It has not been noted hitherto that Chaucer, in making poetic use of the material in Ovid's Heroic Epistles, resorted for convenience to an Italian translation of the Heroides, made in the Trecento. The author of this excellent model of Tuscan prose never achieved literary fame and even the facts of his life are unknown. For information concerning him one must depend upon the meagre statements set down in his introductory note to the rendering of the Epistle of Phaedra. His name in Hebrew, he informs the reader, signifies “Bocca di lanpana”—which is to say that it is Filippo. He refers there to a patroness—“bella donna giovane . . . . il cui nome è fiorito e nominato, secondo la lingua di Francia, di quel bel fiore che l'alto Re d'Francheschi porta nelle sue celestiali insegne”—and describes her coat-of-arms together with her husband's. This Lisa has been identified on manuscript authority—and correctly in probability—as the wife of a Florentine, Simone Peruzzi. She died in 1363. Assuming that she attained to the Biblical three score and ten, one may guess that the work inspired by her in youth was made between 1320 and 1330. On Delphic manuscript evidence scholars have given the author's surname as “Ceffi”—but their conjectures cannot be accepted as fully authoritative. An Italian version of Guido's Historia Trojana was executed by a Filippo Ceffi in 1324.

Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde is a tragedy, strongly deterministic in tone, the action of which is presided over by a complex and inescapable destiny. Professor Kittredge has already given an excellent exposition of the fate which hangs over the chief characters and over the doomed city of Troy, and has analyzed the sources of the feeling that we are “looking on at a tragedy that we are powerless to check or to avert.” And Professor Root, remarking upon the high seriousness and the moral import of Chaucer's poem, says:

In Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea and its derivative, Chaucer's Second Nun's Tale, crowns of lilies and roses are brought by an angel to the future martyrs Cecilia and her husband after she has converted him to Christianity and continence. The usual symbolism of the flowers has been settled by Messrs. Holthausen and Lowes as being chastity and martyrdom; and Mr. Emerson found the earliest occurrence, so far, of them and their symbolism in an authentic work of St. Ambrose. But there was no ground for asserting the original source to be here. Nor is it the Proper Preface for St. Cecilia's day in the Ambrosian missal, from which both legends make a long quotation; the Proper Preface merely reflects some earlier version of the legend, and its date can hardly be determined. Nor in the gospel of pseudo-Matthew (or “Liber de ortu B. Mariae et infantia Salvatoris”), which has been suggested as “probably the source of the whole medieval conception of the symbolism of the two crowns of martyrdom and virginity.” The righteous Abel is here said (cap. vii) to have received two crowns. But not to mention the fact that they are not of flowers, while one crown is for his virginity, the other is not for his own innocent death (though later so misunderstood) but for his acceptable offering to God. Further, this pseudo-gospel seems to be not older than the eighth or ninth century, and this detail is not found in its main source, the “Protevangelium of James.” The early metaphorical examples collected from Sts. Cyprian and Jerome by Miss R. D. Cornelius are mentioned later.

It is now more than forty years ago that the first serious attempt was made to classify the several versions of the Pricke of Conscience according to the MSS which were then known. On the basis of three test-passages selected from approximately the beginning, the middle and the end of the poem (vv. 1836-1927, 5126-5204, 9335-9394, according to the line-numbers in Morris's edition) the MSS were divided into four main families, designated respectively by the symbols, Y, X ii, C, and Z, of which the fourth (Z) represents the Northern version which was printed by Morris.

Few of Milton's lines have called forth more comment and interpretation than lines 130-131 of Lycidas, which form the climax of the denunciation of corruption in the clergy:

But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

For example, Professor C. G. Osgood has suggested that an allusion to “the iron flail of Talus” was intended—a supposition that would link the “two-handed engine” in an interesting way to Milton's avowed admiration for Spenser and to the uprooting of the hills in the war in heaven. This interpretation, however, while it might enrich the metaphor, would make Milton's words voice only a vague hope that some agency, as yet unknown, would punish the corruption of the clergy. And such vagueness in Milton's mind hardly agrees with his deliberate confidence in the accomplishment of the reforms he advocated—a confidence which he maintained, even in the face of an obviously changing popular attitude, until the Restoration was fully wrought.

