A salient point of interest in The Owl and the Nightingale is the amount of knowledge, expressed or implied in the poem, concerning animal life which is correct and possibly due to direct personal observation. Master Nicholas of Guildford, whom, here as elsewhere, I assume to be the author, was not writing a scientific treatise, and is at no particular pains to avoid the acceptance of popular delusion. For example, from a literary point of view, the long account of how the hooting of the owl portends disaster is one of the most effective passages in the whole poem. Such scientific interest as the poem possesses is a byproduct of his purpose to enter into bird-life and set it before the reader. Indeed, had he purposed to write a scientific treatise it is quite conceivable that he would have busied himself collecting misinformation, whether from books or from word of mouth, and would have thought his own personal observations of too little moment to be worth recording. And we should have been tempted to regard him as a man of almost no observation at all, very much as the reader is apt to regard Alexander Neckam, or would regard Neckam but for that writer's remarks about the magnetic needle. Art is older than science, and was highly developed when science was still in its infancy. Master Nicholas, our poet, writing as an artist, was sometimes contented to tell us what he had himself seen and heard. Whether he was or was not a man of uncommon observation cannot, perhaps, be determined. What is incontestably true is that in an age when writers of natural history were blind leaders of the blind, he did some justice to such powers of observation as he possessed.

Amid the controversial winds that blow about the region of Arthurian studies it is agreeable to have a few solid rocks of irrefutable argument. Professor Kittredge in his Study of Gawain and the Green Knight has demonstrated beyond all question two highly important points: first, that the theme of the Beheading Test, which occurs in Arthurian romances, French, English, and German, from about 1180 to about 1380, is derived from an Irish tradition actually existent in a MS. written before 1106; secondly, that the latest of these romances in date of composition is closer in many ways to the original Celtic form than is the earliest. It is well for students to ponder these facts when the authority of Foerster and Bruce is invoked to deny the presence of a strong Celtic element in Arthurian romance, and when some scholars seem to accept as an axiom the principle that if the same motif occurs in two romances, the later borrowed it from the earlier. Indeed, a whole history of the Grail legend has been constructed on this simple but often delusive formula.

The question of how far the Middle English metrical romances and their continental prototypes went in portraying realistically the life and times in which they were written and how much of the detail in them is merely literary convention has long been a moot one. W. P. Ker wrote: “The longer romances are really modern novels—studies of contemporary life, characters and emotions, mixed up with adventures more or less surprising,” but added in another place, “the romance writers of the twelfth century did much to make romance into a mechanic art, … reduced the game to a system and left the different romantic combinations and conventions within the reach of almost any 'prentice hand. …” M. L. Clédat wrote: “Les peintures de mœurs chevaleresques, les descriptions de fêtes, de tournois et de combats, nous plaisent encore par elles mêmes lorsqu'elles sont vives et légères, mais elles valent surtout par les renseignements précieux qu'elles nous fournissent sur la vie réelle et sur l'idéal du monde chevaleresque.” There is obviously some vagueness here, and it becomes desirable to separate the realistic from the conventional material in the Middle English metrical romances in order to determine where the art of the romance writers was merely “mechanic” and where they were actually attempting to give “renseignements précieux … sur la vie réelle et sur l'idéal du monde chevaleresque.”

Attempts to name the author of Pearl, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the two homiletic poems found in MS. Cotton Nero A x. have so far failed. Neither the Scottish Huchown of the Awle Ryale, nor the Londoner Ralph Strode, can well be accepted on the strength of any evidence yet available. But though the name of the poet has escaped detection, much has been learned about him. The thoughtful reader of his works will recognize a man intimate with the Bible and with the writings of the Church Fathers, and one concerned with the theological problems that occupied men's minds in the late fourteenth century. To a strong religious and moral bent there is added a love of romance and the pomp and brilliance of the life in a noble household. The poet's skill in argument and his familiarity with the life and manners of the nobility have led Professor Osgood to the belief that he was a clerk who had studied at Oxford or Paris. Professor Gollancz draws a charming picture of the young man listening to the romantic tales of the minstrels in a great hall, and himself eager to emulate them. The man we seek, then, is an unusual combination of theologian and minstrel, a student of sacred and profane literature, and a close observer of the religious and secular life of the time. Such a man I propose to name as the probable author of the poems before us.

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.

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.

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?

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.”

The modern reader is wont to take with quiet enjoyment the mild irony implied in the delightful spirit of camaraderie with which the Eagle addresses “Geffrey” in Chaucer's The Hous of Fame:

“A ha!” quod he, “lo, so I can
Lewedly to a lewed man
Speke.“

Having sketched, in the opening lines of the Hous of Fame, the medieval system of dream lore, Chaucer announces that he will relate a dream more wonderful than ever came to man before. The importance of this remarkable dream is emphasized. It can be told only after an invocation of Morpheus, and the lives of the listeners will be affected by having merely heard it. May the mover of all bless the dreaming of them who “take hit wel;” may they have success in love or in whatever they most desire; may they be shielded from poverty, harm, mishap, and disease. But woe betide the scoffer! If any man “misdeme” it, through scorn, or jape, or villainy,

… preye I Iesus god
That (dreme he barfoot, dreme he shod),
That every harm that any man
Hath had, sith [that] the world began,
Befalle him thereof, or he sterve,
And graunte he mote hit ful deserve,

