archaisms are unusually correct[29]--if that be any praise--a feature
which perhaps recommended them to Gray, whose scholarship in this, as in
all points, was nicely accurate. The obligation to be properly
"obsolete" in vocabulary was one that rested heavily on the consciences
of most of these Spenserian imitators. "The Squire of Dames," for
instance, by the wealthy Jew, Moses Mendez, fairly bristles with
seld-seen costly words, like _benty_, _frannion_, etc., which it would
have puzzled Spenser himself to explain.

One of the pleasantest outcomes of this literary fashion was William
Shenstone's "Schoolmistress," published in an unfinished shape in 1737
and, as finally completed, in 1742. This is an affectionate
half-humorous description of the little dame-school of Shenstone's--and
of everybody's--native village, and has the true idyllic touch.
Goldsmith evidently had it in memory when he drew the picture of the
school in his "Deserted Village."[30] The application to so humble a
theme of Spenser's stately verse and grave, ancient words gives a very
quaint effect. The humor of "The Schoolmistress" is genuine, not
dependent on the more burlesque, as in Pope's and Cambridge's
experiments; and it is warmed with a certain tenderness, as in the
incident of the hen with her brood of chickens, entering the open door of
the schoolhouse in search of crumbs, and of the grief of the little
sister who witnesses her brother's flogging, and of the tremors of the
urchins who have been playing in the dame's absence:

"Forewarned, if little bird their pranks behold,
'Twill whisper in her ear and all the scene unfold."

But the only one among the professed scholars of Spenser who caught the
glow and splendor of the master was James Thomson. It is the privilege