One of the earliest and most significant of those literary manifestations which were to culminate in the triumph of Romanticism was a new enkindled interest in the older English writers. The attitude of the great body of the so-called “Classicists” towards the earlier English poetry was not altogether one of absolute contempt: it was rather marked by that indifference which is the outcome of ignorance. Readers and authors, with certain illustrious exceptions, were totally unacquainted with Chaucer, and though Spenser fared better, even those who did know him did not at first consider him worthy of serious study.[122] Yet the Romantic rebels, by their attempts to imitate Spenser, and to reveal his poetic genius to a generation of unbelievers, did work of immediate and lasting value.

It is perhaps too much to claim that some dim perception of the poetic value of old words contributed in any marked degree to this Spenserian revival in the eighteenth century. Yet it can hardly be doubted that Spenser’s language, imperfectly understood and at first considered “barbarous,” or “Gothic,” or at best merely “quaint,” came ultimately to be regarded as supplying something of that atmosphere of “old romance” which was beginning to captivate the hearts and minds of men. This is not to say that there was any conscious or deliberate intention of freshening or revivifying poetic language by an infusion of old or “revived” words. But the Spenserian and similar imitations naturally involved the use of such words, and they thus made an important contribution to the Romantic movement on its purely formal side; they played their part in destroying the pseudo-classical heresy that the best, indeed the only, medium for poetic expression was the polished idiom of Pope and his school.

The poets and critics of Western Europe, who, as we have seen, in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had busied themselves with the question of refining and embellishing their mother tongue, had advocated among other means the revival of archaic and obsolete words. Spenser himself, we know, had definitely adopted this means in the “Shepherds Kalendar,” though the method of increasing his poetical vocabulary had not been approved by all of his contemporaries and successors. Milton, when forming the special poetical language he needed for his immense task, confined himself largely to “classical” coinages, and his archaisms, such as swinkt, rathe, nathless, frore, are comparatively few in number.[123]

Dryden’s attitude towards old words was stated with his customary good sense, and though his modernization of Chaucer gave him endless opportunities of experimenting with them, he never abused the advantage, and indeed in all his work there is but little trace of the deliberate revival of obsolete or archaic words. In the “Fables” may be found a few words such as sounded[124] (swounded) which had been used by Malory and Spenser, laund for (lawn), rushed (cut-off), etc., and he has also Milton’s rathe. Dryden, however, is found using a large number of terms which were evidently obsolete in the literary language, but which, it may be supposed, still lingered in the spoken language, and especially in the provincial dialects. He is fond of the word ken (to know), and amongst other examples are stead (place), to lease (glean), shent (rebuked), hattered (worn out), dorp (a village), buries (burrows), etc. Dryden is also apparently responsible for the poetic use of the term “doddered,” a word of somewhat uncertain meaning, which, after his time and following his practice, came into common use as an epithet for old oaks, and, rarely, for other trees.[125]

As might be expected, there are few traces of the use of obsolete or archaic words in the works of Pope. The “correct” style did not favour innovations in language, whether they consisted in the formation of new words or in the revival of old forms. Pope stated in a letter to Hughes, who edited Spenser’s works (1715), that “Spenser has been ever a favourite poet to me,”[126] but among the imitations “done by the Author in his Youth,” there is “The Alley,” a very coarse parody of Spenser, which does not point to any real appreciation or understanding on the part of Pope. In the first book of the “Dunciad” as we have seen, he indulged in a fling at the antiquaries, especially Hearne and those who took pleasure in our older literature, by means of a satiric stanza written in a pseudo-archaic language.[127] But his language is much freer than that of Dryden from archaisms or provincialisms. He has forms like gotten, whelm (overwhelm), rampires (ramparts), swarths, catched (caught), thrice-ear’d (ploughed), etc. Neither Dryden nor Pope, it may be said, would ever have dreamed of reviving an archaic word simply because it was an old word, and therefore to be regarded as “poetical.” To imagine this is to attribute to the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries a state of feeling which is essentially modern, and which lends a glamour to old and almost forgotten words. Dryden would accept any word which he considered suitable for his purpose, but he always insisted that old words had to prove their utility, and that they had otherwise no claim to admission to the current vocabulary. Pope, however, we may suspect, would not admit any words not immediately intelligible to his readers, or requiring a footnote to explain them.

