tion in some other direction of his real meaning. Yet it seems probable that there was some woman, poetically described as "Rosalind," who, during the whole period of time covered by the Spenser poems, appealed to the imagination of the writer, and if that was so, she could not naturally (on my theory of the authorship) have been any one but the love addressed, at some time in the same period, as "Stella." The following passages from the Spenser poems will enable the reader to see the grounds for this statement.

In the Hymne in Honour of Beautie (an early work) is the phrase

she, whose conquering beautie doth captive

My trembling heart in her eternall chaine.

At the close of Colin Clout, where "Rosalind " is blamed for using him so hardly, Colin defends her in a speech containing the following lines:

Not then to her that scorned thing so base,

But to my selfe the blame that lookt so hie :

That hers I die, nought to the world denying

This simple trophe of her great conquest.

In that poem also he alludes, as I think, to the same love in the lines

For that my selfe I do professe to be

Vassall to one, whom all my dayes I serve,

To her my thoughts I daily dedicate,

My thought, my heart, my love, my life is shee,

And I hers ever onely, ever one;

One ever I all vowed hers to bee,

One ever I, and others never none.1

In Book VI. Canto x. of the Faerie Queene, where—

Calidore sees the Graces daunce

To Colins melody,

1 As this poem was published the year after Spenser's supposed marriage, these allusions present a great difficulty. See Chapter XIV.

the same love apparently is referred to as Damzell," and is seen with the three Graces :

"another

That with her goodly presence all the rest much graced. (12.)

She was, to weete, that jolly Shepheards lasse,

Pype, jolly shepheard, pype thou now apace
Unto thy love that made thee low to lout;

Thy love is present there with thee in place;

Thy love is there advaunst to be another Grace.1 (16.)

Yet was she certes but a countrey lasse;

Yet she all other countrey lasses farre did passe. (25.)

With these tributes there are sometimes mixed up appeals to the Queen couched in the language of love, as, for example, in the last stanza of the Hymne in Honour of Beautie:

And you, faire Venus dearling, my deare dread!
Fresh flowre of grace, great Goddesse of my life,
When your faire eyes these fearefull lines shal read,
Deigne to let fall one drop of dew reliefe,
That may recure my harts long pyning griefe,
And shew that wondrous powre your beauty hath,
That can restore a damned wight from death.

The episode in Book VI. Canto x. of the Faerie Queene, above referred to, closes with a stanza in which the two strains of feeling are similarly interwoven :

Sunne of the world, great glory of the sky
That all the earth doest lighten with thy rayes,
Great Gloriana, greatest Majesty !
Pardon thy shepheard, mongst so many layes
As he hath sung of thee in all his dayes,
To make one minime of thy poore handmayd,
And underneath thy feete to place her prayse;
That when thy glory shall be farre displayd

To future age, of her this mention may be made!

It is hard to believe that these expressions of feeling had no basis in actual experience. What that may have been lies evidently in the identification of "Rosalind"; but I must leave the remarks which I may have to offer on that subject for a later chapter.

1 Cf. Eclogue for "April."

AMONG the "Verses addressed to the Author" which are prefixed to the Faerie Queene, some, in my opinion, are by the same hand. The identity of style seems to me unmistakable, and the style is that of the author of the poem. The first two pieces, including the famous

Me thought I saw the grave where Laura lay,

are attributed to Sir Walter Ralegh, the second, entitled "Another of the Same," being initialled "W. R."; the third is signed "Hobynoll," which is supposed to stand for Gabriel Harvey; the fourth, fifth and sixth bear the initials, respectively, R. S., H. B., and W. L.; and the last is signed "Ignoto," a signature which belongs to a number of poems which have been attributed on the strength of it (though without authority) to Ralegh. It also appears in early editions as an alternative to Ralegh's signature. Thus the "Reply" to the song attributed to Marlowe, "Come live with me," was printed in 1600 with the signature Ignoto, but in Walton's Compleat Angler, 1653, as "made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days."1 To "The Shepherd's Praise of his sacred Diana" in England's Helicon, 1600, Ralegh's initials were first affixed, but were obliterated by pasting over them a slip of paper with the word "Ignoto." 2 Hannah also states that Lord Bacon's poem "The world's a bubble" is signed "Fra. 1 Hannah's Courtly Poets, p. II. 2 Ibid. p. 77.

