Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/560

 556 Draper THE GLOSSES TO SPENSER'S "SHEPHEARDES CALENDER" During the later sixteenth century, the vocabulary of modern literary English was in the making; the contributors to Tottel's Miscellany, the Euphuists, the University wits, and, second only to Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, were paramount, determining forces. Spenser's diction has been an influence upon English poetry from the two Fletchers down through Keats and William Morris. It has, moreover, been the subject of comment for over two hundred years, and of scholarly debate for several generations. 1 Dryden, for instance, imputed its un- wonted character to the influence of "our northern dialect." Pope disapproved the poet's imitating the Doric of Theocritus by "old English and country phrases." Gibber's Lives objected to the obsolete expressions; Whitehead's Charge to the Poets referred to "each quaint old word that scarce Eliza knew"; Warton's Observations gave a whole section to the diction of the Faerie Queene and Dr. Johnson raised his voice against the crabbed archaisms, especially in the November Eclogue of The Shepheardes Calender. Indeed, The Shepheardes Calender has become the centre of the discussion in modern scholarship, partly because it seems to be the immediate source of the archaisms of the Faerie Queene, and partly because it presents the problem in a particu- larly acute form. The glosses of "E. K.", moreover, lend a considerable interest as at once illuminating and beclouding the problem. At least two significant opinions have been put forth as to the nature and origin of this body of vocabulary. Grosart, in his edition of Spenser's Works, ascribes it to Lan- castrine dialect, bases his statement upon a list of alleged Lan- castrinisms, and proceeds to build upon it a proof that Spenser's wooing of Rosalind, "the widowes daughter of the glenne," took place in north-east Lancashire. 2 Grosart has been very widely accepted, apparently without verification; but at least two 1 The general influence has been traced in Cory's Critics of Edmund Spen- ser, Univ. of Cal. Publ. II, No. 2. The examples cited are taken from pp. 130 et seq., pp. 152 et seq. etc. 2 Spenser's Works, Grosart ed., I, 408 et seq.