2 complaint: See 1.2-4.

4–6 let my . . . came: Harvey’s affectation of lack of interest in the hexameters he has sent to Spenser works, in backhanded fashion, to solicit a more detailed reaction than the rather generalized approval Spenser offered at 1.18-19.

16 Ascham . . . Scholemaister: Ascham makes the case for quantitative versifying in English in Book 2 of The Scholemaster (R4-S2).

17–20 I would . . . Obseruations: Harvey here responds to Spenser’s reference to his own ‘Rules and Precepts of Arte’, which he has described as based on those ‘that M. Philip Sidney gave me, being the same which M. Drant devised, but enlarged with M. Sidneys own judgement, and augmented with my Observations’. Harvey is asking for copies of Drant’s, Sidney’s, and Spenser’s rules, although his playful use of the language of polite social intercourse—as if he were asking Spenser to introduce him to Drant’s Prosody, Sidney’s Judgement, and Immerito’s Observations—slightly obscures his sense. (Harvey makes a related joke in the prior letter (2.545-546) where he asks to be commended to Spenser’s own self and asks Spenser to convey a message to two of Spenser’s compositions.)

31 into Arte: Since the fourteenth century many humanists had set themselves the goal of vernacular linguistic reform, meant to confer on language use a recognizably artificial elegance and richness. For a critical review of related programs of vernacular reform, see Burke 2004, 17-21 and 89-95; also Scaglione 1984.

34 our Common Naturall Prosodye: ‘Naturall’ is used here in contrast with ‘Artificiall’ earlier in the sentence. Harvey seems to be referring to the relatively informal accentual-syllabic system of most then-contemporary English ‘rhyming’.

34–35 Sir Thomas Smithes: Born, like Harvey, in Saffron Walden, Smith was educated at Cambridge and held the first Regius Professorship of Civil Law. (At Jan, gl 12, E.K. refers to Smith as one of Harvey’s kinsmen.) Under the influence of Sir John Cheke, Regius Professor of Greek, whose efforts at orthographic reform preceded his, Smith began a treatise on the subject in the 1540s, but that work was published only posthumously, as the De recta et emendata lingua anglicae scriptione (‘On correct and reformed English spelling’; 1568); see Scragg 1974.

36 some other: Other systems of orthographic reform had been proposed or were being formulated by Cheke, Richard Mulcaster, John Hart, and William Bullokar.

46–48 he that can . . . from the other: ‘Someone who can give good practical examples of versifying can easily sketch the general rules—the precepts and the ‘arte’—that govern such versifying, since the general art derives (‘fetcheth his original’) from the practice.’ (The next sentence makes it clear that Harvey regards precept as a derivation from practice, thus resolving the difficulty presented in this sentence—that the referent of ‘one’ in ‘skil of the one’ is ‘Examples’, whereas the referent of ‘one’ in ‘considering that the one’ is ‘Preceptes’ and ‘General Arte’.)

52 Ennius: Although only fragments of his poetry survive, Quintus Ennius was long regarded as the first important Roman poet. The phrase quoted below is taken from his epic poem in dactylic hexameters, the Annales, which traced Roman history from the fall of Troy to the present.

58–60

τῑ . . . nobis: Elizabethan grammarians recognized a number of rules by which orthography and position determined the quantity of a syllable, but these rules were not exhaustive: the length of many syllables could not be determined by rule. (For more on ‘length by position’, see the Introduction, XX.) Harvey follows Lily (and others) in alleging that, in such cases, the practice of early poets determines the quantity on otherwise indeterminate syllables: Quarum verò syllabarum quantitas sub praedictas rationes non cadit, à poetarum, exemplo atque autoritate petenda est, certissima omnium regula (‘As for syllables whose quantity does not fall under the rules already mentioned, quantity is derived from the practice, example, and authority of poets, which are the most certain of rules’; Grammar, 1567, H1). According to Harvey, the first syllables of τιμὴ, timē (‘honor’) and unus (‘one’) were ‘naturally’ short, but Homer and Ennius made them long by the very act of beginning lines of their epics with those words. (Classical epic poems were usually composed in lines of dactylic hexameter, the first syllable of which must be long.)

The half line from Homer, ‘timē d’ ek dios esti’, may be rendered ‘Honour is from Zeus’ (Il 2.197); the complete line from Ennius’ Annales is unus homo nobis cunctando, restituit rem, ‘one man, by delaying, restored the state to us’.

60 this by-disputation: Harvey is referring to the tangentially-related debate on the relation of precept and example.

64 Analitiques, and Metaphysikes: Aristotle’s fundamental work on scientific method is concentrated in the Prior Analytics, the Posterior Analytics, and the Metaphysics.

67 ἐμπειρία, ἱστορία, αἴσθησις, ἐπαγωγή: That empeiria (‘experience’), historia (‘inquiry, researches’), aisthēsis (‘perception’), and epagōgē (‘intuitive induction’) are, in effect, the main anchors of knowledge, both informal and scientific, explains why Harvey refers to these as ‘Golden termes’. According to Aristotle, empeiria is built up in memory out of multiple perceptions; empeiria produces universals in the soul by means of epagōgē (Post An B19). Although historia is a term that appears most frequently in Aristotle’s biological works, it is used in the Prior Analytics to refer to the sort of systematic empirical investigation that supplies the first principles (mainly definitions) peculiar to each of the sciences (Pr An A30).

68–69 Ianuarie gift . . . Christmas Gambowlde: Alluding to the robust traditions of gift-giving on New Year’s Day and festive play on Christmas.

69 after Easter: Provides a terminus ab quo for the composition of the letter, since Easter 1580 took place on 13 April.

73 fancie: Although the word can mean ‘whimsical preference’, it can also be used to denote critical assessment.

74–77

Harvey’s ‘A New Yeeres Gift’, to which he refers as nos Trinitatem (‘our Trinity’) at 2.687 above, may be scanned thus:

Some observations on the scansions may be useful here, especially since Harvey’s procedure often seems less than systematic. There are some odd irregularities: he usually treats ‘and’ as long, save when followed by ‘h’. His ear for accentual patterning may similarly dictate scanning ‘Not the like’ (9) as a dactyl, despite the fact that ‘like’ should be long by position, according to Latin rules of scansion.

