The principal source of The Trial of Chivalry has been ably discussed by C. R. Baskervill, who shows how the main plot is chiefly a skilful interweaving of two narratives from the Arcadia; namely, the story of Argalus and Parthenia and Demagoras, which corresponds with the Philip-Bellamira-Burbon plot; and the story of Philoxenus, Helen of Corinth, and Amphialus, which corresponds, in part, with the Ferdinand-Katharine-Pembroke plot. Baskervill does not, however, point out that the dramatist (undoubtedly Chettle) uses part of yet another story from Book i of the Arcadia. Ferdinand and Pembroke swoon away after wounding each other in a duel, and are removed separately by. a forester and a fisherman, who restore them to health. Each thinks the other dead. When they meet again, it is to cross swords once more, but happily they “Discouer eche other in fighting” (the helmet of one of them had fallen off), and resume their old friendship. In the Arcadia, Pyrocles and Musidorus, two princes and affectionate friends, being parted by a storm at sea, regard each other as lost. After a series of adventures they, as members of opposing armies, meet in single combat. Pyrocles strikes Musidorus a blow on the head, “and withal the helmet fell off”; they recognize each other and are reunited.

1. In order to place our subject in a proper setting, let us note what moods were distinguished by representative grammarians of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The table below reproduces their terminology:

Tyrwhitt's dating of the A-text of Piers Ploughman in the year 1362 from the allusions in the Second Vision (Passus v, 10–20) to the “pestilences” and “this south-Westerne wynt on a Saterday at even,” which seem to refer to the plague of 1361 and to the terrific gale which swept southern England on January 15, 1362, has long gone unchallenged. Skeat accepted it without question when he edited the poem for the Early English Text Society in 1877. Tyrwhitt found records of the storm in the chronicles of Thorn, Walsingham, and Murimuth; Skeat added Fabyan, Hardyng, John of Bridlington, the Eulogium Historiarum, and others to the list. That these two scholars have established the reference in the early lines of Passus v is clear enough, but it does not follow from this that the poem was written in 1362. It must have been written some time after 1362. I shall endeavor to show in this paper that the Prologue and First Vision (Passus i-iv) were written as late as May, 1376.

Courthope, in his History of English Poetry, asks the question: “Does Spenser's work satisfy the test of Unity which must be applied to every great creation of art?” Answering this question, Courthope thinks that there is undoubtedly poetical unity in the general conception of The Shepherd's Calendar. But of the Faerie Queene, he says the following:

M. Georges Pellissier, in his contribution to Petit de Julleville's Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature Française, assigns as sources of Baïf's Livre des Météores: Virgil, Aratus, and Manilius. As his statement seems to have passed unchallenged and unverified in succeeding accounts of Baïf's work, the following excerpts have been prepared from a larger study of the didactic works of the Pléiade, and are here presented in the interest of exactness.

Critics have generally considered the 1622 quarto of Othello as an acting version, and have classified it as one of the so-called “good” quartos of Shakespeare. Although it appeared in print much later than the others, it partakes of some of their general resemblances: the retention of oaths, reduction by cutting, the presence of more complete and less sophisticated stage directions, and also of numerous word variants. Many scholars have regarded the Q 1 with mild suspicion, partly because the Folio editors ignored it, and partly because it appears to differ in several particulars from the other good quartos. These peculiarities center about its stage directions, oaths, act and scene divisions, date of publication, its cuts—particularly those of the Willow Song and context—and the evidences of its use as a prompt copy. On these accounts, textual critics have regarded the Q, though admittedly “good,” as distinctly inferior to the folio; and the numerous hypotheses that have appeared show that scholars are far from agreement in explaining the facts. The authoritativeness of the text of any Shakespearean quarto depends largely upon the conditions of its publication. Possibly some of the peculiarities of Q 1 of Othello may be explained—and thus the authority of the text further vindicated—by associating it with a new group of quartos, published contemporaneously.

