ABSTRACT
No Elizabethan writer, however, displays a closer relationship to Chaucer than does Spenser. This kinship was early recognized, in the epitaph on Spenser’s tomb as reported by Camden, which begins: ‘Hic prope Chaucerum situs est Spenserius, illi/Proximus ingenio, proximus ut tumulo’ (‘Here, buried next to Chaucer, lies Spenser, close to him in wit, and as close in his tomb’). Similarly, Nashe refers to ‘Chaucer, and Spencer, the Homer and Virgil of England.’ These judgments were endorsed a century later by Dryden in his preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern: ‘Spencer more than once insinuates, that the Soul of Chaucer was transfus’d into his Body; and that he was begotten by him Two hundred years after his Decease’ (Sp All pp 75, 28, 311).
