musical. great Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth. There were more great writers living in her time than at any other period in our history. 5 Sir Thomas More. See page 68. 6 his translator, Ralph Robinson; the second and best edition of his translation appeared in 1556. 7 public weal, commonwealth, state. 8 Utopia. The word means "nowhere." 9 occupation, work, business. 10 suffice, to be enough. 11 individual, a person. 12 beastly, natural to beasts. 13 unattainable, that cannot be reached or got.

EDMUND SPENSER.

FOR a great poet, we must pass from Chaucer direct to Spenser. Edmund Spenser was born in London probably in the year 1552. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, and then at Cambridge. Three years after he left the University we find him in the household of the Earl of Leicester, a 1 congenial friend to Leicester's famous nephew, Sir Philip Sidney. Then we find him publishing "The Shepherd's Calendar." It secured a ready welcome, for since "The Canterbury Tales" few poems had appeared worthy of comparison with it. One 2 critic of the time said it equalled the best writings of the same kind in Greek and Latin, while another thought "Master Edmund Spenser had done enough for the immortality of his name had he given us nothing else."

Just as men were beginning to realize that a great poet had at length arisen, Spenser went to Ireland as private secretary to the lord lieutenant. The rest of his life was mainly spent away from England, for he took up his abode on an estate at Kilcolman, in the county of Cork, which was granted him out of the forfeited lands of a rebel earl. There

Amongst the cooly shade

Of the green alders by the Mulla's shore

he wrote his finest work, "The Fairy Queen." The tranquil life he lived in his Irish home came to a sudden close. A band of fierce rebels swooped down upon Kilcolman, and set fire to the castle. The poet fled, and in deep distress returned to London, where three

He was

months later-in January, 1599-he died.
buried beside Chaucer in Westminster Abbey,-

6 Here, nigh to Chaucer, Spenser lies; to whom
In genius next he was, as now in tomb.

"The Fairy Queen" is, as the author wrote to his friend Sir Walter Raleigh, a "continued 7allegory." He intended it to be in twelve books, each book devoted

to a "moral virtue." To every virtue was to be assigned "a knight as the patron and defender of the same, in whose actions and feats of arms and chivalry the operations of the virtue whereof he was the protector were to be expressed, "and the vices and unruly appetites that oppose themselves against the same to be beaten down or overcome." Only six books were finished; but

the connection between the different parts is so slight that they lose little by the absence of the rest.

In his wonderful richness of imagination, in his exquisite sense of beauty, Spenser is not surpassed by any poet of any age or country, while the adventures of the various knights are interesting enough as mere stories. Some people say that the poem "may be very fine, but that they cannot understand it on account of the

allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if they thought it would bite them. This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the allegory, the allegory will not meddle with them. Without minding it at all, the whole is as plain as a pike-staff." *

3

1 Congenial, having like tastes. 2 critic, a judge of writings. The critic in question is Webbe, the author of “A Discourse on English Poesy," which appeared six years after "The Shepherd's Calendar." another, Michael Drayton (1563–1631), a poet of the time. 4 immortality, being kept in everlasting memory. 5 the Mulla was a stream which ran through his grounds. The lines are his own. 6 here nigh, etc.; these lines are the English of a Latin epitaph on Spenser. 7 allegory, a kind of parable, a style of writing where there is a deeper meaning underlying the apparent one. Thus when Spenser speaks of the Red Cross Knight fighting the "ugly monster," half serpent half woman, he is thinking of the struggle between holiness and falsehood.

SHAKESPEARE.

WHEN Spenser was a lad of twelve William Shakespeare, the greatest poet of all time, was born. Men have given up their lives to the study of his, yet their patient industry and keen research have not been rewarded by any discovery of importance; they have found nothing which will help us to understand what manner of man he was. "No letter of his writing, no record of his conversation, no character of him drawn with any fulness by a contemporary can be produced." +

The little that is certainly known may be rapidly summed up. Shakespeare was born at Stratford-onAvon in April, 1564. He was educated in the free Grammar School of his native town, where, in the + Hallam.

* Hazlitt.

opinion of Ben Jonson, he acquired "small Latin and less Greek." At eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, and at two- or three-and-twenty went to London to seek his fortune. Joining himself to one of the companies of players, he became an actor, then touched up

old plays, and finally wrote plays wholly his own. His affairs prospered greatly. He became part proprietor of a theatre, saved a good deal of money, bought a considerable amount of land and the finest house in Stratford, and, when he was about forty-six, retired thither to spend the remaining years of his life in dignified