0.1–0.6 To the most . . . new Poete: The formal title to the Dedicatory Epistle puts Gabriel Harvey, MA near the front of Spenser’s book (after Philip Sidney on the title page). Harvey was fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge during Spenser’s residence, as well as his close friend and his correspondent in the Letters. Harvey is principally remembered for his marginalia and his 1590s controversy with Thomas Nashe, the so-called Harvey-Nashe debate. Cf. Jan [10] and Sept [176] (see Goldberg 1989; SpE s.v. ‘Harvey, Gabriel’; Maley 2010: 17-22).

0.5 patronage: A curious term here, and rare in the Spenser canon. OED lists only two definitions applicable before 1579: 1) ‘Christian Church. The right of presenting a member of the clergy to a particular ecclesiastical benefice or living’; and 2) ‘The action of a patron in using money or influence to advance the interests of a person, cause, art’. At FQ DS Walsingham 13.8, Spenser uses the word in accord with the second definition.

1 VNCOVTHE VNKISTE: ‘Unknown, so not kissed’. A misquotation from, or imitation of, Chaucer, TC 1.809, taken from Pandarus’ advice to Troilus: ‘Unknowne, unkist’ (see SpE s.v. ‘Chaucer, Geoffrey’; A. King 2010: 554-6; Cook 2011). The allusion to Pandarus presents E.K. as a ‘go-between’ for bringing ‘the sense of the text and the reader together’, but E.K.’s ‘role of the pander . . . does not inspire confidence’, and instead invites the reader to view the glossator as part of the fictional performance, where ‘annotation [functions] as appropriation’, for E.K. is at times ‘pedantic, coy, and frequently inept’ (Kearney 2011: 112-3).

1 the olde famous Poete Chaucer: Does not merely contrast the ‘new Poete’ with Chaucer but puts the two together in a genealogy of English poets.

2 making: Formally identifies Chaucer as a ‘maker’. E.K. clarifies this meaning at Apr [19].

2–3 his scholler Lidgate: John Lydgate, a poet and monk, was an ardent admirer and imitator of Chaucer (as well as a friend to Chaucer’s son Thomas) and author of such poems as Troy Book and The Siege of Thebes. For Elizabethans, Lydgate was recognized as part of the triumvirate of great English poets, with Chaucer and John Gower. The word ‘scholler’ (meaning ‘pupil’) evokes Lydgate’s learning but also draws attention to his discipleship under Chaucer.

4 Loadestarre of our Language: A resonant, alliterative phrase highlighting Chaucer’s importance in a history of English. A lodestar is a guiding star, usually the pole star. Cf. Lydgate, Fall of Princes 1.252. Chaucer himself uses the metaphor, e.g., CT KnT 2059, TC 5.1392.

4 Colin clout: One of Spenser’s figures for himself as author, as E.K. notes at 113-21. See Jan [1], Sept [176] and their respective notes, as well as the note to 'Colin cloute’, Jan Arg 1.

5 Tityrus: Virgil’s pastoral persona in Eclogues 1 and 6, and thus in the unfolding literary tradition. Cf. Oct 55-60, [55]. For Chaucer as the English Tityrus, see Feb [92], June 81-96, [81], Dec 4 (cf. Envoy 9).

5 God of shepheards: Colin calls Tityrus/Chaucer by this designation at June 81. The phrase sets up a comparison (perhaps a typology) between Chaucer-as-Tityrus and Pan, whom Colin recurrently designates the ‘shepheardes God’ (Jan 17, Apr 51, Maye 113, Dec 7 and 50).

5 comparing: The phrasing suggests that Tityrus represents Chaucer in comparison with Virgil, in a genealogy of leading poets linking Rome with England.

6 prouerbe: Chaucer uses the word, e.g., TC 3.299, CT Monk 2246/3436.

7 Pandares: Pandarus, in Chaucer’s TC; here, a possessive.

12 tromp: A traditional symbol of fame but also the instrument of epic (FQ I.pr.1.4).

