A recent study of the narrative art of Chaucer's Reeve's Tale attempted to set forth some of the technical excellences of the Old French fabliaux, to call attention to their striking resemblance in form to the modern short-story, and, with all due appreciation of the originality of all Chaucer's work, to show that he was technically at his best in tales like the Miller's and the Reeve's, because he was writing under the influence of the best narrative art of the Middle Ages, under the influence of the fabliaux. If these contentions are true, the fabliaux, in spite of their very manifest imperfections,—their lack of style, of moral sense, of any ideal or uplifting quality,—cannot be neglected in any study of Chaucer, of the short-story, or of the history of narration. It is the purpose of the present essay to push the inquiry a step farther back, and to ascertain what were, in turn, some of the possible sources of the technique of these early masterpieces of narration. The fabliaux themselves are, indeed, not all alike; they are to be found in all stages of elaboration, from the longer and more complex signed poems, which disclose an interest not only in plot, but also in character, emotions, scene, and even in moral significance, down to the mere anecdote, anonymous, brief, and simple. It is not difficult to see how the more complex fabliaux could be developed from the more simple. Seeking, however, forms still simpler and less developed than these latter, the critic is obliged to turn his back upon the literature of art and to examine the underlying stratum of the literature of the people. Such a procedure is suggested by the subtitle of Professor Bédier's Les Fabliaux,—“études de littérature populaire,”—by Professor Matthews's definition of the fabliau as “a realistic folk tale,” and by the general impression produced by the fabliau of kinship with ballad and folk tale. And it is justified by our knowledge of the general fact that popular literature precedes and paves the way for the literature of art. Fabliaux, ballads, folk tales are, then, to be analyzed and compared with a view to ascertaining what the more developed forms owe to the less developed. In making such analyses and comparisons it is always an advantage when the whole matter can be focussed upon such single stories as may appear in the various forms concerned. Such a narrowing down of the field makes for simplicity and clearness, and, provided the examples chosen be typical, does not invalidate the general truth of the conclusions.

“Comme tout le monde avait lu le même conte dans Boccace, … les éloges des critiques anglais étaient inépuisables en l'honneur de Chaucer, qui, dans son imitation, avait su ajouter, disait-on, d'heureuses circonstances au récit de Boccace. Nous savons aujourd'hui que tout ce mérite d'inventeur qu'on lui attribuait consiste à avoir fort bien copié notre fabliau.”

Among the many baffling problems of Chaucerian scholarship are those connected with the Squire's Tale. To undertake a satisfactory solution of these is to court disaster. The attempt confounds us. One may, however, with all modesty endeavor to fix one's bearings in the area of story-land to which this poem belongs. To know where we are is almost as gratifying as to discover a source, and it is sometimes more instructive. If, then, I can do anything to further a survey of the narrative neighborhood of the Squire's Tale and its nearest analogue, the Cléomadès, my work may be serviceable. Perhaps, too, this paper may put in a clearer light the probabilities in regard to Chaucer's method and inspiration while at work upon one of his best known Tales of Canterbury.

There are many well-established cases of the influence of an earlier on a later poet—of Marlowe on Shakspere, of Spenser on Keats, of Keats on Tennyson, for instance; but it is not often that we have so clear an example of interaction between contemporaries as that of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. In these days of minute scholarship, it seems strange that so remarkable an instance should (so far as I am aware) have escaped detailed examination, in spite of the unwearying activity of graduate schools and Browning Societies. Both for its human and for its literary interest, the case seems worth presenting, at any rate in broad outline.

The Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune is a poem dealing with the adventures of a Scottish prophet in fairyland, and with the predictions concerning Scotch history which it was his privilege to hear from the fairy queen. Of this poem the graceful “romance” occupies the first fytt, and the prophecies the remaining two fytts.

On the slopes of the Appenines overlooking the fertile plains of Apulia, and about fifteen miles west of the ancient town of Luceria (the modern Lucera), are found the two small towns of Celle and Faeto. They are only a mile apart and their combined population is about four thousand. Besides Apulian, which is the dialect of that region, the inhabitants of Celle and Faeto still speak a kind of French dialect.

