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 inscription 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 indisposition to welcome the tribute of their poet; and he especially praises them under the names of "Phillis, Charillis, and sweet Amarillis," at the same time repeating his assertion that he was a member of their family.1

This relationship, however distant, and although Spenser did not spell his name precisely in the same way, makes it singular that we should know so little about his immediate origin. We can do no more than conjecture the Christian name of his father, and of his mother the surname has never been ascertained; that her first name was Elizabeth, we learn from the seventy-fourth sonnet of his "Amoretti ;" but to what rank of life she belonged, or where her family resided, not the slightest hint is given. In the sonnet referred to, Spenser rejoices that the Christian name of the lady who, we apprehend, became his second wife (he did not marry her until the first three books of the "Faerie Queene" had been about four years published) was the same as that of the Queen, and of his mother: he is speaking of the "most happy letters" forming "Elizabeth," and belonging to three persons especially dear to him :—

"The first my being to me gave by kind,

From mother's womb deriv'd by dew descent;
The second is my sovereigne Queene most kind,
That honour and large richesse to me lent:

1 The whole passage, laudatory of the three sisters, may be seen in vol. v. p. 103, where he terms them

"The honor of the noble familie,

Of which I meanest boast my selfe to be."

The third my love, my lives last ornament,

By whom my spirit out of dust was raysed,' &c.
Vol. v. p. 192.

Presuming, as there is some reason to believe, that his father's names were like his own, and his mother's Christian name certainly Elizabeth, we may likewise presume that after their marriage they settled in London in the first instance, where their son Edmund Spenser was born in 1552. It has generally been too positively affirmed that this event took place in East Smithfield, near the Tower, then by no means a part of the metropolis uninhabited by persons of rank and respectability; but this fact depends solely upon a manuscript note, by a distinguished biographical antiquary of the last century, in a copy of a work in itself of little authority. In opposition to this statement, we may mention that all search hitherto made, for an entry of the birth of Spenser, in parish registers in that district of the town, has failed to obtain the required information.

In the hope of procuring some clue to the marriage of the elder Edmund Spenser, with his wife Elizabeth, or to the birth of their children, we carried our investigations farther west; but, although we traced nothing, on those points, that we thought might possibly have escaped a hasty examination, we were surprised to meet with a memorandum which, we have some reason to think, establishes a fact in the poet's history that has never before been suspected. Todd, and other biographers have argued that, when Edmund Spenser married, about five years before his death, he was bachelor. Of this we entertain grave doubts, not merely because it is unlikely that a man of such a delicate and susceptible mind would remain single until he was more than forty, but because, in

1 Oldys' MS. notes, in a copy of Winstanley's "Lives of the most famous English Poets," 8vo. 1687.

the registers of St. Clement Danes, in the Strand (which have, often and often, been examined in the hope of discovering matters of the sort), we met with an entry of the baptism of an infant, who is named Florence, and who is recorded as the daughter of Edmund Spenser. It stands in the book, among the baptisms for the year 1587, precisely in this form :—

"26 August [1587]. Florenc Spenser, the daughter of Edmond.".

That she was a legitimate daughter we can hardly doubt, since nothing to the contrary (as was then usually the case) is stated on the face of the register; and if the child had been base-born she would probably have borne her mother's surname. We are to recollect also that St. Clement Danes was a most likely parish for Spenser to reside in; for there, at the bottom of what is still called Essex Street, his young friend and patron, Robert Devereux, had a large mansion and gardens: the Lords Grey of Wilton also lived in the same neighbourhood. Another circumstance to be taken into account is the name given to the infant: Florence was not only such a name as Spenser, with his Italian and poetical associations, would be likely to choose, but it was a name which had been long known in the family of the patron, with whom Spenser, seven years before, had gone to Ireland in the capacity of secretary. Florence was the name of the wife of Edmund, Lord Grey of Wilton, who died in 1511, and we may well believe that it continued a favourite appellation during the next generations. Although nothing is added in the register (as was sometimes done) respecting the godfather or godmothers on the occasion, it is not by any means impossible, that some of the Grey or Devereux family stood at the font as sponsors for Florence Spenser.

We are, therefore, strongly of opinion that the

poet was a husband, and had a daughter in 1587, having married after his return to London with Arthur, Lord Grey, at the conclusion of his government of Ireland. The unexpected discovery of this entry, and the wish to show how carelessly these curious sources of knowledge are often inspected, have led us to anticipate a little what ought properly to come afterwards, and will be mentioned in its place in the progress of our memoir.

We have surmised that the poet received the first part of his education in Warwickshire; and in the same year that we hear of his father (as indeed he may have been) at Kingsbury, the son was removed, as we have stated, to Cambridge: so that the well-connected family was probably in circumstances to enable them to defray the, then comparatively small, charges of a college education for their son. Upon this question we are entirely without positive information, and we never again learn, on the authority of the son, a single word respecting his father, nor more, regarding his mother, than that her name was Elizabeth. Either Spenser owed little to his parents, or he was somewhat remiss in repaying what he owed. When he was matriculated at the University, on 20th May, 1569, he was in his seventeenth year; and he obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts on 16th January, 1573, and proceeded Master of Arts on 26th June, 1576. We know that portions of "The Faerie Queene,” under that name, were in existence four years afterwards, and that Spenser continued for some time to reside at Cambridge; but that part of his great work which contains a grateful eulogium upon his alma mater (he expressly and affectionately calls Cambridge his "mother") was most likely not written until more than ten years after he had relinquished her fostering care.1

1 See Book iv, Canto 11, vol. iii. page 247.

Spenser would be pursuing his studies at Cambridge in 1569, and we cannot agree with those who are of opinion that, in the very same year, he interrupted them, and was employed by the Court to bring public dispatches from Sir Henry Norris, the Queen's Ambassador in France, then at Tours. In order to have conveyed them to London, the messenger must, at some previous date, have quitted this country, or perhaps have been resident with the Ambassador, in crder to be in readiness for the duty. It was certainly an Edmund Spenser to whom the "letters," as they are called in the warrant, were entrusted; and it seems to us more likely that the individual should have been the father of our poet, although we do not hear from any other quarter, that he held any office under the Queen, or in connection with the government. On the other hand, we have no information whatever as to the nature of his occupations at any time; but assuredly the youth of the son, if nothing else, would seem to disqualify him for such an important and confidential office. Gascoigne and Churchyard, it is true, were, seven years subsequently, employed in the same way, according to the same authority; but the first was an old soldier, as well as a poet, who died the year after the discharge of this duty; and the second was a man much advanced in life, who had commenced authorship while Edward VI. was on the throne, although he outlived Elizabeth. The Edmund Spenser, named in the warrant may, without any wide stretch of conjecture, have been the father of the poet, who, by the reason of his family connection with Sir John Spencer, possibly obtained the situation of one of the royal messengers. To suppose that it was so, entirely removes the difficulty arising not merely out of the youth of the author of "The Faerie Queene" in 1569, but out of his studies just commenced at Cambridge.

Much stress ought to be laid upon another circum