From the original painting in the possession of the Earl of Fennenl

at Pupplin Castle

Published as the Act directs by FCI Rivington May 11805.

THE

WORKS

or

EDMUND SPENSER.

IN EIGHT VOLUMES.

WITH THE

PRINCIPAL ILLUSTRATIONS

OF

VARIOUS COMMENTATORS.

TO WHICH ARE ADDED,

NOTES, SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF SPENSER,

AND

A GLOSSARIAL AND OTHER INDEXES.

BY THE

REV. HENRY JOHN TODD, M.A. F.A.S.

RECTOR OF ALLHALLOWS, LOMBARD-STREET, LONDON, &c.

Our fage ferious Spenfer, whom I dare be known to
think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas.

Milton's Areopagitica.

No man was ever born with a greater genius, or had
more knowledge to support it, than Spenter.

Dryden's Difcourfe on Epick Poetry.

VOLUME THE FIRST.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR F. C. AND J. RIVINGTON, T. PAYNE,

CADELL AND DAVIES, AND R. H. EVANS.

Bye and Law, Printers, St. John's Square, Clerkenwell,

THE gracious permiffion of dedicating the Works of Spenfer to your Majefty, with which I have been honoured, has been a principal fource of encouragement to me in the labour bestowed on the illuftration of thofe Works; and will be the conftant theme of my gratitude.

In calling to mind your Majefty's love of literature; of that literature especially which promotes the good of fociety, while it affords the highest delight to the imagination; my encouragement has been an humble hope that your Majefty may find in these volumes, however numerous my own imperfections in them may be, fome circumstances refpecting the MORAL POET, till now untold. Of my gratitude it cannot but be the perpetual

59880

fubject, that I have been thus allowed to testify the reverence, with which I am impreffed, of your Majefty's illuftrious conduct, in all the duties, and in all the charities, of publick and domestick life.