In discussing “Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets in England, 1700–1760,” Professor C. A. Moore introduces Henry Needier (1690–1718) primarily to show that Shaftesbury had a few followers before the period of Thomson in which, according to his thesis, literary and ethical discipleship of the moralist and rhapsodist became common. That is to say, the “obscure poet” Needier affords a kind of running-start before the great leap is made, that of establishing a Shaftesburian influence, ethical, theological, and literary, on Thomson, and the oftentimes-designated imitators who sprang up after the Seasons was published. The purpose of the following discussion is to question Professor Moore's interpretation of Needler's indebtedness to Shaftesbury for his theology and his “poetical treatment of nature,” and to show what seem instead to have been the real sources of the poet's thinking and his stylistic achievements.

In the fourteenth century all good Englishmen were singers. How large a part music played in the life of the time is apparent in Chaucer, who, as Burney remarks, ‘never loses an opportunity of describing or alluding to its general use, and of bestowing it as an accomplishment upon the pilgrims, heroes, and heroines of his several poems.’ The carved figures in the minstrels' gallery at Exeter Cathedral and the Angel Choir of Lincoln are lasting memorials to the universal popularity of music in that day. While the cleric devoted himself to the music that lent beauty to the services of the church, the layman delighted in the music of the banquet, the battle, and the chase. Edward III. himself kept a band of household minstrels that included ‘trompeters, cytelers, pypers, tabrete, mabrers, clarions, fedelers, wayghtes.’ Le Art de Venerie, written by Twici, huntsman to Edward II., reveals a highly developed hunting music, and the martial music is mentioned by Chaucer in the Knight's Tale (A. 2511–12):

Pypes, trompes, nakers, clariounes,

That in the bataille blowen blody sounes.

Born into such a world as this, the poet of Pearl and Sir Gawain bore the deep impress of the popular taste. His own taste was of wide compass, and included an appreciation of instrumental and vocal, secular and ecclesiastical music.

Literary historians are practically agreed as to the origin of the two elements which comprise the main plot of Ben Jonson's Epicorne. The story of a man induced by false pretences to marry an almost insanely loquacious woman is a version of a declamation by the Greek Sophist Libanius on the surly man who has married a talkative wife. In regard to this relationship there can be no question. The second, and more important, element of the main plot is the practical joke played upon an eccentric which results in his ostensible marriage to a boy disguised as a girl. The source of this story, the most authoritative German critics and Dr. Henry agree, is to be found in Plautus's Casina, in which a somewhat similar trick is played upon Lysidamus. To this opinion Herford and Simpson, the editors of the definitive edition of Jonson's works, add their endorsement:

A curious use of the word Romant by Mario Equicola, a sixteenth century writer in Italy, in his ponderous Libro de Natura de Amore (“Stampato in Venetia per Lorenzo Lorio da Portes: Adi. 23. Zugno. 1525 …”) has caused some perplexity to two recent students of Renaissance Italy, neither of whom has been able to offer any valid explanation.

Much of Fielding's amusing literary and social satire in his plays of 1736 and 1737 was in a popular vein, if we may judge from the abundance of similar satire in the newspapers of the time. Elsewhere I have shown why Fielding's hits were sure to have been met by the laughing approval of his audiences. His attack on pantomime was somewhat different, however, for pantomime was at the height of its popularity. Critics of it, like Fielding and Aaron Hill, were running counter to popular taste.

When Francis Bacon set down, in the fragment called the New Atlantis, his conception of a commonwealth as it ought to be, he was following a precedent of honorable antiquity. As we should expect, he shows obvious indebtedness to Plato's Republic, Timœus, and Critias and to More's Utopia; but the fact that the latest of these was a century old when Bacon began to write gave him scope for considerable originality in creating a “perfect state” adapted to the thought of his own times. His notes and writings over a period of years show that many of the theories and projects that took form in the New Atlantis had long been in his mind. By 1608 he had perceived the importance to science of coöperation in research, had seen the suitability of a collegiate organization as an agency for carrying on scientific investigation, and had jotted down specific details of plans, problems, and equipment which show that his mind was occupied with the practical aspects of his ideal. Although the opportunity to establish a college of research in an English university never came to Bacon, the concept of such an institution persisted until it became the soul of his Utopia—Salomon's House, or the College of the Six Days' Work, credited with having inspired the founding of the Royal Society.

