confidently be discarded, who in the muster-book of a
hundred in Warwickshire has noted the record of one
Edmund Spenser as living in 1569 at Kingsbury, and
conjectures that this was the poet's father, and that
perhaps the poet spent his youth in the same county
with Shakspere. It may be much doubted whether it is a
just assumption that every Edmund Spenser that is in
any way or anywhere mentioned in the Elizabethan era
was either the poet or his father. Nor, should it be
allowed that the Spenser of Kingsbury was indeed the
poet's father, could we reasonably indulge in any
pretty picture of a fine friendship between the future
authors of _Hamlet_ and of the _Faerie Queene_.
Shakspere was a mere child, not yet passed into the
second of his Seven Ages, when Spenser, being then
about seventeen years old, went up to the University.
However, this matter need not be further considered, as
there is no evidence whatever to connect Spenser with
Warwickshire.
But in picturing to ourselves Spenser's youth we
must not think of London as it now is, or of East
Smithfield as now cut off from the country by
innumerable acres of bricks and mortar. The green
fields at that time were not far away from Spenser's
birthplace. And thus, not without knowledge and
symnpathy, but with appreciative variations, Spenser
could re-echo Marot's 'Eglogue au Roy sous les noms de
Pan et Robin,' and its descriptions of a boy's rural
wanderings and delights. See his _Shepheardes
Calendar_, December:--