vey's advice, whether or not
to dedicate them to His Excellent Lordship, "lest by our much cloying
their noble ears he should gather contempt of myself, or else seem
rather for gain and commodity to do it, and some sweetness that I have
already tasted." Yet, he thinks, that when occasion is so fairly offered
of estimation and preferment, it may be well to use it: "while the iron
is hot, it is good striking; and minds of nobles vary, as their
estates." And he was on the eve of starting across the sea to be
employed in Leicester's service, on some permanent mission in France,
perhaps in connexion with the Alencon intrigues. He was thus launched
into what was looked upon as the road of preferment; in his case, as it
turned out, a very subordinate form of public employment, which was to
continue almost for his lifetime. Sidney had recognized his unusual
power, if not yet his genius. He brought him forward; perhaps he
accepted him as a friend. Tradition makes him Sidney's companion at
Penshurst; in his early poems, Kent is the county with which he seems
most familiar. But Sidney certainly made him known to the queen; he
probably recommended him as a promising servant to Leicester: and he
impressed his own noble and beautiful character deeply on Spenser's
mind. Spenser saw and learned in him what was then the highest type of
the finished gentleman. He led Spenser astray. Sidney was not without
his full share of that affectation, which was then thought refinement.
Like Gabriel Harvey, he induced Spenser to waste his time on the
artificial versifying which was in vogue. But such faults and mistakes
of fashion, and in one shape or another they are inevitable in all ages,
were as nothing, compared to the influence on a highly receptive nature,
of a character so elevated and pure, so genial, so brave and true. It
was not in vain that Spenser was thus brought so near to his
"Astrophel."

These letters tell us all that we know of Spenser's life at this time.
During these anxious eighteen months, and connected with persons like
Sidney and Leicester, Spenser only writes to Harvey on literary
subjects. He is discreet, and will not indulge Harvey's "desire to hear
of my late being with her Majesty." According to a literary fashion of
the time, he writes and is addressed as _M. Immerito_, and the great
business which occupies him and fills the letters is the scheme devised
in Sidney's _Areopagus_ for the "general surceasing and silence o