The vexed problem of Spenser's missing works, incapable as it inevitably is of absolutely certain solution, has nevertheless been treated, in a recent article by Mr. Philo M. Buck, Jr., with results that are interesting and on the whole satisfactory, though marked, as it seems at least to the present writer, by certain faults of method. Mr. Buck believes, as do various critics, that the greater number of the so-called lost works are to be found in Spenser's extant writings. He contends further that the poet, as a measure of political prudence, voluntarily suppressed them in 1580, only to draw them forth about 1591, when he was wrathful at royal neglect, and eager to level their satire at his enemy, Burghley; and most of them, Mr. Buck argues, were published in the Complaints (1591) and in the Faerie Queene. In our consideration of the article, after the inaccuracy of method has been noted, and certain minor phases of the argument have been questioned, it will remain for us to emphasize the probability of the main contention, and the wider significance it has for Spenser's method of composition, especially as regards the Faerie Queene.