“Spenser was interred with great solemnity in Westminster Abbey, by the side of Chaucer; the generous Essex defraying the expences of the funeral, and walking himself as a mourner. That ostentatious but munificent woman, Ann, countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery, erected a handsome monument to his memory, several years afterwards. The brother poets who attended his obsequies, threw elegies and sonnets into the grave; and, of the more distinguished votaries of the Muse in that day, there is scarcely one who has withheld his tribute to the memory of this beautiful author. Shakspeare, in one of his sonnets, had already testified his high delight in his works. “Joseph Hall, afterwards eminent as a bishop, a preacher, and a polemic, but, at this time, a young student at Emanuel College, has more than one complimentary allusion to the poems of Spenser, in his ‘Toothless Satires,’ printed in 1597.” “I think you mentioned, Sir,” said Mrs. Spencer, “that it was in Ireland Sir Walter Raleigh first became acquainted with the illustrious bard. Did Sir Walter spend much of his time there? Perhaps you will oblige us by some account of him.” “Willingly,” answered Mr. Wilmot. “Ireland, in particular, was the scene of several of the early exploits of that brilliant and extraordinary genius, Walter Raleigh; and it was out of his service in this country, that an occasion arose for his appearing at court, which he had the talent so to improve, as to make it the origin of all his favour and advancement. “Raleigh was the poor youngest son, of a decayed but ancient family in Devonshire. His education at Oxford was yet incomplete, when the ardour of his disposition encouraged him to join a band of a hundred volunteers, led by his relation, Henry Champernon, in 1569, to the aid of the French protestants. Here he served a six years’ apprenticeship to the art of war; after which, returning to his own country, he gave himself for awhile to the more tranquil pursuits of literature; for ‘both Minervas claim’d him as their own.’ “In 1578 he resumed his arms, under general Norris, commander of the English forces in the Netherlands. The next year, ambitious of a new kind of glory, he accompanied that gallant navigator, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, his half-brother, in a voyage to Newfoundland. This expedition proving unfortunate, he obtained, in 1580, a captain’s commission in the Irish service; and, recommended by his vigour and capacity, rose to be governor of Cork.