In a recent series of studies I developed at some length the general background of cosmological thought which gave rise to and in large measure explains both the astronomy and the astronomical comment of Paradise Lost. The present essay continues this investigation of Milton's cosmological beliefs, but restricts discussion to the Raphael-Adam dialogue of Book VIII, interpreted in the light of its immediate sources. In brief, these sources consist of a number of related passages from three English books contemporary with Milton.

During the last decade of his life, Joseph Ritson compiled a catalogue of Scottish authors, a Bibliographia Scotica. He had brought it nearly to completion by 1801, and intended to publish it as a companion volume to his Bibliographia Poetica. On Jan. 31, 1801, he sent the prefaces of both works to Thomas Park for correction. But he circulated the manuscript also among other friends, notably George Chalmers, and Walter Scott, in the hope of making it more perfect; so that when he died, in September, 1803, the work was still unpublished. It was known that in the paroxysm which ended his life he had destroyed many of his papers; and for a time his friends feared the Bibliographia Scotica had perished. A fortnight after Ritson's death, Chalmers, writing to Archibald Constable of these things said:

This leads me to ask if you ever got from him the biographical work on the historians and poets of Scotland, which he put into my hands, and intended for you. I intended to have corrected it for him and for you. But before I could do much he sent for it, in order to show it to Mr. Scott, when he was up here lately. Happy if he sent it to you by Mr. Scott; if he did not, it is gone—for ever. If you should happily have got it, I am still more ready, now that Ritson is gone, to do what I can to make the book as perfect as possible.

Dr. Johnson, in discussing the group of poets he dubbed “metaphysical,” defined their “wit” as “a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images … ” This discordia has been recognized ever since as a distinguishing characteristic of Donne and other poets who resemble him; but by Johnson and most succeeding critics the discordia has been considered almost exclusively as a property of the poet's imagery. It seems to me that the principle involved is much more comprehensive; that in the poetry of Donne in particular discordant imagery is only one part of a general method which involves many other elements in his poetic style, and which is responsible to a considerable degree for his most striking and individual effects.

It is plain to the attentive reader of Goldsmith that he was not only in the habit of repeating favorite phrases, but also that he returned again and again to a few favorite ideas. Many, if not most, of these ideas, I maintain, were, if not already formed before he left Ireland, at least predetermined by the traits of character and of mind that he developed there.

The Jesuit father Ignace-Gaston Pardies, mathematician and physicist of some renown in his time, published in 1672 a Discours de la Connoissance des Bestes, famous then, but little known today. Amidst the mass of material on the general controversy of the souls of beasts, this work is outstanding for its brilliance, literary charm, and degree of originality. It is well worth examination, for its own merits and its bearings on the dispute in which it proved an influential contribution, and because of the curious fate to which the book was destined. For the Discourse, which went through numerous editions and caused considerable stir in the Republic of Letters was, although purporting to be a refutation of the Cartesian mechanistic view, reputed to be intended as a defense of that system. From Pardies' own day to the present age, uncertainty has existed as to how the treatise is to be classified.

Graviseth's anonymously published Heutelia, only superficially mentioned in manuals of Swiss literature (except Ermatinger's), deserves a short analytic study both on account of its interest as a state-satire preceding the Age of Enlightenment and on account of the rarity of its editions, which are not accessible to scholars in America.

The book, published in 1658, does not greatly point to the past, although its satirical trends, its realistic and grobianistic elements, and its dislike of monks and women do indeed remind us of the esprit gaulois of Rabelais and the mentality of Fischart and the pamphleteers of the Reformation. More important is the political aspect of this diary of a critical journey through Switzerland; and the whole tenor of Heutelia, the penetrating analyses of men and their institutions, the sharp attacks against the vices of the ancien régime and the bigoted intolerance of the church, make the book an early forerunner of Montesquieu's Lettres persanes. Its style is still baroque and its vocabulary full of foreign words; but in its keen political criticism this book inaugurates an era of greater liberalism. Graviseth, a German aristocrat from the Palatinate who had become citizen of Bern, may well be likened to Albrecht von Haller, because both of them, though aristocrats to the core, tried equally discreetly to work for greater social justice for all. Haller's state-novels attempt it in the realm of pure thought, in carefully worded philosophical and political dialogues; while Graviseth, much more realistic and earthy, mingles jokes and coarseness in his paragraphs, ridiculing the masses for their materialistic viciousness.

