Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/561

 1 Glosses to Spenser's "Shepheardes Calender 1 ' 557 recent scholars have utterly rejected his theory. Long shows that many of Grosart's "Lancastrine" words occur in dialects outside of Lancashire, and that many more Spenser probably took from Middle English or Middle Scots. 3 Long demolishes Grosart's argument; but he does not seem convincing in his effort to substitute Cambridge for Lancashire. Higginson accepts and elaborates both the destructive and the con- structive arguments of Long. 4 Neither of these scholars seems to have studied the language of the poem either independently or completely. Long simply refuted the essentially Lancastrine character of the words beginning with A and B in Grosart's list; and Higginson added little of consequence. The field, therefore seems clear for a fresh study of the sources of Spenser's diction. Such a study, moreover, is of value, not only as determining possible literary or dialectical elements in the vocabulary of Spenser and of the poets that have followed him, but also as throwing light on another vexed question of Spenserian scholar- ship: who was the actual author of the glosses? They are apparently by "E. K.", initials usually identified, plausibly enough, with one Edward Kirke, a Londoner who was a student at Cambridge with Spenser. Uhlemann followed by Sommer and Rhys, 5 set forth the theory, however, that Spenser himself composed the glosses, and Uhlemann explained the errors in them as due to lapse of memory. Fletcher suggests a compro- mise theory that Spenser revised a part of E. K's work; 6 and Higginson thinks that, if so, the revision must have been very cursory and incomplete; 7 but many of the examples which he points out as errors in glossing, are sufficiently defensible to cast doubt on his results; and one has no reason to know that his investigation was either complete or thorough. 4 Spenser's Shepherd's Calender by J. J. Higginson, Col. Univ. dissert., N. Y., 1912, pp. 289 et seq. G. C. Moore Smith, in reviewing Higginson (Mod. Lang. Rev., IX, 394) questions Spenser's Cambridge residence at this period. He thinks that Spenser was probably in the North of England but not neces- sarily in Lancashire. His comment seems judicious. 6 For a fuller history of this discussion, see Higginson, pp. 165 et seq. B M. L. N., 330 et seq. 7 Higginson, pp. 173 et seq.
 * Anglia, XXXI, 86 et seq.