And, if ever poet won heaven for a song,
Herrick is there.
He died in the year

1660.

SP

R. O. MASSON.

EDMUND SPENSER.

PENSER was one of the great men who from age to age mark out the general course of poetry, and who take a place among the few selected from the illustrious of every age whom we look up to as the instructors of all time. He claimed to be descended from a noble family, though the chief evidence of the truth of the assertion is that he took his place in Queen Elizabeth's court as a gentleman of birth. He was born in East Smithfield about the year 1553, in humble circumstances. In his sixteenth year he was entered as a sizar at Cambridge, where he continued seven years, and where he took the degree of A. M. After leaving Cambridge he obtained an introduction to Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated his first poem, "The Shepherd's Calendar," published in 1579. He seems to

have been employed at court, much to his dis

on.

colman.

taste, on various state missions, and experienced much of the discomfort of a hangerIn 1580, however, he was appointed secretary to the viceroy of Ireland, and six years afterward he obtained a grant of forfeited land in the county of Cork, where he fixed his residence in the old castle of KilHere he brought home his wife, the “Elizabeth” of his sonnets, and here he wrote the greater part of his immortal poem the "Faery Queen." The first part was published in 1589, and met with an enthusiastic reception. Queen Elizabeth at once settled a pension of fifty pounds pounds a year on the poet. In 1596 the second part of the

66

Faery Queen" issued from the press. It was intended to have been continued, but was never completed. But fortune, which had so long befriended him, now changed; the Tyrone rebellion broke out in 1598, his house was burned by the rebels, and his infant child perished in the flames. He had to flee with his wife to England in the greatest destitution, and, dejected and heartbroken, he died in the following year, in the forty-fifth year of his age, in a small lodging in London. His remains were laid beside those of Chaucer in Poet's Corner.

"The term 'faery' is used by Spenser to denote something existing in the regions of fancy, and the Faery Queen is the impersonation of glory; the knights of Faeryland are the twelve virtues, who are the champions of the queen."

H

ROBERT INGLIS.

THE MODEST MUSE.

OW nice the reputation of the maid!
Your early kind paternal care appears
By chaste instruction of her tender years;
The first impression in her infant breast
Will be the deepest, and should be the
best;

Let not austerity breed servile fear,
No wanton sound offend her virgin ear:
Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of decency is want of sense.
Secure from foolish pride's affected state
And specious flattery's more pernicious
bait,

Habitual innocence adorns her thoughts,

But

your neglect must answer for her faults.

WENTWORTH DILLON (Earl of Roscommon.

went

Together, Willie walking slow but sure And Donald trotting sagely by his side. (Ay, Donald, he is dead. Be still, old man!)

What link existed, human or divine,
Between the tiny tot six summers old
And yonder life of mine upon the hills
Among the mists and storms? 'Tis strange,
'tis strange!

But when I looked on Willie's face, it seemed
That I had known it in some beauteous life
That I had left behind me in the North.
This fancy grew and grew, till oft I sat,
The buzzing school around me, and would

seem

To be among the mists, the tracks of rain,
Nearing the hueless silence of the snow.
Slowly and surely I began to feel
That I was all alone in all the world,
And that my mother and my father slept
Far, far away in some forgotten kirk
Remembered but in dreams. Alone at nights
I read my Bible more and Euclid less;
For, mind you, like my betters, I had been
Half scoffer, half believer; on the whole,
I thought the life beyond a useless dream

filled

This gray old brow, the feelings dim and

warm

That soothed the throbbings of this weary heart;

But when I placed my hand on Willie's head,

Warm sunshine tingled from the yellow hair Through trembling fingers to my blood within ;

And when I looked in Willie's stainless eyes,
I saw the empty ether floating gray
O'er shadowy mountains murmuring low
with winds;

And often when, in his old-fashioned way,
He questioned me, I seemed to hear a voice
From far away that mingled with the cries
Haunting the regions where the round red