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present time, it is a case in which investigation vindicates itself as a process by which we successfully arrive at indecision; and it is judicious to keep back an expression of opinion which must be in great part capricious.

This most brilliant of the scattered family of the fatherless can well afford to owe nothing to ancestry. The clamour for its appropriation will, it is hoped, excuse the length of a notice which, wherever it may tend to fix or to unfix probability, is at least in the direction of truth.

THE LIE;

OR, THE SOUL'S ERRAND.
Go, soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless arrant;
Fear not to touch the best,
The truth shall be thy warrant :
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Say to the Court, it glows,
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the Church, it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If Church and Court reply,
Then give them both the lie.

Tell Potentates they live,
Acting by others' actions;

Not loved, unless they give,

Not strong but by their factions:
If Potentates reply,

Give Potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition
That, in affairs of state,

Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate:
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell them that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending,
Who in their greatest cost
Seek nothing but commending:
And if they make reply,

Give them likewise the lie.
Tell zeal it lacks devotion;
Tell love it is but lust;

Tell time it is but motion;

Tell flesh it is but dust:

And wish them not reply,

For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell Beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favour how it falters;
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell Wit how much she wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell Wisdom she entangles
Herself by much preciseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

Tell Physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell Charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention:
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.

Tell Fortune of her blindness;
Tell Nature of decay;

Tell Friendship of unkindness;

Tell Justice of delay:

And if they will reply,

Then give them all the lie.

Tell Arts they have no soundness,
And vary by esteeming;

Tell Schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming:
If Arts and Schools reply,
Give Arts and Schools the lie.

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EDMUND SPENSER is the second great landmark, to adopt the figure of Pope, "in the general course of our poetry." Of his pedigree nothing is known further than that he claimed consanguinity with the noble family of his name, whose members so frequently illustrate the county archives of Northamptonshire, and who were themselves descended from a younger branch of the Despensers, anciently Earls of Gloucester and Winchester. His degree of affinity is, however, unknown, and the links of the connection severed or untraceable.

Spenser was born in East Smithfield, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Tower of London, about 1553; and his early years, it has been reasonably surmised, were passed in the cold shade of poverty and dependence. He entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, as a sizar, on the

20th of May, 1569; and the "Theatre for Worldings," a collection of fugitive pieces published in the same year, contains some poems which, upon internal evidence, have been referred to him. On the 16th of January, 1573, he took his degree of B.A., and proceeded M.A. in June, 1576. It has been stated that Spenser was a defeated candidate for a fellowship which Andrews, afterwards successively Bishop of Chester, Ely, and Winchester, more fortunately disputed with him. But, in fact, the rival of Andrews was Thomas Dove, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough; and Spenser's prospects of a fellowship were ruined, as we learn from a letter of his friend, Gabriel Harvey, by an unlucky misunderstanding with persons of academical position and influence so powerful as to make their enmity fatal to his chances of advancement at Cambridge. In these circumstances he availed himself of a home offered him by some friends in the north of England, amongst whom he either resided as a guest, or, as is more probable, turned his learning to account in the performance of the duties of a tutor.

It was during his retirement here that he was called upon to prove the anguish of tricked and insulted affection. His mistress had perception enough to discover that he had "all the intelligences at command," and taste enough to transfer her worthless love to some booby-ancestor, it is to be charitably hoped, of the husband of the fickle heroine of "Locksley Hall." After a time, when the paroxysmal had subsided and softened into the tuneful phase of sorrow, Spenser, in several eclogues of the "Shepherd's Calendar," published in 1579, and dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, laments his hopeless passion and his blasted life. Whilst he personified himself as Colin Clout-a designation which would severely test the erotic indifference even of a Juliet to nominal peculiarities— Spenser is magnanimous enough to bestow upon his heartless fair one the fresh, blushingly beautiful name of

Rosalind-a name which Lodge, appropriating for the heroine of his "Euphues Golden Legacie" (1590), handed down, along with incidents of which the original or the germ is to be found in "The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn," to be immortalized by Shakespere in “As You Like It.”

Pastoral poetry is very liable to collapse at the first. rude breath of realism. In these days it is simply a "thing which is not;" unless, indeed, by the banks of some trickling tributary of the Yarra Yarra, competitive lyres are sounded for the guerdon of a kangaroo ham, which erst were strung by the Cam or the Isis. Perhaps, therefore, it is not much to object to any pastorals that they are not in strictest conformity with Nature. Spenser's shepherds are skilled in the art dialectic, and his folds are little less abstruse and learned than the councilhall of Milton's Pandæmonium. In an evil hour for the poet--for their animadversions gave lasting offence to Lord Burleigh*-his pastoral and polemical creations discussed the relative merits of Popery and Protestantism; and judged, ultra crepidam, beyond the literal crook, the characters of Bishop Aylmer and Archbishop Grindal.

Harvey, the Hobbinol of the "Shepherd's Calendar," persuaded Spenser to London, and procured for him an

*The following anecdote, though not authentic enough for the text, may be sufficiently amusing for a note. It is quoted from Fuller. "There passeth a story commonly told and believed, that Spenser presenting his poems to Queen Elizabeth, she, highly affected therewith, commanded the Lord Cecil, her treasurer, to give him an hundred pound: and when the treasurer (a good steward of the queen's money) alledged that sum was too much, then give him (quoth the queen) what is reason; to which the lord consented, but was so busied, belike, about matters of higher concernment, that Spenser received no reward; whereupon he presented this petition in a small piece of paper to the queen in her progress

'I was promised on a time,

To have reason for my rhyme;
From that time unto this season,
I received nor rhyme nor reason.'

Hereupon the queen gave strict order (not without some check to her treasurer) for the present payment of the hundred pounds she first intended unto him."

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