Spenser’s services to English style, diction and versification are innumerable

Spenser’s services to English style, diction and versification are innumerable:

(i) He was a craftsman by birth and training; he knew that no poet could be really great who had not acquired knowledge and skill in his own craft.

(ii) He counted new words, imported many from France and Italy, and saved many an obsolete word from oblivion. He interchanged parts of speech, made one word do the service of another, freely dropped prepositions, and thus imparted to the English language a rare flexibility and beauty.

(iii) He has to the succeeding generations of English poets a tool which made great poetry possible.

(iv) His is a rich and voluptuous style, and its imitators are legion.