Of the five mixed dissyllable series (stanzas 50, 71, 159, 183, 280), two (159 and 183) fall into two shorter series apiece; the other three appear to be inconsistent; it is perhaps worth note that in all five the scribe begins with his own vowel and fails to carry it through; in one case (183) because he cannot. Finally, of closed-monosyllable series, the majority have ā throughout. Here we find two series in a before t (stanzas 191, 227) where ō could not be carried through; two in -n with the rhyme words tan and Morgan (stanzas 11, 82); one (stanza 91) with the rhyme words tan and pan; one (stanza 25) with Morgan and man; (I have not seen OE a (o) written o in any of a's copies.) In other words, the second principle applies: ā is carried through because ō cannot be written, and a has left the form tan perforce, or because he objected to it less than to pon for pan.11 In the only mixed series (stanza 69) he begins with anon (cf. the opening ō of all dissyllable mixed-series) but proceeds with tan, bigan, and pan. He uses ton only once, in rhyme with don, ston, etc. (stanza 135).

I am not presenting these particular inferences as to a's methods as conclusively proved, though I think they are sound. For proof one would need to get, as a rapid examination leads me to think one could, the same results from other poems and for other vowels and for inflections, at least when these occur in large numbers. What is important is to recognize that in such a large and dialectally miscellaneous MS collection as the Auchinleck, it is possible, owing to the mere bulk and variety of material,12 to get more definite knowledge of the scribe's methods of handling his original than editors have as yet obtained. It is unnecessary, of course, to expatiate on the value of such information in interpreting conflict of dialect forms in anonymous texts, especially when it is combined with further information about

11 Cf. the series, with no OE å in it, ran: þan: wan: man: tan (stanza 129).

12 Arthour and Merlin alone has nearly ten thousand lines; Sir Tristrem and the continuation of Guy of Warwick have between three and four thousand each; Amis and Amiloun and The Seven Sages between two and three thousand each; Pope Gregory, The King of Tars, St Patrick's Purgatory, Sir Degarre, and Horn Childe, over a thousand each; and the nineteen remaining poems average perhaps four hundred lines apiece.

any consistencies the scribe may have exhibited as to spelling, phonology, or inflection; but perhaps it cannot be insisted too often that the only basis for this desirable knowledge is just the exhaustive information about the total variety of MS forms which the Auchinleck editors on the whole did not think it important to give.13

13 For the practice of giving little information as to the total variety of forms in any one poem, Kölbing seems to have been largely responsible. In the introduction to St. Patrick's Purgatory (p. 93) he said that he confined himself to rhyme-established forms as the only basis for dialect determination. He criticized Hausknecht for too thorough presentation of forms within the line: one should confine oneself to rhymeestablished forms, or at least treat these separately from forms out of rhyme (ESt IX:94). His pupil Schwarz, editing The Assumption, apologized for paying more attention to forms within the line than would have been required under different circumstances (ESt VIII: 444). The source of Kölbing's view is to be found in a statement which he repeats in Sir Tristrem (p. lxxvii) from Zupitza:-Wenn ich mich schliesslich vom dialekte des dichters dazu wende, zu characterisiren, wie der abschreiber in sprachlicher hinsicht mit seinem texte umgegangen ist, so gedenke ich mich dabei sehr kurz zu fassen; die ansicht Zupitza's, Anz. f. d. a. VI, p. 46, er sehe keinen zweck darin die lautlehre der einzelnen handschriften ausführlich zu behandeln und dabei für längst bekannte sachen neue belege vorzubringen; er glaube, es hauptsächlich nur darauf an, den dialekt des denkmals selbst zu bestimmen, wofür natürlich die reime von der grössten wichtigkeit seien-scheint mir durchaus das richtige zu treffen. Zudem gibt ja das glossar über alle vorkommenden formen anschluss.

Wächter, echoing Kölbing's view for Roland and Vernagu (p. 34), adds that if we had all the forms, we could not tell which belonged to the scribe and which to the author.