14–16 wittinesse . . . wisenesse: This roll call of linguistic achievements draws attention to Spenser’s intelligence, artistry, wisdom, and moral value, as well as his pleasantness and utility in society---all the more impressive because he writes in the idiom of ‘pastorall rudenesse’.

17 Decorum: A major rhetorical standard, signaling propriety of language, genre, and subject. ‘[U]nder it one might subsume all Aristotle’s pleas to suit style to subject and to audience, arguments to audience, gestures and voice to style, etc.’ (Lanham 1968: 29-30). Cf. Puttenham, Arte of English Poesy (1589), 3.23: 347-60.

20–21 words . . . auncient: Marks off the distinctiveness of Spenser’s archaism in the Calender (see Var 7.614-30, SpE s.v. ‘archaism’, ‘dialect’, ‘language’; Nicholson 2014: 100-23). For criticism of archaism, see Puttenham, Arte of English Poesy 3.4: 229 (‘Our maker therefore at these days shall not follow Piers Plowman nor Gower nor Lydgate nor yet Chaucer, for their language is now out of use with us: neither shall he take the terms of northern men’); Sidney, Defence of Poetry (1595, composed c. 1580): ‘That same framing of his [Spenser’s] style to an old rustic language I dare not allow’ (1973: 112). Sidney's disapproval is striking, because E.K. both asks him to defend the text and mocks anyone foolish enough to disapprove of the language.

20–23 straunge . . . straungest . . . straungenesse: The concept has a range of meanings, from ‘unfamiliar’ to ‘exceptional to a degree that excites wonder or astonishment’, as well as ‘belonging to another country; foreign, alien’ (OED).

22 the whole Periode and compasse of speache: ‘The complete duration and scope of speech’. A grammatically complete sentence, esp. one made up of a number of clauses formed into a balanced or rhythmical whole; (more generally) a series of sentences seen as a linguistic whole. In pl.: rhetorical or ornamental language’. Yet E.K.’s phrase seems also to reflect another sense of period, i.e. 'duration'. E.K.’s word ‘compasse’ here means ‘scope’, ‘space’, ‘circumference’ (OED); it recurs at 76 and 113.

26In . . . traueiled: ’To be travailed in’ means 'to be learned or well-read in an author or body of knowledge, or to be experienced in some skill.’ Spenser puns on the idiom here, suggesting that his readings in 'most excellent Authors and most famous Poetes’ is a labored travel, a long journey, on foot.

27 that worthy Oratour: Marcus Tullius Cicero in De Oratore 2.14.60.

30–31 hit out: A rare and obsolete phrase meaning ‘To bring out, come out with’ (OED).

35–37 obsolete wordes . . . bring great grace and . . . auctoritie to the verse: A major claim, disputed by such early readers as Puttenham and Sidney (see 19-21n).

38–39 Valla . . . Liuie . . . Saluste: Lorenzo Valla was an Italian humanist who became private Latin secretary to Alfonso V of Aragon, and who, in Emendationes in Livium de Bello Punico (1532, 1540), criticized Livy for relying on his Paduan dialect. Titus Livius was a Roman historian, author of The History of Rome. Caius Sallustius Crispus was also a Roman historian, author of The Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jugurthine War, whose penchant for archaism had been attacked most recently by Roger Ascham in The Scholemaster (1570). Ascham, in 1579 the recently deceased tutor to Queen Elizabeth, may well be E.K.’s anonymous ‘other’ (Maclean and Prescott suggest Sir John Cheke, tutor to Edward VI [1993: 502]). Livy and Sallust join Cicero (‘that worthy Oratour’, mentioned by name subsequently) as Roman republicans who oppose monarchy. In being of the ‘opinion’ that ‘auncient solemne wordes are a great ornament’, E.K. sides with Livy and Sallust: ‘the one’ (E.K. continues) ‘labouring to set forth in hys worke an eternall image of antiquitie, and the other carefully discoursing matters of gravitie and importaunce’ (43-4). Significantly, the ‘eternall image of antiquitie’ that E.K. finds in Livy is a history of the Roman Republic. Livy, Sallust, and especially Cicero are important for defining a republic as relating a ‘free person’ to a ‘free state’: ‘Like a free person, a free state is one that is able to act according to its own will’ (Skinner 2002: 2.301). Spenser would have started studying the style of both Livy and Sallust (along with Cicero and other classical authors) at Merchant Taylors’ School (Hadfield 2012: 29-30), but in a letter to Spenser dated 7 April 1580 Harvey reports that undergraduates at Cambridge are focusing on Livy and Sallust rather than Cicero and Demosthenes (Let 2.335-6; see Hadfield 2012: 70; for the importance of Livy to Harvey, see Jardine and Grafton 1990; Schurink 2011: 58-78).

