THE POETICAL WORKS OF

EDMUND SPENSER

EDITED BY J. PAYNE COLLIER

IN FIVE VOLUMES

VOL. I.

LONDON

GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET

COVENT GARDEN

1891

CHISWICK PRESS C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.

ADVERTISEMENT.

DR

HE text of this edition of Spenser's Poetical Works is a careful verbatim reprint of that published in 1862 by the late Mr. J. Payne Collier, whose painstaking endeavours to render it the most correct text extant, have left little to be done in the way of corrections or emendations by any future editor.

The Memoir is also substantially the same. as Mr. Collier's, but is abridged by the omission of such portions as relate to the literary questions of Spenser's time, or refer to his contemporaries rather than to himself. It will be found, however, that care has been taken to retain all the facts and inferences relative to the Poet's life; many of which were given to the world for the first time in Mr. Collier's memoir.

1891.