Whilst Mrs. Spencer and Susan were expressing their high admiration of the character of Sir Philip Sidney, Ann was busily examining a picture which hung next to the before-mentioned painting. As soon as the observations on this last subject had ceased, she eagerly enquired whose rustic dwelling it represented. Mr. Wilmot replied: “That of Edmund Spenser, one of our first genuine poets; whose rich and melodious strains will find their way to the tastes of the real lovers of minstrelsy, as long as inexhaustible fertility of invention, truth, fluency, and vivacity of description, copious learning, and a pure, amiable, and heart-ennobling morality, shall be prized among the students of English literature. “From the circumstance of Spenser’s being entered as a sizar at Cambridge, it is probable that he sprung from an obscure parentage, and possessed but a slender patrimony. His merit, however, soon dawned through the shades that surrounded him; and his intimacy with Stubbs, a noted character of the day, and still more his friendship with Gabriel Harvey, by whom he was introduced to Sir Philip Sidney, attest the superiority of his mental acquirements. “The choice of his associates, together with some passages in his ‘Shepherd’s Calendar,’ had given rise to the suspicion that he was inclined towards puritanical sentiments; and possibly had some share in the disappointment of a fellowship, which he had hoped to obtain in 1576. Leaving college on this event, he retired for a time into the north of England; but the friendship of Sidney, who was fully capable of appreciating his genius, drew him again from his retirement; and it was at Penshurst that he composed much of the ‘Shepherd’s Calendar,’ published in 1579, under the signature of _Immerito_, and dedicated to his accomplished patron. “This year Spenser was sent by the earl of Leicester (probably at his nephew’s request) to France, on some commission; and, in the following, he obtained the post of secretary to lord Grey, and attended him to Ireland. “Spenser, though the child of fancy and of the Muse, was yet the man of business; and an excellent paper on the state of Ireland, which he drew up at this time, is still read and valued. He received a considerable tract of land out of the forfeited estates of the earl of Desmond; and also the castle of Kilcoman, which henceforth became his residence, and where he had the pleasure of receiving a first visit from Raleigh. “Similarity of taste and pursuits must soon have created an intimacy between these candidates for fame; and the barbarism and ignorance which surrounded them, must have cemented their friendship, and heightened the pleasure they must have experienced in each other’s society.