Glosses to Spenser's "Shepheardes Calender" 573 variations seem to be due, not so much to ignorance, as to malice aforethought; and, in the Faerie Queene, where the errors seem more numerous, the development of Spenser's art at the expense of his archaistic bent, would largely account for them. He had a large and, on the whole, accurate Middle English vocabulary. He seems to have had some understanding of Chaucerian grammar, but probably little grasp of Middle English phonology and none of Middle English dialect distinc- tions. Spenser's knowledge of Middle English, however, is a subject unto itself; and the present study cannot pretend to any positive statement except on the rather narrow basis of the words glossed by E. K. Spenser treats the sources of his diction, as he treats the sources of his ideas and images, unhampered by too precise a regard for the original. He shifts at will, sense, syntax and pronunciation, sometimes for his rhyme or meter, sometimes, apparently, from caprice or forgetfulness. The unfortunate result has often been that he has neither left a lucid text nor introduced a new word into the language. The gloss, more- over, is sometimes quite as much a problem as a help. Of course, one cannot apply to it the scientific standards of to-day; but it certainly seems to have been carelessly or hurriedly put together. Perhaps the publisher demanded it at the last minute because he feared the poems would not be understood without it. 55 Perhaps Spenser considered it a piece of weari- some drudgery, slighted it accordingly, and finally turned it over to E. K. for completion. Such errors as the definition of glen as hamlet, even in the most obtuse editor, could result only from carelessness or haste and E. K. was probably not obtuse. As the introduction to this study pointed out, Spenser's influence upon the English vocabulary is of primary importance. His was a very different sort of thing from Lyly's far-fetched Latinization, or the colloquial diction of Greene and Dekker, realistic, powerful, but not especially elegant. At its best, Spenser's vocabulary is native without being common, and elevated without being stilted: in short, the ideal poetic diction; 85 The fact that, independently, it would seem, of any publisher, Dreams was provided with a gloss makes this hypothesis dubious. See postscript to
letter to Harvey, April, 1580.
