makes it practically certain that Spenser was one of those early participants of his bounty. The other fact which supports this theory is that Dean Alexander Nowell frequently attended the yearly examination of the Merchant Taylors' School; and that Spenser was one of the scholars who profited from the estate of his brother Robert Nowell points surely to a friendly talk on the poet's behalf between Dean Nowell and Archdeacon Watts.

Robert Nowell died early in the year 1569, and in the accounts for his funeral there is a list giving the names of six boys of the Merchant Taylors' School to whom two yards of cloth were given to make their gowns. The name of Edmund Spenser stands first on that list. Two months later his name appears again in the accounts of Robert Nowell, the entry, under date April 28, reading: "to Edmond Spensore, scholler of the m'chante tayler scholl, at his gowinge to penbrocke hall in chambridge, xs." On the 20th of the following month, that is, May, 1569, Spenser entered Pembroke Hall (now Pembroke College) as a sizar, and during his student days there he was several times indebted to the Nowell funds for small gifts of money. He probably needed them all. Pov

erty and ill health marked his university career. The college records prove the latter; his position as sizar, independent of his description as a "poure scholler" in the Nowell accounts, the former.

Of Spenser as a Cambridge student we have but a shadowy picture. He took his B.A. in 1573, his M.A. in 1576; he made two friends in the persons of Gabriel Harvey and Edward Kirke; he planted, if tradition speaks truly, the mulberry tree which still survives in the garden of his college. Some biographers would have us believe that his undergraduate days were em

bittered by conflicts with the authorities, but we have no reliable data for such an opinion. John Aubrey, in a statement which must be examined later, asserted that the poet "missed the fellowship there which Bishop Andrews got," but throws no further light on the subject. Perhaps the theory that Spenser was unhappy in his student life receives slight support from the fact that although he refers with affection to his university he makes no mention of his college. The reference to Cambridge is in the fourth book (Canto XI) of the "Faerie Queene," where the poet describes the rivers which he summons to grace the wedding of the Thames and the Medway.

"Next these the plenteous Ouse came far from land,
By many a city and by many a towne

And many rivers taking under-hand
Into his waters as he passeth downe,

The Cle, the Were, the Grant, the Sture, the Rowne.
Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit,
My mother Cambridge, whom as with a Crowne
He doth adorne, and is adorn'd of it

With many a gentle Muse and many a learned wit.”

It is known that Spenser left Cambridge in 1576 on taking his M.A. degree, and it is also established that he was in London by October, 1579. Where did he spend the interval? If

Mr. Knowles is correct in thinking the poet's parents were now living at Burnley, it is natural to suppose that a part of the time at least was passed in their company. All authorities are agreed, and on good evidence, that Spenser went into the north of England on leaving Cambridge, but it seems impossible to locate his exact whereabouts. Just here, however, it is right that the statement of John Aubrey, the antiquarian, should be considered. Aubrey, who was born some twenty-seven years after Spenser's death, had an intimate acquaintance with many famous English writers, and it is to him we are indebted for many vivid facts about Bacon, Milton, Raleigh, and others. He is, in short, a credible witness, whose testimony carries great weight even in the face of improbability. In one of his manuscripts, then, he sets down these particulars of our poet: "Mr. Edmond Spenser was of Pembroke-hall, in Cambridge. He missed the fellowship there which Bishop Andrews got. He was an acquaintance of Sir Erasmus Dryden; his mistress Rosalinde was a kinswoman of Sir Erasmus's lady. The chamber there at Sir Erasmus's is still called 'Spenser's chamber.' Lately in the college, taking down the wainscot of his chamber, they found abun

dance of cards, with stanzas of the Faery Queen written on them. From John Dryden, poet laureat, Mr. Beeston says, he was a little man, wore short hair, and little band, and little cuffes." Such is Aubrey's interesting statement; but there are two considerations which make the critic hesitate to accept it in an unqualified manner. These are, first, that Sir Erasmus Dryden was, in 1576, of too tender an age to have entered upon the responsibility of matrimony; and, second, that his seat at Canons Ashby in Northamptonshire would hardly harmonise with the theory which locates Spenser in the north of England. Perhaps neither objection is very serious. Sir Erasmus may have wedded at a precocious age, and Spenser may have sojourned in the north of England and still had time to spare for Canons Ashby.

Amid so much that is nebulous in the history of Spenser, it would be a relief to think that the mask has been removed from the fair face of his Rosalind. Of course there have not been lacking theories of her identification; and they have, in the main, been as childish if not as numerous as those which cluster around the person of Dante's Beatrice. No one, however, has yet arisen to dissolve Rosalind away as a myth; she