Spenser is the second of our English Master Poets, and he drew strength, throughout life, from the study of his predecessor. No change that time had wrought in form and matter should cloud our perception of the fact that Spenser kept his style in health by making Chaucer its physician.

Before commenting further on these eclogues, we must take into companionship "E. K.," their first editor. He was a college friend of Spenser's, of like age, and newly graduated. As a friend, he would know facts that belonged to the outward and visible life of Spenser, but perception of the inner life, helped as it might be by many a free argument in college rooms, depended on himself. A true artist, whether young or old, will leave his work to speak in its own language to those who have ears to hear. It is enough if he has put his soul into his work. Let others find it there he cannot be its showman. Of the mind of Spenser in "The Shepherd's Calendar," E. K. knew nothing by direct interpretation from his friend, and even from some part of what he could not help seeing and knowing— namely, his friend's disagreement from the queen's opinion in Church questions-he did what he could, in his friend's interests, to divert attention.

In November, 1571, Edward Kirke entered Pembroke Hall, at the age of eighteen, like Spenser, as a sizar. Spenser had entered two years and a half earlier, in May, 1569. Kirke, who removed from Pembroke Hall to Gonville and Caius College, in graduation was by two years his friend's junior. Spenser commenced M.A. in 1576, and Kirke in 1578, the year before the publication of "The Shepherd's Calendar." Kirke shared Spenser's goodwill to Gabriel Harvey, whom younger Cambridge men seem to have then regarded as the leader of their literary set, and Kirke had also

chant royal, sweetened by repeating in the second and fourth line of the second quatrain the rhyme in the first and third line of the first. Instead of a ba b, b c bc, it is a bab, baba.

a large and absolute faith in the genius of his friend Spenser. Having graduated in 1578, he seems to have been at home. in London when Spenser-in Leicester's service-was in London too. Perhaps the Mistresse Kirke of Spenser's letters at this time, through whom he wished letters and parcels to be sent, was his friend's widowed mother, who may have kept an inn in London with which a carrier was associated, and Edward Kirke may have been staying with her while waiting to take his next step in life, in friendly intercourse with Spenser, who was planning then the anonymous publication of "The Shepherd's Calendar,” and was willing enough to let E. K. help to make a volume of it. It would be set forth with his learned, not to say pedantic, gloss, according to the fashion of the critics in his day; this would be welcome to the polite reader, such as he then was. It was pleasant also to the poet that there would go with his verse the friendly comment of a young enthusiasm in sincerest recognition of his genius. He was glad of that, although he signed himself " Immerito."

Edward Kirke took orders in the Church, and was instituted, on the twenty-sixth of May, 1580, on the presentation of Sir Thomas Kytson, to the Rectory of Risby, in Suffolk. This was only half a year after he had shown his parts as editor of "the new poet." The account book of Sir Thomas Kytson shows that he paid a shilling for a "Shepheardes Calender" in 1583. In 1587 he was able to improve Edward Kirke's position by presenting him to the adjacent living of Lackford. Edward Kirke died parson of Risby, as his gravestone records, on the tenth of November, 1613, aged sixty, and his will remains to show that he had married and prospered, and that he had two married daughters, one of whom made him grandfather to three children.* As he was sixty when he

* Grosart's "Spenser," vol. iii., pp. cviii.-cxiv. "Notes and Queries," 3rd series, vol. vii., p. 509. Kirke received as a poor Bachelor of Arts of Gonville and Caius College, on the fourteenth of May,

died in 1613, we know his age to have been twenty-six in 1579, when Spenser's age, if he was born in 1552, was twenty-seven.

The first edition of "The Shepheardes Calender was published at the end of the year 1579. It was entered in the Stationers' Register as licensed to Hugh Singleton on the fifth of December, and the book then published was assigned over to John Harrison on the twenty-ninth of October, 1580. It was a small quarto, with this upon its title-page :-“The Shepheardes Calender Conteyning tvvelue Æglogues proportionable to the twelue monethes. Entitled to the noble and vertuous Gentleman most worthy of all titles both of learning and cheualrie M. Philip Sidney. At London. Printed by Hugh Singleton, dwelling in Creede Lane neere vnto Ludgate at the signe of the gylden Tunne, and are there to be solde. 1579." The second edition, printed "for Iohn Harison the younger, dwelling in Pater noster Roe, at the signe of the Anker," was a complete reprint in 1581. There was a third edition in 1586 and a fourth in 1591, both published by John Harrison the younger.