In 1621 Lope de Vega published his El Perseo, and Calderon followed in 1653 with Las Fortunas de Perseo y Andrómeda on the same subject. Both dramatists so embellished the narrative of Ovid, their common source, with their own inventions for the most part and to a lesser degree with accretions gathered during centuries of transmission as to make those features the subject of pertinent inquiry. A statement of the main incidents of the myth will facilitate our study. Danäe, having been exposed after the birth of her son, Perseus, in the tower, was cast on the island of Seriphus. There she became the wife of its king, Polydectes, who, finding Perseus an obstacle to his designs, induced him to undertake the slaugher of Medusa. Perseus accomplished the feat with the aid of a magic wand (sandals) and a sword, both the gift of Mercury, and a shield from Pallas. He also secured the Gorgon's head. While returning from Africa he rescued Andromeda, who was exposed on a cliff in Ethiopia to the visitation of a sea monster.

The indebtedness of Chaucer's Legend of Philomela to the Ovide Moralisé for details not to be found in the Metamorphoses was established more than a decade ago by Professor Lowes. Observing, further, in the Legend of Ariadne and in the short account of her abandonment by Theseus in the Hous of Fame (405–426) the strong resemblances to Machaut's résumé of Theseus' “fals jape” in the Jugement dou Roy de Navarre, Lowes suggested that these likenesses might also be due, wholly or in part, to a common use of Machaut's favorite source, the Ovide Moralisé, although as the pertinent part of the text of the Ovide Moralisé was still unpublished, he was unable to verify his conjecture. Recently Professor Shannon, without examining the history of Ariadne in the French version of the Metamorphoses, has somewhat rashly rejected Professor Lowes's theory, and declared that Boccaccio's De Genealogia Deorum is the only source aside from Ovid himself which Chaucer used for his stories of the heroine. In the course of a general examination of the influence upon Chaucer of the Ovide Moralisé —made upon de Boer's edition and upon a manuscript of the complete text—I have found that Lowes's hypothesis is sound, while the instances of the impress of Boccaccio's mythology cited by Shannon appear uniformly weak.

The purpose of this paper is not to establish definite sources for Chaucer's Monk's Tale but to consider it as a representative of a general mediæval type. Professor Lounsbury declared that the Monk's Tale belonged to a “species of composition to which the men of Chaucer's age were exceedingly addicted.” In the Canterbury Tales, he continues, “the Monk's tale is introduced as a specimen of these collections of stories, and largely and perhaps entirely for the sake of satirizing, or at least of censuring, the taste that created and enjoyed them.” “In the Middle Ages,” writes Mr. J. E. Wells, “it was not at all uncommon to make collections of a single general type.…. These collections were.… of an encyclopædic character.” So Mr. E. Greenlaw: “It [the Monk's Tale] is.… an example of the many collections of tales having a didactic purpose which were characteristic of mediævalism.”

Quoique l'influence de Pierre Bayle sur l'esprit philosophique et critique de Voltaire soit généralement reconnue et consacrée par la critique, elle n'a pas encore subi l'examen qu'elle comporte, et il reste à la démontrer et à la préciser. Sans doute, au premier abord, l'atmosphère baylienne règne suprême dans les œuvres de Voltaire. Voltaire lui-même, tout le premier, dans de nombreux passages, rend hommage à celui qu'il nomme complaisamment “son père spirituel.” Les épithètes élogieuses que Voltaire adresse au philosophe de Rotterdam abondent, mais elles ne sont souvent qu'un mot d'ordre et de ralliement et ne doivent être acceptées qu'avec réserve et caution. De plus, il se peut que la ressemblance de pensée et de méthode entre deux auteurs tels que Pierre Bayle et Voltaire soit purement accidentelle et ne relève d'aucune influence directe. Un écrivain du caractère de Voltaire, toujours en éveil, curieux de tout savoir, doué d'une mémoire remarquable, prêt à assimiler et à transformer tout ce qui l'intéresse, se joue à dérouter l‘étude la plus minutieuse. Les influences françaises ou anglaises qui ont pu agir sur le développement intellectuel de Voltaire sont multiples et complexes: elles s'entremêlent et s'entrecroisent. Comment donc les définir et en tracer la source? Si Voltaire loue Pierre Bayle jusqu’ aux nues, il ne loue pas moins l'Angleterre, “l‘île barbare des Cassitérides, ”Locke et Newton. La part exacte de l'influence du milieu français et de celle de l'Angleterre sur Voltaire est encore à établir d'une façon définitive. La présente étude ne s'intéresse qu‘à la période de Voltaire qui précède la publication des Lettres philosophiques. Elle se borne à préciser la pensée philosophique et critique de Voltaire à cette époque et à en suggérer les sources probables; elle cherche surtout à découvrir quelques indices de l'influence de Pierre Bayle sur l'esprit du jeune Voltaire et à indiquer certains rapports de pensée et de méthode entre ces deux écrivains.