Harvey elides‘-ie’ followed by a vowel three times (at 9 and 15), treating each compounded syllable as a short syllable. Inconsistently, having treated the first syllable of ‘againe’ elided with the last syllable of ‘Trinitie’ as short in 9, he treats the first syllable of ‘against’ as long in 12.

It is unclear whether ‘Gewe-’ of ‘Gewegawes’ comprises one long syllable or two short ones. The scansion of 19 seems especially uncertain.

83-6–84-7 with the . . . Mistresse: Alluding to Harvey’s loss of preferment to the office of University Orator, the principal duty and honor of which was to speak at commencement ceremonies. Frustrated ambition leads Harvey to forswear his mistress—oratory, presumably—and the remark transformed his sense of the academic place where he finds himself—‘Not the like Trinitie againe’ (86). On Harvey’s failed campaign for that Oratorship see the notes at 2.618-9 and 2.644.

85-8 bony . . . bony: The compositor had set ‘bonny . . . bonny’ which would have dictated that the first syllable of each word be scanned as long. Harvey corrects the spelling in the marginalia to his own copy and we have adopted his corrected readings, assuming that the compositor had resisted his copy in order to normalize the spelling; but see the Textual Introduction [ref]. For a comparable emendation, see below 3.123.

88-11–90-13 Agrippa . . . Craftes: Alluding to the satirically extravagant declamation against learning, De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum et artium (‘On the uncertainty and vanity of the sciences and arts’; composed 1526, published 1530) by Cornelius Agrippa.

91-14–92-15 Pandora . . . Tree: The tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:9), the ‘good bad Tree’, is yoked with Prometheus and Pandora because all three bring woe to mankind by transmitting that which is divine in origin. In both Theogony (507-616) and Works and Days (42-105) Hesiod tells the story of Prometheus’s theft of fire from Zeus. Although he glances at the Pandora story in the Theogony, he does not name her there; he offers a fuller account of Pandora in Works and Days (60-105), where he tells of how the gods avenge the theft by creating the dangerously alluring Pandora, their revenge is completed when she opens a jar filled with the divine ‘gifts’ of disease, toil, and other ills. For Pandora in Spenser, see Rome 260, Am 24.8, and, unusually, Teares 578, where Elizabeth is compared to Pandora without implied pejorative force.

94-17 Toyes . . . Woodcockes: See above (2.652).

100

L’Enuoy: For the envoy as genre, see SC To His Booke, headnote.

The scansion of the first line here is uncertain, but it appears to witness an instance in which, for Harvey, stress-patterning expresses quantity more decisively than orthography does.

101-1 Euensong: Vespers, the evening prayer service, is celebrated just before sunset.

106-6 Valetes: Harvey seems to be referring specifically to the Valete, the formal farewell that concludes academic commencement exercises.

109 requite: Harvey offers the following poem as a response to Spenser’s See yee the blindefoulded pretie God? (1.39-42).

112–113 Garden . . . Lords: Harvey presumably refers specifically here to one of John Young’s gardens in the bishop’s palace at Bromley in Kent, a county generally celebrated for its horticulture. Master of Pembroke College and vice-chancellor of Cambridge, Young was consecrated bishop of Rochester in March 1578 and Spenser served as his secretary around this time. Spenser attests obliquely to his ties to Bishop Young at SC Sept 171.

114 demaunde . . . followeth: The inquiry following being ‘What might I call this Tree?’

114–116 Petrarches . . . Poete: Alluding to Petrarch’s RS 263. The lines may be rendered ‘Victorious tree, triumphal, honor of emperors and poets.’ Also quoted in SC Apr gl 111-12.

117–118

perhappes . . . higher: Because of the ambiguity of ‘conceite’ Harvey’s exhortation does double duty, encouraging Spenser both to imaginative reading and to imaginative writing: he exhorts Spenser to let Petrarch’s poem inspire him to higher imaginative conception (conceit) than that of his quatrain on Cupid, higher than that of Harvey’s poem as well or, perhaps, higher than that of Petrarch’s own poem—but he also seeks to shape Spenser’s understanding (conceit) of Harvey’s own poem by suggesting that it was written under the influence of Petrarch’s poem and should therefore be esteemed the more highly for its emulous complexity.

120 Intelligences: In the tradition of Aristotelean metaphysics, the term denotes those spiritual entities, subordinate to the Prime Mover, that guide the motion of particular celestial spheres; sometimes the Intelligences were understood as a species of angel. Harvey may be using the term more casually here, as denoting intellectual faculties of an especially spiritual or heavenly orientation.

122 Pegaso: The winged horse that serves as a traditional figure for the poetic imagination.

123

Encomium Lauri: ‘In Praise of the Laurel’. This poem, in quantitative hexameters, may be scanned as follows:

124-1 bonny: In his own copy, Harvey corrected ‘bonny’ to ‘bony’ at 3.85 in the previous poem. In a similar metrical position, which calls for a short first syllable, the compositorial spelling seems to stipulate a first syllable that is long ‘by position’ (see Introduction XX); we assume that Harvey would have made the same correction as he made in the previous poem, had he noticed the same compositorial lapse.

125-2 bonetto: Harvey here uses an Italian form for ‘bonnet’, a form not current in England, although it is difficult to decide whether he chooses it for the slightly comic effect or because it fits the metrical scheme.

128-5 Daphne: Ovid relates the tale of the enamoured Apollo’s pursuit of Daphne and her transformation into a laurel at Met 1.452-567.

132-9 Aretyne?: For Harvey’s confounding of Unico Aretino (Bernardo Accolti) and Pietro Aretino, the former a more prolific poet and the latter a more notorious literary figure, see above 2.588-589. The disapproving tone of Harvey’s earlier reference leaves little doubt that Harvey was aware of Pietro Aretino’s reputation for literary mischief: his claim that many living poets are ‘as nobly minded’ as Aretino must be taken as deftly satiric. Indeed, to describe Aretino as ‘halfe Prince to the Princes’ is to suggest the political power of poetic satire.

136-13 I craue . . . aquaintaunce: ‘I seek . . . acquaintance’: Sometimes used idiomatically as a formula for introducing oneself.

139-16 Non omni dormio: As he did in concluding his previous letter (2.685), Harvey again adapts a phrase from Cicero’s Familiares. In effect, Harvey’s Daphne denies her petitioner the leniency she allows some others.

