A  period  combining  a  scholar-like  imitation  of  antiquity  and  of
foreign  contemporary  literature,  principally  that  of  Italy,  with  the
force,  freshness,  and  originality  of  the  dawn  of  letters  in  England,  might
have  been  fairly  expected,  even  a  priori,  to  produce  a  great  imagina-
tive and  descriptive  work  of  poetry. The  illustrious  name  of  Edmund
Spenser  (1553-1599)  occupies  a  place  among  the  writers  of  England
similar  to  that  of  Ariosto  among  those  of  Italy;  and  the  union  in  his
works  —  and  particularly  in  his  greatest  work,  the  Faery  ^ueen  —  of
original  invention  and  happy  use  of  existing  materials,  fully  warrants
the  unquestioned  verdict  which  names  him  as  the  greatest  English  poe*
intervening  between  Chaucer  and  Shakspeare. His  career  was  brilliant,
but  unhappy. Born  in  1553,  a  cadet  of  the  illustrious  family  whose
name  he  bore,  though  not  endowed  with  fortune,  he  was  educated  at
the  University  of  Cambridge,  where  he  undoubtedly  acquired  an
amount  of  learning  remarkable  even  in  that  age  of  solid  and  substantial
studies. He  is  supposed,  after  leaving  the  University,  to  have  been
compelled  to  perform  the  functions  of  domestic  tutor  in  the  North  of
England ;  and  to  have  gained  his  first  fame  by  the  publication  of  the
Shepherd's  Calendar,  a  series  of  pastorals  divided  into  twelve  parts  or
months,  in  which,  as  in  Virgil's  Bucolics,  under  the  guise  of  idyllic
dialogues,  his  imaginary  interlocutors  discuss  high  questions  of  morality
and  state,  and  pay  refined  compliments  to  illustrious  personages. In  these
eclogues  Spenser  endeavored  to  give  a  national  air  to  his  work,  by  painting
English  scenery  and  the  English  climate,  by  selecting  English  names  for
his  rustic  persons,  and  by  infusing  into  their  language  many  provincial
and  obsolete  expressions. The  extraordinary  superiority,  in  power  of
thought  and  harmony  of  language,  exhibited  by  the  Shepherd' s  Calen-
dar, immediately  placed  Spenser  among  the  highest  poetical  names  of
his  day,  and  attracted  the  favor  and  patronage  of  the  great. The
young  poet  had  been  closely  connected,  by  friendship  and  tlie  com-
munity of  tastes  and  studies,  with  the  learned  Gabriel  Harvey  —  a  man
of  unquestionable  genius,  but  rendered  ridiculous  by  certain  literary
hobbies,  as,  for  example,  by  a  mania  for  employing  the  ancient  classical
metres,  founded  on  quantity,  in  English  verse;  and  he  for  sometime
infected  Spenser  with  his  own  freaks. 