Meanwhile, in the year 1715, there had appeared the first attempt to give a critical text of Spenser, when John Hughes published his edition of the poet’s works in six volumes, together with a biography, a glossary, and some critical remarks.[128] The obsolete terms which Hughes felt himself obliged to explain[129] include many, such as aghast, baleful, behest, bootless, carol, craven, dreary, forlorn, foray, guerdon, plight, welkin, yore, which are now for the most part familiar words, though forty years later Thomas Warton in his “Observations on The Faerie Queene” (1754) is found annotating many similar terms. The well-known “Muses’ Library,” published thirteen years previously, had described itself as “A General Collection of almost all the old and valuable poetry extant, now so industriously inquir’d after”; it begins with Langland and reflects the renewed interest that was arising in the older poets. But there is as yet little evidence of any general and genuine appreciation of either the spirit or the form of the best of the earlier English poetry. The Spenserian imitators undoubtedly felt that their diction must look so obsolete and archaic as to call for a glossary of explanation, and these glossaries were often more than necessary, not only to explain the genuine old words, but also because of the fact that in many cases the supposedly “Spenserian” terms were spurious coinages devoid of any real meaning at all.

Before considering these Spenserian imitations it must not be forgotten that there were, prior to these attempts and alongside of them, kindred efforts to catch the manner and style of Chaucer. This practice received its first great impulse from Dryden’s famous essay in praise of Chaucer, and the various periodicals and miscellanies of the first half of the eighteenth century bear witness to the fact that many eminent poets, not to mention a crowd of poetasters, thought it their duty to publish a poetical tribute couched in the supposed language and manner of Chaucer.

These attempts were nearly all avowedly humorous,[130] and seemed based on a belief that the very language of Chaucer was in some respects suitable comic material for a would-be humorous writer. Such an attitude was obviously the outcome of a not unnatural ignorance of the historical development of the language. Chaucer’s language had long been regarded as almost a dead language, and this attitude had persisted even to the eighteenth century, so that it was felt that a mastery of the language of the “Canterbury Tales” required prolonged study. Even Thomas Warton, speaking of Chaucer, was of the opinion that “his uncouth and unfamiliar language disgusts and deters many readers.”[131] Hence it is not surprising that there was a complete failure to catch, not only anything of the real spirit of Chaucer, but also anything that could be described as even a distant approach to his language. The imitators seemed to think that fourteenth century English could be imitated by the use of common words written in an uncommon way, or of strange terms with equally strange meanings. The result was an artificial language that could never have been spoken by anybody, often including words to which it is impossible to give any definite sense. It would seem that only two genuine Chaucerian terms had really been properly grasped, and this pair, ne and eke, is in consequence worked to death. Ignorance of the earlier language naturally led to spurious grammatical forms, of which the most favoured was a singular verb form ending in -en. Gay, for instance, has, in a poem of seventeen lines, such phrases as “It maken doleful song,” “There spreaden a rumour,”[132] whilst Fenton writes,

The general style and manner of these imitations, with their “humorous” tinge, their halting verse, bad grammar, and impossible inflections are well illustrated in William Thompson’s “Garden Inscription—Written in Chaucer’s Bowre,” though more serious efforts were not any more successful.

The death of Pope, strangely enough, called forth more than one attempt, among them being Thomas Warton’s imitation of the characterization of the birds from the “Parliament of Fowles.”[134] Better known at the time was the monody “Musæus,” written by William Mason, “To the memory of Mr. Pope.” Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton are represented as coming to mourn the inevitable loss of him who was about to die, and Mason endeavoured to reproduce their respective styles, “Tityrus” (Chaucer) holding forth in this strain:

It is astonishing to think that this mechanical imitation, with its harsh and forced rhythm, and its almost doggerel language, was regarded at the time as a successful reproduction of Chaucer’s manner and style. But probably before 1775, when Tyrwhitt announced his rediscovery of the secret of Chaucer’s rhythm, few eighteenth century readers suspected its presence at all.

