'
To the year 1569 belongs that mention referred to
above of payment made one 'Edmund Spenser' for bearing
letters from France. As has been already remarked, it
is scarcely probable that this can have been the poet,
then a youth of some seventeen years on the verge of
his undergraduateship.
The one certain event of Spenser's life in the
year 1569 is that he was then entered as a sizar at
Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. He 'proceeded B.A.' in 1573,
and 'commenced M.A.' in 1576. There is some reason for
believing that his college life was troubled in much
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.
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