Eilífs pôrsdrâpa gilt als das schwierigste der mythologischen Skaldengedichte. Weder im Hinblick auf den Gesamtinhalt noch in Bezug auf Einzelfragen der Interpretation ist Einigkeit erzielt worden. Verantwortlich dafur ist weniger unsere mangelnde Kenntnis der Skaldenkunst als die schlechte Ueberlieferung.

The metrical romance Sir Launfal, with its six Middle English versions and two French sources, is rich in material for an investigation of one phase of practical literary criticism in Mediaeval England. Each redactor of the story made certain changes, which when compared with the changes made by the others, and when classified and analyzed with them will not only yield information about the editorial practice of the redactors but will also reveal something of their theory of literary criticism. Such an investigation of the English versions of Sir Launfal, however, must be postponed until the relationships of these to their sources can be made clear. The views so far advanced regarding the relationship of Lanval and Graelent show that there is little agreement on, and hence no satisfactory clarification of, the point.

Chievrefueil,the shortest and perhaps the most charming of the lays by Marie de France, has troubled critics because, unlike her other poems, it seems to lack clarity. Is it not fair to assume, however, that in this instance the usual limpidity and forthrightness of Marie's narrative style may have been clouded by her modern interpreters, rather than by Marie herself? I hope to show that to her mediaeval audience the lovely lines of Chievrefueil presented no difficulties whatsoever, needed no esoteric subtleties for their understanding, and that their Old Norse translator as well as the scribes of both our surviving manuscripts readily comprehended Marie's lucid phrases.

The Canzoniere of Petrarch contains poems written at various times through the long years of the poet's life. It is not a collection made toward the end of his life in a single editorial effort, nor is it a mere gradual accumulation of poems: it is a selective and ordered collection, the fashioning of which, begun in Petrarch's youth, continued to the day of his death. In the present study I am trying to trace the whole course of the evolution of the collection. Much work has been done hitherto, by many scholars, with reference to particular stages or phases of that evolution; but the present study is, I believe, the first to undertake to reconstruct the entire process. Some of the material herein contained is derived from earlier studies, and some of it is new.

While some of the most interesting questions regarding the early history of the Canterbury Tales will undoubtedly never be settled, it seems equally certain that in the full corpus of variants prepared by Professors Manly and Rickert evidence lies embedded which little by little should add to our understanding of the conditions in which the first manuscripts were prepared, hence, possibly, lead to a clearer picture of the situation when Chaucer died. The present article will deal with the lost ancestor of the manuscript family which Dr. Manly and Dr. Rickert have called group d, that ancestor to be designated hereafter as √d. Section I will be devoted to the origin of the material used in the preparation of √d; Section II to the √d editor's handling of that material.

Recent studies have made evident the profound effect of natural science, especially of physics and astronomy, upon English neo-classical literature. In several of these studies, it has been remarked that Matthew Prior's writings contain many passages referring to scientific doctrines and manifesting an unusual attitude toward them. There has been, however, no thorough investigation of the rôle played by the new science in Prior's thought.

A. W. Pollard, in his brief bibliographical introduction to the Macmillan two-volume edition of Sterne (1924), has written: “Tristram Shandy is full of surprises, and not the least remarkable of them is the fact that its publication was spread over eight years, thus further accentuating the very leisurely rate of progress of the story itself.” I can attest to many surprises that await the man who looks into the history of the publication of this novel; and these notes—although they solve none of the vexing bibliographical problems—are designed to give a loosening tug to some of these knots. A brief history of the publication of Tristram Shandy runs:

Johann Caspar Lavater is one of the three writers personally known to Goethe whose names are mentioned most often in Dichtung und Wahrheit. The other two are Herder and Merck: Herder, whose stimulating influence on Goethe may be easily discerned in countless passages of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers and whose Vont Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele has been suggested “as a more probable (and more systematic) source of psychological information for Goethe than the vague ‘Sturm-und-Drang-Psychologie’ sometimes indicated as the framework of the novel”; Merck—“dieser eigne Mann, der auf mein Leben den größten Einfluß gehabt”, Goethe declares in Dichtung und Wahrheit—who in 1772 played a rôle in Goethe's life very like that of the far blinder and less effectual Wilhelm in the story of Werther, and who in 1774 insisted that Goethe submit Die Leiden des jungen Werthers for publication without making any revisions in the manuscript.

In an era when many English writers were becoming identified with a single publisher, Walter Savage Landor distinguished himself by the singularity of dealing with perhaps more publishers than any other writer in English literature. Not taking into account the editors of periodicals, Landor's separate volumes (sometimes, to be sure, mere pamphlets) made their appearance from the houses of at least twenty-eight publishers in the seventy years of his productivity. The story of his relations with his publishers, then, will obviously not be a simple one, and yet it throws a great deal of light both on Landor himself and on the condition of his text.

