The description of the marble reliefs which depict examples of humility, in the tenth canto of Purgatory,—the Annunciation, David and the Ark, Trajan and the widow—has been universally admired, and often studied and discussed. But it seems to me, for several reasons, that the specific matter of the order in which their details are presented may certainly be considered further with interest, and perhaps with profit—although the fact of their orderly sequence is, in at least a general way, obvious to every reader.

The practice has established itself among literary historians and anthologists of associating the English and Scottish ballads primarily with the fifteenth century, sometimes with the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. One of the best and most popular of the histories of English literature now used in schools and colleges states in its revised editions: “These ballads appear to have flourished luxuriantly among the folk in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, after which their composition ceased. Over three hundred of them, in 1,300 versions, have survived, and have been collected and printed.” The now widely used History of English Literature by M. Emile Legouis, the most ambitious among recent histories of our literature, remarks of the ballads: “They cannot all be claimed for the fifteenth century, for poems of this sort must have had an earlier beginning and certainly were produced until a later time, but the impulse to make them seems to have been particularly active in this century, to which, moreover, the oldest extant specimens belong.” A recent excellent poetical anthology has: “Ballad is the name applied to a simple form of narrative poetry which in England and Scotland flourished between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.” Statements like these leave with readers the definite impression that the fifteenth century was the heyday of ballad production, and that the bulk of the three hundred ballads in Professor Child's collection emerged from this century, or from an even earlier period.

The impresa portrait of Sir Philip Sidney which hangs in the Tudor section of the National Portrait Gallery (no. 1862) in London, shows a strikingly handsome young man. (See Figure 1.) The warm gold of his hair is repeated in the braidings and buttons of his white satin dress, in sword-belt, and in the figures which make up the design of headgear and shield. A somewhat bungling painter has caught the sweet gravity of the poet who in the words of his friend was from childhood up never “other than a man.” But sunniness and glow are dominant. Inevitably one recalls Sir Henry's apt characterization of this son of his as Lumen familiae suae. As a matter of fact, the warmth of coloration is part of a general consonance. For the impresa in the upper left-hand corner is of a fire thrusting red and yellow points of life through crossed green boughs, with the “word,” Inveniam Viam Aut Faciam. And the design of the shield celebrates Apollo, the god of Fire and Light, of the golden sun and the tawny flame which like Youth itself must make or find a way.

Spenser's conception of the organization of the universe, as it is set forth in the allegory of the garden of Adonis, and in the Mutability cantos, has recently been given considerable attention. Professor Edwin Greenlaw opened the subject with the suggestion that the poet owed part of the ideas developed in these two passages to Lucretius. Several objections have been made to his theory. M. Denis Saurat points out some inconsistencies in Professor Greenlaw's interpretation, and prefers to regard the passage on the garden of Adonis as lyrical and without serious or sustained philosophic content. Professor Ronald B. Levinson finds Spenser's theory of form and matter in Bruno's Spaccio. Miss Evelyn Albright draws attention to the inconsistency between the Platonic idealism of The Fowre Hymnes (together with certain passages in Colin Clout's Come Home A gaine) and any Lucretian materialism in The Faerie Queene. To these critics Professor Greenlaw replied, in effect, that no one had disproved his contention of Lucretian influence in the passage on the garden of Adonis, and that the well-known eclecticism of the Renaissance accounts for the mixture of Platonic and Lucretian philosophy in Spenser.

Courthope, in his History of English Poetry, asks the question: “Does Spenser's work satisfy the test of Unity which must be applied to every great creation of art?” Answering this question, Courthope thinks that there is undoubtedly poetical unity in the general conception of The Shepherd's Calendar. But of the Faerie Queene, he says the following:

From Plato and Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen, through the medieval commentators, the Elizabethans inherited a body of complex psychological principles. An examination of these principles and their bearing on The Faerie Queene has so far been only casual and incidental. Since in Book ii, Canto ix, the poet combines one of the most widely used of medieval motifs—the conception of the body as a world, city, or castle—with certain current doctrines of psychology, such an inquiry is especially apposite. Spenser's use of the abundant contemporaneous literature of psychology affords material for an extended treatment such as that which Miss Anderson has made of Shakespeare's plays. The present study purposes to set forth one aspect of his system of psychology—his psychology of memory in the allegory of the Castle of Alma, to make clear the relationship of his system to the current Elizabethan doctrines, and to establish the purpose of certain departures from those doctrines.

