The Spanish scholar, Ramón Menéndez Pidal, who has of late been engaged in the work of resurrecting Spanish epic matter of the Middle Ages, has several times called attention to a curious form of lay communion recorded in certain traditions examined by him. Thus, in the tragic account of the seven Infantes of Lara which we find in the chronicle called the Estoria de los Godos, it is stated that the seven brothers, before beginning their last sad battle, “gave communion and confessed all their sins, one to another” (comulgaron e confesaron todos sus pecados unos á otros). On this passage Menéndez Pidal comments as follows (Leyenda de los Infantes de Lara, Madrid, 1896, p. 36): “This sort of priestly function, which, in default of clergy, relatives exercised one for another, was a very orthodox doctrine for the minstrels (juglares), and it even existed as a real custom during the Middle Ages.” He cites the noted instance in the chanson de geste Aliscans, according to which Count William not only heard the confession of his dying nephew, Vivian, but also gave him by way of communion some “pain benoït,” which the Count is said to have brought with him in his scrip (vv. 826 ff.). For other Old French examples of this lay administration of the most august of sacraments, Menéndez Pidal refers to Leon Gautier, La chevalerie (Paris, 1890, pp. 44 ff.), where, in fact, no few are mentioned, in all of which, however, the species of the communion is symbolical, being either grass or leaves.

In the Arthurian romances the term Round Table is employed in three significations. Most commonly it denotes a brotherhood of knights; very rarely—though of course this is the primary meaning—it is used actually for the table itself; and finally it designates a courtly festival celebrated by Arthur on some great feast day, usually Pentecost. This last meaning of the expression is the one with which the present paper is especially concerned.

Within the last decade students of German in America have been brought to a fuller consciousness of the great debt which American culture owes to the German Fatherland. On this side of the water the Americana Germanica and its successor, the German American Annals, edited by Prof. Learned, have not only thrown much light on the linguistic, literary and cultural relations of the two countries in the past, but have also served as a stimulus in calling the attention of scholars to many points of contact hitherto overlooked. On the other side of the ocean, Ludwig Viereck, in his book Zwei Jahrhunderte deutschen Unterrichts in den Vereinigten Staaten, has given German scholars a clear historical account of the part which German instruction has played and is still playing in American education.

Most literary productions are definitely accepted as the work of certain men, whose personality is associated with, and in a measure fixed by, their writings. Cases are not uncommon, however, in which the originality of a book is dubious, or its authorship uncertain; and students of literature are then called upon to decide whether a work, or a passage in a work, is the product of one man's brain, or of another's. In other words, they must determine the personality back of the written words.

The lay of Yonec is composed of 562 lines of eight syllables, riming in couplets. The substance of this charming lay of Marie de France is as follows:—

There lived in Britain an old knight, who was so jealous of his young wife's beauty that he confined her in a tower and placed her under the care of his sister, an aged widow. The knight passed his time in the chase, while his young wife had no solace but in her tears. One morning in April, after he had set off on his usual occupation, the fair lady began her lamentations as she was wont to do. She execrated the hour when she was born, and the avarice of her parents, who had married her to an old jealous tyrant.

French fléchir < Old French fleschir < fleschier, “to bend,” < *flexicare < flexus < flectere, “to bend.”

French fléchir, O. F. fleschir, fleskir has been derived by Förster, Zeitschrift f. rom. Phil., III, p. 262, from a Latin *fleskire < *fiescus < flexus. The assumption of the shift of ks to sk is defended by an appeal to alaskir from laxus, seemingly showing the same metathesis. This phonetic step, which must be assigned to a Latin period, is in both instances certainly unjustifiable, although it has been admitted by excellent authorities. In the Dictionnaire général we find French lâcher derived from a type *lascare < laxare. Here the assumption of metathesis seems to go back to Diez, Etymologisehes Wb., pp. 188 f., who cites as analoga Campanian fisquer for fixer and lusque for luxe; but these forms clearly represent popular deformations of learned words and are accordingly irrelevant.

Among unfinished stories the Squire's Tale holds a prominent place. Milton, in a familiar passage, lamented its fragmentary condition, and all other lovers of good literature have shared his regret. Two persons have attempted to finish the tale “half told.” Spenser's completion is well-known. Well known, and somewhat notorious, too, is the laborious ambition of John Lane. His dull lines, having neither anything in common with Chaucer nor any native worth, can be of only curious interest to students of literature. They but remind us that the story of “Cambuscan” will never be wholly told.

The main object of this study is to call attention to certain characteristics of style that may serve as evidence in determining questions of authorship and relation of plays within the period treated; to develop a small and, perhaps, rather rough instrument of research, which will hardly rise to the dignity of a “test,” but may serve as a useful auxiliary to more significant criteria. No attempt has been made to complete the study on the rhetorical side; attention has been given generally only to such matters as seemed important for the main purpose. A simple but sufficiently precise terminology has been used, and it has not been thought worth while to discuss its relation to the formal terminology of ancient or modern rhetorical treatises. All the forms here discussed are found in contemporary poetry other than the drama, especially in the work of the sonneteers.

Before the history of Italian bestiary literature can be satisfactorily written, considerable preliminary work remains to be done. When Lauchert published his Geschichte des Physiologus (Strassburg, 1889), although he devoted a certain amount of space to the poets from the Sicilian school to Ariosto, he was not aware that any bestiaries earlier than that of Leonardo da Vinci existed in Italian prose. Three years later, Goldstaub and Wendriner, Ein Tosco-Venezianischer Bestiarius (Halle, 1892), published the text of a manuscript belonging to the Biblioteca Comunale at Padua, and also an account of seven other manuscripts, all of which are in Florentine libraries. This book (cited hereafter as G-W) is the most comprehensive study of the Italian bestiaries now available, and may safely be taken as the basis for further investigation. The present paper, based in large part on work done in the libraries of Florence, Naples and Paris, is offered as a contribution to the study of the subject, and will, it is hoped, be of value in indicating a large amount of material, including several important manuscripts, which was entirely unknown to Goldstaub and Wendriner. An important phase of the subject, namely, the use of bestiary material by the Italian poets of the thirteenth century, has been investigated by Dr. M. S. Garver, of Yale University, in a dissertation which he hopes to publish soon.