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external life of the poet, though we may glean from his works some knowledge of his opinions and position.1 And hardly any one would now agree with Ten Brink's opinion that Purity and Patience are the most mature products of the poet's art, and the latter his masterpiece.2 Miss Thomas followed Ten Brink in considering Purity and Patience the poet's last works, but her discussion of the chronology of the poems is almost wholly taken up with her attempt to prove that The Pearl came before Gawain, and not after, as Ten Brink had maintained. Her reasons for considering The Pearl the earliest of the four poems were vague and general: its isolation from the other three in form and diction, and the much greater number of comparisons. More definite reasons were advanced for a close connection between Purity and Gawain. Not only similarities in phraseology, but also the enforcement of the same moral in both poems, the extolling of the virtues of loyalty (trawpe) and chastity, seemed to Miss Thomas sufficient ground for refusing to separate these two poems by The Pearl. She therefore adopted the order The Pearl, Gawain, Purity, Patience."

Gollancz's attempt to reconstruct a biography, Schofield's articles should be consulted. Bateson's hypothetical sketch of the poet's life (pp. 55-63, 1st ed., abandoned in 2d ed.), and Osgood's less fanciful deductions (pp. 1 ff.), show that an entirely different chronology offers no difficulties for the imaginary reconstruction of the poet's biography.

1

See especially C, F. Brown, The Author of the Pearl: Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass. 19. 115-48.

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Miss Thomas found no evidence in Gawain and Purity themselves for the priority of Gawain, except the fact that the author would have been likely to introduce the knightly descriptions into the Biblical setting of Purity, had he already employed them in the romance, and again the fact that the lines in Gawain have

An entirely different order, Purity and Patience, Pearl, Gawain, was proposed by Osgood on the basis of the difference in the art and technique of the poems.1 According to Osgood, the episodes in the homilies are more loosely articulated, both logically and in composition, and the moral element is clearly distinct from the sensuous.' Bateson agreed with Osgood in considering the homilies earlier, and attempted to fix more precisely their chronology and that of Gawain. He pointed out that the close relationship between Purity and Gawain on the one hand, and Purity and Patience on the other, made it necessary to assume either the order, Gawain, Purity, Patience, or Patience, Purity, Gawain, and he thought the former impossible because of the dependence of Purity on Patience.3

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The organic connection between Purity and Patience is so obvious that no one has ever proposed separating them. The many parallels between Purity and Gawain pointed out above, and the paucity of parallels between Patience and Gawain, are sufficient, I believe, to justify Bateson's contention that Purity must come between Patience and Gawain, whether the order is Gawain, Purity, Patience, or Patience, Purity, Gawain. But are there any more definite indica

more of the freshness of an original. Neither of these points carries any weight, since the transference of the customs of chivalry to ancient settings is usual in poems of the kind, and the 'freshness' of the lines in Gawain may be due to the gradual perfecting of the poet's art. Cf. Bateson's criticism, Patience, p. xxii, n. 2. 1Pearl, pp. xlix ff. Schofield and Kittredge also believe that Purity and Patience are the poet's earliest works; see Schofield, Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass. 19. 165, and n. 2.

2 Patience, p. xiii.

I agree with Bateson's chronology, although the chief argument he advances (p. xxii) for the order Purity, Patience, is valueless unless one accepts the dependence of Patience on Tertullian's poem, which is more than doubtful; cf. p. xl.

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* Pp. xv f. Cf. Bateson, p. xxi.

The Pearl may be left out of consideration for the moment,

tions, other than these, and perhaps less liable to contradiction than the argument drawn from the poet's development as an artist,1 that any one of the three poems precedes another? When the same or similar phrases and ideas are used in more than one poem, it will be well to examine them carefully for any evidence concerning which is the more likely to have been suggested by the other. And although this evidence is necessarily small in quantity, and involves the consideration of fine points in the handling of words and phrases, it is more tangible than general comparisons of artistic merit.