144 Partim . . . Musis: ‘Some for Jove and Pallas, / Some for Apollo and the Muses’

145 coniure thee by: Can mean either ‘entreat you by appeal to’ or ‘magically constrain you by the occult agency of’.

147 Tom Troth: Conventional personification of honesty.

147–148 Il fecondo . . . Immerito: ‘The fertile and famous Poet, Messer Immerito’. ‘Messer’ is an Italian honorific, slightly less formal than ‘Signore’.

149–150 a certayne . . . Gentleman,: The identity of this gentleman remains obscure. That Harvey wrote at another’s instigation may be a fiction, a weak attempt to distribute blame for the poem’s insults, the little community of blame itself intriguingly mysterious.

150–152 in Gratiam . . . cutem: ‘To please certain Anglifrancitalians flitting here and everywhere among us. Come now: you know these fellows as you know yourselves, inside and out.’

153

Speculum Tuscanismi: ‘The Mirror of Tuscanism’ or perhaps ‘Tuscanismo’s Mirror’. Although Harvey and John Lyly had been friends, Lyly (among others) apparently brought the poem to the attention of his patron, the Earl of Oxford, suggesting that the poem was meant as a personal satire on the Earl, which it surely was, although Harvey denied it (Foure Letters, 1592, C4). For troubles that the various provocations of the Letters brought on Harvey, see Introduction, [cross-ref].

Harvey’s grip on the regularities of dactylic hexameter is especially loose here. 15, indeed, seems to require so much latitude—‘ly’ treated as a long syllable, ‘guyses’ treated as bisyllabic, with a long second syllable—that one might suspect a transmissional problem. The final lines suggest that he continues to treat ‘and’ before ‘h’ as short and, if he means to respect this rule throughout, then ‘Tongue, and’ in 18 must be regarded as a dactyl.

The last line deserves special notice, given Harvey’s special attention to the proper scansion of ‘Travailer’ at 471-480 below (and the thematic focus on travel in Letter 5). As Harvey makes clear in that later discussion, he expects a high degree of coincidence between stress and length and if we take the pattern of quantity as an orchestration of stress, the line has droll force. The constraints of the hexameter would promote the second syllable of ‘Travaile’ and thence an awareness of both the French origins of the word and of the etymological sense of the laboriousness of travel, rendered an oxymoron by the epithets ‘Blessed and happy’. As for ‘Travailer’, which Harvey will later insist should not be scanned with its second syllable as long, despite the Latin rules of orthographic quantity, the regularities of the hexameter require that its second syllable be treated in the present line as short. Yet, while Harvey’s line effectively rejects any lengthening (by orthography) of the second syllable, the requisite lengthening (by position) of the final syllable effectively gallicizes the ‘Travailer’, capitulating to the estrangement of the Englishman that the poem deplores throughout.

154-1 Galateo: Giovanni della Casa’s treatise on etiquette of that name, first printed in Italian in 1558 and first printed in an English translation in 1576. But the arrival of ‘Galateo’ may refer to more than the influence of a book and its concerns. ‘Galateo’ may also personify Italianate mannerism and artificiality: ‘Galateo’ might be taken as a male version of Galatea, the too-attractive product of Pygmalion’s craft. ‘Tuscanismo’ might be taken as a specifically Tuscan companion to ‘Galateo’.

155-2 Vanitie . . . Empresse: Since an empress ostensibly has absolute power, Statelinesse would seem fated to come squarely into conflict with Vanitie.

156-3 No man . . . swayne: A difficult line. The punctuation suggests that it means ‘No real man can be found anywhere, only a minion; no stout person, only a lout; no straightforward person, only a swain’. But because the punctuation of the copy text is unreliable, and because both ‘stout’ and ‘plain’ are ambiguous, it may be that the line should be construed ‘No real man can be found anywhere, only a minion, an arrogant lout, and a mere swain’. Minion is often used to indicate the effeminate male lover of a man in a position of authority.

161-8 braue . . . footewarde: With its self-embrace, this vivid description of a particularly deep bow suggests both sycophantry and self-love.

162-9 Largebellyed . . . hose: The continental fashion for the so-called peascod doublet, which swells like a peapod at its bottom-most point just at the belly, was quite new in England. Harvey is playing with the descriptive epithet, hinting that the peascod distention is a debased version of the related form of the codpiece. The ‘half-hose’ are breeches, as distinct from whole-hose, an integrated combination of either trunk-hose and stockings or trunk-hose, canions (close-fitting ornamental rolls), and stockings. The more traditional silhouette of trunk-hose is relatively full at the upper thighs, whereas breeches drop the apparent center of gravity farther down the leg. Breeches obviate the need for a codpiece.

163-10 Straite . . . diueling: Harvey turns his satiric attention to the rear of the new-fangled doublet. Whereas the Elizabethan undergarment (‘shirt’) was usually cut full, the comparison of the rear of the doublet to a shirt suggests some failure of decent concealment as the doublet descends to the buttocks, probably from being cut too tight. The doublet described here is certainly cut close at the breech, perhaps lacking any panels or skirts to mask the attachments of doublet and breeches, and thus suggesting the comic self-exposure of a diving duck.

165-12 Ruffes . . . witnesse: Especially deeply folded ruffs. The plural ‘Ruffes’ suggests that this refers to a ‘suit of ruffs’, matching ruffs for neck and hands.

165-12 starchd: Although the fashion for starched ruffs had come in from the Low Countries in the 1560s, starching of large ruffs was an abiding object of mockery. See Phillip Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, Pt. 1 (1583).

166-13 A per se A: A formula for spelling the single-lettered word aloud: ‘A per se, A’, i.e., ‘A itself, A’, the phrase came to designate pre-eminence. Thus Henryson’s description of Cresseide as ‘floure and A per se of Troie and Grece’.

167-14 in all poyntes: In all details, but with a (fairly dull) pun on ‘points’, ribbons or cords for lacing together the parts of a garment, often quite decorative.

168-15 odde: The older sense of the term—‘unique, singular’—was only beginning to find competition from a newer one—peculiar, eccentric.

169-16 Primerose: The spelling emphasizes a common figurative use of the term to mean ‘the best’.

170-17 fellowe perelesse: The phrase is slightly paradoxical, since one sense of fellow is ‘an equal’, whereas Harvey’s ‘perelesse’ implies singularity.

