No editor of Spenser has failed to remark on certain poems and passages which reflect the influence of Chaucer. Attention has not hitherto been called, however, to what not only seems to be the most marked example of this influence, but to what is also an unusually clear case of literary borrowing. The purpose of this study is to show that in Daphnaïda, Spenser has followed Chaucer's Booh of the Duchess, in general form and outline, in manner of treatment, and in style and subject matter; that he has taken from the Duchess certain stanzas almost entire, has borrowed from it whole sections of eulogistic ideas and elegiac conceits, and has adopted Chaucer's phraseology itself, with a freedom at once both striking and convincing.