Chaucer's Booh of the Duchess opens, as is generally agreed, with five lines rather closely translated from Froissart's Paradys d'Amours. Froissart, however, was himself imitating a passage from Guillaume de Machaut's Fontaine Amoureuse, and Chaucer, who knew both works, utilized the Fontaine, along with Ovid, for the tale of Ceyx and Alcyone, which occupies most of his Proem. Yet, in the midst of this story, he darted back to the Paradys for a moment to pick up the strange name Fclympasteyr, and, near the end of the Proem, the influence of Froissart is again visible in a few details. One of these is amusing. Froissart prayed not only to Morpheus, but to Juno and Oleus:

Car tant priai a Morpheus,
A Juno et a Oleus—(15-16).

The attention of students of mediaeval drama has often been arrested by a short dramatic text from a Vienna manuscript published by DuMéril among the examples of the liturgical Epiphany play in his Origines Latines du Théâtre Moderne. Among the mediaeval Latin plays of Epiphany this slight specimen is unique in its rhetorical form, in the names of the dramatis personæ, and in the absence of liturgical elements. The play is composed of thirteen leonine hexameters, which provide thirty-one speeches, each of the last ten hexameters being divided among three speakers. The first three lines, in the nature of an invitatory, are assigned to Stella as a speaking character, and the Magi appear under the names of Aureolus, Thureolus, and Myrreolus. The play bears no marks from the liturgy. Although the introductory rubric Ad adorandum Filium Dei per Stellam invitantur Eoy might serve well enough for launching a liturgical play, there is no concluding rubric to indicate a liturgical association, and the text itself contains no formulae reminiscent of the liturgy.

About three years ago an article was published by the present writer defining the essential features of the enueg and the plazer and showing the rise of this type of poetry in Provençal and its subsequent spread to Catalan, French, Italian, and Portuguese. The enueg was found to be a rimed composition on the subject of vexations and annoyances, while the plazer took pleasures as its theme. Except for this difference, the important characteristics of both are the same: (A) the enumeration of a series of vexations or pleasures, usually without continuity; (B) the repetition of a word or phrase which indicates the attitude of the poet, such as ‘it vexes me’ or ‘it pleases me.‘ Since that time the investigations have been continued, especially in French and Italian.

Every reader of the Restoration comedy of manners cannot fail to be impressed with the frequent occurrence of the character-sketch. Often this is of a typical personage having no part in the action, as when in Wycherley's Plain Dealer, Novel and Olivia together in dialogue form describe Lady Autumn, her daughter, and a fop, none of whom appears in the play. Again, one notices a marked use of the dramatic convention of making one actor describe another who is about to enter. A typical instance occurs in the scene just mentioned when Novel describes in the form of a “character,” Lord Plausible, and is interrupted by that gentleman's entrance.

Thomas Warton's Observations on the ‘Fairy Queen’ of Spenser has hardly yet received due recognition as the first important piece of modern historical criticism in the field of English literature. By the variety of its new tenets and the definitiveness of its revolt against pseudo-classical criticism by rule, it marks the beginning of a new school. Out of the turmoil of the quarrel between the ‘ancients’ and the ‘moderns’ the pseudo-classical compromise had emerged. The ‘moderns’, by admitting and apologizing for a degree of barbarity and uncouthness in even their greatest poets, had established their right to a secure and reputable place in the assembly of immortals, although on the very questionable ground of conformity with the ancients and by submitting to be judged by rules which had not determined their development. It was thus by comparisons with the ancients that Dryden found Spenser's verse harmonious but his design imperfect; it was by applying the classical rules for epic poetry that Addison praised Paradise Lost, and that Steele wished an ‘Encomium of Spencer also.‘

That Thomas Middleton was the author of the London Lord Mayor's Show for 1623 has long been known; that he was not the sole author no one has suspected. His pamphlet describing the occasion is entitled The Triumphs of Integrity; it was printed by Dyce, and from him by Bullen; Dyce does not tell where the pamphlet which he reprints may be found; and I have not been able to discover it in the libraries of the British Museum, the Guildhall, the Society of Antiquaries, or the Bodleian.

It has for a long time been generally agreed among Chaucerian scholars that the most serious defect of the Chaucer Society's arrangement of the Canterbury Tales is its placing of the Physician's Tale, Pardoner's prolog, and Pardoner's Tale, which constitute what is generally known as Group C, between the Nun's Priest's Tale and the Wife of Bath's prolog. This arrangement has absolutely no ms. authority, for no ms. is known to exist in which Group C either precedes Group D or follows Group B. Nor does Group C contain any references to time or place which make the Chaucer Society's arrangement a probable one. Indeed, the arrangement was adopted for no better reason than to make the tales of the third day not less than those of the second, a reason which we can only characterise as a trivial one.