And in the following verse he deals with some theories of medical treatment:— “Like as to make our appetites more keen, With eager compounds we our palate urge; As, to prevent our maladies unseen, We sicken to shun sickness when we purge: Even so, being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness, To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding, And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness To be diseas’d, ere that there was true needing. Thus policy in love, to anticipate The ills that were not, grew to faults assur’d, And brought to medicine a healthful state Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cur’d. But thence I learn, and find the lesson true, Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.”[38] [38] _Sonnets_, verses 118, 119. CHAPTER III. SPENSER. Edmund Spenser was born in London towards the close of the year 1552, and in his after career, added lustre to an age which for brilliancy in literature has never been equalled in the history of this country. He lived for some time in Lancashire in his early days, but in 1578 quitted the country for the court. It was probably his friend Sir Walter Raleigh who introduced him to court-favour and Queen Elizabeth. In 1589 he published the _Faerie Queen_, a poem which will ever live in English literature. There are few allusions in the works of Edmund Spenser to medicinal plants, although he frequently mentions salves and other methods of administration used in the leechcraft of his time, as instanced in the following quotations:— “Eftsoons he gan apply relief Of salves and med’cines which has passing prefe”.[39] [39] _The Faerie Queen_, book i., canto x. “With wholesome read of sad sobriety, To rule the stubborn rage of passion blind, Give salves to every sore, but counsel to the mind.”[40] [40] _The Faerie Queen_, book vi., canto vi. In the first book of the _Faerie Queen_ Spenser makes an interesting allusion to trees and their uses in his time, in the following lines:— “Much gave they praise the trees so straight and high: The sailing pine; the cedar proud and tall; The vine-prop elm; the poplar never dry; The builder oak, sole king of forests all; The aspen good for staves; the cypress funeral; The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage; the fir that weepeth still; The willow, worn of forlorn paramours; The yew, obedient to the binder’s will; The birch for shafts; the sallow for the mill; The myrrh sweet bleeding in the bitter wound; The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill; The fruitful olive, and the plantane round; The carver holm; the maple, seldom inward sound”.[41] [41] _The Faerie Queen_, book i., canto i.