originate in Patience and to be transferred to Purity. When the storm breaks on Jonah's ship, and the sailors take to the oars to try to reach dry land, the Vulgate text says et non valebant, which the poet translates 'Bot al watz nedles note' (Pat. 220), a phrase which he repeats in Purity in describing the vain attempt of the multitude to escape the flood: 'Bot al watz nedlez her note' (Pur. 381). A better, and what seems to me a conclusive, instance is the phrase 'Goddes glam to hym glod' (Pat. 63); 'Godez glam to hem glod' (Pur. 499). The Vulgate original for Patience is Et factum est verbum Domini ad Jonam (Jonah 1. 1); for Purity, Locutus est autem Deus ad Noe, dicens (Gen. 8. 15). It is obvious that the poet has translated the Latin literally in the phrase in Patience, and has then transferred it to Purity, where the Latin has merely the usual expression for 'he said.' The transference could work only one way. A comparison of two longer passages in Patience and Purity, those on the beatitudes, and those quoting Psalm 93. 8-9, makes the priority of Patience the more probable, as Bateson has already suggested.2 Even though one should not assume that the passage on the beatitudes in Patience (9 ff.) is directly modelled on Tertullian's poem,3 it seems more likely that the complete translation of them in Patience was written first, and that the more casual and less exact reference to one beatitude followed in Purity (25 ff.). Me mynez on one amonge oper, as Mapew recordez,' the poet says in Purity, and it is easy to suppose that the reason the poet deems it unnecessary to mention 1In this case the poet might, of course, have thought of the phrase in his description of the flood, and later used it to translate the Biblical clause, but it seems to me less likely, especially since note is used in the line in Pur. in a slightly more strained sense: 'trouble, pains,' instead of merely 'work.' the others is because he had already done so in Patience.1 More important is the difference in the quotation from Psalm 93. 8-9.2 In Patience the quotation is not only prefaced by the explicit statement that King David said it in a psalm of the Psalter, but the four lines (121-4) are an almost word for word, at least phrase for phrase, translation. The paraphrase in Purity (581 ff.), which is given as though emanating from the poet himself, without any suggestion of its being a reflection of the psalm, is much less exact. The singular (mon, þyself, pou) is used for the plural (Vulg. insipientes, Pat. ffolez); the sentences translated in one line in Patience (123, 124) are expanded into two in Purity (583-4, 585-6); and finally, in Purity, the clauses referring to God's all-hearing ear and all-seeing eye are interchanged, whereas Patience preserves the order of the original. The reader should examine these passages in their context, and see for himself the improbability of the poet's having written the vague impression first and the exact translation afterward. The few reasons that have hitherto been suggested for believing that Purity was the first of the homilies are very vague, and might as easily be made to prove exactly the contrary. Patience is, to be sure, more concise than Purity, but this is inevitable from the fact that it handles only one incident, whereas Purity is of epic proportions, illustrating the doom that awaits the impure by means of three long narratives, which must be connected with one another by transitional passages of exhortation and remonstrance. It is easily conceivable that a poet who had written a short homily on one of the virtues mentioned in the beatitudes might desire to attempt a homily on another virtue, this 1 1 Cf. the note on 1. 51, in which the word masse is probably used in a strained sense because the phrase is a reminiscence of Patience 9-10. 2 For the Vulgate text and the two passages paraphrasing it, see note on 1. 581. time on a grander scale.1 If it is said that the style of Patience is terser, and the lines more firmly knit together, it may be replied that this impression is derived chiefly from the sharper division2 into stanzas of four lines, and it may well be that the poet in his later and larger work abandoned the confining limits into which he had endeavored, somewhat unsuccessfully, to force his lines in Patience. Since the judgments of critics on the development of the poet's art have not been unanimous, I have endeavored to present some more convincing evidence for the chronology of his works. This evidence, added to that already adduced by others, is sufficient, I believe, to establish with some degree of certainty the fact that Purity (and with it Patience) precedes Gawain, and that Patience precedes Purity. The place of The Pearl in the poet's works is more difficult to determine, though artistic considerations* would seem to require a position between the Biblical poems and Gawain. The order of the poet's works would then be Patience, Purity, (The Pearl?), Gawain. 