45–47 Tullie . . . reuerend: During the Renaissance, humanists often called Cicero ‘Tully’. At De Oratore 3.38, Cicero defends old words on the grounds that they lend dignity to rhetoric; at Orator 80, he similarly allows for occasional use of archaic diction in style.

46 paterne of a perfect Oratour: Cf. Oct Arg, ‘the perfecte paterne of a Poete’.

51–52 as in old buildings . . . ruinous: The comparison between language and architecture recurs throughout the Calender, especially in Spenser’s word ‘frame’ (e.g., Dec 77 and note). See 19 for E.K.’s praise of Spenser for ‘framing his words’ and 101 for a style that is ‘finely framed’.

52 pictures: The comparison between pictures and words evokes the Horatian tradition of ut pictura poesis (‘as is painting, so is poetry’ [Ars Poetica 361]), a staple of English Renaissance poetics. See note on ‘some Picture’ Feb Arg 11.

61 Alceus: Alcaeus was a Greek lyric poet of the 6th c. BCE, but E.K. is actually citing Cicero, De Natura Deorum 1.79.

65–66 marking . . . cast: A metaphor taken from archery: by not recognizing the goal of the archer’s aim, the reader will misgauge the extent of his shot. The ‘compass’ is the curved trajectory of the arrow.

67–70 this Poete . . . restore . . . Mother tonge: Arguably the grandest claim of the Calender, Spenser’s attempt to restore luster to the English language within a European competition against ‘french . . . Italian . . . Latine’ (75). This project is connected to the circle surrounding Matthew Parker, who was Archbishop of Canterbury before Edward Grindal (Crawforth 2011).

73–74 patched . . . peces and rags: Spenser stitches the clothing metaphor into the name of his persona, Colin Clout, since a ‘clout’ is ‘A piece of cloth’ (OED). The comparison of poetry to clothing recurs throughout the Calender (cf. Oct 87 for poetry’s ‘peeced pyneons’).

79 they: 1581 crudely expands the abbreviated form (thẽ) in 1579 to ‘then’; we adopt the corrected reading from 1586.

82 Euanders mother: Evander was an Arcadian leader who took up residence on Mount Palatine (Virgil, Aen 8.51-4). E.K.’s reference comes from Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.5.1; for his mother's archaic diction, see Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 1.10.2.

92 dogge in the maunger: Proverbial (see C.G. Smith 1970, no. 192).

102 spue out: Cf. Lev 18:28, Rev 3:16.

103 hunt the letter: Use extravagant alliteration. Cf. Sidney, Defence, criticizing poets’ ‘coursing [chasing] of a letter, as if they were bound to follow the method of a dictionary’ (1973: 117).

104–106 iangle . . . rage . . . instinct . . . Poeticall spirite . . . rauished: E.K. criticizes ‘the rakehellye route of our ragged rymers’ (102-3) for bungling the poetic principle of Neoplatonic fury so important to Spenser, especially on display in Oct (see headnote, where we suggest that the use of such language evokes the sublime).