The Revenger's Tragedy was long regarded as the work of Cyril Tourneur, but in recent years scholars have vigorously denied his authorship. Though this discussion has demonstrated the weakness of the case for Tourneur, it has not thus far resulted in establishing general agreement as to the true author of the play.

The characteristic virtues of his noble patroness, James Thomson sang in the opening lines of his Spring,

O Hartford, fitted or to shine in courts

With unaffected grace, or walk the plains

With innocence and meditation joined.

Other poets of country life besides the author of the Seasons enjoyed the patronage of the benevolent Countess of Hertford with her taste for rural landscapes, rural solitudes, and rural verses. Stephen Duck, the “Thresher Poet,” doubtless owed much of his court-favor to the good offices of the Countess, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Caroline. Her country residence he describes familiarly in his poem, A Description of a Journey to Marlborough, etc.; and an unpublished poem by him (preserved among the Alnwick manuscripts) specifically recognizes her aid and beseeches its continuance. John Dyer she may also have known; his Grongar Hill in an early version she transcribed in her commonplace-book. He was one of Aaron Hill's circle, which included Thomson and also Richard Savage, who, according to Dr. Johnson, owed his life to her intercession with the Queen. These young poets were the protegés of Lady Hertford's youth;1 another poet of country life, however, claimed her interest some twenty years after Thomson's fruitful visits to Marlborough and St. Leonard's Hill.

In a valuable article on “The Dating of Shenstone's Letters,” published some years ago, Professor John Edwin Wells succeeded in verifying or correcting the dates of eighty-nine of the one hundred eleven letters collected in volume iii of the poet's Works. Unfortunately, as Professor Wells noted in the introduction of his article, the dates assigned to these letters by the editor are not trustworthy:

The most casual reading of the studies of any of the persons connected with the Shenstone circle ever so slightly, causes one to realize that the earlier letters at least have been and are used considerably as bases for dating facts and events of minor literary and personal history of the time. The dating given by Dodsley in his edition of the Letters is the dating generally accepted without further consideration. Study of the letters, however, indicates that the year given in the dating of many of the letters, is evidently not Shenstone's but has been inserted by the editor ... The dating of many of the letters is incorrect.

The Drinking Academy, A Play by Thomas Randolph, edited by Dr. Samuel A. Tannenbaum and me and published by the Harvard University Press in June, 1930, was noticed at length in The Review of English Studies for October by Professor G. C. Moore Smith. He rejects Randolph's authorship and advances the claim of Robert Baron. “The present writer expressed the view,” he asserts, “that if the manuscript was, as alleged, in the handwriting of its author, the play could hardly be Randolph's.” As I was emboldened to accept Dr. Day's ascription of the play to Randolph partly by the fact that Professor Moore Smith, convinced by Dr. Day's evidence, had himself categorically assigned it to Randolph in the very note to which he thus vaguely refers, I subjoin extracts therefrom, since—as the testimony of an expert—they are an important element in the case.

When, in 1697, the actors of the Comédie Italienne announced their intention of producing Fatouville's La finta matrigna ou la belle-mère supposée, readily associated with La fausse prude, a novel published in Holland againt Mme de Maintenon, the machinery of the law-moved swiftly. On May 14th of that year M. d'Argenson, head of the police, closed the theater, thereby terminating the activities of the Italian troupe in the seventeenth century. For so long a time did Mme de Maintenon deprive the court of amusements that, as soon as the period of mourning for Louis XIV was ended, the regent Philippe d'Orléans hastened to re-establish in France the theater which had previously supplied an abundant source of entertainment. In 1716 he succeeded in bringing to Paris, under the leadership of Luigi Riccoboni, a troupe which began performances on May 18 at the Palais-Royal but removed on June 1 to the repaired and redecorated Hôtel de Bourgogne.

All the accepted authorities agree in stating first, that William Dunbar was not wholehearted in his devotion to Chaucer, but followed him “at a distance and, perhaps, with a divided affection” for some other school of poetry; and secondly, that the other influence which divided his affection was that of French poets such as Alain Chartier, Charles of Orleans, and above all Villon.