The first my being to me gave by kind
From mothers womb deriv'd by dew descent.
The second is the Queen, the third 'my love, my lives
last ornament.' A careful examination by Mr. Collier
and others of what parish registers there are extant in
such old churches as stand near East Smithfield--the
Great Fire, it will be remembered, broke out some
distance west of the Tower, and raged mainly westward--
has failed to discover any trace of the infant Spenser
or his parents. An 'Edmund Spenser' who is mentioned
in the Books of the Treasurer of the Queen's Chamber in
1569, as paid for bearing letters from Sir Henry
Norris, her Majesty's ambassador in France, to the
Queen,{1} and who with but slight probability has been
surmised to be the poet himself, is scarcely more
plausibly conjectured by Mr. Collier to be the poet's
father. The utter silence about his parents, with the
single exception quoted, in the works of one who, as
has been said above, made poetry the confidante of all
his joys and sorrows, is remarkable.
Whoever they were, he was well connected on his
father's side at least. 'The nobility of the
Spensers,' writes Gibbon, 'has been illustrated and
enriched by the trophies of Marlborough; but I exhort
them to consider the "Faerie Queen" as the most
precious jewel of their coronet.
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