occupancy, not to a statesmanly administration. He urges the stationing numerous garrisons; he is for the abolishing native customs. Such proposals won a not unfavourable hearing at that time. They have been admired many a time since. It is to this work of Spenser's that Protector Cromwell alludes in a letter to his council in Ireland, in favour of William Spenser, grandson of Edmund Spenser, from whom an estate of lands in the barony of Fermoy, in the county of Cork, descended on him. 'His grandfather,' he writes, 'was that Spenser who, by his writings touching the reduction of the Irish to