Lord Bacon" in all editions after the first, where it is marked "Ignoto."

An even more remarkable instance of the ambiguity which attaches to these two signatures occurs in the two following poems (taken from pp. 29 and 120 of Hannah's volume) :

What is our life? The play of passion.
Our mirth? The music of division :
Our mothers' wombs the tiring-houses be,
Where we are dressed for life's short comedy.
The earth the stage; Heaven the spectator is,2
Who sits and views whosoe'er doth act amiss.
The graves which hide us from the scorching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus playing post we to our latest rest,
And then we die in earnest, not in jest.

Sr W. R.S

Man's life's a tragedy: his mother's womb,
From which he enters, is the tiring room;
This spacious earth the theatre; and the stage
That country which he lives in: passions, rage,
Folly, and vice are actors; the first cry,
The prologue to the ensuing tragedy;
The former act consisteth of dumb shows;
The second, he to more perfection grows;
I' the third he is a man, and doth begin
To nurture vice, and act the deeds of sin;
I' the fourth, declines; I' the fifth, diseases clog
And trouble him; then death's his epilogue.

IGNOTO.4

I conclude that the claim for the Ralegh authorship of these two poems is based on the identity of thought and style, but that constitutes an equally good ground

1 Hannah's Courtly Poets, p. 117.

2 Compare Bacon, Adv. of Learning: “But men must know, that in this theatre of man's life, it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on." Also Spenser, Sonnet liv. :

"Of this world's Theatre in which we stay,

My love, lyke the Spectator, ydly sits."

3 "From a MS. formerly belonging to the late Mr. Pickering. It was printed anonymously in a music-book of 1612: see 'Censura Lit.,' vol. ii. p. 103, 2nd edition; and is found also in MS. Ashm. 36, p. 35, and MS. Ashm. 38, fol. 154." (Editor's note.)

4 "Rel. Wotton.' Claimed without authority for Ralegh by Brydges and the Oxford editors." (Editor's note.)

for claiming them both for "Ignoto," and I suppose even the greatest Ralegh enthusiasts do not claim all the poems signed "Ignoto" for Ralegh. I regard them as indisputably the work of the same hand, and the hand as that of "Immerito" of the Shepheards Calender. I believe the two signatures were adopted by the writer at an early age, when he was not making use of the name of a real person, to express the idea that he was as yet undeserving and unknown. That a writer should address a succession of commendatory verses to himself may seem extraordinary, and no doubt it is; but I have already drawn attention to the extraordinary self-praise which appears in the body of Spenser's poems, and I have no doubt that this was one of the peculiarities of the genius of which we are writing; also, apart from this, that it was deliberate as a means of "advertisement" in an age when there were no press reviews. Another example of this is to be found, in my belief, in the two sonnets signed "G. W. Senior" and "G. W. I." (? junior) prefixed to Spenser's Amoretti. The second, at least, seems to me to be the work of the author. It is interesting in this connection to note that Thomas Nashe accuses Gabriel Harvey of himself writing the well-known sonnet addressed to him by Spenser:1

Onely I will looke upon the last sonnet of M. Spencers to the right worshipfull Maister G. H., Doctour of the lawes or it may so fall out that I will not looke upon it too, because (Gabriell) though I vehemently suspect it to bee of thy owne doing, it is popt foorth under M. Spencers name, and his name is able to sanctifie anything, though falsely ascribed to it.-Foure Letters Confuted, 1593.

In both the explanatory letter and the sonnet addressed to Ralegh and prefixed to the Faerie Queene the writer alludes to a poem by Ralegh about the Queen, which he is supposed to be keeping back.

1 "Harvey, the happy above happiest men

I read; that, sitting like a Looker-on

Of this worldes Stage," etc.

(Dated from "Dublin, this xviij. of July, 1586." Published by Harvey, 1592, Foure Letters.)