PROPER: A secondary sense of the word can be ‘elegant’.

familiar: Deriving primarily from its use as a rubric in Cicero’s collection of letters ‘ad familiares’, the term here signifies personal rather than official letters; see Let Intro 1:#.

Aprill last: The earthquake occurred on 6 April 1580.

Versifying: Poetry organized primarily by metrical quantity. Spenser uses the term to contrast with rhyming, just as Ascham does in the Scholemaster (1570): ‘The noble Lord Th. Earle of Surrey, first of all English men, in translating the fourth booke of Virgill: and Gonsalvo Periz that excellent learned man, and Secretarie to kyng Philip of Spaine, in translating the Ulisses of Homer out of Greke into Spanish, have both, by good judgement, avoyded the fault of Ryming, yet neither of them hath fullie hite perfite and trew versifiyng’ (1970: 291).

wellwiller: This intermediary figure has not been identified. The pseudonym might be understood as a translation of ‘Benevolo’, the figure who was to have performed effectively the same function in bringing a different pseudo-unauthorized volume, a collection of Harvey’s letters and poems, to the press around the same time; see Let Intro 1:#.

Bynneman: Bynneman had published van der Noot’s Theatre for Worldlings just a few years after he was made free of the stationers. One of London’s most productive stationers, Bynneman had moved his main shop to the Thames Street site in 1579.

Baynardes Castell: The castle, property of the Earl of Pembroke, was located on the north side of the Thames between Blackfriars to the west and Burley House to the east.