The Gesta Danorum of the twelfth-century Danish historian, Saxo Grammaticus, might fairly be expected to include stories corresponding, more or less, to those episodes of Beowulf the scene of which was the Danish court; in point of fact the Ingeld episode, at least, was known to Saxo, who gives us two versions of it, differing widely, it is true, from each other and from the English version, but demonstrably the same story in origin nevertheless. When however we turn to the chief adventure of Beowulf at the Danish court, the fight with Grendel (and that with Grendel's dam), the Saxonian parallel usually pointed out strikes one as extraordinarily far-fetched. I refer to Biarco's fight with the bear, an episode which Saxo disposes of in the following words:

Talibus operum meritis exsultanti novam de se silvestris fera victoriam prsebuit. Ursum quippe eximiae magnitudinis obvium sibi inter dumeta factum iaculo confecit comitemque suum Hialtonem, quo viribus maior evaderet, applicato ore egestum beluse cruorem haurire iussit. Creditum namque erat hoc potionis genere corporei roboris incrementa præstari.

A New study of the life of Robert Mannyng of Brunne finds its justification in the belief that one of Chaucer's most interesting predecessors in the art of story telling deserves to be better known than he is. Since all accounts of the life of Robert Mannyng are based upon his own statements about himself, the present attempt at a reinterpretation may be clarified by quoting the pertinent passages to begin with.

Commentators on the text of the Canterbury Tales have hitherto proceeded very largely on the basis of personal preferences, comparing the manuscript readings and accepting those which commended themselves to the judgment of the critic, and rejecting the others as due to perversions or carelessness on the part of the scribes. Obviously this method of determining the text represented an eclectic rather than a scientific process.

In that section of his “tale” which treats the deadly sin of Ire, Chaucer's Parson observes that from this sin come various “stynkynge engendrures,” including manslaughter, or homicide.

Though Gil Vicente was court dramatist for Manuel the Fortunate and for John III of Portugal and wrote his short dramatic pieces primarily for performance at court festivals, he recognized the worth of reproducing in his dialogue the rich and racy speech of the common people, and whenever possible he availed himself of all sorts of folk-lore material. Thus, we find him weaving ballads into his dialogue, ornamenting his plays with lyrical passages inspired by traditional songs and dances, and making use of games, superstitions, incantations, terms of abuse, and other popular elements. Gil Vicente, then, antedates Juan de la Cueva in his employment of ballad verses in the dialogue, and so becomes the first to essay a practice which later, under the genius of Lope de Vega, made popular poetry an integral part of the Spanish comedia.

What “connyng Laten bokys” provided the scientific data for John Rastell's The Nature of the Four Elements? There were many books to choose from, in fact, so many Rastell claims, that if translators would busy themselves turning them into English, “All subtell sciens in Englysche myght be lernyd.”

It is generally conceded that what differentiates the best work of Alarcón from that of his contemporaries in Spain is the serious moral purpose and the very practical code of morality that he develops. His best plays are also marked by realism of plot and characterization. They are, moreover, remarkably clean and free from objectionable elements. This is the spirit of his best plays and this is the spirit, too, of sixteenth-century Mexico as he knew it.

The power of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's intellect is not yet spent; few theologians—Catholic or Protestant—have wielded a major premise so cogently; that premise for him, hors de l'église, point de salut; and of this premise, the most impressive conclusion is still, after two hundred and fifty years, the work entitled Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes. It is quite true that his adversaries, for the moment dismayed by the appalling results of the Reformation, as therein portrayed, rallied and returned to the attack, asking whether, indeed, variation was necessarily so great an evil, whether in fact it was not the very genius of Protestantism; to which there is but one answer, and that pragmatic rather than metaphysical. But here, too, the Bishop of Meaux was singularly equipped, for the penchant of his thought is assuredly towards the Visible; the Six Avertissements aux Protestans sur les Lettres du Ministre Jurieu contre l'Histoire des Variations were in the nature of a brilliant counter-attack; they were to be the Bishop's last word on this question. What, asks Bossuet, is the result of disobedience to the Church Universal? He concludes, “que faute de se soumettre à une autorité si inviolable, on se contredit sans cesse, on renverse tous les principes qu'on a établis, on renverse la Réforme même et tout ce que jusqu'ici on y avoit trouvé de plus certain; et qu'enfin on se jette dans le fanatisme et dans les erreurs des Quakers.” His Ultima Thule, then, of nonsense, was the doctrine of the Society of Friends.