James Gillman's Life of Coleridge may be called the first and the official biography. Allsop's and Cottle's volumes, which preceded it, were fragmentary and miscellaneous; and although Gillman's death in 1839 left the work incomplete, bringing the story of Coleridge down only to about 1817, it was not superseded for fifty years. It was necessarily a main source for Traill, Brandl, and Caine, who wrote their accounts in the 1880's; for Leslie Stephen in his sketch for the D.N.B., written in 1887; and for Campbell in his “Biographical Introduction,” of 1893, which still remains the fullest and best treatment. Gillman's Life is now little read, but it has had important influence on our conception of Coleridge. It is therefore worth while to consider what Gillman did—and what he did not do.

Der Expansionstrieb des sozialen Subjekts führt notwendigerweise zum “Gewahrwerden der äussern Begrenztheit”; auf Handlung als Wirkung folgt die Gegenwirkung, “es sei nun, dass Liebe uns zu fördern suche, oder Hass uns zu hindern wisse.” Was das Individuum in seinem Entfaltungstrieb beeinträchtigt, erscheint ihm als Willkür der Umwelt, was es verstandesgemäss auf eine Ursache nicht zurückführen kann, als Zufall. Es lehnt sich gegen diese äussere Willkür auf, indem es seinen persönlichen Willen hervorkehrt und ihm entsprechend zu handeln glaubt, wenn es diesen der Umwelt aufzuzwingen versucht; doch ist der Kampf gegen die äussere Willkür vergebens, denn, wenn auch diese als Willkür erscheint, so ist sie in der Naturkausalität begründet. Den erstrebenswerten Zustand, den das Individuum als Freiheit bezeichnet, den Zustand der ungehemmten Entfaltung, kann es zu seinem Glück nie erreichen. Das Streben nach Freiheit, wie es sich in der Reaktion gegen die beschränkenden Einrichtungen der Umwelt äussert, führt zum Konflikt zwischen den Handlungen des persönlichen Willens (Ausdruck des Expansionstriebes) und der Gegenwirkung der vermeintlichen Willkür einer feindlichen Umwelt.

Among the shadowy figures that make up the circle of Congreve's most intimate friends, Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, seems to have suffered most from the gossip of her own age and from the more detached but still biassed estimates of later critics. Not one of her contemporaries spoke a really decisive word in her favor; and the biographers of Congreve have preferred to dismiss her as an amusing eccentric. But one critic, Leigh Hunt, has cared to linger over this minor portrait, commenting on “the slow yet sensitive mind” of the Duchess and concluding that she loved Congreve “with all the heart she had, and a great deal of obstinacy.”

Most critics of early American literature have testified to the widespread censure of fiction in the last years of the eighteenth century. The attacks, occasionally dignified by book or magazine publication, were, as Carl Van Doren has pointed out, fanlike in their spread: The dullest critics contended that novels were lies; the pious that they served no virtuous purpose; the strenuous, that they softened sturdy minds; the utilitarian, that they crowded out more useful books; the realistic, that they painted adventure too romantic and love too vehement; the patriotic, that dealing with European manners, they tended to confuse and dissatisfy republican youth.

The dullest critics contended that novels were lies; the pious that they served no virtuous purpose; the strenuous, that they softened sturdy minds; the utilitarian, that they crowded out more useful books; the realistic, that they painted adventure too romantic and love too vehement; the patriotic, that dealing with European manners, they tended to confuse and dissatisfy republican youth.

