0.2 Welwiller: See See the use of the term on the t.p. and comment. n above.

4 a faithfull friende: The friend has not been identified.

5 copying . . . handes: The Wellwiller here claims to have received the letters, which had passed from hand to hand four or five times, in a copy written out by Immerito himself at the behest of the ‘faithfull friende’. Spenser first adopts the pseudonym, Immerito, as the signature for his envoy to SC To His Booke.

9–10 In exiguo quandoque cespite latet lepus: ‘Sometimes a hare hides in the short grass’; i.e., one sometimes finds good things right under one’s nose. Not a common proverb, though adduced in Letter 105 of Book I of Marsilio Ficino’s Letters (1957: 157).

14–17 But shewe me . . . liues.: Implying that it will be difficult to come up with comparable letters, the Wellwiller alleges that if the reader can find only two such letters, then the reader may justly say that Immerito and the Wellwiller have effectively no experience of English epistolary achievement.

15 the other twoo: I.e., the two letters by Harvey in the first of the two collections of letters.

18 himselfe: I.e., Harvey.

20 matter . . . importance: Political matters, presumably, as opposed to the prosodic and geological concerns of Harvey’s letters here.

23 in Writing: I.e., in manuscript.

25 these two following: Again, Harvey’s two letters in the first of the two collections.

28 in this Tongue: The Wellwiller maintains a focus on a central theme of the letters, as of The Shepheardes Calender, the defense of the vernacular. While the letters assert that literary achievement in English can rival that in other European vernaculars and, indeed, in Latin, the Wellwiller argues that these letters instance the literary excellence of which English is capable.

30 Talente: Among the earliest uses of the term to mean ‘native skill’, as opposed to the sort of divine endowment, which latter, more reverent sense derives from the Parable of the Talents (Matt 25:14-30).

31 so little harme: Although Harvey would later develop a reputation for splenetic expression, his letters are here singled out for what is characterized as an unusually mild and non-polemic manner.

32–33 whych . . . writing: The clause is restrictive.

33–34 If they . . . curious: I.e., if the correspondence had been composed especially for print publication, the letters would have been more elaborately or beautifully wrought.