187 Eyed . . . employde: In his Metamorphoses, Ovid recounts tales of the hundred-eyed Argus (1.625) and of Midas, to whom Apollo gave ass’s ears when Midas judged his poems inferior to Pan’s (11.729). Ovid, whose cognomen, Naso, means ‘nose’, first introduces Mercury, whose wings give him a speed that makes him an especially useful servant of Jove, in the tale of Argus (1.671).

176-23 na: Harvey’s odd adjustment of the spelling seems contrived to bar a bisyllabic reading of ‘nay’.

177-24–179-26 None . . . them: ‘I know of some—though I do not name them—whom only a portion of a year has so perfected, outwardly and inwardly, in body and soul, that no one can half match them, either in what they say and mean [‘for sense’] or in the impression they make [‘for . . . senses’].’

187 Vulturs . . . Lyon: The animal-lore in these lines is quite conventional, if not always accurate. The vulture’s keen sense of smell was proverbial, although Old-World vultures are not in fact remarkable in this regard.

186-33 Penatibus Hetruscis laribusque nostris Inquilinis: ‘At [the dwelling where preside] our immigrant Tuscan household gods and protectors’. Harvey’s joke here is to suggest that all nativism is collapsing in the face of Tuscanization: like the manners and dress of the gallant the poet describes, the penates, the very household gods who protect the poet’s house, are arriviste imports.

190 Castor, and Pollux: The twin sons of Leda. Harvey here recalls that, by a law of Lycurgus, Spartan women were required to contemplate images of these two, the Dioscuri or Gemini, so that their unborn children might take the impression of the twins’ bravery and beauty.

196 Adonis, Cupido, Ganymedes: Each famous exemplars of male beauty.

203–204 in . . . seruice: ‘In legal study and practice’. Justinian the Great, Byzantine Emperor from 527 to 565, was famous for having presided over the systematizing revision of Roman law in the Corpus Juris Civilis, hence Harvey’s use of Justinian as a general personification of the law. The competition between loyalty to ‘Mistresse Poetries’ and ‘Emperour Justinians service’ recurs to the theme of the opening of Spenser’s first letter.

204–206 a certaine . . . kynde: The ‘devise’, a poem (or collection of poems) combining moral, political, and scientific thought, to which Harvey here alludes has not been identified. (Harvey is probably not alluding here to the unfinished Anticosmopolita. He intended to dedicate this epic to Leicester, but Spenser was surely already ‘privie’ to its existence and contents, since Harvey has mentioned the poem, without mystifying rhetoric, in his previous letter and E.K. has referred to it in SC Sept.) Stern 1979: 52-3 surveys Harvey’s poetic works-in-progress from the period.

208–209 a young Brother: John Harvey was over a decade younger than Gabriel.

210 Giouannibattista: Not an uncommon first name for Italian men of the period.

217 Dum fueris . . . Aues?: ‘So long as you are secure you will count many friends; if your life becomes clouded you will be alone. You see how the doves come to a white dwelling, how an unclean tower harbours no birds.’ The first half-line of this passage from Ovid’s Tristia 1.9.5-8 is quoted inexactly, although it reproduces the form it takes in Gower’s paraphrase at 7.331 of Vox Clamantis. For an argument that Spenser was especially interested in these lines, see Tuve 1970: 139-64.

223

John Harvey’s hexameter lines may be scanned

219-1 Bearnes: Harvey seems to have adopted the spelling to set up an assonantal relationship with ‘bare’ in 220.

223 Pentameters: Elegiac couplets, consisting of lines of dactylic hexameters alternating with paired hemiepe.

224 Rithmus: ‘This rithmus of theirs [i.e., ‘the Greeks and Latins’] is not therefore our rhyme, but a certain musical numerosity in utterance’ (Puttenham 2007: 159).

230

Harvey’s elegiacs may be scanned thus:

226-1 play the Placeboes: The ‘Placebo’ is the vesper service of the Office of the Dead. To ‘play the Placebo’ was to flatter insincerely, like a paid mourner.

242

The poem is marked by a heavier use of elision than in the other quantitative verses in Letters.

236-5 Louehouse: John Harvey’s coinage suggests ‘a dwelling in which the residents are united by affection’, but the poem’s theme suggests a secondary meaning, ‘brothel’.

244 him: Petrarch

244 in your Coate: Cf. SC Julye 162.

244–246 as much . . . Sunne: Although it had been contested, the ancient belief that all the planets and stars derived their light from the Sun continued to hold sway among many astronomers, even some as intellectually bold as Kepler.

246–247 in . . . October: (SC Oct gl 97-99) The lines are Petrarch, RS, 187.1-4.

258

The translation may be scanned thus:

276

Harvey’s hexameter condensation of the March emblems may be scanned:

274-1 fell: The adjectival use here takes some color from the Latin noun, fel, meaning ‘gall’; see the rare use of fell as a noun at FQ III.xi.2.5, ‘Vntroubled of vile feare, or bitter fell’.

276 on the other side: I.e., on the other side of the piece of paper.

281

John Harvey’s hexameter may be scanned thus:

It is worth noting that because of orthographic rules and the rule of length by position, Spenser would probably have regarded ‘like’ and the second syllable of ‘Majestie’ as long in these lines. But John Harvey seems to be disregarding such rules here and instead organizes his hexameters according to accentual patterns.

281–282 Something more: Of this composition, presumably in verse, nothing more is known. All of John Harvey’s printed publications focus on astronomical prognostication, but since most of these publications, in prose, concern themselves with how to interpret the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 1583, Gabriel Harvey is unlikely to be heralding them here.

285 Gemini: Dyer and Sidney; see above (3.188-189).

290 Epithalamion Thamesis: See 1.60.

288 siquidem vltima primis respondeant: ‘if last things correspond to first ones’. Harvey is both imitating and responding to Cicero’s De finibus, ‘Respondent extrema primis’ (‘the conclusions accord with the premises’; 5.83).

292 Collinshead: Playfully paired with ‘Hollinshead’ the term refers to Colin Clout, the central figure of The Shepheardes Calender.

292 Hollinshead: See above 1.59-70, where Spenser earlier suggested a link between the chorography presumably undertaken in the Epithalamion Thamesis and the ‘Historical Description of the Land of Britaine’ (by William Harrison) which served as prelude to Holinshed’s chronicle. Indeed the phrasing here suggests that Harvey regards the unpublished Epithalamion, The Shepheardes Calender, and Holinshed’s great chronicle as part of a national-cultural campaign, one which might properly cohere with the development of a rule-governed movement of English quantitative versifying and to which his brother might hope to contribute.