It is time that three things should be stated emphatically: (1) while at Oxford Hogg was fully as radical as Shelley and was Shelley's genuinely sympathetic coadjutor instead of his amused companion; (2) Hogg and Shelley were equally responsible for The Necessity of Atheism; and (3) it is more than probable that Hogg wrote the first draft of The Necessity. The first of these has been vaguely hinted at by Shelley's biographers; the second has been hazily confined by them to Hogg's writing of the Preface to The Necessity; the third has never been mentioned. The facts are abundant and reliable; but Hogg's Life of Shelley, in spite of its known inaccuracies and misinterpretations, has prevailed.

The Lettres Persanes, on which Montesquieu worked in leisurely fashion for perhaps ten years, reflect to a large extent the voluminous reading he must have done during this time. Their great variety of subjects implies numerous possible sources of inspiration, not all as yet indicated by Montesquieu scholars. It is my purpose to consider as possible sources of some ideas in the Lettres Persanes three authors of Montesquieu's epoch—Malebranche, Leibniz, and Shaftesbury. By the expression “possible sources” I mean that there are between Montesquieu and these three writers some relationships of ideas which may imply influence, since Montesquieu esteemed these writers and knew, or could have known, their works before 1721, the date of the publication of the Lettres Persanes. Two of these authors, Malebranche and Shaftesbury, were in fact greatly admired by Montesquieu. Ranking them as highly as Plato and Montaigne, he even calls these four writers “the four great poets.”

Perusal of some Voltairian conte material not long ago elicited two cursory observations which have since seemed to be confirmed by more detailed reading. They concern the evident interest which the seventeenth-century Spanish moralist, Gracián, appears to have evoked in Voltaire. The observations, as first made, were these: that in a list of Voltaire's library, works of Gracián stand out prominently, in both Spanish and French; that El Criticón, a moralistic tale of a traveling naïf and his realist-tutor, presents not only an interesting link in the adventure genre, but seemingly a hint of the Candide-Martin relationship of the conte philosophique} The suggestion of a connection, conscious or not, between El Criticón and Candide was, on first observation, based upon superficial comparison. The present brief inquiry will attempt to confirm the point that a reasonably close connection does exist—one which receives attention neither in editions of the contes nor in other critical works on the period.

George Walker, a London bookseller and publisher, author of several Gothic tales, printed in 1799 a satirical novel, The Vagabond, directed against the Jacobins and their philosophic forerunners. The author's purpose was a serious one, to refute and counteract the works that had poured from the Jacobin presses. As a result the novel, though amusing and fanciful in the manner of the Anti-Jacobin, represents a consistent view-point and an earnest desire to show the beauties of society as then organized. In its way, it is a summary of the reactionary position, and, by giving the opinions of the opponents of Rousseau, Hume, Mary Wollstonecraft, Holcroft, Paine, William Godwin, and others, illustrates a large section of late eighteenth-century thought.

Sir Robert Howard, patron of John Dryden, director and playwright of the King's Theatre, Auditor of the Receipt of the Exchequer, and member of Parliament for thirty years, was a very important figure in the court of Charles II. It is surprising, therefore, that so little knowledge of his activities has found its way into print. Even Mr. Montague Summers in his recent extensive study of the Restoration theatre, The Playhouse of Pepys, deplores this scarcity. Moreover, he makes a statement or two which proves the inaccuracy of the little which has been printed. Referring to Howard's appointment as Secretary to the Commissioners of the Treasury, he calls the office “a very lucrative Post,” and in proof quotes Pepys, “Howard hath got, they say, £20,000 since the King came in.” I should like to suggest that the £20,000 came from several sources besides the Secretaryship. Wittingly or not, however, Mr. Summers has indicated the keynote of Howard's career. It was money first, last, and always which interested him.

In the The Newcastle Magazine, xv (Jan. 1825) I discovered the satire which all students of Hogg know he wrote, but which is thought never to have been published, John Paterson's Mare. In this satire, Hogg allegorically presents the friends and enemies of Blackwood's Magazine (somewhat as he had done in the Chaldee Manuscript), and incidentally introduces, most interestingly, Jeffrey's critical treatment, in the Edinburgh Review, of such contemporaries as Joanna Baillie, Tom Moore, Ritson, Byron, and the Lake Poets.