But the Chaucerian imitations were merely a literary fashion predoomed to failure. It was not in any way the result of a genuine influence of the early English poetry on contemporary taste, and thus it was not even vitalized, as was the Spenserian revival, by a certain vague and undefined desire to catch something at least of the spirit of the “Faerie Queene.” The Spenserian imitations had a firmer foundation, and because the best of them did not confine their ambition altogether to the mechanical imitation of Spenser’s style in the narrower sense they achieved a greater measure of success.

It is significant to note that among the first attempts at a Spenserian imitation was that made by one of the foremost of the Augustans. This was Matthew Prior, who in 1706 published his “Ode, Humbly Inscribed to the Queen on the Glorious success of Her Majesty’s Arms, Written in Imitation of Spenser’s Style.”[135] We are surprised, however, to find when we have read his Preface, that Prior’s aim was in reality to write a poem on the model of Horace and of Spenser. The attitude in which he approached Spenser’s language is made quite clear by his explanation. He has “avoided such of his words as I found too obsolete. I have however retained some few of them to make the colouring look more like Spenser’s.” Follows then a list of such words, including “behest, command; band, army; prowess, strength; I weet, I know; I ween, I think; whilom, heretofore; and two or three more of that kind.” Though later in his Preface Prior speaks of the curiosa felicitas of Spenser’s diction, it is evident that there is little or no real understanding or appreciation.

Now began a continuous series of Spenserian imitations,[136] of which, with a few exceptions, the only distinguishing characteristic was a small vocabulary of obsolete words, upon which the poetasters could draw for the “local colour” considered necessary. In the majority of cases the result was a purely artificial language, probably picked haphazard from the “Faerie Queene,” and often used without any definite idea of its meaning or appropriateness.[137] Fortunately, one or two real poets were attracted by the idea, and in due course produced their “imitations.”

William Shenstone (1714-1763) is perhaps worthy of being ranked amongst these, in virtue at least of “The Schoolmistress,” which appeared in its final shape in 1742. Shenstone himself confesses that the poem was not at first intended to be a serious imitation, but his study of Spenser led him gradually to something like a real appreciation of the earlier poet.[138]

“The Schoolmistress” draws upon the usual common stock of old words: whilom, mickle, perdie, eke, thik, etc., but often, as in the case of Spenser himself, the obsolete terms have a playful and humorous effect:

Nor is there lacking a quaint, wistful tenderness, as in the description of the refractory schoolboy, who, after being flogged,

Hence “The Schoolmistress” is no mere parody or imitation: there is a real and tender humanity in the description of the village school (adumbrating, it would seem, Goldsmith’s efforts with a similar theme), whilst the judicious use of Spenser’s stanza and the sprinkling of his old words help to invest the whole poem with an atmosphere of genuine and unaffected humour.

The next Spenserian whose work merits attention is William Thompson, who, it would seem, had delved not a little into the Earlier English poetry, and who was one of the first to capture something of the real atmosphere of the “Faerie Queene.” His “Epithalamium”[139] and “The Nativity,”[140] which appeared in 1736, are certainly among the best of the imitations. It is important to note that, while there is a free use of supposedly archaic words, with the usual list of certes, perdie, sikerly, hight, as well as others less common, such as belgards (“beautiful looks”), bonnibel (“beautiful virgin”), there is no abuse of the practice. Not a little of the genuine spirit of Spenser’s poetry, with its love of nature and outdoor life, has been caught and rendered without any lavish recourse to an artificial and mechanical diction, as a stanza from “The Nativity,” despite its false rhymes, will perhaps show:

This cannot altogether be said of the “Hymn to May” published over twenty years later,[141] despite the fact that Thompson himself draws attention to the fact that he does not consider that a genuine Spenserian imitation may be produced by scattering a certain number of obsolete words through the poem. Nevertheless, we find that he has sprinkled his “Hymn” plentifully with “obsolete” terms, though they include a few, such as purfled, dispredden, goodlihead, that were not the common property of the poetasters. His explanations of the words so used show that not a few of them were used with little knowledge of their original meaning, as when he defines glen[142] as “a country hamlet,” or explains perdie as “an old word for saying anything.” It is obvious also that many obsolete terms are often simply stuck in the lines when their more modern equivalents would have served equally well, as for instance,

or

With these reservations the diction of Thompson’s poems is pure and unaffected, and the occasional happy use of archaism is well illustrated in more than one stanza of “The Nativity.”

