strange new craft, and many shook their heads, declaring that "so many books could never find purchasers." But the wise printer heeded them not. He worked with a will from morn till eve, and marked his hours by the Abbey bells. It was not only Chaucer’s writings that he gave to the public, but many other works which without him would long have remained unknown or forgotten, and more than any one else he helped to fix the language which Chaucer had used, by himself using the same in all his translations. His busy life came to an end in 1491, and he was buried in the Church of St. Margaret’s, Westminster. But at the sign of the Red Pale his favourite apprentice, Wynken de Worde, carried on the master’s work with the same extraordinary industry, producing no fewer than five hundred separate books up to the time of his death in 1535. This date brings us to within about twenty years of the time when Edmund Spenser, Walter Raleigh, and Philip Sidney, the singing birds and knightly spirits of the Elizabethan Court, were born. Like Chaucer, Spenser was a Londoner and he describes his birthplace as "The merry London, my most kyndly nurse, That to me gave this life’s first active source." He proudly declared that "he took his name from an ancient house," but we know little of his immediate family. His boyhood was spent at Smithfield, then within easy reach of woods and fields, and he has given us a glimpse of it in these words, which show that he was a boy very much like all other boys:— "Whilome in youth, when flowed my joy full spring Like swallow swift, I wandered here and there for heat of headlesse lust me did so sting, That I oft doubted daunger, had no fear: I went the wastefull woodes and forrest wide Withouten dread of wolves to bene espied. "I wont to raunge amid the mazie thicket, And gather nuttes to make my Christmas game, And joyed oft to chase the trembling pricket, Or hunt the hartlesse hare till she were tame. What wrecked I of wintrie age’s waste? Tho’ deemed I my spring would ever last. "How often have I scaled the craggie oke, All to dislodge the raven of her nest? How have I wearied with many a stroke The stately walnut tree, the while the rest Under the tree fell all for nuttes at strife? For like to me was libertye and life."