Take first some phrases which are common to Gawain and Purity. In Purity it is said of the angels who show some unwillingness to accept Lot's offer of hospitality. (805-7):

Pay nay þat þay nolde nez no howsez,

Bot stylly þer in be strete as pay stadde wern,
Pay wolde lenge þe long nazt and logge þeroute.2

Now the same phrase that occurs in this first line is found again in Gawain 1836, in an entirely different context. When Bernlak's wife beseeches the hero to accept a present of her gold ring or girdle, the poet says:

& he nay[ed] þat he nolde neghe in no wyse
Nauther gold ne garysoun,

that is, he refused to accept either. NED. was able to find no other instance of the verb nigh in this meaning 'take

since its difference in form prevents the same kind of comparison with the other poems.

1I consider this argument of the artistic superiority of Gawain a strong one for its being the last of the poems. Both the excellence of narrative construction and the more skilful and easier handling of the alliterative line (cf. p. 63) point to Gawain's being the most finished product of the poet's art. But it is naturally difficult to refute a man who declares the exact contrary to be the case. 2 This paraphrases the last clause of Gen. 19. 2.

or accept.' How did the poet happen to use it in this strange sense? There can hardly be any other satisfactory explanation than that the convenient alliterative phrase 'nay þat he nolde neghe' recurred to him because he had already used it in expressing an act of refusal in another poem, in a case where the persons really refused to approach something. In other words, the unnatural use of the word in Gawain must follow the natural use of it in its ordinary meaning of ‘approach' in Purity. The poet would never have used the verb in this extraordinary way unless it had been included in, and psychologically associated with, an alliterative phrase previously employed. One or two other phrases, which in Purity directly translate the Latin of the Vulgate, are used in Gawain in a less natural and more formal manner. So, for example, Purity 943, 'Lest ze be taken in þe teche of tyrauntez here' translates the Vulgate ne et tu pariter pereas in scelere civitatis (Gen. 19. 15); but in Gawain 2488, when the word teche, meaning 'sin,' is again used in the same phrase,1 the expression becomes redundant, as though it were used formally: 'In tokenyng he watz tane in tech of a faute."2

Another slightly different example is what seems to me a reminiscence in Gawain of a figure of speech elaborately developed in Purity. It is said of Christ, in Purity 1068,

1It should be remembered that the phrase 'taken in teche' is rare, and probably occurs only in these two instances.

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So the poet's translation of ne irascaris by 'tatz to non ille' (Pur. 735) he uses again at Gaw. 1811. Again it seems to me that the very bold construction at Gaw. 1805 'to dele yow for drurye,' with a personal pronoun the object of dele, could never have been used if the poet had not already used the natural construction ‘dele drwrye' (Pur. 1065). So also when the poet says of the castle that Gawain approaches that its pinnacles were so thick 'þat pared out of papure purely hit semed' (802), it is easier to suppose that this strange comparison occurred to him because he had already described decorations actually 'pared out of paper' (Pur. 1408), than it is to assume the contrary.

that he 'ever is polyced als playn as þe perle selven.' And again in the long simile (1117-32) in which the pearl, whose dullness may be brightened by washing it in wine, is compared to the man whose vile sin may be washed away by penance, the poet says the sinner 'may polyce hym at þe prest by penaunce taken.' In Gawain, when the hero confesses his one act of disloyalty, Bernlak absolves him in the following manner (2391-4):

Pou art confessed so clene, be-knowen of by mysses,
& hatz þe penaunce apert, of þe poynt of myn egge,
I halde pe polysed of þat ply3t, & pured as clene,1
As pou hadez neuer for feted.

NED. calls special attention to this instance as the only one in which the verb polish comes to mean 'cleanse, purify.' Surely the idea of using the word in this sense and in this passage would never have occurred to the poet if he had not in Purity spoken of the 'polishing of the soul by penance' in a comparison with the 'polishing of the pearl.' Such peculiar use of words and phrases as these can hardly be explained in any other way than as reminiscences of Purity.

The same test one might expect to apply with even greater ease to Patience and Purity. For, since both of these poems are paraphrases of different parts of the Vulgate, any poetic phrase translating the Biblical words in one poem, and appearing in the other without having any basis in the Biblical text in this second case, would offer strong presumption that the poem in which it directly translates the Biblical text was written first. But unfortunately most of the more important resemblances in phraseology between Patience and Purity occur in passages which in both poems are added by the poet to the Biblical story. Only two instances are of any importance, and these both appear to

1 Cf. Pur. 1116: 'And pure þe with penaunce tyl þou a perle worpe.'

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