The reason why Kölbing, with other scholars, overlooked the usefulness of exhaustive information, seems to have been that he had too mechanical a conception of the value of the establishing rhyme. He passed from the explicit statement that only establishing rhymes are evidence for dialect, to a practice implying that all establishing rhymes are evidence; whereas, of course, only rhymes at once establishing and authentic are evidence, and when we have a unique text, not autograph, by an anonymous author, we have no absolute proof as to what rhymes are authentic. For example, according to Kölbing's own theory, based on the evidence of inflections, the scribe of Sir Tristrem wrote S (pp. lxxii-lxxviii), and the poem itself is quite certainly N (pp. lxixlxxvii). Yet when there occurs in establishing rhyme a form typical of S rather than of N, Kölbing regularly, and of course rightly, tries to find evidence for its use in N, but he does not mention the possibility, a priori often a probability, of the form's being due to the scribe. He finds parallels, for example, in Ywain and Gawain and in Sir Percyvelle, for the few monosyllabic infinitives in -n; but these two romances occur in late unique MSS, and Kölbing does not mention here that -n forms occur also out of rhyme in Sir Tristrem (p. lxxiv). He says he fails to find in N any parallel to the single established infin. in -i, but does not mention in the same context that infinitives in -i occur within

the line (p. lxxvii). Again, when he lists inflectional forms in Sir Tristrem due to a S scribe, he gives only those within the line (pp. lxxvii ff), implying apparently that rhyme-forms are not scribal, though later (p. xci) he speaks of establishing rhymes as the only ones attributable certainly to the author. Here we need to remember that mediaeval scribes, not knowing that establishing rhymes would be so precious to modern investigators, did not feel there was any taboo against changing them, and that difficulty was probably their only deterrent. There is no proof that a did not sometimes change establishing rhyme-forms.

THE ORIENTAL IN RESTORATION DRAMA

LOUIS WANN

The phrase "Light from the East" possesses, by virtue of an accident of geography, a more unique significance for English literature than for any other important literature of modern nations. Every outside influence of importance has, necessarily and literally, come from the East, in contradistinction, for example, to the case of Russian literature. But we do not, of course, use the phrase in this broad sense. The two greatest cultural influences in the formation of English thought and literature through the centuries, that of Greek and Roman civilization conveyed by means of the Renaissance, and that of Hebrew civilization conveyed, for a longer period, by means of the Bible, are both, in a stricter sense than that just used, Oriental in provenance and nature. Yet we do not call the classics and the Bible Oriental. There is, then, a third important civilization or group of civilizations, which, though deprived of the stimulus of a Renaissance or the irresistible power of a Bible to aid it, nevertheless made its attraction felt fairly early in English literature, and for the past four hundred years has affected with increasing profoundness the literary expression, if not the life, of the English people. This third civilization we call that of the Orient.

Because of its important place in the history of the literature, the influence of the Orient deserves more study than we have hitherto given it. Except for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it has been neglected. And it is in the

1 Only two important contributions to the subject, and these in restricted fields, have been made: Conant, Martha Pike, The Oriental Tale in England in the 18th Century, 1908, and Meester, M. E. de, Oriental Influences in the English Literature of the 19th Century, 1915. Compare the fuller treatments for French literature by Martino, Pierre, L'Orient dans la littérature française au xviie et au xviiie siècle, 1906.

two centuries preceding these that the real beginnings of the influence may be seen and studied, with its gradual development toward the conception of the Orient that produced the eighteenth century tale, the Orient-fascinated poet of the Romantic movement, and finally the scientific Orientalist of the nineteenth century. The place of the Oriental in Restoration drama constitutes one chapter in this study of four centuries of influence, which, linked with a similar study of the Oriental in the Elizabethan drama2 and the half-century preceding it, offers significant evidence of the manner in which the lure of the Orient fastened itself upon the English dramatist and the English citizen, and revealed itself in the productions of the stage during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A consideration of the conception of the Oriental as a dramatis persona in Restoration drama may, then, profitably be entertained.

By way of clearness, we may first distinguish clearly the meaning of Orient and Oriental. Though these words convey to most minds a signification definite enough as opposed, broadly, to Occident and Occidental, they are yet capable of various interpretations when the question of exact delimitation is raised. What are the exact or approximate boundaries of the Orient, both in time and place (for it is a question both of chronology and geography)? Just what are the elements that go to form our picture of the Orient? In the broadest sense, an Oriental is one whose native habitat lies, without respect to time, within the following geographical area in the three continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia: In Europe, the Balkan States, Greece, and European Turkey; in Africa, all the lands bordering the southern shore of the Mediterranean, including the modern states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli, and Egypt; in Asia, practically the entire continent, from the Mediterranean to the Pacific, including the Oceanic Archipelago.

'See my article, The Oriental in Elizabethan Drama, in Modern Philology XII: 423-447 of which this study is a continuation on the same general plan and to which rather frequent reference must be made in the present paper.