In the studies devoted to the literary growth of Novalis the roots that lower into the realm of Shakespearean art and thought have strangely been overlooked. Such omission is not entirely unwarranted in view of the seeming disparity in substance and character between the works of the two poets. And yet the assumption that Novalis should have remained impervious to the “fine frenzy” of Shakespeare, when all of his friends and literary companions came under the spell of it, must give us pause. Literary “influences” do not always proceed along the path of material evidence; they are forces that often come to light in forms and directions which we least expect. A poet as sensitive and unpredictable as Novalis is no exception; he strove to be unique and master of his own existence and style, although the evidence shows that the poetic art of Shakespeare vitally contributed to the fruition of the Hymnen an die Nacht.

Wordsworthians have long been puzzled and perhaps a little distressed by the poet's apparent shift in political opinion. It is curious that in all the discussion that has resulted no one has said much about Wordsworth's rather vigorous life as a man of business. The story begins with the popular picture of Wordsworth “virtuous, simple, and unaffectedly restricting every want and wish to the bounds of a very narrow income”, with his “little cottage, and the sister and wife dressing the mutton leg in the same room where it was to be eat.” There is probably some truth behind this picture, though it belongs to an earlier period than that of Scott's letter. For some years after his father's death (1784) Wordsworth very likely had more expectations than cash. But since his uncles and guardians were prepared to contribute almost 460 to his college expenses, Wordsworth's only real hardship must have been in not having his own money at hand. Moreover Wordsworth's father, who, in succession to his father and to his cousin, John Robinson, the favorite of George II, had been attorney and land-agent to the Earl of Lonsdale, left only part of his estate tied up in the famous debt owed by the Earl. It is difficult to determine the size of the remainder. Words worth's elder brother, had about 100 a year; and there seems to have been other real and personal property. Gordon Wordsworth, working from the account of his greatgrandfather, lists the following property as belonging at some time to John Wordsworth: the Sockbridge estate; “the various ‘Cattle Gates’ upon the moor”; Ingmire Close, which he had bought from his father-in-law, and which gave him a vote in Cumberland; two fields near Cockermouth, which had cost 200; and “other small properties in various parts of Cumberland.” And the other children must have had some share in an estate at Newbiggin, in Westmorland.

Coleridge's interest in philology, more specifically in English linguistics, was one manifestation—by no means the least important—of his amazing myriad-mindedness. His lectures, essays, notes, and reported conversations abound with allusions, comments, and speculations on the nature and problems of language in general and of English in particular; and his experiments in vocabulary bear additional testimony to his interest in the subject. Although increasing attention has recently been paid to this aspect of his genius, a systematic study of the subject awaits the publication of a definitive edition of his works. Nevertheless, an attempt might be made to examine certain limited phases of his interest in linguistics, particularly his theories about the nature and development of language, his observations on the character of English, and his own remarkable contributions to the enrichment of its vocabulary.

Emerson saw in the art of poetry a process veiled in mystery, and no one fully acquainted with his writings is unaware of the manifold ways in which Emerson approached that mystery in an attempt to explain it. As early as 1838, he began what he hoped would be a long poem on the poet and his art. Occasionally returning to the composition over a period of some years, in the end he left only fragments of his original plan. The essay entitled “The Poet”, published in 1844, integrated more fully many of the conclusions to which Emerson had come on the subject. But still he was apparently unsatisfied. Further early experiments in suggesting the function of the poet are revealed in four poems in the 1847 collection of verses. In “The Problem”, “Saadi”, and “Bacchus” Emerson viewed in different ways the origin of the artist's and poet's power. And in the last poem, entitled “Merlin”, he turned back, for the embodiment of the ideal poet, to the ancient bard.

Mr. R. H. Wilenski protests against the common belief that Ruskin was a kind of Art-Dictator of England in the eighteen-fifties. Ruskin, he says, was not a best-selling author during that decade; nor, on the other hand, was he respected by established artists and architects. So slight was his repute, indeed, that his letters to the Times in May 1851 can have done little to influence either the general or the specialist public in favor of pre-Raphaelitism. This drastic revision of accepted notions has had surprisingly little effect. In Mr. Paul Bloomfield's William Morris, Ruskin appears once more as the critic who gave “status” to the Pre-Raphaelites; and Mr. William Gaunt declares that on May 13, 1851, “an eagle scream was heard, a mighty talon hovered over the correspondence columns of The Times. It was Ruskin to the rescue. The Pre-Raphaelites had found a champion.” Neither of these writers mentions Wilenski's dissent.

Malcolm El Win'S treatment of Charles Reade's documentary method is for the most part sound, yet his suggested sources for the “flood scenes” of Put Yourself in His Place (1870) are incomplete and misleading. While he is correct in saying that Reade “enacted his principal researches at Sheffield”, and that “the scene of the novel [Sheffield] is thinly disguised under the name of Hillsborough”, he is wrong in assuming that Reade derived his “flood scenes” from the materials included in one of his notebooks.

Como es sabido, Antonio Machado discurre sobre innumerables temas divinos y prof anos por boca de su sabio y occurrente profesor de Retórica, Juan de Mairena. Este professor apócrifo no se cansa de repetir que la poesía es un arte temporal.