The Faerie Queene is packed with classical allusions and classical proper names, especially Canto xi of Book iv, with its lists of sea-gods and founders of kingdoms and the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris. Here in particular, Spenser concentrated his mythological learning both in quantity and in obscure erudition; and he seems to have had at his elbow such compilations as Hesiod's Theogony, the Library of Apollodorus, and the Libri Mythologiæ of Natalis Comes. His use of the Theogony in his list of nereids illustrates how closely in this matter he followed his authorities: all but two of the fifty are derived from Hesiod; he followed even Heriod's order as closely as his stanza-form allowed; and a number of the descriptive epithets are similar. Two of Spenser's names, however, have no counterpart in Hesiod, Phao and Poris; nor do they appear in similar lists of nereids in Homer or Apollodorus or other classical sources, nor in Boccaccio's Genealogia Deorum Gentilium nor in Natalis Comes.

Virtually all of Spenser's biographers have assumed that the poet lived in or near Dublin from the time of his going to Ireland as secretary to Lord Grey in 1580 till 1587 or 1588. In this paper I shall explain why data heretofore relied upon are of small value in establishing Spenser's residence near Dublin from 1584 till 1588, and shall advance further evidence, in addition to that brought forth by Mr. Plomer and Mr. Cross in The Life and Correspondence of Lodowick Bryskett, to support the assumption that after 1584 Spenser was Bryskett's deputy as clerk in the Council of Munster. To understand this hypothesis, a survey of the intimate relations between Spenser and Bryskett, as well as their connection with the Sidney family and Lord Grey, is essential.

Professor H. S. V. Jones in his recently published Spenser Handbook (New York, 1930) has an interesting and valuable chapter on Book vi of The Faerie Queene. Much of his discussion is concerned with the so-called courtesy literature of the Renaissance, which offers striking parallels to Spenser's illustration of the virtue of courtesy. According to Professor Jones, Spenser's object in Book vi is “to exhibit in his allegory certain articles in that familiar creed of courtesy which had been stated and expounded in many doctrinal treatises of the Renaissance, and to oppose to the ideal of the gentleman the forces which were hostile to its realization.”

A rapid reading of Spenser's Veue will show that here is no allegory and little narrative; for the Veue is an exposition of the present condition of Ireland with proposals of what must be done to correct the manifold evils, to establish Ireland as a loyal colony of England, and to insure a flow of money from west to east, reversing the deep drain from the exchequer of England to the bogs of Ireland.

The traditional comment of Ben Jonson that “in affecting the ancients Spenser writ no language,” amplified by objections of nineteenth century philologists against Spenser's supposed inaccuracy in reviving old words and his lawlessness in coining new ones, has been much qualified by recent critical analysis. Professor Renwick has emphasized the relation of Spenser's diction to the general Renaissance problem of developing and enriching the modern tongues as mediums for serious literature. In somewhat greater detail Miss Pope has traced the course of Italian, French, and English Renaissance criticism on the subject of literary diction and its relation to Spenser's practice. From these studies Spenser's experiments in language are seen to have a dignity of purpose quite different from the freakishness implied in Jonson's petulant remark and all too often assumed by previous critics. Though Spenser was the first great English poet of the sixteenth century, general cultural activity had been vigorous. Printing had made possible the vogue of translations, both scriptural and purely literary, and English as a literary language assumed a growing importance.

Swift wrote brilliantly of the Dissenter, or Puritan, as revealed in the person of Jack, one of the three brothers in the Tale of a Tub, but there was a century of attack on the Puritans behind him. It is not the purpose of this paper to try to show that Swift was influenced by earlier writers. All that will be attempted is the analysis of the various themes of the attack on the Puritans in the Tale of a Tub, and a comparison of the results with those obtained from a similar analysis of the more prominent earlier satires of the Puritans. There may well have been various influences of earlier men on Swift, but, as has been said, this question will not be raised. The real contribution of Swift—what he alone thought and said about the Dissenters—will be more easily seen if we first eliminate the themes which had already been used. Of equal importance is the listing of the points Swift definitely avoided using or emphasizing but which the earlier men had delighted in employing.

In Thomas Wright's Life of Daniel Defoe we find the following statement:

During this illness [i.e., of the ‘apoplexie,’ 1715] Defoe was visited by a Quaker whose kindness made a great impression on him, and he never after neglected an opportunity of speaking well of the religious body to which the good man belonged. And they deserved to be well spoken of, for at this exciting period, when all England was in a ferment, when even the pulpits were made to answer the purpose of hustings, the Quaker body alone advocated temperance and Christian charity. Like Defoe, they cried ‘Peace, peace!’

When William Hazlitt died, in 1830, his literary fame was obscured by his political views. The man who admired Napoleon and wrote a biography of him and who championed the radical creed of the French Revolution could hardly have been expected to be popular among Englishmen of the early nineteenth century. During the past twenty-five years, however, several volumes containing selections from his essays have been issued; and most editions of Shakespeare enrich themselves by quoting his opinions. His Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, printed in 1817, is still very much alive. Heine, in his volume Shakespeare's Mädchen und Frauen (1838), declared: “With the exception of William Hazlitt, England has given us no Shakespearean commentator of any consequence.” And this verdict, though decidedly exaggerated, gains new interest when we append the Teutonic explosion: “It takes the very heart out of me when I remember that Shakespeare is an Englishman, and belongs to the most repulsive race which God in his wrath ever created.”

