SPENSER, EDMUND 1552-1599), "the prince of poets in his time," was born in London—Oldys says, in East Smithfield —probably in 1552, possibly in (The date depends on whether Sonnet 6o, written when Spenser was 41, belongs to 1593 or to 159o: v. infra.) His mother's name, he tells us, was Elizabeth : his father has been conjecturally identified with John Spenser, a journeyman cloth-maker. Later, the poet claimed kindred with the Spencers of Althorpe in Northamptonshire, and had his claim allowed; but the poverty of his home is shown by the grants made to him out of the Nowell bequest as a poor scholar of Merchant Taylors' school. There, under the great Mulcaster, he laid the foundations of his wide, if inexact, scholar ship; best of all, he learned from Mulcaster to "worship the English," and to believe it as capable of great poetry as any language. He was still at school when, in 1569, he supplied some verse translations from Marot and du Bellay to Van der Noodt's Theatre of Worldlings. Van der Noodt, it is true, took the credit of these verses to himself : but they were included, with some alterations, in the Complaints volume of 1591 (v. infra), and we need not doubt that they are Spenser's. The rhymed stanzas after Marot at least bear his mark : the blank-verse renderings from du Bellay are inferior, and were considerably altered and tagged with rhymes for the re-issue of 1591.
In this same year he entered Pembroke hall, Cambridge, as a sizar, matriculating on May 20. He remained at Cambridge for seven years, as was then not unusual, proceeding B.A. in 1572 and commencing M.A. in 5576. His health was poor; but he read widely, especially in philosophy and rhetoric, studying Italian as well as Latin, Greek and French, and training himself for poetry. His studies profited from the friendship of Gabriel Har vey, a fellow of his college, a conceited pedant, but a real scholar, and sincerely attached to Spenser, though his friendship may not always have been quite disinterested nor his literary advice wise.
Literature, however, stirred the mind of Cambridge less than theol ogy. In the ecclesiastical controversy with which the university had seethed ever since Cartwright's brief tenure of the chair of divinity (1569-7o), Spenser took the Puritan side. But he was neither sectary nor ascetic. He had a hatred of popery (inflamed by the Bartholomew massacre) and contempt for the hirelings who "for their bellies' sake" had climbed into the Anglican fold.
What he did on leaving Cambridge is still a mystery. He had missed his fellowship, and must look about him for a profession or a patron. The view that he went to live with relatives in Lan cashire, though buttressed by appeals to family tradition and to the language and scenery of the Calender, rests at bottom on no ascertained fact.
But in the "North-parts" (Drayton brings Rosalind to the Cotswolds; Aubrey says that she was related to Sir Erasmus Dar win's lady, who was a Wilkes of Hodnell in Warwickshire), Spen ser fell in love with the Rosalind of the Shepheardes Calender, of whom again we can say only that she was a lady of higher rank than his, who enjoyed, but did not reward, her young poet's devo tion. In 1577 we seem to get a glimpse of Spenser in an unexpected quarter. In the View of the Present State of Ireland Irenaeus tells how he witnessed the execution of Murrogh O'Brien, which took place at Limerick in July, 1577. In the rest of that dialogue Irenaeus represents Spenser himself, and it is natural though not inevitable to conclude that he does so in this place also. But no other evidence has been found for this visit ; Phillips's state ment that Spenser was secretary to Sir Henry Sidney may be dis counted, since he has probably confused Sidney with Grey. Yet Irenaeus's account of this hideous incident reads like the words of an eye-witness, and the visit, if it occurred, would point to a connection with the Sidney-Leicester circle earlier than 1579.