Verisimilitude in a work of fiction is not without its attendant dangers, the chief of which is that the responses it stimulates in the reader may be those appropriate not so much to an imaginative production as to an historical one or to a piece of reporting. History and reporting are, of course, honorable in themselves, but if we react to a poet as though he were an historian or a reporter, we do him somewhat less than justice. I am under the impression that many readers, too much influenced by Chaucer's brilliant verisimilitude, tend to regard his famous pilgrimage to Canterbury as significant not because it is a great fiction, but because it seems to be a remarkable record of a fourteenth-century pilgrimage. A remarkable record it may be, but if we treat it too narrowly as such there are going to be certain casualties among the elements that make up the fiction. Perhaps first among these elements is the fictional reporter, Chaucer the pilgrim, and the role he plays in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and in the links between them. I think it time that he was rescued from the comparatively dull record of history and put back into his poem. He is not really Chaucer the poet—nor, for that matter, is either the poet, or the poem's protagonist, that Geoffrey Chaucer frequently mentioned in contemporary historical records as a distinguished civil servant, but never as a poet. The fact that these are three separate entities does not, naturally, exclude the probability—or rather the certainty—that they bore a close resemblance to one another, and that, indeed, they frequently got together in the same body. But that does not excuse us from keeping them distinct from one another, difficult as their close resemblance makes our task.

That interesting Devonshire worthy, Joseph Glanvill, has received a large share of attention in recent years because his interests so clearly reflect what he himself first termed his “climate of opinion.” He has been variously considered as a rational latitudinarian, a Cartesian, a spokesman for the “new science” in its Baconian aspect, a religious sceptic, and a revealing case of conformity to the Royal Society's demands for a “plain” style in prose. My aim is to point out that all of Glanvill's ostensibly diverse interests and attitudes fall into focus, and form a unified and consistent pattern, if we see him in the role of a religious and, at times, theological apologist for the Anglican settlement. The facility with which this popularizing writer turns the errors, facts, and philosophies of his age to the service of his particular ideology should remind us once again that ideas set in the continuity of their traditions are one thing; viewed as active participants in the life of a given generation of men they become quite another.

In the opinion of the late Thomas R. Lounsbury, Chaucer was virtually “free from these verbal quibbles which characterize to so marked a degree the language of the Elizabethan dramatists.” “The single instance,” he went on to say, “in which he furnishes any noticeable example of this sort is the play upon the word ‘style’ in the Squire's tale; though there is possibly one of the same character in a line in ‘Troilus and Cressida,‘ where it is said that

‘This Calkas knew by calkulynge,‘ i., 71

that Troy was to be taken. Still, from conceits of all kinds and of all grades Chaucer's language, at every period of his literary career, was in general wholly free.“

Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) was early recognized as a prime mover of the revolution in literary taste that occurred in the later eighteenth century. The compilation had stimulated, according to Jeffrey, the “first revulsion” to the older literature. Wordsworth did not think there was “an able writer in verse of the present day” who would not willingly acknowledge his obligations to the Reliques. It had “absolutely redeemed” English poetry. Of Percy's enormous contribution to ballad scholarship proper, one need hardly quote testimony. It is no wonder, then, that literary scholars have gone to such inordinate pains to unravel the complicated editorial history of this (for its time) ambitious work. Since the publication in 1867-68 of Percy's principal source, the precious Folio MS., almost too much has been written about Percy's textual manipulations. Curiosity has been no less lively as to Percy's criteria for admitting ballads and songs to his collection, the guiding purpose behind his arrangement, and the sources of the scholarly data that went into his able headnotes and essays. Excellent hints on these matters abound in Percy's correspondence with the syndicate of scholars that assisted him during the years he was putting together his ballad book—Edward Lye, Thomas Astle, James Grainger, William Shenstone, Dr. Johnson, Richard Farmer, Thomas Warton, Sir David Dalrymple; and though otherwise undistinguished, these letters have been making their way into print for over a hundred years, until they now constitute a shelf of sober volumes. “Shenstone's billets,” the slips on which Percy's most influential mentor rated the contents of earlier poetical miscellanies, were edited twice in two years; no less than five recent studies have been devoted to the cancels and late alterations in the first edition of the Reliques.

Source-hunting notoriously has its perils. The warnings of Harold Williams to Swift scholars are thoroughly salutary. “A Tale of a Tub,” he writes, “offers no great opportunities for the ingenious hunter of source books… .” And of Gulliver's Travels: “The eager search in hidden corners for similarities of phrase or narrative may easily become a mistaken pastime.” The fact remains, however, that when one does encounter similarities of phrase or of theme, or even extensive similarities of tone, one pricks up one's ears.

