It is not a matter of mere chance that the conception of a “calling” or “profession” is meeting with special interest in Germany. Several books have been written on the subject, some with the intention of showing that a better understanding of the idea of a “calling” would contribute considerably toward the building up of a new and improved social order. While thus practical and political interests are debating the problem, an attempt to reach the root of the question has been made by the German sociologist, Max Weber, who in his work Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism,1 undertook to answer the question, Why does Protestantism seem to be particularly congenial to the capitalistic type of civilization? According to him, it is the conception of a “calling” as a God-given task, developed by Luther and incorporated into Calvin's religious system, which is responsible for this fact. The word Beruf, English “calling,” itself in its present meaning, originated, he asserts, in Luther's translation of the Bible, and from that source it spread throughout the Germanic world.

A recent study of Peire d'Alvernhe's Chantarai d'aquest trobadors identified one “Guossalbo Roitz” ridiculed by Peire with a certain Spanish nobleman named Gonçalvo Roiz, showed that this man had been in or near Puivert (Aude), where Peire's satire was written, in the summer of 1170, and proposed that the brilliant cortège with which he was travelling had attracted to that spot the troubadours of Peire's satire. Since this group of nobles was going into Aragon escorting Eleanor, the daughter of Henry II of England, to her wedding with Alfonso VIII of Castile, it suggested the possibility that at least some of the troubadours of the satire were attached to the bride's suite.

Literary endeavor in the Middle Ages, as in the Renaissance, was essentially an art of imitation. Since little emphasis was placed upon originality of subject-matter, since praise went rather to the combination and interpretation of familiar materials—or to stylistic qualities —the author felt free to appropriate whatever themes or episodes best suited his fundamental conception. Thus an Arthurian romance was usually a tissue of commonplace incidents and motifs, developed in accordance with the purpose or the taste of the individual writer. To distinguish between the narrative content of a work and the particular interpretation applied to it by the artist, the Middle Ages employed the terms matière and sens. The matière might come from any source; the sens alone was the contribution of the latest reworker.

It is remarkable that the one possibly contemporary statement in regard to the authorship of Piers Plowman has never been adequately examined. That is the note in the Trinity College Dublin MS. D, 4, I (Skeat's No. XLI, C-text), to the effect that the author was William Langland, the son of a gentleman, Stacy de Rokayle, who lived in Shipton-under-Wychwood as a tenant of Lord le Spenser in the County of Oxford:

Professor G. R. Owst has called attention to the fact that the fable of the rat parliament, which forms a striking addition to the B-version of Piers Plowman, was also employed with reference to contemporary political conditions in a sermon preached at just this time by Thomas Brunton, Bishop of Rochester. Bishop Brunton, in an unsparing denunciation of corruption in the English government, praised Parliament for its action in bringing the conditions to light, but warned that vigorous steps must be taken to punish the guilty. Otherwise, he continued, Parliament would be like the assembly of rats and mice in the fable which decreed that a bell be hung about the cat's neck yet provided no one to carry the plan into execution. Father F. A. Gasquet, who was the first to point out this passage in Brunton's sermons, conjectured that the parliament in question was the “Good” Parliament and consequently suggested that the sermon was preached sometime in 1376. The interest which the document holds for both the historian and the student of Piers Plowman gives the question of its origin a peculiar importance. Detailed study of the manuscript arrangement of Brunton's collected sermons makes it possible, I believe, to arrive at a clearer understanding of the circumstances which inspired the sermon and even to determine the very day on which it was delivered.

The chronology of the “Monkes Tale” has been often discussed, and there are widely divergent views regarding its composition. Skeat and others have suggested that it was an independent work of Chaucer's, written early as the beginning of a collection after the form of the De Casibus. More recently, Professor Robinson has suggested that Chaucer's model was the Roman de la Rose, which provided not only the source for some of the stories but the connecting link of the Fortune Moral as well. If Chaucer did use the Roman de la Rose, the “Monkes Tale” may very well have been written early, at a time, indeed, when the French influence on Chaucer was still strong. For this reason and others, Professors Robinson and Kittredge regard the poem as an early composition. On the other hand, Professor Tatlock has argued that the poem was written expressly for the Canterbury Tales and at a time when this project was already well under way.

The Rime of Sir Thopas,“ wrote Tyrwhitt,”was clearly intended to ridicule the ‘palpable gross’ fictions of the common Rimers of that age, and still more, perhaps, the meanness of their language and versification.“ This view, which Skeat found ”judicious and correct,“ has until recent years met with little question. In 1922, however, Miss Lilian Winstanley, while admitting the piece to be a burlesque of the metrical romances, argued that it was also ”intended as a satire against Philip van Artevelde“; and Professor J. M. Manly later set forth at considerable length the view that ”the object of satire was the ridiculous pretentiousness“ of the Flemings, that ”Chaucer's primary object in writing was not so much to burlesque the minstrel romances as to produce a satire of the countrymen of Sir Thopas, and that his contemporaries enjoyed its subject matter even more than its form.“ This general line of argument has been accepted by Professor F. N. Robinson, who, in his admirable edition of Chaucer, observes that ”two recent studies of Sir Thopas have made it seem very probable that Chaucer had another purpose, perhaps his primary one, namely, to poke fun at the Flemish knighthood.“ Since this interpretation of Chaucer's gay little piece has thus received an authoritative blessing, in a standard edition, it may well be examined in some detail, in order to determine how far it is really valid.

