the same way as was that of Milton some sixty years
later--that there prevailed some misunderstanding
between him and the scholastic authorities. He
mentions his university with respect in the _Faerie
Queene_, in book iv. canto xi. where, setting forth
what various rivers gathered happily together to
celebrate the marriage of the Thames and the Medway, he
tells how

... the plenteous Ouse came far from land
By many a city and by many a towne,
And many rivers taking under hand
Into his waters, as he passeth downe,
The Cle, the Were, the Grant, the Sture, the Rowne.
Thence doth by Huntingdon and Cambridge flit,
My mother Cambridge, whom as with a Crowne
He doth adorne, and is adorn'd of it
With many a gentle Muse, and many a learned wit.

But he makes no mention of his college. The notorious
Gabriel Harvey, an intimate friend of Spenser, who was
elected a Fellow of Pembroke Hall the year after the
future poet was admitted as a sizar, in a letter
written in 1580, asks: 'And wil you needes have my
testimoniall of youre old Controllers new behaviour?'
and then proceeds to heap abusive words on some person
not mentioned by name but evidently only too well known
to both the sender and the receiver of the epistle.
Having compiled a list of scurrilities worthy of
Falstaff, and attacked another matter which was an