106 aboue the meanenesse of commen capacitie: The bad poets E.K. criticizes falsify what Longinus in On Sublimity calls the sublime, an aesthetics of heightened language that Longinus locates in Homer’s Iliad, the Greek tragedians, Plato, Cicero, Demosthenes, and others.

110 Pythia: The prophetess of Apollo at Delphi. E.K. alludes to the Cumaean Sybil foretelling Aeneas’ victory in Virgil, Aen 6.77-97. Longinus uses the Pythia as his arch-myth to represent the sublime poet (On Sublimity 14.2; see P. Cheney 2009: 16).

111 Os . . . domans: ‘[he tires her] raving mouth, tames her wild heart’ (Virgil, Aen 6.80).

113–114 Colin . . . Authour selfe: The first identification of Colin with Spenser.

116–118 Of Muses . . . my vnrest: Quotations from June 65 and 79; yet 65 reads, more accurately, ‘Of Muses Hobbinol, I conne no skill’.

120 couertly: According to Puttenham, Arte of English Poesy, pastoral should ‘under the veil of homely persons and in rude speeches . . . insinuate and glaunce at greater matters and such as perchance had not been safe to have been disclosed in any other sort’ (1.18: 128).

126 habilities: We follow 1586, assuming that the question mark in 1579 reflects a misreading of copy. It may be that a semi-colon would be preferable to a colon: MS semi-colon could either have been read as a question mark or MS semi-colon, correctly apprehended, could have been misrepresented, had a question-mark been mistakenly distributed to the sort-box for semi-colons.

127–128 as young birdes . . . greater flyght: A recurrent topos of Spenser’s literary career, introduced here, and accommodated to pastoral as a literary form preparatory to epic (P. Cheney 1993). The trope is central especially to October, when ‘Colin fittes such famous flight to scanne’ (88; see note).

129–131 Theocritus . . . Sanazarus: E.K.’s inventory neglects the authors in a tradition of native pastoral preceding the Calender, represented by the earl of Surrey, who wrote one pastoral eclogue in Tottel’s Miscellany (1557); Alexander Barclay, who wrote five pastoral eclogues (published as a set in 1570); George Turberville, who translated Mantuan’s Eclogues (1567); and Barnabe Googe, who wrote Eglogues (1568). See SC Intro 1.XX.

129 Theocritus: Greek poet of the third century BC whose Idylls inaugurated the genre of pastoral literature.

130 Mantuane: Baptista Spagnuoli of Mantua published eight of his ten Latin eclogues in 1498; some of these eclogues were imitated in English by Barclay.

131 Petrarque: Francesco Petrarch, now most famous as the author of the Italian Rime Sparse, also produced twelve influential Latin eclogues, Bucolicum Carmen .

131 Boccace: Giovanni Boccaccio, author of The Decameron, wrote sixteen Latin eclogues and the Italian pastoral romance, L'Ameto.

131 Marot: Clément Marot, who wrote four eclogues in French, two of which Spenser imitates in November and December (see headnotes).

131 Sanazarus: Jacopo Sannazzaro, who wrote several Latin piscatory eclogues (i.e., featuring fisherman instead of shepherds), as well as the romantic prose and verse Arcadia.

133–134 foting . . . followeth . . . trace him out: An important metaphor of authorship, linking imitation with interpretation, the poet’s following in the footsteps of other poets and the reader tracking these literary maneuverings. The pun on metrical foot clarifies what lies behind the idea of following someone’s footsteps: the hunt, a form of competition, which extends to the reader, who traces the author’s tracking of other authors. (On the pun, see Hinds 1987: 16, citing Catullus, Poems 14.21-3; Horace, Ars Poetica 80; Ovid, Met 5.264, Am 3.1.8, Tristia 1.1.15-16. Origins lie in Lucretius, DRN 1.404-09. On the ‘image of tracking the deer as an analogy for interpretation’ being ‘a typically Stoic conception’, see Pugh 2005: 79.) Spenser elsewhere uses the hunt as a trope for authorship (e.g., Let 1.58-60). Sometimes he does not make the hunt explicit in his travel metaphor: Envoy 11 (see note; on the link between the two metaphors, and on the meaning of ‘trace’ as hunt, see Bates 2013, chapter 1, citing E.K.’s trope).

