ing into England, he was robb'd by the
rebels of what little he had; and dying for grief in
great want, anno 1598, was honourably buried nigh
Chaucer in Westminster, where this distich concludeth
his epitaph on his monument

Anglica, te vivo, vixit plausitque poesis;
Nunc moritura timet, te moriente, mori.'

Whilst thou didst live, liv'd English poetry
Which fears now thou art dead, that she shall die.

'Nor must we forget, that the expence of his funeral
and monument was defrayed at the sole charge of Robert,
first of that name, earl of Essex.'
The next account is given by Edward Phillips in
his _Theatrum Po{e"}tarum Anglicanorum_, first published
in 1675. This Phillips was, as is well known, Milton's
nephew, and according to Warton, in his edition of
Milton's juvenile poems, 'there is good reason to
suppose that Milton threw many additions and
corrections into the _Theatrum Po{e"}tarum_.' Phillips'
words therefore have an additional interest for us.
'Edmund Spenser,' he writes, 'the first of our English
poets that brought heroic poesy to any perfection, his
"Fairy Queen" being for great invention and poetic
heighth, judg'd little inferior, if not equal to the
chief of the ancient Greeks and Latins, or modern
Italians; but the first poem that brought him into
esteem was his "Shepherd's Calendar," which so endeared
him to that noble patron of all vertue and learning Sir
Philip Sydney, that he made him known to Queen
Elizabeth, and by that means got him preferred to be
secretary to his brother{5} Sir Henry Sidney, who was
sent deputy into Ireland, where he is said to have
written his "Faerie Queen;" but upon the return of Sir
Henry, his employment ceasing, he also return'd into
England, and having lost his great friend Sir Philip,
fell into poverty, yet made his last refuge to the
Queen's bounty, and had 500_l_. ordered him for his
support, which nevertheless was abridged to 100_l_. by
Cecil, who, hearing of it, and owing him a grudge for
some reflections in Mother Hubbard's Tale, cry'd out to
the queen, What! all this for a song? This he is said
to have taken so much to heart, that he contracted a
deep melancholy, which soon after brought his life to a
period. So apt is an ingenuous spirit to resent a
slighting, even from the greatest persons; thus much I
must needs say of the merit of so great a poet from so
great a monarch, that as it is incident to the best of
poets somet