338.Stanza on Spenser's "Shepherd's Calender."

—In some of the early quarto editions of Spenser, in the "Shepherd's Calender," June, there is a stanza which in almost all the subsequent folio editions is omitted. I shall be much obliged for any information as to when and why it was left out; in the copies in which it appears it is the twelfth stanza, and is as follows:—

"Now dead he is, and lieth wrapt in led,

(O why should death on him such outrage show?)

And all his passing skill with him is fled,

The fame whereof doth daily greater grow;

But if on me some little drops would flow

Of that the spring was in his learned head,

I soon should learn these words to wail my woe,

And teach the trees their trickling tears to shed."

The last line is a good specimen of alliteration.

E. N. W.

Southwark, Nov. 17. 1851.