135 principals: According to the lexicon of falconry, the two outermost primary feathers in each wing.

135–136 in time shall be hable to keepe wing with the best: At once a bold prophecy of Spenser’s authorship and a marketing ploy for the author’s future publications.

137 the generall dryft and purpose: E.K. goes on to identify only two ends to the Calender, neither of which encompasses the full ambition of the twelve eclogues, since the two speak only to the author’s youthful sex life: ‘to mitigate and allay the heate of his passion, or els to warne (as he sayth) the young shepheards’ (139-40). Whereas the first suggests a therapeutic end to writing for the author, the second suggests an ethical end for the reader.

144 olde name: The Kalender of Shepherdes (first published 1506), an English version of Guy de Marchant’s Le Compost et Calendrier des Bergers, an almanac of astrological and miscellaneous learning, often revised and reprinted during the sixteenth century (Shinn 2009).

145–151 Glosse or scholion . . . nations: Here E.K. explains why he has added a gloss to the eclogues: to draw attention to ‘wordes and matter’ that would ‘passe’ the reader by; and to make the work compete with that of other ‘nations’. In particular, the Calender coheres with Renaissance editions of Virgil, Sannazaro, the Geneva Bible, and other books (McCanles 1982; W.J. Kennedy 1985; Kearney 2011).

158–159 Dreames . . . Cupide: Not extant. Some of these works might be incorporated into later poems (see SpE s.v. ‘works, lost’; Celovsky 2010). For ‘Dreames’, cf. Nov [195] and note. The list implies a parallel with Chaucer, whose apocryphal works included, in the sixteenth century, Chaucer’s Dream, the legend The Judgement of Paris, and The Court of Cupid.

161–162 pleasurable or profitable: The Horatian dictum for the two aims of poetry (Ars Poetica 343-4).

165 the maydenhead of this our commen frends Poetrie: Marks a link between virginity and publication. Humanists frequently used erotic language to address the practice of scholarly commentary in Renaissance editions; cf. E.K. on Chaucerian kissing and pandering at SC Ded Ep 1-10 (see Wallace 2007: E.K. here practices ‘a trick learned in the humanist schoolroom’ [163]).

167 Ma. Phi. Sidney: Identified on the title page as the book’s dedicatee, although E.K.'s letter to Harvey treats Harvey as the dedicatee of his efforts; see To His Booke 11 and note. Since Sidney would not be knighted until 1583, 'Master' is an appropriate form of address.

169 Enuie: See To His Booke 5 and note.

169–170 your mighty Rhetorick: In April 1574, Harvey had been appointed University Praelector of Rhetoric at Cambridge. He was well known as a leading Ramist in England, championing the rhetorical theory of Petrus Ramus from France (see Ong 1958). In 1579, Richard Bridgewater (or Bridgwater) was known to be about to resign the position of Public Orator at Cambridge, and Harvey was jockeying for the position, which he failed to get; this passage may contribute to Harvey's campaign for the post.

180–193 Post scr . . . 10. of Aprill. 1579: The postscript on Harvey’s deserving of ‘the garlond’ (179) for his English and Latin poems feels like an afterthought but also underscores Harvey’s role as a poet, complementing his role as a rhetorician at the end of the Epistle proper (‘your mighty Rhetorick’ [168-9]). The date may be deliberately misleading, predating the contract drawn up for the queen's proposed marriage to Alençon in November 1579 (see Nov gl 16) so as to deflect suspicion from an author critical of the match (McLane 1961: 53-4; see Pugh 2016: 149-51).

190 Latine Poemes: Cf. Sept [176] and note.