facts for this tradition. It may be that the Lord
Treasurer was not endowed with a high intellectual
nature; but he was far too wise in his generation not
to pretend a virtue if he had it not, when
circumstances called for anything of the sort. When
the Queen patronized literature, we may be sure Lord
Burghley was too discreet to disparage and oppress it.
Another solution refers to Burghley's Puritanism as the
cause of the misunderstanding; but, as Spenser too
inclined that way, this is inadequate. Probably, as
Todd and others have thought, what alienated his
Lordship at first was Spenser's connection with
Leicester; what subsequently aggravated the
estrangement was his friendship with Essex.



Footnotes
---------

{1} See Peter Cunningham's _Introduction to Extracts
from Accounts of the Revels at Court_. (Shakspeare
Society.)
{2} It may be suggested that what are called the
archaisms of Spenser's style may be _in part_ due
to the author's long residence in the country with
one of the older forms of the language spoken all
round him and spoken by him, in fact his
vernacular. I say _in part_, because of course his
much study of Chaucer must be taken into account.