Page:Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Tolkien and Gordon - 1925.djvu/30

xviii style to the other three poems in the same manuscript. As has been noted (p. xvii), there are descriptive passages of some length in Sir Gawain and Purity of striking similarity, containing whole lines that are almost identical. Sir Gawain is most closely connected with Purity, but there are many links with the other two poems also. It is usually assumed from the unity of dialect, the numerous verbal and stylistic parallels found in these poems, and from their being copied together in one manuscript, that they are all by one author. The arguments are not conclusive, but the assumption withstands all tests so well that most of those who have worked over the poems in detail have been convinced that they are all by one author.

It has been suggested that St. Erkenwald also is by this poet, and there is, undeniably, a strong similarity between its workmanship and that of the four poems in MS. Cotton Nero A. x. The similarity is not so close as between the four poems themselves, however, and the ascription of St. Erkenwald to the same poet must be regarded as very dubious.

The other poems show a considerable variety of form and subject. Patience relates in a lively manner the story of Jonah and how he learned his lesson of patience. The poet’s descriptive talent is not even baffled by the interior of the whale: it is as picturesque as the landscapes of Sir Gawain. Purity retells three more biblical stories illustrating the value of chastity and God’s punishment of impurity—the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Deluge, and the fall of Belshazzar. Purity is inferior to Patience and Sir Gawain in narrative art, but the poet was not the man to miss the descriptive opportunities of the flood and Belshazzar’s feast. Patience and Purity are written in alliterative lines arranged in quatrains, though