32. "The want of whom I feel too well in my present friendless condition." 33. =fits not well.= It is not proper. 34. =nobler peer.= The Earl of Essex. 35. Macaulay says of Lord Essex's expedition against Spain, in 1596, that it was "the most brilliant military exploit that was achieved on the Continent by English arms during the long interval which elapsed between the battle of Agincourt and that of Blenheim." 36. =Hercules two Pillors.= The rocky capes on either side of the Strait of Gibraltar. It was said that Hercules erected them to mark the western limit of his wanderings. 37. =Hesper.= Hesperus was the evening star, also sometimes regarded as the morning star, and hence called by Homer the bringer of light. See note on Lucifer, page 80 and page 189. 38. =Twins of Iove.= Castor and Pollux. Two heroic brothers who as a reward of their devotion to each other were placed among the stars in the constellation Gemini. 39. =bauldricke.= Belt, girdle, or sash. The "bauldricke of the heavens" is the zodiac. 40. =Which.= In early English this pronoun was very commonly used instead of _who_ when referring to persons. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. EDMUND SPENSER was born in London about the year 1552. He was educated at Merchant Taylor's school, and in 1569 went to Cambridge University, where he entered Pembroke Hall as a sizar. In the same year his first poetical performances--translations from Petrarch and Du Bellay--were published in a miscellaneous collection without the name of the author. At the University he was zealously devoted to the study of Latin and Greek literature, and there he made the acquaintance of several students who afterwards became men of note. In 1579 he visited Sir Philip Sidney at Penshurst, with whom he afterwards spent some time in London at the house of Sidney's uncle, the Earl of Leicester. In 1580 was published, but without his name, his first considerable poem, "The Shepheards Calendar"; and in the autumn of the same year he went to Ireland as secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, the new Lord Lieutenant. With the exception of a few brief visits made to England, the remainder of his life was spent partly in Dublin and partly at Kilcolman Castle on a grant of forfeited land in the county of Cork. Between 1580 and 1589 he wrote the first three books of "The Faerie Queene," and in 1590 they were published in London, through the influence of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had recently visited the poet in Ireland. In the summer of 1594 he married a lady named Elizabeth, probably the daughter of some English settler in Ireland; and in the following year he carried to London and published the second three books of "The Faerie Queene." At about the same time were published his "Colin Clout's Come Home Again," and his "Amoretti Sonnets," and an "Epithalamium" relating to his courtship and marriage. Returning to Ireland, he resumed his labor upon the half-completed "Faerie Queene," but it was rudely interrupted by the