In 1904 I ventured to write an article entitled “The Nature and Fabric of The Pearl,” in which I advanced opinions at variance with those previously held on the subject. Since then have appeared a new edition of the poem, five new English translations of all or a large part of it, and several articles on various aspects of the work. In no one of these documents has my point of view with regard to the symbolism, allegory, and autobiography in the poem been fully accepted. To be sure, the chief part of former, fanciful speculations regarding the author's life and incentive to composition have not been repeated; but all who have recently written about the poem have clung tenaciously to the pleasant belief that The Pearl is a personal lament of the poet for a daughter of his own, and therefore strictly elegiac and autobiographical. This belief would be fairly harmless if (because of the primary stress always laid upon it) it did not inevitably obscure the true significance of the poem; but on this account it should not be allowed to establish itself more firmly without frank protest.

Some time since, Mr. Paul Radin, a student of Ethnology in Columbia University, happened upon the discovery, in a second-hand book store in New York, of an early edition of the works of Lucan. On investigation, the two stout wooden boards with which the volume was bound were found to be lined with two manuscript sheets of an admirably written parchment codex (150 x 195 mm.) which Mr. Radin brought to the present writer for examination. It is by Mr. Radin's kindness that opportunity has been given to make the following communication.

This curious product of mediævalism, translated from some Latin treatise by an unknown hand in the latter half of the fifteenth century, carries symbolism to its last stage. It is interesting as showing how the preachers in the abbeys and cathedrals of England found, on occasion, “sermons in stones.” It would seem as if Longfellow must have read this poem; for a part of his Golden Legend, the close of Friar Cuthbert's sermon, is an accurate reproduction of the spirit of this piece.

While the origin, sources, and evolution of the drama of the sixteenth century have been elaborately studied, curiously enough the non-dramatic literature of the period has suffered from comparative neglect. Monographs on single authors, studies on English literature alone, in many cases have erred thru false perspective. Thus, altho the time is not yet ripe for the general history of the sonnet, desired by M. Vaganay, it may be profitable briefly to consider English literature, in one of its phases, in relation to the great movement of which it was a part.

From Langbaine's time it has been usual to consider the play How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad as drawn directly from Cinthio's Hecatommithi, book III, novel 5. But Riche had translated this novel and made it the sixth history of his Farewell to Military Profession some years before the drama appeared, and, as Riche's translation was no doubt easily accessible, the author of the play is more likely to have used his version than the Italian. It would be hard to decide which is the immediate source, however, for the double reason that Riche usually follows his original almost phrase by phrase, occasionally enlarging a compressed Italian expression into what amounts to an explanation or illustration of the original, and that, where the author of How a Man May Choose has followed his source closely, he is so far from copying the language that his phrasing may as well be his own translation as his adaptation of Riche's. But the slight evidence is all in favor of his borrowing from Riche. For instance, where Cinthio reads, “Aselgia … indusse un suo drudo a riuelare a di Agata, che il marito auelenata l'hauena,” we find in Riche:

“Wherefore she reveiled his speeches unto a ribalde of hers, such a one as supplied her want of that which Gonsales alone, nor ten suche as he were able to satisfie her withall, and induced hym to appeache hym for that facte. … This companion accused Gonsales upon his owne wordes unto the freendes of Agatha,” etc.