The source of Chaucer's Tale of Melibeus is well established. This long medieval tractate on prudence is a translation—and a very close translation—of a French treatise which Chaucer read and admired so much that he put it into English dress and placed it among his Canterbury Tales. The French treatise was, in turn, an adaptation of a Latin work by Albertano of Brescia: namely, Liber Consolationis et Consilii. Chaucer's tale, however, was uninfluenced by the Latin: he was content simply to translate the French adaptation which he had under his eyes.

In the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1929) under the Spenser entry, J. C. Smith says: “The notion that E. K. is a mask for Spenser himself has been disproved by Dr. Herford.” Since 1895, when the late Dr. C. H. Herford published his edition of the Shepheardes Calender, a great many critics, as well as Professor Smith, have accepted as final Dr. Herford's conclusion that E.K., the so-called editor, is some one other than Spenser, and is probably Edward Kirke. In this paper I shall try to refute the arguments advanced by Dr. Herford and his followers, and to give supporting evidence for the affirmation in my title.

In seeking for sources of Milton's theology, scholars have gone far afield. While they have argued for Milton's dependence on Ochino, Boehme, Servetus, and even the occult Cabbalists—with little or no external evidence and only vague and general parallelism to corroborate Milton's knowledge and use of these writers—they have disregarded certain systematic theologies, which Milton knew, and which have the same general plan and purpose as the De doctrina Christiana. With one of these treatises, the present investigation is concerned: it will seek to determine the relationship of the De doctrina to Wolleb's Compendium Theologiœ Christianæ with the view of contributing something to an evaluation of Milton's originality as a theologian, and to a knowledge of his habits of borrowing and of the manner in which he worked.

The purpose of this paper is to point out certain elements in the development of the rhetoric of the “classical” pentameter couplet in the middle seventeenth century and to show how the development of this rhetoric is bound up with the establishment of its formal metrical pattern. The rhetoric and metre interacted and helped to shape each other into the integral form which we know in Dryden and Pope.

In a previous article I pointed out that Swift's analysis of Jack the Dissenter had been in part anticipated by earlier satirists. Some references to plays, poems, and prose attacks were then given to substantiate my contention. In this brief bibliography of non-dramatic satire from the Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, to Tom Brown, ca. 1700, further evidence will be presented that before Swift's time there was a long tradition of satire of the Puritans, and one which in many ways was much like his own attack. Since the work of presenting the dramatic satire of the Puritans has, in part at least, been done, no titles of plays will be included. The bibliography will also confine itself to citation of satires on the Puritans. The year 1621 was chosen as a starting point, for I believe that with the Anatomy of Melancholy there began a new era of satire, and especially of analysis of cause and effect in the problems of religious enthusiasm, a subject upon which Swift wrote some of his best passages. That this bibliography is in any way complete is not claimed; it is hoped, however, that it will present some satires which have been neglected by students of the strife between the Puritans and their satirists, and will also help to clarify the problems of the literary background of A Tale of a Tub and the Discourse on the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit

It is well known that Coleridge had Wordsworth in mind when he wrote his Ode on Dejection—the poem is addressed to Wordsworth, mentions Wordsworth's Lucy Gray, and was first published on the day of Wordsworth's wedding; but that Coleridge's Ode may have been influenced by Wordsworth's great Ode on Intimations of Immortality has been generally overlooked. If the date of Wordsworth's Ode is 1803–1806, as it is often given in the anthologies and histories, such influence is impossible, because we know Coleridge's Dejection was composed April 4, 1802. The date 1803–1806, however, is not accepted by most scholars; Professor John D. Rea emphatically states, “It is known that the date 1803 is wrong; the Ode was begun 1802.” The passage in Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, written March 27, 1802, “At breakfast William wrote part of an ode,” refers, it is now believed, to the Ode: Intimations of Immortality. On March 27, 1802, Wordsworth was writing his great Ode; and a week later, on April 4, 1802, Coleridge wrote his.

The question has recently been raised as to whether or not the order of the publication of the Waverley Novels is also, as Lockhart implies, the order of writing. Dame Una Pope-Hennessy, writing in the New York Saturday Review of Literature for April 23, 1932, (p. 686), appeals to lovers of Scott for help in the solution of the problem of the chronology of his novels. She states her reasons for believing that St. Ronan's Well, though later revised, was written seventeen years before Waverley. In a similar communication published in the London Times Literary Supplement for April 28, 1932, Dame Una Pope-Hennessy outlines the genesis of her skepticism as to the usually accepted chronology of Scott's novels:

American triumphs on the sea in the War of 1812 tempered the American mind into a belief in its power to express itself in a literature independent of any foreign influence. Previously America had shown only a faltering confidence in herself as a literary nation. No great protestations of literary strength had appeared in the periodicals. But with America's victory in this second war with the mother country, a new-found note of confidence came into literature. This new confidence was not, however, a nation-wide experience. It was a political phenomenon, Democratic rather than Federal.