It is generally agreed that the best of all the Spenserian imitations is “The Castle of Indolence,” which James Thomson published two months before his death in 1748.[143] Yet even in this case there is evident a sort of quiet condescension, as if it were in Thompson’s mind that he was about to draw the attention of his eighteenth century audience to something quaint and old-fashioned, but which had yet a charm of its own. “The obsolete words,” he writes in his “advertisement” to the poem, “and a simplicity of diction in some of the lines, which borders on the ludicrous, were necessary to make the imitation more perfect.” Hence he makes use of a number of words intended to give an archaic air to his poem, including the usual certes, withouten, sheen, perdie, weet, pleasaunce, ycleped, etc. To the first edition was appended a page of explanation of these and other “obsolete words used in this poem”: altogether between seventy and eighty such words are thus glossed, the large majority of which are familiar enough nowadays, either as part of the ordinary vocabulary, or as belonging especially to the diction of poetry.

Though the archaisms are sometimes scattered in a haphazard manner, they are not used with such mechanical monotony as is obvious in the bulk of the Spenserian imitations. In both cantos there are long stretches without a single real or pseudo-archaism, and indeed, when Thomson is indulging in one of the moral or the didactic surveys characteristic of his age, as, for instance, when the bard, invoked by Sir Industry, breaks into a long tirade on the Supreme Perfection (Canto II, 47-61) his diction is the plain and unadorned idiom perfected by Pope.[144] Yet Thompson occasionally yields to the fascination of the spurious form in -en,[145] as

or

Sometimes it would seem that his archaisms owe their appearance to the necessities of rhyme, as in

and

There are lines too where we feel that the archaisms have been dragged in; for example,

(though there is here perhaps the added charm of a Chaucerian reminiscence); or

But, on the whole, he has been successful in his efforts, half-hearted as they sometimes seem, to give an old-world atmosphere to his poem by a sprinkling of archaisms, and it is then that we feel in The Castle of Indolence something at least of the beauty and charm of “the poet’s poet,” as in the well-known stanza describing the valley of Idlesse with its

Though the Spenserian imitations continued beyond the year which saw the birth of Wordsworth,[147] it is not necessary to mention further examples, except perhaps that of William Mickle, who, in 1767, published “The Concubine,” a Spenserian imitation of two cantos, which afterwards appeared in a later edition (1777) under the title “Sir Martyn.” Like his predecessors, Mickle made free use of obsolete spellings and words, while he added the usual glossary, which is significant as showing at the end of the eighteenth century, about the time when Tyrwhitt was completing his edition of Chaucer, not only the artificial character of this “Spenserian diction,” but also the small acquaintance of the average man of letters with our earlier language.[148]

It must not be assumed, of course, that all the “obsolete” words used by the imitators were taken directly from Spenser. Words like nathless, rathe, hight, sicker, areeds, cleeped, hardiment, felly, etc., had continued in fairly common use until the seventeenth century, though actually some of them were regarded even then as archaisms. Thus cleoped, though never really obsolete, is marked by Blount in 1656 as “Saxon”; sicker, extensively employed in Middle English, is rarely found used after 1500 except by Scotch writers, though it still remains current in northern dialects. On the other hand, not a few words were undoubtedly brought directly back into literature from the pages of Spenser, among them being meed, sheen (boasting an illustrious descent from Beowulf through Chaucer), erst, elfin, paramour. Others, like scrannel, and apparently also ledded, were made familiar by Milton’s use the former either being the poet’s own coinage or his borrowing from some dialect or other. On the other hand, very many of the “revived” words failed to take root at all, such as faitours, which Spenser himself had apparently revived, and also his coinage singult, though Scott is found using the latter form.