There are few of Chaucer's works for which the principal source has been so definitely pointed out as for the Clerkes Tale. Chaucer borrowed it from a Latin prose tale by Petrarch, who in turn had it from the tenth story of the tenth day out of Boccaccio's Decameron. Petrarch's Latin, which is Chaucer's source then, has been made easily accessible to everyone by the Chaucer Society, who published it in Originals and Analogues. Unfortunately, however, the Chaucer Society took their text from the Basle edition, which is notorious for its inaccuracy and inexcusable corruptness in reading after reading. For a long time, therefore, Chaucer scholars have felt the need for a reliable text of Petrarch's Latin tale. Professor G. L. Hendrickson, to whom credit is due for correctly inferring a number of necessary emendations in the text, has this to say after one such emendation:

Though the influence of Chaucer upon Greene has been commented upon from time to time by various critics, the similarity that exists between The Clerk's Tale and Pandosto has apparently gone unnoticed. This is in a manner surprising, since the two pieces show resemblances that run true throughout—in characters, in situations, and in general plot-structure. There is a lack, however, of parallel passages; and this may account somewhat for their not having been linked up before now. Greene's method in employing his material, too, has blurred the original outline, though it has by no means disguised it beyond recognition.

As all Chaucer scholars know, it was the intention of the Chaucer Society to follow the Life Records of Chaucer with a similar volume on Thomas Chaucer. This intention was referred to as early as 1901, at the close of R.E.G. Kirk's Forewords to the former compilation; and for many years the work was announced in the list of future volumes to be published by the Society. As the years passed and the expected work failed to appear, it was naturally assumed that the project had been abandoned, perhaps after Kirk's death in 1908. So that when Professor Ruud published his monograph a few years ago he voiced the common sentiment when he said “we cannot now expect from the Chaucer Society the volume, long promised, of the life records of Thomas Chaucer.”

Aureate terms are defined by J. C. Mendenhall in his thesis of that name as “those new words, chiefly Romance or Latinical in origin, continually sought under authority of criticism and the best writers, for a rich and expressive style in English, from about 1350 to about 1530.” Mendenhall sketches the history of “flourished words” before Chaucer's day but reminds the reader that “All this development was in a sense merely preliminary. It was Chaucer, who, according to the universal opinion of his age, really gave us a stylistic vocabulary.” In other words, he admits that whatever may have been the ultimate background of the fifteenth century's enthusiasm for ornate diction, its actual inception is traceable directly to Chaucer. His most essential assertion is that Chaucer followed the accepted rules and traditions of rhetorical art, but that his vocabulary was, nevertheless, distinctly choice and unusual.

William Roper, son-in-law of Sir Thomas More, is one of those people who seem overshadowed by associates. He is usually mentioned as the son-in-law of the Lord Chancellor, or as the husband of More's brilliant daughter, Margaret. The origin of his connection with the More family is dismissed in the DNB by the statement: “His legal duties apparently brought him to the notice of Sir Thomas More, and about 1525 he married More's accomplished daughter, Margaret.” But in fact the Ropers were people of some financial and professional importance in their own right; and according to documents of the period, the Ropers and the Mores had legal and other business relations for many years before the intermarriage between the two families.

From Homer on, certain images have been part of the epic poet's inheritance and equipment. Not only has he felt obliged to introduce them somewhere into his work, but to distribute them in the very proportion observed by his predecessors. Beasts, plants, any phenomena used in previous epic simile belonged to him, too, if he could make them at home in a new context. Of course he was free to originate novel images from contemporary events or his own personal experience; but Homer's high precedent, or Vergil's, prescribed the old images as well. Milton's choice of imagery, however, is distinguished from that of other important epic poets of Western Europe by an iron control over, a virtual renunciation of, animal similes.

AT THE death of Joseph Spence, the companion and intended biographer of Pope, Spence's executors discovered certain manuscripts relating to a burlesque poem, The Charliad. Although the work was apparently ready for the press, the author had taken no steps toward publication, and for sundry reasons the executors decided upon suppression of the poem as the proper course to follow—at least for a time. After more than a century and a half, The Charliad still remains undisturbed in manuscript form, known only to scholars and to them chiefly by name. Because of its intimate connection with The Dunciad, however, as well as because of lesser considerations, Spence's peculiar production deserves some belated attention.

After Professor Lowes' monumental study of the Ancient Mariner as a work of pure imagination, it may seem futile to search the poem for any didactic meaning or philosophical message. Professor Lowes has written that “to interpret the drift of the Ancient Mariner as didactic in its intention is to stultify both Coleridge and one's self!” But I trust that this essay will not result in verification of Professor Lowes' dictum. We must not be too quick to class even slightly obscure poems of Coleridge's as works of pure imagination. When we recall his philosophical disposition and the great fame which his somewhat murky speculation brought him during his own lifetime, the danger involved in such procedure should seem obvious.

To Shelley poetry came hard. Some of his lyrics, most quick and intense, did not rise through easy inspiration. The pages of his Note Books are full of pitchings forward, startings back, travail, and keen uncertainty. Poems like The Masque of Anarchy which one might think of as being plucked in full petal out of the inspired wrath of the poet's heart grew rather against the edge of a painful gardener's knife. The “Down down” lyric of Prometheus, although fastening itself within the poet's imagination, for a long time defied creativity. The inability of Shelley at once to apprehend the artistic relationship existing between those images and rhythms which visited his mind, haunted his thoughts and hung in his memory, is with him a vital characteristic.