Eighteen lines of dedication, signed "Immerito," bid the book present itself to Sidney, who is named only upon the title-page,

"As child whose parent is unkent

To him that is the president
Of noblesse and of chivalre,"

and they end with a promise of more verse to follow. E. K. then, in an "Epistle Dedicatory," begins by apply ing to his friend, from Chaucer's "Troilus and Cressida," the phrase, “unkist, unkent." While unknown to most men, he is regarded but of a few. "But I doubt not, so soon as his

1575, ten shillings from Dean Nowell out of his brother Robert's money. His identification with "E. K," of "The Shepherd's Calendar " rests upon such strong evidence of probability that it is usually taken without question, although not proved conclusively.

name shall come into the knowledge of men, and his worthiness be sounded in the trump of Fame, but that he shall be not only kist, but also beloved of all, embraced of the most, and wondered at of the best. No less, I think, deserveth his wittiness in devising, his pithiness in uttering, his complaints of love so lovely, his discourses of pleasure so pleasantly, his pastoral rudeness, his moral wiseness, his due observing of decorum every where, in persons, in seasons, in matter, in speech, and generally in all seemly simplicity of handling his matters, and framing his Words." Then he goes on to speak at length of the poet's use of old words, and his reasons in art for the use of them. It will be a chief part of E. K.'s work in his glosses to explain them. He dwells also upon the well-knit sentences and upon Spenser's use of eclogue : "So flew Theocritus as you may perceive he was already full fledged. So flew Virgil, as not yet well feeling his wings. So flew Mantuan, as not yet being full summed. So Petrarch, so Boccace, so Marot, Sannazarus, and also diverse other excellent both Italian and French poets, whose footing this author everywhere followeth : yet so as few, but they be well scented, can trace him out." Presently E. K. distinctly says that it is not his intention to interpret the main purpose of the work: "Now as touching the general drift and purpose of his glogues, I mind not to say much, himself laboring to conceal it." They who had eyes would see. E. K. did not wish many to see much of opinions that might shut his friend out from Court favour. He glanced off to the safe subject of love, and fixed the reader's mind as much as possible on that. From what lay below the surface he even endeavoured to divert attention. But he has told in this "Epistle Dedicatory" that by Tityrus Chaucer was meant, and that the poet meant himself by Colin Clout.

Young Spenser's sympathy was with the Puritan in the Elizabethan Church. He took his stand in "The Shepheardes Calender" openly enough against the queen's manner of

dealing with Archbishop Grindal.

He read the best of our

old poets, followed in their steps, and even closed "The Shepheardes Calender " with exaltation of Chaucer and Langland

"Dare not to match thy pipe with Tityrus his style,

Nor with the Pilgrim that the Ploughman played awhile:
But follow them far off, and their high steps adore.

The better please, the worse despise : I ask no more."

He had read Skelton's bold denunciation of Church worldliness, and from Skelton's Colin Clout, who spoke the ills he knew as one of the common people, Spenser took the name by which he called himself in all his poems. Edward Kirke, who must often have heard his friend fervent in argument, is careful to divert attention from the full significance of this choice of a name. "Colin Clout," he says, in his "Glosse" to the first eclogue, "is a name not greatly used, and yet have I seen a poesie of M. Skelton's under that title. But indeed the word of Colin is French, and used of the French poet Marot (if he be worthie of the name of a poet) in a certain Eclogue: Under which name this poet secretly shadoweth himself, as sometime did Virgil under the name of Tityrus, thinking it much fitter than such Latin names, for the great unlikelihood of the language." In this manner E. K. always crosses the scent when he would keep sharp noses off the track of his friend's Puritanism.

Spenser's use of old English words was in "The Shepheardes Calender" designed for simple shepherd's speech, and to attune his English with the Doric of Theocritus. But E. K. was right in suggesting that Spenser sought to recover to his mother tongue some of her own wealth that had been exchanged-as he thought, unprofitably-for foreign garniture. Throughout Elizabeth's reign the expansion of thought caused effort in many directions to enlarge the means for its expression. The language was enriched ;a larger house required more furniture. New words were