3 1This, in fact, seems to me more probable than that he should have written the more pretentious work first and the shorter poem afterward. 2 On this division, see pp. xliii-iv. Gollancz recognizes (Camb. Hist. 1. 361) that the division is less marked in Purity. In general, there does not seem to me to be much difference in the style or handling of the line in the two poems. There is the same abruptness and tendency to anacoluthon in each. 3 3 Osgood, p. xlix, is non-committal about the order of the two poems, simply grouping them together-'Purity and Patience.' 'See Osgood, p. xlix; and Bateson, pp. xix ff. It may be well to mention that the lines on the pearl in Purity (1068, 1116 ff.) cannot be considered in any way a reminiscence of The Pearl, since the comparison in Purity is of an entirely different kind from the symbolism in The Pearl. V. SOURCES The chief source of Purity is the Vulgate text of the Bible. It would be impossible to enumerate exactly the lines of the poem which depend on the Latin text, since many passages, though based originally on the words of the Vulgate, are elaborated to such an extent that verbal reminiscences from the Bible appear only rarely in a rich mosaic of description. So, for example, the marvelous ornamentation depicted in Mandeville's tale of Oriental splendor is superimposed on the Biblical description of the sacred vessels of the Temple (1439 ff.). But it would be fair to say that about three-fifths of the lines of Purity have their ultimate source in the Latin of the Vulgate. In the next section, which deals with the literary art of the poet, the manner in which he uses his main source will be discussed in greater detail. The few apocryphal incidents which the poet adds to the Biblical stories he narrates can hardly be traced to any definite source. The story of Lucifer1 and the raven's treachery2 were common tradition, and though Lot's wife's disobedience in serving salt to her guests,3 and Christ's cutting of the bread,* are more unusual, no direct original has been discovered for either. Holthausen suggested that the poet may have been familiar with Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica, but such parallels as he mentions—the raven's feeding on carrion, and the unnatural sin of the descendants of Adam-are not remarkable, since these interpretations were traditional, and the poet might have found them in many other commentators. The only verbal 1 See note on 1. 211. similarity of importance1 is insufficient to prove direct borrowing, especially when one remembers the frequency with which medieval commentators copied and recopied each other's phrases. It is noteworthy that the apocryphal material used by the poet, where it is not commonplace, consists of homely anecdote. This same characteristic of homely simplicity may be seen in his whole attitude toward the traditional commentaries. In Purity, at least, he seems to be less fettered than most homilists by theological doctrine and conventional interpretations, even where these may have been known to him. He often shows himself remarkably independent in his simple and direct application of Biblical stories to spiritual truths, and in such cases he is not at all bound by the accumulated allegorizings of centuries of scholastic exegesis. The possible dependence of Patience on the poem De Jona et Nineve, once ascribed to Tertullian, has led to the suggestion that another similar poem, De Sodoma, occurring along with De Jona in the Latin poet's works, may have been known to the Gawain-poet. But as Bateson, who advanced this hypothesis, omits to mention it in his revised edition of Patience, this point need not be considered. Even the dependence of Patience on Tertullian's De Jona now appears more than doubtful.5 1 See note on 1. 660. 'Cf. note on 1. 169, and the summary of the poem, pp. xlvi-vii. O. F. Emerson, Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass. 10. 242-8; Bateson, Patience, pp. xli-vi. * Bateson, Ist ed., Appendix I, pp. 64-7. 'See Liljegren's criticism (Engl. Stud. 48. 337-41) of Emerson and Bateson; Gollancz, Preface to Patience, speaks of De Jona only as 'an interesting and noteworthy parallel.' A point not mentioned by Liljegren may be noted here. Emerson (pp. 246-7) and Bateson (pp. xlv-vi) attempt to bolster up their arguments by comparing Tertullian's treatment of the beatitudes in his homily De Patientia with the opening of the poem Patience. Tertullian's purpose is to show that the virtue of patience is essential to the |