76 



townships near Preston. This Hugh Singleton took an apprentice 

 from Preston the same year that the ShephenVs Calendar was 

 going through the press. The second and most important item 

 of Dr. Grosart's additional evidence respecting the poet's where- 

 abouts after he left the University, was a letter of Gabriel Harvey 

 to his friend Edmund Spenser. Spenser had published certain 

 literary efforts of Harvey's under the title of "Devices," which 

 he had never intended should be given to the world. Harvey 

 wrote "To be short, I would to God that all the ill-favoured 

 copies of my now prostituted ' Devices ' were buried a great deal 

 deeper in the centre of the earth than the high altitude of the 

 middle region of the very English Alpes in yom- shier." Dr. 

 Giosart regarded this evidence as being conclusive in favour of the 

 Burnley and Pendle district as the home of the Spenser family, 

 though not the actual place of the poet's birth in consequence 

 of his father's migration to London. Dr. Grosart thought he dis- 

 cerned in the descriptive i^assages of the " Shepherd's Calendar'' 

 what he called " local touches," wherein scenery, natural char- 

 acteristics and social customs which had existed iu these secluded 

 tracts of the country were faithfully depicted. 



Mr. Abram proceeded to speak of the criticism which Dr. 

 Grosart's work elicited, and of the prejudice amongst Manchester 

 writers against the suggestion that Spenser had any connection 

 with this district. Burnley or Blackburn seemed to be looked 

 upon as quite outside the sphere of literary culture or production. 

 Could any good thing come out of Nazareth '? Could any great 

 poet by any possibility spring from a race of dull, stolid yeomen, 

 vegetating iu the wilds of Cliviger and Pendle Forest ? If 

 Spenser's family could only have been connected with the 

 vicinity of Manchester, evidence of his local relationship might 

 have had a much better chance of being sifted and justly dealt 

 vpith by the superior intelligences of Cottonopolis. Yet Burnley 

 men were conceited enough to think that the district which in 

 that Elizabethan age yielded the most learned and able of the 

 English Protestant champions in the controversy with Kome — 

 Dr. Wm. Whitaker — and Dr. Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. 

 Paul's, one of the most eminent founders of the National Church, 

 might also give to the world a poet of the first magnitude such 

 as Edmund Spenser was. 



In the Palatine ]S!ote Book, at the end of 1884, was printed a 

 series of papers arising out of Dr. Grosart's work. Miss Caroline 

 Fishwick had no hesitation in disagreeing with every inference of 

 Dr. Grosart, who answered her very effectually. Mr. Abram also 

 replying to Miss Fishwick had showed the vast number of Lanca- 

 shire dialect words to be found in Spenser's works, Miss Fishwick 

 refusing to admit any of these except such as happened to be 

 found in the publications of the Dialect Society. Miss Fishwick 