The Versailles edition of the Works and Correspondence of François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651–1715), Archbishop of Cambrai, reproduced again with some modifications in the Paris edition, is the best edition available; but it is incomplete and imperfect in many respects. This is true especially of the correspondence with its cumbersome classification, its doubtful identifications, its discrepancies and deficiencies in chronology. Fortunately, in recent years numerous additional works and letters of Fénelon have been published in books and periodicals, and these, together with a number of corrections and revisions which have been made of the correspondence, have served to supplement and to rectify our knowledge of Fénelon and his activities. It is the purpose of this paper further to modify and to complement this knowledge: first, by correcting an error made by the editors of the editions mentioned above, in mistaking the identity of the person to whom one of Fénelon's letters is addressed; secondly, by revising the text of this same letter as it is published; thirdly, by reproducing for the first time a Mémoire written by Fénelon, which seems either to have been unknown to the editors, omitted through mistake, or deliberately suppressed by them as unimportant.

L'exactitude des Mémoires de Mme de Vandeul a toujours été, en J plusieurs endroits, suspecte. La correspondance de Diderot nous a révélé quelques incompatibilités et a fourni matière à quelques déductions nouvelles; cet article en résume les conclusions.

Thomas Percy was a born scholar. He loved the meticulous detail-hunting his studies required—or he would not have done so much of it. But pure scholarship offered him little opportunity for advancement. Given a post, one might be a solitary worker, like Wanley, content with doing one's duty to the books without much interest in the public. And if Percy had obtained the assistant librarianship in the British Museum about which he inquired, he might have become a scholar of that type. But he was expecting scholarship to subserve literature as a means to clerical advancement. And clerical advancement required pull. Percy had no pull—he must make it himself. He must become widely known; his approach must be literary.

At first glance Franklin's little story, An Arabian Tale, appears to be one of the most insignificant and inconsequential of his writings. Economically composed in fewer than three hundred words, it scarcely covers a page in any printed text. But despite the simplicity and brevity of the tale, and the lack of any literary values of plot, suspense, or climax —it is, indeed, hardly a “tale” at all—it is surprising that the piece has been so consistently neglected, for it is of vital importance to the history of Franklin's thought.

Rosts Sendschreiben “Der Teufel, An den Kunstrichter der Leipziger Schaubühne (Altenau 1753,)” erschienen in Leipzig und Dresden vor der Herbstmesse, muβ, seiner Popularität halber, in vielen Nachdrucken verbreitet worden sein und fand dann später eine Wiederbelebung, allerdings mit Auslassung von acht besonders anzüglichen Versen und mit Entstellungen in Wort und Zeichensetzung, in Christian Heinrich Schmids Anthologie der Deutschen, Frankfurt und Leipzig 1770. Es ist wohl kaum zweifelhaft, daβ Goethe und Merck diese Anthologie, in der Lessing, Wieland, Herder, Mendelssohn und viele andere Gröβen der Zeit vertreten waren, kannten, denn Herr Schmid bemühte sich sehr bald, unter die Mitarbeiter der Frankfurter gelehrten Anzeigen aufgenommen zu werden, was ihm allerdings miβlang. Wir dürfen indessen sogar als wahrscheinlich annehmen, daβ der Leipziger Student Goethe, der Gottsched einen Bock schilt, Rosts Gedicht schon in der Originalfassung zu Gesicht bekommen hat, denn es ist ja nicht nur von literarischer Bedeutung, sondern zugleich witzig und treffend, und hat als eines der ersten und kräftigsten Pasquille in Knittelversen (zumal da Gottsched selber diesem Versmaβe für den Gebrauch in Satiren seinen priesterlichen Segen gab), in seiner urwüchsigen Hans-Sachsischen Art einen auβerordentlichen Eindruck gemacht. Um so verwunderlicher scheint es, daβ seine Wirkung auf Goethe, die wir hier als höchst wahrscheinlich und von unbeachteten Folgen zu erweisen suchen, übersehen worden ist, obwohl Flohr in seiner Geschichte des Knittelverses vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zurJugend Goethes (Berlin 1893) den ausgesprochenen Knittelverscharakter der Epistel erkannt und gewertet hat.

