I have also to thank Sir James Murray, Dr. Bradley, and Dr. Craigie for information on points of lexicography; and Mr. Charles Cannan for the protracted loan of his copy of the first folio. J. C. SMITH. ST. ANDREWS, _September, 1909_. FOOTNOTES: [1] But this was corrected as the sheet passed through the press. See note _ad loc._ in the Critical Appendix. [2] The peculiarity consists not in the occasional occurrence of a rhymeless line--a thing that can easily be paralleled from Shelley or any poet of equal fluency--but in the fact that the right word is in every case so obvious that we cannot but believe it to have been in Spenser’s mind. [3] This argument loses some of its weight from the likelihood that Spenser had been in Ireland before 1580. In his _View of the Present State of Ireland_, Irenæus, who is Spenser’s mouthpiece, speaks of himself as an eyewitness of the execution of Murrogh O’Brien, which took place at Limerick in July, 1577. The statement, of course, is not conclusive, as it would be if made in Spenser’s own person. Yet Spenser’s account of this hideous incident has the stamp of personal observation, and, taken with the evidence of Phillips’s _Theatrum Poetarum Anglicorum_, points to the conclusion that in 1577 Spenser had been sent to Ireland by Leicester with letters to Sir Henry Sidney. His visit, however, must have been brief, and may well have left no trace in his poetry. Upton believed that the _Ruddymane_ episode in II. ii referred to the O’Neills, whose badge was a bloody hand (_v._ the _View of the Present State of Ireland_). If there be anything in this, it makes against the view that a book and a half had been written by August, 1580; for Spenser is not likely to have known the O’Neill ‘badge’ till he settled in Ireland. [4] The passage in Tasso (_G. L._ ix. 25) is itself an imitation of Virgil, _Aen._ vii. 785. Yet the ‘greedie pawes’ and ‘golden wings’ of Spenser’s picture seem due to Tasso’s ‘Sù le zampe s’inalza, e l’ali spande.’ Both these arguments, then, are indecisive; and in the absence of decisive proof I find it hard to believe that Harvey, who though a pedant was no fool, can have seen anything like the whole of Book I without recognizing its superlative merits. [5] Fraunce’s book was licensed on June 11. [6] From these _Pageaunts_ E. K. quotes a line: ‘An hundred Graces on her eyelidde sate,’ which appears, slightly altered, in _F. Q._ II. iii. 25. [7] The ‘fennes of Allan’ (II. ix. 16) would be near New Abbey in Co. Kildare, where Spenser seems to have occasionally resided in the years 1582-4. [8] In the whole of Books I-III there is only one feminine ending, viz. in II. ix. 47. In Books IV-VI such endings abound.