And he the man whom Nature selfe had made To mock herselfe and Truth to imitate, With kindly counter under Mimick shade, Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late; With whom all joy and jolly meriment Is also deaded and in dolour drent. The context shows that by 'dead' is not meant physical death, but that That same gentle spirit, from whose pen Large streames of honnie and sweete nectar flowe, produces nothing, sits idle-handed and silent, rather than pander to the grosser tastes of the day. But this view, attractive as it is, can perhaps hardly be maintained. Though the _Teares of the Muses_ was not published, as we have seen, till 1591, it was probably written some years earlier, and so before the star of Shakspere had arisen. Possibly by Willy is meant Sir Philip Sidney, a favourite haunt of whose was his sister's house at Wilton on the river Wiley or Willey, and who had exhibited some comic power in his masque, _The Lady of May_, acted before the Queen in 1578. Some scholars, however, take 'Willy' to denote John Lily. Thus the passage at present remains dark. If written in 1590, it certainly cannot mean Sidney, who had been dead some years; just possibly, but not probably, it might in that case mean Shakspere. Of the remaining works published in his _Complaints_, the only other one of recent composition is _Muiopotmos_, which, as Prof. Craik suggests, would seem to be an allegorical narrative of some matter recently transpired. It is dated 1590, but nothing is known of any earlier edition than that which appears in the _Complaints_. Of the other pieces by far the most interesting is _Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubbards Tale_, not only because it is in it, as has been said, Spenser most carefully, though far from successfully, imitates his great master Chaucer, but for its intrinsic merit-- for its easy style, its various incidents, its social pictures. In the dedication he speaks of it as 'These my idle labours; which having _long sithens composed in the raw conceipt of my youth_, I lately amongst other papers lighted upon, and was by others, which liked the same, mooved to set them foorth.' However long before its publication the poem in the main was written, possibly some additions were made to it in or about the year 1590; as for instance, the well-known passage describing 'a suitor's state,' which reflects too clearly a bitter personal experience to have been composed before Spenser had grown so familiar with the Court as he became during his visit to England under Raleigh's patronage. But it is conceivable that his experiences in 1578 and 1579 inspired the lines in question. The remaining pieces in the _Complaints_ consist of translations or imitations, composed probably some years before, though probably in some cases, as has been shown, revised or altogether recast. Probably in the same year with the _Complaints_-- that is in 1591--was published _Daphnaida_,{1} 'an