Jean Paul, der fast allmächtige Herrscher im Bereiche deutscher Prosa, hat bei verschiedenen Gelegenheiten bekannt, dass er gänzlich unvermögend sei, Verse zu schmieden. Solche Einseitigkeit ist ja in der Literatur an und für sich keine Seltenheit. Es gibt eine ganze Anzahl groβer Prosaisten, die keine oder doch nur vereinzelte und unbedeutende Verse geschrieben haben; es seien nur etwa Montaigne, Balzac, Sterne, Dickens, Hamann, E. T. A. Hoffmann, J. Gotthelf, Thomas Mann genannt. Bei Jean Paul war aber diese Unfähigkeit offenbar in ganz ungewöhnlichem Grade vorhanden. Und das muss umso mehr verwundern, als er doch, wenn man einmal die Unterscheidung zwischen Dichter und Schriftsteller gelten läβt, zweifellos als ein Dichter im vollen Gewichte des Wortes anzusprechen ist (obgleich er gewiss auch ein grosser Schriftsteller war). Hat ihn doch ein so strenger Forderer wie Stefan George die gröβte dichterische Kraft der Deutschen genannt. Mag er auch selber gelegentlich, wie Lessing, an seiner Berufung gezweifelt und alles von ihm Geleistete nur seinem Fleiss, seiner “Heuristik” zugeschrieben haben, so gab es doch wieder Stunden (in dem ungedruckten Tagebuch seiner Heidelberger Reise hat er in bescheiden-stolzen Worten eine solche verzeichnet), wo er es im tiefsten fühlte und wuβte, dass er ein echter Dichter sei. Ja die Art seiner dichterischen Begabung, wenn sie sich auch mit keiner der üblichen Gattungen voll deckte, lag doch mehr nach der lyrischen als nach der epischen oder gar der dramatischen Seite. Von einem Dichter, der von sich sagte: “Wenn mich eine Empfindung ergreift, daβ ich sie darstellen will, so dringt sie nicht nach Worten, sondern nach Tönen, und ich will auf dem Klavier sie aussprechen,” sollte man annehmen, daβ ihm die musikverwandteste Form, die lyrisch-metrische, am nächsten gelegen hätte. Er hat denn auch bekannt, daβ es ihm “in der hebenden Stunde” oft so gewesen sei, “als müβt' er sich durchaus ins Metrum stürzen, um nur fliegend fortzuschwimmen.” Aber wie er auf dem Klavier sich niemals in geordneten Bahnen, in festen Takten und bestimmten Melodien bewegte, sondern sich in freiestem Phantasieren dahinströmen Hess, gewissernassen die “unendliche Melodie” seines Bayreuther Nachfahren vorausahnend, so vermochte er auch in der Dichtung seine lyrischen Empfindungen nicht in die Fesseln eines einmal gegebenen, regelmäβig wiederkehrenden Zeitmasses zu legen. Treffend und witzig hat er sich einem Vogel verglichen, der mit aneinander gebundenen Füβen nicht fliegen könne.

