he wrote part of the Calendar at Penshurst; especially the eleventh eclogue, in which he laments the death of a "maiden of great blood," supposed to have been a daughter of the Earl of Leicester. In the tenth eclogue he lauds the Earl of Leicester as "the worthy whom the queen loves best;" so that he was now got into the very high-road to preferment, and does not appear to have been backward to walk diligently in it. Leicester and Sidney, near kinsmen as they were, were just the two men of the whole kingdom to push the fortunes of a poet. With this early and regular introduction to these two powerful men (powerful in politics and literature, and in favor with the queen), it is difficult to weave in a belief of the fine story of Spenser's pushing his own way with the ninth canto of the first book of the Faërie Queene. It is a pity this should not be true, yet how can it? The story goes thus: One morning Spenser, determined to try his fortune with Sir Philip Sidney, the courtier most celebrated of the time for his intellectual accomplishments, and for his generous disposition, went to Leicester House, an entire stranger, carrying with him this canto of his great poem, in which is contained the fine allegory of Despair. He obtained admission to Sidney, and presented his MS. for his approbation: that great lover and judge of poetry had not read far before he was so much struck with the beauty of a stanza, that he ordered fifty pounds to be given to the author; proceeding to the next stanza, he raised his gift to a hundred, which sum he doubled on reading a third, and commanded his steward to pay instantly, lest he should be induced, by a further delay, to give away his whole estate. Pity so fine a story was not true! some imaginative person must have pleased himself with fancying how such a thing might have been.