In his ‘Préface sur la Franciade, touchant le Poëme Heroïque’ Ronsard summed up his theories on the epic for the ‘lecteur apprentif’ about to undertake the arduous task of reading his Franciade and asserted that the epic poet should be a walking encyclopedia of philosophical, medical, botanical, anatomical, and juridical knowledge. Furthermore, he advised the prospective reader or budding poet not to neglect any fact or story pertaining to the nature and properties of trees, flowers, plants, and roots. None of Ronsard's admirers heeded more fully this ancient conception of poetry, which was to have as its aim the popularization of all human knowledge, than did Du Bartas, whose catalogs of plants, animals, and precious gems remind us of classical and medieval bestiaries, herbals, and lapidaires.

In the process of editing the poems from the songbooks of the lutenist and composer, John Dowland, I have found that Nicholas Breton is the author of at least one of these poems and may have written another. Both songs were printed in A Pilgrimes Solace (1612). ‘From silent night’ (No. 10) is dedicated ‘To my louing Country-man Mr. John Forster the younger, Merchant of Dublin in Ireland.’ ‘Thou mighty God’ is a single poem divided into three parts (Nos. 14-16). Both are among Dowland's finest songs, remarkable for their emotional intensity and melodic and harmonic boldness. E. H. Fellowes, editor of English Madrigal Verse, lists no author for either poem.

Among the poems edited by Professor Kenneth Muir from the Blage manuscript of early Tudor poetry there appears the following octave (XXXIX):

Thou slepest ffast; and I with woffull hart
Stand here alone, syghing, and cannot ffleye.
Thou slepyst ffast, when crewell love his darte
On me dothe cast, Alas! so paynefullye.
Thou slepyst fast, and I all ffull of smart
To the my fo in vayn do call and crye.
And yet methinkes, thou that slepyst ffast,
Thou dremyst styll whiche way my lyf to wast.

This poem had previously appeared as anonymous in Norman Ault's Elizabethan Lyrics, and Professor Muir does not definitely ascribe it to Wyatt, in spite of the evidence of the verse form. Wyatt was the only early Tudor poet who thoroughly explored the possibilities of the Italian ottava.

Rfoulché-delbosc was the first to point out that Luis del Mármol Carvajal committed extensive plagiarism in his Historia del rebelion y castigo de los Moriscos del Reyno de Granada. As the French hispanist showed, Mármol lifted large parts out of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza's De la Guerra de Granada. At the time Mármol wrote his book—some time before 1580, according to Foulché-Delbosc— Mendoza's Guerra, unpublished until 1627 (about fifty-five years after it was written), was available in many manuscript copies. Unquestionably, the Guerra served Mármol as a major source, especially for reporting certain events at which he had not been present. Foulché-Delbosc, in 1894, expressed astonishment that no one seemed to have noticed this before him.

The only references by Reformers to More's Utopia listed in R. W. Gibson's St. Thomas More: A Preliminary Bibliography (New Haven, 1961) are two by Tyndale and two by Foxe. Actually Tyndale makes five direct references to Utopia and a large number of indirect references. At least two other Reformers besides the two listed who refer to Utopia are John Frith and William Roy. Each of the direct and indirect references to the Utopia made by Reformers is polemical. The usual point made is that since More has once passed off fiction as truth, he is quite capable of continuing to do so—especially in religious controversy.

Tyndale uses More's authorship of the Utopia to attack both More himself and the Catholic Church in general. For instance, he very conveniently dismisses an entire chapter of More's Dialogue by saying that it ‘is as true as his story of Utopia & all his other Poetrie….’ Here the reference serves as shorthand; it saves Tyndale from the necessity of entering into extended argument.

The first meeting on stage of the three rebels, Glendower, Hotspur, and Mortimer, occupies a central position in I Henry IV, at the beginning of Act III. In historical fact, these men's deputies met at the house of the Archdeacon of Bangor to plan the tripartite division of the realm. Shakespeare, however, brings the men themselves together and substitutes Hotspur for his father Northumberland, who was actually the man designed to receive a third part of the kingdom. By modifying these historical materials, Shakespeare creates in this pivotal scene a situation that reveals dramatically the central flaw in each of the conspirators. Hotspur's impetuosity, Glendower's superstition, and Mortimer's hesitant middle way all contributed to the eventual collapse of the conspiracy with Hotspur's death at Shrewsbury.

The scholarly books in this field during the current year fall into four main groups. Much the largest of these is a welcome group of scholarly editions, led by William Ringler's masterly Clarendon edition of the poems of Sidney. In Max Patrick's series of Stuart Editions the new titles include his own edition of Herrick, W. B. Hunter's edition of Jonson's poems, J. C. A. Rathmell's edition of the psalms of Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke, a collection of meditative poems edited by Louis Martz, and a collection of short seventeenth-century fiction, edited by C. C. Mish. An anthology of masques and triumphs and an anthology of seventeenth-century epics are also promised later in this series.

The year 1549 is a familiar one to all those interested in sixteenth-century French poetry because it marks the date of publication of the Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse which stands as a sort of manifesto of the nascent Pléiade. In this document of Italian inspiration Du Bellay repudiated most of the indigenous poetic forms in favor of the classical ode and eclogue and the Petrarchan sonnet. In the second part of the work he exhorted his young poet thus: ‘Chante moy ces odes incongnues encor’ de la Muse Francoyse, d'un luc, bien accordé au son de la lyre Grecque et Romaine’ (II, iv).

The Florentine chronicler, Giovanni Villani, takes time out from his spare narrative of the hectic events of the revolutionary year 1294 to devote a chapter to the commemoration of the death of that ‘worthy citizen whose name was Brunetto Latini,’ and who ‘was a great philosopher, and was a perfect master in rhetoric….’ No Florentine of his generation, opines Villani, could speak so eloquently or write so artfully as that ‘worthy citizen.’ It was the notary, Ser Brunetto Latini, who composed the justly renowned commentaries on Cicero's rhetoric, as well as compiling perhaps the best of all encyclopedias written by thirteenth-century Italians (Il Tresor). Moreover, he held the highest communal offices, repeatedly went on key diplomatic missions, and was longtime Chancellor of the Commune. In all things he was un' uomo civile. Above all others of his generation he ‘refined the Florentines,’ teaching them to counsel wisely, orate effectively, and to rule the republic according to the precepts of Aristotle's Politics.