on terms of some familiarity, and there was an engagement between them to exchange letters while he should be abroad. There is one remarkable expression in the course of this letter, which, understood loosely, would lead us to believe that Spenser had even been already presented to the Queen. "Your desire," he says, " to know of my late being with her Majesty must die in itself." But the most that these words will really warrant is, that he had at some time been employed as Leicester's agent on confidential business with Elizabeth. Had the business not been of this character, there was no reason for making a mystery of the circumstance, and that a formal presentation at court is not intended requires no argument, for that would have been announced with something of the same flourish with which so notable an event is celebrated in "Colin Clout's come Home again."

The Shepherds' Calendar had been now perhaps a long time completed. An officious friend, whose name still remains concealed under the initials E. K.,1 had

1 As Spenser is known to have been on intimate terms with a Mrs. Kerke, that name has been suggested for his editor. Another hypothesis is that E. K. and the poet were the same person. But to say nothing of the meanness of a man's praising himself under a disguise, we should be sorry to think Spenser capable of the pedantry and folly which the comments of E. K. display. Those who do not stick at such an admission may, however, be unwilling to grant that he did not understand himself; that he could have explained astart," befall unawares"; entrailed, "wrought between"; forsatt, "sunburnt." E. K. professes, indeed, to have been in Spenser's confidence, and "privy to his secret meaning"; but he has told us very little that we could not have guessed without his help, while he has left much unexplained that we should like to know.

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furnished a sort of general introduction, arguments to each Eclogue, and a running gloss, in which he attempted to explain what he regarded as the more difficult allusions and hard words, and had prefixed to the whole a letter to Gabriel Harvey (dated the 10th of April, 1579), commending the virgin work of the new poet" to his patronage and protection. All this he had done on his own responsibility, and without the knowledge of Spenser, who had been "for long time far estranged"; absent from London, we may suppose, in the North country and in Kent. In addition to this poem Spenser had written several others, which were in circulation among his friends; but all of these he hesitated to publish, for reasons of modesty or of prudence thus stated to Harvey. "First, I was minded for a while to have intermitted the uttering of my writings, least, by overmuch cloying their noble ears, I should gather a contempt for myself, or else seem rather for gain and commodity to do it, for some sweetness that I have already tasted. Then also me seemeth the work too base for his excellent lordship, being made in honor of a private personage unknown, which of some illwillers might be upbraided not to be so worthy as you know she is; or the matter not so weighty that it should be offered to so weighty a personage, or the like." The particular work here referred to, in honor of Rosalind, is very probably, after all, only the Shepherds' Calendar, of which she might be regarded as the heroine, although she by no means constitutes its sole subject, and which, though dedicated to Sidney from the beginning could not dispense with the approbation of Leicester.

All scruples, of whatever nature, were finally overcome, and the Shepherds' Calendar was given to the world in December, 1579. Both the author and his commentator expected the book to be severely handled, probably on account of the strong Puritanic or Low Church sentiments of two of the Eclogues, and this may be the reason why it was published anonymously. It went through five editions in seventeen years, but the name of the author seems for some time not to have

become generally known. One John Dove, who translated it into Latin verse between 1584 and 1596, had evidently never heard of Spenser, and George Whetstone ascribed it, eight years after it appeared, to Philip Sidney. The merits of the work were peculiar and great, but not such as we are likely to appreciate at this distance of time. If it suffers by a contrast with what Spenser and others effected afterwards, it appears to advantage side by side with any poetical composition that had preceded it for a hundred and fifty years. The author, while deprecating a comparison with Chaucer and Piers Plouhman," plainly aspires to be considered of their school, and not of the cold, forced, and affected versifiers that intervened between them and his day. And if his earliest production be not entirely free from the faults of his predecessors and contemporaries, if it be chargeable with artificial sentiments, with extravagance, with the poor conceit of alliteration, with a want of originality, sincerity, and force, it has still

1 It was entered in the Stationers' Registers on the 5th of Do cember.

2 "Dare not to match thy pype with Tityrus his stile,

Nor with the Pilgrim that the ploughman playd a while."

much of the free movement, the essential music, the richness, life, and spirit of genuine poetry.

It will be convenient to notice in this place several early compositions of Spenser, which have either been entirely lost, or, if preserved at all, have come down to us incorporated in his later poems. These are,

1. His Dreams. A work described in a letter to Harvey of the 10th of April,' 1580, as fully finished and presently to be imprinted, and in a postscript further said to be grown as great as the Calendar by means of a gloss, or running paraphrase, which E. K. had written to it. Of this production Harvey speaks thus in reply to the letter of Spenser just mentioned: "Extra jocum, I like your Dreams passingly well; and the rather because they savor of that singular extraordinary vein and invention which I ever fancied most, and in a manner admired only in Lucian, Petrarch, Aretine, Pasquil, and all the most delicate and fine-conceited Grecians and Italians (for the Romans to speak of are but very ciphers in this kind); whose chiefest endeavor and drift was, to have nothing vulgar, but in some respect or other, and especially in lively hyperbolical amplifications, rare, quaint, and odd in every point, and, as a man would say, a degree or two at the least above the reach and compass of a common scholar's capacity." And he afterwards proceeds: "I dare say you will hold yourself reasonably well satisfied, if your Dreams be but as well esteemed

1 The date is printed "quarto Nonas Aprilis," but Nonas must be a mistake for Idus, since the earthquake of the 6th of April is mentioned at the beginning of the letter. Harvey's reply, carelessly stated by Todd and others to be without date, was written on the 23d of April, nono Calendas Maias.

of in England as Petrarch's Visions be in Italy; which, I assure you, is the very worst I wish you." From what is said by both parties, we may infer that the Dreams was of a similar character to Petrarch's Visions, but a comparatively extensive work, and by no means only the seven Sonnets printed under that title among the Complaints.

2. Nine Comedies. These are mentioned in two letters of Harvey, in one of them in such terms as to show beyond doubt that they were dramatic compositions: "To be plain, I am void of all judgment if your Nine Comedies, whereunto, in imitation of Herodotus, you give the names of the Nine Muses (and in one man's fancy not unworthily) come not nearer Ariosto's comedies, either for the fineness of plausible elocution, or the rareness of poetical invention, than that Elvish Queen doth to his Orlando Furioso, which notwithstanding you will needs seem to emulate and hope to overgo, as you flatly professed yourself in one of your last letters. Besides that you know it hath been the usual practice of the most exquisite and odd wits in all nations, and specially in Italy, rather to show and advance themselves that way than any other; as, namely, those three notorious discoursing heads, Bibiena, Machiavel, and Aretine did (to let Bembo and Ariosto pass), with the great admiration and wonderment of the whole country; being indeed reputed matchable in all points, both for conceit of wit and eloquent deciphering of matters, either with Aristophanes and Menander in Greek, or

1 See the Correspondence, Appendix II., Vol. V.