Before we may hope to solve some of the problems which confront the student of Chaucer we must gain a clearer understanding of the relationship in which the extant mss. stand to the text written by the poet's own hand. In the hope of throwing some light upon this relationship it occurred to the present writer to apply to all the Chaucer mss. thus far printed a very obvious grammatical test by noting their usage in the case of the plural present indicative of the verb shullen. The use of this test first suggested itself as a result of my observation that in these forms there is a curious variation among different mss., and even in the same ms. in different portions of Chaucer's text. These reversals of usage in the same ms. are best illustrated in Camb. Gg. 4, 27, for this manuscript contains not only the Cant. Tales, but also Troilus, the Parl, of Foules, and the Legend of G. W. In the Parl, of F. one finds the plural of the present indicative written schul eight times and schal only once; in Troilus, on the other hand, there are no less than forty-one schal's as against eight schul's. Much the same ratio is found in the Legend, which has eleven schal's and only two schul's. Moreover, among the several tales of the Canterbury collection this manuscript shows marked difference of usage, swinging abruptly from six to two in favor of schal in the Man of Law's Tale to nine to one in favor of schul in the Wife of Bath's Tale, which immediately follows. Similar examples of reversal of usage in these forms might be cited in nearly all the printed mss. Such alternations between schal and schul on the part of the same scribe are evidently due to variations in the mss. from which he was copying. In other words, the responsibility for this variation in usage does not rest upon the scribes of the extant mss.,—though they may have added to the confusion already existing. It is clear, then, that this confusion between shul and shal must proceed, either from scribes intermediate between Chaucer and the extant copies or—from Chaucer himself.

A popular allegorical subject in the Middle Ages was that which represented the struggle of the good and evil powers for the possession of man's soul. Frequently the evil power is centralized in the devil or his procurator, and the contest is excited by the harrowing of Hell and the release of the damned souls by Christ. According to some of the Church Fathers, the devil had certain rights over man after the first sin, a right which was the more legitimate since it was sanctioned by God himself. The whole subject is closely connected with the dogmatic traditions of the Church concerning the redemption. In the twelfth century, Hugo of St. Victor in his commentary on the fifteenth Psalm gives an account of a dispute between Christ and Satan, in which the devil asserts his right to man as having been consigned to him after the Fall. We find this reproduced in an Italian version of the thirteenth century entitled Piato del Dio col Nemico. According to other versions, the Virgin Mary undertook the defense of man against the claims of the devil. This idea was a product of the worship of the Virgin which affected so many of the doctrines of the Church. As the protecting Mother of sinners, she was the natural adversary of the forces of evil. Mary, the Queen of Heaven, was thus contrasted with Lucifer, the independent ruler of Hell. In certain cases, the story represents a trial scene in which Christ appears as the judge, the Virgin Mary as the advocate of mankind and Mascaron, the devil's procurator, as the plaintiff. This version is found in three texts, Dutch, Latin, and Catalan, which show marked similarities.

Many students of English literature are agreed that the Eighteenth Century stands in special need of reconsideration. In earlier days Wordsworth, Keats, and many more, with the new dawn on their lips, consigned their Augustan fathers and grandfathers to an ill-considered damnation. In our own age we have tried to be more tolerant. But our methods have been unfortunate. We admit the Eighteenth Century to be interesting, but interesting only in so far as it anticipates romanticism. In consequence all scholarship on the Eighteenth Century literature of England has become a mad scramble in search of romanticism. Since Professor Beers and Professor Phelps traced its growth in the Eighteenth Century it has become so fashionable to detect signs of revolt against neo-classicism that some brilliant critic of the future may gain distinction by turning the tables and by proving that a school of Pope actually existed. Of the many conceptions of the Eighteenth Century one of the most exaggerated is the notion that the influence of Spenser was one of the main forces that made for romanticism. It is the purpose of this study to examine the Spenserian problem by a brief analysis of those poems which fashion dubbed Spenserian Imitations. My contentions may be made more clear by departing from the strict chronological method and by taking Thomson's Castle of Indolence, a very composite poem, as a climax.

The unique quarto to which this title has been given was printed at London for Thomas Cadman in 1585. It crossed the Atlantic as part of the Rowfant Library, and was for some time offered for sale in New York, until Mr. A. W. Pollard, on his recent visit to this country, bought it for the British Museum. It has been privately printed in England, with an introduction by Mr. Pollard, to whom I am indebted for many courtesies, but otherwise it has not been published since the original issue of 1585. It is, unfortunately, imperfect, lacking sig. A (title page and three other leaves) and beginning on B1 with the latter part of a sentence. Apart altogether from its rarity, it has features of considerable interest, but before entering upon questions of authorship and interpretation, it will be well to put the reader in possession of the text. Only obvious errors have been corrected, and in these cases the original readings are given in footnotes. I have numbered the lines of the comedy for reference.

In 1907 M. Pierre Champion announced his discovery that the manuscript fr. 25248 in the Bibliothèque Nationale, consisting chiefly of poems by Charles d'Orléans, was to a great extent autograph, and where not autograph, was revised under the personal care of the poet. Important as is this discovery for the knowledge of fifteenth century French literature, there is one feature of the manuscript which may lead us, if the slender clues are followed, to an identification of a new English poet of the courtly school.

On page 346 of the ms . M. Champion finds, in the Duke's autograph, two roundels in English On pages 310–313, in an interpolated quire not originally part of the volume, are six roundels and a ballade in English. This quire contains no piece in the Duke's hand; but two pieces at the beginning of the quire are by him, and written in the hand of the earliest scribe of the volume.

The present study originated in a suggestion of Monsieur Marius Sepet, of Paris. In his famous monograph, Les Prophètes du Christ, in describing the so-called Festum Asinorum of Rouen, M. Sepet contributes the following note: