possible journey to the Continent, are still perhaps open questions, without hopeful prospect of solution. There are others, however, more hopeful.

A study of the other "Spensers" or "Spencers" of the poet's times, especially the several Edmund Spensers, is clearly indicated. Grosart claimed to have discovered eleven hundred Elizabethan Spensers. But if the facts concerning the few who figure at all historically could be dug out and collated, we might be greatly helped in solving some of the open points in Spenser's life. Thus who was Turbervile's Spenser? Who the Edmund Spenser who was the bearer of dispatches from France in 1569? And who the Edmund Spenser, father of Florence Spenser, so earnestly discussed by Collier and his critics?

Similar light on the life might be thrown by an intensive study of Spenser's Circle-that is, those of his contemporaries in their relations to him, with whom there is fair reason for assuming that he had some contact. I have compiled a provisional list of about a hundred of these. Of course, the list should be much longer. The assemblage of evidence in each case would be an interesting and doubtless not infrequently a fruitful task. The relations of Bryskett and Spenser, of Grey and Spenser, and of Boyle and Spenser, especially, ought to be further investigated, and I have no doubt that neglected or unknown evidence on these topics is yet to be discovered. And by the way who were Lord Grey's other secretaries, 1580-82?

Material lies at hand in the British Museum and in the Public Record Office for a study of Spenser's Autograph. This might lead to the discovery of unknown holograph manuscripts of Spenser.

A sort of itinerary of Spenser's travels in Ireland might well be attempted. As private secretary of the Lord Deputy in 1580-82 Spenser probably accompanied Lord Grey in his journeyings about Ireland, and Grey pretty well covered the country. The View of Ireland reveals a wide knowledge of Irish topography. Then also we should have a list and an elucidation of Spenserian Place Names in Ireland." A search of the public documents would show Spenser's name in connection with many Irish names of places.

The names mentioned in the poems are indexed by Whitman. But those mentioned elsewhere are quite as important.

A little study of the history and functions of the Council of Munster and of the duties of its Clerk would illustrate one phase of Spenser's life.

The "Spenser Tradition" should be studied. Soon after his death and throughout the seventeenth century various anecdotes about the poet kept on coming to light. What value and authority as biographical material has each of these? Some of the early biographies are little more than a string of such traditions.

And finally there are two literary studies of Spenser's works which require extended treatment. These are his indebtedness to Ovid, doubtless very considerable, and Spenser as the founder of modern English poetic diction. The latter topic has been partially studied, especially in relation to the Shepherds' Calendar and to the later Spenserian "imitations." But a general study of the Diction in its more pervasive if less imitative effects remains a desideratum.

Chicago.

An instructive illustration of the inconsistency with which the evidence of the Spenser tradition is treated is seen in the fact that while the competent Life by Selincourt accepts one piece of Aubrey's gossip (that of the visit to Hampshire: see the one-volume Oxford edition of Spenser, p. xxix), it disregards two or three of the minor points presented by Camden and by Ware. Now Aubrey's anecdotes, while not necessarily falsifications, are per se suspect, while Camden was a contemporary and friend of Spenser, and Ware in his youth was connected with some of Spenser's circle in Ireland and always deeply interested in him. Both Camden and Ware have the reputation of being historians of integrity.

ANOTHER VIEW OF SPENSER'S LINGUISTICS

BY F. F. COVINGTON, JR.

In an article entitled "Spenser's Linguistics in the Present State of Ireland," (Mod. Phil., Jan. 1920), J. W. Draper has confirmed the opinion of those who have read Spenser's prose tract that the poet's knowledge of the science of language was very limited. By a detailed study of the words relating in various ways to Ireland and etymologized by Spenser in the "View" Draper has shown that Spenser has exhibited a tendency to allow his fancy to usurp the place of accurate knowledge of the Celtic languages and the laws of derivation, branches of knowledge in which he was conspicuously deficient. Draper, however, has allowed himself some liberties in his treatment of the subject which, it seems to me, strict fairness to Spenser must call in question. At least two of the studies of the words used by Spenser involve an important principle which must be taken into consideration in any study of a work the text of which has not been definitely established.

Throughout his article Draper seems to assume that the Globe (Morris) text is the final authority not only for Spenser's own words, but for his individual orthography. This is an exceedingly risky assumption, in view of the facts: (1) that Morris does not claim that his text is authoritative (See Preface); (2) that the Lambeth MS, upon which Grosart bases his text of the "View," and which, according to the same authority, is "the copy submitted by the Author to the Archbishop of Canterbury for License," differs often both in wording and spelling from the Globe; (3) that Ware's, the first printed text,2 agrees with neither of these two throughout, and sometimes differs from both.