That French literature exerted some influence upon the author of Piers Plowman has been recognized since the time of Thomas Warton, who, in his History of English Poetry, pointed out the similarity between Langland's vision of Antichrist and Huon de Méri's Tournoiement de l'Antéchrist. This influence had not been examined with any particularity, however, until Miss Dorothy Owen, of the University of London, made an illuminating study of Piers Plowman in comparison with some earlier and some contemporary French allegories. The French pieces used for this comparison are Le Roman de Carité by the Reclus de Moilliens; Le Songe d'Enfer by Raoul de Houdenc; Le Roman de la Rose; Huon de Méri's Tournoiement de l'Antéchrist; Rutebeuf's Voie de Paradis; Guillaume de Deguileville's Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine; Le Salut d'Enfer, and De Dame Guile. Miss Owen has shown certain correspondences between the English poem and the French allegories studied, but in no case, I believe, has she been able to establish a definite connection. Students of Piers Plowman know, however, that it is very difficult to trace any of Langland's allegories to certain sources. It is doubtful whether the source of any passage of considerable length in Piers Plowman has ever been convincingly identified.

From Plato and Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen, through the medieval commentators, the Elizabethans inherited a body of complex psychological principles. An examination of these principles and their bearing on The Faerie Queene has so far been only casual and incidental. Since in Book ii, Canto ix, the poet combines one of the most widely used of medieval motifs—the conception of the body as a world, city, or castle—with certain current doctrines of psychology, such an inquiry is especially apposite. Spenser's use of the abundant contemporaneous literature of psychology affords material for an extended treatment such as that which Miss Anderson has made of Shakespeare's plays. The present study purposes to set forth one aspect of his system of psychology—his psychology of memory in the allegory of the Castle of Alma, to make clear the relationship of his system to the current Elizabethan doctrines, and to establish the purpose of certain departures from those doctrines.

Perhaps no character in English Literature commissioned by his author to be the title bearer of his work has fulfilled his commission more effectively than Piers the Plowman. Even to the layman, ungiven to “Lettrure and longe studie,” there is pleasant connotation in the name, while to the scholar, moving in the uncertainties of authorship and text, the title of Piers the Plowman and the central importance of his figure in the poem stand as one thing sure. Still one may ask questions. Just why should this poem of political and religious satire have been called the vision or book concerning Piers the Plowman? From the angle of his presence in the action of the poem, he is but a minor character. Conscience, Kynde Witte, and Longe Wille, any of them are more consistently recurrent. Just who is Piers anyway? And what is his significance in the poem?

The Faerie Queene is packed with classical allusions and classical proper names, especially Canto xi of Book iv, with its lists of sea-gods and founders of kingdoms and the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris. Here in particular, Spenser concentrated his mythological learning both in quantity and in obscure erudition; and he seems to have had at his elbow such compilations as Hesiod's Theogony, the Library of Apollodorus, and the Libri Mythologiæ of Natalis Comes. His use of the Theogony in his list of nereids illustrates how closely in this matter he followed his authorities: all but two of the fifty are derived from Hesiod; he followed even Heriod's order as closely as his stanza-form allowed; and a number of the descriptive epithets are similar. Two of Spenser's names, however, have no counterpart in Hesiod, Phao and Poris; nor do they appear in similar lists of nereids in Homer or Apollodorus or other classical sources, nor in Boccaccio's Genealogia Deorum Gentilium nor in Natalis Comes.

There is much independent and debonair criticism of contemporary English literature in the Mémoires littéraires de la Grande Bretagne, written for the information of continental Europeans by the Swiss Georges Deyverdun and his very close friend Edward Gibbon. Unfortunately volumes for 1767 and 1768 only were published, although, as Gibbon remarks in his personal Memoirs, “the materials of the third volume were almost completed, when I recommended Deyverdun as governor to Sir Richard Worsley. … They set forwards on their travels; nor did they return to England till some time after my father's death.” The number printed was so small that copies of the first volume are very infrequently to be met with, and of the second very rarely indeed. For Gibbon, the Mémoires littéraires were to some extent the fruit of his studies during a sojourn at Lausanne between 1753 and 1758; for Deyverdun they were a means of livelihood, hit upon only after Gibbon had sought suitable employment for him far and wide in England. Inasmuch as they confirm what became a life-long connection, an account of how they came to be written may very well include a few remarks upon the early friendship of the collaborators.

“Poets are always entitled to a royalty on whatever we find in their works.” James Russell Lowell, himself a poet of sorts, was perhaps not entirely disinterested in making this observation. But a host of critics and students have accepted it at face value and have busied themselves in a hunt for the treasures which Shakespeare buried in The Tempest. The tools with which they work are mysterious and inexact; so, often, are their findings. Nothing daunted, they have advanced beyond the field of mere facts and sources in a search for treasures of another class—those which can be dug out of The Tempest, and which are of a metal and minting that Shakespeare himself might scarcely recognize.

