DMUND SPENSER, the author of "The Faerie Queene" and of the other works, in verfe and profe, contained in the enfuing volumes, was born in 1552, twelve years earlier than Shakespeare. It has been ufual to fix this event in 1553; but Spenfer himself tells us, in the fixtieth fonnet of his "Amoretti," printed in 1595, entered at Stationers' Hall in 1594, and, in all probability, written at the clofe of 1593, that he had already completed his fortieth year. His birth is thus carried back to 1552.2

Although he was unquestionably born in London, a

a For Spenfer's fixtieth fonnet, fee vol. v. p. 146. He tells the lady whom he was then addreffing, that the year of his courtship, juft ended, appeared to him longer

"Than all thofe forty which my life outwent."

See Profeffor Craik's "Spenfer, and his Poetry," 3 vols. 12mo. 1845, vol. iii. p. 229:-" This was in the end of the year 1593, fo that he would appear to have been born in 1552." See alfo Profeffor Child's "Memoir of Spenfer," prefixed to his edition of the Poems, 5 vols. 12mo. Bofton, 1855:-"The fixty-eighth fonnet was written on Eafter Sunday; the fixty-fecond on the 1ft of January; the fourth alfo, on the first day of the year: we conclude, therefore, that the fonnets from the fourth to the fixty-fecond, were compofed in the year 1593, and the fixtieth toward the end of the year. . . . If then the poet were fortyone years old, it would appear that he was born in 1552."

b

point to which we shall more particularly advert presently, there is fome reafon to think that he may have spent his youth in Warwickshire, and that his father was refident in that county in 1569: an Edmund Spenfer, who may have been the poet's father, is mentioned, in the mufterbook of the Hundred, as an inhabitant of Kingsbury. We do not at that date find the name of Edmund, in connection with Spenfer, in any other family of the fame name; and, fince it is not at all known where the poet received his early education, we trust we may be allowed to conjecture that it was in the county which gave birth to Shakespeare. In his feventeenth year Spenfer was fent to the University of Cambridge, having been admitted, as the College records teftify, a fizar of Pembroke Hall on 20th May, 1569.°

By this date he could hardly have become acquainted with Shakespeare; but the fact that Spenfer had paffed his youth in Warwickshire may afterwards have led him to return there, or to cultivate the friendship of diftinguished men from that county;d and it is matter of

See the "Life of Shakespeare," prefixed to the edition of his Works, 6 vols. 8vo. published by Whittaker and Co. in 1858, vol. i. p. 95. An opinion is alfo there given that Spenfer must have been born. before 1553.

This fact, and the dates when Spenfer took the degrees of Bachelor and Master, we believe, were originally ascertained by the Rev. Dr. Farmer, author of the "Effay on the Learning of Shakespeare," 8vo. 1766: they are confirmed by G. Chalmers in his "Supplemental Apology," &c. 8vo. 1797, p. 23.

d Several eminent literary men of that day were from Warwickshire, fuch as Drayton and Thomas Greene; while Daniel, though not a Warwickshire man, fell in love with a Warwickshire lady, which (together, perhaps, with Shakespeare's rifing reputation) made him thus celebrate the Avon in his " Delia,” 4to. 1592:—

"No, no, my verse respects nor Thames, nor theaters,
Nor feekes it to be knowne unto the great,
But Avon, rich in fame though poore in waters,
Shall have my fong, where Delia hath her seate."

(Sign. G, 4 b.)

not uninteresting fpeculation, whether an intimacy may not thus have been commenced between our great poet of real life, and our great poet of romantic fiction, which led Shakespeare fo feelingly to lament the death of Spenser in his "Midfummer Night's Dream ;" and Spenfer, fo zealously to applaud Shakespeare, almost by name, in more than one of his memorable productions. On this difputed fubject we shall neceffarily be called upon to fay more hereafter.

e

Wherever Spenfer may have paffed his youth, and been educated, whether at Kingsbury, in London, or elsewhere, we have it on his own affertion, in one of the last separate poems he ever wrote, that he was born in the metropolis, though he does not inform us in what part of it :

a

The Burbadges, and fome other famous actors of the time, were also from Warwickshire. Wood tells us (Ath. Oxon. i. p. 765, edit. Bliss) that William Warner, author of " Albion's England," 4to. 1586, was Warwickshire man: " A. Chalmers, on the other hand, afferts (Biogr. Dict. xxxi. p. 165) that Warner was "a native of Oxfordshire." How little they attended to his works is shown by the fact that, like Spenfer, he himself informs us, in ch. 62, that he "first breathed the air in London." Elsewhere he gives the very year of his birth, at which Ellis (Specimens, ii. 297) only guessed, viz. 1558. Warner's " Albion's England" went through many re-impreffions: we quote from that of 1602, p. 272.

