To anyone who has followed the development of the theory of ballad origins, it is well known that there are two main theories in the field for our suffrages at the present time: the communal; and the individualistic, literary, or anti-communal theory. The last name of the second theory is indicative of the attitude of its upholders, for they have in truth been largely occupied with a criticism of the communalists, always demanding of them more and ever more light, and ever, like doubting Thomas, refusing to believe until an actual ballad dating from at least the time of Hereward the Wake is produced for their fingers to touch. The communalists, by an appeal to the well-established facts of folk-lore and ethnology, maintain that the ballads are the product of the communal stage of society in Europe, in which the populace held festive dances, and in which there was actual improvisation of certain traditional lyric narratives. These narratives had their verse-form determined by the dance; and the whole poem from beginning to end was the product of the people, and was not in any way composed by literary persons. Moreover, these ballads have been handed down by oral tradition, and live in the mouths of the people. Of course, there is no claim that one expects to find in the ballads of the collections anything which springs directly from the ancient source; all that is claimed is that the poetic form is handed down, and, so to say, the general ballad tradition. This claim of long descent is substantiated by the very features of the ballads as they exist to-day; by their impersonality, their refrain, their depicting of but a single situation, their use of incremental repetition. Thus, it is maintained, the ballad is not derived from any pre-existing literary material, but is the result of a primary impulse which is as old as man, and out of which the various forms of communal poetry spring. Finally, the ballad is not connected with the popular tale; “it follows an entirely different line and springs from an entirely different impulse.”

Satires are of two general types. Those in which the general characteristics of humanity are subjected to ridicule, and those in which the attack is directed at specific individuals and definite events. The first, since humanity has not greatly changed thru the centuries, always retains about the same amount of interest. Nor is it ever much resented because, as Swift says, “satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for any offense by any, since every individual person makes bold to understand it of others, and very wisely removes his particular part of the burden upon the shoulders of the world, which are broad enough, and able to bear it.” This however by no means applies to satire of the second type. There the contemporaneous interest, heightened by the excitement of the knowledge of the persons or the events, is purchased at the expense of posterity enlightened only by a depressing foot-note. Unhappily it is to the second class that Skelton's satires belong. In his lifetime he was palpitatingly alive; as is shown by Hall, his epigrams were on everyone's lips, and even before his death, as in Eastall's Hundred Mery Talys (1526), he was a celebrated character; today his satires are like old riddles the answer to which has been forgotten. The reason for this condition is not only that he dared not, or cared not, to be too plain, but also that, owing to an absence of dates, we cannot be sure exactly to what period his allusions refer. The earliest editions that we have, altho undated, are at least twenty years after his death. This may be because all the copies of the early editions have perished, or because, as he himself intimates in Colin Clout (1239-41), no early editions were allowed to be printed. A second result arising from this condition is that equally we can never be sure of his text. Consequently his satires, at times apparently intelligible, are yet as a whole hopelessly confused.

The Provençal biographer's account of Jaufre Rudel's dying visit to the “faraway lady” was first seriously called in dispute by E. Stengel. Afterward, Gaston Paris disposed of the whole legend, as well as of the general reliability of the Provengal biographers, whose testimony had been accepted without question half a century before by Fauriel and others. Monaci, while granting the legendary character of “Melissenda,” attempted to identify Jaufre Rudel's beloved with Eleanor of Aquitaine. Appel, arguing from the number of religious phrases occurring in Jaufre's poems, concluded that the lady of his devotions was the Virgin. Appel's theory, supported as it is by a vast erudition, is confuted in my opinion by P. Savj-Lopez. Giulio Bertoni would adopt a middle ground between those who, like Appel, maintain the idealism of Jaufre's love, or like Monaci, believe that his passion was fixed upon a woman of earth, more or less identified by allusions in his verse. Ramiro Ortiz would accept the conclusions of Monaci, etc., admitting the reality of the lady, but feels that either Jaufre Rudel was directly influenced by certain passages of William of Poitiers, or else some of the minstrels who sang Jaufre's poetry made interpolations borrowed from William.

The Divine Comedy contains three examples of the repetition of a word or a phrase at the beginning of successive lines, one where the first word of a line is repeated from the last of the preceding line, another pas-

There is no agreement among Shakespearian critics with regard to the organic unity of Twelfth Night. Dr. Furnivall in one place believes that “the leading note of the play is fun.” In another place he says less aptly that “the lesson is, sweet are the uses of adversity.” Morton Luce records his “impression that the perfect unity of Twelfth Night lies in the wise good humor that pervades the play.” Schlegel is representative of a group of critics who believe that “love regarded as an affair of the imagination rather than of the heart, is the fundamental theme running through all the variations of the play.” Most commentators, however, have agreed that the leading thought of this play may be discovered in its title; that the words Twelfth Night, or What You Will, are themselves the key-note of the play; that Shakespeare's first thought was to provide a comedy suitable for the festival. No one of these critics has thought that an organic idea has been more than incidental in this creation of pure mirth. So purely comic are its scenes, and so entirely sufficient are all of its incidents, that critics have not gone behind its gay life to look for an underlying moral law.