Dryden’s attitude towards old words was stated with his customary good sense, and though his modernization of Chaucer gave him endless opportunities of experimenting with them, he never abused the advantage, and indeed in all his work there is but little trace of the deliberate revival of obsolete or archaic words. In the “Fables” may be found a few words such as _sounded_[124] (swounded) which had been used by Malory and Spenser, _laund_ for (lawn), _rushed_ (cut-off), etc., and he has also Milton’s _rathe_. Dryden, however, is found using a large number of terms which were evidently obsolete in the literary language, but which, it may be supposed, still lingered in the spoken language, and especially in the provincial dialects. He is fond of the word _ken_ (to know), and amongst other examples are _stead_ (place), _to lease_ (glean), _shent_ (rebuked), _hattered_ (worn out), _dorp_ (a village), _buries_ (burrows), etc. Dryden is also apparently responsible for the poetic use of the term “_doddered_,” a word of somewhat uncertain meaning, which, after his time and following his practice, came into common use as an epithet for old oaks, and, rarely, for other trees.[125] As might be expected, there are few traces of the use of obsolete or archaic words in the works of Pope. The “correct” style did not favour innovations in language, whether they consisted in the formation of new words or in the revival of old forms. Pope stated in a letter to Hughes, who edited Spenser’s works (1715), that “Spenser has been ever a favourite poet to me,”[126] but among the imitations “done by the Author in his Youth,” there is “The Alley,” a very coarse parody of Spenser, which does not point to any real appreciation or understanding on the part of Pope. In the first book of the “Dunciad” as we have seen, he indulged in a fling at the antiquaries, especially Hearne and those who took pleasure in our older literature, by means of a satiric stanza written in a pseudo-archaic language.[127] But his language is much freer than that of Dryden from archaisms or provincialisms. He has forms like _gotten_, _whelm_ (overwhelm), _rampires_ (ramparts), _swarths_, _catched_ (caught), _thrice-ear’d_ (ploughed), etc. Neither Dryden nor Pope, it may be said, would ever have dreamed of reviving an archaic word simply because it was an old word, and therefore to be regarded as “poetical.” To imagine this is to attribute to the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries a state of feeling which is essentially modern, and which lends a glamour to old and almost forgotten words. Dryden would accept any word which he considered suitable for his purpose, but he always insisted that old words had to prove their utility, and that they had otherwise no claim to admission to the current vocabulary. Pope, however, we may suspect, would not admit any words not immediately intelligible to his readers, or requiring a footnote to explain them.