In identifying Lady Oxford as Byron's political “tutelar genius” of 1813, as the “woman, who, amid all her fascination, always urged a man to usefulness or glory,” I have brought to light a certain speciousness in the interpretation accepted by Byron's biographers of his liaison with Jane Elizabeth Scott, Lady Oxford, as simply comparable to the story of Rinaldo overcome by indolence in the “Bower of Armida.” Miss Mayne and M. Maurois and even Miss Raymond have somehow overlooked the fact that Lady Oxford was a pupil of Home Tooke, the Reform “agitator” (to use Byron's admiring term), was sometime mistress and lifelong political “genius” of the Radical spokesman, Sir Francis Burdett—was, in short, a woman who did not content herself with “soothing” and enchanting Byron but rather “always” pressed him on “senatorial duties” and endeavored to make him an advocate “particularly in the cause of weakness.” Eywood was a pleasant bower, but Jane, it turns out, was not Armida—though Byron, eager to realize that dream of Tasso he had always cherished, took a cue from the picture of Armida and Rinaldo which she had hung in his room and let his fancy feed on the intensity of the passion which she inspired and “returned with equal ardour,” for the time preferring her sorcery to “parliamentary mummeries” of doubtful value in which she was urging him to engage. Byron liked her politics, but he wanted to escape politics for a while. He did not wish to think himself attached to her party, nor to any party. Similar conflicting emotions troubled Byron's dramatic hero Sardanapalus when his lovely Myrrha said, “I think the present is the wonted hour / Of council....”

In an article published in ELH I attempted to describe the intense admiration for Browning that existed in Pre-Raphaelite circles during the years 1847–56, and to suggest the importance of this admiration in furthering the growth of Browning's literary reputation. I pointed out that the proselytizing zeal of Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the chief source for the enthusiasm of his friends, and that the Browning worship of the whole group of Pre-Raphaelites reached its height at the time of the publication of Men and Women in 1855. In the present article I propose to trace the influence of Rossetti in kindling devotion to Browning's poetry, especially Men and Women, among certain Oxford undergraduates in the years immediately after the publication of Men and Women, and to draw conclusions about the significance of this in the story of Browning's gradual advance to fame.

Like every original artist, Hawthorne may be approached in a variety of ways, and each of these ways will add something to the ultimate picture of his mind and art. Most of the work that scholars have done on Hawthorne, however, has been historical and biographical, and the result has been that Hawthorne the artist and thinker has been relegated to the background. This is particularly regrettable when one remembers that he was the most complete artist of the New England renaissance, and in The Scarlet Letter the author of a book which as art transcends all other American novels. It is to fill out the contemporary conception of Hawthorne that his theory of art is here considered as it may be pieced together from allegory, preface, and chance remark. Focusing attention on his ideals in art makes certain the meaning of the prefaces, and an investigation of his doctrine of the artist gives an insight into his method of achieving his ideal. In brief, to study Hawthorne's literary theory is to discover the intellectual basis of his art, and to see his work from the inside is to arrive at a fresh sense of his intention. It was Goethe's conviction that the critic should first of all ask what the author had intended. If the following investigation makes for clarity, it should furnish an opportunity for a new appraisal of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

My purpose is to trace the evolution of the chief characters of Noire-Dame de Paris, with particular reference to the often neglected evidence of the author's notes and manuscript changes. Fortunately, the reliquat for this novel is exceptionally copious, including two general scenarios, which have been dated tentatively 1828 and 1830; several briefer outlines which apparently were intended as special scenarios for scenes or chapters; and approximately one hundred pages of fragments. It is thus evident from the outset that Notre-Dame de Paris, like les Misérables, was really the fruit of extensive preparation, even though the final version was completed under the lash in four and one-half months. In fact, contrary to a current school of opinion, the very “rapidité inconcevable” with which Victor Hugo occasionally wrote was apt to be the result, not the paradox, of a “longue élaboration.”

The central axiom of Mathew Arnold's cultural arithmetic is well known; less familiar is this curiously precise elaboration:

And, as the discipline of conduct is three-fourths of life, for our aesthetic and intellectual disciplines, real as these are, there is but one-fourth of life left; and if we let art and science divide this one-fourth fairly between them, they will have just one-eighth of life each.