In 1838 Lytton published in the Monthly Chronicle an essay entitled “On Art in Fiction.” This essay is ignored by those who have written on Lytton's narrative art; yet, as it is reprinted in the volume, Pamphlets and Sketches, it takes up thirty-five closely printed pages and deals explicitly with the various parts of the novelist's craft. In it Lytton defines, in terms that apply to prose fiction, the aims of art and the means by which the aims may be achieved. By 1838 he had written twelve novels. The essay represents an experienced novelist's conclusions about the potentialities of his chosen form; and, moreover, it provides us with a measuring stick to set up against his later if not his earlier novels.

When the liberal journalist Fernández de Lizardi found himself barred from further discussion of political conditions, at the close of the first brief term of freedom of the press in Mexico in 1812, he turned to descriptions of manners and customs as a means of reaching his public, not with the intention of furnishing entertainment but, like Larra two decades later, with the hope of effecting reforms. Under cover of this type of material, which seemed perfectly harmless to the censors, he portrayed in his El Pensador mexicano, during 1813 and 1814, social and educational conditions as they then existed in the capital of the viceroyalty. When this avenue of expression was gradually closed to him after 1814 by the absolutist régime, Lizardi resorted to fiction; in his three realistic novels, picaresque in form but replete with costumbrista material, he accomplished for Mexico City what Mesonero Romanos futilely planned some years later to do for Madrid through the picaresque novel. Under the free press in 1820 Lizardi turned from fiction to a defense of the constitution; in El Conductor eléctrico he published many articles similar in tone and purpose to Miñano's Cartas, which appeared in Madrid in the same year; but he contributed nothing further toward the development of the satirical sketch on manners. When the more finished costumbrista article made its appearance in Mexico almost twenty years later, the revival of the form was due, not to native initiative, but to Spanish models. The Mexican literary periodicals in which these were published coincided both in content and in point of time with their Spanish prototypes; those in which fully developed costumbrista essays appear date, in the mother country from the opening, in Mexico from the close, of the third decade.

Critics have analyzed at length the philosophy of ironic determinism held by Thomas Hardy, and they have been almost equally voluble in treating the irony that lies like a spinal column in the body of Joseph Conrad's writing. But although the critics have successfully summed up the philosophies of these writers, they have abstained from any satisfactory discussion of the methods of irony which Hardy and Conrad use to illustrate their concepts of irony. The two novelists use differing methods to bring out somewhat differing ideas on life, and I propose here to contrast their methods so as to bring out the distinctive qualities in the method of each.

In dem kleinen Aufsatz “Über Wahrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit des Kunstwerks” vom Jahr 1798 führt Goethe den Nachweis, daß “das Kunstwahre und das Naturwahre völlig verschieden” sind, und daß die Verschiedenheit so weit geht, daß der Künstler keineswegs danach streben dürfe, daß sein Werk sich wie ein “Naturwerk” darstelle und einem solchen zum Verwechseln ähnlich sei. Die Beweisführung geht von der Oper aus, dem Kunstwerk, das nach seinem Wesen von Naturwahrheit denkbar weit entfernt sei, dessen Kunstwahrheit, aber, wenn man die Wirkung als Maßstab nimmt, sich nicht bestreiten lasse. Was aber für die Oper gelte, treffe mutatis mutandis auf alle Künste zu, sie erstrebten keine Wahrheit, keine äußere Gleichheit mit der Wirklichkeit, sondern nur eine auf ihren eignen inneren Gesetzen beruhende Wahrscheinlichkeit. So treffend die Ausführungen sind, so sind sie doch nicht erschöpfend, und man muß in der eingeschlagenen Richtung einen Schritt über Goethe hinaustun. Das Kunstwerk ist nicht nur keine bloße Nachahmung der Natur, sondern wenn es das wäre, wenn es nur einen in der Wirklichkeit vorhandenen Vorgang oder Gegenstand kopierte, so würde es damit aufhören, ein Kunstwerk zu sein. Die Photographie oder die Wachsfigur im Raritätenkabinet sollen der Wirklichkeit so ähnlich als möglich sein, sie werden mit der ausdrücklichen Absicht geschaffen, den Beschauer über ihre Nichtwirklichkeit zu täuschen. Diese Absicht lässt sich jedoch nur bis zu einem gewissen Grad durchführen, die Täuschung wird niemals vollkommen sein, und daraus ergibt sich, daß die Nachbildung mit Notwendigkeit hinter dem Vorbild zurückbleibt und im Vergleich mit ihm als etwas Unvollkommenes erscheint. Bei ihrer Betrachtung drängt sich der Vergleich mit dem Original, mit der Wirklichkeit, auf, und da dieser zu ihren Ungunsten ausfallen muß, so erweckt die Nachahmung in dem Beschauer eine Empfindung der Unzulänglichkeit, also grade das Gegenteil von dem reinen Lustgefühl, das das Kunstwerk hervorrufen soll.