faults of Spenser's vocabulary are largely of a quite different character from that commonly imputed to them. It is not that he brought together the language of the past and of the present, the speech of the educated man and of the rustic, and fashioned from it a dialect which nobody who lived at any time or at any place ever spoke. This is, of course, true. Still, its truth might be conceded by an admirer of the poet who did not feel that it was a serious charge against the diction he employed. But it is far from being the whole truth. Spenser's errors were of a different and graver character. He failed frequently to understand the words and grammar of the author he admired. Hence his revivals of Chaucer are often not revivals of the past, but pure creations of his own fancy, to which nothing similar ever existed in reality. He coins words under the apparent impression that they were ones. that had issued from the mint of his predecessor. He gives to words he adopted from Chaucer meanings they never had in the writings of the latter, or in those of any one else. He adds new terminations to old words, in order to make them suitable for ryme. One instance of his understanding or misunderstanding will be sufficient to show the general nature of the mistakes he was always liable to make, and frequently did make. In AngloSaxon the irregular verb gan, 'to go,' had as a preterite code. In later English this preterite appeared in several forms, of which yede and yode are both found. The former occurs in Chaucer, though not frequently. Spenser, instead of looking upon them as variants of the same word, regarded them as two different parts of the same strong verb. With him yode appears as a preterite and

yede or yeede as an infinitive. It is sufficient to say that as an infinitive yede had no real existence. No illustration of its employment can be met with outside of his pages or possibly the pages of some of his imitators, or of one or two of his contemporaries who had committed. independently the same error.

It is therefore just to say in qualified terms what Jonson said in sweeping ones, that, as a result of his affecting the speech of Chaucer, "Spenser writ no language." He became at times a difficult author, not so much because his words had only an obsolete existence as because they had never had any existence at all. His imitations of his predecessor's vocabulary were largely spurious. They were therefore foredoomed to failure. To revive the past of a language is a sufficiently arduous undertaking. But to give life to a supposed past that was never a present is something quite beyond the power of a genius greater than was even that of Spenser. Yet there seems to be a fatality about Chaucer in causing the best scholars to make the worst blunders. No one who comes even remotely within the sphere of his influence seems capable of resisting the infection. We can naturally find traces of it in the comments made in regard to the efforts avowedly put forth in the sixteenth century to reproduce his diction. Malone, who was usually as accurate as he was dull-it is not easy to give higher praise to his accuracy-ventured to contradict Ben Jonson in his criticism of Spenser's imitation of the ancient English writers. "The language of the 'Fairy Queen," he wrote, "was the poetical language of the age in which he lived; and, however obsolete it might ap

pear to Dryden, was, I conceive, perfectly intelligible to every reader of poetry in the time of Queen Elizabeth, though the Shepherd's Calendar' was not even then understood without a commentary." This statement was quoted approvingly by Todd in his edition of Spenser's works. It served him as a starting-point from which to enlarge still further the circle of ignorance and misrepresentation. Not satisfied with adopting the view just set forth, he went on to speak of Malone as having declared that Jonson's criticism was directed only against the 'Shepherd's Calendar' and not against the 'Fairy Queen' -which is something that was neither true of what Jonson said, nor of what Malone said that he had said. Modern linguistic study has made it clear that the language of the Fairy Queen' was the poetical language of the day only so far as the authority of Spenser made it so. His authority was not sufficient to perpetuate it. If the archaisms he borrowed ever renew their life in these later days, it will be because they have become familiar to us in the authors from whom he mainly took them, and not because they have become familiar to us in his pages, where they still seem out of place.

These attempts at reviving the versification and vocabulary of Chaucer are sufficient of themselves to show how potent his influence still continued to remain in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Abundant proofs of this fact lie everywhere upon the surface, and convey, one would suppose, their own lesson. Yet the lesson has rarely been learned. It has been necessary, in con

1 Dryden's Prose Works, vol. iii., 2 Todd's Spenser, vol. i., p. clxiii. P. 94 (note).

sequence, to give the details in full because the opposite view has often been promulgated. There is nothing connected with Chaucer's life and writings that has not been the subject of mistake and misunderstanding, and that too frequently in quarters where it would have been little expected. The question of Chaucer's reputation in the Elizabethan age furnishes no exception. Much stress need not be laid upon the blunder of a writer like Hippisley, who tells us that, with the exception of Beaumont and Puttenham, "there is scarcely any distinct recognition of the poetical merits of the Canterbury Tales' anterior to Dryden." But there is something to cause surprise in the astounding comparison between the reputations of Chaucer and Gower that was made by so distinguished a pioneer in Early-English study as Marsh. That scholar, whose utterances were in general carefully guarded, asserts that for a long time the fame of the lat ter was much more extensive than that of the former. "His works," he writes, "as being of a higher moral tone, or at least of higher moral pretensions, and at the same time of less artificial refinement, were calculated to reach and influence a somewhat larger class than that which would be attracted by the poems of Chaucer, and consequently they seem to have had a wider circulation." This sentence does something more than convey a false impression. There is hardly a single statement of any sort in any part of it that is not hopelessly misleading. The reason given for the opinion which has just been quoted is full as extraordinary as the opinion itself. As the sole evidence of the asserted inferiority of Chau

1 Hippisley's Chapters on Early English Literature, p. 42.

cer's reputation to that of Gower, we are gravely told that the former is not mentioned by Shakspeare. On the other hand, the play of Pericles' is avowedly based upon the story of Apollonius of Tyre contained in the 'Confessio Amantis,' and the author of that work is besides introduced into the play by name, and performs the office of the chorus in the ancient drama. "There is no doubt," continues Mr. Marsh," that the poem of Gower, however inferior to the work of his master, was much esteemed in his lifetime, and still enjoyed a high reputa tion in ages when Chaucer was almost forgotten. But posterity has reversed the judgment of its immediate predecessors; and though Gower will long be read, he will never again dispute the palm of excellence with the true father of English literature."1

Assertions of such a character, coming from such a source, have a tendency to discourage the expectation that we shall ever arrive at the truth about Chaucer on a single point. No more unauthorized and unwarranted. inferences have ever been drawn from a single fact. It so happened, without doubt, that Chaucer's name was not mentioned by Shakspeare. But no reader of Troilus and Cressida' can possibly suppose the great dramatist to have been unfamiliar with the production of the early poet that bears the same title. The Midsummer-Night's Dream,' moreover, though not based upon the Knight's tale, contains passages that prove that portions of the latter work were before the mind of the writer while engaged in the composition of the

Origin and History of the English Language, by George P. Marsh, 3d edition (1872), p. 439.