Edmund Spenser, by family, was English, and by birth a cockney.

The next year, 1580, upon the descent of the Spanish and Italian forces in Ireland under the Pope's banner, for the support of the Desmonds in their rebellion in Munster, he had a captain's commission under the lord Grey of Wilton, to whom at that time the famous Spenser was secretary; but the chief services which, captain Raleigh performed, were under Thomas earl of Ormond, governor of Munster.

Spenser was the friend and protégé of Sir Philip Sidney, (son of the before-named Sir Henry,) and of his uncle, the Earl of Leicester.

In The Shephearde's Calendar (1579), by Edm. Spenser, Rosalinde is the maiden vainly beloved by Colin Clout, as her choice was already fixed on the shepherd Menalcas.

What delighted him more than Spenser were Hoole's translations of Tasso and Ariosto (later he learned Italian, and read these in the original), and Percy's "Reliques of Ancient Poetry.

Nor can it reasonably be objected against the device that in the hands of inferior craftsmen it degenerates but too readily into the absurdities of the 'pathetic fallacy,' or that Spenser himself is not wholly guiltless of the charge.

Even the sequestered Spenser was a statesman; and poets and writers of fiction abound in the political histories of all the great nations of Europe.

We know that Spenser was a sizar at Cambridge, that is, one of those students who, to quote Macaulay, "had to perform some menial services.

Like Chaucer, Spenser was a busy man of affairs, but in him the poet and the scholar always predominates.

As HOMER and VIRGIL among the Greeks and Latins are the chief Heroic poets: so SPENSER and WARNER be our chief heroical "makers.

Though Spenser is the one great non-dramatic poet of the Elizabethan Age, a multitude of minor poets demand attention of the student who would understand the tremendous literary activity of the period.

Spenser was, in fact, a great painter.

Milton loved him; so did Dryden, who said that Milton confessed to him that Spenser was "his original," a statement which has been pronounced incredible, but is, in truth, perfectly comprehensible, and most likely true.

In spite of these peculiarities, Spenser is not hard reading after the first appearance of strangeness has worn away.

There had been a revival of pastoral poetry in Italy and France, but, with one or two insignificant exceptions, Spenser's were the first bucolics in English.