no writers have such power as he to awake the spirit of poetry in others.  Cowley owns that he derived inspiration from him; and I have heard the celebrated Mr. James Thomson, the author of the Seasons, and justly esteemed one of our best descriptive poets, say, that he formed himself upon Spenser; and how closely he pursued the model, and how nobly he has imitated him, whoever reads his Castle of Indolence with taste, will readily confess.

Mr. Addison, in his characters of the English Poets, addressed to Mr. Sacheverel, thus speaks of Spenser: 

  Old Spenser next, warm’d with poetic rage,
  In ancient tales amus’d a barb’rous age;
  An age, that yet uncultivate and rude,
  Where-e’er the poet’s fancy led, pursued
  Thro’ pathless fields, and unfrequented floods,
  To dens of dragons, and enchanted woods. 
  But now the mystic tale, that pleas’d of yore,
  Can charm an understanding age no more;
  The long spun allegories, fulsome grow,
  While the dull moral lyes too plain below. 
  We view well pleased at distance, all the sights,
  Of arms, and palfries, battles, fields, and fights,
  And damsels in distress, and courteous knights. 
  But when we look too near, the shades decay,
  And all the pleasing landscape fades away.

It is agreed on all hands, that the distresses of our author helped to shorten his days, and indeed, when his extraordinary merit is considered, he had the hardest measure of any of our poets.  It appears from different accounts, that he was of an amiable sweet disposition, humane and generous in his nature.  Besides the Fairy Queen, we find he had written several other pieces, of which we can only trace out the titles.  Among these, the most considerable were nine comedies, in imitation of the comedies of his admired Ariosto, inscribed with the names of the Nine Muses.  The rest which are mentioned in his letters, and those of his friends, are his Dying Pelicane, his Pageants, Stemmata Dudleyana, the Canticles paraphrazed, Ecclesiastes, Seven Psalms, Hours of our Lord, Sacrifice of a Sinner, Purgatory, a S’ennight Slumber, the Court of Cupid, and Hell of Lovers.  It is likewise said, he had written a treatise in prose called the English Poet:  as for the Epithalamion Thamesis, and his Dreams, both mentioned by himself in one of his letters, Mr. Hughes thinks they are still preserved, tho’ under different names.  It appears from what is said of the Dreams by his friend Mr. Harvey, that they were in imitation of Petrarch’s Visions.

To produce authorities in favour of Spenser, as a poet.  I should reckon an affront to his memory; that is a tribute which I shall only pay to inferior wits, whose highest honour it is to be mentioned with respect, by genius’s of a superior class.  The works of Spenser will never perish, tho’ he has introduced unnecessarily many obsolete terms into them; there is a flow of poetry, an elegance of sentiment, a fund of imagination, and an enchanting enthusiasm which will ever secure him the applauses of posterity while any lovers of poetry remain.