These two lines Mr. Bateson translates into colourless modern English: "For the mote made him-though it were little as compared with him -to feel sick," and adds for our information that "the reader of whaling stories will recall how frequently the whale suffers from dyspepsia!"

We need not follow the poet in detail through the rest of the narrative, which is full of lifegiving detail till the end. After God had commanded the whale

That he hym sput spakly vpon spare drye,

we see Jonah washing his muddy mantle on the beach and proceeding with his message of doom to the "burgesses and bachelors" of Nineveh. The gourd under which he sleeps becomes a "wodbynde" (some kind of convolvulus): it is "hedera," or ivy, in the Vulgate. Jonah's delight, as he lay under it-"so glad of his gay lodge" is amusingly described. He

Lys loltrande ther-inne lokande to toune.

So contentedly did he "loll" there, indeed-"so blithe of his wood-bine"-that he cared not a penny for any "diet" that day; and when it "nighed to night" and "nappe hym bihoued," he slept the sleep of the just "vnder leues." In

his account of Jonah's anger against God, and God's argument in favour of sparing Nineveh, the poet elaborates as ever the Bible narrative, and the appeal for the right of the inhabitants to live is tenderer than in the more concise original. God pleads, for instance, for the "lyttel bairnes on barme (breast) that neuer bale wrought," and the reference to "much cattle" becomes:

And als ther ben doumbe bestes in the burgh many.

I do not suggest that Patience is better than the Book of Jonah, or as good, but that it has the vitality of an original work. The poet has a personal knowledge of character a sense of drama, and a sense of life. Mr. Bateson's edition of the poem was first published seven years ago. He has now largely recast and rewritten it. I have taken some liberties with his text in quoting it, slightly modernising it in places. It is an edition for students of mediæval literature rather than for the general reader. But with the help of its excellent glossary others than scholars should be able to enjoy it if they are prepared to take a little pains. And it is worth taking pains to become acquainted with so vivid and robust a poet as the author of Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight.

INTERLUDE

THE CULT OF DULLNESS

Many conflicting opinions were expressed on the occasion of the Keats centenary, but everybody appeared to be unanimous on at least one pointcontempt for the critics who told Keats to go back to his gallipots. We took it for granted that they were a very unusual sort of critics, and that, if a Keats were born to-day, we should give him a different sort of welcome. It is as though we had forgotten the history of literary genius and of its first reception into a jealous world. Human beings have naturally a profound respect for the great man, but they respect him most when he is dead. A dead demigod is to them infinitely better than a living lion. Their self-respect suffers if they have to live in the same world with some young fellow that overtops them. They feel, unconsciously, that by bringing him down they are raising themselves up. The Greeks pretended that it was the gods, and not themselves, who were jealous of human greatness, and they called this jealousy Nemesis. I suspect.