That John Bunyan had read at least the first book of Spenser's Faerie Queene, and had transformed certain adventures of the Red Cross Knight into the adventures of his own hero in Pilgrim's Progress, is a statement which has been frequently made. And, indeed, the idea has much reason on its side. The parallel between a series of incidents in Spenser's first book and a series in Pilgrim's Progress is fully as close as many another which has been held sufficient to establish a literary relationship. To Spenser's House of Holinesse, with its porter, its four grave damsels, its sober entertainment of the knight, corresponds Bunyan's House Beautiful. To the closing episode of the Red Cross Knight's sojourn at the House of Holinesse, his sight of the pilgrim's road and of Hierusalem from the near-by Mount of Contemplation, corresponds the view which Christian, from the top of the House Beautiful, has of the Delectable Mountains, from which, in the course of the story, he is to see the Celestial City itself. To the immediately succeeding conflict with the dragon, to the monster's fiery breath and horrid shrieks, to the hero's distress and eventual triumph, and particularly to the miraculous restoration of the wounded knight through the agency of the Tree of Life, corresponds Christian's battle with Apollyon, fought in the Valley of Humiliation, just after he has parted from the damsels of the House Beautiful. When to the parallel between these series of incidents in The Faerie Queene and in Pilgrim's Progress is added a certain similarity between the allegorical significances of these incidents, as well as a much more doubtful likeness between Spenser's Despair and the Giant Despair of Bunyan, some sort of relationship between the earlier and the later author appears evident enough.

In spite of Lanson's well known edition of Voltaire's Lettres Philosophiques, students have shown comparatively little curiosity concerning the implications which might be drawn from the number of those letters which deal with Quakers and from the fact that those four letters are the first of the series. Lanson, without making any claim to completeness, has suggested possible sources other than personal contact for Voltaire's knowledge of Quakers, and Morize has called attention to an account of them given by Sorbière. Nevertheless the actual extent of French interest in Quakers, and the number of publications concerning them were far greater than either of the above commentaries would suggest.

Although Puritans in the Elizabethan period were of many varieties, dramatists agreed in representing them by a single type. Whether this type was originally drawn from life, or was evolved from the presentation of the Hypocrite in the morality plays, there can be no doubt that the conventional Puritan of the Elizabethan stage was little more than an abstraction. Real Puritans even then were of many minds: some stood for Calvinism and some for re-baptism; some for a militant church and some for a passive; some were democratic and would let the congregation rule, and some believed in a presbyterian form of government. Others joined the Puritans merely because they objected to so much royal interference. The existence of so many diverse views among the Puritans may to some extent have necessitated a broad characterization of them. Thompson has shown, however, that even when dealing with a particular sect, as for example the Family of Love, Elizabethan playwrights failed to discriminate.

In his study of The History of John Bull, Dr. Teerink by clearing up the curious dating of the Examiners—he shows that each number appeared on the second Thursday mentioned—has thereby fixed the dates of publication of the five parts of The History (March 6, March 18, April 17, May 9, July 31). He has also determined at least approximately the dates at which the several pamphlets were written, and has thrown light upon the matter in the pamphlets by references to historical events.

If philosophy is the love of wisdom unconditioned, Shelley was as truly a philosopher as Plato; but if, as the Greeks taught, it is the love also of order, his right to the title may be questioned. There is some justice in the allegation that he was not a systematic thinker. Being an enthusiast rather than a critic, he made little effort to reduce his multiform ideas and impressions to strict order; if a new opinion seemed good in itself he was inclined to acknowledge it without first ascertaining whether or not it was consistent with others previously avowed. With the diffusive imagination of the dreamer he erected vast and indistinct outlines of theory wherein the logical mind seeks in vain for substance and particulars, though they harmonize well enough with the idealist's habit of generalization. Avoiding the word philosophy on account of this lack of system, I prefer to use the word doctrine in refering to the body of Shelley's opinion concerning Love.

The student of Friedrich Hebbel cannot proceed very far without being impressed by his robustness. To cite a single illustration of his emphatic, indeed violent, language, in his Genoveva (III, 10), Golo, having reached the climax of his illicit intentions, rushes at the heroine and exclaims: “Nun bist du mein.” A struggle ensues. Golo hurls the crucifix from Genoveva and says:

. . . . Und ob der Heiland selbst
Sich stellen wollte zwischen Dich und mich:
Zu seinen sieben Wunden gäb' ich ihm
Die achte. . . .

Stronger language than that can hardly be used; but in such exemplifications of rhetorical virility Hebbel's works abound.

During 1817-1818, Ralph Waldo Emerson furnished himself with lodgings at Harvard College by serving as the president's Freshman. His activities as messenger to President John Thornton Kirkland and to the faculty reached their high point when Emerson, at the close of the college year, formally distributed to his classmates official notices of their class standing and of their honors.