It were much to be wished that his writings were better known in this country, particularly by those who represent him as nothing but a wild schemer, because they hold the system of Newton. It is a sort of article of faith in many popular English works on astronomy, that Des Cartes was a fool. To any one who has imbibed that opinion, we recommend the perusal of some of his writings. [Illustration] SPENSER. The materials for the personal history of Edmund Spenser[11] are very scanty; and it may not be amiss to warn the reader of what he will find exemplified in the present article, that early biography, with any pretension to authenticity, must partake nearly as much of a negative as of a positive character. Footnote 11: Our engraving is from a copy of the picture in the possession of the Earl of Kinnoull, which was made some years since by Mr. Uwins. As to the year of Spenser’s birth, we are thrown for any thing like admissible evidence on the date of his matriculation at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, in 1569, which, according to the usual age of admission in those days, would place his birth about 1553. The monument erected to him by the Countess of Dorset, afterwards of Pembroke and Montgomery, places his birth in 1510, and his death in 1596. This monument, having been erected only thirty years after the poet’s death, might have been expected not to be very inaccurate as to dates; but its authority is completely put down by the college entry. It is altogether at variance with university practice at any period, that a man should be matriculated at the age of fifty-nine, for the purpose of passing through his seven years _in statu pupillari_, and proceeding to the degree of M.A. at the ripe age of sixty-six. Neither do any facts on record give countenance to the supposition that the poet lived to the advanced age of eighty-six. The parentage of Spenser is supposed to have been obscure: the only information he has given us on that point is confined to the unimportant fact, that his mother’s name was Elizabeth. But although his silence respecting his parents, and his entering the university as a sizar, give reason to suppose that his nearest connexions had fallen into humble life, his claim of alliance with “an house of ancient fame” indicated that his blood was not altogether plebeian. The dedications of his ‘Muiopotmos’ to Lady Carey, of his ‘Tears of the Muses’ to Lady Strange, and of ‘Mother Hubbard’s Tale’ to the [Illustration: _Engraved by J. Thomson._ SPENSER. _From an original Picture in the possession of The Earl of Kinnoull._ Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. _London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._ ] Lady Compton and Mounteagle, express affection and bounden duty, on the score of kindred, to the house whence those ladies sprang, who were three sisters, and daughters of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe.