On 2 May 1760 a new play by Charles Palissot, entitled Les Philosophes, had its first performance in Paris. The immortality achieved by this comedy has nothing to do with inherent literary value; it has survived because those whom it attacks were among the most important thinkers in eighteenth-century France, and because Diderot, one of its victims, retaliated in that brilliant satire known as Le Neveu de Rameau. In Palissot's comedy, the philosophes are referred to as “un tas de charlatans, / Qu'on voit sur des tréteaux ameuter les passants.” The notions of ethics and human nature supposedly espoused by these rabble rousers are essentially a popularization of the ideas of Helvétius, whose De l'esprit was publicly condemned less than two years before. “Les hommes sont égaux par le droit de nature,” Valère declares, much to the satisfaction of his servant; men are guided by “l'attrait du bonheur,” whose source is in the passions; personal interest is the only motivation (ii.i). And we catch glimpses of conduct consistent with a conscious, literal following of these and other maxims. But, significantly, Diderot's works are the ones that are mentioned, not Helvétius'. Diderot's play, Le Fils naturel, is made an important source of inspiration for Cydalise, an eighteenth-century Philaminte, in the writing of her book; she experiences great difficulty thinking up a first line for her preface, but, having abandoned “J'ai vécu” (used by Duclos), decides upon some thing “plus pompeux et plus philosophique”: the words with which Diderot opens his Pensées sur l'interprétation de la nature, “Jeune homme, prends et lis” (II.iii). The whole “boutique philosophique” is thus ridiculed, with little attempt being made to discriminate among the ideas of the individual thinkers; Diderot and Helvétius are made to share the same philosophy.

The Early Quakers, who liked to call themselves the First Publishers of Truth, swept from the north of England across the nations roughly between 1650 and 1675. And during this same quarter century what we have dubiously labelled “plain” style manifestly supplanted the highly-ornate, rhetorical tradition of English prose which had burgeoned in extravagances of Arcadian rhetoric and Euphuism to flower in the earlier seventeenth century's “Senecan amble.” Clearly, rhetorical analysis can tell us much about the skeletal structure of prose style even in the later years of the century, but it can no longer lay open the center of energy-informing expression, as it can in much earlier prose. The aim of this essay will be to discover those bedrock aspects of expression which are demonstrably homologous with the profoundest conception of life shared by the first Quakers, the most feared and fastest-growing sect of the later seventeenth century, as well as the religious body most neglected by modern students of prose form. The rise of the new “plain” prose has been attributed to the heightened philosophic interest in scepticism, with its pragmatic theories of action; to the intensified interest in empirical science which centered in the Royal Society; and to the rise of a semi-t educated bourgeoisie. But these decades in England's story were characterized most widely by continuous theological debate and exhortations So it would seem probable, granting the convergence of several streams of cause, that the peak swell on which the new prose tradition rode to dominance can most intelligibly be traced to an ultimately theological tide. The literature of early Quakerism is of unparalleled value in testing and illustrating this hypothesis because—with the incalculable human distance between George Fox and William Penn—this evangelistic group cut across all social and educational distinctions, even dimmed the dualism in the rôles of the sexes. Yet when the Quakers pour forth their heart's belief and hope, they do so again and again in the same modes of expression, modes only approximately and infrequently appearing in the sermons and tracts of non-Quaker contemporaries like Everard and Saltmarsh. These characteristics, explained by and explaining the earliest Quaker faith, I should like to call seventeenth-century Quaker style.

It Is Not difficult to account for the repeated concern of lopistas with the question of the dating and the versions of La Dorotea. In order to discern Lope's intention in recasting his adventure with Elena Osorio in the unique actión en prosa form, one must first reach some conclusion regarding the stage or stages in his long career at which the work was conceived and composed. There are today few critics who consider the actión en prosa even largely a youthful work. Most see evidence throughout of the workmanship and outlook of the old Lope, not restricting this to passages of necessity late—the horoscope of Fernando-Lope's future, the discussion of a parodied culterano sonnet, the “piscatory idylls” inserted at the last minute as elegiac tributes to Marta de Nevares. And indeed it can hardly be questioned, after the perceptive studies of Vossler and Montesinos, that La Dorotea, as it appeared in 1632, reflects the maturity of its author. In no other way can we account for the special flavor of this work in which all of Lope's life and art appear in a new focus against a background of inexorably fleeting time.

It has often been observed that some comic characters, given a touch too much of seriousness, dignity, individuality, or respectability, or being called upon to suffer pain past the limit of comic endurance, may easily be regarded as pathetic or tragic figures. No subject matter is inherently comic; whether it be comic or not depends on the attitude of readers or audience. Thus Shylock, Don Quixote, Alceste, and even Malvolio have been taken by moderns as essentially tragic rather than comic characters, and Falstaff chidden by his king—“How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!”—extracts from modern eyes the indignant tear. Only a hair, it seems then, may divide the comic from the tragic, and some characters of comedy, quicksilver-like, will not remain on the comic side of the boundary.

The relation between content and style, the functional nature of style, the “balance” between inventio and elocutio —these adumbrate a method of interpretative criticism that has its roots in classical antiquity. But the “balance” concerns more than style. It extends to, or shall we say begins with, the content itself wherein the author manifests his world view, his philosophy of man, his hierarchy of values, and, in the Christian era, his reason-faith relationship. An evaluation of style requires, therefore, a previous evaluation of content.

John Leland, sixteenth-century antiquary and defender of the Arthurian legend against Polydore Vergil, is probably better known to historians than to literary scholars. Nevertheless he was an assiduous writer of Latin verse during most of his life, published seven volumes of poetry before his death, and left in manuscript a large collection of epigrams and other occasional verses. In a Bodleian manuscript in Leland's own hand (MS. Top. gen. c. 4, p. 301) we have evidence that he had himself collected these poems for preservation, for he says there, in connection with a poem of his on Chaucer, “in libris meorum epi-grammaton his uersibus eius gloriae assurgo.” This manuscript collection seems not to have been preserved, even in the generation following Leland's death. Our present knowledge of Leland's poemata, aside from those printed during his lifetime, is based upon a manuscript in the hand of John Stow (Bodleian MS. Tanner 464. iv) and a printed edition of 1589 edited by Thomas Newton. A note from Newton to Stow, written on the outside of Stow's manuscript, shows that he had examined this manuscript, but his text is obviously based on a different one. Not only are there many differences in the readings of individual poems, but there is also the fact that the Stow manuscript contains twenty-eight poems not included in the printed edition.