That all this region marvell'd at her fame:

But this brave peere extinct by hastned fate,

She staid, ah! too too long, in widowes state;

And in that state took so sweet state upon her

All eares, eyes, tongues, heard, saw,

and told, her honour, &c. A Dedication to this Lady Dowager Derby, full of the most exalted panegyric, is prefixed to Thomas Gainsford's Historie of Trebizonde, a set of tales. Lond. 1616. 4to.

But Milton is not the only Great English poet who has celebrated this Countess Dowager of Derby. She was the sixth daughter, as we have seen, of Sir John Spenser, with whose family Spenser the poet claimed an alliance. In his Colin Clouts come home again, written about 1595, he mentions her under the appellation of Amarillis, with her sisters Phillis, or Elizabeth, and

Charillis, or Anne; these three of Sir John Spenser's daughters being best known at court. See v. 536.

Ne lesse praise-worthy are the Sisters three, &c.

After a panegyric on the two first, he next comes to Amarillis, or Alice, our lady, the Dowager of the above-mentioned Ferdinando Lord Derby, lately dead.

But Amarillis, whether fortunate,
Or else unfortunate, as I aread,
That freed is from Cupid's yoke by
fate,

Since which, she doth new bands
adventure dread:

Shepheard, whatever thou hast heard
to be

In this or that praysd diversly apart,
In her thou maist them all assembled

see

And seald up in the treasure of her heart.

And in the same poem, he thus apostrophises to her late husband Earl Ferdinand, under the name Amyntas*. See v. 432.

Amyntas quite is gone, and lies full

lowe,

Having his Amarillis left to mone!
Help, O ye Shepheards, help ye all
in this,

Her losse is yours, your loss Amyntas
is;
Amyntas, flowre of Shepheards pride
forlorne: &c.

And to the same lady Alice, when Lady Strange, before her husband Ferdinand's advancement to the Earldom, Spenser addresses his Teares of the Muses,