P. 21, No. xviii.--This sonnet is the first among the commendatory poems prefixed to the original edition of _The Fairy Queen_. As original in conception as it is grand in execution, it is about the finest compliment which was ever paid by poet to poet, such as it became Raleigh to indite and Spenser to receive. Yet it labours under a serious defect. The great poets of the past lose no whit of their glory because later poets are found worthy to share it. Petrarch in his lesser, and Homer in his greater sphere, are just as illustrious since Spenser appeared as before. P. 23, No. xx.--I have marked this poem as anonymous, the evidence which ascribes it to Sir Walter Raleigh being insufficient to prove him the author of it. It first appeared in _England’s Helicon_, 1600. In all known copies of this edition ‘Ignoto’ has been pasted over W. R., the original signature which the poem bore. This may have arisen from a discovery on the part of the editor that the poem was not Raleigh’s; but also may be explained by his unwillingness to have his authorship of it declared; so that there is here nothing decisive one way or the other. Other external evidence bearing on the question I believe there is none, except Izaak Walton’s assertion fifty-three years later (_Complete Angler_, 1653, p. 64) that it ‘was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days.’ No doubt then there was a tradition to this effect; though ‘younger’ must not be pushed too far, as Raleigh was ten years older than Marlowe, to whose poem this is a reply. All that we can say is that there is no name in English literature so great, but that the authorship of these lines, if this could be ascertained, would be an additional honour to it.--l. 21-24: In the _second_ edition of Walton’s _Complete Angler_, 1655, this stanza appears--I should say, for the first time, were not this fact brought into question by its nearly contemporaneous appearance in a broad-sheet (see _Roxburgh Ballads_, vol. i. p. 205) which seems by its type to belong, as those expert in such matters affirm, to the date 1650-55. The stanza there runs, ‘What should you talk of dainties then! Of better meat than serveth men? All that is vain; this only good, Which God doth bless and send for food.’ While Walton may have made, it is also possible that he may have found ready made to his hand, this beautiful addition to the poem.