As has been said, the crowd of poetasters who attempted to reproduce Spenser’s spirit and style thought to do so by merely mechanical imitation of what they regarded as his “quaint” or “ludicrous” diction. Between them and any possibility of grasping the perennial beauty and charm of the “poet’s poet” there was a great gulf fixed, whilst, altogether apart from this fatal limitation, then parodies were little likely to have even ephemeral success, for parody presupposes in its readers at least a little knowledge and appreciation of the thing parodied. But there were amongst the imitators one or two at least who, we may imagine, were able to find in the melody and romance of “The Faerie Queene” an avenue of escape from the prosaic pressure of their times. In the case of William Thompson, Shenstone, and the author of the “Castle of Indolence,” the influence of Spenser revealed itself as in integral and vital part of the Romantic reaction, for these, being real poets, had been able to recapture something at least of the colour, music, and fragrance of their original. And not only did these, helped by others whose names have all but been forgotten restore a noble stanza form to English verse. Even their mechanical imitation of Spenser’s language was not without its influence, for it cannot be doubted that these attempts to write in an archaic or pseudo-archaic style did not a little to free poetry from the shackles of a conventional language.

This process was greatly helped by that other aspect of the eighteenth century revival of the past which was exemplified in the publication of numerous collections of old ballads and songs.[149] There is, of course, as Macaulay long ago noted, a series of conventional epithets that is one mark of the genuine ballad manner, but the true ballad language was not a lifeless stereotyped diction. It consisted of “plain English without any trimmings.” The ballads had certain popular mannerisms (the good greenwood, the wan water, etc.), but they were free from the conventional figures of speech, or such rhetorical artifices as personification and periphrasis.

Hence it is not surprising that at first their fresh and spontaneous language was regarded, when contrasted with the artificial and refined diction of the time, as “barbarous” or “rude.” Thus Prior thought it necessary to paraphrase the old ballad of the “Nut Brown Maid” into his insipid “Henry and Emma” (1718), but a comparison of only a few lines of the original with the banality of the modernized version is sufficient testimony to the refreshing and vivifying influence of such collections as the “Reliques.”

The tendency to present the old ballads in an eighteenth century dress had soon revealed itself; at least, the editors of the early collections often felt themselves obliged to apologize for the obsolete style of their material.[150] But in 1760 the first attempt at a critical text appeared when Edward Capell, the famous Shakespearian editor, published his “Prolusions”; or “Select Pieces of Antient Poetry—compil’d with great Care from their several Originals, and offer’d to the Publick as specimens of the Integrity that should be found in the Editions of worthy Authors.” Capell’s care was almost entirely directed to ensuring textual accuracy, but the “Nut-Browne Maid,” the only ballad included, receives sympathetic mention in his brief Preface.[151]

Five years later, the most famous of all the ballad collections appeared, Thomas Percy’s “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry” (1765). The nucleus of Percy’s collection was a certain manuscript in a handwriting of Charles I’s time, containing 191 songs and ballads, but he had also had access to various other manuscript collections, whilst he was quite ready to acknowledge that he had filled gaps in his originals with stanzas and, in some cases, with nearly entire poems of his own composition. Much censure has been heaped upon Percy for his apparent lax ideas on the functions of an editor, but in decking out his “parcel of old ballads” in the false and affected style of his age, he was only doing his best to meet the taste of his readers. He himself passes judgment on his own labours, when, alongside of the genuine old ballads, with their freshness and simplicity of diction, he places his own “pruned” or “refined” versions, or additions, garbed in a sham and sickly idiom.

It was not until over a century later, when Percy’s folio manuscript was copied and printed,[152] that the extent of his additions, alterations, and omissions were fully realized, though at the same time it was admitted that the pruning and refining was not unskilfully done.

Nevertheless the influence of the “Reliques,” as a vital part of the Romantic revival, was considerable:[153] it was as if a breath of “the wind on the heath” had swept across literature and its writers, bringing with it an invigorating fragrance and freshness, whilst, on the purely formal side, the genuine old ballads, which Percy had culled and printed untouched, no doubt played their part in directing the attention of Wordsworth to the whole question of the language of poetry. And when the great Romantic manifestoes on the subject of “the language of metrical composition” were at length launched, their author was not slow to bear witness to the revivifying influence of the old ballads on poetic form. “Our poetry,” he wrote, “has been absolutely redeemed by it. I do not think that there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligations to the “Reliques.”[154]

