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,
If in mine quest thou falsen me.[133]
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:
Mickle of wele betide thy houres last