Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/570

 566 Draper may not have been certain what the right form actually was; but the number of cases inclines one to the opinion that he willfully varied sense, syntax, or pronunciation when the occa- sion suited. Rhyme must commonly have been the cause: about a hundred of the words under consideration in this paper are used at least once in rhyme. The twelve eclogues must have been difficult experiments for the young poet; and Spenser was no purist. The fact that Spenser was no purist is given particular point by a list of anomalous cases in which, through ignorance or caprice or for some technical reason not evident to the reader, he seems either to have coined a word or changed very consider- ably one that already existed. Some of these coinages seem to have a dialect source, and may have existed in Spenser's day in the very form in which he used them; but, if they be coinages, they are most of them of little credit to the inventor, for only three or four have found a permanent place in the lan- guage. *Haske (XI), "a wicker fish-basket," may be related to hassock, as N. E. D. suggests; but I think it is more likely either a dialect word now obsolute or a coinage of Spenser's for rhyme. Beastlihead (V) will perhaps pass as the poetical brother of beastliness and beasthood. Bellibone (IV) may be either a variant of bonibel or a corruption of the French belle bonne or belle et bonne; in any case, it is not very happy. *Fore- haile (IX), I have not been able to find in N. E. D. or E. D. D. If overhaile* 7 is a corruption of overhaul, this may be a corruption of a lost dialect form of forehaul. E. K. glosses it as draw or distress; and the former meaing suggests haul; but distress seems to be the sense that serves best in the text. Haydeguies (VI), glossed by E. K. as a "country danse or round," is pro- bably an old dialect word. The original of the passage, which seems to be from Virgil, does not throw any light on the pro- blem. 48 Hereby there (IX) for here and there, seems to have no reason for existence except Spenser's sheer delight in the pseudo- antique. Hidder and shidder (IX), Herford assigns to Northern dialect: I have not found either form in E. D. D., and am inclined to think that Spenser simply added the dialectical 47 N.E.D. gives hale as the regular ME. spelling of haul; and Douglas uses ourhaill, to cover, in King Hart, Gregory Smith's Specimens, 52, 1. 16. 48 See Reissert in Anglia, IX, 215 n.