In his study of the word gaull Draper bases his discussion upon the presence of a -u- in a word that is normally spelled gall. "Gaull, he says, is Irish for 'straunge inhabitaunt' . . . There is a word gall, meaning foreign, in Irish; and the introduction of

1 The Complete Works . . . . of E. Spenser, ed. Grosart, vol. IX, "Note," p. 9.

Ancient Irish Histories, Dublin, 1809. (Reptd. from Ware's ed., 1633).

the -u may show either that Spenser took advantage of Elizabethan license in spelling to enforce his etymologies, or that he was trying to reproduce an Irish dialectic pronunciation goul, or merely that he had chanced upon that spelling in Irish." Any one of these suppositions is allowable, no doubt, if Spenser spelled the word with a -u-; but if it can be shown that the probabilities are strongly against Spenser's having used such a spelling, the whole discussion is pointless. The evidence is against Draper's contention. In Grosart's text the word is spelled gald, and it is so spelled in Ware (to which fact, by the way, Draper calls attention in a foot-note, apparently without noting its significance). Furthermore, Buchanan, upon whom Spenser leaned heavily in these matters, has the form GALD in a passage bearing directly upon this point. I quote part of chapter XXVIII, book II, of his Rerum Scoticarum Historia:

"Hae autem tres nationes [i. e., the Britons, the Picts, and the Scots], totum Britanniae latus, quod ad Hiberniam vergit, tenent; nec levia indicia, sed penitus inustas notas Gallici sermonis & cognationis adhuc servant. Illud autem in primis, quod Scoti prisci, omnes nationes, quae Britanniam incolunt, in duo genera partiuntur: alteros GAEL, alteros GALLE, sive GALD, appellant; hoc est, (ut ego quidem interpretor,) Gallaecos, & Gallos.. Vox enim GALLE, aut GALD, non est minus apud eos significans quam apud Graecos & Latinos Barbarus, apud Germanos WALSCH." "

To which may be added in further confirmation the following passage from Campion's "Historie of Ireland," which Spenser had almost certainly read: "It is further to be known, that the simple Irish are utterly another people then our Englishe in Ireland, whom they call despitefully boddai Sassoni's and boddai Ghalt, that is, English and Saxon churles." 4

On the same page Draper discusses the word farrih, a war cry, which Spenser thinks is of Scottish derivation, on account of its resemblance to the name of one of the "first kings of Scotland called Fargus, Fergus, or Ferragus." This derivation is "fanciful" enough, but not, I believe, so fanciful as Draper considers it;

Ed. Ruddiman, Leyden, 1725.

'Ware's ed., 1809, page 20, (first published 1571.)

for it is more than likely that Spenser wrote not farrih, but ferragh, a form certainly closer to " Fargus, Fergus, and Ferragus” than farrih. In this instance again the spelling of the Globe text seems inaccurate. Both Grosart and Ware print ferragh. But there is stronger testimony than textual. The evidence as to the sound of this war cry tends to show that the spelling in Ware and Grosart more closely approximates it than that in the Globe. Campion in his account of this cry has faro; and Todd's note on this passage in the "View" tends to confirm my contention: The vulgar Irish supposed the subject of this war song to have been Forroch or Ferragh (an easy corruption of Pharroh which Selden, in his note on Drayton's Polyolbion, says was the name of the war song once in use amongst the Irish kernes), a terrible giant, of whom they tell many a marvellous tale. . . ."

66

7

8

In his discussion of a third word involving the question of orthography Draper charges Spenser, by implication, with carelessness (or capriciousness at least), when the carelessness is his own. On page 119 of his article we read: "The third of the legal terms is 'tanistih,' usually spelled tanistry, the custom of choosing the successor of a chief during his lifetime from any member of his family." But "Tanistih" in the Globe text is the man, the tanist, not the custom, which is spelled Tanistrye consistently, except in one passage, where the juxtaposition of the two words, probably, was responsible for the form Tanistrih. It is strange that Draper should have overlooked such passages as these, both on the page from which he cites the word, and the preceding. For on page 611 the Globe text reads: ". . . for all the Irishe doe holde theyr landes by Tanistrye; which is, (as they say) noe more then a personall estate for his life time, that is, Tanistih, by reason that he is admitted therunto by election of the countrey."

"What is this that you call Tanistih and Tanistrye?" And on page 612, to which Draper refers, we find: "But how is the Tanistih chosen?" "And so it may well be that from the first

P. 90, Grosart's ed.

P. 92, Ware's ed., 1809.

'Historie of Ireland, Ware's ed., 1809, p. 39.

9

Works of E. Spenser, ed. Todd, 1805, vol. vш, p. 372.

Todd also cites Warton's note on Sir Ferraugh, F. Q. IV. II. 4, ibid.

Warton might have added F. Q. IV. iv. 8.