The materials for the personal history of Edmund Spenser[11] are very
scanty; and it may not be amiss to warn the reader of what he will find
exemplified in the present article, that early biography, with any
pretension to authenticity, must partake nearly as much of a negative as
of a positive character.
Footnote 11:
Our engraving is from a copy of the picture in the possession of the
Earl of Kinnoull, which was made some years since by Mr. Uwins.
As to the year of Spenser’s birth, we are thrown for any thing like
admissible evidence on the date of his matriculation at Pembroke Hall,
Cambridge, in 1569, which, according to the usual age of admission in
those days, would place his birth about 1553. The monument erected to
him by the Countess of Dorset, afterwards of Pembroke and Montgomery,
places his birth in 1510, and his death in 1596. This monument, having
been erected only thirty years after the poet’s death, might have been
expected not to be very inaccurate as to dates; but its authority is
completely put down by the college entry. It is altogether at variance
with university practice at any period, that a man should be
matriculated at the age of fifty-nine, for the purpose of passing
through his seven years _in statu pupillari_, and proceeding to the
degree of M.A. at the ripe age of sixty-six. Neither do any facts on
record give countenance to the supposition that the poet lived to the
advanced age of eighty-six.
The parentage of Spenser is supposed to have been obscure: the only
information he has given us on that point is confined to the unimportant
fact, that his mother’s name was Elizabeth. But although his silence
respecting his parents, and his entering the university as a sizar, give
reason to suppose that his nearest connexions had fallen into humble
life, his claim of alliance with “an house of ancient fame” indicated
that his blood was not altogether plebeian. The dedications of his
‘Muiopotmos’ to Lady Carey, of his ‘Tears of the Muses’ to Lady Strange,
and of ‘Mother Hubbard’s Tale’ to the
[Illustration:
_Engraved by J. Thomson._