Why Pembroke College, Cambridge, should have chosen July 19th for
its commemoration of the birth of Edmund Spenser I don't quite know, for it is not certain even that the poet was born in 1552 at all, much less on what particular day in that year. But what does a date matter, except as a peg to hang a lunch on ? No one will doubt the propriety of the steps Pembroke is taking to recall one of its most distinguished and slightly forgotten sons, who was, after all, the first great English poet since Chaucer and the first of the brilliant Eliza- bethan constellation. Not many people read The Faery Queen today, and of those who do still fewer get to the end of it. But Spenser did at least popularise, or rather invent, what can still only be described as the nine-line Spenserian stanza, made much more familiar to modern ears by Shelley than by its author. Whether there are to be other Spenser celebrations I have not heard. Certainly it is fitting that his own college (which also produced Gray nearly two centuries later) should
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