294 Ecquid erit pretij: Harvey repeats the sentence on the uncertain rewards of poesy that Spenser quotes above (1.72) from the De senectute, a work that Cicero puts in the mouth of Cato the elder.

294–295 Res age quæ prosunt: ‘Do those things which are profitable’. The maxim is the first half-line of distich 4.7, from the Distichs of Cato, a collection of short moralizing verses that had served for centuries as an important Latin textbook. It is unclear whether Harvey knew that Julius Caesar Scaliger had attributed the work, not to Cato the Younger, the ‘little’ Cato, but to an otherwise unidentified author of the 3rd or 4th century BCE.

300 I am nowe taught: The idiom would normally mean ‘I have learned by now’, but Harvey uses the phrase with joking literalism.

300–302 (no remedie . . . fielde): Setting aside that I must inevitably lose to you [as a poet].

304 De pane lucrando: The opposition of literature and breadwinning was a topos of sixteenth-century intellectual life, as witnessed by Johannes Sinapius’ oration Adversus . . . eorum, qui literas humaniores negligunt, aut contemnunt, eo quod non sint de Pane lucrando (Against . . . those who neglect or condemn humane letters because they contribute nothing to bread-winning; Haguenau, 1530).

305 hand . . . halfpenny: The proverbial phrase ‘to have one’s hand upon one’s halfpenny’ usually means ‘to have some particular object in view’. Harvey uses the phrase with witty eccentricity, making it mean ‘to have the particular object of making money in view’.

306 you know who: Whereas it is rather easy to think of the Cuddie of the Calender as a type, and not as the pastoral guise of a real person, the present context suggests that Cuddie is a pseudonym for an historical individual. (A few lines later, the name ‘Cuddie’ seems to have deictic force comparable to ‘Master Collin Cloute’ and ‘Master Hobbinoll’.) That said, speculation on Cuddie’s identity has somewhat languished; McLane made a respectable case for identifying Cuddie with Edward Dyer (1961, 262-79).

320 [1-12]: Quoting SC Oct 7-18.

321–322 be . . .Poetrie: I.e., because she has favoured them with so little (in the way of talent).

323 and some personall priuiledge:The mysterious phrase suggests that Spenser (‘Collin Cloute’) is the recipient of some form of very personal patronage, in addition to thosee benefits bestowed by Mistress Poetry, which latter may be thought of either as semi-occult endowments, like the patronage of a Muse, or as the gift of some specific technical aptitudes.

324–325 dying Pellicanes . . . Dreames: See above (1.73).

329–330 Lucian . . . Pasquill: A somewhat heterogeneous list, although the modern satirist Aretino shared with his Greek forebear Lucian a commitment to satiric expression at once colloquial and ingeniously wrought. One can only guess to whom ‘Pasquill’ refers, since the brief satiric epigrams pinned to ‘Pasquino’, the name by which a battered Hellenistic statue in Rome was known, usually went unattributed. Harvey may refer here to Sir Thomas Elyot, whose Pasquyl the Playne, a dialogue on the art of counsel, had appeared in 1533.

336–349 In whiche respecte . . . of Man.: Harvey takes care that his praise of the startling rhetorical features of the Book of Revelation not be construed as trivializing the text, as if it were no more than a triumph of stylistic ingenuity. Yet he does say that the superiority of John’s Revelation to the visions of poets is comparable—and not reducible—to the superiority of divine wisdom to human wit.

350–353

I dare . . . wish you.: The ‘Dreames’ thus described might plausibly be taken as early versions of the several visionary sequences in Complaints. It might be taken particularly as referring to those revisions of the poems translated for Theatre for Worldlings that were eventually published in Complaints as Bellay and Petrarch, although the phrasing seems not to refer to translations.

355 Faerie Queene: The passage suggests that Harvey has returned a copy of some portion of The Faerie Queene without suggestions or comment, despite Spenser’s admonition that he return the poem along with his ‘long expected Judgement wythal’ (1.77). His gently wheedling inquiry as to whether such commentary is indeed necessary and his swift turn to praise of Spenser’s comedies seem to betray Harvey's lack of enthusiasm for Spenser’s epic, as does his suggestion that the comedies are closer in manner to those of Ariosto than is The Faerie Queene to OF.

359 in imitation of Herodotus: Herodotus’ Alexandrian editors had divided his Histories into nine parts, each named after one of the Muses, although Lucian attributes the division and naming of the work to Herodotus himself (Herodotus 1). Harvey may be remembering that in Lucian’s account, Herodotus first recited his Histories at the Olympiad, the work offered as a competitive literary effort as Harvey supposes Spenser’s Comedies to be.

361 Ariostoes Comœdies: 358-364 your Nine Comœdies . . . ouergo: Harvey’s judgment that Spenser’s achievements in drama surpass his promise as an author of epic, suggest Spenser’s early, competitive engagement with the work of Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1553). Ariosto is known to have written five plays: Cassaria (1508), Suppositi (1509) – translated into English as Supposes (1566) by Spenser’s older contemporary, George Gascoigne – Negromante (1528), Lena (1528), and the unfinished Studenti. No plays of Spenser’s survive and it may be that Harvey is only joking when he suggests Spenser’s competition with Ariosto in this form, but Spenser’s debt to Ariosto in The Faerie Queene is deep, since Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso models the fusion of Arthurian chivalric romance and classical epic that Spenser would also undertake in his own epic.

362 Eluish Queene: This title strongly links the central plot of Spenser’s epic, Arthur’s enamouring dream of Gloriana and his quest to find her, to its source in Chaucer’s ‘Tale of Sir Thopas’: ‘Me dremed al this nyght, pardee, / An elf-queene shal my lemman be’ (CT 7.787-8).

365 one of . . . Letters: No letter survives professing Spenser’s attempted paragone with Ariosto’s epic.

368 that way: In the composition of comedy.

