At this time, however, or not long after—the _Notes_ must have been written between 1572 and 1575, and the correspondence of Spenser and Harvey actually appeared in 1579—these other persons were thinking a great deal about the classical metres. The _Five Letters_ (“Three” and “Two”[233]—not to be confused with the _Four Letters_ which Harvey issued long afterwards about Greene) are full of the subject, and of poetical criticism generally. They, together with the controversy which arose over Gosson’s _School of Abuse_, and which indirectly produced Sidney’s _Apology for Poetry_, make the years 1579-1580 as notable in the history of English criticism as the appearances of _Euphues_ and _The Shepherd’s Calendar_ make them in that of creative literature. ----- Footnote 233: See Grosart’s _Works of Gabriel Harvey_, vol. i. pp. 6-150. Parts will be found in the Globe edition of Spenser, pp. 706-710. ----- Spenser’s first letter informs Harvey that “they [Sidney and Dyer] have proclaimed in their ἀρειωπάγῳ[234] [the literary _cénacle_ of Leicester House] a general surceasing and silence of bald rhymers, and also of the very best too: instead whereof they have, by the authority of their whole Senate, prescribed certain laws and rules of quantities of English syllables for English verse, having had thereof already great practice, and drawn me to their faction.” [Sidenote: _Spenser and Harvey._] And later, “I am more in love with English versifying than with rhyming, which I should have done long since if I would have followed your counsel.” He hints, however, gently, that Harvey’s own verses (these coterie writers always keep the name “verses” for their hybrid abortions) once or twice “make a breach in Master Drant’s rules.” Which was, of course, a very dreadful thing, only to be “condoned _tanto poetæ_.” He requites Harvey with a few Iambics, which he “dare warrant precisely perfect for the feet, and varying not one inch from the Rule.” And then follows the well-known piece beginning— “Unhappy verse, the witness of my unhappy state,” where certainly the state must have been bad if it was as infelicitous as the verse. ----- Footnote 234: I am not responsible for the eccentricities of this form. -----