On leaving the University, Spenser resided for about a year with relatives
in Lancashire, where he found employment. During this time he had an
unrequited love affair with an unknown beauty whom he celebrated in the
_Shepheards Calender_ under the name of Rosalind, "the widow's daughter of
the glen." A rival, Menalchas, was more successful in finding favor with
his fair neighbor. Although he had before this turned his attention to
poetry by translating the sonnets of Petrarch and Du Bellay (published in
1569), it was while here in the North country that he first showed his high
poetic gifts in original composition.

After a visit to Sir Philip Sidney at Penshurst, Spenser went down to
London with his friend in 1578, and was presented to Sidney's great uncle,
the Earl of Leicester. He thus at once had an opportunity for advancement
through the influence of powerful patrons, a necessity with poor young
authors in that age. An immediate result of his acquaintance with Sidney,
with whom he was now on relations of intimate friendship, was an
introduction into the best society of the metropolis. This period of
association with many of the most distinguished and cultivated men in
England, together with the succession of brilliant pageants, masks, and
processions, which he witnessed at court and at Lord Leicester's mansion,
must have done much to refine his tastes and broaden his outlook on the
world.

In personal appearance Spenser was a fine type of a sixteenth century
gentleman. The grace and dignity of his bearing was enhanced by a face of
tender and thoughtful expression in which warmth of feeling was subdued by
the informing spirit of refinement, truthfulness, simplicity, and nobility.
He possessed a fine dome-like forehead, curling hair, brown eyes, full
sensuous lips, and a nose that was straight and strongly moulded. His long
spare face was adorned with a full mustache and a closely cropped Van Dyke