This paragraph introduces a paper which illustrates a larger project: a study of aspects of Gower's works in fourteenth-century historical relationships. The objective is an interpretation of his writings as mirroring the attitude and point of view of a conservative middle-class Englishman for the years 1381-1400 and through them an interpretation of the England of his day. Though these writings show the long heritage of an economic, political, ethical, and religious past, our interest always centers in his immediate present. Non-literary contemporary records consequently provide the first essential materials for this interpretation. Macaulay's standard edition of his works, published half a century ago, based on all manuscripts then available, constitutes the printed source for this study. The high quality of Gower's preserved manuscripts, which give his own revisions, and the fact that these revisions show important changes in his attitudes toward individuals and organizations or institutions, make a re-examination of all of them now available an essential part of this interpretation and raise again the unresolved problem of his ethical integrity. Gardiner Stillwell's able article, “John Gower and the Last Years of Edward III,” provides a suggestive introduction for the interested student. The title of the present article is John Gower, Mentor for Royalty: Richard II.

Milton's casual use of the word “vicissitude” provides a simple measure of our differences from him and of our difficulty with his epic. At the opening of Book VI of Paradise Lost occurs a descriptive passage of relaxed intensity:

There is a Cave
Within the Mount of God, fast by his Throne,
Where light and darkness in perpetual round
Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through Heav'n
Grateful vicissitude, like Day and Night. (4-8)

The phrase “Grateful vicissitude” delays or shocks almost any modern reader, for whatever our dictionary-makers say, it has been many years since “vicissitude” was used in ordinary English speech or writing in other than a pejorative sense. In Paradise Lost, however, “vicissitude” is always “grateful;” it is change, variety, movement, the mark of vitality and joy characteristic of both the divine and the human master artist's work. We cannot properly read the poem unless we can share imaginatively, at least for the moment, Milton's conception.

In The Senecan Amble (London, 1951), George Williamson, attempting to account for the innovations in prose style in seventeenth-century England, uses the term “anti-Ciceronianism” to describe the movement toward the new simplicity. Yet more than thirty years ago, Morris Croll, in one of his essays on this subject, made it clear that the term “anti-Ciceronianism” is “open to several objections,” one of which is that “it may be taken as describing a hostility to Cicero himself, in the opinion of the new leaders, instead of to his sixteenth-century ‘apes,‘ whereas in fact the supreme rhetorical excellence of Cicero was constantly affirmed by them, as it was by the ancient anti-Ciceronians whom they imitated.” Certainly Cicero and Quintilian were read and studied in the seventeenth century. Their influence continued to be a strong one during the very period in which the new critical movement was directed against those of their followers who, during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, had debased the study of oratory to a mere concern with the tricks of declamation.

Although the principal subject of this paper is Ben Jonson's second tragedy, Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), a good deal of what I have to say is equally applicable to his earlier and somewhat more ambitious Sejanus His Fall (1603). The two plays are alike in many ways. For one thing, neither of them has ever been popular. Even among professed admirers, very few have been willing to praise them as highly as Jonson thought they deserved to be praised, and fewer still have seen any genuine tragedy in them. In fact, most criticism, favorable as well as unfavorable, has centered on such interesting but essentially peripheral matters as Jonson's use of the Senecan ghost and chorus (in Catiline), his portrayal of character, his reconstruction of the Roman scene, and, of course, his rhetoric. Discussions of Jonson's plots have scarcely gone beyond the problem of identifying his sources, and almost no one has touched upon the question of whether any real importance attaches to the use he made of those sources. This would not be particularly surprising, perhaps, if we were dealing with some competent journeyman, like Thomas Heywood for example, whose selection and use of sources is a matter of mainly academic interest; but in Jonson we have a playwright who not only aimed at something more than a popularly successful play but also set unusually great store by authenticity of fable—or “truth of argument,” as he called it—where tragedy was concerned (Works, IV, 350). His manipulation of material, therefore, especially at points where the disagreement of authoritative sources about a major issue forced him to make a choice, becomes a matter of considerable interest. It is certainly of interest to the historian, for it shows the sort of interpretation of history an intelligent and well-informed classical student of the seventeenth century might reasonably hold. My point, however, is that it is also a matter of literary interest. It can be shown, I think, that Jonson's ordering of his fable, rightly understood, gives the clue to why and how he expected these plays to be judged as tragedies rather than merely as serious history plays. In other words, it lets one see the conception of tragic drama that he worked by.

Anglo-norman literature represents an interesting and fairly rare phenomenon in western culture. For about three centuries an imported vernacular was widely current in England, though in varying degrees. This language, which was basically the Norman dialect of French, took on in England a character of its own, both because of its distance from its home ground and because of the influence of external events. At the same time it produced a considerable body of literature, in part reminiscent of its origin, in part determined by the Latin and English literature of its new home, in part influenced by new importations from France. Then—one might almost say abruptly—although the conquerors were never expelled, the imported language and literature ceased to have independent existence. Yet their influence remained forever in English language and literature, absorbed into the nation as were the conquerors and immigrants themselves.

Middle high german poetry, which begins in the last decades of the eleventh century, was in the hands of clerics for nearly a century. Clerics treat religious material in the sense of their priestly office. Some of those who identify themselves add to their name the word “priest.” As they indicate in the prayers with which they begin and end their poems, they stand before God as authors of their poems, together with their audience, in order to honor Him and to instruct their hearers. For who can praise God without knowing Him? “Sed quis te invocat nesciens te?” says Saint Augustine, the great model of medieval piety, at the beginning of his Confessions.