rudeness of the shepherds whom he brings on the scene, by making it both
archaic and provincial. He found in Chaucer a store of forms and words
sufficiently well known to be with a little help intelligible, and
sufficiently out of common use to give the character of antiquity to a
poetry which employed them. And from his sojourn in the North he is said
to have imported a certain number of local peculiarities which would
seem unfamiliar and harsh in the South. His editor's apology for this
use of "ancient solemn words," as both proper and as ornamental, is
worth quoting; it is an early instance of what is supposed to be not yet
common, a sense of pleasure in that wildness which we call picturesque.

And first for the words to speak: I grant they be something
hard, and of most men unused: yet English, and also used of
most excellent Authors and most famous Poets. In whom, when as
this our Poet hath been much travelled and throughly read, how
could it be, (as that worthy Orator said,) but that 'walking
in the sun, although for other cause he walked, yet needs he
mought be sun-burnt'; and having the sound of those ancient
poets still ringing in his ears, he mought needs, in singing,
hit out some of their tunes. But whether he useth them by such
casualty and custom, or of set purpose and choice, as thinking
them fittest for such rustical rudeness of shepherds, either
for that their rough sound would make his rymes more ragged
and rustical, or else because such old and obsolete words are
most used of country folks, sure I think, and I think not
amiss, that they bring great grace, and, as one would say,
authority, to the verse. . . . . Yet neither everywhere must
old words be stuffed in, nor the common Dialect and manner of
speaking so corrupted thereby, that, as in old buildings, it
seem disorderly and ruinous. But as in most exquisite pictures
they use to blaze and portrait not only the dainty lineaments
of beauty, but also round about it to shadow the rude thickets
and craggy cliffs, that by the baseness of such parts, more
excellency may accrue to the principal--for ofttimes, we find
ourselves I know not how, singularly delighted with the show
of such natural rudeness, and take great pleasure in that
disorderly order:--even so do these rough and harsh terms
enlumine, and make more clearly