Spenfer had died only the year before "Midfummer Night's Dream" was printed, though it had been acted feveral feafons earlier. We are fully perfuaded that the couplet, in Act v. Sc. 1,

"The thrice three Mufes mourning for the death
Of learning, late deceas'd in beggary,—

had reference to the death of Spenfer, in grief and poverty, in the January preceding. On the revival of plays, it was very common to make insertions of new matter especially adapted to the time; and this, we apprehend, was one of the additions made by Shakespeare shortly before his drama was published in 1600. For Spenfer's allufions to, and applaufe of, Shakespeare, fee his "Tears of the Mufes" (the "thrice three Mufes") vol. iv. p. 335; and "Colin Clout's come Home again,” vol. v. p. 48. Shakespeare had a brother Edmund, born in 1580, but the probability is that he was fo baptized after Edmund Lambert. See the Life of Shakespeare (Whittaker and Co. 1858), vol. i. p. 59.

"At length they all to mery London came,
To mery London, my moft kyndly Nurse,
That to me gave this Life's first native fourse,
Though from another place I take my name,
An houfe of auncient fame." f

This paffage has, neceffarily, been cited or referred to by all the biographers of Spenfer; and they have justly confidered it fo decided and unequivocal, that some of them have passed over, without due notice, the testimony of Camden, who, giving an account of the unhappy death of the author of "The Faerie Queene," twice over states that he was "a Londoner." Camden was himself born in the Old Bailey, the year before Spenfer, and may have felt fome pride in recording that he was a townsman. We fubjoin, in a note, the whole of what he fays of the poet in his "Life and Reign of Queen Elizabeth,” in the obituary for the year 1598-9, although it anticipates various points requiring future notice: to these we shall recur at the proper time.

Camden fays nothing of the poet's immediate family, nor of the "house of ancient fame," from which, in other places and at earlier dates, Spenfer (perhaps more fre

"Prothalamion," printed in 1596, and probably written early in that year. See vol. v. p. 261.

See "Hiftory of England," by Kennett, vol. ii. p. 612, edit. 1719. Camden, having spoken of the deaths of Doctors Stapleton and Cozens, thus proceeds:

The last was Edmund Spenfer, born at London, and a student in Cambridge, who had so happy a genius for poetry that he outwent all the poets before him, not excepting his fellow-Londoner, Chaucer himfelf; but, through a fate common to that fraternity, he was always poor, though he had been fecretary to the Lord Grey, Lord Deputy of Ireland. For he had scarce fixed himself in his new retirement, and had got a little leifure to purfue his ftudies, but the rebels rifled and threw him out of house and home, so that he returned to England in a bare condition, where he died not long after, and was interred in Westminfter, not far from Chaucer, at the Earl of Effex's charge. His hearse was attended by the gentlemen of his faculty, who caft into his tomb fome funeral elegies, and the pens they were wrote with."

quently and vauntingly than became his own pre-eminence) claimed to have been defcended. This "house was that of Sir John Spencer of Althorp, and our poet alludes to it again in his " Muiopotmos," fpecially dated 1590, though publifhed in a collection called "Complaints" in 1591; in his "Tears of the Mufes," of the later year; and in his "Profopopoia, or Mother Hubberd's Tale," alfo of 1591. These three productions are feverally dedicated to as many of the daughters of Sir John; and there Spenfer mentions his "kindred" and affinity to the "house of ancient fame" of which they were ornaments," and we have no reason to believe that they in any way disowned or flighted the relationship. On the contrary, we may hope and believe that they were proud of a connection with the author of the then just published " Faerie Queene," the best, if not the most popular, production of the kind that had appeared in any language. By his "Colin Clout's come Home again" (which was not printed until 1595, although the infcription of it to Sir Walter Raleigh bears date at the close of 1591) it is clear that these ladies, Carey, Compton, and Strange, had shown no indifpofition to welcome the tribute of their poet; and he especially praises them under the names of "Phillis, Charillis, and fweet Amarillis," at the fame time repeating his affertion that he was a member of their family.

This relationship, however diftant and although Spenfer did not spell his name precisely in the fame way, makes it fingular that we should know fo little about his

h See vol. iv. pp. 325, 383, 455.

The whole paffage, laudatory of the three fifters, may be seen in vol. v. p. 51, where he terms them

"The honor of the noble familie,

Of which I meanest boast my felfe to be."