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sonnets. ‘Cowley also, in the essay ‘‘ Of myself,” referred to 
«The Faerie Queene.” Herrick, Pope, and Wordsworth have 
also borne their tribute to him. In Tennyson can over and over 
again be traced the echo of Spenser. Byron, Shelley, and Keats 
have also imitated the stanza and shown their debt to Spenser, 
from whose ample quarry many of the later poets have dug 
much of the stone out of whish they have built their noble and 
beautiful poems. ‘The stanza of “The Faerie Queen” was 
Spenser’s own invention, and was most musical. 
After giving an analysis of the book, which represented the 
twelve cardinal virtues, the Lecturer referred to ‘‘ The Shepherd’s 
Calendar ” as a work in which was given a picture of the scenery 
about Hurstwood. There was no English poet who could 
describe scenery better. There was no other English poet who 
had not made allegory wearisome. 
‘Spenser had a very high and noble ideal of a Christian 
gentleman. Had he not seen one in the life of Sir Philip 
Sydney? Had he not a deeply religious heart, which was as 
alien to the rigour of the Puritans as to the excesses of the 
Church? Between the two, he stood for a sound, sane, 
Protestant, English conception of a true gentleman. When you 
think of that little man with his soul full of wonderful fancies, 
ringing with the music of the nine muses, with his heart warm 
with a noble and dignified patriotism, with a spirit that suffered 
much from a certain sort of neglect, and yet was ever ready to 
suffer and be strong. When you think of that Godly, real man, 
do not merely think of him, but read him, and when you read 
him, you will find, perhaps, not exactly the ideal gentleman and 
gentlewoman of to-day, but the ideal picture of the gentleman 
and gentlewoman of a time more glorious even than ours, when 
manners were simpler, when truth was less veiled by what some 
people call modesty. If you can think of him as simple, 
truthful, noble in his devotion to his wife and children, faithful 
to friends, who were no longer friends at Court, when there was 
danger in such faithfulness, in his outspoken opposition to that 
greedy and coveteous Chancellor, Lord Burleigh, in his devotion 
to what was pure and true and holy, and his wide learning always 
used for the interests of truth and purity ; and above all else, in 
the crystal clearness of his own pure intellect, of his own just 
soul, then you, with me, will be able to lay a wreath of immortal 
love upon the grave of the poet’s poet, Edmund Spenser.” 
CORPO? 
