I n April 1992 I had the honour of delivering the Carl Newell Jackson Lectures at Harvard University. This book is essentially a record of the four lectures as they were given, though a number of revisions have been made and notes and references added. There is a special reason in this instance for not introducing substantial additions or changes to the spoken version. As such, the subject—the mixed form, verse with prose, in the West from the first century AD to the thirteenth—is enormous. Yet it is also elusive: there were so many kinds of mixed form in the period, so many ways of combining verse with prose, so many uses, from the most poetic to the most prosaic, to which such combinations could be put. The advantage of broaching the topic in a brief series of lectures was that these—like the topic itself—could keep a certain elusiveness. It was possible to proceed evocatively rather than systematically. It was clear, in such a situation, that there could be no question of an exhaustive history or an all-encompassing theory. The problems of cultural continuities, of genre and definition, which lurk to ambush the historian and the theorist on their highway, present no dangers to a traveller who chooses to go by a smaller, unpaved route. I have tried to exemplify" the art and scope of the mixed form" by singling out a range of instances for consideration, and by critical interpretation of certain key passages in my chosen texts. The route I decided to follow came to reveal quite a few discoveries and surprises. Some of the most individual texts at which I paused were little known, some had never been brought into a discussion of