The year before the appearance of the “Reliques,” Thomas Chatterton had published his “Rowley Poems,” and this attempt of a poet of genius to pass off his poems as the work of a mediaeval English writer is another striking indication of the new Romantic spirit then asserting itself. As for the pseudo-archaic language in which Chatterton with great labour clothed his “revivals,” there is no need to say much. It was a thoroughly artificial language, compiled, as Skeat has shown, from various sources, such as John Kersey’s “Dictionarium Anglo-Brittanicum,” three editions of which had appeared before 1721. In this work there are included a considerable number of obsolete words, chiefly from Spenser and his contemporaries, marked “O,” and in some cases erroneously explained. This dictionary was the chief source of Chatterton’s vocabulary, many words of which the young poet took apparently without any definite idea of their meaning.[155]

Yet in the Rowley poems there are passages where the pseudo-archaic language is quite in keeping with the poet’s theme and treatment, whilst here and there we come across epithets and lines which, even in their strange dress, are of a wild and artless sweetness, such as

or the whole of the first stanza of the famous “An Excelente Balade of Charitie,” where the old words help to transport us at once into the fictitious world which Chatterton had made for himself. Perhaps, as has been suggested, the “Rowley dialect” was not, as we nowadays, with Skeat’s analysis in our minds, are a little too apt to believe, a deliberate attempt to deceive, but rather reflected an attempt to escape from the dead abstract diction of the period.[156]

Apart from this special aspect of the Romantic revival marked by a tendency to look back lovingly to the earlier English poetry, there are few traces of the use of archaic and obsolete words, at least of such words used consciously, in eighteenth century poetry. The great poets of the century make little or no use of them. Collins has no examples, but Gray, who began by advocating the poet’s right to use obsolete words, and later seemed to recant, now and then uses an old term, as when in his translation from Dante he writes:

Blake, however, it is interesting to note, often used archaic forms, or at least archaic spellings,[157] as Tyger, antient (“To the Muses”), “the desart wild” (“The Little Girl Lost”), as well as such lines as

or

Perhaps by these means the poet wished to give a quaint or old-fashioned look to his verses, though it is to be remembered that most of them occur in the “Poetical Sketches,” which are avowedly Elizabethan.

The use of archaic and obsolete words in the eighteenth century was then chiefly an outcome of that revival of the past which was one of the characteristics of the new Romantic movement, and which was later to find its culmination in the works of Scott. The old words used by the eighteenth century imitators of Spenser were not often used, we may imagine, because poets saw in them poetical beauty and value; most often they were the result of a desire to catch, as it were, something of the “local colour” of the “Faerie Queene,” just as modern writers nowadays, poets and novelists alike, often draw upon local dialects for new means of expression. The Spenserian imitations recovered not a few words, such as meed, sheen, dight, glen,[158] which have since been regarded as belonging especially to the diction of poetry, and when the Romantic revival had burst into life the impulse, which had thus been unconsciously given, was continued by some of its great leaders. Scott, as is well known, was an enthusiastic lover of our older literature, especially the ballads, from which he gleaned many words full of a beauty and charm which won for them immediate admission into the language of poetry; at the same time he was able to find many similar words in the local dialects of the lowlands and the border. Perhaps in this work he had been inspired by his famous countryman, Robert Burns, who by his genius had raised his native language, with its stores of old and vivid words and expressions, to classical rank.[159]

Nevertheless it is undoubted that the main factor in the new Romantic attitude towards old words had been the eighteenth century imitations and collections of our older English literature. Coleridge, it is to be remembered, made free use of archaisms; in the “Ancient Mariner,” there are many obsolete forms: loon, eftsoons, uprist, gramercy, gossameres, corse, etc., besides those which appeared in the first edition, and were altered or omitted when the poem reappeared in 1800. Wordsworth, it is true, made no use of archaic diction, whether in the form of deliberate revivals, or by drafts on the dialects, which, following the great example of Burns, and in virtue of his own “theories,” he might have been expected to explore. Nevertheless the “theories” concerning poetical language which he propounded and maintained are not without their bearing on the present question. Reduced to their simplest terms, the manifestoes, while passing judgment on the conventional poetical diction, conceded to the poet the right of a style in keeping with his subject and inspiration, and Wordsworth’s successors for the most part, so far as style in the narrower sense of vocabulary is concerned, did not fail to reap the benefits of the emancipation won for them. And among the varied sources upon which they began to draw for fresh reserves of diction were the abundant stores of old words, full of colour and energy, to be gleaned from the pages of their great predecessors.