, in place of the genitive in-ou. Again, as one becomes familiar
with an old author, he ceases to be conscious of his archaism: the final
_e_ in Chaucer no longer strikes him as funny, nor even the circumstance
that he speaks of little birds as _smale fowles_. And so it happened,
that poets in the eighteenth century who began with burlesque imitation
of the "Faerie Queen" soon fell in love with its serious beauties.

The only poems in this series that have gained permanent footing in the
literature are Shenstone's "Schoolmistress" and Thomson's "Cast of
Indolence." But a brief review of several other members of the group
will be advisable. Two of them were written at Oxford in honor of the
marriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1736: one by Richard Owen
Cambridge;[26] the other by William Thompson, then bachelor of arts and
afterward fellow of Queen's College. Prince Fred, it will be remembered,
was a somewhat flamboyant figure in the literary and personal gossip of
his day. He quarreled with his father, George II, who "hated boetry and
bainting," and who was ironically fed with soft dedication by Pope in his
"Epistle to Augustus"; also with his father's prime minister, Sir Robert
Walpole, "Bob, the poet's foe." He left the court in dudgeon and set up
an opposition court of his own where he rallied about him men of letters,
who had fallen into a neglect that contrasted strangely with their former
importance in the reign of Queen Anne. Frederick's chief ally in this
policy was his secretary, George Lord Lyttelton, the elegant if somewhat
amateurish author of "Dialogues of the Dead" and other works; the friend
of Fielding, the neighbor of Shenstone at Hagley, and the patron of
Thomson, for whom he obtained the sinecure post of Surveyor of the
Leeward Islands.

Cambridge's spousal verses were in a ten-lined stanza. His "Archimage,"
written in the strict Spenserian stanza, illustrates the frequent
employment of this form in occasional pieces of a humorous intention. It
describes a domestic boating party on the Thames, one of the oarsmen
being a family servant and barber-surgeon, who used to dress the
chaplain's hair:

"Als would the blood of ancient beadsman spill,
Whose hairy scalps he hanged in a row
Around his cave, sad sight to Christian eyes, I trow."

Thompson's experiments, on the contrary, were quite serious. He had
genuine poetic feeling, but little talent. In trying to reproduce
Spen