Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Poetical Works, Vol. 2 of 5: With Memoir and Critical Dissertations
It is remarkable that Harvey thought rather coldly of that portion of The Faerie Queene which was sent him. Such blunders by good-natured friends, in judging of great works in ms., are nearly as common in literary history as those of pub lishers or their readers. Some one told Godwin, that if he pub lished Caleb Williams, it would be the grave of his putation. Another, after reading the opening chapters of Waverley, thought them insipid and coarse. A third, Hob house we think, advised Lord Byron not to publish the first two cantos of Childe Harold. And worthy Gabriel Harvey thus accosts our poet If so be 'the Faerie Queene' be fairer in your eye than the Nine Muses, mark what I say - and yet I will not say that which I thought - but there is an end for this once, and fare you well till God, or some good angel, put you in a better mind.
In December 1579, appeared The Shepherd's Calendar, with a dedication to Maister Philip Sidney, and a pret'atory epistle, an argument, a glossary, and explanatory notes, by the mysterious E. K., whom some think to have been one Edward Kirk, others one King, and others suppose to have been an alias of Spenser himself. It appeared in a small quarto, with wood cuts, and ere 1597 it had passed through five editions. I e shall have occasion in our after paper to characterise its merits as well as those of his other minor poems.
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