and puritanic preaching. Let us understand these elements clearly, for
apart from them the _Calendar_ is a meaningless work.

It was a fashion among Italian poets to make eclogues or pastoral poems
about shepherds, their dancing, piping, love-making,--everything except a
shepherd's proper business. Spenser followed this artificial fashion in his
_Calendar_ by making twelve pastorals, one for each month of the year.
These all take the form of conversations, accompanied by music and dancing,
and the personages are Cuddie, Diggon, Hobbinoll, and other fantastic
shepherds. According to poetic custom these should sing only of love; but
in Spenser's day religious controversy was rampant, and flattery might not
be overlooked by a poet who aspired to royal favor. So while the January
pastoral tells of the unhappy love of Colin Clout (Spenser) for Rosalind,
the springtime of April calls for a song in praise of Elizabeth:

Lo, how finely the Graces can it foot
To the instrument!
They dancen deffly and singen soote,
In their merriment.
Wants not a fourth Grace to make the dance even?
Let that room to my Lady be yeven.
She shall be a Grace,
To fill the fourth place,
And reign with the rest in heaven.

In May the shepherds are rival pastors of the Reformation, who end their
sermons with an animal fable; in summer they discourse of Puritan theology;
October brings them to contemplate the trials and disappointments of a
poet, and the series ends with a parable comparing life to the four seasons
of the year.