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.
But, as Mr. Richard Morris has remarked to me, he
could not have drawn from Chaucer those forms and
words of a _northern_ dialect which appear in the
_Calendar_.
{3} These are given in the Appendix to the present
work.
{4} This supposed description of his first love was
written probably during the courtship, which ended,
as we shall see, in his marriage. The First Love
is said to be portrayed in cant. vii., the Last in
cant. x. of book vi. of the _Faerie Queene_. But
this identification of Rosalind and Mirabilla is,
after all, but a conjecture, and is not be accepted
as gospel.
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