Certain critical conceptions regarding the Shepheards Calender require to be re-examined. One of these is the idea that the Calender is a series of experiments, lacking unity except through the rather imperfectly worked out idea of the seasons or the little drama of Colin and Rosalind. This view probably proceeds from the fact that in 1579-1580 Spenser and Harvey were discussing the subject of reformed versifying, and is strengthened by the well-known indebtedness of the Calender to certain types of Renaissance pastoral. But these discussions with Harvey are easily magnified; the careful reader of the famous letters finds abundant evidence that Spenser was none too serious. The indebtedness to foreign models is very real, but it has been stressed to the exclusion of elements not less important, and it no more proceeds from a supposedly experimental character of the work as a whole than the similar eclecticism of the Faerie Queene; a serious, unified purpose is by no means precluded. Moreover, we know by Spenser's own statement that his chief model was Chaucer; and this influence of Chaucer, strange to say, has not yet been thoroughly investigated. As to the idea that this so-called series of experiments possesses only the slight unity afforded by the seasons motif or by the Colin-Rosalind story, the fanciful importance attached to the Kalendrier des Bergeres as a possible model on the one hand, and the not unnatural desire to learn all that is possible of the life of Spenser on the other, have too long diverted attention from what I believe was Spenser's real purpose in writing the Calender.

It was probably during, or shortly after, his residence at Cambridge University that Edmund Spenser composed two ‘hymnes,’ or odes, in praise of love and beauty. The ‘love’ praised was ‘platonic love’; the ‘beauty’ praised was ‘intellectual’ beauty.

These two poems were written, it seems certain, before 1580. Over twenty years later, perhaps twenty-five,–at any rate not long before 1596,–the poet, grown older, professes to condemn them as conspicuous among “the many lewd layes” that “in the greener times of his youth” he had made

Contrairement à bien des écrivains et à bien des philosophes, Jean Jacques Rousseau semble avoir trouvé, dès le début de sa carrière, l'idée directrice qui devait le guider dans toute son œuvre. Contenue, déjà presque entière, dans le Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts, la théorie sur la bonté originelle de l'homme est formulée avec netteté et développée dans le Discours sur l'Inégalité; on la retrouve dans tous les ouvrages de Rousseau, c'est l'essential même de sa doctrine, le principe admis par lui comme absolu et incontestable, dont il ne se départira pas et qu'il défendra obstinément. Il est assez étonnant, au premier abord, de voir Rousseau prendre cette attitude dans la lutte philosophique à un moment où les idées de progrès out gagné tellement de terrain, dans un des siècles les plus civilisés et les plus heureux de son raffinement que l'on ait connu. Ajoutons que Rousseau, en sa double qualité de Génevois et de protestant foncier, qu'il est toujours resté, aurait dû croire plus que tout autre à ce que Calvin appelle la “malice humain.” Suffitil de dire que Rousseau “étant éminemment individualiste, toute sa doctrine sort de la constitution particulière de son moi,” comme M. Lanson le déclare? Il ne semble pas, et cette solution ne nous satisfait guère; il y a pourtant là un problème psychologique autant que littéraire qui vaut d'être examiné.

It would appear, on investigation, that English classicism made itself firm roots in Elizabethan soil. Furthermore, that the plant was exotic, and came of French stock seems extremely probable. If this is our conclusion, it is necessary to premise the characteristics of an age possessing classic tendencies and show them to have appeared in sixteenth century English letters. Also we must trace interrelations of technique and theme between France and England, in order to support our latter deduction.

Butler's Hudibras has been edited many times, and much erudition has been shown in explaining the wit of that remarkable burlesque. Yet, curiously enough, the most obvious method of annotation has hitherto been entirely overlooked. This would have been to utilize the abundant material bequeathed to us by Butler himself in the form of prose “ characters,” which were published only after his death—material that throws a most interesting light upon the poet's method, and at the same time clears up many obscurities in the mock-epic. These “characters” were written between 1667 and 1669—five or six years after the appearance of the first part of Hudibras, but were not collected and published till 1759. Even then, only 121 out of 187 were printed in Thyer's edition of The Genuine Remains in Prose and Verse of Mr. Samuel Butler. The remaining 60 have lain undisturbed in the British Museum as “Addition No. 32625–6,” till the industry of a modern scholar has at last unearthed and published them. The whole collection conforms closely to the fashion of writing “characters” that was prevalent all through the seventeenth century. The character-sketch, or “ character ” as it came to be called in that age, was a short account, usually in prose, of the properties, qualities, or peculiarities, that serve to individualize a type. And such these of Butler are.