369–370 Bibiena . . . Ariosto: While four of these five had composed comedies—Bembo had not, but Harvey may have imagined that Bembo’s dialogues, Gli Asolani, were dramatic works—the three authors first named developed a distinctly modern satiric vein in comedy. Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena’s Calandra (1507, but substantially revised in 1513), is the breakthrough achievement; Bibbiena draws on the plot of Plautus’ Menaechmi, although he bases the title character on the simpleton, Calandrino, of Boccaccio’s Decameron. Machiavelli contributed two plays to the development of Italian comedy, Mandragola (1518) and Clizia (1527). Pietro Aretino is a more prolific playwright than Bibbiena or Machiavelli, and the most boldly satiric; of the five plays collected for publication in 1553 (and placed on the Roman Index of prohibited books five years later), the Cortigiana (1534) is an especially mordant parody of the ethos of Castiglione’s Courtier. (It is possible, if unlikely, that Harvey has again confused Pietro Aretino with Bernardo Accolto, ‘Unico Aretino’, who had himself written one comedy, Verginia, first printed in 1513.) For the earlier confusion, see above, 2.588 and 3.131.

375–378 If so . . . I thought: This concludes Harvey’s elaborately insinuating evasion of direct comment on Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Having both denigrated epic and disapproved, implicitly, of Spenser’s efforts in the form, Harvey reframes Spenser’s dual commitment to comedy and to epic as a competition—or, rather, as a pair of competitions: between the Nine Muses, after whom Spenser had named his comedies, and the titular ‘Faerye Queene’ of his epic; and between Apollo, the Muses’ leader and patron, and Hobgoblin, whom Harvey suggests is an appropriately trivial daemon of Spenser’s nativist, fairy epic. This latter competition between the genre-gods, Apollo and Hobgoblin, adapts legends of artistic competition between the refined Apollo and such rustic challengers as Pan and Marsyas (for Apollo’s competition with Pan, see Ovid Met 11.146-71; for that with Marsyas, see Met 6.382-91 and Pseudo-Hyginus Fabulae 165). Harvey’s conception has a jocular eccentricity: it specifies Apollo quite untraditionally as the god of comedy, and whereas Apollo traditionally punishes his challengers after he triumphs over them, Harvey imagines Hobgoblin as fleeing, unpunished, with the stolen garland of victory.

381 you charge me: Referring to Spenser’s insistence that Harvey ‘imparte some your . . . Poesies to us, from whose eyes, you saye, you keepe in a manner nothing hidden’ (1.9-11).

385 bongrely: We adopt the reading from the earliest of the two printed states of the forme on the theory that the forme was ‘corrected’ without recourse to copy. The second state reads ‘bnngrely’, plainly a botched attempt to correct ‘bongrely’, an unfamiliar elaboration of bongre (agreeable, pleasant) to ‘bungrely’ (bungling). (The determination that ‘bnngrely’ appears on a second state derives from variants elsewhere on this state of the forme; see the Textual Introduction.)

397-6 Saint Anne: The mother of the Virgin, patron saint of housewives.

422 vnworthy . . . Curtesie: Unworthy of the happiness of loving and being loved save by Anne’s courteous transfer of her worthiness to him. The lines adapt to this amatory context the theological doctrine of imputation, whereby attributes are transferred between Christ and his followers: the faithful are ‘imputed’ worthy of salvation because Christ transfers his worthiness to them, while Christ is ‘imputed’ guilty by a reciprocal transfer of human guilts to him. See 2.604n.

409-18 one bodyes call: At the command of one person in particular. In this usage, one-body may be contrasted with some-body.

411-20 hartroote: On the hypothesis that the forme was corrected without recourse to copy, we here adopt the reading from the earliest state of the forme; see the Textual Introduction.

413-22–422 Soule, take thy reste . . . Saint Anne: Having referred to Anne as a body (at l. 320), the speaker abruptly shifts to addressing her as a spiritual being. The ensuing lines are comically excited by competing evocations of Anne’s spirituality and of her material interests. The speaker will invite her to consider love as a form of spiritual ‘Usurie’ that will enable her to ‘take thy reste’, profiting without effort; he will also promise that his own spiritual patron (‘your servaunts Dæmonium’) will provide for her ‘odde [material or erotic] necessaries’. The jostle of the spiritual and the material receives steadied restatement when the speaker describes himself as the servant of two masters, Saint Penny and Saint Anne.

420-29 hartily: The use of rime riche here seems to insist that we imagine at least two different senses of the word pertain; the available meanings are ‘zealously’, ‘sincerely’, ‘in a manner pertaining to the heart’.

423-1–437 I but once . . . or Pewter: The interlinguistic puns of Let 333-334 may be worked out thus: not only is Susanne’s heart not worth the hair of the newly beloved Anne, it is not worth the hair of an ass (Fr âne); for those who know Latin (or tavern slang), it will be understood that Susanne is a pig (L sus, Gk συς) in comparison to Anne. Because of an ancillary pun on Latin—latten is brass or similar alloys—the pairing of ‘Latine, or Pewter’ sets up an obscure slur on Susanne’s adulterated nature in the next line, which seems to play on the fact that L sus can denote not only a pig, but also a fish (as it does in the pseudo-Ovidian Halieutica at l. 132) and that sus is of common grammatical gender, either masculine or feminine.

426-4 hir Mother Fish: The reading in the first state of the forme being clearly incorrect, we adopt the reading from the second state of the forme, although we believe the correction to have been made without recourse to copy. It may be that the MS copy here reads ‘hir Mother, Fish’, which Bynneman’s compositor originally reproduced inaccurately.

428-6 coye: Although the primary sense is ‘to behave coyly,’ the verb can, in rare instances, mean ‘disdain’; see Shakespeare, Cor 5.1.6.

440 Nonproficients: This seems to have been Harvey’s coinage, derived perhaps from Paul’s description of those whose opposition to the truth in the end of days will have no consequence (sed ultra non proficient insipientia enim eorum manifesta erit omnibus sicut et illorum fuit; 2 Tim 3:9).

441–446 Cuiusmodi . . . Maias: ‘And even though I suspect this will probably seem to you to be one of the Impossibles, may you now finally say farewell to such trifles and ditties, unless [you compose them] with me (who, having set aside the Chalice of Love, am bound by a certain solemn vow and oath to drain the Chalice of the Law as soon as possible). I will say no more. Farewell. From my lodgings, the ninth day before the calends of May’.

453 correcte Magnificat: ‘To correct Magnificat’ was proverbial, meaning ‘presumptuously to challenge or dispute an accepted principle’.

