Garrod, in his essay on Keats, equates Wordsworth's “wise passiveness” with Keats's “negative capability.” At least, he fancies that Keats's expression embodies “a quality not essentially different” from Wordsworth's. I contend that, in truth, the two are poles apart.

In context, Garrod is referring to Keats's attitude toward Coleridge, as set forth in his famous letter of December 1817 to his brothers. Going to and returning from a Christmas pantomime with his friends Brown and Dilke, Keats had “not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke on various subjects”; whence, suddenly “several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously— I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason—Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge.”2

The monumental collections of biographical material published by John Nichols are, combined, the richest source of eighteenth-century literary biography. Nichols is known to have been as generous as he was prolific. It would be strange, therefore, if the two greatest biographers of the period, Johnson and Boswell, had not been indebted to some extent to him. That Johnson was so indebted for material included in six of the Lives of the Poets, I have shown previously. I shall show here that Boswell was similarly indebted, by examining the contributions of Nichols to the Life of Johnson.

It is hard to think of another brief quotation in English literary history so felicitous as the one attributed to John Dryden: “Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.” Here in a single sentence the family relationship between two great writers is established; Dryden is placed as an incisive and prophetic judge of literary worth; Swift is dramatically provided with cause for turning away from his disappointing “Pindarics” to the remarkable prose connected with his name; his somewhat over-stressed “life-long” hatred for Dryden is given its impetus. And if Dryden may be considered representative of the end of the seventeenth century and Swift of the beginning of the eighteenth century in English letters, a whole new age of prose is conveniently suggested in the eight words Dryden is supposed to have uttered. Whether or not he really did utter exactly those words—and I am quite certain that he did not—makes no great difference now: it is too late to add qualifying phrases to all the biographies, critical essays, monographs, and literary histories in which Dryden's pronouncement may be read. It has assumed a quality of fictional truth that renders it more convincing and more “true” than demonstrably authentic pronouncements could be. It is like some of the equally quotable adjudications of Samuel Johnson, chestnuts from the same tree, which also seem too suspiciously apropos to have been casually voiced, though they may have been recorded verbatim. Indeed, the eight words under consideration sound much less like Dryden than like Dr. Johnson himself; but that is a matter I will refer to later on in this paper.

Seit mehr als hundert Jahren haben sich Literarhistoriker, Amateure und—leider audi—Philosophen um die Erhellung der Faustenste-hungsgeschichte gemüht. Trotz unendlichen Fleißes, glücklicher Funde und archivalischer Mitteilungen ist das Ende des Rätselratens auch heute noch nicht in Sicht.

In the first half of the eighteenth century, for almost a decade, young Henry Fielding was the most prominent and the most productive playwright in England. Between 1728 and 1737 he staged at least twenty-five plays, six of them full-length comedies, the others short farces, burlesques, and ballad-operas. In 1737 his theatrical career was stopped by the Licensing Act, which was aimed by the Walpole government at Fielding personally. In later years appeared two more five-act comedies which he had written during this early period.

Studies of influence in English dramatic writing have emphasized almost exclusively the creative tradition, giving scant attention to the influence of contemporary acting traditions as significant factors in the creative process. My intent in this paper is, by means of reversing the emphasis, to throw into sharper focus the impact of the actor on the creation of dramatic literature.

Recent scholarship has tended to overstress Milton's adherence to Ramism and to overlook his significant deviations in both theory and practice. The distrust of the human thought processes in theoretical or practical deliberation and the faith in the immediate intuitive perception of logical relations, which is the ultra-spiritual epistemology implied throughout the Ramistic logics, were much more in keeping with the enthusiasm of the radical sects of the seventeenth century than with the rationalism of Milton. Milton was an independent thinker in logical matters as elsewhere and the balance of scholarly evaluation is in need of some readjustment.

Tomás de iriarte (1750-91) is often called upon to furnish early or embryonic examples of modern metric forms because he, perhaps more than any other writer of his time, consciously attempted to exploit the wealth of Spanish verse and strophe arrangements then known and to enrich the language with new forms and combinations. Emiliano Díez Echarri even goes so far as to say that Iriarte was “capaz con un poco más de estro poético de haber renovado toda nuestra métrica.” Other well-known scholars, including Menéndez y Pelayo, Miguel Antonio Caro, Manuel González Prada, Julio Saavedra Molina, Pedro Henríquez Ureña, and Marasso Roca, to name only a few, have at one time or another studied some phase of Iriarte's versification, though no general survey of it has, to my knowledge, been made. The “Géneros de metro usados en estas fábulas” appended to the Fábulas literarias lists forty types, but does not tell the whole story of the versification in the Fábulas—much less of Iriarte's work as a whole. A study of Iriarte's versification would have at least a threefold value: it might (1) serve as a near equivalent to a summary of Spanish formal or learned versification to and including his time; (2) indicate a stronger Italian influence on Spanish metrics at this particular period than has generally been suspected; and (3) bring into clearer focus the original or near-original phases that may have influenced subsequent metric technique, given the fact that Iriarte's work has been so widely known. This paper will attempt to expand especially the first and third of these features of Iriarte's work.

The continuous and almost unprecedented popularity of Robinson Crusoe, Part i, has been variously explained. In accounting for the book's superiority to the imitations which it has inspired, several critics have praised Defoe for allowing his island adventurer barely enough in the way of tools and equipment to keep himself alive and gradually to improve his condition. It is often held, too, that Crusoe manifests unusual mechanical ability. But the facts do not support either of these assumptions, and I believe that the reader who makes them has failed to recognize a perennial source of the book's charm.

James Sutherland, Defoe's biographer, commends the author for restricting his hero to “only a few things saved from the wreck,” with which he “proceeds to build up a new life.” In his introduction to the Modern Library edition of Robinson Crusoe, Louis Kronenberger agrees with others who, he says, have pointed out that “Defoe allowed Crusoe just enough in the way of equipment and fodder and tools for him at the outset to stay alive, and in the course of time to be made comfortable.” Paul Dottin remarks that Defoe has simplified his task by allowing the castaway “tout ce qui peut etre utile.”

It was in Marie de Gournay's salon, rue de l'Arbre Sec., and later rue St-Honoré, that took place (prior to the founding of the Académie, in which many of her contemporaries say that she played an important rôle) frequent discussions that were to determine the future of the French language. Her opinions were listened to with respect—though not always followed—by such men as Boisrobert, Ménage, Sorel, Voiture, Malherbe, Racan, and others. Among her staunch friends, besides Montaigne, were La Mothe le Vayer, Claude de l'Estoile, Colletet, St François de Sales, and Michel de l'Hospital. She was also highly esteemed abroad by Juste Lipse, Hensius, Baudius and, in Italy, by Capaccio. She was, at the time of the incident we are about to relate, a vivacious, enthusiastic woman in her fifties, with an extraordinary fund of knowledge, a sharp tongue tempered by a keen sense of humor and a sparkle of wit that earned her the respect of the learned and pensions from the mighty. Charles Sorel insisted on her gentler qualities: “Au-dessus de son savoir je voudrois mettre encore sa générosité, sa bonté et ses autres vertues qui n'avoient point ses pareilles,” and he said that Bouhours “l'a mise au rang des plus illustres filles d'esprit.” The Abbé Michel de Marolles, who was a frequent visitor at her home, was impressed by her kindness : “Elle avoit l'âme candide et généreuse.”