This was a favorite theme of the friendly and sensitive poet; he has also written several elegies and aeglogues in honor of Sidney.
SPENSER'S FATE .-- The fate of Spenser is a commentary upon courtiership, even in the reign of Elizabeth, the Faery Queene.

Her requital of his adoration was an annual pension of fifty pounds, and the ruined castle and unprofitable estate of Kilcolman in Ireland, among a half-savage population, in a period of insurrections and massacres, with the requirement that he should reside upon his grant.

An occasional visit from Raleigh, then a captain in the army, a rambler along the banks of the picturesque Mulla, and the composition and arrangement of the great poem with the suggestions of his friend, were at once his labors and his only recreations.

He sighed after the court, and considered himself as hardly used by the queen.
At length an insurrection broke out, and his home was set on fire: he fled from his flaming castle, and in the confusion his infant child was left behind and burned to death.

A few months after, he died in London, on January 16, 1598-9, broken-hearted and poor, at an humble tavern, in King Street.