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.

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.

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.