The list of doublets in the appendix of Skeat's Etymological Dictionary is the most complete collection so far published, the list in Maetzner's Englische Grammatik being hardly worthy of mention. Professor Skeat's definition of doublets, however, is so broad as to include cognates from the Aryan mother tongue—pairs referable to the same Aryan base, such as beef and cow. brother and friar, cell and hall, chief and head, cool and gelid, cone and hone, core and heart, corn (1) and grain, corn (2) and horn, fell and pell, foremost and prime, genus and kin, guest and host (2), name and noun, two and deuce, verb and word, the list of which might be extended. Professor Skeat would probably now exclude chief and head, for it is doubtful (see Brugmann), tho the consonants agree, whether Lat. caput and A.-S. hëafod are cognates. His definition of doublets is as follows: “Doublets are words which, tho apparently differing in form, are nevertheless, from an etymological point of view, one and the same, or only differ in some unimportant suffix.”

It is now ten years since a Latin romance dealing with the history of Gawain was published for the first time by Professor Bruce from the Cottonian ms. Faustina B. VI. Two years later he printed a second romance from the same manuscript, which he believed, no doubt correctly, to be the work of the same author. As to who this author was, Professor Bruce hazarded no opinion, but he dated the romances, on grounds which will be discussed later in this article, in the second quarter of the 13th century.

In ways innumerable in the course of the past four or five centuries Italy has influenced the thoughts and feelings of Englishmen. The full history of this influence is yet to be written. And naturally enough, for Italy appeals variously to the student of archæology, to the historian, to the artist, to the poet, and to the mere tourist in search of amusement. No landscapes more exquisite can be found in the world than some portions of Italy; no city can fill the peculiar place of Rome or Florence or Venice; and nothing can surpass the subtle witchery of Capri and Sicily and some of the half-forgotten hill towns ruined ages ago.

No editor of Spenser has failed to remark on certain poems and passages which reflect the influence of Chaucer. Attention has not hitherto been called, however, to what not only seems to be the most marked example of this influence, but to what is also an unusually clear case of literary borrowing. The purpose of this study is to show that in Daphnaïda, Spenser has followed Chaucer's Booh of the Duchess, in general form and outline, in manner of treatment, and in style and subject matter; that he has taken from the Duchess certain stanzas almost entire, has borrowed from it whole sections of eulogistic ideas and elegiac conceits, and has adopted Chaucer's phraseology itself, with a freedom at once both striking and convincing.

Spanish poets of the seventeenth century were very fond of the contrast between the physical limitations of men, especially when prisoners,—“ ces eternels envieux des mouches et des oiseaux” (Victor Hugo)—and the freedom of birds that fly at will, or of “ fishes that tipple in the deep.” But nowhere has the comparison been given such artistic form and signal appropriateness as in the mouth of Calderon's hero, Segismundo. This young Titan felt himself fettered by stone walls. They were a real prison to him and he rebelled against his lot. He was not in a mood to admit, had it even occurred to him to do so, the superior advantage of man's mental freedom over the physical freedom of fishes and birds and brutes, or running brooks. But the thought was not original with Calderon, nor, according to Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo, was it original with any of Calderon's immediate predecessors, but went back to the Greek philosopher, Philo. Lope de Vega was probably the first to transplant the conceit to Spanish soil,—and it bore abundant fruit. In one of his early plays, El Remedio en la desdicha, written before the close of the sixteenth century, occur the following verses:

Rendido estoy á tu nobleza, y veo
Que mi ignorancia fué mi propio engaño;
Aunque si amor á todos da disculpa,
¿ Porqué no la tendrán mi amor y celos ?
Si tú, si tus soldados, si los hombres
Si las aves, los peces, si las fieras,
Si todo sabe amor, si todo teme
Perder su bien, y con sus celos propios
Defiende casa, nido, mar y cueva,
Llora, lamenta, gime, y brama; advierte
Que celos y sospechas me obligaron
Al desatino que á tus pies me rinde.

