the Irish, and on the outbreak of Tyrone’s rebellion in 1598 his house was sacked and burned, and he himself forced to flee to London, where he died a few weeks later “a ruined and heart-broken man”; the rich promise of the “Shepheards’ Calendar” had been amply fulfilled in the “Complaints,” “Amoretti,” “Colin Clout’s Come Home Again,” the “Epithalamium” the finest bridal song in any language, and above all in the six published books of “The Faerie Queene” (1589 and 1596), in which all his gifts and graces as a poet are at their best; “He may be read,” says Professor Saintsbury, “in childhood, chiefly for his adventure; in later youth, for his display of voluptuous beauty; in manhood, for his historical and ethical weight; in age, for all combined” (1552-1599).

SPERMACETI, a white waxy matter obtained in an oily state from the head of the sperm-whale inhabiting the Pacific and Indian Oceans; candles made of it yield a particularly steady and bright light.

SPEY, a river in the N. of Scotland which, rising in Badenoch, flows NE. through Inverness, Elgin, and Banffshire, falls into the Moray Firth after a course of 107 miles; the salmon-fisheries are valuable; it is the swiftest of the rivers of Great Britain.

SPEZIA (20), the chief naval station, “the Portsmouth,” of Italy; occupies a strongly fortified site at the head of a bay on the W. side of Italy, 56 m.  SE. of Genoa; here are the naval shipbuilding yards, national arsenal, navy store-houses, besides schools of navigation, manufactures of cables, sail-cloth, &c.

SPHINX, a fabled animal, an invention of the ancient Egyptians, with the body and claws of a lioness, and the head of a woman, or of a ram, or of a goat, all types or representations of the king, effigies of which are frequently placed before temples on each side of the approach; the most famous of the sphinxes was the one which waylaid travellers and tormented them with a riddle, which if they could not answer she devoured them, but which Oedipus answered, whereupon she threw herself into the sea.  “Such a sphinx,” as we are told in “Past and Present,” “is this life of ours, to all men and nations.  Nature, like the Sphinx, is of womanly celestial loveliness and tenderness, the face and bosom of a goddess, but ending in the claws and the body of a lioness ... is a heavenly bride and conquest to the wise and brave, to them who can discern her behests and do them; a destroying fiend to them who cannot.  Answer her riddle—­Knowest thou the meaning of to-day?—­it is well with thee.  Answer it not; the solution for thee is a thing of teeth and claws.”

SPICE ISLANDS.  See MOLUCCAS.

SPINELLO, ARETINO, a celebrated Italian fresco-painter, born at Arezzo, where, with visits to Florence, his life was chiefly spent; was in his day the rival of Giotto, but few of his frescoes are preserved, and such of his paintings as are to be found in various galleries of Europe are inferior to his frescoes (1330-1410).