by Mr. Hughes, which I shall present the reader, as it serves to illustrate the great worth and penetration of Sidney, as well as the excellent genius of Spenser.  It is said that our poet was a stranger to this gentleman, when he began to write his Fairy Queen, and that he took occasion to go to Leicester-house, and introduce himself by sending in to Mr. Sidney a copy of the ninth Canto of the first book of that poem.  Sidney was much surprized with the description of despair in that Canto, and is said to have shewn an unusual kind of transport on the discovery of so new and uncommon a genius.  After he had read some stanza’s, he turned to his steward, and bid him give the person that brought those verses fifty pounds; but upon reading the next stanza, he ordered the sum to be doubled.  The steward was no less surprized than his master, and thought it his duty to make some delay in executing so sudden and lavish a bounty; but upon reading one stanza stanza more, Mr. Sidney raised the gratuity to two hundred pounds, and commanded the steward to give it immediately, lest as he read further he might be tempted to give away his whole estate.  From this time he admitted the author to his acquaintance and conversation, and prepared the way for his being known and received at court.

Tho’ this seemed a promising omen, to be thus introduced to court, yet he did not instantly reap any advantage from it.  He was indeed created poet laureat to Queen Elizabeth, but he for some time wore a barren laurel, and possessed only the place without the pension [2].  Lord treasurer Burleigh, under whose displeasure Spenser laboured, took care to intercept the Queen’s favours to this unhappy great man.  As misfortunes have the most influence on elegant and polished minds, so it was no wonder that Spenser was much depressed by the cold reception he met with from the great; a circumstance which not a little detracts from the merit of the ministers then in power:  for I know not if all the political transactions of Burleigh, are sufficient to counterballance the infamy affixed on his name, by prosecuting resentment against distressed merit, and keeping him who was the ornament of the times, as much distant as possible from the approach of competence.  These discouragements greatly sunk our author’s spirit, and accordingly we find him pouring out his heart, in complaints of so injurious and undeserved a treatment; which probably, would have been less unfortunate to him, if his noble patron Sir Philip Sidney had not been so much absent from court, as by his employments abroad, and the share he had in the Low-Country wars, he was obliged to be.  In a poem called, The Ruins of Time, which was written some time after Sidney’s death, the author seems to allude to the discouragement I have mentioned in the following stanza.

  O grief of griefs, O gall of all good hearts! 
  To see that virtue should despised be,
  Of such as first were raised for virtue’s parts,
  And now broad-spreading like an aged tree,
  Let none shoot up that nigh them planted be;
  O let not these, of whom the muse is scorned,
  Alive or dead be by the muse adorned.