Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/59

Rh He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and placed where he wished, by the side of his favourite Chaucer. The pall was held up by poets, who assembled round the grave, and dropped in their farewell elegies with the pens that wrote them, a touching tribute to his memory. The charges of his funeral were defrayed by the Earl of Essex, and after an interval of upwards of thirty years, his monument was erected by Anne, Countess of Dorset. This was restored and rectified as to dates in 1788 at the expense of his college at Cambridge.

Spenser was the last interpreter of those waning modes of thought, which had once exercised so powerful an influence through the wide extent of Christendom. With him the romance of the mediæval chivalry expired, and his genius availed to immortalize the splendid euthanasia.

has been termed a volunteer laureate. We know but little of his life, and principally acquire our estimate of his character from the general tenor of his writings. Through all, there runs a propriety and an unaffected simplicity, that the "well-languaged" poet cannot fail to be a favourite with all who have mused over his pages. He was born near Taunton in Somersetshire, in the year 1562, of a father "whose faculty," to use the quaint language of Fuller, "was a master of music, and his harmonious mind made an impression on his son's genius, who proved an exquisite poet. He carried in his christian and surname two holy prophets, his monitors, so to qualify his raptures, that he abhorred all prophaneness." In 1579, he was entered as a commoner at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he remained about three years, but left without a degree. He then resided in some capacity at Wilton, and under the patronage of the Countess of Pembroke, sister of Sir Philip Sydney, devoted himself to