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Among the questions which still await investigation in the literary history of sixteenth and seventeenth century England, not the least important is that of the survival of the vernacular writings of the Middle Ages. No one can have studied the records of publishing activities during the Tudor and Stuart periods without becoming aware that a considerable number of the romances, tales, poems, chronicles, lives of saints of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries still continued to circulate, and to find, though probably in ever smaller numbers, appreciative readers. Nor can anyone who has noted this persistence of medieval literature beyond the Middle Ages fail to draw from it inferences not a little damaging to our current conceptions of sixteenth and seventeenth century taste. As yet, however, no historian of literature has dealt with the problem in a systematic or detailed way—no one has tried to set clearly before us precisely which works, out of the total body of medieval writings, remained in vogue, how long the popularity of each of them lasted, how far they were modified in form or content to suit the taste of successive generations, by what sort of “public” they were read, and of what nature was the influence which they exercised upon the newer writers. Some day perhaps we shall have such a history of the survival of medieval literature in early modern England. In the meantime, as a preliminary treatment of a single phase of the subject, the present study of Guy of Warwick may not be without its interest. It proposes to trace from the days of the early printers to the close of the eighteenth century the fortunes of but one—though perhaps the most typical one—of the many romances whose popularity survived the Middle Ages.

Two years after the appearance of Worthington's volume, the idea of progress in religion was again offered to the consideration of the public by a writer much more prominent than he and immensely more skilled than either he or Edwards in metaphysical speculation. This new exponent of the doctrine was a fellow of Christ's College, widely known since 1731 as the translator and annotator of Archbishop King's De origine mali and destined presently to become Bishop of Carlisle-Edmund Law.' His book, which went through seven editions between 1745 and 1784, consisted of three discourses originally written for delivery before Cambridge University and collected under the title, Considerations on the state of the world with regard to the theory of religion, in three parts: I. Want of universality in natural and revealed religion, no just objection against either; II. The scheme of divine providence with regard to the time and manner of the several dispensations of revealed religion, more especially of the Christian; III. The progress of natural religion and science, or the continual improvement of the world in general.2 Law's problem in this work was set and his treatment of it in part determined by a controversy which had profoundly agitated the English religious world a little more than a decade before and which, by reason of the character and importance of the issues it involved, deserves to be considered one of the turning-points in eighteenth-century thought. 1 1703-87. On Law's career see, besides the article in the DNB, the notice by William Paley prefixed to Considerations on the theory of religion (London, 1820), pp. vil-xvi. 2 Cambridge, 1745. Unless otherwise stated, my references are to this edition. Law continued to interest himself in the book until shortly before his death, with the result that several of the later editions contain much new material, especially in the characteristically voluminous notes. These editions appeared as follows: 2d ed., Cambridge, 1749; 4th ed., London, 1759 (advertised in the London chronicle for October 17-19, 1758); 5th ed., Cambridge, 1765; 6th ed., Cambridge, 1774; 7th ed., Carlisle, 1784; "a new edition," London, 1820. A German translation from the fifth English edition was published at Leipzig in 1771. There is a brief discussion of the Considerations in Leslie Stephen, History of English thought in the eighteenth century, chap. viii, par. 36. [MoDraN PHILOLOOY, May, 19341 349

of the early eighteenth century, and presented evidence which in his opinion practically established the reality of the influence. The evidence consisted of a preface, hitherto overlooked, contributed at Richardson's request to the fourth volume of the first edition of Clarissa Harlowe (1748) by one whom he afterward described as "a very learned and eminent Hand."2 The main object of this preface was to recommend Clarissa to the public as an example of true realism in fiction. By way of introduction, however, the writer of the preface sketched in general terms the history of the emergence of realistic prose fiction from mediaeval romance, and in particular praised some of his French contemporaries (though without naming them) for their discovery of "the true Secret, by which alone a deviation from strict fact, in the commerce of Man, could b'e really entertaining to an improved mind, or useful to promote that Improvement," namely, by a "faithful and chaste copy of real Life and Manners." He then passed to his eulogy of Richardson's work with the following transitional statement: "It was on this sensible Plan, that the Author of the following Sheets attempted to please, in an Essay, which had the good fortune to meet with success [Pamela]: That encouragement engaged him in the present Design."3 Upon

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