For almost one hundred years an anonymous novel, or rather romance, bearing the title Mephistophiles in England; or, The Confessions of a Prime Minister, has been resting on the shelves of many libraries, unnoticed by students of comparative literature. The title itself is sufficient to attract the attention and to arouse the curiosity of any who have become acquainted with one of Goethe's most celebrated dramatic characters; an appreciative dedication in verse to “the immortal spirit of the illustrious Goëthe” indicates clearly the influence which the German poet had already exercised upon the writer; and even a superficial reading of the work, particularly of the first part, reveals the inspiration as well as the indebtedness which its author owed to the Faust.

Among the historical events of the nineteenth century, the struggle of the Italian people for liberty and unity occupies an outstanding place. But, while this movement, known as the Risorgimento, was so important in the development of European politics and, consequently, could not fail to attract the attention of English writers, Americans were naturally much less exposed to its influence. The United States was not a world power in those days; with existing means of communication it seemed remote from Europe, and its policy was to remain aloof from the problems and complications of the Old World. In these circumstances it would not be surprising if the stirring events of the Risorgimento awoke few echoes across the Atlantic.

The years from 1885 to 1898 have been correctly termed by Mr. G. K. Chesterton “an epoch of real pessimism.” Not that pessimists were common at this time, but the question of the value of life was on the horizon of every educated man, and developed like a storm cloud whenever the air of speculation chilled. In England the literary men in particular were given to pessimistic questionings; and a great volume of Continental literature, of a quality to reënforce the idea of the world's tedium and pain, began to appear in translation. FitzGerald's translation of the Rubaiyat sprang into public attention in 1885 and maintained an immense popularity for the next fifteen years. Inasmuch as it has often been confidently affirmed that the cause of the pessimism of this period is to be found in the teachings of Schopenhauer, I have undertaken to examine the nature and extent of Schopenhauer's influence. No evidence appears, however, that Schopenhauer had more than a contributory influence; and the task has necessarily broadened into a study of the history of literary pessimism. Because of the extent of the subject, the present paper offers little more than a summary of methods and results. I hope later to publish the proofs in greater detail.

IN a recently-published volume, Anatole France: critique littéraire,1 Mlle. Annette Antoniu gives a very closely-documented and, in the main, trustworthy, account of the intellectual and critical development of the great novelist. This work, however, confines itself to the consideration of Anatole France's pronouncements in his works of criticism and is, by the very nature of its subject, somewhat diffuse in its treatment. It may, therefore, be of some interest to study France's attitude towards poetry and poets as expressed in his novels and short-stories, in his volumes of essays and in his reminiscences of childhood, as well as in his conversations with some of the numerous “literary reporters” who, during the past decade, have been basking in the glory of the deceased master. Such an examination is of importance in view of the many bitter attacks that have been leveled at France by critics who are not content with attempting to expose what they consider to be the dangers inherent in his skepticism, and have left no stone unturned in the effort to prove that, both as man and as thinker, he was totally devoid of the moral sense. Thus, for example, in his Historie du Parnasse,2 M. Maurice Souriau would have us believe that France dealt treacherously by his erstwhile comrades, the Parnassians, and, more especially, by their principal leader, Leconte de Lisle.

I am prompted to enter again upon this subject by two considerations, which hang together. One is that opinions I had previously expressed upon it have, in a respectable quarter, been treated with greater condescension than a man not wholly in error can well be expected to ignore; the other is that similar opinions, as I have lately noticed, have (independently) appeared in recent reputable criticism, particularly the foreign. I had said that it is not justifiable to treat literary or other art as a document, a record of the time, on the one hand, or of the author's life, on the other; that, rather, art reflects the taste of the time, and the taste of the author; and that while much of the life of the period may be reflected, and of the author, too, it is only with the greatest difficulty and uncertainty that this can be isolated and recognized. Imaginative literature is not only not history or unconscious autobiography but not even raw material for it; big allowances must be made both for the limitations and conventions of the art and also for the character of the artists. Some of these, to be sure, are realists, intent on the external object; some also are egoists, concerned, directly or indirectly, with their own nature and experience: but good art, and the greatest, is not limited or determined either by the artist's person or his day. And rather similar are the opinions of the critics Mm. Rémy de Gourmont, Paul Valéry, and Henri Bremond; and of recent notable novelists such as Proust and Gide. Like writers of their nation and of England whom I have cited in discussing the subject before, they are all of one accord against the biographical or historical attitude as unfruitful and irrelevant; and nearly all of them have much to say of Racine as one who did not recognizably reflect his time or his own life within it, and is, because of that, all the more significant as a poet.