‘Pageants,’ and the ‘Epithalamion Thamesis’ may have been rough drafts of episodes that found a home later in the ‘Faerie Queene.’ Fragments of the ‘Stemmata Dudleiana,’ in which Spenser apostrophised his patron Leicester, may be embodied in the ‘Ruines of Time’ which was published in ‘Complaints’ in 1591. Almost all the other poems published in that volume were mentioned in the correspondence with Harvey, and were probably composed while Spenser was enjoying Leicester's patronage. Similarly the ‘Hymns in Honour of Love and of Beauty’ (which were first published in 1596) were probably written while the poet was under the thraldom of ‘Rosalind.’
But more interesting is it to note that of the two poems—‘The Shepheards Calender’ and ‘The Faerie Queene’—on which Spenser's fame mainly depends, the former was completed, and the latter well begun, while Spenser was under Leicester's roof in 1579. ‘I wil in hande forthwith with my “Faerie Queene,” whyche I praye you hastily send me with al expedition,’ wrote Spenser on 5 Oct. 1579. Eighteen days later Harvey replied: ‘In good faith I had once again well nigh forgotten your “Faerie Queene;” howbeit by good chance I have now sent her home at the last, neither in better nor worse case than I found her.’ Ten years elapsed before any portion of that work was ready for the press. The ‘Shepheards Calender,’ on the other hand, was sent to press without delay. On 5 Dec. 1579 the publisher, Hugh Singleton, obtained a license for its publication, and it appeared at once in a small quarto volume bearing the title, ‘The Shepheardes Calender, Conteyning tvvelue Æglogues proportionable to the twelve moneths. 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.’
Under the modest pseudonym of ‘Immerito,’ the author dedicated in a short poem this series of twelve dialogues or eclogues to his friend Sir Philip Sidney. No mention was anywhere made of Spenser's name. An ‘epistle dedicatory’ to Gabriel Harvey, dated 10 April 1579, was signed ‘E. K.,’ who may safely be identified with Spenser's and Harvey's college friend, Edward Kirke. From the same pen proceeded the notes and glossary that were appended to each poem. The design was suggested by the pastoral poetry of Theocritus, Bion, Clement Marot, and the Italian Mantuanus (cf. Anglia, 1880, iii. and 1886, ix.). In imitation of the Doric dialect of the first named, Spenser adopted an archaic vocabulary, which justified Kirke's glossary. Marot's and Mantuanus's influence is apparent throughout, alike in subject-matter and phraseology, and the eleventh and twelfth eclogues are direct paraphrases from the French poet. In the ‘June’ eclogue Spenser introduced a panegyric on Chaucer, ‘who [he says] taught me homely, as I can, to make.’ Love is the leading, but by no means the sole, topic of the poems. The condition of the church and the papal ‘heresy’ are discussed in the spirit of a convinced adherent of the established church. Among the interlocutors of the twelve dialogues Spenser introduces under veiled names not only his friend Harvey (as Hobbinol) and himself (as Colin), but also Grindal, the archbishop of Canterbury (as Algrind).
The work was received with enthusiasm. A second edition—an exact reprint—was issued in 1581 ‘for John Harison the younger.’ A third and a fourth edition appeared respectively in 1586 and in 1591, both by the same publisher, while a fifth, printed by Thomas Creede, was dated 1597. It was translated into Latin by John Dove about 1585, but Dove's rendering remains in manuscript at Caius College, Cambridge. Spenser was at once admitted by critical contemporaries to the first place among English poets. William Webbe, in his ‘Discourse of English Poetrie’ (1586), reserved for the author of the ‘Shepheards Calender,’ of whose name he was uncertain, ‘the title of the rightest English poet that ever he read’ (ed. Arber, p. 35). ‘He may well wear the garland, and step before the best of all English poets that I have seen or heard’ (ib. p. 52). Before 1589 Nash wrote of ‘divine Master Spencer.’ Sir Philip Sidney, while deprecating Spenser's use of ‘an old rustic language,’ credited the eclogues with ‘much poetry indeed worthy of the reading’ (Apology for Poetry). Francis Meres, like Webbe, saw in Spenser the compeer of Theocritus and Virgil. ‘Master Edmund Spenser,’ wrote Drayton, ‘had done enough for the immortality of his name had he only given us his “Shepherd's Calendar,” a masterpiece, if any.’
In 1580 Spenser again appeared in print. In that year Henry Bynneman published two volumes to which Spenser contributed. One was entitled ‘Three proper and wittie familiar Letters; lately passed betweene two Vniversitie men; touching the Earthquake in Aprill last, and our English refourmed Versifying. With the Preface of a well-willer to them both.’ The other
