In his ‘Préface sur la Franciade, touchant le Poëme Heroïque’ Ronsard summed up his theories on the epic for the ‘lecteur apprentif’ about to undertake the arduous task of reading his Franciade and asserted that the epic poet should be a walking encyclopedia of philosophical, medical, botanical, anatomical, and juridical knowledge. Furthermore, he advised the prospective reader or budding poet not to neglect any fact or story pertaining to the nature and properties of trees, flowers, plants, and roots. None of Ronsard's admirers heeded more fully this ancient conception of poetry, which was to have as its aim the popularization of all human knowledge, than did Du Bartas, whose catalogs of plants, animals, and precious gems remind us of classical and medieval bestiaries, herbals, and lapidaires.

The scholarly books in this field during the current year fall into four main groups. Much the largest of these is a welcome group of scholarly editions, led by William Ringler's masterly Clarendon edition of the poems of Sidney. In Max Patrick's series of Stuart Editions the new titles include his own edition of Herrick, W. B. Hunter's edition of Jonson's poems, J. C. A. Rathmell's edition of the psalms of Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke, a collection of meditative poems edited by Louis Martz, and a collection of short seventeenth-century fiction, edited by C. C. Mish. An anthology of masques and triumphs and an anthology of seventeenth-century epics are also promised later in this series.