Ah! Shepheards, then said Colin, ye ne weet How great a guilt upon your heads ye draw To make so bold a doome, with words unmeet, Of thing celestiall which ye never saw. For she is not like as the other crew Of shepheards daughters which emongst you bee, But of divine regard and heavenly hew, Excelling all that ever ye did see; Not then to her that scorned thing so base, But to myselfe the blame that lookt so hie, So hie her thoughts as she herselfe have place And loath each lowly thing with lofty eie; Yet so much grace let her vouchsafe to grant To simple swaine, sith her I may not love, Yet that I may her honour paravant And praise her worth, though far my wit above. Such grace shall be some guerdon for the griefe And long affliction which I have endured; Such grace sometimes shall give me some reliefe And ease of paine which cannot be recured. And ye my fellow shepheards, which do see And heare the languors of my too long dying, Unto the world for ever witnesse bee That hers I die, nought to the world denying This simple trophe of her great conquest. This residence of Spenser in the North, which corresponds with that period of Milton's life spent at his father's house at Horton in Buckinghamshire, ended, as there has been occasion to state, in the year 1577. What was the precise cause of Spenser's coming South, is not known for certain. 'E.K.' says in one of his glosses, already quoted in part, that the poet 'for speciall occasion of private affayres (as I have bene partly of himselfe informed) and for his more preferment, removing out of the North parts, came into the South, as Hobbinoll indeede advised him privately.' It is clear from his being admitted at his college as a sizar, that his private means were not good. Perhaps during his residence in the North he may have been dependent on the bounty of his friends. It was then in the hope of some advancement of his fortunes that, bearing with him no doubt in manuscript certain results of all his life's previous labour, he turned away from his cold love and her glen, and all her country, and set his face Town-ward. It is said that his friend Harvey introduced him to that famous accomplished gentleman--that mirror of true knighthood--Sir Philip Sidney, and it would seem that Penshurst became for some time his home. There has already been quoted a line describing Spenser as 'the southern shepheardes boye.' This southern shepherd is probably Sidney. Sidney, it would seem, introduced him to his father and to his uncle, the Earl of Leicester. If we are to take Iren{ae}us' words literally--and there seems no reason why we should not--Spenser was for a time at least in Ireland, when Sidney's father was Lord Deputy. Iren{ae}us, in _A View of the Present State of Ireland_, certainly represents Spenser himself; and he speaks of what he _said_ at the