There is always a particular interest attaching to the last work of a great author; and in an especial degree this has been the case with Shakespeare. If The Tempest was not really his last play, it would seem that it ought to have been. The action now and then lags a bit, and gives the people on the stage or in the audience a chance to ponder; which the chief character once does to such effect that his speech, of purest and highest poetry, seems to be the “conclusion of the whole matter,” der Weisheit letzter Schluss. And there are meetings and leave-takings, and glances into the past and at what is to come.

Virtually all of Spenser's biographers have assumed that the poet lived in or near Dublin from the time of his going to Ireland as secretary to Lord Grey in 1580 till 1587 or 1588. In this paper I shall explain why data heretofore relied upon are of small value in establishing Spenser's residence near Dublin from 1584 till 1588, and shall advance further evidence, in addition to that brought forth by Mr. Plomer and Mr. Cross in The Life and Correspondence of Lodowick Bryskett, to support the assumption that after 1584 Spenser was Bryskett's deputy as clerk in the Council of Munster. To understand this hypothesis, a survey of the intimate relations between Spenser and Bryskett, as well as their connection with the Sidney family and Lord Grey, is essential.

It is in the Lettres Philosophiques that Voltaire speaks of China for the first time. In these pages the oriental empire is already “la nation la plus sage et la mieux policée de l'univers.” By 1734 the cult of Chinese things had begun to exercise a decided influence on French art and thought. The movement had developed under two aspects: a material manifestation in the vogue of “chinoiseries” or “magots de la Chine,” and an intellectual manifestation which took the form of a profound admiration for Chinese culture and, more particularly, for Confucian thought. The first of these two aspects had made itself felt from the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV. Russian, Portuguese, and English merchants had brought to Europe a vast quantity of Chinese objets d'art which were greatly admired and extensively copied in the Western countries. Of the second aspect of the movement Leibnitz, in the seventeenth century, was the undoubted progenitor. The German scholar, the most universal mind of his time (to quote the opinion of Voltaire), read the maxims of Confucius, newly translated, and his brilliant imagination was fired by the wealth contained in the literature of the Eastern people. He dreamed of a universal culture in which Orient and Occident should pool their resources to produce a new intellectual universe. As instruments for the creation of this new culture he looked first to the Society of Jesus and then to Peter the Great. The former had already given ample reason for being chosen. Under the impulse of the literature produced by the missionaries of the Society, and particularly that polemic element which dealt with the famous quarrel over the Chinese ceremonies, Europe had begun to acquire extensive knowledge of the great Oriental empire, a knowledge hitherto inaccessible.

Critics have long recognized Chaucer's poetry as a connecting link between mediæval and modern literature. In particular, his literary technique, his originality in the telling of old tales, and his wide range of subject matter have caused him to be ranked variously from the most modern of the mediævals to the most mediæval of the moderns. The student of Chaucer may well question to what definite extent and in what particular respects the poet was mediæval, and in what modern. Certain it is that he blended in his work characteristics of both periods.

Professor Manly, in his British Academy lecture, Chaucer and the Rhetoricians, has shown with his usual brilliance that certain features of Chaucer's technique resulted from his study of manuals on the art of writing. As yet, however, little attention has been given to such handbooks as possible sources for the matter of passages in Chaucer. For instance, no one, I think, has suggested that rhetorical treatises may have supplied Chaucer with quotations from Latin writers; yet the rhetorics are as likely sources as the grammars and florilegia, which have long been mentioned in this connection. Indeed, two of the three arts of poetry with which Professor Manly's lecture is most concerned, the Ars Versificatoria of Matthieu de Vendôme and the Documentum de Arte Versificandi of Geoffrey de Vinsauf, contain numerous citations from Horace and Juvenal, as well as from those Latin poets to whom the Troilus is commanded to pay especial homage, “Virgile, Ovyde, … Lucan, and Stace.”

While reading the plays of Massinger, I was struck by the frequency with which he terminates his lines with the insignificant words of and to. As I went from play to play I found these words bobbing up in the important end position with surprising regularity. Curiosity led me to measure this regularity by an actual count and classification in all his plays, and then to ascertain the practice of his predecessors and contemporaries. My idea was that in these two small words there might be found a distinguishing characteristic of Massinger's verse.