Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/568

 564 Draper picked up the Northern forms among students in the University, is not quite convincing: Spenser could of course, have caught the phonological turn of their accent; but whether he would have learned such homely and country phrases, in an environ- ment where neither he nor the Northerners would have had much occasion to use them, is a matter of question. At least, it is certain that almost all the words that he surely took from dialect, and most of those that he may have taken, are fairly well localized in one or more of the Northern shires. There are a few words from various sources, curiously shifted from their normal form or meaning. Sometimes the change seems to be only tropical in nature; and the note in the gloss seems rather the explanation of a metaphor than the definition of a new meaning of the word. Her peeced pineons (X), orphans (V), a thrilling throb (V), well-thewed (II), with cakes (XI), wounds (II), probably belong to this class, which were excluded from discussion at beginning of the present study. Spenser's use of archaisms to help his rhyme has already been suggested; and there is an interesting group that seems to have been shifted in sound or in sense, apparently for the sake of rhyming. *Astert (XI) seems to be a variant of Middle English astart, to rhyme with expert. 44 *Bent (IX) has no apparent dialectical or archaic origin; it is probably either elliptical for obedient, or tropical, as in the phrase, bent to one's will. *Be- tight (XI) seems to be a variant past participle for Middle English betide: in Mother Hubbard's Tale (39), he uses the regular weak form betided.** *Bynempt (XI), is, in like fashion, a coined past tense of Middle English bename to rhyme with contempt; and the sense also seems somewhat forced. *Byn- empte (VII) is the same form used in a rather more accurate sense, but rhyming rather badly with ypent. *Clincke (V) seems to come from the Lancastrine click with a gratuitous N either by analogy with the clink of Northern dialect, or 44 Some editions of the gloss give it as astart. See the variants listed in Grosart's notes, II, 269, line 99. 45 Chaucer uses a preterit singular bettt and a past participle belli, both marked short by Stratmann. To make his rhyme with light and height, Spenser had to unvoice the D of the past participle or perhaps he confused it with the preterit and lengthen the I. These reasons seem to account for his strange spelling.