Ben Jonson, in one of those utterances which have won for him the reputation of churlishness, but which are often marked by acute critical sense, asserted that Spenser ’in affecting the Ancients writ no Language.’[96] The remark applies first and foremost, of course, to the Calender, and opens up the whole question of archaism and provincialism in literature.  This is far too wide a question to receive adequate treatment here, and yet it appears forced upon us by the nature of the case.  For Spenser’s archaism, in his pastoral work at least, is no unmeaning affectation as Jonson implies.  He perceived that the language of Chaucer bore a closer resemblance to actual rustic speech than did the literary language of his own day, and he adopted it for his imaginary shepherds as a fitting substitute for the actual folk-tongue with which he had grown familiar, whether in the form of rugged Lancashire or full-mouthed Kentish.  And the homely dialect does undoubtedly naturalize the characters of his eclogues, and disguise the time-honoured platitudes that they repeat from their learned predecessors.  With our wider appreciation of literary effect, and our more historical and less authoritative manner of judging works of art, we can no longer endorse Sidney’s famous criticism:[97] ’That same framing of his stile, to an old rustick language, I dare not alowe, sith neyther Theocritus in Greeke, Virgill in Latine, nor Sanazar in Italian, did affect it.’[98] If a writer finds an effective and picturesque word in an old author or in a homely dialect it is but pedantry that opposes its use, and it matters little moreover from what quarter of the land it may hail, as Stevenson knew when he claimed the right of mingling Ayrshire with his Lothian verse.  Even such archaisms as ‘deemen’ and ‘thinken,’ such colloquialisms as the pronominal possessive, need not be too severely criticized.  What goes far towards justifying Jonson’s acrimony is the wanton confusion of different dialectal forms; the indiscriminate use for the mere sake of archaism of such variants as ‘gate’ beside the usual ‘goat,’ of ‘sike’ and ‘sich’ beside ‘such’; the coining of words like ‘stanck,’ apparently from the Italian stanco; and lastly, the introduction of forms which owe their origin to mere etymological ignorance, for instance, ‘yede’ as an infinitive, ‘behight’ in the same sense as the simple verb, ‘betight,’ ‘gride,’ and many others—­all of which do not tend to produce the homely effect of mother English, but reek of all that is pedantic and unnatural.[99]

The influence of Chaucer was not confined to the language:  from him Spenser borrowed the metre of a considerable portion of the Calender.  It may at first sight appear strange to attribute to imitation of Chaucer’s smooth, carefully ordered verse the rather rugged measure of, say, the February eclogue, but a little consideration will, I fancy, leave no doubt upon the subject.  This measure is roughly reducible to four beats with a varying number of syllables in the theses, being thus purely accentual as distinguished from the more strictly syllabic measures of Chaucer himself on the one hand and the English Petrarchists on the other.  Take the following example: