From his college days onward Coleridge considered himself, and was considered by his intimate friends, the champion of religion, and particularly of the Christian religion. That this championing of Christianity was frequently attested in his letters and writings; that the most ambitious poem of his youth—Religious Musings— was written in the spirit of its title; that he occasionally preached from Unitarian pulpits; that all his later prose writings were predominantly religious; that he at no time considered the writing of poetry his prime purpose—these facts lead to the conclusion that religion was the dominating interest throughout most of his life.

Through the kindness of Professor R. M. Mitchell, of Brown University, who has sent me his copy of Venus in Rom, I am now able to give an account of Wilibald Alexis's rendering of the story of Venus and the ring. The materal is handled very freely — tant pis. The scene is laid in the Rome of the Renaissance, where (as one of the characters says) “winkt uns das Alterthum lockend in seine Wunderwelt zurück.” The first half— the whole is a novelette of thirty thousand words—is very slow-moving. Hubert von Stein, a German nobleman, has come to Rome to visit his friend, Theodor Savelli; who has, however, mysteriously disappeared. There are glimpses of Roman social life, of a necromancer and hermit named Palumbus, of the beautiful Viola Gritti, of Savelli's half-deserted palace (with a broken statue which has injured the workmen who were removing it), and even of Raphael painting in the Vatican. And there are violent thunder storms, strange meetings, dreams, visions, at night; a manifest attempt to create an atmosphere of the supernatural. The latter half is more lively. Savelli has appeared, half insane; he tells of a ball game on the day of his wedding, of putting the inconvenient ring on a Venus statue, of his consequent marriage with the goddess and fearful visits to the Venusberg. Hubert's wife Mathilde comes from Germany to find her husband … with a Roman mistress, Faustine, and a baby. Enter Martin Luther. There is an attempt on Leo X's life, a street riot, in which Hubert, denounced as a heretic, defends himself for several pages single-handed against the mob, escapes by leaping into the Tiber, is rescued by his mistress (who dies defending him), and counter-rescued by his faithful spouse. At the end Savelli, still insane, regains his ring— not, however, through Palumbus's aid,—returns to his wife Viola, persuades her to drink poison, burns his palace after an elaborate funeral, and becomes a pilgrim. Palumbus dies. Mathilde and Hubert return to Germany, with little Guido, Faustine's son.

German lexicographers are practically unanimous in deriving Kartaune, together with its variant Kartauwe, from an Italian word quartana, interpreted to mean either ‘a gun of the fourth magnitude’ or one ‘which shoots a ball of 25 pounds.‘ Kluge, for example, says:

The question of rising and falling rhythm in English verse has received such various and confusing treatment in recent metrical discussion that further consideration is evidently necessary. It is my purpose to point out the factors that make verse rhythm rising or falling, and to emphasize the importance of vocabulary as one of these factors.

In the June issue of last year (vol. XXXIV, no. 2, pp. 225 ff.) Mr. A. H. Gilbert published supplementary notes to my old paper on Spenser's imitations from Ariosto. Since he has brought the matter forward once more, I may as well supplement his supplement with a few stray addenda of my own, which I have stumbled on at intervals since 1897. Some of these were first observed by Upton, whose notes, as quoted in Todd's edition of 1805, had at that time escaped my attention. The list is confined to the ground covered by my old paper; it has nothing to do with the field opened by Mr. Gilbert, Spenser's conclusions and transitions in the manner of Ariosto.

Of all the agencies involved in the great world-war, the newspapers, at the outbreak of hostilities, were more ready than any other for the demands placed upon them. Regiments had to be raised, munitions and supplies had to be provided, and means of transportation, in the face of dangers never confronted before, had to be assured. But the special correspondents were at once ready to take their posts at the front, and the newspapers at home were equipped to put the news in the most graphic form before the reading public.

Separate editions of Milton's History of Britain appeared in 1670, 1677, 1695, and 1818. It has been included in all the important collections of his prose works. In 1706, moreover, Dr. White Kennett, whose Complete History of England is a series of historical writings from the pens of various authors, chose Milton's work to do duty for the period preceding the Norman Conquest. Foot-notes were added, though of no remarkable value. The first of Kennett's three folio volumes was republished in 1719; in 1870 Milton's history, and along with it two of the other contributions to the first volume, were reprinted under one octavo cover; in 1878 appeared a stereotype reproduction of the volume of 1870.

Of the several agencies whose joint functioning made possible the Elizaibethan theatre, the most neglected, the least understood, and yet in some respects the most important, is the dramatic company. The history and organization of the playhouses have long since attracted the attention of scholars, and the individual fortune of the playwrights and actors has been studied from many points of view. Research on the dramatic companies, on the other hand, has taken but one direction. Fleay, Maas, and Murray have gone far to establish the chronology of the companies, but their real place in the history of the Elizabethan theatre has not been established. General works on the Elizabethan drama and theatre have failed to give them the attention they deserve, and the general student of the period hardly realizes that upon the companies rested a considerable share of the financial responsibility for the drama and the entire burden of producing it. Nor is it difficult to understand why the dramatic companies have been neglected. Writers upon our period have been content to treat of Elizabethan actors in a manner fitting those of all succeeding periods. The function of the modern actor is to act. The theatrical capitalist and the specialized skill of the producer relieve him of all the financial, and a substantial part of the artistic, responsibility which rested upon Elizabethan actors. If, however, the Elizabethan actor had greater responsibilities, he had also greater opportunities. The Elizabethan drama owes far more than has yet been realized to the fact that many of the playwrights and all of the producing managers were great actors, who knew the audience intimately enough to gauge its capacities, who acknowledged no paymaster or employer but that audience, and whose instincts partook alike of the shrewdness of the successful business man and the daring of the artist. This producing and managerial function of the companies justifies a closer investigation than has yet been made of their place in the theatrical activities of the time and of the business organization which enabled them to hold it.