in accepting his position. In some lines on
the death of a friend's wife, whom he laments and praises, the idea
presents itself that the great queen may not approve of her Shepherd
wasting his lays on meaner persons; and he puts into his friend's mouth
a deprecation of her possible jealousy. The lines are characteristic,
both in their beauty and music, and in the strangeness, in our eyes, of
the excuse made for the poet.

Ne let Eliza, royall Shepheardesse,
The praises of my parted love envy,
For she hath praises in all plenteousnesse
Powr'd upon her, like showers of Castaly,
By her own Shepheard, Colin, her owne Shepheard,
That her with heavenly hymnes doth deifie,
Of rustick muse full hardly to be betterd.

She is the Rose, the glorie of the day,
And mine the Primrose in the lowly shade:
Mine, ah! not mine; amisse I mine did say:
Not mine, but His, which mine awhile her made;
Mine to be His, with him to live for ay.
O that so faire a flower so soone should fade,
And through untimely tempest fall away!

She fell away in her first ages spring,
Whil'st yet her leafe was greene, and fresh her rinde,
And whilst her braunch faire blossomes foorth did bring,
She fell away against all course of kinde.
For age to dye is right, but youth is wrong;
She fel away like fruit blowne downe with winde.
Weepe, Shepheard! weepe, to make my undersong.

Thus in both his literary enterprises, Spenser had been signally
successful. The _Shepherd's Calendar_ in 1580 had immediately raised
high hopes of his powers. The _Faery Queen_ in 1590 had more than
fulfilled them. In the interval a considerable change had happened in
English cultivation. Shakespere had come to London, though the world
did not yet know all that he was. Sidney had published his _Defense of
Poesie_, and had written the _Arcadia_, though it was not yet published.
Marlowe had begun to write, and others beside him were preparing the
change which was to come on the English Drama. Two scholars who had
shared with Spenser in the bounty of Robert Newell were beginning, in
different lines, to raise the level of thought and style. Hooker was
beginning to give dignity to controversy, and to show what English prose
might rise to. Lancelot Andrewes, Spenser's junior at school and
college, was training himself at St. Paul's, to lead the way to a larger
and higher kind of pre