Many origins have been suggested for the type of narrative song appearing in the English and Scottish traditional ballads: minstrel genesis, origin in the dance, improvisations of mediaeval peasant communes, or descent from the dance songs of primitive peoples. The hypothesis of minstrel origin was that first to be advanced and it has always retained supporters. There remains a possibility not yet brought forward which deserves to be presented for what it is worth, since the problem, though it may be insoluble, has its attraction for critic and student. We have but meager knowledge of the ballad melodies of pre-Elizabethan days, and we can get but little farther with the study of the ballads by way of research into mediaeval music. Moreover the earliest texts remaining to us seem to have been meant for recital rather than for singing. In general, the melodies of ballads are more shifting, less dependable, than are the texts, in the sense of the plots and the characters which the texts present. This is true of contemporary folk-songs and it was probably true earlier. One text may be sung to a variety of airs or one air may serve for many texts. Nor can we get much farther with the study of ballads by way of the minstrels. They have had much attention already; and nothing has ever been brought out really barring them from major responsibility for ballad creation and diffusion in the earlier periods. Again, we can get but little farther by studying the mediaeval dance, or folk-improvisations, or the dance songs of primitive peoples, all of which have been associated with the Child ballads to an exaggerated degree. It is time to try a new angle of approach—the last remaining—although the hypothesis which it suggests is far removed from the theory of genesis enjoying the greatest acceptance at the present time, and although it—like its predecessors—may not take us very far.

My recent article, The Secret of Chaucer's Pardoner, was the first of a series of studies advanced in support of the general thesis that Chaucer, in his choice of physical peculiarities that would fittingly correspond to the characters of his Canterbury Pilgrims, made use of, or at least was influenced by, the rules and regulations laid down in the universally popular Physiognomies of his time. More specifically, I attempted to show that the Pardoner is a typical example of what the physiognomists would call a eunuchus ex nativitate. The present article demonstrates that Chaucer's Reeve and Miller, in the exact correspondence of their respective personal appearances and characters, are also “scientifically” correct according to the specifications of physiognomical lore, and that the quarrel between these traditional and professional enemies cannot properly be understood unless scanned from the medieval point of view.

The Platonic origin of certain ideas in the seventh and eighth hooks of Paradise Lost has been ignored by Milton's critics. In Raphael's account of creation (Bk. VII, ll. 621-622), speaking of the stars, he calls them

Numerous, and every star perhaps a world
Of destined habitation …

And again (Bk. VIII, ll. 148-152) :

… and other suns perhaps
With their attendant moons thou wilt descry
Communicating male and female light,
Which two great sexes animate the world,
Stored in each orb, perhaps with some that live.

We do not grow less certain, as time goes on, that Milton's idea of the divine nature fails to satisfy some of our deepest religious feelings. We require of theology that it be logical; we require also that it be humane. It may become mystical; but when reason fails, theology must not become illogical; and when reason demands, it must not become inhumane. Milton's God is either inconsistent or cruel or both, but he is not a mystery. Hence Professor Erskine, desiring to find the poet humane, can well argue that the idea of death in Paradise Lost undergoes a distinct change, but hence on the other hand Professor Stoll, desiring to find him consistent, can just as well argue, falling back upon the convenient notion of predestination, that there is no change where the change was intended from the beginning. Yet however we argue, Milton fails as a theologian by attempting to reduce the whole mystery of human nature to a formula and arriving at a dilemma. Pain is in itself an evil which it is the ineffable hope of mankind to destroy. The experience of pain may be used for its elimination, and the end is good, but pain is none the less evil. Man's supreme experience is not in causing but in destroying it. What spiritual satisfaction we could find without this experience is a mystery, but we arrive only at confusion when we say that evil and the cause of it, without ceasing to be evil, are good because without them we should be without the experience. Man at his best seeks to accomplish bis ends with as little pain as possible; God should be nothing short of infinitely more humane than man. Milton's omnipotent beneficence can not or will not do for man what man would do for himself if he were Milton's God. The trouble is, of course, with the whole Calvinistic system of thought. The asserter of eternal providence proves more than we wish to believe. He sinks the ship to dampen the sails. He starts up a snake in order to gain credit for killing it. He blackens the moral character of God in order to dispose of the problem of evil.

A writer in The Annual Register, soon after the death of Charles Churchill, gave to the world the first account of his life; this was followed by The Genuine Memoirs of Mr. Charles Churchill. To Bell's edition of the poet's works is prefixed a life of the author by Doctor Johnson; this does not add anything new. Kippis, in his Biographia Britannica, followed most of the inaccuracies of the first biographer, but added some new material from his personal information. Anderson used these sources in the British Poets (1795). Robert Southey in his Life of Cowper, and William Tooke in an edition of Churchill's Works (1804) made more elaborate studies of the poet's life, but, unfortunately, were satisfied with earlier biographies or neglected to give careful references to original material. John Forster, in The Edinburgh Review (1845) pointed out many of Tooke's inaccuracies. Every biographer of Churchill from Chalmers in his English Poets to Leslie Stephen in The Dictionary of National Biography, followed Tooke, or Tooke modified by Forster. In 1903, R. F. Scott in his Admissions to the College of St. John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge, made several valuable contributions to our knowledge about the early career of the satirist. Ferdinand Putschi, in Charles Churchill, sein Leben und seine Werke (1909), had not seen Mr. Scott's book, and followed the earlier biographers.