The play commonly known as Shakspere's Pericles first appeared in 1609, in a version so corrupt that it was clearly a piracy. Whether this was identical with the drama of the same title which was entered on the Stationers' Register in company with Antony and Cleopatra, on May 20, 1608, cannot be determined. This, however, is certain: the entry was made by Edward Blount, but the play was published by Henry Gosson, to whom no record of transfer is to be found. As to the composition of Pericles, it is now generally admitted that, with the possible exception of a few phrases, the first two acts are not by Shakspere but in all probability by George Wilkins.

It is not so very many years ago that students of Folk-Lore who felt that the indebtedness of Europe to the East in the matter of stories had been exaggerated were greatly interested and pleased by Bédier's work on the French Fabliau. The same scholar is now publishing the results of his investigations in the field of the French epic, results extremely suggestive, not to say exciting. What more startling than to be told that if, because of illness or accident, William of Toulouse had died before he was able to enter the monastery of Aniane and found the monastery of Gellone, not one of the chansons de geste, not one of the legends of the cycle of Orange would exist; and not one of these chansons nor one of these legends would exist, if by chance, three or more centuries after the death of this man in the Abbey of Gellone, the monks of the abbey had not been anxious to attract to his relics the pilgrims of Saint Gilles de Provence and Santiago of Compostela? Whether such a radical theory meets with general acceptance or not, it was well that some one, instead of trying to reconstruct the French epic postulated as existing before the documents which we possess, should examine the latter anew and pay especial attention to what is an interesting phenomenon in nearly every mass of epic literature, the relations of the religious bodies to these great narrative works. No one could have done this more brilliantly than Bédier. No one henceforth will forget how intimate these relations were in France. Nevertheless, it is hard to give up without a struggle what we have fancied were intermediate steps in the evolution of the French epic, when we remember what has gone on in other countries participating in epic activity, and one may well hesitate to attribute to the church so great a rôle as does this latest theorist. Doubts become especially insistent when one reads his remarks upon the Ami and Amile legend, in its three forms, the eleventh century Latin poem on friendship by Raoul le Tourtier, the chanson de geste, and the Vita sanctorum Amici et Amelii of the twelfth century. To do Bédier entire justice, his own words will be quoted as far as possible, even his summary of the legend, with which it is well to start.

To propose to consider the construction of an ideal or standard undergraduate curriculum, even to the extent only of tentative approach, must seem, at first thought, rather rash and even a bit foolish; the attainment of any satisfactory result seems extremely difficult, and the result promises to be useless when attained. Yet when we consider in connection with the undergraduate years the vast number of the works of English literature and the great body of knowledge concerning them, the question must inevitably arise, What out of all this great mass of material should be presented to the undergraduate? in what order, and by what methods should it be presented? Again, when we consider that the undergraduate years are but a single stage in the educational life, with distinct limitations, with other stages before and after, and that the curricula of these other stages, especially the secondary school period, have recently been the subject of much discussion having for its aim the construction of a standard or ideal curriculum, it does not seem impossible that some profit may come from such a discussion as that proposed. If it be true that that which has not been treated ought to be treated, then there is ample justification for the choice of this subject. If one may trust the evidence of pedagogical literature this particular subject has not been treated to any great extent. A somewhat careful examination of pedagogical bibliography has failed to disclose a single title bearing directly upon it, and my pedagogical colleagues are unable to refer me to any. To rush in where even pedagogic angels fear to tread surely gives promise of folly; the rashness of the attempt may pardon the folly. With a full appreciation, then, of the difficulties in the way, but with confidence that there are among us idealists to maintain that what is theoretically true must be practicable, provided the means can be found, I venture upon some consideration of the question, What material out of the great field of English literature, including works of literature, history of literature, and criticism, can best be given to the college student in the several years of his undergraduate life?

Our positive knowledge concerning the date and authorship of the first part of the Roman de la Rose is wholly derived from the lines in which Jean de Meun refers to his predecessor, Guillaume de Lorris:

Vés-ci Guillaume de Lorris,
Cui Jalousie, sa contraire,
Fait tant d'angoisse et de mal traire,
Qu'il est en péril de morir. Michel's Edition, 11291-94.
Ci se reposera Guillaume,
Le cui tombel soit plains de baume. 11326, 11327.
Car quant Guillaumes cessera
Jehans le continuera
Apres sa mort, que ge ne mente,
Ans trespassés plus de quarante. 11352-55.