In his Preface to The Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque Poe, while discussing the character and style of these tales, says: “I am led to think it is this prevalence of the ‘Arabesque’ in my serious tales, which has induced one or two critics to tax me, in all friendliness, with what they have been pleased to term ‘Germanism’ and gloom. The charge is in bad taste, and the grounds of accusation have not been sufficiently considered. Let us admit for a moment that the ‘phantasy-pieces’ now given are ‘Germanic’ or what not…. But the truth is that, with a single exception, there is no one of these stories in which the scholar should recognize the distinctive features of that species of pseudo-horror which we are taught to call Germanic, for no better reason than that some of the secondary names of German literature have become identified with its folly. If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul.” In this passage, though himself possessed with almost a monomania for discovering ‘plagiarism’ in other writers, (nowadays we should rather speak of 'influences'), Poe practically denies similar charges brought against him. And, in this denial, he takes occasion to lunge a side thrust at Hoffmann in his reference to 'phantasypieces' and ‘some secondary names of German literature‘—as will be seen later.

Among the points of superiority which distinguish the plays of Shakespeare from those of most Elizabethan dramatists, none is more obvious and more easily demonstrable than the firmly built plan, the clear construction which sets in strong relief a dominant dramatic idea. In the poet's mature tragedies, this dominant idea is always a development of what Professor Dowden calls “the fatality of character.” The protagonist is hurried to the catastrophe, not so much by the irresistible force of external events, as by some defect, or some enfeebling excess in his own spiritual constitution. From the analogy of the other plays, therefore, we should expect in Hamlet to find little or no emphasis laid upon external hindrances to the execution of the prescribed revenge, but rather the accentuation of a purely subjective hesitancy inherent in the emotional and intellectual habits of the man himself.

Some twenty years ago M. Émile Picot had occasion to edit a group of sixteenth century French moralities, two of which were signed by the device “Rien sans l'Esprit.” He discovered that this curious pseudonym veiled a certain Pierre Duval, a poet of Rouen. On following up his researches, the learned Paris scholar found that Duval was the centre of a little group of poets who produced several modest volumes of verse during the last decade of the reign of Francis I.

The national epic poems of France offer a vast body of literature in which we may study the development of French ideals from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. During so long a period at a critical epoch in European civilization influences of all kinds are of course reflected in this poetry. These influences may be described as literary, political, social and religious.

It is with but one of the literary forces which came to bear upon the chansons de geste that we are concerned just now. This external force is that exerted by the matièdre de Bretagne, popularized in France about the middle of the twelfth century. The admirably brief statement of Mr. Alfred N utt (in Celtic and Mediaeval Romance, pp. 15-18) leaves little to be desired as regards the influence of the Breton matter upon the matièdre de France. Mr. Nutt's account of the change in literary ideals during the twelfth century recommends itself to anyone who is conversant with the period.

To say that the seventeenth century Character holds an important place in the development of prose fiction is a commonplace of criticism. That it was through the periodical essay of the eighteenth century that it influenced the development of fiction is equally well known. But the Character of the periodical essay, written by men more interested in the individual than in the type, was quite different from the old formal Character of the beginning of the seventeenth century. Through what changes it passed in the course of its development; and why it was through the periodical essay, rather than in its own proper form, that it came to exert the influence it did, are two questions which I shall attempt to answer.

Among the English poets of the fourteenth century the one who deserves the seat next to Chaucer is the anonymous author of the four poems: Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, The Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience. The singular beauty of these poems has long stimulated scholars to the most diligent efforts to discover their author.

The first attempt to identify the unknown poet was made in 1838 by Dr. Edwin Guest, who confidently assigned these poems to Huchown, the mysterious Scotch poet mentioned by the chronicler Wyntoun. At one time or another, almost every piece of fourteenth century verse which shows a northerly dialect has been ascribed to Huchown; this identification of our author was therefore natural, if not inevitable. In the following year Sir Frederic Madden, in his edition of Sir Gawayne, accepted Dr. Guest's opinion that Huchown was its author. At the same time he recognized the fact that the poem in its present form is not in the Scotch dialect, and suggested as an explanation that it had been rewritten “by a scribe of the Midland counties.” With this recognition that Sir Gawayne as we have it is in the Midland rather than the Scottish dialect, there was manifestly slender reason for continuing to suppose that Huchown was the author.

At the request of my friend Dr. Brown, who in the preceding article has cast so much light on the character of the author of The Pearl, I have undertaken to state in print certain heterodox opinions, which I have long held, concerning the nature and fabric of that beautiful poem.

Briefly, to indicate my main thesis at the outset, I would maintain that The Pearl is not in the least elegiac or autobiographical, as hitherto regularly regarded by scholars and critics, and that the conclusions as to the author's life and domestic sorrows frequently drawn from it are wholly without foundation.