455–458 companye . . . controlement: The phrase ‘Priviledges and Liberties’ extends the metaphor in which the words of a language are represented as a company or craft guild, with a set of traditional prerogatives not to be encroached upon at will. The phrase, ‘without . . . controlement’ participates in the same lexical register.

459 Remembrancer: Here, primarily, a chronicler or one charged with the task of reminding. The Queen’s Remembrancer was, specifically, an officer of the Court of the Exchequer charged with debts to the Crown and this particular sense of the term has resonance in Harvey’s phrasing, suggesting particular native ‘prerogatives’ of the language.

460–461 Penes . . . loquendi: ‘Usage, in whose power [resides] the judgement, right, and regulation of speech’. Harvey here extends Horace’s rule of customary usage. In the Ars Poetica, Horace specifically describes usage as a kind of gatekeeper that ushers coined and imported words and phrases into acceptable use, licenses metaphoric extensions, and outlaws once acceptable terms: si volet usus, / quem penes arbitrium est et ius et norma loquendi (‘if Usage permits, in whose power is the judgement, law, and regulation of speech’; Ars Poet 71-2, ed. trans.).

461–462 who . . . Valānger: Harvey refrains from naming the wag who pronounced the second syllable of Valanger’s name as if it were long (or stressed), according to the Latin prosodic rule that dictates that syllables that conclude with paired consonants be treated in verse as long ‘by position’, regardless of their length or stress in normal speech. Harvey’s seems to be a mock reticence, designed to insinuate that it was Spenser himself who had made the joke (‘braverie’) and to imply that the fact that this pronunciation was regarded as risible, casts the lengthening of the second syllable of ‘carpenter’ as a practice equally absurd.

475 bargaīneth . . . Trauaīlers: Again Harvey mocks Spenser for adopting rules that lengthen the second syllable of certain trisyllabic words despite the weak stress accorded those syllables in common usage.

478 fat-bellyed Archedeacon: Drant was installed as archdeacon of Lewes in 1570. For another slur on Drant’s weight, see 5.111 below.

479 Maister Doctor Watson: Thomas Watson was Master of St. Johns, Cambridge from 1553 to 1554 and Bishop of Lincoln from 1556 until he was deprived of the bishopric in 1559. Watson was in the custody of Thomas Young, shortly after the latter became bishop of Rochester, during the time at which Spenser was Young’s secretary.

479–480 All . . . Ascham: The verse in question is part of Watson’s distich translation of the third line of the Odyssey: ‘All trauellers do gladly report great prayse of Vlysses, / For that he knew many mens maners, and saw many Cities’. Ascham quotes the lines approvingly in the Scholemaster as instancing ‘how our English tong, in auoidyng barbarous ryming, may as well receiue, right quantitie of sillables, and trewe order of versifiyng . . . as either Greke or Latin’ (1970: 224). Harvey’s point is that, according to orthographic rules, the second syllable of ‘Travailers’ should be long, since ai is a diphthong, but that to lengthen or stress it would violate normal pronunciation.

482 Quite . . . head?: Harvey quotes, with minor adjustments in spelling, from Ascham’s rendering of Od. 21 420-2 in Toxophilus (2002:120).

483–489 Nay, haue . . . or in Uerse?: Harvey refers to his ‘firste’ list, ‘Maiestie, Royaltie, etc.’ as examples of words in which unstressed second syllables would seem speciously to require treatment as long, because their vowels precede double consonants, and to his ‘seconde’ list, ‘bargaineth, following, etc.’ as examples of words in which paired vowels in unstressed second syllables would also seem to require similarly specious treatment as long, by orthographic rule.

493–494 Premisses . . . to): Harvey notes in passing that according to Latin prosodic rule, the double-s would dictate treating the second syllable as long by position, yet the syllable is unstressed.

497 succĕssour: Harvey suggests that, in his day, the second syllable has a stress relatively lighter than the first.

499–501 Execūtores . . . other: Each of the Latin terms listed here is distinguished by a long syllable (‘being long in the one’) where its English derivative has an unstressed syllable (‘shorte in the other’). The breve over the second syllable of ‘succĕssour’ at 497 indicates the standard pronunciation in Harvey’s day.

505–506 indifferent . . . waye: So that the penultimate syllable might acceptably serve as either long or short; see ‘common’ (l 418-419) below.

506 stande with: The idiom is ambiguous and can mean ‘to side with’ or to ‘argue against’. Context suggests the latter meaning here, as does Harvey’s unambiguous use of the idiom at 3.374-375.

510 Cur . . . violē̄ntly?: Harvey quotes loosely from a distich ‘Ad amicam’ by Nicolas Borbonius (Nugae, 1533, D7v): ‘Cur violas mittis? nempe ut violentius urar: / Heu violor violis ô violenta tuis.’ The English translator has not been identified.

510 common: Anceps, able to serve as either long or short.

512 Volucres: The emendation here renders homologous the series of words, each of which includes a syllable that may be scanned as either short or long, owing to the fact that a short vowel precedes a double consonant the first of which is mute and the second of which is the liquid ‘r’. Emending corrects a certain error, for the final syllable of ‘volucres’ is long. It may be that the correct reading should be ‘Volŭcres’, although it remains unclear why Harvey would feel it necessary to indicate the standard quantity of the second syllable.

521 Diastole: See the discussion above (1.23-30).

523–524 Maiestie . . . Rules: See ‘the kingdome of oure owne Language’ in Spenser’s letter above (1.33-34). Harvey’s rhetoric here may well be what provoked Mulcaster to make an argument against phonetic orthographic reform in The Elementarie (1582) in similar terms, describing an original state in which ‘sound alone’ ‘was soverain and judge’ and ‘gave sentence of pen, ink and paper’ (I1v) and a later, more highly evolved cultural polity in which sound is conjoined to reason and custome in a ‘wise triumvirate’ (I4v). Mulcaster deplores modern orthographic reform as abetting a reactionary cultural turn in which ‘sound like a restrained not banished Tarquinius desiring to be restored to his first and sole monarchie, and finding som, but no more sounding favorers, did seke to make a tumult in the scriveners province’ (H4v).

525 Petty Treason: While the Treason Act of 1351 limited petty treason to murder of a husband by a wife, a master by a servant, or a prelate by a clergyman, the term was used generally to refer to inferiors’ criminal rebellion against superiors other than the sovereign.

