To be sure he is here paraphrasing, and also is writing in the language of pastoral poetry, that is, the language of this passage is metaphorical; but it is equally clear that the writer was intimately and thoroughly acquainted with that life from which the metaphors of his original are drawn. He describes a life he had lived. It seems probable that he was already an author in some sort when he went up to Cambridge. In the same year in which he became an undergraduate there appeared a work entitled, 'A Theatre wherein be represented as well the Miseries and Calamities that follow the Voluptuous Worldlings as also the greate Joyes and Pleasures which the Faithful do enjoy. An Argument both Profitable and Delectable to all that sincerely loue the Word of God. Deuised by S. John Vander Noodt.' Vander Noodt was a native of Brabant who had sought refuge in England, 'as well for that I would not beholde the abominations of the Romyshe Antechrist as to escape the handes of the bloudthirsty.' 'In the meane space,' he continues, 'for the avoyding of idlenesse (the very mother and nourice of all vices) I have among other my travayles bene occupied aboute thys little Treatyse, wherein is sette forth the vilenesse and basenesse of worldely things whiche commonly withdrawe us from heavenly and spirituall matters.' This work opens with six pieces in the form of sonnets styled epigrams, which are in fact identical with the first six of the _Visions of Petrarch_ subsequently published among Spenser's works, in which publication they are said to have been 'formerly translated'. After these so-called epigrams come fifteen _Sonnets_, eleven of which are easily recognisable amongst the _Visions of Bellay_, published along with the _Visions of Petrarch_. There is indeed as little difference between the two sets of poems as is compatible with the fact that the old series is written in blank verse, the latter in rhyme. The sonnets which appear for the first time in the _Visions_ are those describing the Wolf, the River, the Vessel, the City. There are four pieces of the older series which are not reproduced in the later. It would seem probable that they too may have been written by Spenser in the days of his youth, though at a later period of his life he cancelled and superseded them. They are therefore reprinted in this volume. (See pp. 699-701.) Vander Noodt, it must be said, makes no mention of Spenser in his volume. It would seem that he did not know English, and that he wrote his _Declaration_--a sort of commentary in prose on the _Visions_--in French. At least we are told that this _Declaration_ is translated out of French into English by Theodore Roest. All that is stated of the origin of his _Visions_ is: 'The learned poete M. Francisce Petrarche, gentleman of Florence, did invent and write in Tuscan the six firste . . . . which because they serve wel to our purpose, I have out of the Brabants