those circumstances, there is considerable likeness.
Spenser is frequently alluded to by his
contemporaries; they most ardently recognised in him,
as we shall see, a great poet, and one that might
justly be associated with the one supreme poet whom
this country had then produced--with Chaucer, and they
paid him constant tributes of respect and admiration;
but these mentions of him do not generally supply any
biographical details.
The earliest notice of him that may in any sense
be termed biographical occurs in a sort of handbook to
the monuments of Westminster Abbey, published by Camden
in 1606. Amongst the 'Reges, Regin{ae}, Nobiles, et alij
in Ecclesia Collegiata B. Petri Westmonasterii sepulti
usque ad annum 1606' is enrolled the name of Spenser,
with the following brief obituary:
'Edmundus Spencer Londinensis, Anglicorum Poetarum
nostri seculi facile princeps, quod ejus poemata
faventibus Musis et victuro genio conscripta
comprobant. Obijt immatura morte anno salutis 1598, et
prope Galfredum Chaucerum conditur qui felicissime
po{e"}sin Anglicis literis primus illustravit. In quem
h{ae}c scripta sunt epitaphia:--

Hic prope Chaucerum situs est Spenserius, illi
Proximus ingenio proximus ut tumulo.

Hic prope Chaucerum, Spensere poeta, poetam
Conderis, et versu quam tumulo propior.
Anglica, te vivo, vixit plausitque po{e"}sis;