526–527 or . . . Orthography either: Extending his effort to regulate prosody by customary pronunciation (by taking speech stress as the proper sign of quantitative length), Harvey here proposes that pronunciation should also regulate spelling. This was by no means an idiosyncratic proposal; Harvey joins Thomas Smith, John Cheke, William Bullokar, and John Hart in promoting strictly phonetic spelling.

531 yrne: None of the three printed 16th-century editions exhibit the spelling that Harvey quotes. The line is quoted from Homer, Il 4.123.

533–534 whyche leaven: Referring to the second of the two, ‘a leaven of dowe’.

535–540 Pseudography . . . corrupte Orthography: The spellings that Harvey prefers may reflect contemporary pronunciation, but his charge that the denigrated spellings reflect both innovation and corruption is odd, since some of them---‘sithens’ and ‘phantasie’---are traditional ones.

535 yl-fauoured: We adopt the reading of the first state of the forme; press-correction here seems to have been intended to reduce the crowd of hyphens at the line break (‘yl-fa=|uoured’).

542–551 fayer . . . myre: In each of the pairings in this paragraph, Harvey’s first spelling indicates what he regards as a bisyllabic pronunciation; his second, a monosyllabic one. It should be noted that the possible double reference of both fayer and ayer is a distraction from Harvey’s general point, which is that the two words, like the others listed below, can admit of both monosyllabic and bisyllabic pronunciation.

543–544 bothe pro . . . hærede,: For both ‘air’ and ‘heir’.

544 hærede (for: For the emendation here, see the Letters: Textual Introduction.

545 Scoggins Aier: Although no sixteenth-century edition of Scoggin’s Jests survives, a seventeenth-century edition preserves a version of the story to which Harvey refers. It hinges on Scoggins’ willful misunderstanding of a lawyer’s advice that he and his wife ‘make an heire’, which they do by retiring to their bed and farting (Andrew Boord, The First and Best Parte of Scoggins Jests, 1626, C3v-4v).

560–561 common . . . Prosodye: The phrase here means ‘customary pronunciation’. Harvey uses prosody to mean ‘pronunciation’ throughout the ensuing discussion.

562–571 Wherein . . . Qualitie: Harvey here concedes that when the rules of Latin prosody are applied to (properly) written English sentences, they yield prosodic analyses that generally accord with customary English pronunciation of those sentences, even though the rules sometimes seem to flout the ‘innate’ character of the syllable, i.e., its length according to etymology and morphology. (Harvey doesn’t here press the question of whether it is actual duration of sound or stress in English that accords with Latin quantity.) But he insists that the rules themselves don’t determine the length of English syllables.

572 Mother Prosodye: This common allegorical device (for which cf. ‘Mother Earth’ and see OED ‘Mother’ 4a) transforms customary pronunciation into a ‘supreame Foundresse’.

572–573 worketh the feate: Constitutes the particular quantity of syllables.

574 whose: Referring to ‘Position, Dipthong, etc.’

575–577 secundæ intentiones . . . primæ: Harvey here draws on the philosophical distinction between first intentions (L primae intentiones) or concepts of things, and second intentions (L secundae intentiones) or concepts of concepts: the quantity of a syllable he here describes as a first intention, and the quantity as inferred from metrical rule he describes as a second intention.

577 in shorte: To be brief (with a pun on the topic at hand).

586 so like itselfe: So ‘sensible’ [that customary pronunciation be reducible to rule].

591–598

Sed . . . vale: ‘Beseech you. I will respond soon to your little darling’s delightful letters as meticulously as possible, while in the meantime sharing with her as many exquisite greetings and healths as she has hairs—half-golden, half-silver, and half-bejeweled—on her head. What [more] do you seek? By your Venus, she is another little Rosalind, and your very own little Hobbinol, and no other, loves her lavishly (with your permission, as before). O my Lady Immerito, my most beautiful Madam Colin Clout, much more than abundant salutations to you, and fare well.’

Harvey is responding to Spenser’s request at 1.76-7 that he write to Spenser’s sweetheart (Corculum). Most commentators suppose the sweetheart to be Spenser’s new wife, on the dual evidence of the reference to her as a ‘Domina Immerito’—which may be translated ‘Madam’ or ‘Lady Immerito’—and the record of Spenser’s marriage to a Maccabaeus Chylde on 27 October 1579. But the logic of the passage suggests that the ‘Domina Immerito’, the ‘bellissima Collina Clouta’ here addressed is not a Mrs. Spenser, but the same addressee as that of the preceding three sentences, Spenser himself, albeit affectionately feminized. (It may be observed that in classical elegy, the domina is always a commanding mistress and never a wife.) While Harvey’s queer joke may indeed be motivated by Spenser’s having married—the joke being that marriage feminizes the besotted groom—Harvey’s joke may as easily reflect his sense that there is something perverse in Spenser’s having encouraged him to adopt an elaborately affectionate posture towards Spenser’s sweetheart—in which case the joke will involve Harvey’s demonstration of a now polymorphous and ambidirectional warmth. Difficult as it may be to specify the force of the passage, it cannot securely corroborate the theory that Harvey’s correspondent had married Maccabeus Chylde.

601 the two Gentlemen: Sidney and Dyer, to whom Harvey had referred, at the beginning of the letter, as crucial sponsors and fellow-practitioners in Spenser and Harvey’s ‘new famous enterprise’ of quantitative versifying.

603 M. Daniel Rogers: Antiquarian and Latin poet, Rogers had a considerable diplomatic career in France and the Low Countries. He had lived in Paris during most of the 1560s and had established warm relations with Ramus and several members of the Pléiade, but his literary connections were international: he was on warm terms with Douza, Sturm, Languet, Buchanan, Schede, and Lipsius. Rogers became acquainted with Sidney sometime before 1575 and accompanied him on diplomatic missions in the late 1570s. In suggesting that Spenser show Rogers Harvey’s reflections on quantitative practice, he is perhaps seeking to affiliate their efforts with such continental quantitative experiments as those of Rogers’ friends Ronsard and Baïf.

604 Marble booke: Possibly referring to the durability of grateful memory; cf. Lewes Lewkenor’s dedication to Anne, Countess of Warwicke, of his translation of Contarini’s Commonwealth and Government of Venice (1599): ‘for I will neuer forget, but still retaine engraued in the marble table of a thankefull memory . . . the many fauours you haue done me in particular’ (*2v).

606 Nosti . . . stylum: ‘The hand and style you know’.